Bladesinger - Keith Francis Strohm [23]
The druid watched his face change, as if he'd swallowed something bitter.
"No," Taen said after another moment of silence, "it's just-"
"Just what?" she interrupted. The spring wind had picked up, blowing several strands of Marissa's red hair across her face. She brushed them back irritably. "You've barely said anything to me since we left Mulptan," she continued, "and what you have said has been ruder than a pig farmer during the slaughter." This last she had spoken in Elvish, something that she knew would make the half-elf even more uncomfortable.
With the part of her mind that wasn't running red with anger, Marissa knew that this conversation wasn't going as she had planned at all. She needed to calm down. It was just that sometimes Taenaran's tortured soul made her want to reach out to him in comfort, and sometimes it made her want to slap some sense into him. She respected his pain and knew it wasn't simply maudlin claptrap. He had a right to feel it. His life-the things he had done. It was painful, and real life rarely turned out like tavern tales or those sappy songs requested by moon-eyed merchants' daughters. Still, Taen needed her, and if she was honest with herself, she knew that she needed him.
"Marissa," Taen began, "I'm… I am sorry. You know that. I've been feeling very strange ever since we crossed into Rashemen. It's as if everything seems somehow more real here. My past. My failure…" He stopped speaking.
Marissa reached out across the short distance between them and grabbed his hand. "Taen," Marrisa said softly, "you can't deny your past, or run from it, but you can be so busy trying that you end up denying your present. We are here, in Rashemen, for a purpose. Don't ignore that or the person that you are. Otherwise, you'll never become the person that you were meant to be."
Taen smiled, giving her hand a squeeze as he did so. "You sound like-" He hesitated.
"Her?" Marissa asked.
The half-elf nodded.
"She sounds like a very wise woman, Taenaran," Marissa said.
She released the half-elf's hand and kicked her horse into a trot. Let him sulk now, she thought. At least he knew that he didn't have to do so completely alone.
Now that she had spoken with Taen, her mind and heart felt free of the burden she had been carrying. By the time Borovazk called their halt, Marissa could think only of their destination-the Red Tree and whatever mysteries she would encounter beneath its branches.
* * * * *
The Red Tree stood like an ancient giant trapped between elemental forces. Its gnarled roots reached deep into the bones of the earth, seeking the marrow-wisdom of stone, while thick-boled limbs stretched toward the freedom of air, wind, and sky. Broad, ovate leaves, some of them dappled and covered with late-autumn red and gold, waved softly in the gentle evening wind. Light from the setting sun kissed the very tips of these leaves, as a noble might kiss the elegant fingers of a courtesan; they flickered and flamed beneath the dying light of the sun.
Taen stood a fair distance from the Red Tree and gazed upon its magnificence. All of Rashemen had made him feel small and insignificant beneath its broad expanse, but here, under the shadow of this ancient tree, the half-elf felt truly insubstantial. Perhaps it was simply that the Red Tree was somehow more real. Regardless, the half-elf knew that he was in the presence of a mystery older, perhaps, than some of the gods. Even dour Roberc sat in reverential silence after they had set up camp. No pipeweed or long pulls from the wineskin-the halfling simply sat, fierce Cavan laying docilely by his side, and looked thoughtfully at the giant tree.
When they had first arrived, all of them had spent a few moments alone with their own thoughts as they stood before the wonder of the Red Tree, though it had been Borovazk at the last who had indicated that they should set up camp a distance from the Red Tree. The site, he had explained, was