Then everything changed.
Brin stopped kissing. Her whole body went rigid, and he felt her muscles tighten as she pushed him away.
What’s wrong? What did I do? Does she think I was pulling her to the floor? Did she think I was going to—
“I didn’t—” he started to apologize, but stopped when he saw the terror on her face. It wasn’t him she was upset with. She was horrified but acted as if he wasn’t there.
She retreated to the door, pulled the torch free of the sconce, and brought it down toward the floor.
“Look,” she said. Their movement in the cell had brushed aside a patch of straw. The flickering glow revealed a familiar three-toed footprint—one with claws.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Witness
Alon Rhist had been the fourth fane, the first from the Instarya tribe, and the first male ruler of Erivan. He took power in the midst of the Dherg War after Fane Ghika of the Asendwayr had been killed in the initial battle. For five dark years, he had fought a losing war against the Dherg. After his death, Rhist became the only fane to be buried west of the Nidwalden River. The fortress that bore his name was also his tombstone.
—THE BOOK OF BRIN
As Suri walked, her feet gave rise to a cloud of dust. It was unlike the sickly yellow soil of Dureya, easily disturbed and slow to settle. There, the pallid grit collected on her asica, muting its color, dulling everything. Here the dirt was light, but the air was heavy. Spring breezes failed to lift the sense of suffocation. It couldn’t. The stifling misery Suri felt wasn’t caused by weather.
Months of working with Arion had opened countless doors that Suri had previously ignored. Hand in hand they had explored those new corridors, and with each discovery, Suri’s understanding of the Art increased. With understanding came awareness. The more she learned, the more she realized how little she knew. In the past, she had overlooked so many things that had screamed for her attention. She hadn’t been blind to them, just never noticed. People always did that. So devoured by their own problems, they never noticed the wildflowers in their path. That spring, she saw the world in a new way. She had learned to not merely look but to see. Not everything she saw was pleasant.
Overhead, the dark wings of seven vultures circled against a gray sky that was too big, too bare, too vacant.
“How can there be no trees?” Suri asked and let her arms clap her sides, issuing a burst of yellow dust.
“There’s a tree.” Raithe pointed at an ancient stump whose long-dead roots resembled the skeletal remains of a hand clutching a fistful of rocks.
“That’s not a tree.”
“Used to be a tree.”
Suri turned her head side to side, viewing the entire tabletop plain. “Is that what happened? People cut them all down?”
Raithe shook his head. “Don’t think there were many to start with.”
The two had left the Rhist early that morning. No plans had been made, no rendezvous agreed to. Suri had awakened with itchy feet, the sort of irritation that could only be calmed by a good solid walk over new ground. She found Raithe at the ford, standing on the bridge and looking down into the chasm where the river rushed. She, too, had paused to take a peek. Nothing was said, no greeting, not even a wave.
When Suri moved on, Raithe fell into step alongside her. That’s how it usually happened. Raithe likely felt it was coincidence, but armed with her new sight, Suri recognized more was at work. In terms of the Art—the Language of Elan—she saw it as a golden thread that connected the two of them, just as she felt linked to Arion. This heightened connection indicated a relationship of importance and the reason they so often found each other at just the right time. Suri imagined that she would have noticed a similar thread between her and Maeve had she known how to see it back then. What significance that thread indicated, Suri had no idea, but that was how the sight—as Arion sometimes referred to it—worked. In a way, they were puzzles, clues, bits and pieces of half-heard conversations. Suri liked mysteries, but all too often when put together these puzzles revealed unhappy pictures.
“How did you live here without—” Suri shook her head. “It’s not just the lack of trees; there’s so little life. No greenery, all rock.”
“Now you know why we crossed the Bern. Look.” Raithe pointed back west and slightly south where the land turned a lush green. “The Fhrey call it Avrlyn.”