Avandor's Gift
Vision of Trees

Sleep had evaded me despite my bone-deep weariness. I wanted answers, clues—something— and I knew I wasn’t going to get them with my eyes shut. Tetje said I had to wait until morning before going out, and though it was still dark, Anolis would be rising soon enough. I tore the sheets from around me and pushed my feet into the society-approved shoes that Tetje provided. I opened the room door and stared at the figure that stood waiting on the opposite wall.

“It is morning.” He said.

“I thought you said it was dangerous to go out in the dark.”

“It is a good thing then that it is pre-dawn, not quite day and not quite night.” He said as he handed me a cloak. I draped it about myself and we slipped out of the house careful not to wake anyone else.

“Were you there all night?” I asked after a while.

“No, though the thought did cross my mind more than once to do the same.” I couldn’t see his face behind the hood but I imagined his lips pressed into a hard line.

“I wasn’t going to run.” He didn’t answer. “Why is it that you despise me, is it because I am chuman?”

“Why are my feelings towards you relevant? They do not change the situation at hand.”

“They may not, but I would like to know for my own understanding. You profess to be a scholar, so you can understand my curiosity.”

He stopped and looked at me. “I have never professed such a thing,”

I raised a brow. “Really?”

“I have never professed it openly more than once and that is as good as not saying it, but I will satisfy your curiosity regardless.” He started walking once more. “My feelings towards you are the general feelings of my kind towards others— indifference. We tend not to get personally attached to anyone.”

“Tet was different.”

“She had to be different, she was to be your wife, but by now you already know that.” He said turning to me.

I nodded. “Your father, from what I gathered felt similarly towards us as your sister.”

“And look where that led them. Him in a strange land guiding savages and her probably dead, despite what you say.” He answered sharply and then mellowed his tone when he continued. “The library is just ahead. Show me your proof and let us be gone.”

As I walked through the now scattered boughs of fir, I couldn’t believe that this was the same place I visited years ago. The sloping hill that was covered with lush grass was replaced by charred earth. Some of the floating bowls that had confounded my imagination were empty, broken and toppled over. Those left standing offered no shimmery glow above them, but a blackness where not even air seemed to dwell.

“As luck would have it, the more recent chapters still stand, history of the millennia past and the knowledge stored there in are lost to us forever.” He said as we came to one of the most peripheral bowls. “Show me your evidence; I am now ready to see.”

“The water looks sullied and different, will it work?”

“It hasn’t for me, maybe you will be different.” He said staring into the pool like a man looking through fog.

I looked at the water for a second and willed myself to remember clearly the night Tet had first appeared. I then dipped my finger into the shallow pool. The water rippled and an image appeared, but it wasn’t the one I had wanted to conjure.

I was shown a land where the trees seemed to grow directly up from fog with no earth surrounding it. Above the tops of the trees were four mountains with golden peaks floating above silvery mists.

“Tetje are you seeing this?” I asked.

“Yes,”

“I have never been to this place or seen it. Do you know it?”

“I know of it.” he said.

“Why would the well show me this?”

“Look carefully and see if there is something to be noticed.” He said still peering into the pool.

The image changed, but it was the same place. I was now standing in the midst of the strange airy forest. There was something familiar about the narrow trunks, each were identical having a knobby eye in the centre. The picture moved as it drew me toward one tree in particular. It was wider than the others and the main trunk was smooth. It had two low branches but the one on the left was sawed off. I studied the one on the right closely. I knew the branch immediately as I had held it, or rather one like it in my hands once.

“Alphandé,” I whispered. The image disappeared and the water in the bowl was again murky and turbulent. Tetje and I stepped back suddenly as the water continued to pour out. The basin shook once and then fell to the floor and broke open in two. Tetje and I looked at each other and then back at the bowl.

“It is strange that we should be given the image of Agden in so recent a chapter. I wonder who it is that went there?”

“No one yet, but I will soon.”

“And why in Envladane would you do that!”

“Did you not see it? It showed us Alphandé.”

“You saw Alphandé?”

“You didn’t?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not possible, this must be a trick.”

“But it isn’t.” I was confident. “This isn’t the first time the pool has shown me the silver staff.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw Alphandé before the Great Race. It was shown to me so that when I got to the top of the hill I knew that I had found it. It is the same here I think.”

He shook his head. “That I replace difficult to believe. The wells do not show the future.”

“But they show the past. Agden was the place Alphandé was found wasn’t it so?”

“Yes.”

“So I know where I should go now. Don’t you see it Tetje, with Alphandé restored I can free the magic from Tet. We could have order again.” I said feeling the most excited I have felt since starting on the journey.

“That maybe so, but not everyone can just wander into Agden.” said Tetje.

“What do you mean?”

“Well first, it lies far in the east with hundreds of leagues separating it from Talithá.”

“Distance isn’t an issue.”

“You are right, it isn’t an issue it is one of many. Huma and the Diadem also lie east. That is where the clans are most unstable. We would have to pass them and the thousands of acolytes of the deer that are gathered there. If somehow we manage to get past them we still have to get into Agden itself and that is where the real trouble starts.”

“What do you mean?”

“Many changelings have wandered into Agden but only one has ever returned.”

“The first Grey Mage Sulna, the staff bringer.” I said as another mysteriously hidden piece of knowledge jumped to the fore front of my mind.

“Sulna and Sulna alone has ever made it into Agden and out of it.”

“It seems Sulna will have company soon enough.” I said.

“You do not know what you are saying.” said Tetje in a tone which bore naught but horror.

“Maybe not, but I have a fair idea.” I had a deal to make with a god.