5. Chapter 5
Iheard Malik call my name as I ran out of the council room, but did not allow myself to turn back.
With the glow of the eir lighting my way and my skirts fluttering behind me, I ran past the small band of men that had accompanied Malik's family to Sorrel.
Seeing them made it all the more real—the mainland king was coming, the Mother Blessed were being threatened, and Yllsora knew, and was warning us in her way.
The ground shook beneath me as I ran towards the temple and the Astaros that dwelled within, the earth's unease forcing its way through the icy ground and into my veins.
I was dizzy with the feeling, as Yllsora had not acted in such a way since the Shroud, and I knew Sorrel would not survive another.
"Allyra!" I heard from behind me, but this time, it was the sound of my fellow Mother Blessed.
I turned to find a small group of them coming from their homes, worry written across their faces, no doubt coming out to investigate the very same thing I felt.
"What is happening?" they asked.
My breath trembled as it escaped me. "I'm not sure. But I'm going to find out. Go back into your homes." I looked around to the Dures' men once more. "It's not going to be safe for us much longer."
They looked at me with a fear I knew all too well, before nodding and heading back to their homes, leaving me to continue on my trek to the temple, the ground testing my balance as I ran.
My hands shook as I opened the doors of the temple, the dark wood of the door solid and frozen beneath my hands, the hinges groaning against the ice that coated its metal.
I rushed inside after I forced it open, desperate to evade the inescapable winter chill, my coat long forgotten in the council room.
But even inside the temple walls I did not find respite from the cold of the winter, the icy chill weaving its way through the pillars that allowed all Mother Blessed to see the Astaros at all times, no matter where we were in the village.
Protecting the Astaros was one of our only duties before the Shroud, as they not only gave life to the lands but also acted as a well for the Mother Blessed, our source of power this far from Rida.
They were our lifeline, and without the Astaros, the Mother Blessed's power would only get weaker the further from Rida they got.
And being so far north, we greatly depended on the Astaros for without them, Sorrel would be a ghost of a place.
I made my way towards the Astaros in the center of the temple, my fingers aching from the cold, and watched as the wind tossed its branches, the appendages bending at its whim. The movement would have been beautiful, if I didn't know better, yet I knew this was a calamitous sign.
The only way the Astaros communicated with the Mother Blessed was through our channeling of its roots and the winds that traveled through their branches, as the Astaros never moved, never bent with the gusts of wind as the nimids do.
They were a steady symbol of strength, standing strong during winter storms, never losing their leaves even in the deepest of frosts, telling us what we needed to know only when we asked.
Discontent laced the air as the wind whipped around me while I kneeled in front of the Astaros, the bite of the cold stinging my cheeks, a warning sign from Yllsora.
But I was desperate for answers, and so I reached out to the raised roots at the base of the Astaros, the wind coming to a halt at my touch.
A small jolt went through me at the contact, not enough to drain me but enough to send a tug through my stomach, a warning that, while I was being let in, to tread carefully.
A breath shuddered out of me at the feeling.
Much time had passed since I had attempted to speak to Yllsora in this way, the evidence that she still heard me enough to spark the smallest light of hope within me. A blessing that so many other Mother Blessed did not have following the Shroud.
But that also meant I had to listen.
The temple settled with my presence, a hush now filling the space, amplifying the creak of the branches of the Astaros above as they calmed with the absence of the wind.
I focused all my energy on the ground below, closed my eyes, and listened to the stillness.
I knew that was where the feelings of the trees liked to hide.
In those quiet moments between gusts, before they loosed their rage on the next swell.
It was only a moment of stillness, but enough for me to plunge deep into the ground beneath me, to feel the soft rumble of roots deep under the surface, to hear their yowl of pain as they tried to move but were stunted by the chill of the earth.
I pushed deeper, searching for more answers, for some sort of explanation as to why Yllsora was acting this way—and why now—but found nothing as the iciness dripped into my bones, the roots warning me that I had overstayed my welcome.
I pulled my hands from the ground, my breath shuddering out of me as I opened my eyes.
I had hoped to find a trace of the thrum of the earth that had once echoed strong and proud, but as I looked closer at the base of the Astaros, I found something I had never seen before.
The Astaros' trunk was sickly dark, the moon reflecting off the wet glint that had buried its way inside the wood. My hand reached towards the trunk, caressing what used to be the base of the tree, only for it to come away sticky, the lignin of the tree destroyed and coating my hand.
It was then that everything around me dimmed to a muffle, a soft voice caressing my ear.
Something has been spreading among Yllsora; you have known this for a while now. You feel it in every part of this world, where others cannot.
Everything seemed to still then, my hands freezing on the base of the tree, the branches of the Astaros relaxing, all as the voice of the Mother filled my ears.
It had been a long time since I had heard her, her guiding voice having gone quiet after the Shroud.
But tonight, she returned.
A swell of hope rose within me at the sound of her voice, hope that maybe Yllsora would find its way out of this winter, that we could return to life before the Shroud, and this would all be a part of the past. That this decade of frost at the beginning of the world would be something we could overcome, and would be a part of our history, and not our present.
My mind reeled at the possibility, my body full of hope, but I found the strength to push the feeling down, to focus and turn my eyes towards the trunk and to the roots I sat atop, their dark color finally registering.
She was right. I had felt the change among the roots for some time now, but had never been able to name what I felt crawling along them.
It is a rot, the Mother said, bringing death where the Mother Blessed work to coax life.
I looked close to the Astaros tree, at how the rot ate away at it, it's base beginning to decay, the sunken wood of the trunk threatening to collapse the tree from below.
At the sight of it, my power reached for the roots that connected to the base of the tree, wanting nothing more than to coax life from them, to stop this rot, my hands trembling with the power that desperately wanted out.
Yet another tug pulled from deep within me, my breath shuddering out as my power recoiled, pulling me back to the branches of the Astaros, where the voice of the Mother sounded again.
No. You cannot help the roots here. You must go to the source, to Rida, and stop the rot there.
My breath left my body at the prospect of going to Rida.
To the very place that made being a Mother Blessed possible.
It was a journey no one from Sorrel had ever made—for even as an island, Wellea was vast and largely untraveled, the Alesi Forest covering most of the land in between the few villages that populated the region.
It is a journey that must be done, the Mother said. Now more than ever. You are faced with two foes: the rot and the men who wish to take the Mother Blessed's power, their objective one and the same—to lessen the Mother Blessed's connection to Yllsora.
I did not want to think that the claims of Malik's father were true, that the mainland men had finally reached their limit on us Mother Blessed holding more power than them, but I knew that I could not deny them now that the Mother had addressed it, had spoken truth to it.
The weight of it all was heavy on my shoulders, much more than I ever thought possible.
I had dedicated my life to the Mother and her word, but I'd never expected such a request to come from the Divine.
All these years, I held out hope that she would one day save us from the calamity that we faced, that we would be returned to the Yllsora I had once known and loved, and that life would continue on as it once had, but I had been mistaken.
I tried to stop it in my own way, she answered. But other Divine reach for this world and have already made their mark here. You know what I speak of.
And I did. For years I had suspected that the Black Shroud was the work of another Divine. That only something as powerful as those who reside in the Caelium could make such a thing happen, could affect Yllsora in such a way that we still felt its effects a decade later.
Go, Allyra. Stop what was started ten years ago. Go to Rida, and do what you must. Do not let the rot reach her roots. And do not let the men from the mainland tear her down for their own gain. Save Rida, protect Yllsora, save the Mother Blessed. You are the only one who can do so.
The voice of the Mother disappeared on one final soft breeze, and I felt my heart threaten to rip out of my chest as I contended with everything she had just said, and the very notion that she had returned to us at all.
What did this mean for the future of Yllsora? I thought to myself. Would she come back once Rida was saved? Once the rot was stopped? How would I even stop the rot?