Farlanders' Law (The Rose Shield Book 3) Read online

  “We need to call on Shafter,” he said. “I told him I’d bring you here. He almost came after you himself.”

  “They would have beaten him.” Sim hiked down the dirt track, using her staff as a walking stick. The camp road cut through rows of shacks, narrow alleys twisting off into the night. The dim glow of luminescence filtered through camgras shades covering the small paneless windows and capturing the heat. Despite the area’s derelict condition, graceful witchwood grew between the dwellings, ivory branches arching over the roofs and rustling with new leaves.

  Sim flipped her staff to her shoulder. “Why help me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “You’re Ellegean, a warrior. Your oath is to your realm.”

  “I’m here to learn, to find a way for Farlanders and Ellegeans to live in peace. Arresting you doesn’t serve my purpose.”

  She tipped her head, casting him a sideways glance, a crooked smile on her lips. “So, not about Sim? Solely your duty?”

  Whitt chuckled and then sobered. “About you. I have to make amends for what happened to your family. I can’t let it go. I can’t forget it. That day changed my life more than you’ll ever know.”

  “You didn’t hang them, Whitt.” She shifted her gaze forward. “Ellegeance did.”

  “Algar did. He isn’t all of Ellegeance. He was one man, and he’s dead.”

  She walked in silence, leading the way as they neared the heart of the district. Whitt had been eight summers old when High Ward Algar hanged Sim’s father and siblings. Catling had shielded him from the influencers’ touch, and the full horror of their broken necks and bloated faces had branded his heart. She’d spoiled Algar’s show, and a short time later, Gannon had come for her. All the trouble, all the years of loneliness and despair began that day. He needed to make it right for Sim before he could let it rest and make it right for himself.

  City bells tolled midnight when Sim pointed to Shafter’s shack, lights aglow in the window. The bleached bones of the dead hung from pale branches outside his home, the ancient traditions practiced in spite of Ellegean scorn. Whitt cringed inwardly at the sight. Farlanders believed the wind through the bones echoed an endless prayer for the departed. Different certainties and traditions shaped the Farlanders’ view of the world, and they had lived there longer than he. Who was he to judge?

  Sim’s staff tapped softly on the wall beside the camgras door. “Sim and Whitt wait at your door,” she said, a formal greeting.

  The woven matt swept aside. Shafter filled the doorway, his scarred face creased by the shadows of a scowl. He sighed, his relief palpable as he stepped aside. “I welcome you.”

  Whitt trailed Sim into the tight but tidy interior. A single luminescent lantern hung from the roof’s center. Wood pallets lined two walls, their surfaces plush with layered furs. Camgras mats carpeted the dirt floor. Sim shucked her boots and hung her weapons belt on a peg. She took a seat on a pallet, crossing her long legs, and tilting her head to the space beside her. Whitt divested himself of his boots and weapons and sat on the pallet’s edge, forearms resting on his knees.

  Across from him, a curved clay hearth notched the wall, the remains of a meal abandoned on a knee-high table beside a basket of food. A stack of wood rose up the near wall to a set of shelves holding the balance of the man’s possessions.

  Shafter stood by the door, his bare arms crossed over his coarse jerkin. A narrow trail of pale green spots, no larger than thumbprints, climbed from his wrists to shoulders. He gave Whitt a grateful nod before turning his scowl on Sim. “You used your gift on the Ellegeans?”

  Sim’s eyes tightened into icy slits and darted toward Whitt. He raised his eyebrows, planning to tell the truth if she didn’t. She faced the man who had raised her. “Yes. They angered me.”

  “Was it a wise choice?”

  She huffed, the question leaving her little room to maneuver. “No, but they—”

  “A wise choice?”

  “No.” She shut her mouth.

  Apparently satisfied, Shafter took a seat on the other pallet, moving aside a quiver of arrows. Gray fletches, wooden shafts, and strings of sinew lay on a wide tray near his feet. “Most Ellegeans have no concept of the breadth of our gifts. If we aren’t cautious, they will learn before they are prepared, and fear will crush any hope for understanding. Long ago, when Wister called the birds, he chose defiance. I understood his willingness to risk the truth, but it didn’t save him, and it exposed us to further acts of fear.”

  Whitt frowned. “I never thought your gifts were secrets.”

  “Ellegeans fear what they don’t understand.”

  “I remember when Sim used to travel with you to the stead.” Whitt angled his head for a look at her. “I must have been four when you first told me the planet is alive, that all elements of the world contain living light and are part of the body of creation. At the time, your words sounded magical and mysterious, and I’d no reason to doubt you.”

  “Do you doubt me now?” she asked.

  “Not after I saw you sprout a tree from a severed twig.”

  “You are reckless,” Shafter admonished her. “You feed the Cull Tarr preachers’ beliefs in demons for no benefit.”

  “I heard the Cull Tarr preachers in Mur-Vallis,” Whitt said. “Their messages always struck me as confusing and contradictory. I don’t know anyone who takes them seriously.”

  “When their sermons are of use, they are the truth,” Shafter said.

  “Maybe Ellegeans should be frightened of us.” A flush rose up Sim’s neck, heating her cheeks. “When we are meek, they trample on our backs. Talking is no use because they don’t value our words. Writing papers means nothing because they change the sense of their language. Violations continue; they cut trees, block rivers, and decimate herds. Ellegeans commit violence on the land. I think violence is the language they understand.”

  “Not all Ellegeans are crude and disrespectful,” Whitt said, indignant that she lumped all his people together into one dung heap. “When we learn about each other, truth will speak louder than fear. Our time together as children informed my perspective on Farlanders, and I’ve never forgotten it.”

  Sim studied him, the anger in her face softening. “You are different, Whitt. And I am only so powerful. This world is conscious. I can’t force it to do my bidding unless it is willing.”

  “Unless it’s willing?” Whitt shook his head. “You made the tree grow. I saw you.”

  “It grew because the land agreed.”

  “You mean the planet… thinks?”

  She smirked, looking at him askance, her pale hair falling forward of her tapered ears. “I told you the land is sentient.”

  “I figured you meant it’s self-aware,” he replied. “I didn’t think you meant it… negotiates.”

  Sim’s eyes creased, and she laughed. “You Ellegeans are as heavy and thick as stones.”

  “The kari are the spirits of the land,” Shafter said.

  A vague memory of Bromel’s words sparked in Whitt’s skull. Bromel had stated that Scuff’s honoring and care for the kari were the basis of his prosperity. Whitt hadn’t imagined the kari were real beings capable of communication, and he didn’t believe it any more now than he did then.

  Shafter slid from the pallet and knelt at the low table near the hearth. From a pouch, he drew a handful of fresh herbs. “I am indebted, Whitt. I wish to give you a gift if you will accept it.”

  Sim’s back went rigid, her eyes narrowing. “What are you doing?”

  Whitt glanced at the herbs in Shafter’s fingers. “I’m grateful for the offer, but I wouldn’t know how to use it. And a gift isn’t necessary. I helped Sim because I needed to.”

  “My gift will enlighten you.” The intensity in Shafter’s eyes burned through Whitt’s resistance, the offer beyond his ability to refuse.

  “Shafter,” Sim hissed.

  The scarred man gave Sim a silencing frown and crushed the herbs in his fist. He rolled th
em in his hands and pressed them into three wooden cups. With a hooked finger, he hoisted a jug of spike and filled the cups. The liquor leeched the green from the leaves. Whitt accepted the drink and waited, unsure whether a ritual accompanied the gift.

  Shafter raised his cup, and when Sim bowed her head, Whitt mirrored the gesture. “This day,” Shafter said, “Farlander and Ellegean come together in peace to share a vision of the land’s soul and the living light flowing through our veins.”

  The three of them took a sip, and Whitt let out a soft whistle, the flavor sharp but fresh and surprisingly sweet.

  Sim studied him over the rim of her cup. She tipped her head back and drained the spike down her throat. Shafter did the same, and Whitt gulped to catch up. The potent drink seared on the way down as it commonly did, and the sweet aftertaste stuck to his tongue.

  He hadn’t eaten in hours and his stomach burned. Heat radiated outward, flushing his skin and leaving him queasy. Shafter topped their cups again and nodded to Whitt to drink.

  This time the green liquid shimmered with an eerie opalescence. Shafter and Sim downed their drinks and waited, watching him, expectation thick in the air. He inhaled and swallowed the green light, feeling it slide down his throat into his chest and belly, his skin tingling. A wave of dizziness tilted the room and forced a blink. He kneaded his eyelids, attempting to focus and clear his head of the strange sensation.

  “Something odd is happening,” he said, trusting that whatever Shafter crushed into the cup wasn’t poisoning him, intentionally or otherwise. He stared at the tall Farlander, the man’s skin seeming to glow from the inside. “Are you supposed to glow?”

  Shafter angled his head toward Sim, and Whitt swung around, nearly tipping off the pallet. Sim’s skin danced with light, colors running through and around her, streaming from her fingertips as she waved her hand through the air. Her face was luminous, the irises of her eyes glistening like green diamonds. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured and closed his gaping mouth.

  “Luminescence,” Sim said. “The world’s blood.”

  “She has the gift,” Shafter reminded him. “Your hands.”

  Whitt’s gaze fell to his hands, his fingers splayed and glowing with a soft radiance closer to Shafter’s aura. The queasiness ebbed, his senses sharper, his head whirling but adjusting to the altered vision. “I’m shining.”

  “We will witness the night.” Shafter rose and left the simple home.

  Sim stood and looked down at him with a smirk. “Come with me, Whitt.” She offered her three-fingered hand blazing like a brand. Whitt reached up, and the light leapt between them, connecting and blending. He grinned and somewhere in the fiery white connection found her fingers. She pulled him up.

  He stumbled, wobbly on his feet. “Whatever that is, it’s potent.”

  “Nightbalm, godswell, other herbs it’s best you don’t know. Perhaps you drank a sip much.”

  “Poison.” He rubbed his eyes, the glow around him intensifying.

  “You will survive.” She towed him gently out the door, and Whitt gasped. The trees beside Shafter’s home streamed and pulsed with color, brilliant against the night sky. Leaves glistened like shards of glass. The ghostly light radiated beyond their borders and threaded through the air to other branches, to the patches of grass and weed, to her and to him. He stood like a block of living stone, opening his vision to the connections, the interlinking web of life and light that bonded all he perceived. The air felt no different, but his eyes told him it ran thick as water. He inhaled, aware that he’d held his breath, afraid of drowning.

  “This way.” Sim laughed and tugged on his hand.

  He shuffled after her, paying no heed to his feet, his eyes roving through the quiet lanes, noticing variations in the intensity of light. Even the earth beneath his feet possessed a soft radiance. The living things, those he thought of as alive, the plants and trees, gleamed. Sim gleamed. He was sure the world’s animals would gleam.

  For a time, their course abutted the inner-city wall. Sim traced her hand along the stone, growing moss and thickening the tangles of luminous vines that workers toiled endlessly to clear. She glanced over her shoulder at him with a daring smile. “Your cities are tolerated by the kari, Ellegean, not to the contrary as your high wards believe.”

  The wall had been a diversion, a truth revealed, and she veered back into the Farlander compound, delivering them to the far end, into a rocky meadow where pale-leafed trees had all but abandoned the thin soil. Sim released his hand and raised her fingers. A lone talprin’s lofty branches bowed toward her, an exchange of soft light passing between them. She swept her hands across the meadow, trailing airborne color, and the wildflowers reached upward as if eager to drink it in. All around Whitt’s legs, the land swayed toward him, tendrils of living iridescence seeking him, blending into him, nourishing him. He stretched out a hand, and the land sent its life up to meet him, weaving around his fingers.

  “It’s the luminescence living within us,” Sim said. “It’s the world’s blood, connecting all elements of its body.”

  “Do you see this always?” He laughed. “I wouldn’t be able to function.”

  “No, Ellegean.” Sim smiled. “It’s the drink. But I feel the presence always. When it is serene as it is now, and when it is harmed as it is when you… your people treat the land as a dead thing without consciousness. Come.”

  Shafter waited for them atop a gentle rise on an exposed ledge with a view of the Whiprill’s misty tumult below the dam. The main tributary reappeared at the valley’s rim and cut past Tor. It glistened with swirling color as all the natural waterways did, but he sensed a rhythm, a melody, a waltz between the water and mist. As far as he could see, the fields and distant forests pulsed with light, ripples of color threading across the land, mutating, communicating. Two of the south’s silver hounds loped along the riverbank. The wilderness lived, the world a body, mind, and soul, an organic entity on which his days unfurled, a sojourner.

  “Look around you.” Shafter gazed beyond the meadow at the leagues of light. “Who can possess so vast a world? Even we cannot comprehend this perfection, the intricate balance to which the spider and raindrop, the floating seed and dead crow belong. You are welcome here, Ellegean, but we are of here, stewards of the mystery of which we are a part.”

  The man’s words resonated with profound awe for the complex beauty of his home and deep sorrow for the changes that must feel beyond his control. Bromel has once said that Ellegeans thought they could own the sun, moon, and stars, and Whitt believed it.

  Sim stood beside him, her hands on her hips. “Ellegeans would cut this life into pieces, sever its head, carve apart its veins, chop its limbs, and peel its skin. You cannot dismember something that is alive and expect it to live. You cannot wound it with each passing day and expect it to sustain you. Unless the Ellegeans plan to fly your tiers to another world, this one must be honored and cared for.”

  “I don’t imagine we’re going anywhere,” Whitt said. “And as far as I know, the Founders aren’t coming back.”

  “Now you see,” Shafter regarded him. “My gift bears a weight. Your vision will fade, but you must remember here and here.” He touched two fingers to Whitt’s forehead and heart. Then he turned and retreated toward the rambling lanes.

  “We should return too.” Sim sighed, her face raised to the cerulean moon, her body no less luminous.

  Whitt swept his gaze across the horizon, attempting to imprint his memory with the exquisite beauty of the glittering world spinning before him. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay for the sunrise.” He sat on the ledge, elbows on his knees, his head and heart laid bare to the night’s peace. Shafter’s gift altered his perception of the Farlanders’ struggle, but he had embraced the burden of responsibility an eternity ago when Algar hanged Sim’s family.

  The glowing woman with the brilliant eyes sank down beside him and smiled.

  Chapter Four

  Whitt and
six warriors, including Tavor and Cale, formed a human barricade facing a mix of Ellegean settlers and poorly motivated city guards. Behind him, Farlanders picked through a shamble of obliterated shacks and splintered trees, collecting belongings that the settlers hadn’t demolished as they razed the structures east of walls. With quiet reverence, they salvaged the bones scattered when the branches fell. The carcasses of a herd of long-coated native goats lay in the road feeding a host of flies, the bodies dragged there by the guards after slitting the animals’ throats. Crows circled intent on a feast.

  The twelve guards formed their own line of defense and, fortunately, didn’t seem eager to scrap with Guardian warriors even if the odds angled in their favor. They had to know they tramped on Ellegean law despite their orders.

  Settlers, half of them armed with sledgehammers, picks, and axes, shouted threats, their rampant destruction interrupted. The other half sniffed the air with upturned noses and carped at the mess as if the Farlanders were the cause. Whitt steamed at the arrogance and thanked the Founders that Sim hadn’t shown up. She’d be heaping fuel on the flames of animosity, hurling insults, and likely getting them all killed.

  He scanned the roadway for a glimpse of her and caught sight of Pike in his plum cloak, the guards’ cocky captain strutting through the spectators who knew to keep their distance. The broad-shouldered man was bred for leadership or deference, depending on one’s perspective, and he lacked an empathetic hair on his manicured head.

  The guards parted, and he paused to survey the scene before he sized up his opponent. Cale scowled and Tavor looked bored. Pike’s gaze shifted to Whitt. “Here we are again. What’s this, third time this week?”

  “This demolition is against Ellegean law,” Whitt reminded him. “This land is shared by treaty.”