What Anger Carried

Thiarel left before the laughter had died.

She rose from the circle and walked beneath the trees without looking at Rishi. Sirael waited one breath longer. Her gaze passed over him, Maeril, and the livingwood across his knees. Then she took up her bow and followed her sister.

The council came apart around them.

Lirae gathered the empty cups. Caereth drew Faelar aside and spoke with his head bent close. Nessari lingered beside her practice staff until Lirae touched her shoulder and sent her toward the Root-House.

Leaves stirred after the last of them.

Then the training ground held only Rishi, Maeril, and the marks their bodies had left in the dirt.

Rishi remained on his mat. The new scar beneath his robes pulled when he breathed too deeply. An older ache had settled into his left shoulder. Neither pain was sharp enough to need his hands.

Beside him, Maeril had not moved.

Her cold tea sat beside one knee. She stared at the empty place where Elenya had been, fingers spread against her cloak.

Rishi set one palm on the mat and rose.

The staff came with him. He rolled his shoulder once, then turned slowly at the waist until the pull across his lower abdomen eased. The livingwood followed the motion as if it had always belonged in his hand.

A year beneath these trees.

Training with hunters whose steps he could barely hear. Work among people willing to look at what they had done and ask what came next. The thought warmed him before he could guard against it.

“Oh, good,” Maeril said. “You can still stretch.”

Her voice was level enough to stop him.

“That is good to know.”

Rishi lowered the staff.

Her face had flushed. Her eyes shone too brightly, and a muscle worked along her jaw.

“Maeril.”

She stood so fast that her cloak caught beneath one boot. She kicked it free and began to pace the edge of the circle.

“We were supposed to keep traveling south.” Her boots cut through the dirt in long, hard strides. “We had not even decided how far. We were going to see what we found. Do you remember that, or did a Dryad eat it with the rest of you?”

Rishi planted the staff and waited.

“We were going to stop in Mosstone for a few tendays. A month, perhaps. Long enough to help with the Pale Sap because I could not walk away while people rotted from it.”

Maeril turned at the targets and came back.

“And yes, I wanted something too. A glimpse of this. A chance to speak with real druids again. To walk an ancient forest instead of reading about one in Candlekeep. To learn something from people who do not think all wizards smell of dust and bad decisions.”

Her tail struck the side of her boot.

“A detour. That was the word I used. We would help. I would deepen my initiation, and then we would take the road south.”

She stopped in front of him.

“Instead, I lost you.”

The words left no room in the clearing.

“Not almost. I lost you long enough for your heart to stop. Long enough for Aestra to give up the life she wanted. Long enough for the whole Grove to mourn you.”

Maeril pressed one hand to her breastbone.

“And now they have offered me a year of everything I wanted.”

She pointed toward the path Elenya and her family had taken.

“A year inside a wood-elf house. A year learning how their lives fit around the forest, how their rites hold, how their spells grow out of seasons instead of pages. Time with a Mythal from the inside. Do you understand what that means to me?”

Rishi nodded once.

“And I will sleep under the same hill as the woman who tore you open.”

Her hand fell.

“I will pass her sister when I fetch water. I will eat with people who remember the smell of your blood. I will lie down with the grove humming through the walls because part of it lives in that staff now.”

She looked at the wood in his hand.

“There is no ward for this, Rish. Nothing I can draw that makes you impossible to kill. No clever adjustment to the Mythal that promises I will never find you on the ground again.”

She turned away, took three steps, and came back.

“I thought I knew the risk. We prepare. We watch each other. I put a shield where the blow is going, you move before the next one, and somehow we thread the needle again.”

A laugh caught in her throat and came out bitter.

“I held that drunken Mythal upright while you steadied the Dryad. We had it breathing again. Then I tried to take Thiarel out of the fight without hurting her. I was good. I did everything I knew how to do.”

Her voice rose.

“Thiarel still opened you like paper,” she shouted.

Rishi felt the new scar answer. Claws. Heat. The ground rising against his face.

“You died. Your breath stopped. Your heart stopped. Your blood was on my hands. I saw it. I felt it.”

He did not look away.

“And now we stay.” Her hands opened at her sides. “Here. With them. With her. For a year, perhaps longer. The dream and the nightmare are woven so tightly I cannot find the end of either thread.”

She was shaking. She kept speaking.

“I wanted a deeper bond with Mielikki. I wanted more than being a polite visitor at a shrine.”

Her breath shortened around the words.

“Now I have it. Your death paid part of the price. Aestra paid the rest. I look at the being in that Grove and remember her asking us to help her live. Elenya has wagered her house on us, and I—”

Maeril’s voice broke.

The next breath shuddered through her. Her boots had stopped at the far edge of the circle, toes pressed against a root.

Rishi set the staff upright. He had turned with her as she paced, keeping her in sight, but he had not crossed the space between them.

Now he did.

One step. Then another, slow enough for her to refuse him.

She did not move.

The familiar words came first to him: suffering, choice, vows, consequence. He had used them beside sickbeds and graves until they knew the shape of his mouth.

He let them pass.

“You are afraid. You have reason.”

Maeril looked at him as if he had struck something loose.

“I am not made of paper,” he said. “I am not made of stone, either. You did not pull me into that grove. I walked beside you. I saw the danger and chose it.”

“Did you?” The force returned to her voice, but not its steadiness. “Because I am not sure I saw it. Not down to the root. I thought we would be careful enough. Precise enough. We always find a way through. A way no one has to die.”

Rishi stayed where he was.

Maeril wiped one cheek with the heel of her hand.

“I was not ready to lose you. Not for a dryad I had only just met. I thought we could help Aestra and come back.”

She looked down at her hands.

“I liked her. She could barely stand at that table, and she was still arguing with me about what she could feel. I wanted to hear what she made of it when she was not frightened and ill.”

Maeril’s hands closed into fists.

“She wanted a road she could choose for herself. I heard her say it. Then I watched her become part of that Grove, and I could do nothing to give her another way.”

Her fingers opened with effort.

Rishi placed the staff on the ground beside him. He lifted one hand, waited, then rested it lightly on her upper arm.

“You do not have to sound ready. Or wise. Not with me.”

Her laugh came out wet and broken.

“Good. I feel like someone who wagered the person she loves for the chance to help and the chance to learn how roots speak to the sky.”

She leaned into his hand by a fraction.

“And I still want it. That is the worst part. I know the price now, and I still want to stay.”

Her gaze moved past him to the trees.

“I want to stand here and belong. A little.”

“So do I.”

She looked back at him.

“You are happy.” The words carried a last edge of accusation. “You are happy about this.”

“Yes.”

Rishi let the answer stand before he added to it.

“I am frightened. I grieve. I am happy. All of them are true.”

Maeril breathed out through her nose.

“Of course. A multi-tasking monk.”

When her weight settled evenly over both feet, Rishi lowered his hand.

“Elenya’s gift costs her authority. It will cost the house.”

He looked toward the path where Thiarel had vanished.

“I want to learn from their speed and silence. To live beside people who hurt us, and whom we hurt, without turning away.”

The staff lay between them, one dark line across the scuffed earth.

“I feel honoured. And bound.”

Maeril scrubbed both hands over her face.

“You and your vows.”

Her hands hung open now. Her shoulders bowed beneath the weight the anger had carried.

She followed his gaze to the staff.

“What are you thinking?”

Rishi picked up the livingwood with both hands and returned to the centre of the clearing.

He set the staff’s end against the dirt.

The form began with his feet. Step. Plant. Turn.

He stripped the movements to their bones and carried them through a small circle. At three points, the staff pressed into the packed earth. His heel returned each time to the centre, deepening the same shallow hollow.

Three marks around one.

He set one point toward the oldest roots for Rillifane, one toward the changing path for Sehanine, and one toward the forest’s edge for Mielikki. At their centre, his heel marked the place of his answer.

He bowed his head.

“Thank you.”

He did not say whether he meant Elenya, the forest, Ilmater, or all of them. The staff gave one low pulse beneath his hands.

Maeril came to stand beside him. Her eyes followed the three marks and the hollow between them.

“That looks like a ritual.”

“It is a mark. For her. For the house.”

“She will know who left it.”

“I hope so.”

Maeril’s shoulder settled against his.

“Fine,” she said. “Let us find out where our new not-quite-innkeeper has put the dangerous monk and his irresponsible witch.”

Lirae called their names from the path.

Maeril looked once more at the marks. Then she turned toward the voice.

Rishi lifted the staff to his shoulder and followed.