Robin Owens - Guardian of Honor

She eyed the gong and bit her lip. It was near the altar with those jewel-crystals and other magical stuff. She really didn’t want to touch it.

“Sinafin?” she whispered.

No answer.

Alexa studied the studly guy again, this time making it to his face. She frowned. He looked a little like someone she’d seen before, but she couldn’t place the resemblance. Nice jaw, good straight nose. Eyes heavy-lidded and tilted up at the corners. Soft, mobile lips.

Soft, mobile lips? She was losing it. Time to get her act together and see if she could help the man, but at least his wide, lightly haired chest rose and fell steadily.

Then she noticed something else. Unlike every other adult in Lladrana, he didn’t have black hair or black hair with silver or gold streaks at one or both temples. No, the flickering light gleamed on his striped black-and-white hair. She stared. The baby had black-and-white hair like that too. Did they ritually drown those? She knew in her bones it must mean something.

His lids opened and she stared into deep brown eyes that slowly focused. He opened his mouth and started coughing. He stirred, moaned, then subsided again into unconsciousness. But his breath turned steady and deep.

The door pushed open and cold air swept around her, plastering her nightgown to her body. She whirled. A skinny teenager holding a tray and a pitcher stared openmouthed at her. She narrowed her eyes. He had that electric-blue outline that several of the Marshalls had had that morning. She glanced back at the man lying by the pool—yes, there was a slight electric-blue tint coating him.

She looked at her own hands. They radiated blue. Then she saw her own body, fully revealed by the thin, wet nightgown. She looked very white. She made a sound like “Eek”—a girly sound, she thought in disgust—hurried and snatched her robe.

“Voulvous? Vu?” The boy’s voice rose in a question.

Alexa forced her lips into a grin, flopped a hand in what she’d intended to be a wave, and wobbled past the boy to the door. She’d done what Sinafin had wanted. Alexa didn’t plan to hang around for questions she couldn’t answer.

The man groaned behind her. She quickened her pace. The teenager frowned, then set the tray down and ran to the man.

Alexa slipped out the door and into the cloister walk. Silver rain fell tinkling around her, then sputtered into droplets and subsided into a soft patter.

Once back in her room, after showering—another pain, since some of the jerir penetrated her scratches instead of sliding from her body—Alexa was restless. She went to the windows to look out, and saw blackness over the fields. Her tower was one of the four large round Towers of the Castle Keep, but no one lived there except herself.

She dressed in leggings, a shirt and a long tunic, then she paced.

Though the weather had cleared and brilliant stars shone in the night sky, there was only the faintest luminescence where she knew the Town should be. No use going to the Town, since she wasn’t even familiar with the Castle. The thought of walking alone down the hill to the Town daunted her. She shivered as the memory of the night hike she’d taken in Colorado flickered in her mind’s eye. She’d been crazy, spellbound, grief-stricken—maybe all three.

She noticed the swaying white branches of the beautiful large tree in the garden below. Concentrating hard, she heard the soft murmuring of the tree’s Song, which spoke of contentment and spring and growing and destiny. The strains came too quietly to grasp and the melody was such that she wanted to listen to the whole of it. Or maybe she just had cabin fever and wanted out. She drew her heavy, warm purple cloak around her, then slipped from her room and down the stairs.

Everything was quiet.

Hesitating, she cocked her head to get the tree’s direction. With slow steps she followed the tune and found herself before a small door that would let her out of the Keep and near the garden. She opened it, and air laden with humidity and the rich secrets of night-growing plants wafted to her. As she inhaled, more notes joined the rich orchestral symphony. She exited, and a few strides later faced the tall hedge maze. Perfectly groomed, it stood a good fifteen feet high, dense and dark and green-black.

Still the tree Sang, and it Sang to her. She could almost hear it Sing her name. She pulled her cloak close and the cowl low and threaded her way through the maze by sound instead of sight. Low bird chirps accompanied the soft tread of her own footsteps.

A few minutes later she exited the maze at a right angle from where she had entered. There was a small lawn, then an old, low wall of stone with a little door that looked to be just her size. She smiled and walked to it, put her hand on the cold handle, pressed the latch and pulled, expecting an awful creak. The door swung silently and easily open.

The moon had risen while she’d been in the maze and now painted the garden in silver light. A profusion of bushes with stark branches of various shades of gray and black were all tangled together as though the garden wasn’t well tended. Most of the Lladranans would have to stoop through the door.

But the white tree lifting graceful branches into the sky was the only life taller than the wall.

A bench circled the tree, and she picked her way through dead leaves along an overgrown path toward it. For a moment she hesitated, then slid her hands up and down the trunk, feeling the bark, smooth in some spots, rough in others. Tree-song enveloped her and she sat on the bench, leaning against the trunk.

She didn’t know how long she rested there, her busy mind quiet, experiencing the tree’s melody, imbued with serenity. It lilted of sap rising through it slowly, slowly, of the anticipation of each bud pushing through bark and unfurling tiny leaves, of the reaching of its branches and how it danced with the wind and the sky and the Song.

There you are! Sinafin said, the hint of a scold in her voice.

She was still the purple bat. In the recesses of her mind, Alexa knew she should be upset with the shape-changer, and there were questions she wanted answers to, but being in the tree’s presence had made all her questions seem less urgent, as if she were measuring time more slowly now. So she just stared at the purple bat and admired its wings.

Sinafin hung upside down from a near branch and gazed at Alexa. Even this wasn’t too disconcerting. She was operating on tree-time, with tree-serenity-philosophy still pulsing around her.

The shapeshifter whiffled, eyes bright. You like the brithenwood tree, very good.

Why? Another question that should be more important than it seemed. Only one concern rose to her mind.

“I’m here to make new fenceposts to defend Lladrana?” She’d culled that from Sinafin’s mind-movie of the night before and the talk amongst the Marshalls in the Temple after she’d been taken to bed like a kid. But within the peace of the garden the spark of irritation failed to flame.

Yes.

“Tell me of the fenceposts.”

They are the primary defense of Lladrana, made by Guardian Marshalls during the last true invasion of horrors, about eight hundred years ago. Before my time. Since then we’ve had only little groups sneaking over. And the frinks. They are new in the past two years.

“I’m supposed to discover how the fenceposts are made and remake them?” Alexa wanted to be clear on this point.

The bat stretched its wings, so transparent that some stars shone through the tissue-skin. Yes.

“How?”

The Song will guide you.

Alexa hadn’t heard voices yet. “How?”

Sinafin was silent, her sprightly tune having faded. The background music hardly murmured. The tree was silent. Nothing answered Alexa.