by Terry Brooks
She was inside the Bloodfire.
How odd, she thought, that I can stand in a pillar of fire and not be burned. She glanced down at herself to be sure she was not mistaken, but her body was whole and her flesh undamaged.
What is happening to me?
She wondered again at the way in which she had been brought to this place, drawn to it by something larger than herself. She thought at first it must be the fire, but then she realized the fire had been summoned by her presence as the bearer of the Ellcrys seed and was no more than an impersonal magic that responded to her appearance. She was the source of the summons—the Chosen of the tree, the bearer of its seed, a young girl wrapped in cool flames.
She experienced a sudden revelation, a door opening back on her life that filled her with a terrible understanding.
There had never been any choice in this matter for her.
She had never been able to walk away from her fate.
Her life’s story had been imprinted on her from the moment of her birth.
She was one of the Omarosian Chosen, an Elessedil carrying on the line so that the magic that kept the Forbidding whole and the demons imprisoned would not die out. She was the descendant of a girl who—desperate to atone for a tragic mistake—had given up her life so her people could be made safe. That was who and what she was. That was the life she had been given to live should the Ellcrys fail.
As it had failed. As it must have sensed, not so long ago, it would.
Unbidden and unafraid, she reached into her tunic pocket and closed her fingers about the Ellcrys seed. The smooth orb was warm against her skin, and she could feel it pulsate softly. She stared at the scarlet fire surrounding her, wondering what she was supposed to do next. Shouldn’t something already be happening? Why wasn’t the seed responding in some more dramatic way to the Bloodfire?
She wondered suddenly if she had misjudged things. Was there something more to the ritual of immersion? Perhaps she lacked some piece of knowledge that was crucial to the process. Or perhaps the seed was failing to respond because she was not the one intended to produce it. Perhaps the Ellcrys had been mistaken after all. Perhaps the seed was not hers to bear beyond this point, as she had hoped all along. She was meant to bring it here, where it would be quickened, and then to return it to the tree so that the proper Chosen could be summoned and …
She trailed off abruptly, aware of what she was doing.
Denying herself. Equivocating. Looking to escape the responsibility she had been given.
None of which was right. She was the one. She knew it.
Ignoring the persistence of fears and doubts, hardening herself for whatever would happen next, she brought the Ellcrys seed all the way out of her pocket and held it forth, fully exposed. Instantly, the flames brightened around her and the seed blazed in their reflection. A feeling of connection between the seed and the fire bloomed within her, revealing that she was not wrong in coming here and that the Ellcrys had left nothing to chance. Tendrils began to weave and lace within her body, and images appeared before her eyes.
The images filled her with understanding and hope.
She dropped to her knees and brought the Ellcrys seed close against her breast.
And gave herself over to its power.
On the other side of the doorway to the Bloodfire chamber, Aphen sat with Cymrian on a large rock, eyes fixed on the thin sheet of water that separated her from her sister. It felt like hours had passed.
“She should be back by now.”
Cymrian shook his head. “You can’t know that. We have to be patient.”
“I don’t want to be patient.”
“I don’t blame you. You don’t even want to be here. None of us does. This whole business is terrifying.”
“Perhaps she isn’t the right one. Perhaps someone else is. Perhaps there’s been a mistake.”
“Perhaps.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“Arling doesn’t think so. And that’s what matters.”
They went silent again, waiting. Aphen found her thoughts straying to other times—to when the girls were young and played together every day, when life was simpler and less threatening and the world was a better place. She couldn’t help herself. She knew it was pointless to wish for something that was gone. It was pointless even to think about it. She was going to lose her sister and she would never get her back.
Arling would never see twenty. She would never take a lover. She would never bond and have children. She would never see even as much of life as Aphen had.
She would never return to her home. Aphen would have to be the one to tell their mother what had happened. Whatever that turned out to be.
“I don’t feel as if this is enough to change what is happening with the demonkind. I don’t sense that this will do what we think. Something is wrong, Cymrian.”
The Elven Hunter nodded. “Everything is wrong. That’s the problem. Nothing feels right.”
“It shouldn’t be like this.”
He looked over at her. “I thought that once about you and me, back before you agreed to accept me as your protector. I loved you, and you didn’t know it, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. But I always believed that one day everything would change. Now, maybe, it has. Because we love each other and things feel right again. Do you see what I’m saying? Sometimes we just have to trust that time and fate will bring us back to where we are supposed to be. Sometimes patience and belief are all we have.”
She stared at him. “I couldn’t have done this without you. You have made all the difference. You kept me from falling apart.”
“I think we did that for each other. I think maybe we always will.”
She smiled. “I hope that, too.” She paused. “But I don’t know. I don’t know about anything now.”
They were silent again after that, eyes fixed once more on the waterfall entry, watching and listening. The minutes passed, and nothing happened. All around them, the gloom hovered like a specter’s cloak spread wide. They had kept their diapson-powered torches turned on, but the slender beams did barely enough to illuminate a narrow span of the cavern’s blackness and nothing to brighten the whole.
Somewhere behind them, back the way they had come, water was dripping in the stillness.
Abruptly, Aphen stirred. “I’ve waited long enough. I’m going in after her.”
But it was Arlingfant Elessedil who came to her instead, emerging through the screen of water like a ghost, thin and wan in the gloom and damp, somehow less substantial than before—so diminished that it seemed as if the light from their hastily redirected torches shone right through her.
“Aphen?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
Aphenglow was on her feet instantly, racing toward her sister until she had her firmly gripped in her arms and held close. She was shocked at the other’s lightness. Arling seemed like a rag doll, her bones gone and her body emptied out. She hung on Aphen, clung to her like it was all she could do to remain upright.
Cymrian rushed over to help. “What’s happened?” he demanded, lifting the girl into the cradle of his arms.
Arling’s eyes found his. The formerly dark orbs were blood red and glistening. “The fire …,” she began, and then her eyes closed, and she was unconscious.
“Let’s get her out of here,” Aphen said at once.
Cymrian nodded and turned back the way they had come. “Wait,” he said, stopping. “Where is the seed?”
But Aphen only shook her head and motioned him on. “Doesn’t matter. She’s done whatever she could. That’s enough.”
In truth, she didn’t know if she could bear to find out where the seed had gone. It wasn’t in her sister’s open hands, but she was certain Arling had done whatever was required to quicken it.
Yet when they had reached the far side of the cavern and were about to enter the short passageway leading back into the chamber formed of stone blocks and columns, Aphen grabbed Cymrian’s arm and b
rought him to a halt.
“Let me have a look at her,” she said.
With the Elven Hunter kneeling and Arling resting in his arms, Aphen searched through her sister’s clothing, checking pockets and even the folds of her tunic, trying to find the seed.
But it wasn’t there.
She exchanged a worried glance with Cymrian. “She couldn’t have lost it. Not after all this.”
“She was in shock, disoriented,” he reminded her.
“But she mentioned the Bloodfire just before she passed out. She was aware enough to do that much.”
Cymrian shook his head. “Wake her. Ask her.”
Aphen was loath to do this, but she couldn’t continue on without knowing. Too much was at stake. Using a healing magic with which she was intimately familiar, she brought her sister awake. Arling’s eyes fluttered open, and her scarlet gaze slowly came into focus.
Aphen forced a reassuring smile. “Arling, where is the seed? Do you still have it?”
Her sister gave a small nod. “Safe inside.” She lifted her hand and placed it over her heart. “She knew what was needed. She was right to tell me to come.”
“Don’t talk. I just needed to be sure. I was afraid you might have lost it.”
“I lost other things. Not that.” She rose to a sitting position. “Aphen, we have to go. We have to get back to Arborlon.” Her voice was urgent. “Now, Aphen! We have to hurry! There’s no time!”
She seemed to be getting stronger suddenly, her words carrying a certain force as she spoke them. Then, all at once, she was struggling to break free, trying to squirm out of Cymrian’s arms and get back to her feet.
“No, Arling, don’t!” Aphen cried out, trying to help Cymrian hold her down. “Stop it. You aren’t ready!”
But Arlingfant Elessedil was more than ready. Stronger than both of them combined, she wrenched free of their hands, flushed and wild-eyed, a different person entirely. In seconds she was standing clear of them. “You don’t know!” she screamed.
Aphen took a step back. Her sister seemed transformed. She didn’t even look as if she recognized her. “Arling, it’s me!”
Arling stared at her, then nodded. “I can walk by myself,” she said.
Her companions exchanged a worried glance. “All right,” Aphenglow agreed, holding up her hands in a placating gesture. “If that’s what you want.”
There was a tension between them that hadn’t been there two minutes before, and it had resulted in a full-blown confrontation that Aphen didn’t understand. Something had happened to Arling. She wasn’t the same person. This new Arling was hard and determined in ways that the old had never been.
Aphen didn’t know what to do.
They started down the passageway, moving through the darkness, following the beams of their smokeless torches, heading for the opening into the other cavern. They passed into it without another word being spoken, Cymrian in the lead again, Arling and Aphen right on his heels, almost side by side, the latter giving the former frequent sideways glances that were not returned. The stone columns rose all around them like giants frozen in place, sentinels against dangers long since forgotten, but perhaps right around the corner. The gloom absorbed the light cast by the torches so that it felt as if they were traversing a massive space in which walls had been cast down and darkness ran on forever.
They were almost to the far wall and could see its stone block surface behind soaring columns spread out before them in staggered rows when there was a flash of movement off to one side.
Cymrian wheeled toward it, and Aphen quickly moved to place herself in front of Arlingfant. But then she heard a sudden gasp, and she wheeled around to find her sister firmly clutched in the arms of Edinja Orle with a slender blade set just below Arling’s chin.
Aphen, her sister mouthed silently.
Ahead, the moor cat Cinla materialized out of the darkness, long and sleek and dangerous as she advanced on Cymrian.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” Edinja said softly.
She emphasized her words by pressing the knife she held a little more tightly against the skin of Arling Elessedil’s exposed throat.
“Why don’t we take a few minutes to talk things over?” she said, and gave them a satisfied smile.
25
Inside the Forbidding, the light was hazy and gray and the air tasted of metal and damp. Tesla Dart led Oriantha and Redden Ohmsford through the wilderness they had found upon returning to the land of the Jarka Ruus, skittering here and there as she went, constantly in motion. Fugitives from the Straken Lord’s Catcher, Tarwick, and his minions, they were constantly looking over their shoulders for unwelcome pursuit. They had tried to disguise all evidence of their passing before coming back into the Forbidding, wading through creek waters and even traveling the trampled pathway left by the passing of Tael Riverine’s massive army, hoping their few footprints would disappear amid the many. But they understood that Tarwick was Catcher for a reason, and that even these efforts might not be enough to fool him.
Still, it would be unexpected for them to return to a place they had struggled so hard to escape, so there was reason to believe Tarwick might confine his search to the Four Lands. He might not know of Tesla Dart’s presence or suspect the help she would give the two outlanders with whom she traveled. Diverting their escape route from the obvious to the unlikely might throw him off sufficiently to allow them to complete a swift journey through the Forbidding and then to escape back into the Four Lands by means of another portal before their hunter knew what they were about.
It was a dangerous game they were playing, and Redden couldn’t be certain how the odds were stacked. Because they had fled so suddenly and made the decision to come back into the Forbidding so abruptly, there had been no time to gather up water and food, and they had almost nothing of either. Nor did the boy think that Tesla Dart—for all her knowledge of her own country and its creatures—knew exactly where they could find another way back into the Four Lands. She acted as if she did; she even insisted that she did. But something about the way she phrased it suggested it wasn’t as settled as she tried to make it sound. She might have confidence such an opening existed because the imprisoning wall was crumbling, but that didn’t mean she had a road map of its location imprinted in her mind.
What she did have was Lada, and the presence of the odd little creature provided the boy with a small glimmer of hope. The Chzyk seemed capable of finding its way in any territory and under any conditions, racing all over the place at blinding speed, never seeming to tire, a lizard imbued with innate instincts. Even if Tesla Dart wasn’t certain of the path they should take, he thought maybe Lada might be.
He thought, too, that something had better happen soon to resolve their situation. His strength was almost gone, and his state of mind was still precarious. He remained mired in memories of his imprisonment at Kraal Reach, of the sounds and stench and discomforts of the rolling cage that had brought him back into the Four Lands, imprisoned like some exotic creature. He still flinched at the thought of the abuse and taunts he had received from his captors and was still devastated by images of Khyber Elessedil’s terrible death. And it felt to him as if his newfound freedom was an illusion that could fade as swiftly as a mirage. He had no faith in its solidity, no confidence in its permanence. He had a sense of impending collapse, as if everything might go back to the way it had been in a single instant.
He slogged on because he had no choice in the matter, but it was working at him, gnawing at his sanity and eroding his emotional and psychological balance. He could feel it happening and he had no defense against it.
The day wore on, and their journey across miles of barren emptiness continued. They were moving in a mostly northerly direction, trying to get to a hole in the wall of the Forbidding that would bring them out much farther north of where they had started and presumably closer to where Redden and Oriantha both thought they should be when they reentered the Four Lands.
When
they finally stopped for a rest, Oriantha waited until Tesla Dart was chittering away with Lada before kneeling beside a dejected Redden.
“How are you holding up?” she asked quietly.
Redden shook his head, his wild red hair falling over his eyes. “Not well.”
“Can you keep walking?”
“Probably. But I feel like I’m coming apart inside. I can’t seem to stop it from happening.”
She put her hands on his shoulders. “Remember what I said. I won’t leave you, no matter what.”
“I know that.”
“I will stay with you, and I will find a way to get us both safely back into the Four Lands and to Arborlon and to your brother. I know these are only words, but they are a promise. You will not be returned to Tael Riverine while I am still alive.”
He was crying again, and he brushed at his tears angrily. “It just feels like there’s no end to any of this. I keep thinking about all the others. All of the dead. I feel as if I’m being drawn to them. I can feel their hands closing on me. I can’t make myself believe I won’t end up like them.”
“Listen to me,” she said. Her lean, smooth face was so close to his own, he could feel her breath on his cheek. “By the end of this day, we will be outside the Forbidding and back in the Four Lands. I will make Tesla Dart promise this. There won’t be another day inside this world. Then maybe you can start putting what you’re feeling right now behind you.”
He nodded without looking at her. “I can’t do anything before then, I can tell you that much.”
“Just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other,” she said. “Just stay with that for the rest of today. You’ll be fine.”
They set out again shortly afterward. They had finished the little food and water Oriantha had brought with her from the camp. Tesla Dart seemed to be able to go for long periods with no food or water at all, and she said nothing of the supplies situation, insisting they press on.
