Chapter 9

9

A mystery entices like the known never can.

~ Lord General Menok

Hours passed, and the day grew warmer as Kaylina and Vlerion clambered through the preserve on the trail of the Kar'ruk. The taybarri, faithfully tracking their enemies across the miles, picked up their pace.

Kaylina, who'd alternated walking behind and riding on Levitke, looked around, realizing she'd been daydreaming, if not dozing. The scant minutes of sleep she'd gotten in Vlerion's bed the night before hadn't been refreshing, and her eyes were gritty with fatigue.

Earlier, he'd sung to her, his voice far more appealing than he'd implied, so she could learn the lyrics of his song of soothing. Unfortunately, its pleasant notes and his rich voice had turned it into a lullaby, prompting her to doze, and she didn't remember the words.

As the taybarri loped through the trees, Vlerion sniffed the air. Trying to detect the telltale musky scent of the Kar'ruk?

Throughout the day, they hadn't caught any glimpses of the two warriors they'd been following. More than once, Kaylina had seen Vlerion look back, as if wishing he'd gone after the main group. It was possible these two were deliberately leading them away from their comrades, from the core of whatever plot the Kar'ruk were enacting.

"With luck, the rangers have reached that camp by now and are on the trail of the larger group," Vlerion mused.

Crenoch and Levitke whuffed and increased their pace again. Vlerion turned his focus forward.

Kaylina touched her sling, but she didn't smell anything other than growing vegetation and a few early spring flowers blooming. Ahead, the forest thinned, and she wondered if they were coming out of the preserve.

No, they had reached a lake that spread along the floor of a valley, the banks thick with trees aside from a couple of pebbly beaches allowing access. At the far end, a waterfall flowed into the clear blue lake. At the closer end, reeds rose up around lily pads. Beyond the walls of the valley, the snow-smothered Evardor peaks were visible. Geese and other waterfowl Kaylina couldn't name floated near the lilies, dipping their beaks in for food.

The view was beautiful, and, for some reason, it was also familiar.

"Huh," Vlerion said from Crenoch's back as the two taybarri headed for one of the beaches.

"Have you been here before?" Kaylina peered around for threats, but it looked like the taybarri had momentarily forgotten their tracking mission and wanted a drink and a swim, much as they had at the creek. Indeed, they padded straight into the lake, stout tails swishing across the surface.

"Not personally, but the artist who did my brother's painting must have been here." Vlerion looked around, his gaze lingering on the waterfall.

Yes, Kaylina realized with a jolt. That was where she'd seen this lake before. On a wall in the hallway of Vlerion's estate. His mother had said the painting had been created to honor her fallen son, Vlarek.

"The real Lake of Sorrow and Triumph, that which inspired my brother's song and is loosely tied to historical events, is in the Southern Evardor mountains, near the Pass of Tears, hundreds of miles from here. Halfway to your islands, in fact."

"That's the name of the song you're teaching me, right? That you hum."

"Teaching you? You fell asleep every time I sang it."

"Because your voice is soothing. You should be honored that it lulled me so."

"There was snoring."

"A gentleman doesn't point out if a woman makes noise in her sleep."

"Once, there was drooling."

Kaylina stuck her tongue out at him.

"To answer your question, yes, it's one of several songs that I hum. The others are more calming—one is a lullaby. My brother's tale is haunting, though parts are up-lifting. As you might have caught in between snores, it speaks of what the lake saw over the millennia of its existence, especially witnessing the history of man. The triumph part tells of when men first banded together to carve out a place for themselves against the Kar'ruk and the great predators that dominated the fertile coastal lands." Vlerion turned slow circles, peering into the distant banks and surrounding forests for enemies as he spoke. "Our ancestors overcame great odds by merging their tribes and learning from each other. But later, once their enemies were at bay, they turned on each other. As you may know from your history books, the kingdom has risen and fallen numerous times. When men squabbled among men, all that they'd achieved disintegrated into chaos until outside threats imposed themselves, forcing humans to work together again. The song speaks of the cycles and of how it seems impossible for our kind to ever be content and achieve lasting peace among ourselves."

Kaylina nodded, having gotten the gist from the lyrics. She hadn't been entirely asleep.

"It is haunting," she agreed. Or maybe depressing was the word. "I'm surprised it brings you calm when the beast encroaches."

"It's not so much because of the history or the lyrics but because my brother wrote it, and it has meaning to me. And it's a lesson. On many topics. I'll play it on the violin for you when we return to ranger headquarters so you can get more of a feel for the beauty of it." Vlerion hesitated. "When it's safe for you to return with me."

Kaylina smiled at the thought of him playing, but, in a moment of fatigue-induced defeat, she wondered if it would ever be safe for her to return to the barracks with him. Even if she cleared her name, the beast remained a threat. Her failure to change the plant at the castle filled her with anxiety about lifting his curse. She'd been naive to think she could do what all the men in his family, generations of his ancestors, had researched and failed to do.

"I suppose if I'd thought about it," Vlerion mused, looking toward the lake again, "I would have known the vegetation and mountains in the painting were local, not from a lake a thousand miles to the south, but I didn't contemplate it deeply. I assumed it was a fictional depiction of the real Lake of Sorrow and Triumph."

Movement at the corner of Kaylina's eye made her spin, her hand dropping to her sling. No breeze stirred, but a vine twitched farther inland, dangling not from a branch but a large rectangular rock. There were numerous slabs of rock jumbled about the area, barely discernible due to moss and vines smothering them.

"Are those natural?" she wondered.

Vlerion followed her gaze. "There are Daygarii ruins in the preserve. Those might be some of them."

"Did any of your ancestors ever visit them?"

The vine twitched again.

Vlerion squinted at it. "I cannot know all of my ancestors' actions, but, as I said before, the rangers are not welcome in the preserve, so I've never come here. I doubt my brother did either."

"Maybe there are clues in the ruins. Information the druids left behind that might share how to lift curses." The thought pushed aside Kaylina's earlier feeling of defeat and rekindled hope. "Did they have a written language?"

"I don't know. A lot of humanity's previous knowledge about the Daygarii has been forgotten. Some say the druids, before leaving our world, destroyed our records pertaining to their kind. The taybarri elders would be the ones to ask, as their people have long lives and genetic memories that can't be destroyed except in death. The elders, however, only appear and communicate with men when they wish to do so. People who seek them out usually only find vacated tunnels and lairs."

Kaylina wished she'd brought Frayvar instead of asking him to research newspapers in the city. Maybe if she found hieroglyphs or something else the druids had left behind, she could draw pictures to show him later. Except she hadn't brought any paper.

"I'm going to take a look." If she found something, they could come back later.

She'd only taken two steps before Vlerion gripped her shoulder to stop her.

"Even those who aren't cursed are wise to avoid druid ruins. They did not like humanity." He pointed toward the still-twitching vine.

"Don't you think it's worth the risk of looking if it could help you?" Kaylina admitted it was unlikely anything applicable to his curse could be found in a jumble of rocks, but if she could learn more in general about the ancient druids, might it not help her discover a solution for him?

"No," Vlerion stated.

"No?"

"No."

"But imagine…" Kaylina spread her arms, brushing off Vlerion's grip, as if she were about to describe one of her visions about the success of her meadery. Instead of goblets of honey wine, she saw the druids. Oh, they were nebulous since she didn't know what they'd looked like, but they moved about on the banks in a time when these ruins had been a seat of civilization for them, a place where they lived near and interacted with the wildness. "If this was a home for them, they might have kept records of what they saw and did, and who they were as a people. Some could remain. There could be libraries hidden here, libraries full of knowledge, and maybe ancient books all about curses—and how to lift them."

"In that jumble of mossy rocks, a library."

"Sure, why not?"

One of the taybarri whuffed and stepped out of the water, nose turning into a breeze. Vlerion also sniffed the air.

Kaylina didn't smell the musky odor of the Kar'ruk but trusted the taybarri had better senses and might have caught something. What she did smell was intense floral scents that reminded her of the islands back home where the bees foraged on wildflowers. Altered wildflowers that grew vigorously despite the surrounding saltwater and the hurricanes that swept through.

A hint of a glow by the ruins drew her in that direction. In the shadow of one of the stone slabs, a flower reminiscent of lavender emitted a soft violet light. Beautiful. She longed to touch it.

"Kaylina," Vlerion said, a warning in his tone.

"Kar'ruk?" She turned toward him.

Vlerion was watching her, not their surroundings. "Possibly. Likely . But you need to stay away from those ruins. If there was a library, it wasn't meant for human eyes, and that flower is glowing."

"Yes, isn't it beautiful?"

Kaylina did stop walking toward it, as she didn't recall deciding to do so, and that made her uneasy. Most of the altered flowers back home had medicinal or culinary uses. Having magic that was dangerous was rare. She had, however, heard of altered plants elsewhere that would defend themselves from perceived threats, animal, human, or otherwise.

"It could be poisonous." Vlerion beckoned for her to return to the beach.

The tip of the vine that had been twitching earlier rose up and flicked in his direction.

Yeah, he was right. This place wasn't safe. Yet…

As Kaylina headed toward the beach with him, she couldn't help but look wistfully at the ruins, believing they held answers.

Before she'd taken more than a few steps, the back of her hand warmed. She halted and stared down at the bandage. It didn't hurt the way it had when the plant branded her, but that mark was doing something . It itched a little, like it was healing, but the warmth was strange. It couldn't have gotten infected, could it?

"Are you all right?" Vlerion stepped in front of her, and she jumped.

Distracted by her hand, she hadn't noticed him returning to her. She shook her head at her inattentiveness—a Kar'ruk could have sprung out and lopped her head off. "Yes. But my hand is being weird."

Kaylina was tempted to remove the bandage and look.

" Only your hand?" He cocked an eyebrow.

She squinted at him. "You're not going to ask me why I can't be more normal , are you?"

His other eyebrow went up. "No. If you were normal, you wouldn't want anything to do with me."

"That can't be true. I've seen women throw themselves at you." Maybe she'd only seen Lady Ghara do that, but she trusted there had been others. Even his mother had said the beast gave a man an inexplicable allure.

"None who know what I am and all that it entails." Vlerion took her hand gently. "How is it being weird?"

"It's warm. Intensely so. And it just started." For some reason, Kaylina felt compelled to look at the vine again.

Its tip turned toward them, as if it was watching them. A week ago, she would have called herself crazy for thinking something like that, but after her encounters with the plant in the castle, she wasn't quick to dismiss anything.

"Let's see." Vlerion carefully unwrapped the bandage.

Kaylina held her breath, thoughts that it might have grown infected returning. That didn't usually happen so quickly, but who knew what the rules were when dealing with magical cursed plants? The fear that her hand might have to be amputated made her close her eyes and look away as the bandage loosened.

"It's healed quickly," Vlerion said.

"What?" She turned back, hoping that meant the mark had disappeared. It hadn't. The star-shaped leaf brand remained, but it now looked like a scar she'd had for years instead of hours. That was better than an infection that could spread and kill her, but… She slumped against Vlerion. "Am I going to have this forever? Because I poured honey on a plant that I thought liked it?"

He wrapped his arms around her. "It does look permanent, but it may fade over time."

"What is wrong with the north, Vlerion? Innocent people get accused of crimes left and right, and glowing sentient plants attack when you least expect it." Kaylina reminded herself that Targon had almost been killed by that plant, so she shouldn't whine, but she struggled not to feel sorry for herself. To feel exhausted and defeated. If not for Vlerion and a desire to help him, she might have grabbed Frayvar days ago and stowed away on a ship heading south, even if it meant returning to her family a failure. She regretted all the times she'd snapped at them, and she missed their camaraderie and predictability. These days, her life was far from predictable.

"The north is not an easy place," Vlerion said.

He could have pointed out that she'd brought at least some of her trouble on herself by insisting on leasing that awful cursed castle, but he didn't. He merely held her and offered his support. It touched her so much that she teared up and had to wipe her eyes surreptitiously on his leather armor.

"You're a good man, Vlerion. Even if your boss is an ass. And you're sometimes uptight and haughty."

"You've an interesting way of complimenting people."

"It's my island charm." Her hand warmed again, and she scowled at it.

The vine she felt was watching them made another flicking motion at Vlerion. When it shifted toward her, the motion changed.

"Is it my imagination or is that vine beckoning to me?" she asked.

Vlerion glared dourly at it. "If it's beckoning, it wants you to step into a trap."

Kaylina bit her lip, less certain. "Let me try something."

His eyes closed to slits, but he released her. She took a few steps toward the ruins. Her hand cooled. She moved toward him again. It heated up.

"Something's going on," she said.

"Yes. We're tracking the Kar'ruk." Vlerion turned toward the taybarri, who were watching them instead of sniffing the air. "Which way, Crenoch? There are prints all along the shoreline."

Kaylina gazed into the ruins, longing to investigate, but she had no idea if her hand would lead her to something useful or to her death.

Crenoch and Levitke ambled over. They sniffed Kaylina's pockets, and Crenoch licked her hand. The brand. A coincidence? Or did the taybarri know something?

"Does that mean you're on strike until she gives you more honey?" Vlerion asked them.

Levitke sashayed toward the ruins.

"The Kar'ruk did not go in there." Vlerion shot an exasperated look at Kaylina, as if the actions of their wayward mounts were her fault.

Crenoch placed a paw next to a faint indention in a patch of bare earth.

"Is that a footprint?" Vlerion asked. "Moon craters, maybe the Kar'ruk did go in there."

"I'll check," Kaylina said.

Vlerion drew his sword and raised a hand, indicating he would go first.

She pointed at the animated vine. It hadn't reacted to the taybarri ambling past, but that didn't mean it would appreciate Vlerion entering the ruins.

"It might attack you," she said.

"Then I'll lop it in half," he growled.

"Let me investigate, and I'll call out if I get in trouble. Then you can spring in and nobly save me from the Kar'ruk or the ruins or the vines—whatever turns dastardly."

Vlerion sighed. "I'll check the bank more thoroughly. With as many prints as there are, I think other Kar'ruk joined the ones we were tracking. Either that, or they danced up and down the shoreline like drunken nobles at a festival." Back stiff, he walked toward the lake.

Kaylina looked at Crenoch. "I'm not sure if he agreed with my plan or not."

The taybarri licked her face with his large tongue.

"You'd agree with anything that might get you some honey."

He whuffed.

Since Levitke was already wandering among the ruins and nothing had happened, Kaylina headed after her. She would only poke around for a few minutes, and she would be careful in case the Kar'ruk had set traps.

Of course, if they had wanted to deter pursuers, they would have laid traps along the shoreline, where thirsty rangers might stop to fill their canteens. If the Kar'ruk knew how the druids had felt about humans, they would have assumed rangers wouldn't go anywhere near the ruins. If anything, a former druid village would be a place the Kar'ruk might camp, believing humans wouldn't disturb them in there.

The thought made Kaylina halt and eye the moss-covered slabs of rock warily. But she didn't smell any musky odors, and Levitke was ambling about without concern. Kaylina didn't think any Kar'ruk were there, at least not now. Her hand remained cool, almost soothingly so, as she headed deeper into the ruins.

Ahead, stone benches rose up a slope in a semi-circle that overlooked the lake and a flat, cleared area among the ruins. An amphitheater of sorts?

In the cleared area, Kaylina spotted large footprints. Levitke sniffed them, then swished her tail as she gazed about.

"Do you think there's anything useful in here that could help me learn how to remove curses?" Kaylina didn't expect her to respond in any way, but the taybarri brushed her tail over the ground, wiping out a couple of footprints. What did that mean?

Next, Levitke ambled past the benches and toward rectangular stone formations that reminded Kaylina of raised garden beds. Flowers heady with unfamiliar scents grew inside and outside of their borders. The taybarri's tail brushed some plants, and orange pollen wafted into the air.

Levitke stopped in one formation and placed her foot on something. She wiped it side to side, her claws scraping on stone or metal as she brushed away dirt.

Kaylina joined her. It was a plaque. Though it was as weathered and pitted as the stone slabs, runes were visible on it, the first sign of writing.

"Did you know this was here? Have you been here before?"

Levitke whuffed, then wandered into the flowers and squatted to pee on them.

"I have no idea how to interpret that response."

Levitke whuffed again, tail batting more pollen into the air. It tickled Kaylina's nostrils, and she sneezed. The cloying stuff lingered in her nose and made her skin tingle.

"Tingly nostrils. Just what one wants." Kaylina knelt and brushed more dirt off the plaque. "If I had paper and some charcoal, I could make a rubbing. But all I've got is the ranger book." She glanced toward the lake, but enough ruins blocked the view that she couldn't see Vlerion. She did glimpse the tip of Crenoch's blue tail swishing about and trusted his rider wasn't far. "If Vlerion is looking at tracks, he might not notice a touch of book blasphemy, right?"

As she eased off her pack, Levitke moved into a different patch of flowers and rolled on her back like a hound. She swished from side to side, this time sending yellow pollen into the air.

"You like this place, huh?" Kaylina pulled out the ranger book and checked for blank pages. "The title page might do, but I don't have charcoal for a rubbing." She eyed the pollen dusting the area—thanks to Levitke's rolling it was all over the nearby stones. "I don't know if that'll be waxy enough, but let's try."

After making sure Vlerion couldn't see her, and wouldn't notice her destroying his book, Kaylina carefully tore out the title page and laid it over the raised runes. She swept pollen from the rocks into her palm, then spread it over the paper. She used the binding of the book to rub over the page, pressing and trying to get the pollen to stick to the paper. It worked better than she expected.

"It's sticking to my nostrils, so why not," she murmured and raised the page, blowing off loose pollen.

Levitke padded over.

"What do you think?"

The taybarri snorted, her hot breath blowing across the page.

"Yeah, it probably won't help Frayvar or whoever knows how to read this language, but you never know." Kaylina tucked the page back into the book to protect her rubbing and returned it to her pack. Someone else had probably done this long ago with professional rubbing materials. For all she knew, every library in Port Jirador had copies of the plaque with translations. Even though it felt like they were out in the middle of nowhere, it couldn't be more than ten or fifteen miles back to the city.

One of the plants that Levitke had rolled in straightened its stalk, its bulbous flower rising up and rotating toward the lake. Several others did the same. They looked like a herd of animals lifting their heads because they'd detected a predator approaching.

Levitke whined and pawed at her ears with one limb while her other three carried her away from the flowers. She hid behind a stone slab.

"Vlerion?" Kaylina couldn't hear anything, but maybe the taybarri could. Something that bothered her ears? "Are you doing something… offensive?"

"I'm looking at refuse the Kar'ruk left behind and searching for clues about their plans," he called back.

"Offensively?"

"I don't think so. Why?"

A shriek came from the heart of the flowers.

It startled Kaylina so much that she fell over, grasping for her sling. The petals of several flowers undulated as another shriek sounded. An alarm?

Levitke roared and ran away, shaking her head, her tail smacking the ruins.

"Kaylina?" Vlerion yelled, concern in his voice.

"I'm fine." Another shriek sounded, battering her eardrums. "I think," she muttered.

She started to stand but was lightheaded and wobbled. Was that pollen affecting her somehow? Her foot bumped against the corner of the plaque, and she fell back to her butt.

Taybarri footfalls sounded on the shoreline—Crenoch also running?

As more shrieks echoed from the ruins, Vlerion charged into view. His eyes grew round when he spotted Kaylina on the ground, and he sprinted toward her.

"No, no," Kaylina called, lifting a hand, but the shrieks of the plants drowned her out.

Face set with determination, Vlerion leaped over a mossy stone and ran toward her as he glanced at the flowers and into dark nooks for threats.

Alert as always, he saw a vine uncoil like a snake and lash out at him. He twisted, swinging his sword as it reached for his throat. The blade sliced into the rubbery tip, but, as with the vines in the castle, it was sturdy and doubtless magical. He barely deflected it.

As he sprang away from the area, another vine detached from an upright slab behind him. It whipped toward his waist.

"Look out!" Kaylina surged to her feet, but she was still lightheaded and almost pitched over again. She caught herself on a boulder and managed to stay upright.

Vlerion had heard her warning and dove away from the grasping vine, but four others snaked out. One snagged him, wrapping around his waist.

Face remaining a calm mask, he slashed at it with his sword. But another caught his wrist as yet another slithered in from the opposite direction. It also wrapped around his waist. A new vine erupted from the ground under his feet and clasped his ankle. Two more descended from a thick tree branch and stretched for his neck.

"No!" Kaylina staggered toward him, cursing the lightheadedness that affected her balance. As soon as she moved away from the boulder she'd gripped for support, she pitched to her knees.

What in all the altered orchards was happening to her?

Vlerion twisted to avoid the vines grasping for his neck, but they slid under his armpits instead, wrapped over his shoulders, and pulled his feet off the ground. He retained his sword, but with another vine ensnaring his wrist, he couldn't use it.

On hands and knees, Kaylina crawled toward him, determined to reach his side, but she had no idea how she could help. The way the magical vines gripped him from all directions ensured he was trapped.