Chapter Twenty-Two

“Lady Thera!” A hand shook Thera’s shoulder.

Thera slowly released the grey wolf’s scruff. His eyes gleamed in the light of many torches. It was Alba bending over her, her forehead knotted. Her eyes widened as Thera winced.

“I’m…unharmed, First Sword.” Thera tried to twist her mouth into some sort of reassuring smile; she could not. Alba continued to stare. Her hand tilted Thera’s face to the light.

“Demon’s heart, Lady!”

“The blood isn’t mine…” said Thera, “…not mine.”

There was a scuffling at the cliff edge as two Elankeep soldiers stripped weapons and gear off the dead Memteth. They rolled the corpse over the edge.

“We’re burning ‘em.” Alba explained, glancing aside at the huge wolf. “It’s over, Lady Thera.”

Thera hugged the Elanraigh wolf and then raised herself stiffly. She could see the moon was high with a few tattered clouds tangling the stars. A friendly wind was blowing from shore to sea, dissipating the dark smoke from the pyre of Memteth dead.

Women’s voices called from the plateau below, “He’s a big ‘un. Who got him?”

“The Lady Thera!” was the reply shouted down by Alba’s two guards.

“No,” Thera rasped. She cleared her throat. “No. It was Farnash. I owe my life to Farnash.” Thera’s hand searched for him. The grey wolf flagged his ears and nosed her hand. He too had risen to his feet, alert and proud.

Thera felt a mental nudge. “First Sword Alba, I present Farnash, grey wolf of the Elanraigh.”

Alba’s eyes glinted whitely, but she nodded her head, “I believe we met once before.”

The grey wolf gaped his jaws in a good-humored fashion. His head butted Thera’s hand once more and he turned, moving swiftly to the trees. He turned at the tree line. “Sky Sister.”

“Blessings,” sent Thera, trusting that her heart would color the inadequate sending.

* * * *

“I must see my aunt—I feel it is most urgent.”

“Impossible,” replied Dama Ainise, the Salvai’s First Lady.

The healing mistress, Rozalda, drew her thick, straight brows together. “Lady Thera, our Salvai sleeps deeply. I have given her a draught to ease her pain.”

“Her wound…?”

Mistress Rozalda looked back toward the Salvai’s chamber door, and her voice was low and troubled. “It is not a severe wound. It is not that which takes her strength, though she is no longer young.”

Dama Ainise removed a filmy cloth from her sash, fluttered it open and touched it to her eyes. A sweet perfume wafted. “Rozalda! The wound is terrible! So much blood,” She pressed the cloth against her lips, her blue-veined eyelids fluttering.

Rozalda frowned, but said nothing.

Thera laid her hand on the healer’s arm. “I must see her myself; she might have words for me beyond your hearing.”

As the healing mistress stared forthrightly at her, Thera flushed. Her words sounded presumptuous, even to her own ears. Who was she to claim powers here, at the Salvai’s seat?

“I am sure if she had words for anyone, she would have spoken to me,” quavered Dama Ainise in her courtly accent, “for I have been her First Lady all these years.”

The healing mistress’ warm hand suddenly covered Thera’s. “As the Elanraigh wills, you shall see her.” With a swirl of green robe, she turned.

Blessings be! Thera sighed with some relief and followed in Mistress Rozalda’s wake. Dama Ainise’s light footsteps hurried behind them.

Ever since Alba had escorted Thera into the keep, voices, barely audible, had been swirling around Thera’s head—their whispers urging her make haste to this meeting.

They walked a long corridor slotted with latticed openings through which moonlight shone like paving stones at their feet. Mistress Rozalda indicated the Salvai’s door to Thera, and then stepped aside. Dama Ainise making as if to follow Thera, was halted by Rozalda plucking and holding her sleeve. With one heartrending glance at the Salvai’s closed door, Ainise allowed herself to be gathered into the crook of the healer’s arm.

The torch nearby shivered, sending shadows dancing up the wall. Rozalda murmured, as if to herself, “The wind rises.” She patted the shoulder of Dama Ainise, who wept into her gauze linen.

Thera’s hand rested on the door’s surface. Red cedar. Alive, and thrumming welcome. “The wind rises?” Something in the healing mistress’s tone held her—though the planes of Rozalda’s face were carved in shadow, Thera saw a silvery sheen on her cheek.

Mistress Rozalda pulled the hood of her cloak forward. “Lady, there are many wounded to be seen and tended. We will leave you here, if that be your will.”

Pressured by a sense of urgency from within the chamber, Thera nodded, and then pushed on the door, which opened easily to her touch. “I thank you, both,” she murmured. “I will stay with my aunt awhile.”

Rozalda bowed.

Dama Ainise’s slender fingers clenched her cloak into a tight gather of material at her neck. “Tell her we love her…” The First Lady’s lips moved as if she shaped words she could not speak. Rozalda placed a firm hand under her elbow and turned her away.

Thera entered the tower chamber. The lattices were thrown back from the windows—one overlooking the sea, and the other facing the darkness of the Elanraigh. A restless fire gusted in the fireplace. The chamber was spare and neat. Salvai Keiris lay unmoving in the tall, canopied bed.

Thera’s temples throbbed. She read the impression of a soul almost beating itself against the walls in its eagerness to be gone. The air was heavy with the scent of herbs and fragrant ointment. Her aunt’s left arm and shoulder were neatly bandaged and bound. Her other arm lay alongside her body on top of the immaculate cover.

Quietly Thera pulled a small, woven-twig chair beside the bed. She gathered the Salvai’s free hand into her own, and waited.

Settling her mind, she imagined herself sinking into a deep, quiet pond.

In that stillness they met.

“I always thought you disliked me,” blurted Thera, surprised again at the impression of a gentle caress. The Salvai’s ghostly image sighed, a thin breath of sound. “No!” Then, “Yes. It was envy I suffered from, child—Elanraigh forgive me my mortal blindness. Envy since I first saw you, my young, half-sister’s only child. You were such a pretty child, chasing the salamanders that basked on the sunny walls of your mother’s garden. I envied that child. You see, I knew the Elanraigh already loved you in a way it had never expressed with me. Forest-mind told me that you would be my successor—and more—a Salvai blessed with the old gifts.

“It was difficult for me to accept. The Elanraigh freely gave you its love. Keiris continued, All I ever wanted was for the Elanraigh to love me, and I thought that by dedication, duty, and will alone I could accomplish that.”

The pale figure in Thera’s vision looked yearningly toward the Elanraigh, then turned her face toward Thera. She continued, “I think the Elanraigh took pity on me when first I escaped here, to Elankeep. I was a woman long past receiving the Sha’Lace. Your mother, Fideiya, was only fifteen when promised to ArNarone’s heir. I had rejected suitor after suitor, ‘till my father was long past patience and swore that he would arrange for my settlement—will I, nil I.

“It was a different bonding I craved. I always envied my older half-sister’s relationship with the Elanraigh. It is your other aunt I speak of, Dysanna. Have you heard of her? She was dead long before you were ever born and when I was just sixteen. I dreamed of being so loved by the Elanraigh. Everyone wondered that the Elanraigh would accept no new Salvai after Dysanna died. The Elanraigh mourned. As I grew I sensed the Elanraigh’s need. I persisted in my prayers and finally the Elanraigh accepted. Blessings be. It was a good arrangement, I felt useful and at peace here. Though I knew the Elanraigh grieved as the hostility between the Ttamarini and Allenholme continued.

“Then one day, years after Dysanna’s death, some Ttamarini came to Elankeep. Dysanna’s son, Teckcharin, proposed a ritual union between us.

“By the One Tree! A half-bred savage! He must have sensed how I despised him, and how I cursed his father for ruining Dysanna.

“He stood silent, while their witch-woman spoke at length about a union between his folk and mine, as if such a thing could be. My sister suffered because such an alliance would not be tolerated by our people. She and the Ttamarini offers of peace were rejected out of hand. Your great-grandfather, Leif ArNarone and the Allenholme Council declared Dysanna as dead.

“As we stood there facing one another, that surly boy and I, I asked the winds of the Elanraigh to come and destroy them for their presumption!

“When my anger had stilled enough for me to once again sense my beloved Elanraigh, I felt only that it was both wounded and displeased by my outburst.

“So strong was my wish to please the Elanraigh that almost, for a moment I could bow to what it envisioned. Then I imagined that manling touching me—my mind went to darkness. I could not.

“I felt as if I smothered, and I flung the Elanraigh my refusal. The Elanraigh could have demanded my life of me, and I would have given it, but I could not do this. I do not remember what my rage and fear drove me to say to the Ttamarini’s young chief.

“My women came and I was led away in their care. When I awoke the next day, the Ttamarini were gone.”

The ghostly Salvai trembled, and the thin hands came up to cover her face.

“That was almost twenty winters ago. I have tried my best. Though the Elanraigh and I were loyal to each other, I was never its beloved. Not like Dysanna was, not like you are. I am the withered seed,” whispered the frail voice. “Yours is the life force it waits for.”

Thera’s brow puckered slightly as she stroked the cool hand she held. She knew there were women like her aunt Keiris who would never be life sworn, or joined with another. However, instinctively, she knew this withholding of self was disastrous in a Salvai. She considered the way she had responded to Chamakin, and felt heat rising to her skin. Yet, what if the first time she had faced another’s desire had been the bestial Memteth on the ridge. How then? She shivered.

The Elanraigh gently nudged her attention; forest-mind’s will lay like a mentor’s hand on her shoulder. She knew what the dying Salvai needed to know, and was too proud to ask. “The Elanraigh welcomes you, aunt,” Thera sent, “as beloved sister. Be at peace. We shall all meet again at the One Tree.”

Wind gusted through the latticed window and shadows crowded along the wall.

Surprised, Thera heard the voice she knew as Teacher’s call softly, “Keiris.”

The vision of Keiris turned with her pale arms reaching and thin face transfigured.

“Dysanna!” Keiris cried in joyful recognition.