It was a day or two before Robert gently inquired and found that her anger and sorrow had more to do with the fire in the forest and foothills than with burglary or trespass.
"It makes sense now," he said to her. "After all, don't you druids worship trees?"
"Of course not," she said. "We love them and tend them, but they are only our responsibility, not our gods. They and all the other life of the land. My gardens. The flowers. You see, when a tree dies, it takes a while-several days, even when the damage is severe and sudden. The agony is constant until the roots go. And what fell to the fire a week ago was the show of my life's work. How would you feel?"
Robert thought of South Moraine and of the departing horsemen. "I see," he murmured.
And he did.
On the eighth day, she examined his leg, her strong, gentle fingers coursing from ankle to knee, and her own hollow countenance showed a little color and life once more as she pronounced him mended.
"Mended, that is. Not healed," she insisted. "You'll do the healing yourself-with walk and exercise and a change in heart from fear to certainty."
"Will you walk with me, Lady?" the seneschal asked with a grin. "I mean… seeing as it's medicinal and all? Perhaps I could be of some use to you as well."
So they began their walks as the seneschal's leg grew stronger and the spirit of the druidess was restored in the soft rains and new undergrowth of the repairing land.
But little was left of the grove-covered foothills to the east. The fire had climbed practically to the height of the mountains, and except for the steepest peaks-Berkanth, for example, and Minith Luc-the foliage was blasted to the timberline, and the big trees would take years to recover or return.
Perhaps he had never understood the druids before now, Robert thought, glancing often at the woman who walked beside him, turning away as her intent brown eyes locked with his. All the talk he had heard in Nidus- of tree worship, of entombing enemies in hollow logs, of stealing babies-seemed like rumor and foolishness now. For what he saw in this woman was none of the mystical, green treachery against which a generation of mages had warned him. She was instead a keeper of life, a seneschal of the land.
He thought again of Daeghrefn, of the riders vanishing into the smoke, of the words hurled coldly at him from horseback: I'm sorry, Robert! I cannot help you where you are going.
"Are you alone?" he continued to ask, and asked again one day as they stood on a bare obsidian rise overlooking the plains. There, scarce a fortnight before, he had been left for dead by his commander. "Are you alone, L'Indasha Yman?"
Her hair-bright auburn again, as though the last days had been but a fitful, nightmarish dream-was bound with dried holly. She looked up at him, her dark eyes hooded and elusive. She thought of the promise the god had made her twenty years before. "Not for long," she murmured. "Or so says Paladine."
Robert nodded. He leaned against his cane and climbed a step along the rising trail.
"And when does your… visitor arrive?"
"I had been told," the druidess replied, "to expect her any day."
"Her?"
"Yes. I believe my visitor is a woman, sent to help me with a wearisome task," L'Indasha said mysteriously. Then, turning toward Robert, she regarded him with a level, disarming directness.
"Do you remember the young woman who passed through the smoke that afternoon on the South Moraine, when you lay on the field of battle? She is the one. At least, I think she is. But I found her only to lose her, it seems."
"I remember little of her, m'Lady," the seneschal replied with an ironic smile. He bent and rubbed his leg. "I must allow that my thoughts were elsewhere at the time-on fire and ogres and what in the devouring name of Hiddukel was happening in that purple smoke. But I am certain of the young men who rode with her. If they were homeward bound, they're no doubt in Castle Nidus."
"I believe I am healed now," Robert said the next morning.
The druidess glanced up alertly from a caldron.
"Healed, not merely mended," the seneschal continued with a smile. "I expect I've imposed on your hospitality too long."
"Where will you go?" L'Indasha asked.
"I'm not sure. Not back to Nidus." He rose carefully and walked without aid to the mouth of the cavern. Below, at the edge of the forest, there was more green than blackness and ruin, and to the south, the faint song of a larkenvale. L'Indasha's work had not been in vain, he noted, and more than ever he longed to stay with her, to see through the greening of a thousand things.
"You offered to be of service not long ago," L'Indasha said, seeming to read his thoughts. "And there's a journey I must make-not an easy one, but you say you're healed now."
Robert leaned against the stone and smiled. "Nidus?"
L'Indasha shook her head from side to side. "From here, I can feel the power of Cerestes' warding spell about the castle. If I were to go to Nidus, the Lady would know at once of my presence. She would have me, and the girl's life would be forfeit."
Robert nodded. "Nidus or Neraka or the ends of the earth, my offer of service stands. Where might we be heading?"
"North… then up," the druidess announced, standing and dusting off her green robes. In the new light of the morning, she looked even younger, as though over the last week she had shed twenty years. "To the slopes of Berkanth, that mountain sacred to Paladine. Then a rocky climb to ice."
L'Indasha picked up the wooden bucket. "I can take this along now that I've your arm to aid with the carrying."
Robert's face reddened, and he looked away.
"Wherever my helper is," L'Indasha declared, "in Nidus or Neraka or at the edges of the earth, it is on Berkanth I shall find that help. Take the provisions, if you would. They're in the linen sack near the back of the cave. And the blankets beside them as well. It will be cold traveling."
Robert obeyed compliantly as the druidess brushed by him and up the narrow trail above the cavern. With a shrug, lifting the belongings to his shoulder, he followed, crossing the charred garden as the druidess took to the rocky path between obsidian cliffs, on her way to Berkanth, toward the highlands and the longer view.
To the north, in the hills above Nidus, Cerestes as well was upward bound.
Takhisis had summoned him as he lay drowsing in his study. She appeared as a dark presence at the edge of his dream, her voice, low and melodious, twined with his breathing until the mage thought she had called from his heart.
He awoke in a sweat, sprawled across the sunlit table amid papers and vials.
Come to the grotto, the Lady had commanded. I have need ofyou.
And so, in the hours before sunset, he had wakened and slipped into the foothills, to the same small grotto that had marked their place of communion in an earlier time. There, in the bare circular chamber, in a silence broken only by the distant dripping of water and the rustle of the returning bats, the mage knelt on the stone floor, awaiting the Change and the goddess.
Above all, stay calm, he told himself, casting forth the flurry of spells to mask his thoughts from the prying goddess.
What have I thought ill of her? She does not know… not yet. I did her bidding. I saved Verminaard andiiis companions from the ogres.
How could she know?
My loyalties will give me time with this Judyth. The girl will trust herself to me, and Takhisis will approve it all. Who better to discover what knowledge Judyth hides-a goddess who veils herself in blackness and golden eyes and sinister voices in the night? Or a kindly mage, a scholar, a tutor to the young of the castle?
Why, eventually, I shall be the only one Judyth can trust.
And I will use her trust for myself alone.