Would you like to visit them? Will you walk with me?”
He reached for her hand, which she gave to him willingly, and he led her away from where they had been talking and into the gardens. Once there, they strolled down pathways formed of flat stones here and crushed rock there, of mossy earth and deep grasses. Hedgerows bracketed their passage at one point; vines grown thick on trelliswork shadowed their quiet walk at another. All around, the vast sweep of the flower beds formed blankets of color that radiated in a sudden wash of sunlight, their myriad scents filling the air.
“This must take an awful lot of work,” Prue said to him finally, unable to conceive of how he could manage.
“It takes everything I’ve got to offer, but not more than I wish to give.” He pointed.
“See the rainbows formed by the sunlight reflecting off the moisture from the dew?
There, where the scarlet and gold meet? I cannot imagine life without gardens. Can you?”
The way he said it told her he already knew the answer. There were flower beds and gardens in her world, but nothing like this. Mostly there were only the forests, meadows, and rocky heights of the mountain peaks, and for her people beauty such as she saw here was solely the province of the imagination.
“The legends say you were alive at the beginning of things when the old world was born,” she said. “That would make you very old. But you don’t look old.”
“I don’t always look the same. This is how I look to you, but to others I look different.”
She studied him a moment. “Am I safe here? Are you going to send me back?”
He seemed to consider. “You are safe for now, but I am going to have to send you back at some point. Although I won’t send you back to where I found you.”
“I’m not anywhere close to where I was, am I? Or even close to the same country?”
“You are nowhere anyone can reach you. The boy Hawk was here once, a long time ago. He walked these gardens, too. He talked with me as I am talking to you. He asked questions of me, and I gave him what answers I could.” He glanced over at her. “Just as I will give you what answers I can.”
They walked side by side for a few minutes, saying nothing, the man and the girl, surrounded by a profusion of colors and smells and a sense of peace. Birds flew past in bright bursts of color, and insects buzzed and hummed from within the cool, shadowed depths of the greenery.
“You saved me from that old man for a reason,” she said, making it a statement of fact.
“That old man is a demon come out of the ruins of the Great Wars, a creature of vast and terrible appetite, a beast with a singular vision. It lives for only one reason—to destroy all those who bear the black staff. It thought for many years that it had done so, that all of them were gone. It wandered the wastelands of the old world, seeking out any it might have missed, without success. There were none to be found. Then, one day, not so long ago, it had a dream of such a bearer—a dream that came to it unbidden and was fostered by its preternatural instincts. It sensed the presence of the Word’s magic and the nature of its source. A man who wielded such magic had ventured outside a valley that had once been hidden and no longer was. It caught a whiff of both, nothing more, but that was enough. The demon knew its hunt was not ended.”
The King of the Silver River gestured toward a stone bench that was settled in a small circular clearing in the middle of the pathway. They walked to the bench and sat down together.
“There were others of its kind once, hunters of Knights of the Word. This demon may be the last. Do you know of the man it hunts? Have you met him?”
She nodded. “His name is Sider Ament. He bears a staff that was carried into my valley homeland five centuries ago by one of two Knights of the Word who came there with my ancestors.”
“Do you know, as well, of your own heritage as a child of the Ghosts, one who was a companion of the boy Hawk and came with him into the valley?”
She shrugged. “It was a rumor in my family history, but I did not know for sure. So is it true? Am I a direct descendant, and has the magic come to me through the girl Candle?”
He spread his hands on his knees and studied her face. “All true. You have Candle’s magic in your blood, passed down to you through the generations. Some of your ancestors had use of it, some didn’t. You do. But it is a fragile gift, and it does not always serve its user successfully. It is quite unpredictable. You must have noticed.”