by Terry Brooks
Which was selfish, and she knew it. But even knowing she should be thinking of Arling was not enough to leaven the pity she felt for herself.
Farther ahead, visible now through the darkness, the new day was beginning to brighten the eastern sky. Were they in time? Was the old tree gone by now and the Forbidding collapsed completely? She knew that the demonkind army would be on the move again; Arishaig would have fallen and its citizens would have been destroyed or driven out. Some would survive, but many would not. That was the fate that awaited Arborlon and the Elves, too, and she had no way of knowing how much time remained before it found them.
All too soon, she thought.
Bile rose in her throat, and she forced it down. She banked the Sprint toward the treetops and in the general direction of the Gardens of Life. Her hands moved mechanically even as her brain shut down and fresh tears filled her eyes.
“Little girl,” she called over her shoulder to Arling. She felt her sister lift her head. “We’re almost there.”
At first, there was no response. Then, clear and steady, came Arling’s voice. “I’m ready, Aphen.”
The words broke Aphenglow’s heart, but she managed to keep it from showing. “Do you have the seed ready?”
In truth, she had not seen it since Arling had emerged from the cavern that contained the Bloodfire. She still didn’t have the faintest idea what was to be done with the seed once they were on the ground and in the presence of the Ellcrys. There had been no explanation in any of the tomes she had studied or recitations she had uncovered. Arling had not said one word about what she knew. She had barely referred to her most precious possession. There was a black hole in Aphen’s understanding of what was to happen next, and she felt a wrenching need to know.
“What will you do when we land?” she asked her sister.
A long silence. “Go to her.”
The tree. “You will give her the seed?” Aphen pressed.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“But you do have it? You brought it out from the cavern, didn’t you? You can pass the seed on?”
“Aphen,” Arling whispered, leaning forward again, her lips close to her sister’s ear. “There will be no passing. The Ellcrys seed is inside me. The Bloodfire put it there. It is a part of me now.”
Aphen squeezed her eyes shut, knowing at once what that meant. Tears leaked from her eyes, but she managed to cry silently, keeping her body still. “I will be there with you all the way,” she whispered back.
Arling’s voice grew softer still. “I would like that.”
They descended into Arborlon, Aphen reading the terrain, seeking their destination. She found the gardens easily enough—a part of the Carolan Heights, far west at the edge of the city overlooking the Rill Song. She chose a place where the bluff was grassy and open and landed the Sprint on its billowing softness, using wind and sails to ease her into place before cutting power to the parse tubes and locking down the thrusters.
Elven Hunters placed on sentry duty swarmed the craft, but when they saw the sisters emerge, clinging to each other as if a strong wind might blow them apart, they didn’t seem to know what to do. They stared at the Elessedil women and at one another as they waited to discover what was happening.
“Stand away, please,” Aphen demanded, determined to care for Arling by herself. “Go back to your watch.”
She helped Arling cross the Carolan to the Gardens of Life, pointing them toward a gap in the bordering hedgerow that sheltered against the strong west winds. Once inside, they made their way through the flower beds and bushes to where the Ellcrys stood on a rise near the gardens’ center. The gardens were shadowed, the new day coming awake with the sunrise, and Aphen let Arling set her own pace. Her sister was unsteady on her feet; the unexpected strength she had found after emerging from the Bloodfire cavern had faded.
At one point, she stumbled and nearly fell. Aphen only just managed to catch her. “You will stay close to me, won’t you?” Arling asked, lifting her face momentarily, her strange red eyes blinking rapidly.
“All the way,” Aphen whispered back, repeating her earlier promise. “Do you need to rest?”
Arling’s trademark smile was quick and rueful. “Lots of time for that later, Aphen.”
When they reached the gardens, they found the other Chosen gathered, but it was hard to tell for certain if they had just arrived or had perhaps been there all night. They ringed the tree, preparing for the morning greeting. It was clear they had done what they could, but none of their efforts seemed to have been even the least bit effective. The Ellcrys was a skeleton by now, a shadow of what she had been. Emaciated, withered, her bark turned crusty and her scarlet leaves black, she was in the final stages of her life. In the retreating darkness, lit only by the first rays of the rising sun, she seemed diminished to the point of nonexistence.
Freershan and the others saw the sisters approach and, after a moment of shock, leapt to their feet and came running. They gathered around, all talking at once, trying to find out where Arling had been and what had happened to her. But Arling said nothing. She didn’t even look at them, her head lowered and her scarlet eyes closed.
“She can’t speak with you now,” Aphen said quickly, realizing her sister lacked the strength and perhaps the desire to communicate with others. “Please move back. Let us go ahead alone. We are here to help the tree.”
She badly wanted to ask about her grandfather, about the city and its danger, about a dozen other concerns that crowded to the forefront of her mind. But she knew that any discussions would only slow them further. And in point of fact, what difference did it make? All that mattered now was restoring the tree.
Rebuilding the Forbidding and hastening Arling toward the end of her human life.
The words burned in her mind like live coals, but she endured them, facing the truth about what she was doing. There was no point in turning away. That would be disrespectful and cowardly, and a clear attempt to repudiate her sister’s decision.
The Chosen fell away, and she moved Arling ahead again, advancing on the skeletal form of the Ellcrys. The sun was cresting the horizon, its brilliant light splashing across the sky, penetrating the shadows and layering the tree in golden streaks. But the effect simply revealed even more of her damage.
When they reached the base of the rise, Arling stopped. “I must go alone from here, Aphen.”
“I can help you a little farther …,” Aphen started to say, but stopped when she felt Arling’s fingers dig into her arm.
“No. You must wait here.” Her sister’s head lifted, and the scarlet orbs of her eyes stared out from her stricken face. “I love you, Aphen. I always will, wherever I am, whatever happens to me.”
Aphen tried to speak and couldn’t. Instead, she wrapped her arms about Arling and held her close.
Her sister was crying now. “I wish we had more time. I wanted so much to be with you in Paranor. To be Druids together, you and I. I wanted nothing more than to be like you.”
“No.” Aphen shook her head, still holding her sister tight. “You were always better than me. Always.”
“Tell Mother, Aphen. Try to be there for her when she finds out. Be kind to her, no matter …”
She trailed off uncertainly. “I will,” Aphen promised.
They held on, unable to let go, unwilling to break the connection. Seconds slipped by, and Aphenglow felt the hurt of what was about to happen so badly it was physically painful. Even without knowing the details, even as uncertain as she was about what she would witness, she could hardly bear it.
“Come see me often?” Arling whispered, making it a question.
“Yes,” Aphen answered, and broke down completely, crying openly.
Arling hugged her once more and then pushed her away. She stumbled up the rise, a frail figure in the growing light of the sunrise, making her uncertain way toward the Ellcrys. Aphen watched helplessly, longing to go after her sister. But she did as she was told and remained
where Arling had left her, watching and waiting.
At the crest of the rise, Arling paused for a moment, staring at the desiccated tree. Then she moved closer, reaching out her hand and touching the blackened trunk. The Ellcrys shivered, more dead leaves falling away, more bark sloughing off. But it seemed to Aphen the tree was responding, recognizing who Arling was and what it meant to have her there.
Arling held her ground for a long moment, then moved close to the Ellcrys and wrapped her arms around her, leaning in.
A second later, the tree disintegrated completely, turning into a fine dust that showered down on Arling until she was completely covered.
Arling stood where she was for another few seconds, becoming a gray ghost, before lifting her arms skyward and uttering a long, mournful cry.
Then she began to change.
On the blood-soaked plains fronting the entrance to the Valley of Rhenn, the brothers Ohmsford stood face-to-face. It was, for Railing, the culmination of everything he had hoped to accomplish since the onset of his long, disappointing search for Grianne Ohmsford, begun all those weeks ago. Finding and returning his brother had been the driving force behind his efforts, and he had never stopped believing—even in his darkest, most despairing moments—that he would make that happen. But to have it come to pass so abruptly, with no warning whatsoever, was shocking.
His brother managed a crooked grin. “Thought you’d seen the last of me, didn’t you?”
Even given the cacophony rising from the Jarka Ruus as they celebrated their new leader’s victory, Redden’s words were clear. The sound of his voice broke the spell that had frozen Railing in place, and he flung his arms about his brother, hugging him so hard he had to let go almost immediately and step back for fear he might be injuring him. For Redden Ohmsford was but a shadow of his former self, with haunted eyes and a troubled look on his face. His face and arms were battered and bruised, his body was emaciated, and he was hunched over as if bearing an unseen weight. The strength he had exhibited when they had parted was gone entirely, and what remained was a poorly sketched representation.
Railing kept his hands on his brother’s shoulders, refusing to break contact. “I thought I would be the one to find you.”
Redden looked down, tears in his eyes. “I couldn’t wait any longer for that to happen. So here I am.”
He had flown with Oriantha and Tesla Dart from Arborlon to the Valley of Rhenn, Redden explained, arriving just as the battle between the Straken Lord and the witch wraith was reaching its conclusion. Still at the controls of the transport, he was trying to decide where to land when he caught sight of the combatants and the dragon where they occupied the open ground between the Jarka Ruus and the Elves. An instant later he noticed two figures standing close by and recognized his brother and Mirai. With no hesitation at all, even when Oriantha began screaming in his ear to turn around, he piloted his ancient vessel over the cliffs warding the entrance to the pass and down onto the flats. Neither Railing nor Mirai had noticed him land, their eyes directed toward the epic struggle between the demon and the wraith.
He was on the ground and out of the pilot box before the diapson crystals had cooled. He caught a glimpse of Tesla Dart’s horrified face and Oriantha’s catlike leap over the ship’s side as she came in pursuit while he raced across the trampled ground to reach his brother, but he never slowed.
“I found them, Railing,” he shouted now over the din of the demon-kind’s wild, mindless cries, suddenly remembering. “I found the missing Elfstones!”
Railing stared. “How did you manage that? How did you even get back here? I thought you were trapped inside the Forbidding!”
Redden glanced over his shoulder as Oriantha came pounding up behind him, her face a mask of fury. “How could you be so stupid? There’s an entire army right in front of you! Are you trying to kill yourself? Get out of here!”
“Look!” Redden persisted, ignoring her, motioning her closer. “She has them. Oriantha does. Except for one set. Show the Stones to Railing.”
But the shape-shifter’s hands were empty “I gave them to Tesla Dart to hold while I came after you.” She pointed over his shoulder. “And forget what I just said about getting out of here. It’s too late to run.”
They looked toward the Jarka Ruus. The witch wraith was approaching. The crystalline white frost that had covered her earlier was gone, and she was once again a slight figure dressed in ragged gray and bent against the morning light as if it hurt to be exposed to it. She showed no interest in what was left of the Straken Lord as she passed his remains, and no concern for the dragon crouched at her back.
Instead, her eyes were on Railing and his brother.
“Get behind me,” Railing told Mirai and gently eased her back.
“What’s this about?” Redden asked, stepping up to take her place.
Railing didn’t know where to start. “I tried to bring back Grianne Ohmsford to help us against the Straken Lord. But she returned like this, and now she’s killed him and has taken his place as leader of the Jarka Ruus.”
Redden looked confused, as if he was hearing the words but not understanding their meaning. Railing had already turned away to face the witch. There was no time for anything now but finding a way to send her back to where she had come from, and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to do that.
“You’ve found your brother without my help!” the witch wraith called out to him, slowing while still twenty feet away. Her body seemed to shift and change inside her robes, as if she were not entirely solid.
“You have to go back,” Railing replied. “You have to return to Mother Tanequil. I will go with you.”
“Will you now?” she said. She pointed to the multitudes assembled behind her—a casual gesture. “What do you think they will say to that?” She seemed genuinely interested. “They might not like the idea!”
“It doesn’t matter. You can do whatever you want! You’ve freed them from Tael Riverine. They won’t challenge you now.”
She came closer, and he could hear Mirai hissing at him in warning. “We have to go! Now!”
But Railing only moved ahead a few more steps, bringing him within ten feet of the witch. He was scared out of his wits by the prospect of what this creature could do to them—what she might at any moment choose to do. But he was still hoping he could reason with her.
“What will you do with me once we’ve returned to Mother Tanequil?” she wanted to know.
“Whatever I must to get you back to what you were. I promise.”
“What are you talking about?” Redden hissed, still at his elbow.
There was a long silence as the witch considered. “I think maybe you would try to do as you say,” she said finally. “The problem is that I don’t want you to. I don’t want to go back to being what I was. All I want is what awaits me here.” She gestured behind her to the dragon and the Jarka Ruus. “I want what they want.”
Railing felt his heart sink. In the dual life of Grianne Ohmsford, the part that was the Ilse Witch had won and the part that was the Ard Rhys had lost. She no longer felt the urge to go back to being an aeriad. She no longer wanted that life, the one he had dragged her away from in order to bring her here.
It was his fault, he knew. All his.
“So you see the problem,” she continued, “because you won’t let that happen, and neither will your brother. Will you?”
“We’re your family!” Railing reminded her frantically.
Within the shadows of the cloak’s cowl, her head gave a small shake. “No, boy, you are not. I have no family.”
The Ilse Witch struck out at Railing without warning and without preamble—a fiery strike exploding from a withered limb that she thrust out from her gray robes like a snake. But Redden was quicker. Sensing what was about to happen, acting on his instincts, he flung himself at Railing an instant before the fire was expelled and sent them both tumbling to the ground. Rolling clear of his brother, Railing responded by using the wishs
ong to fling dagger-sharp particles of rock at the ragged figure before them. The pieces tore into her, shredding her coverings, riddling her through and through.
But still she stood upright, seemingly unaffected, conjuring a torrential gust of wind that picked up both Redden and Railing and threw them backward into Mirai, sending all three crashing to the ground. Redden was stunned, but Railing, quickly rising to a guarded crouch, tried a fresh tactic, using his wishsong to damage her senses, clogging her mouth and nose with dirt, hammering at her ears with shrieking sounds, and blinding her with the sun’s own brightness. He went after her relentlessly, holding nothing back, striking out at her with everything he had because he knew he was unlikely to get a second chance.
For a moment, it looked like he might succeed. Grianne went stumbling away, trying to fend off the unexpected attack. Unable to clear her vision or her hearing, she began choking and gasping. Railing pressed his advantage, using the wishsong to summon roots that wrapped themselves about her like shackles and pulled her down.
But she fought back against what was being done to her. An explosion of light ripped through the air and ended with a concussive boom like thunder following a lightning strike. Railing was flattened instantly, his magic dispersed and his consciousness gone. He lay sprawled on the earth, steam rising from his inert form.
Oriantha attacked the moment Railing went down, coming at the witch from her blind side, moving so fast she was little more than a blur. But the witch saw her anyway, caught her in midair, and threw her away like a scrap of paper. The shape-shifter landed in a heap and didn’t move again.
Mirai was kneeling over Railing as the witch turned on her. “Why don’t you join him?” Grianne asked almost gently, arms extending. “You love him, don’t you? So why don’t you die, too?”
The Highland girl reached for Railing and tried to pull him away, but he was too heavy, so she grabbed on to him and shielded him protectively. “Get away!” she screamed.
