The Black Elfstone

by Terry Brooks

  “Which might help her but not you. Besides, she is stubborn, that one. I’ve seen it as clearly as you. She will not understand unless you tell her of your fears. And then she will wish to stand and fight beside you.”

  Drisker nodded. Flinc was right. Tarsha Kaynin was not the type to walk away. Another choice was needed.

  “I will leave instead, then,” he said.

  “Only a few days should be required.”

  “But they will still come.”

  “Perhaps. But they are not interested in her. She will be safe enough. There are others who will be here to greet them. Others perhaps better suited to deal with such visitors. You have powerful friends, russ’hai, though sometimes it mystifies me why. You’ve certainly done nothing to please them in a way that would make them friends.”

  Drisker smiled. He did have friends, and they were better friends than those at Paranor had ever been. Those who had been all too willing to consign him to oblivion, to take advantage of his decision to step down as High Druid and make sure he was cast out for good. Even worse, to make sure it was known far and wide that he was no longer one of them, and no longer welcome to return. It emboldened his enemies and left him vulnerable.

  The forest imp looked off into the trees. “She waits now,” he said quietly.

  Drisker nodded. “I expect so. But let her wait awhile longer. It is a part of her training, learning to wait, learning of patience.”

  The imp pursed his lips. “I know something of waiting.”

  Indeed. Forest imps had endless patience. For days, weeks, even months on occasion, they could disappear inside themselves and not move a hair. It was in their nature. Much of their time in the Faerie World had been spent in endless waiting. In the war between creatures of darkness and light, they had stepped aside from both. They had not thought of themselves as part of either faction and did not see the point in allying with either. So they kept to themselves while the war raged.

  And after? When the dark were consigned to the Forbidding and the light held sway? For a time, they flourished. But then humans came into the world, and the Faerie kind dwindled in numbers until only a handful remained hidden in the deep woods and high mountains and impassable hollows, waiting for the cycle to reach its end and begin anew. They could live a long time, these forest imps. Centuries, in some cases. It was in their nature to survive, to endure when other, more aggressive species burned out and vanished. Instead of refusing to change, the imps evolved and found ways to fit into a world that never remained the same for long.

  Flinc was quite old. Older than dirt, he liked to say without a hint of irony or braggadocio. He was proud that he had lived so long and seen so much, and he liked holding that over Drisker with his inferior Druid Sleep that allowed only years and not centuries of longer life. But they were friends, the imp and he, bonded by a shared worldview and involvement in the possession and usage of magic. Friendships were odd constructs, after all, formed in strange ways and maintained for strange reasons. However you saw them, it was hard to dispute that not all of them made sense or offered insights into the lives of the people involved.

  Drisker glanced back to where Flinc had been sitting in his rocker, but the chair was empty. The imp had gone back into the trees, his message delivered and his piece said. He was not one to linger. He was not one for casual conversation. Not a bad trait, to Drisker’s way of thinking.

  The Druid stood and stretched. Time to get under way. He had sent Tarsha out into the forest, instructing her to hide her trail and then wait for him to find her. When he did—not if, but when—she was to circle him once in an open space without allowing him to discover she was there. She could use the wishsong to achieve this and to offer proof she had done as tasked. She could call up whatever other magic she possessed to aid her. She could employ what subterfuges she chose.

  A seemingly impossible task in his mind, but then he thought her capable enough of achieving the impossible, even at this point in her training.

  He straightened himself and, picking up traces of her body heat still lingering against the air currents, he began tracking her.

  —

  Less than a quarter mile away, Tarsha was resting in a shady glen dappled with ferns and wildflowers and surrounded by giant spruce. She had gone as far as she thought necessary before stopping and no farther. It was pointless to wear herself down by attempting to outdistance or outsmart Drisker Arc. He was more than capable of finding her no matter what she did to try to lose him. Druids were trained to track using heat images, and on a windless day like this one there was little hope that whatever impressions she had left in her wake would dissipate before he caught up to her. She could try to disguise her passage with magic, but he would likely be able to read that, too. Druids, after all, were the prime wielders of magic in all the Four Lands, and you never wanted to underestimate what they could do. Especially someone like Drisker Arc.

  So let him come. Let him track her, and when he found her he would discover she had become more talented than he thought. Not that he would underestimate her. But he still thought of her as a novice, even though she had gone beyond that point in their first five days together.

  As a tutor, he was formidable. He trained her from dawn to dusk and sometimes beyond. He worked her steadily and methodically, always with a goal in mind, always with a lesson at the heart of every exercise. His method was to challenge her at every turn, and she thought some of this was due to his understanding of her urgency about helping her brother, but most of it was a reflection of his desire to discover if she could fill his need for an assistant. He was not one to drag things out, not one to hold back on the theory that caution was always best. Either you could do this or you couldn’t. Either she could measure up and begin the process of learning from him or she couldn’t and should be sent home. He wanted a quick answer to that question, and she was prepared to give it to him.

  If it was the answer she hoped for, perhaps she would one day be a member of the Druid order. Even if, as he had told her, he was no more than an outcast himself.

  In the trees off to her left, something moved. For a moment she froze, gone cold to the bone. Was it him? Had he somehow managed to creep up on her without her knowing? She waited for more, for his appearance, for a word, for an indication she had failed. But there was nothing there.

  Or apparently nothing. She had her doubts. This wasn’t the first time she had sensed she might have a shadow. She had blamed it on an overactive imagination. But she wasn’t entirely sure. Not then and not now.

  “If someone is there, show yourself,” she called out, standing to face toward the movement she had sensed.

  Nothing happened.

  Nerves, she thought. Shades! Am I such a child?

  She sat back again, looking up at the sky, clearing her thoughts and calming herself. Another few minutes and it would be time to prepare. He had said he would give her thirty minutes. But she knew better. He would give her more. He would give her at least an hour because he would want her to wait on him, wondering what he was planning. For he was always planning, always seeking to stay a step ahead. Frequently, he was—although less so as the days passed.

  His complexities troubled her.

  Sometimes she wondered if his almost alien intuition and prescience were a direct by-product of his peculiar nature. Living out here alone for more than two years seemed to have given him a strong connection with his surroundings and whatever creatures inhabited them. At times, he talked to things she couldn’t see. Or perhaps he was talking to the air or the trees or the sky; she could never be sure. He never offered to explain, and she didn’t think it her place to ask. But he clearly believed his behavior was normal, and this was more than a little disturbing. If he was seeing things that weren’t actually there, then how reliable was he? If he talked to himself, what did that say about his mental state? And the way he was constantly touching things for no apparent reason. And how he sniffed the air like an animal. However yo
u looked at it, he was exhibiting behavior that suggested his sanity was not altogether sound.

  Yet whom else could she turn to if she walked away now?

  Better to chance the stability of the known than to risk the unknown. How could she be worse off by doing so?

  It was a question she was not prepared to face.

  —

  Drisker Arc moved steadily into the forest, tracking the heat images Tarsha had left in her wake, keeping his senses attuned to his surroundings, searching for any sign of the girl. But he did not detect her anywhere close and so did not slow in his efforts to catch up to her. She would have stopped by now and be planning a way to complete her task. She would have found a suitable spot and set herself in place. Because he would be searching for her, she would want to move quickly, knowing she could not expect to fool him for long. Keeping these factors in mind, he was already developing a strategy—refining the details of a plan for tricking her into thinking she had gotten the better of him. He was confident he could do this, his experience and skill giving him the edge over her raw talent. But he knew he must be careful; she was no fool.

  He hated to admit it, but he loved matching wits with this girl. The excitement of having to test his skills against those of someone he was teaching was something he had missed since leaving the order. He realized how stagnant his life had grown, and he regretted that he had been so reluctant to do anything to change that until now. It was so easy to let go of everything when you lived alone. He had let it happen almost without realizing it, thinking it was better this way, believing this was how things were meant to be.

  After all, hadn’t he been the one to abdicate his position as High Druid? Hadn’t he been the one to walk away from Paranor? Hadn’t he decided that it was all too frustrating and pointless?

  Wasn’t he the one who had given up?

  He banished these thoughts swiftly and returned to the matter at hand. The heat images were fragmenting now, stirred and broken by a sudden breeze. Drisker quickened his pace, surprised that the images were continuing to appear in a mostly straight line. Why wasn’t the girl doing more to try to throw him off, to switch directions or offer multiple images? She seemed so confident.

  He pressed on, and soon the images grew stronger again, an indication that he was getting close to her. She had not gone as far as he had imagined she would, choosing instead to let him come upon her more quickly than he would have expected. She had a definite plan in mind, certain she had a way she could get the better of him, seeing no point in drawing things out. It was the sort of risk he admired.

  On the other hand, she was making this awfully easy on him.

  He slowed his pace, sniffing the air, reaching out with his other senses, trying to find what might be hidden from him. But he found nothing unfamiliar or troubling. Everything seemed to be just as it should with no encroachment by scents or appearances or movements that felt out of place. He extended his search to what he could see in his mind, a reaching-out beyond his sight and hearing. Again, he felt soft breezes brush his face. Just a whisper, nothing more. Tiny seeds and bits of lichen blown loose from the trees tumbled about him.

  He walked on, slower now, following the traces of herself she had left behind but allowing caution to govern his progress. Fresh breezes brushed his face and the back of his neck. But when he glanced up into the trees he saw no movement in the branches.

  And with a reluctant smile, he stopped where he was. “You can come out now,” he called to her.

  She emerged from the shadows of the woods to his right, her smile firmly in place. “You didn’t see me, did you? Or hear me? How did you know I was there?”

  He walked up to her and put his hands on her slender shoulders. She was just a girl, but a girl with such promise. “I didn’t sense a thing until the breezes. They touched my face but the treetops remained motionless. You were moving without my seeing you, but I felt you. I’m sorry, Tarsha. You’ve lost.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I’ve won.”

  He frowned, looking into her eyes and finding an undeniable certainty in their steady gaze. “Did you now?”

  “You told me I was to circle you once without you detecting my presence. I did that.”

  “But I called you out before you finished.” the Druid pressed her. Then he hesitated, realizing what he had missed. “But I didn’t, did I? You circled me earlier, when I allowed myself to become distracted by my thoughts. I remember the breezes against my face and the seeds and bits of lichen. You circled me then. But how did you manage it? How did I not sense you?”

  “I didn’t let you,” she declared proudly. “That was the point of the exercise. To stay hidden.”

  He shook his head. “But I should have been able to detect you in some way. I wasn’t that distracted.”

  “You did detect me. You just didn’t realize it was me you were sensing. You thought it was just you. I used the wishsong to make myself be you for the few moments I required. I disguised myself as you—invisible so you couldn’t see me, blending my smell and movements so closely to your own I was just another part of you and you couldn’t tell the difference!”

  “You have evidence of this? You’re not just telling tales, are you?”

  She looked offended. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  She stepped back, gestured with a circular motion, and hummed a little of the wishsong. Instantly Drisker Arc found himself wrapped in a garland of silvery seedlings and lichen that clung to his dark robes like tiny stars. He looked down at himself in disbelief, and then laughed heartily.

  “Shades, Tarsha Kaynin. My apologies. You have indeed won the contest!”

  She rushed in to hug him, then backed away almost hurriedly, afraid she had overstepped her bounds. “Sorry,” she said.

  He shrugged, his smile broadening. “Oh, please don’t be. After what you’ve managed to accomplish this day, I think you’re entitled to a little celebration.”

  He turned her about, and they began the walk back to his cottage, the Druid asking her to explain her process in disguising herself using the wishsong while he added bits and pieces of advice that might serve her better in the future. Although it was hard to think that she needed much advice now. She had proved herself in dramatic fashion, demonstrably the best young magic wielder he had ever encountered. He was so pleased with her performance—and with her overall progress—that he was prepared to consider her end of the bargain fulfilled. But he didn’t want to lose her, didn’t want to give her up just yet. It was more than a bargain by now. It was the clear realization that she had helped bring him back to himself when he had given up. Instructing Tarsha had given him a purpose in life that for a long time had been absent.

  When they arrived home, an arrow shrike was waiting. It sat in the open-fronted wire cage allotted for its use, a message tied to one leg.

  Drisker walked over to the bird, stroked it reassuringly, and removed the message. Tarsha crowded close to try to read the contents over his shoulder, but he shifted his body slightly to block her from doing so.

  In ragged Troll dialect, the message read:

  Corrax Trolls destroyed two days past.

  Enemy unknown.

  Come now.

  M.

  Drisker studied the message a moment longer and then crumpled it up and stuffed it in his pocket. He needed to know more about this. He needed to find out who these enemies were and what they wanted. He knew the messenger and how to find him. He wouldn’t have been summoned if it wasn’t urgent. He had the excuse he needed to leave for a while, as Flinc had suggested. Tarsha would be fine without him. She would be well-enough protected in his absence.

  He turned to her. “I’m sorry, but I have to go away for a few days. Maybe longer. You’ll be here alone. Can you manage?”

  She nodded at once. “Of course. What is it? What’s happened?”

  Drisker hesitated. He didn’t want to alarm her until he understood more of what this meant. “Let’s just say that a fr
iend has summoned me with news I can’t ignore. I promise to explain when I return, but in the meantime…You must excuse me.” And he turned and vanished into his cottage.

  TEN

  As Drisker Arc moved through his cottage, gathering supplies for his sudden journey, Tarsha was left alone on the porch to puzzle things through. She had only a short time to do so before he reappeared, a pack slung over one shoulder and a polished black staff in one hand. The staff caught her attention immediately, a gnarled piece of wood intricately carved with runes and seemingly unmarked by usage or age.

  He caught her staring and handed it to her. “Take it. Feel its strength, its warmth. Wood like this is rare and precious, Tarsha. This staff is very old, and it has been passed down through the years. The one who carried it first was a Druid like myself, centuries ago.”

  “It is a beautiful thing,” she agreed, handing it back.

  He gripped it tightly, studied it himself for a moment, and nodded. “I’ll be gone for more than a week. Stay close to the cottage. The fewer who know of your presence here, the better.”

  “Am I to worry, then? Should I hide?”

  He smiled. “Hiding might be taking it a bit far. But caution would be advised. I do have enemies, and sometimes they come calling. Just use your good sense—and your magic if it is needed. But better to hide than fight. Better to keep hidden than to force a confrontation.”

  She wondered where he was going but knew that wherever he went it would be in response to the arrow shrike’s message. Even so, he still did not offer an explanation but simply turned from her and walked away. She watched him until he was out of sight, gone down a pathway toward the village of Emberen, and then she sat down on the porch to think.

  Her thoughts that morning were dark and conflicted. On the one hand, she was pleased with her progress as the Druid’s student, particularly after her achievement in this morning’s exercise. She had caught him completely by surprise, disguising herself in a way he had not guessed she might try and then draping him in silver stars in dramatic fashion. She had reason to feel proud of how far she had come with her studies of magic in such a short time.