While she rested there, eyes hardly blinking, she saw a girl tiptoeing down the trail, making not a sound. A mouse would have been hard-pressed to walk as quietly.
Rain is coming to see Draken, Myrrima thought. She can’t bear to leave him alone.
Somehow, the realization gladdened her. Draken had lost so much already, Myrrima hoped that he would find a lasting love.
A cool wind blew over her, and Myrrima felt a sudden chill. It was cold, so cold.
Just as quickly, she realized that it wasn’t the wind. The cold seemed to be inside her—reaching down to the bone. And the young woman coming toward her made too little sound. She was leaping over rocks, marching through deep grass and dry leaves.
Myrrima recognized the young woman now. It was Erin. It was the shade of her daughter, glowing softly, as if with some inner light. Yet her form was translucent.
Myrrima pushed herself up in a sitting position, heart racing. To be touched by a shade might mean her death. Myrrima’s every instinct was to run.
Yet she longed to see her child one last time.
“Ware the shade!” someone in the Walkin clan hissed in the distance. It was an ancient warning.
Erin came, passing near Myrrima’s bed. Her feet moved as if she was walking, but her body only glided, as if carried on the wind. She was dressed just as she had been in death.
She went past the edge of camp, over to her own still body, and stood for a moment, looking down, regarding it calmly.
Myrrima dared hope that the shade might notice her. Very often, the dead seemed only vaguely aware of the living, so Myrrima didn’t expect much. But a loving glance would have warmed Myrrima’s heart. A smile of recognition would have been a lifelong treasure.
The spirit knelt above her body, reached down a finger, and stroked her own lifeless chin.
Myrrima found tears streaming down her cheeks; she let out a sob, and hurriedly shook Sage, waking her, so that she too might see her sister one last time.
Then Erin turned and peered straight into Myrrima’s eyes. Instantly the child drew close, covering eighty feet in the flutter of a heartbeat, and she did something that no shade on Myrrima’s world had ever done before: Erin spoke, her child’s voice slicing through the air like a rapier. “What are you doing here, Mother? You should go to the tree.”
Myrrima’s throat caught. She was too astonished to speak. But Sage had risen up on one elbow, and she spoke: “What tree?”
Erin looked to Sage. “The Earth King’s tree: one of you should go there before night falls again. Before night falls forever.”
A sob escaped Myrrima’s throat. She longed to touch her daughter. “I love you.”
Erin smiled. “I know. You mustn’t worry. All of the neighbors are here. They’re having a wonderful festival!” She pointed east, up toward Mill Creek.
As if carried on the wind, Myrrima suddenly heard the sounds of the fair: a joyful pandemonium. Minstrels strummed lutes and played the pipes and banged on drums. She heard the young men cheer uproariously as a lance cracked in a joust. There were children screaming with wild glee. In all her life, Myrrima had never heard such sounds of joy.
Then Erin peered at her again, and said, “Go to the Earth King’s tree!”
With that, the shade dissipated like a morning mist burning beneath the sun. Yet though Erin’s form was gone, Myrrima still felt the chill of the netherworld.
Sage climbed to her feet and stood peering off into the east. “Why does she want us to go to the Earth King’s tree?”
Myrrima had no idea. She knew where the tree lay, of course. It was an oak tree—the only one in all of Landesfallen, up on Bald Hill, past the town of Fossil. Legend said that before the Earth King died, he’d traveled the world, seeking out people, putting them under his protective spell.
When he’d reached Bald Hill, he was an old man, failing in health. So he’d used the last of his powers to transform himself into a tree. Thus he stood there still, in the form of an oak, watching over the world.
“He’s coming back!” Sage suddenly exulted as an odd notion took her. “The Earth King is returning!”
Myrrima stood, studied her daughter’s clear face in the starlight, saw wonder in Sage’s eyes.
“He can’t be,” Myrrima said calmly. “Gaborn is dead.”
But Sage was too enamored of the idea. “Not dead,” she said, “transformed. He’s a wizard of wondrous power. Don’t you see? He knew that his life was failing, so he turned himself into a tree, preserving himself, until now—when we need him most! Oh, Mother, don’t you see?”
Myrrima wondered. She was a water wizardess, and often during the changing of the tides, she felt the water’s pull. If she were to give in to it, go down into the river and let herself float out to sea, in time she would grow gills and fins, become an undine. And as the centuries slowly turned, she would lose her human form altogether.
But could she gain her old form back? She had never heard of such thing, never heard of an undine or fish that resumed its human shape.
Gaborn had been the Earth King, the most powerful servant of the earth in all of known history. If he’d had the power to transform himself into a tree, then perhaps he could indeed turn himself back.
“It’s more than twenty miles from here to Bald Hill,” Myrrima said. “I don’t think I have the energy to walk that far in a single day.”
Sage said matter-of-factly, “Father can do it.”
4
The White Ship
The generous man is beloved of his family and of all those who know him.
Borenson loped for seventeen miles in the darkness before he found Draken. The lad was with Baron Walkin and one of his brothers.
The giant reached them just at the crack of dawn, as the sun rose up in the east as pretty as a rose. Wrens flitted about in the brush beside the water, while borrowbirds whistled their strange ululating calls from the white gum trees.
The three had stopped at a huge bend in the channel where the ruins of a ship had been cast up among the dead trees and bracken. The ship must have been taking on stores at Garion’s Port. The hull was more than breached—the whole ship had cracked in half. The men had begun salvage efforts, pulling a few casks and crates from the water around the wreckage. But when they had grown tired, they had then set camp by the shore.
Borenson found Draken groggily nursing a small fire while Baron Walkin peered out into the water and his brother slept beneath a bit of tarp. Borenson jutted his chin toward the wreck and asked Draken, “What’s the report?”
“The only people that we found were floaters. Other than that, all we really found was this wreck.”
Borenson was saddened to hear that there were no survivors, but he hadn’t expected better news. So his mind turned to more immediate concerns. “Anything of value on it?”
“Not much. There were some casks of ale floating about, and bales of linen. We found a few empty barrels floating high. We got those. As for the ship, we thought that the brass fittings on the masts and whatnot might be of worth. But after our long walk, we grew too tired to try to haul it all home. We thought that we might use the empty barrels and some other flotsam to make a raft, and then pole it upstream with the tide.”
Borenson walked over to Baron Walkin to get a better view of the wreck. Dead fish floated in the still water beside the ship’s hull, their white bellies distended and bloating. After a moment, Borenson recognized that something large and hairy floating against the wreck was a goat.
“Do you think we could use the wood from the ship to make a smaller vessel?” Borenson asked.
Baron Walkin peered up at him curiously. “There’s not enough left of it, even if we had the right tools. Besides, if we did manage to get something floating, where would you sail to?”