We started off with a picnic, and it was the most enjoyable thing I'd done in ages. Not just because of the good food and the beautiful weather -- the weather was always beautiful on Ajri -- but because I managed to find an excuse to lie down next to Jaffaran, who put his arms around me. It was like heaven. And my brother didn't say a word either. Now that I think back on it, I suspect that at the time, both of them still regarded me as their little sister, and so thought nothing at all about the embrace. But I enjoyed it for what it meant to me, if not to Jaffaran.
Some of our friends had brought fishing poles, and Torin had brought a ball, of course. My brother loved nothing quite so much as a good ball game, and he gathered up anyone who wanted to play after the picnic. I expected Jaffaran to join, but when I looked up from where I was picking up the dishes and the leftovers, I didn't see him in the mix with the other players. Astanal was grazing quietly in the shade, so I knew Jaffaran wasn't tending his stallion either.
I dusted some crumbs away from my hands and set out to find him. He was exactly where I expected he would be, poking around inside the old ruins. Like any of the other den'Rhelys teachers I'd met, Jaffaran was always curious about everything around him, even things that most of us would find mundane. In this case, though, he'd found something interesting. He was drawing a picture of the strangest tree I had ever seen.
My boots rang against the old tiles that covered the floor of the ruins, giving me away to Jaffaran just as I came to the stairs. I held up a hand to say a simple hello, but clearly I'd startled him.
"Stay where you are," he said sharply, holding out his hands to ward me off. His notebook dropped to the ground. "Don't come down here."
I stopped in my tracks, with a bemused smile for his tone. "All right," I said, perplexed by the urgency. "I was just coming to see where you'd gotten off to. The ball game is finishing up, and we'll be leaving soon. What's wrong with coming down there? Is there a wild animal in the bushes?" I smiled as I teased him, and took another step toward the stairs. He moved over a step, angling to put himself between me and the tree, still holding out his hands to stop me.
"You're not listening," he said.
I started to protest, laughingly, still not sure what all of the fuss was about. But Jaffaran looked more serious than I had ever seen him. "I did promise I would listen," I replied slowly, watching him with a curious gaze. He watched me back, warily. It was all very odd. I slid down to take a seat beside one of the large pieces of fallen stonework. "How about here?" I asked. "Far enough?"
His stance relaxed as I sat on the tile, though his eyes were still worried. "It'll do," he said. "Just promise me you won't touch this thing."
"So many promises," I chided him. But he didn't look in the mood for a joke. I put one hand on my heart and held up the other as I would for a solemn vow. "I will stay up here as long as it's necessary, where it's safe from... whatever that is. I've never seen anything like it. It's beautiful."
"I suppose it is, in a way," he replied, turning back to his examination of the tree-like structure. "What I can't understand is how it's grown so much. We should have seen it before it got to this stage." He pulled a weathered old parchment out of his pocket, poring over whatever as written there. I could only see the back of it, which was badly faded and hard to read. I didn't recognize any of the words, which I might have taken for total gibberish if they hadn't been laid out in such precise lines and handwriting. There seemed to be a diagram, too, that looked a bit like the base of the crystal tree. "You said you've never seen it before?" Jaffaran inquired, still looking over the strange notes. "When were you last out here?"
I had to stop and think about it. We had come out here all of the time, decades ago when Stellan, Torin and I were all children. We'd clamber up the fallen columns, or play as family elders holding court in the collapsed hall. My mother had always worried that one of us would fall down the giant hole in the floor, but my father had encouraged us, and said there was good fishing down there. We had kept coming as young adults, until recently. Those had been wonderful days, back when my father and older brother were the people I remembered, not the strangers they had become.
"I think it's been about five years," I said to Jaffaran. "Maybe five and a half."
"Mmm hmm," he said absently, still reading his old parchment and squinting at the crystals. "And when did your father -- forgive me, Lady Savna -- when did your father begin to decline?"
"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked, tilting my head. I must have sounded defensive as well as perplexed, because Jaffaran finally looked up fro his reading.
"You don't know what this is, do you?"
"What, the tree? No, I just told you..."
"That you hadn't seen it before," he repeated. "Which means it must have grown to this size in five years or so, and that's a problem. This isn't a tree, Savna. It's a root."
Now I was well and truly confused. "Roots grown down, not up," I pointed out.
"From our perspective they do, yes. But things don't look the same from every angle." He circled the tree, staring up into what looked like crystal branches to me, and I wondered what angle he was looking for that would make a root grow up toward the sky.
"I don't understand," I said.
"No, I suppose you don't. But I think this may be the reason your father has changed. It's close enough to have an effect at this size, and according to the old texts, one of the first signs that the root is waking is that it seeks out power and tries to corrupt it. Your father would be the nearest, best target." He turned back once more to the parchment full of strange words and drawings. "There's got to be a way to destroy it..."
I could only follow a portion of what he was saying, but the last part was clear. "Can't we just break it, or cut it down?" I skipped down the steps, hands out to try to see what the root was made of. "It looks so fragile." Up close I could see that there were even gaps between the segments of the branches. It was impossible that such a thing could stay upright.
In a flash, Jaffaran was between me and the crystals, holding tightly to my hands to keep me from touching anything.
"Don't," he said simply.
"But I just--"
"You have to understand how dangerous this is, Savna. That root is from the other side of the gate. It's burrowing into our world, trying to find an avenue for the powers there to come back to Ajri. You cannot touch it. You cannot go near it." He was staring directly into my eyes as he spoke, gauging my response to see if I was listening this time.
I was lost for a moment in the golden amber of his gaze, full of strength and of knowledge that went deeper than I had ever realized. It was also full of concern for me -- not for Ajri, or my father, or the crystal oddity behind him, but for me. I started to answer, but before I could say anything, to let him know how much that concern meant to me, or that I would do whatever he asked of me, a breeze blew around us, strangely unsettling. I could feel it on my skin, but there was no rustling of leaves, and no ripples on the water. The horses started whinnying on the other side of the pond, and Jaffaran took me by the arm to steer me up the stairs. "Out," he said. "Now. We're going back."
I let myself be herded up the steps, but stopped at the top, just long enough to turn around, put a hand to Jaffaran's chest and stop him in his tracks. I didn't know when I would have this chance again, so acting on pure impulse I leaned in and kissed him. I got more of his nose than his lips, but as far as I was concerned, it was perfect.
