by Terry Brooks
Aphen nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Seersha studied her friend out of her one good eye. Her face was crisscrossed with slash wounds and bandages, but her gaze was steady. “I will miss you. It will be lonely being the only Druid left in the order.”
“Oriantha will come, if you will have her. She’s already asked if we would take her. Her mother intended that for her, and if she wants it, why not? She would be a good companion for you, and a good addition to the order. Besides, others will come to join, as well. It won’t always be you.”
Seersha pursed her lips. “I think you are making a mistake. You don’t belong here. You belong in Paranor. Can I tell you why?”
“You can tell me anything.”
“You are the best of us, Aphen. You were always meant to be the Ard Rhys after Khyber. She wanted it that way. I know. I’m not the right choice. I lack the necessary balance. I don’t have the necessary skills. Mostly, I’m a fighter, a weapons master. I’m not a diplomat. I don’t have the patience. I would match my use of magic against anyone or anything in combat, but it takes more than that to be the Ard Rhys.”
She paused. “If you stay here, good intentions notwithstanding, you will be wasting your life. You will try to find a way to make your mother love you again, but that’s a small victory even if it happens. And while talking with Arling will make you feel better about yourself, it isn’t what she wanted for you. If she were still your sister and not the Ellcrys, you wouldn’t think twice about coming back to Paranor. And you would bring her with you the moment she finished her term as a Chosen. You’ve already told me this is what she wanted. It was what you wanted, too. It can’t happen for her, but that doesn’t mean you should abandon your place in the order. It doesn’t excuse you from carrying out your obligation to see it continue. Arling would want that, and you know it. She would tell you to go back. Come to Arborlon to see her when you can, but don’t make that your legacy.”
The words were blunt and hurtful, though Aphen couldn’t say exactly why. But she was used to Seersha speaking her mind, and she knew that what her friend was saying wasn’t meant as a reprimand.
“I’ve thought about all that,” she replied, though in fact she hadn’t thought about it in those exact terms. “I just think staying here is the best choice.”
Seersha gave a small smile. “Will you think about it some more?” she asked. “Can we talk about it another time?”
Aphenglow smiled back. “I don’t see why not.”
They visited for a while longer, and then Seersha grew tired and fell asleep. Aphen watched over her for several long minutes, thinking of what she had said. Sound advice from a good friend, but not the advice she wanted. She rose and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
Outside the healing center she stood blinking in the bright afternoon sunlight, deciding what to do next. She chose to go to Ellich, hoping he might find time to speak with her. She was troubled by what Seersha had said, suddenly uncertain about her decision to stay in Arborlon. She thought she knew what her uncle would tell her, but she wanted to hear him say it. If he reaffirmed what he had been telling her for months about coming home, she might find it easier to dismiss Seersha’s arguments.
She found Ellich ready and willing to speak with her, which was something of a relief. Although he was elbows-deep in his newly minted role as King—a role she still believed should have gone to him in the first place—he put everything aside immediately and walked out into the palace gardens to speak privately with her.
“I’m still coming to terms with things,” he told her. “Very much the same as I suspect you are. Discovering the truth about Jera was heartbreaking. I won’t ever know for certain how long that creature was playing at being my wife. I won’t ever know how long she had been dead. It’s very difficult to believe, any of it.”
“We were all deceived, Ellich. It was cruel and evil; it took someone like Edinja to conceive of such a plan.”
“It cost us both people we loved. It cost me the ability to trust my own senses.”
She looked at him carefully, noting how worn and haggard he looked and the haunted glint in his eyes. He would never be the same, she knew. He would rule the Elves wisely, but he would not again be as strong a man in himself.
She pushed back against her sadness. “I need to ask you something about my own life, if you will consider listening. I have a difficult choice to make.”
What he advised was pretty much what she had expected. She belonged in Arborlon with the Elves. She needed to be close to her mother and to her people. Her time with the Druids was over. The order was decimated in any case, all of its members dead save for Seersha and herself, and there was no firm guarantee that Seersha would recover. It was a grim thing to say, but he believed Aphenglow should be realistic about how matters stood.
When he had finished, he told her again how sorry he was about both Arling and Cymrian. She knew what he was feeling. With Jera and his brother gone, he was left with Aphen and her mother as his only family, and quite naturally he wanted to keep both with him. He was uncertain, at this point, how he would do as King, and it would help to have Aphen, in particular, there to advise him.
In fact, he confided, he had been thinking of asking her to consider becoming a member of the High Council.
She left him more convinced than ever that staying in Arborlon was the right thing to do. But when she returned to her cottage—the one that once had seemed so welcoming and safe, filled with Arling’s presence and the warmth and closeness the sisters had shared during the year she had been researching the Elven histories—she encountered an oppressive emptiness and silence, and wondered how she would ever manage to fill it again.
She was just about to fix herself something to eat when there was a knock on the door. When she opened it, Woostra was standing there.
“Seersha told me you don’t intend to come back to Paranor,” the scribe announced without preamble. He was nervous and fidgety, and his white hair was a wild tangle. “I wanted to hear it from you.”
“Come in,” she said, stepping back. “We can discuss it.”
They sat at the little table where she and Arling had discussed things so often in the past. It was the first time she had spoken to Woostra alone since her return, and it felt immediately uncomfortable.
Perhaps he sensed it, too. “I want you to know I am sorry about Arling. Even if it was necessary, even if there was no choice, it is still a terrible tragedy. I wish it hadn’t happened.”
“Thank you for saying that.”
He nodded curtly. “That said, if you are thinking of leaving Paranor and the Druid order, you are making a terrible mistake.” His face was stern. “Have you thought this through?”
“I think so.”
“Then you must realize you are betraying every vow and breaking every promise you made when you joined the order. You were never meant to take those promises and vows lightly, and I don’t think you did when you took them. Now you seem to have decided otherwise, in spite of the fact that your sister did for your people exactly the same as she would expect you to do. She sacrificed herself for the greater good. Is it possible you don’t understand that this is what’s being asked of you?”
“I don’t know that anything is being asked of me. I’m doing what I believe to be the right thing.”
His mouth tightened into a knot. “Right for you, perhaps, but not for everyone else. It is certainly not the path Arlingfant would have followed. It is not the path Khyber Elessedil would have taken. It is the path of least resistance, and a nod to the self-pity you are feeling and the effort you are making to avoid having to deal with a much harder reality than you’ve had to face up to before.”
“Which is?” she said.
“That, without you, the order will fail and the Druids will vanish. Perhaps not forever, but long enough that everything that’s been accomplished since the time of Walker Boh will be lost. You think I exaggerate. You think I am an old
fool, rambling on about the good old days. But I’m talking about the future, Aphenglow. The future the Druids can either help to shape or leave to its own miserable fate. Khyber chose the former; she gave her life to that effort. She would have expected you to do the same—even though your sister is gone, even though your life is in upheaval, and even though it may prove to be difficult and perhaps even costly beyond any price you’ve paid up until now.”
“You make it sound so inviting,” she snapped, suddenly irritated.
“I’m making it sound like the truth. It isn’t up to me to persuade you that Druids in the future will have an easy time of it or that things will improve now that the Forbidding is restored and those creatures are locked away again. None of that is up to me. You should be making these arguments yourself. But you’re not, so I have to say what I think.”
He rose. “Now I’ve done so, and I’ll leave. If it’s to be Seersha and myself, then that will have to do. Maybe the shape-shifter daughter of Pleysia will come along. She seems to know what I’m talking about.”
He walked to the door, opened it, and stopped, looking back at her. “But it won’t be the same without you. Nothing will. You think on it. You remember what the others gave up for the order. Do the right thing.”
Then he was gone.
Afterward, she made her dinner and ate it alone in the privacy of the cottage she had once shared with Arling. Although her sister was gone, her ghost remained, a silent watchful presence that inhabited every room and every memory. Aphen almost couldn’t bear it, but then told herself she must learn to, that it would never change, never get better. Nor did she think she wanted it to. Arling belonged here more than she did. Missing her sister was a fact of life. She must learn to get used to it. Even a ghost could offer a small bit of company.
When she was finished with her meal and had cleaned up after herself, Aphen sat down to translate the note Railing Ohmsford had given her several days earlier. She had not felt pressured to do so before now, but Woostra’s visit and the ghostly presence of her sister had generated a need to do something more than sit staring out at the darkness.
She began slowly, but the language was familiar, a rather crude variation on the same ancient Elfish used by Aleia Omarosian in her diary, and soon she was working her way through it quickly. The note was written by Aleia’s Darkling boy, and Aphen had no doubt that she had taught him the language he had used to compose the note while they trysted all those centuries ago.
She wrote out the words carefully, read them through once swiftly to affirm she had them right, and then read them a second time more slowly.
She was crying within seconds.
My Dearest Little Elf, Aleia:
I can only hope you do not hate me too badly, but I will never know for certain. By the time this letter is read, you and I both will be long dead. I did not intend for matters to end this way. I risked too much by taking all of the Elfstones but the seeking blue and hoping you would use them to come to me. But events conspired against us, and now we will never be reunited.
Know that I love you and will always love you. I took the Elfstones because I could tell I would lose you otherwise, and must find a way to bring you to me. I intended nothing more than that you find me; I never gave a single thought to using the Elfstone magic against you or your people. I was desperate to hold on to you and took what risk I deemed necessary to do so. But my transgressions were discovered, the Elfstones were taken from me, and I was imprisoned. I was disgraced and declared a traitor. No one would listen to my explanation; no one would heed my pleas. When you came searching for me, I was locked away and magically concealed from you and from the blue Elfstones’ power. My people had magic also, you will remember, and they used it.
Still, I thought to escape and come to you. I sought a way to make that happen. But all of my efforts failed.
When a new form of magic swept up all of my people and their allies and many other creatures and exiled us to another world, I knew there was no longer any hope. At first, we did not know what had happened. It seemed as though we were still in our former world, but the landscape had been ruined and the air and water were fouled. Everything was dark and hazy and bleak. Thousands of us died. I was released finally, for those in power saw no particular reason to keep me locked away.
I was old by then, after all, and no longer a threat to anyone.
The Elfstones had lost their importance. Efforts had been made to make use of them, but an Elven magic can be summoned only by Elves. The Stones had become nothing more than a reminder of how powerless we were and how shamefully we had been treated. Along with other magic and other talismans we had come to possess, they were locked away and mostly forgotten.
But through the kindness of a friend I have gained access to them. When this note is finished, I will place it in the case where the Elfstones remain and hope that someday your people will find it. I have no reason to think that will ever happen, but I must do what I can. I do not want to be thought of as a thief and a liar. I do not want the record I am sure has been written of my treachery to be the final word on what I did. Or of what you meant to me.
You must believe you were everything to me and will remain so until the day I die. There will never be another. If I could have one day back in my life, I would choose a day I could spend with you. Nothing would be sweeter. Nothing would mean more.
And so I leave you, faithful to the end, lost in another world.
Your one true love, Charis.
Aphenglow Elessedil put down the note and wiped away her tears.
“See what love brings you, Arling?” she whispered.
But at least now she knew the entirety of the story of Aleia Omarosian and her Darkling boy, Charis.
She wondered with whom she would share it.
35
Weeks passed. Railing had been back home for almost three months, his memories of the past starting to lose their sharp edges and grow less painful. Mirai was living with him at his home, embraced by his mother in a way he still was not. Sarys had come to accept Redden’s condition, and had even told Railing it wasn’t his fault. She had forgiven him, she said, for his part in what had happened. But she looked and acted differently in his presence, and he couldn’t tell if it was because of perceived failures in his character or a fear of losing him as she had lost Redden.
Whichever it was, it hurt him enough that he could not manage to put aside either his sense of guilt and failure or his deep, abiding sadness. He could only press on, helping with Redden’s care and trying his best not to disappoint his mother further.
Having Mirai living with them helped. His mother had always loved her, and this didn’t seem to change with the Highland girl’s complicity in hiding what the twins were up to. Mirai was partnered with him, and they would be married, when Redden was better. But for now they let things be as they concentrated on looking after Redden and waiting for his condition to change.
But Redden refused to wake up. He was deep in his catatonia, unimproved since the battle with the witch wraith at the Valley of Rhenn. Nothing any of them said or did seemed to get through to him. Wherever he had gone inside himself, it was far distant from the real world and he remained unreachable. Sarys cried less over him with the passing of every new day, but still she cried. Railing saw it and hated it. Mostly, he hated that he was seen as the cause.
“She doesn’t feel like that,” Mirai argued when they were in bed together at night, whispering in the dark. “You have to let her grieve and not make it personal. No one could have done more than you did to try to save him.”
But her words didn’t help. Nothing did. In spite of everything she said, in spite of patience and faith, Railing could feel his brother slip a little farther away with the passing of every day. He couldn’t sense any possibility of Redden getting well again.
He was sitting alone with his brother at the edge of the woods behind their home on a gray summer day months later, talking to him and staring off i
nto the trees by turns. He wasn’t saying anything particularly important or looking for his brother to respond, even though that was always at the back of his mind. He was just passing time while Mirai and his mother prepared dinner inside. Redden sat slack-faced and as still as stone, just as he always did. They kept him alive by hand-feeding him and seeing to his personal needs, and Railing hated all of it. It was undignified and it was demeaning. This was his brother, his twin, and it felt like it was happening to him. Redden never got sick and he never wanted for anything, but he also never seemed much more than a stuffed toy.
He bit his lip as the thought slipped into his mind like a snake. It felt like a betrayal of how much he loved his brother.
One hand drifted down to his pocket and the ring given him by the King of the Silver River. He carried it all the time, even though he had sworn off magic and had not used the wishsong once since his return. This forsaking, at least, was something his mother appreciated. He carried the ring mostly because it reminded him of the warning the King of the Silver River had given about what might happen if he persisted in his search for Grianne Ohmsford. It was his own private form of punishment—and one that he felt he deserved. He wasn’t sure what else he should do with the talisman even if he quit carrying it. Should he cast it away or give it to the Druids as he had the crimson Elfstones, as they were now being called? Aphenglow might like to have it, as well, for the new Druid order. Maybe he would give it to her on her next visit from Paranor. She was overdue for taking a fresh stab at using her Druid magic to heal Redden. Her other attempts had failed, but she had insisted she would not give up.
He brought the ring out and studied it for what must have been the thousandth time, and as he did so something occurred to him—something so preposterous that for a moment he just sat there staring. The ring had been given to help him find his way out of the darkest places, to show him how to work his way clear when he was lost. Each thread was a link in a chain that would lead to a safe haven.
