Guardian_Rise of the Nature Walker Read online

  “She WHAT?” Elysiam said, eyes wide. “That is NOT OKAY! Sath, you said she had changed… You said Gin was fierce. That is NOT fierce, that is just WRONG. What is wrong with her? We’ve got to go get her!”

  “No.” Sath shook his head. “You three stay here and I will go get her.” He ran one giant hand down his face. “Tend to Tairn. When she is well enough to travel, take her to Qatu’anari and give her to the guards. They will detain her until I can return and sort out what to do with her.” They nodded, and Sath started walking toward the eastern wall of the Outpost.

  “Thank you, Rajah, for your mercy,” Tairn said, her voice already sounding stronger from Elysiam’s healing magic. Sath looked back and scowled at her over his shoulder.

  “Do not thank me yet, Tairneanach. You will be lucky if the guards do not decide your fate before I return to Qatu’anari,” he replied, expecting a response. There was none, so he resumed his quick pace toward the wall. Just wait, Gin, please just wait, he thought.

  Eighteen

  Taeben woke to the toe of a robed figure prodding him in the back of the head. He rolled over and recognized the cobalt robes of a fellow wizard, and the concerned face of his apprentice. How had she found him? Of course, he had created a bond with her, a link for her to know where he was at all times, a safeguard if he ever found himself in danger. But why hadn’t Salynth arrived yet? Taeben almost sought her through the bond, but thought better of it. If she had lost track of him when he was so weak, he did not want to alert her to his whereabouts any sooner than necessary. “Are you all right, milord?” the young dark elf asked. Taeben looked down at his hands, now regrown and just as they had been and then beamed a smile back at her.

  “Oh, yes, Elspethe,” he said. “I am quite well, but I find myself to be a bit depleted at the moment. Would you mind terribly giving me a bit of a boost, my dear?” Elspethe blushed, a sight that Taeben felt he would never tire of seeing as it brought to her high cheekbones the loveliest shade of deep amethyst. She held out her arms and he wrapped his hands around her wrists, speaking Eldyr words - taught to him by Salynth and running the risk that it would alert her to his location - words that would bind them together temporarily, and transfer her strength into him.

  Taeben smiled as she threw her head backward and closed her eyes, her face a stunning cerulean mixture of pain and pleasure. He had never wondered if this spell caused the other party pain, but thought that perhaps it was in her nature as one of the underground dwellers to confuse the two. Not something that was common to his kind at all, or to the tree dwelling…an image of Gin smiling up at him crossed his mind and he quickly refocused on his apprentice. The magic flowed through his palms and up his arms, winding around him like a warm blanket and then filling him with the droning vibration of her heartbeat. After a few more moments, he felt the heartbeat flutter and collapsed the connection, releasing one of her hands as he caught her in his other arm.

  “It will be a few minutes before you are strong enough to transport, milord,” Elspethe said softly. Her eyes were hooded as she looked up at him, and Taeben noticed that she swayed a bit as he released her. Just a few minutes more and she might not have survived. “You are sure that you have taken enough?” Taeben nodded and sat down inside the spires.

  “Yes, my dark flower, I have. You are to be commended for your bravery,” he said, enjoying the smile that crossed her features. “Now away with you, it will not do for us to be seen together.” She nodded and after a long look at him murmured some words that he did not understand and then clapped her hands together above her head, winking out of sight as she did. Taeben set his mind back to the task.

  Ah, there you are, Taeben! I feared the worst.

  Couldn’t come earlier and help me though, could you Salynth?

  You are so cruel when you speak to me. Without me, you would still be a lowly magician, conjuring bread and water for coins in the street. You owe me some respect, pet.

  What do you want, Salynth?

  You, my pet. We are destined to be together. The wood elf and the dark elf were just dalliances. I can give you more than they ever could.

  I have gotten all that I need from you, Salynth. Go find someone else to annoy.

  I will forgive that because I have not yet told you the best news of all, pet. Not only can I travel to you through the bond that brought you to me here in the tower, I can go anywhere I like.

  What? What did you say?

  I am free of the tower, my love. There is truly nowhere you can hide from me. I will always find you, Taeben. ALWAYS.

  Taeben fisted his brand new hands in his lap until his finely manicured nails dug into the fresh pink skin of his palms. He would not be Salynth’s puppet again. Never again. He reached down deep into the core of his being where his magic lived and drew out barriers to place in his mind - barriers that he knew she hated as they went up, blocking her out. Her voice, at first a loud wail in the back of his mind, settled into the dull hum where Gin used to be. Ginny. There was still work to do.

  Closing his eyes and concentrating, he soon found Tairn’s mind in the Outpost. “So, she still lives,” he murmured. “Handy.” A bit more of a push and he was seeing what she saw, which was mostly the sky above her and a blonde wood elf hovering over her, casting healing magic. “Elysiam,” he whispered, and then fell silent to watch.

  “How long do we give Sath to go get Gin before we go check on them?” he saw Elysiam ask a gnome who was standing over Tairn, a battle axe in his hand. Hackort, of course he was nearby. The gnome shrugged.

  “I suppose if it’s much longer we will have to go to the tower and try to help him stop her, won’t we?” asked a dwarf standing next to the gnome. Taeben recognized him as Teeand, that irritating warrior that had taken up with his pet. He wondered why they talking about that Qatu and Gin and a tower... A horrible thought entered his mind on the heels of an even worse memory. After Gin left him, he struggled to keep watch over her as she slowly built up defenses against him in her mind. He located her at the Outpost several weeks after she left, and was able to watch her through the bond without her realizing it. Several times, he had checked in on her and found her up on the top of the guard tower in the corner of the garrison wall, her toes over the edge, ready to leap off in order to drive him from her mind. The memory stirred the buried feelings he still had for her - the need to possess her and keep her safe warred with his anger and its need to punish her for even thinking of such a thing.

  “She wouldn’t,” he said, withdrawing from Tairn’s vision sharply. “Don’t you dare, Ginny, don’t you DARE!” He hopped to his feet and cast his own transport spell. “Outpost.”

  After spending the better part of the day attending to Tairn, Elysiam was spent. She started to get to her feet in order to walk around and stretch her legs, but Tairn reached up and grabbed her arm. She tried to pull away, but Tairn pulled her down close to her own face. “Listen to me. You have to go to Gin and Sath,” she said. “Taeben saw, he knows where they are.” Elysiam looked at her strangely, and then motioned for Teeand to come close.

  “She says that Taeben sees. I thought he was dead?” Elysiam asked the dwarf. Teeand’s eyes widened. “How does he see? Tairn, what are you saying? Tee, I thought he was DEAD.”

  “So did I,” Tairn said as she tried to sit up but was still just too weak. “Taeben was controlling me before; he made me kill Kazhmere and tried to get to Gin through me. I thought that Sath killed him but… He is in my mind again, Elys, he knows where Gin is. You have to go to her before…”

  “You rest now, Tairn. Elys, leave her,” Teeand barked. “Elys, we have to go NOW. Something is very, very wrong.” Tairn raised a hand in protest but quickly lowered it and lay still at the look Hackort gave her. “You, Tairn, will stay here until we return,” he said. She nodded. Teeand managed to beam a sad smile at her. “We will get there before the wizard does, Flower, don’t you worry.” Tairn nodded and closed her eyes.

  “Sath had his chan
ce,” Hackort said. “Now it’s our turn. Oh, I hope I get to kill that wizard this time!” He dashed out the door after Elysiam and Teeand, swinging his axe madly as he ran.

  Gin sat on the edge of the wall surrounding the roof of the guard tower. The tower stood on the border that served as the dividing line between the Grasslands and the eastern edge of the Great Forest. She took off her packs and carefully stowed them - save one small leather bag - behind some crates in one corner. A guard came up the stairs and out onto the roof, but he ignored her presence and soon disappeared back down the stairs.

  She looked to the east and saw that the sun was beginning to set. The sky filled with reds and oranges as the sun dipped under the horizon, swapping places with the moon for another day. The orange reminded her of the soft fur of the magical tigers that protected the Qatu like Sath…and his poor sister, Kazhmere. “She died, because of me,” Gin said softly. “Tairn may have charmed her at Ben’s order, but she wouldn’t have been able to had I not brought her to Qatu’anari to see Khuj. And why would he have ordered her death at all, had it not been because of his obsession with me?” Opening the bag, she withdrew a necklace that Kazhmere had given her upon returning from her rescue from the tower. The sapphire beads, so reminiscent of the night sky over Qatu’anari, were cold under her touch as she grasped them tightly to her chest before carefully putting them down on the stone roof. “Forgive me, Kazhi,” she said in her best Qatunari. “Ben might not have given you a second thought if I had never crossed your path.” A tear escaped her eye as Gin remembered the amused look on Kazhmere’s face the first time she had spoken Qatunari in front of her. “I hope your brother still thinks as highly of me as he did when he taught me his language, Highness,” she said to the imagined shade of the Qatu Princess Royal.

  The next piece from her pack was Lairky’s dagger. Gin held it up and saw her own reflection in the blade. She remembered the first time that her sister had gripped the jeweled hilt, and then remembered Sath’s men bringing it to her in the palace after finding it in the rubble of the embassy building where Lairky died. Gin had thought that she would give the blade to Kae, but her cousin had given her a wide berth after her return from the Keep and Gin could hardly blame her.

  She smiled sadly as new tears formed in her eyes. Kae and Lairky would have made quite a team. “Such a waste,” she murmured, carefully placing the dagger next to the necklace. “All you ever wanted to do was protect me, my precious baby sister. You were so brave and so very ferocious. I can only hope that when you joined Mama and Papa in the afterworld that they were as proud of the warrior you became as I was.” Gin bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. “You were nothing short of a miracle.”

  Third, she took from her pack a small silver ring with a blue stone in its center. Dorlagar had given it to her ages ago. She remembered standing there under the stars as he told her that the ring had belonged to his sister, Radea; the sister he had travelled all of Orana to find, only to be told of her death when he’d gotten so close to where she had been all along. Gin knew the rage that Dorlagar had felt at losing Raedea - the rage she felt at losing her parents and her brother - and it had made her softhearted toward him in the end. It also nearly ruined her relationship with Sath.

  Raedea, Sath’s first friend, was the first one to make him believe that he was more than just a street rat, killing to stay alive. “The sister I never met, but loved and mourned just the same,” she said. “While I do not regret Dor’s death, I certainly do regret for him the way that his life played out and that he could not share in your good counsel, Raedea. May he find you in the afterworld, and the two of you renew your bond.”

  Finally, she retrieved the ring that was her father’s - stolen by Dorlagar and then sold back to her older brother, Cursik. That ring had started her on the path that had ended at Bellesea Keep with Dorlagar’s death. Again, she imagined Dorlagar’s face as she plunged her blade into his neck. She remembered the peace that had settled on his face as his life had slipped away, and she hoped that Taeben’s passing had been as peaceful.

  Gin studied the ring for a moment, tracing the shape of a wide-spreading tree etched into the fire emerald set into the golden band. “My family sigil,” she whispered as she again closed her tiny fist around the ring. “The sigil of the Nature Walker. Oh, Mama, Papa, I am not strong enough to assume your role. Cursik and Lairky could have worn the mantle of Guardian and made you and the Guardians proud, but I fear I am not able…” She placed the ring on the floor in between the dagger and the necklace. “Cursik, my older brother, my protector, how I wanted to make you proud of me! I hope that you were, and I hope that you reunited with your Mae in the next world. You, Mama, Papa, Lairky and your Mae… What a gathering that must be…”

  Sath ran to the corner tower where he thought he had seen the outline of a female elf standing on the wall. It had to be Gin. He sprinted up the stairs but skidded suddenly to a halt as he heard a female voice. “Just stay there, Gin, please just stay there,” he muttered as he resumed his pace. The guard on duty did not even see Sath coming before the Qatu grabbed him by the face and held him fast until he lost consciousness. Sath leaned the human up against the wall and continued up the stairs.

  Gin gathered the objects into her hand and walked over to the fire that was always burning in the pit on the roof. She sat on the wall next to the blazing flames, the objects on the wall next to her. Leaning over the brazier, Gin took Lairky’s dagger in her left hand and cut into the tip of her index finger, wincing slightly as it began to bleed. She balled up her fist, and her blood ran out between her fingers into the fire. “My parents, I have avenged your deaths as well as ended a poor soul’s miserable existence,” she said. “May all three of you find peace.” She moved her hand back and forth across the flame until the wound on her finger ceased to bleed.

  Gin placed the sigil ring in her bag, and then lifted Raedea’s ring to her lips. “Again, the sister that I never knew, I hope that you and Dorlagar have been reunited somehow. He missed you so. Find peace, and bring it to your poor brother,” she said, dropping the ring into the bag. “My tiny and perfect sister, I would never have agreed to your plan to separate Sath from that evil bard. If only I had your bravery and gone alone, it would be me that had died at Sath’s hand and not you. That is he truly wished anyway, to be rid of me. I am so sorry, my Lairky, my miracle.” She wiped a tear away to find that her finger that had started bleeding again, leaving a smear of her blood across her cheek. She contemplated using magic to heal it, but decided to leave it to scar. Moving carefully, to avoid opening the wound more, Gin strapped the dagger into her boot.

  Sath listened intently from his perch on the top of the stairs to the roof. Hearing her voice had given him pause; her words stopped him outright in mid-step. She honestly thought that he wanted her dead. He had given her plenty of reasons to think that, he supposed. He moved as quietly as was possible for his size and crouched down in the corner opposite Gin’s perch on the wall. He watched in silence as she picked up the necklace and held it just out of the flames.

  “Kahzi, my sweet girl,” she said in Qatunari, ignoring the tears that ran down her cheeks. “You did not deserve what happened to you. You could have been Queen of the Qatu, if it weren’t for me.” Gin brought necklace to her lips and kissed the beads, then dropped them into the bag. “Just as Sath will never forgive me for your death, neither will I forgive myself. This I swear,” she said, then passed her hand through the flames, wincing as the wound on her finger cauterized again, ensuring a scar would form even if healing magic was applied.

  Sath watched her in silence. “I forgive you, Gin, darlin',” he whispered, but his words were lost in the sound of the wind that now howled around the tower as it was bathed in the moonlight. After replacing the small bag in her pack, she brushed the ash off her hands and then placed one palm over her finger and spoke words of minor healing. The blood dried up and the wound healed, mostly, leaving only a pink line of a scar
across her fingertip. Matches the one I gave her, Sath thought with a grimace, the one on the side of her face. He got to his feet, still keeping low to the wall but ready to spring if she did what he feared when he heard she was headed for the tower.

  Gin walked over to the edge of the eastern wall, and turned to face the now almost completely risen moon. Off in the distance, the ocean that formed a natural boundary between races of the continent and the Qatu - the symbolic dividing line between her and Sath - sparkled like diamonds under that moon. She looked out across the waves and smiled, then turned around and noticed Sath crouched opposite her. The smile faded. “What are you doing here? How long have you been over there?” she demanded.

  “I told you once a long time ago that I would always find you if you were lost, remember? Didn’t you tell the others where you were going because you wanted me here, Gin?” Sath said, his voice gentle and quiet.

  “No. I didn’t want to add further insult to injury and make you think I’d run off again, though I don’t suppose there’s anyone left for me to run off with, is there?” Gin turned her face upward to look at him as he moved closer, and Sath marveled at how the starlight enhanced the oaken tinge in her skin. “So what are you doing here? Come to tell me that Taeben and Tairn are…”

  “You don’t really believe that I wanted YOU dead, do you darlin'’?” Sath asked, interrupting her. “I didn’t know what I was doing, remember? That bard had charmed me.” He took a small step closer. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Irrelevant at this point.” Gin held one of her hands toward him, giving him a good look at her newest scar. “That’s far enough, Sath,” she said. “Answer me, what are you really doing here?”

  “I have something I wanted to give you.” He reached into his pack and drew out a necklace. “It belonged to a wood elf, a ranger I think. It’s been so long ago, I don’t remember. I…got it from her before I met you, and since it came from one of your kind that fell to the Bane of the Forest, I thought you ought to have it. I used to keep it as a bookmark when I read your journal. Silly, I know.” Allynna’s silver medallion, inscribed with the insignia of Aynamaede on one side sparkled in the morning sunlight. Gin’s breath caught in her throat - she would recognize that anywhere. “But now…I feel like it will always represent who I used to be before I met you,” he said as he carefully replaced it in his pack. He would place it around her neck later, provided he could save her from breaking it. “I know why you came here, Gin, and I am here to keep you from getting hurt…again, if I can.” Sath took a step closer to her - a few more steps and he could snatch her back from the edge before she fell off…or jumped off.