Holmberg, D K - The Lost Garden Triology [Omnibus] by Holmberg D K

Author:Holmberg, D K [Holmberg, D K]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ASH Publishing
Published: 2015-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

More than anything, the ground woke Eris.

She rolled over and saw the moon glowing brightly against the sky, hanging full and yellow as it hovered above the highest hill. Eris stretched and let out her breath. The air carried a heavy chill, and she suppressed a shiver.

How had she fallen asleep?

The rest left her feeling better and helped clear away some of the doubts that had started tainting her thoughts. She might not be the keeper she’d thought, but she was still a keeper. When she managed to return to Eliara, she would force Lira to teach her.

Somehow.

First, she had to determine which way to go.

Eris slipped off her thin slippers and touched her feet to the ground, dreading the chill she knew would come. Dry grasses crunched beneath her feet and pressed uncomfortably against her. Sucking in a deep breath, she delved into the roots.

The connection felt tenuous at first. The grasses were nearly dormant, and she struggled to gain anything meaningful from them, but all she needed was the connection.

Pressing out with the connection, she felt the forest behind her. It rebuffed her attempt to follow the roots, the barrier formed by Imryll stout enough she couldn’t follow it. There came a glimmer of something more before it faded as well. Could that be the svanth tree?

She pushed outward, following the shallow roots of the nearly dormant grassy plain, stretching for something familiar. Copses of trees dotted the landscape. Wild flowers, some with massive fields like those she’d seen in visions, covered hills.

Finally, she came to the familiar presence of the Svanth. Eris swallowed as she did but didn’t break the connection. The forest seemed to welcome her, though she wasn’t a keeper of the forest as she’d thought. Instead, she must be a keeper of flowers, like Lira. Perhaps that was the only reason the forest welcomed her.

At least now she knew the direction she needed to travel.

She picked up her shoes and started south, not breaking the connection. As she walked, her bare feet crunching against the dry grass, she continued to press outward, reaching Eliara and Lira’s garden and pushing further, reaching toward the border with Saffra…

She stumbled and broke the connection.

The border failed.

Eris recognized it as a change in the life as she pushed outward, a flash of a vision.

Grasses and flowers burned as the magi pushed north into Errasn, reaching the Loess River. But even that border began to fail. The fringes were singed. And beyond the fringes there was nothing. No sense of life. Nothing. Simply desolation.

What had changed?

Something must have changed, else why would the border fail? The only answer Eris had was Lira. But if Lira failed, what did that mean for Eris’ mother?

Eris ran, afraid to consider what would happen were Lira to fall. More than her mother dying, the magi would continue to press north, twisting the land with their destructive magic. Eris felt the effect even here. Once they reached Eliara, how much longer before they reached the Svanth?

And then beyond the Svanth, into Imryll’s forest.

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