Diaspor Aspenwind's Arc

Chapter 12 of 18

Diaspor walked south with the swarm at his back and his wound bleeding fresh through the lavender cloth. By midday he could no longer hide the shake in his legs. He smelled woodsmoke and crushed herbs, and pushed through the brush toward it. A small lavender stone pavilion stood in a clearing, its arched door curtained with a shimmering membrane. A small winged fae with leaf-green clothes and wary gold eyes stepped out, a poultice already in her hands. She saw the cloud above him and stopped cold. She knelt and tore a ring of bee balm flowers from a basket at her hip, pressing the blooms into the dirt in a wide circle around her feet. "I will treat you," she called, "but not while they hover. The ring holds them. You must come alone, or I cannot help." Diaspor looked up. The swarm orbited him in slow, patient rings, the gold wheel still drifting near his chest. Three scouts broke loose and circled lower, striped bodies bright against the sky, watching him decide. If he sent the swarm off, they would only return. If he stayed inside their crown, he would bleed out in the grass. He drew his golden sword and drove it point-down into the earth between himself and the flower ring. Then he lifted the gold wheel from the air and closed his fist around it. "Hold," he said, low and even. "Wait beyond the trees. Do not follow." The swarm shuddered. For a long breath he thought they would not obey. Then they peeled back in a long dark ribbon and settled into the high branches, eyes on him, silent. He stepped over the bee balm ring and dropped to his knees. The healer's small hands moved fast, packing the wound, binding it tight. She would not look at the wheel in his fist. "They know your voice now," she whispered. "That is worse than a sting." Diaspor closed his eyes. He was alive. He was their master in truth. And the confession he owed had just grown a swarm-shaped wall around it.