Temken stretched her right hand forward. "There, " he said, voice soft but intense, "the living force of the bayou. Growing trees, plants, animals; the never-ending cycle of life. It's Gaea's song, as you heard it, before. "
She didn't hear it. And, if she understood his explanation, she couldn't remember ever hearing it, which could be a problem. Also she did not favor keeping her eyes closed, shutting off her best warning of the danger that the bayou could visit on them at any time. In her mind's eye, the darkness encroached upon them, drawing tighter every time they tried to call upon the magic of the land.
"I can't touch it, " she said, resigned. Deeper within her mind, she also knew that she didn't want to touch it and shouldn't be trying. She wouldn't have been, except for the reserve of energy that Temken seemed able to tap into for them both. "It's not there. "
"It is, " he insisted. "You've seen it once already. "
"It's not there for me, " she said, squirming within his embrace. Still, the memory of the orchid almost made her believe until the shadow's touch fell over her and dimmed the memory again.
Temken's grip tightened on her wrists. "It has to be, " he said. Then quieter, he observed to himself, "There must be a reason I was led to you first. "
From Gwenna's point of view, it was she who had come to meet Temken.
"I was sent, " she began slowly, then grew confused as if a dark shroud had suddenly been pulled across her mind. She saw no use in arguing the point. Frustrated and tired, she saw little use in continuing the exercise. "Let it go, Temken. Magic is just one more false promise. "
"Have you forgotten Titania? The Citanul druids?" He spun her around. "Magic is a part of our lives, just as it was then. "
Opening her eyes, Gwenna caught the expression of concern that had taken control of Temken's face. His eyes pleaded with her to believe-to try. Her gaze twitched away involuntarily, searching the darkness beyond the isolated clearing and finding the bayou's shadow looming over all the elves had built, dampening their lives.
"It didn't help any of us, " she said listlessly.
Eyes narrowing, the elf mage glanced back over his shoulder, following Gwenna's own gaze into the darkness.
"Let it go," she whispered again, tired and imploring.
"No." He didn't sound as certain of himself as before. His hazel eyes blinked their doubts. Then his voice grew stronger. "The potential exists within you and has to be the seed of your release. Try again." He guided her back around, keeping hold of her right hand, and moved up beside her, stretching his own right hand out ahead of them both. He glanced to her face and frowned. "You have to trust me, Gwenna."
Trust did not come easily in the bayou, but Temken's touch wore away at the despondency that blanketed their lives. The darkness rallied, forcing itself in on her, but a temporary breeze through the overhead canopy rustled leaves and branches and brought to her the faint touch of nature's song. Gwenna seized upon it and nodded to Temken, uncertain and apprehensive, then closed her eyes again, reaching out. This time she felt a familiar pull, as before when Temken reached into the bayou to bring forth the orchid. He was channeling the land's mana and allowing her to feel it course through him.
"Accept it," he whispered. "Allow Gaea's power to work through you toward the beauty of life's never ending cycle. Find in your memories the strength you remember from other lands you've passed through- other lands that touched you and you touched in return. This place has similarities to those if you look."
Gwenna tried, and as the darkness began to glow a subtle green she fought for any memories that might banish the pervasiveness of the decaying bayou-that might banish the shadow.
But it was not so easily dismissed.
Despair roiled up under the surface of Temken's promise, challenging the place he had won inside Gwenna's mind. Dark energy touched her, washed over her in a stronger wave than Temken's meager offering. The shadow moved through her, never long enough to make itself completely known, but a presence nonetheless filled with raw power. Gwenna felt the clammy touch of death against her left hand, in her heart and mind, coursing through her veins, threatening to burst if she did not find some way to release it. She struggled against it, despising its basic nature but unable to throw it off. She did not want it. She had never truly wanted it, and she would do anything now to be rid of it.
The power surged against the life-force running through Temken, overwhelming and consuming them both. It bound the two of them together, draining away strength. Gwenna opened her eyes and stared into the face of Temken as he paled and gasped for a sudden lack of breath. The elven mage jerked away, breaking his bond to Gwenna in an effort to stave off the pain invading his own body. The dark rush of power faded. The two staggered to their knees.
"It hates," she said weakly, the vestigial memories of this attack and others remaining with her. "It needs. It will never let us go."
Then the veil fell back into place, churning her thoughts to mask its own intrusion and leaving in place the well of sorrow and loss that Gwenna had carried with her since Argoth's ruin. Suddenly at a loss for words for what had just happened, she watched as Temken struggled to his feet. He looked at her strangely, a mixture of pity and dawning horror.
"I know it now," he said, voice cracked and weak. Without further word or expression, he turned and walked from her, into the dark embrace of the bayou.
Clinging muck squelched with Temken's every step in protest of his passage until the peninsula of marshy ground ended abruptly, plunging into the black and fetid waters of the bayou. A light, patchy mist roiled the surface, chill and clammy as ghostly tendrils worked their way through the seams in his trousers. Lonely cries sounded to his right, then left as a pair of mist lynxes challenged each other. A black-feathered marsh ibis glided by, then soared upward in an attempt to penetrate the thick canopy.
Temken settled back on his haunches, shaking off the draining effect that had channeled through Gwenna. He still felt its dark touch trailing icy claws along the base of his spine, clutching at his heart, clouding his mind. It hates, she had said. It needs. A malevolent intelligence was working through her. It was keeping her-keeping them all, he was sure-imprisoned within the bayou. Something slithered up from the waters, crossing the muddy ground behind him, and paused with its sense of his body heat. Temken whispered to it a piece of Gaea's song, urging the viper along its way. Never once did he need to turn and look at it, so attuned to nature's forces around him. In this same manner the elf mage knew his adversary was not of nature and so was not truly alive. A blind spot in the preternatural sight gifted him with the wielding of the land's magic. As a worker of the forest's mana, Temken had recognized in the bayou its sources of nature's magic. He had ignored its darker aspects, a mistake that had proven near fatal today.
No longer.
He glanced over his shoulder and found the lights of the village cookfires, a distant and dim glow between trees and brush. Far enough, he decided, wanting no distractions. Temken swallowed against the taste of mildewed plantlife, now acutely aware of the aura of death that held the bayou in its grip, and prepared his casting. A cascade of stringy, bilious green moss blocked most of his view to the right. The living waterfall turned black and was decaying where it met the water's scummed surface. He focused on it, drawing mana from first the bayou's living side and then from his memory of Kroog's struggling young forests and the frozen taiga north of Argive. He took it into him, feeling the suffusing glow of life and turned his focus on the hanging moss.