Page 255 of The Dryad Storm

By building a world foreveryone.

“I suspect it’s as all the holy books and myths say,” Or’myr flatly states. “I don’t think it can be destroyed. But its thrall can, via the love we hold for each other.”

Surprised murmuring kicks up as he and Elloren reveal what their momentinside the Wor’s wood showed them. Yes, Or’myr considers, as he narrows his eyes on the cloth-wrapped Wor gripped in Wynter’s hands, they can fight the wretched tool with love and connection. But it’s also not a bad idea to encase the evil thing in as much stone as possible.

To give the world time to build on what love there is.

“Let’s imprison the damned thing,” Or’myr says, tightening his grip on his gem-encrusted geo-wand as he looks to his fellow Urisk and rises along with Elloren, all of them staring the Wor down.

“I’m ready,” Bleddyn says, lifting her malachite stylus. “Let’s begin.”

Or’myr works with his Urisk’kin straight through the night and through the entirety of the next day to encase the Shadow Wor deep in the earth surrounded with layer upon layer of their strongest, most impenetrable encasings of stone.

Once it’s done, powerful Dryad’khin from Erthia’s every group and magical tradition send multiple bands of defensive magic around the stone-encased Wor, and Vang Troi posts a constantly changing guard from every cultural group in Noilaan to monitor the site, the Ironflower-tressed Dryad, Yulan, casting a dense field of demon-repelling Ironflowers over the Wor’s location.

Because they all know that the Shadow Wand will remain ever-waiting. Sending out dreams and visions to its guards and others. Dreams of power and glory and domination. Seductive dreams hooking into every impulse for fracture and vengeance. But finding no firm purchase.

Because, for the moment, a critical mass of the people of the East are aligned with IV and with each other as Dryad’khin.

Ready to work to heal Erthia.

“Come to the Forest, cousin,” Elloren prods Or’myr as the two of them stand before the Great Tree IV the next evening, along with a constantly changing crowd of Dryad’khin streaming in to make contact with IV’s embracing mist. Elloren turns to him, her green eyes alight with affection. “Come out of your Dryad dormancy.”

Or’myr smiles wryly as he peers up at the gigantic tree, stars twinkling through the gaps in its cloud-high canopy.

“You know,” he says, turning to his cousin, “I never fully related to the Mage side of myself.”

Elloren smirks at him. “Even as you were drawn to collect every piece of woodyou came across, like me? And set trees into the walls of your Vonor?”

Or’myr lets out a short laugh, ever heartened by her kindred understanding. “I have a complicated relationship with my Gardnerian lineage.”

“YourDryadlineage,” Elloren insists, growing serious. “Or’myr, let the Forest heal the fracture inside you.”

He huffs out a breath, peering up at the huge tree. “I don’t think the Forest can heal all the fracture inside me.” He grows silent for a moment, knowing it can’t touch the worst fracture of all.

His inability to fully be with Tierney.

A look of pained understanding crosses Elloren’s features, her hand coming gently to his arm. “Then let it healsomeof it. You’ve sacrificed so much for all of us. You inspired a Western Mage Resistance. Did you know that? Do you have any idea how many Mages arrived here with Resistance bands marked with purple moons on their arms?”

Or’myr blinks at her in surprise.

“Cousin,” Elloren says, with great import, “you sparked a rebellion in the West.”

Or’myr lets out a hard exhale, looking toward the pale white moon above. “Vo sparked it.”

“Wealldid,” Elloren insists, before smiling at him. “Maybe Vo did too.”

Or’myr looks closely at Elloren, suddenly wanting the sense of connection she and the other Dryad’khin seem to have found with the Forest, even if the connection he’s most longing for can never be his.

“All right, cousin,” he says, his mouth slanting up as emotion mists his eyes, “bring me to your Forest.”

Elloren takes his hand, and he lets her lead him to IV’s enormous mass of a trunk. He lifts his palms and presses them through the green mist to the trunk’s night-black bark.

Purple rays flash out around his hands, and gravity gives way, and then he’s suddenly falling, falling straight into the Tree and enveloped in a swirl of darkness, then liquid purple light as IV’s energy connects to the Vo River and he’s swept up in a sudden, heart-expanding sense of Tierney’s Asrai aura all around him, swirling through the streaming power.

And he’s certain that somehow, she’s fallen into the trees, as well.

Tierney, he calls out, and can feel her answering leap of shock as well as the joy-filled surge of her power in response to finding him there. And Or’myr knows,stunned joy tightening his heart, that Tierney isright there, somehow, in the Natural Matrix alongside him, a vision of one of the Eastern Cypress groves that grow straight up from the edges of the Northern Vo River suffusing his mind.

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