Bladesinger - Keith Francis Strohm [24]
The three men unsaddled horses, pitched shelters, and gathered what wood they needed for their small cooking fire, while Marissa wandered deeper into the woods surrounding the Red Tree to prepare for her…
Her what? Taen didn't even know what to call it. Watching the giant elemental riddle that was the Red Tree, he wasn't sure that he would ever know what to call it. Here was a mystery that, like so many other things, went beyond his mastery. He worried about Marissa. For all of her knowledge and faith, she wasn't wychlaran. She was a stranger in this land, foreign, and there was no telling what the powers of Rashemen would do if she dared step foot beneath the tree.
Borovazk didn't seem concerned, and that did much to put his mind at ease. Something had happened at the stream when Marissa had knelt before the spirit of the water, something that obviously went deeper than just the normal paying of respect to the telthor. Ever since then, Borovazk had treated the druid differently. He was soft spoken around her-almost deferential. If the Rashemi ranger did not see any harm in what Marissa was about to do, who was he to gainsay him?
Yet Taen felt uneasy.
The half-elf walked quietly to where the ranger sat carving a piece of thick wood with a bronze-handled knife.
"Borovazk, are you sure that Marissa isn't in any danger?" Taen asked.
The ranger stopped his knife from cutting and looked at Taen. Borovazk's blue eyes gazed deeply into Taen's own. The half-elf grew uncomfortable beneath the weight of that stare, but he would not look away.
"Who can tell?" the ranger said at last. "Borovazk is no Old One; he has no power within to understand the Vyvadnya. Is witch-lore. Deep and dark. Borovazk think that the little one has more than just power within her. If she says her god sent her to the Red Tree, then Borovazk think that her god will protect her, eh. Besides," the Rashemi raised his knife to point back in the direction from which they had just traveled, "you saw what happened at the stream. Even the telthor acknowledge her. Borovazk thinks that the telthor know something we don't."
The ranger got to his feet and gave the half-elf's back a hearty slap. "No more worry, little friend," Borovazk continued. "You and I shall drink some jhuild and make our own witch-lore, eh?"
Taen smiled but said nothing more. Borovazk left to find his ever-full flask of firewine, leaving the half-elf alone with his thoughts. The sun had finally set. Here and there, stars glittered and gleamed in night's dark diadem. Taen stared at them for a moment, those holes in the darkness, and wondered what would happen this night. He wanted to believe the ranger, wanted to put down his fear like a weary soldier wants to put down his blade, but he couldn't. Fear was indeed a blade, and he found it embedded deep within his heart.
Cursing softly to himself, he took up a vantage point where he could keep Marissa in his keen elf sight all night long. Let Borovazk drink himself into insensibility, he would keep watch over the druid.
So he waited-under the dark sheet of night, with the wind in his hair and the soft hiss of leaf-whispers sighing in his ears.
CHAPTER 8
The Year of Wild Magic
(1372 DR)
Marissa touched the Red Tree.
Her right hand traced the path of deep rivulets and channels in its bark; the stump of her left hand pressed gently against its trunk. The druid had removed her glove as well as the rune-covered gauntlet she wore over the shattered skin and bone of her other arm. She was naked, skin on skin with the ancient tree. Beneath her touch, its bark felt rough-the old