Page 92 of The Dryad Storm

Chapter Seven

Purple Geomancer

Sparrow Trillium

Deep inside III

Sparrow’s heart accelerates into a hammering panic as she hurtles through the Great Tree’s all-encompassing darkness. Her center fills with aching pressure, as if the Tree is trying to join her very core to its terrifying, endless depths.

Abruptly, she slows to a suspended halt.

Fear and disorientation firing through her in comet-like surges, Sparrow rues how impulsively she went to the Great Tree, mesmerized by what felt like a heart-pull that intensified as she took in the ethereal Geo’din messenger birds of the Urisk pantheon perched all over its roots.

Birds who seemed to be calling to the very center of her being.

Filled with what suddenly felt like glistening, trappedpower.

Her fear devolving into throat-clenching anguish, Sparrow startles as violet light flashes through her vision and violet crystals emerge from the darkness all around her, big as the Tree’s huge roots.

Bigger.

Her eyes widen as she gapes at the crystals, her suspended form but a speck in the face of these colossal, geometric formations, their shimmering purple rapidly overtaking the darkness. She pulls in a shuddering breath as she’s swept up in the overpowering feeling that the giant crystals surrounding her are benevolently watching.

And waiting.

As if the Tree is making a startling offering to her, like she’s some powerful Urisk geomancer ready to wield these mammoth crystals suffused with her kindred Urisk’viil color, the Great Tree not realizing she’s a mere seamstress, lacking thegeomancy power only Urisk males are gifted with.

Sorrow grips Sparrow as everything in her strains to connect to the gigantic crystals.

Strains tomergewith them.

I’ve no power, she agonizes to the Great Tree as the crystals continue to form all around, some of the smaller formations crystalizing toward her, made up of every variety of the purple-hued stones she’s especially drawn to as a member of the violet Urisk’viil class.

A memory of Noilaan’s dockside gem market enters Sparrow’s mind, how she could afford only a select few purple stones. Her hands were shaking as she purchased then pocketed them, feeling like she was committing a crime, the keeping of kindred-Urisk’viil geomancy stones forbidden to women by the Urisk religion.

I’m in love with a Mage, Sparrow had rebelliously thought in that moment as she brushed her fingers over the taboo stones.Why not own kindred stones as a man would?

Thoughts of Thierren constrict Sparrow’s throat with a longing so intense, she can barely pull in a breath, her mind swinging to that last, agonizing collision of their gazes as she was flown away on dragonback by demonic Tilor while Vogel’s demon tide rippled over Voloi, cutting Thierren from sight as she screamed his name.

Thierren, my beloved, where are you?

Her heart squeezes tighter as the face of her other loved one surfaces in her thoughts—Effrey. Did the child survive Vogel’s siege of Voloi?

Thierren’s and Effrey’s names ring out in Sparrow’s mind with heart-shredding force as a formation of iris-hued charoite and deep-violet jasper crystallize toward her. A sizzle of yearning is suddenly tingling against the underside of her skin. Not just to be reunited with Thierren and Effrey, but to wieldgeopower.

Her whole being fills with the certainty that the Great Tree is trying to link this stone world to her in some way. But it’s completely misguided.

“I’mfemale!” she cries out to the Great Tree, railing against fate. “Urisk females have no geomancy!”

Sparrow is abruptly flooded with the core-warming sense of the Great Treesmiling—a smile of such vast-rooted kindness, tears sheen Sparrow’s eyes, blurring the purple-crystalline sparkle of the world surrounding her.

And then the entire purple scene around her contracts, and she’s cast into another vision.

Head spinning, Sparrow finds herself peering down from the twisted golden branches of a bulbous desert tree, a yellow desert landscape spread out before her. A golden city with gleaming domed structures shines in the distance, great mountains of yellow stone just beyond, everything appearing to waver from the battering-ram heat of a white-hot sun.

Surprise overtakes Sparrow.

Urisk’hiir.A city she’s heard about in tales from Uriskan’s past. She recognizes it by the three fabled golden stars hanging over the mountains, bright as dragon eyes even in day’s full light. The city before her—along with the entire country of Uriskan—destroyed during the last Realm War by Gardneria’s Black Witch, Carnissa Gardner.

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