Alton knelt before her. He saw no marks on her throat except those she’d made herself. “Estral, are you all right?”
She gazed at him, forehead furrowed. She shook her head.
“What is it? What . . . what did that thing do to you?”
She started to speak, but no sound came out.
“Estral?”
She crumpled into his arms, heaving with silent sobs.
Alton carried Estral into his tent and sent for Leese. The wait was agonizing. Estral would not respond to his questions or his touch. She lay curled in a fetal position on his cot, buried her face into his pillow, and would not move.
Leese finally arrived and while she examined Estral, Alton paced outside, awaiting some sign. He heard the mender’s murmured questions within, but no answers from Estral. Not a word.
Dale came and sat on a tree stump. “What happened?” she asked.
Alton explained what he’d seen. “Some sort of magical attack.”
“From Blackveil?”
“Where else? She seemed all right after,” Alton continued. “Frightened, but unharmed—at least outwardly. But unable to speak.” He felt strains of concern from the wall guardians. They’d responded to Estral’s music like nothing else, and now there was only silence and their dismay.
Leese slipped through the flaps of her tent, blinking in the sunlight.
“Well?” Alton demanded.
“I’ve given her a little something to help her rest,” the mender replied. “She was very upset, which is not surprising.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“It’s beyond my experience,” Leese said, “especially if what you say about magic is correct. I can identify no injury or sickness. The only thing I can find is that her voice is gone. Totally and absolutely.”
Alton clenched and unclenched his hands, feeling the urge to pound on the wall—or anything hard—as he had not in quite a while.
Dale bunched her eyebrows together. “Seems like that spell was intended directly for Estral.”
“She must have been getting too close to finding the right notes,” Alton said. “It was cast by someone who does not want the wall fixed.”
The three fell into a heavy silence, the gloom penetrating into a deep dark within him. He would make whoever had done this pay, not just because it prevented Estral’s music from fixing the wall, but because of what it had done to her, taking away an intrinsic part of her—her ability to sing.
Yes, he’d make whoever was responsible pay, even if it meant confronting Mornhavon the Black himself.
GOD AND A MIRACLE
A wave of disorientation rolled over Grandmother and she almost blacked out.
What was that? she wondered, passing her hand over her eyes. Good thing she’d been sitting. She’d felt movement, a displacement of the world, and its subsequent reordering.
The others appeared unaffected, unaware. Deglin tossed another stick of wood on the fire, and Min and Sarat discussed what to do about cooking utensils since Grandmother had “ruined” one of their pots. Cole stretched his back and shoulders, and Lala played string games.
Somehow she had the vague idea that Deglin and Sarat shouldn’t be there, and that their little group had moved to the edge of the grove after awakening the Sleepers because of all the destruction, not remained where they were. It must have been a dream of the sort one exhausted to the core dreamed, a dream close to reality but not, and darker.
It was a good thing they hadn’t moved to the fringes of the grove because that appeared to be where most of the destruction to the great trees was concentrated. The inner trees remained unchanged. There had not been as many Sleepers as she’d expected and she was not sure of what God’s response would be. She looked into the fire, recalled that she’d seen what Birch was up to, and that God had come to her. Hadn’t He? At first He was pleased, and then . . . enraged? Perhaps she remembered only the dream, and her memories of it were quickly fading.
But not the part about Birch. How strange. She shrugged. No matter, she’d done what she came here to do, and after she rested for the night, they’d begin their journey home. Maybe they’d even survive it.
“Have another cup of tea,” Sarat said, pressing a mug into Grandmother’s hands. “We must have you strong for our journey back.”
“Thank you, my dear.”
A strong gust of wind rippled the surface of her tea, bent the flames of their campfire sideways, sending sparks tumbling along the ground. The vast limbs of the grove trees groaned and carried on an angry dialog among themselves.
Grandmother set her tea aside. “Help me rise,” she told Cole, and he did, resettling the blanket over her shoulders.
“What is it, Grandmother?” Sarat asked, her hands trembling.
They were pelted with pine needles and twigs, and damp, decaying cones. Leaves whirled along the forest floor in dervishes. The ground shuddered.
“Grandmother?” Sarat asked, her voice pitched higher.
“I am not sure,” she replied, but the air was bloated with expectancy—the forest strainng against some imminent collision, the rising of a storm tide, something momentous, a shattering of all they’d known, and a thrill shivered through her.
The mist pushed away leaving a giant man-shaped space in the air.
“I HAVE COME.”
“It is God,” Grandmother whispered. The mist billowed and roiled, filling in the image of the man shape until it no longer existed.