Silently, the group trailed behind them as Jervon strode forward, carrying his precious burden, and vanished through the Gate, leaving that uncanny Place behind forever.
When they emerged back into the clearing, it was into full sunlight. Elys seemed to have suffered no ill effects from her long ensorcellment, and as soon as her husband set her on her feet, she held out a hand to her daughter. “Lydryth?” she whispered. “Can it be?”
“Mother!” the songsmith said, and then the two of them were hugging and weeping with joy. Lydryth felt as though her heart could hold no more happiness. To have both her parents returned to her in the space of a single day!
When, at length, Elys was able to relinquish her hold on her child (as though she were afraid one of them might be torn away again), she greeted her friends. “Tell me what has chanced,” she begged, “for I remember naught.”
Voices rose in an excited babble as each tried to render his or her own version of all the lost years. When their story was finished, the witch’s lovely features were troubled, but Elys had been a warrior for years in a war-torn land, as well as a witch, so she did not cry out or rail when she discovered that the Adepts at Garth Howell had stolen nine years of her life from her.
Instead she shook her head, staring around her. “I remember nothing,” she said simply. “As far as I know, I lay down to nap in Kar Garudwyn, then awoke here. It is you”-she gazed at her husband and grown daughter, her friends and shield-mates-“my loved ones, who have suffered, not I!” Her mouth tightened. “I swear by All the Powers That Be, there will be a reckoning.” Her voice was quiet, but a note in it sent shivers down Lydryth’s back.
In silent accord, the group turned to make their way across the clearing to where the horses were tethered. But scarcely had she taken more than a step when Elys suddenly gasped, putting a hand to the small other back. “Elys?” Joisan was at her side immediately, her arm circling her friend, supporting her. “Is it the baby?”
Lydryth’s mother nodded. “And none too soon, apparently,” she said, with a grim attempt at humor, “since I have been carrying him, if what you tell me is true, for nine years!”
The single group quickly separated into three. Hyana and Joisan, both experienced healers and midwives, tended Elys as the hours passed. Jervon and Kerovan rode out of the clearing in quest of supplies and transportation for Elys, and returned some time later with their horses hitched to an ancient wagon they had managed to persuade a local farmer to lend them. They had left their swords with the man as a pledge of good faith in lieu of the future payment in gold they promised.
Lydryth and Alon worked together to bury Yachne, then spent their time talking, tending Monso and the other horses, catching each other up on the desperate hours of the past night. The songsmith learned that the Adept had been caught and tricked into entering Yachne’s illusion-cloaked circle with a vision of herself, lying upon the ground with a broken leg.
The sun was slanting toward the west, far past noon, when a squalling yowl of indignation-sounding almost like a cat whose tail has been assaulted by an unwary foot-filled the clearing. Lydryth and Alon, hand in hand, went together to gaze upon where Jervon, grinning broadly, stood holding the Seventh Defender of Arvon.
He was much too small, the songsmith decided, to bear such a portentious title… and seemed almost too small to bear the name his fond parents had bestowed upon him. “Trevon,” Elys whispered, from her nest of blankets in the wagon, as she regarded the squirming red morsel her lord held so proudly. “Hope,” Alon said. “In the Old Tongue, that means ‘hope.'”
“I know,” Lydryth told him, putting her arm around his waist and leaning wearily against him. “And hope is something we will need sorely in the coming years, if Hyana’s foretelling about a great conflict here in Arvon comes to pass-a war like unto the one you finished fighting in Escore not so long ago.”
The Adept nodded soberly, but there was a light in his grey eyes. “And apparently you and I have a role to play in that conflict,” he whispered softly. “Hope. We will need it.” He gazed intently at Trevon. “We will need him.”
Some hours later, the party left the clearing, leaving behind a mound of freshly turned earth where Yachne lay. Alon, astride Monso, suddenly pointed. “Look!”
Lydryth, beside him on Vyar, gasped. “The grass! It has turned green!”
Hyana’s voice rose, also filled with wonderment. “Look! Look at the woods!”
The rot-trees were changing, altering, as they neared them. Oak, rowan, beech and maple and evergreen now stood, instead of those stark black-and-white ghosts of trees. “The wood!” Lydryth cried, staring amazed. “It is healing itself!”
Beside her, Alon smiled, then reached over to take her hand. They rode on together, side by side, and the new tide of living greenness went before them, swelling outward, like a wave upon the shore.
Epilogue
£ydryth’s fingers swept a last, ringing chord, sending the note bounding around the Great Hall in Kar Garudwyn like a child on the morning of Midwinter Feast. “And so,” she said softly, as that final note began to die away, “they returned to Kar Garudwyn, after cleansing and healing that Place of Power. And their joy was very great.”
Clapping rang out as she bowed, applause from the assembled guests and family members. Even Trevon smiled toothlessly, gurgling in his mother’s lap.
“A fine song, Lydryth!” Jervon said. ” ‘The Ballad of the Songsmith’ is the best you’ve written so far!”
She smiled fondly at her father. “It is always best to write what you know,” she said wryly. Suddenly the bard was conscious of someone leaning over the back of her chair, and, turning her head, she saw (though she had known the newcomer’s identity within her heart immediately) that it was Alon. He smiled at the assembled guests. “A great success, my lady. I liked it very much. Especially the requiem to Steel Talon.”
Then, lowering his voice, he added, “But perhaps our visitors are wearied. It has been a long day of feasting, and evening is now upon us.”
Laughter boomed out from Obred, the Kioga chieftain. “I heard that. Lord Alon!”
Lydryth and Alon both colored, and the Kioga leader laughed harder. “We can take a hint, Lord Alon, and you have the right of it-it is indeed time to go. But,” Obred said, smiling, “you must expect such minor inconveniences if you would wed a songsmith. Especially one as good as the Lady Lydryth. Hearing her play and sing, one is loath to depart a gathering where she performs.”
Alon grinned at the burly leader. “I well understand, Obred. It was hearing her voice that made me fall under her spell in the first place.”
Lydryth put aside her hand-harp, then stood up, smoothing the skirt of her blue wedding gown. “You forget, my lord,” she said, under her breath, as she put her hand on her new husband’s arm, and made to follow him out of the hall,” ’twas Monso fell under my spell first! You merely followed his example!”
“And a very good example it was, too,” Alon said, as he led her in the opposite direction from the departing guests, toward the stairs. They stopped, smiled and waved amid a last chorus of toasts and good-wishings.
Lydryth paused at the top landing to gaze back along the gallery, where they could see Kerovan and Joisan, Sylvya, Firdun, Hyana, and Elys and Jervon all bidding farewell to the wedding guests. The happiness of seeing them all together again filled her heart until it felt as though it would burst. “I will have to write a song about today,” she said softly.
Alon slipped an arm around her, then gently brushed back a wayward curl. “Cannot it wait until tomorrow?” he asked mock-plaintively. “Or will you forget it if you do not write it down immediately?”
Lydryth laid her head against her lord’s shoulder. “It can wait,” she promised, with a smile, then kissed him. “The best songs cannot be forgotten.”
The End