by Terry Brooks
He knew at once that their hunters were close.
Barely conscious of what he was doing—almost as if his fingers were acting on their own—he reached inside the metal box and extracted a single set of the three Elfstones. He knew instinctively which ones he wanted and where within the velvet cushioning they lay. Then he closed the lid, tucked the box under his arm, and moved back across the room to join his friends.
The search had yielded little. There were weapons available, but they were ancient and clearly meant to be used as talismans. And there was nothing to reveal what sort of magic any of them possessed and no way of knowing how to summon that magic.
“When they come,” Tesla Dart announced suddenly, “I will throw the box with the serpents at them.”
Oriantha said nothing. She moved away from them and began to shape-shift into her animal self, stretching out and turning sleek and powerful, abandoning her human form in favor of something faster and stronger and more dangerous. She had made her choice in this matter, as Redden had known she would. She would make no concessions to her hunters.
Tesla Dart started scurrying about, finding additional torches at the entrance to the niche that she lit with fire from the torch she carried. Then she began placing them about the cavern at regular intervals, trying to make it easier for them to see what was coming, hoping to give them some small advantage.
She took the last two brands, dashed all the way across the chamber, and jammed them into the rocks on either side of the tunnel opening before rushing back again.
Sounds from within the tunnel’s blackness grew audible. Their time was almost up. Redden summoned the magic of the wishsong, emitting a soft hum to begin the process, bringing the heat of it out of his core to be balanced invisibly within his chest, ready for use when it was needed.
Oriantha was completely changed by now. On all fours, she slunk into the shadows and disappeared. She would choose her own place to make her final stand. She would face what was coming on her own terms.
Across the chamber, shadows emerged from the tunnel and started toward them. They were just a handful at first, then a dozen, and then many more. At least thirty or forty by Redden’s quick count, too many for them to withstand. Too many for them to escape. They crossed the chamber and hovered in the shadows just beyond the light, vague forms that emitted a strange hissing; that grunted and growled; that gave high, keening moans. Eyes glittered from out of the dark here and there, but never for more than a moment, always shifting away again.
Tarwick appeared suddenly before them, his scarecrow form materializing out of the gloom. His lean feral features were bladed and planed by the deep shadows, and his eyes glittered as they fixed on his prey. All around him, his hunters pressed forward eagerly—Goblins with demon-wolves on leashes, Furies with their terrifying cat faces, and creatures that had no name Redden could determine.
There were so many, he thought in despair.
Tarwick began speaking, and the language he used was unknown to the boy. But Tesla Dart understood. “Says we put down weapons. Says we are his prisoners.”
Now the Furies were mewling and hissing, and the demon-wolves were snapping at the air. If they all came at once, Redden knew it was the end—even with the power of the wishsong to aid them.
“What does Tesla say to Tarwick?” the Ulk Bog whispered back at him.
She was deferring to him, which he found oddly ridiculous. As if he knew what to do. As if he were leader of their little group. He did not answer, but instead concentrated on bringing the magic of the wishsong closer. He took deep breaths and centered himself inside, where the fear and doubt fought to claim him. Words whispered in his head, repeating themselves over and over.
We will fight them. We will stand until we fall. We will never go back into the cages.
Almost without thinking about it, he stepped backward into a pool of shadow and knelt, setting the metal case on the cavern floor. When he rose again, his fingers were closed so tightly about the crimson Elfstones he could feel the edges cutting into his palm.
What sort of power did they possess?
He was remembering those times he had linked the magic of the wishsong to another form of power—to when Railing and he had flown the Sprints through the Shredder and again when he had used the wishsong to enhance the power of the fire launchers aboard the Quickening.
But he remembered, too, when he had tied to escape the Straken Lord’s camp, been confronted by a giant that could crush him with a single blow, and almost failed in his efforts to summon the wishsong’s power.
He remembered what he had felt in those crucial moments, and how he had responded. He remembered how good it was to be free again and how desperate he was to remain so.
“Move back,” he said to Tesla Dart. “Behind me.”
She stared at him in surprise, but then did as she was told. “What are you doing?” she hissed at him.
He ignored her. He didn’t know what he was doing. Not specifically. But he knew what he wanted to happen, and that was enough.
Tarwick was watching him suspiciously and the creatures that served the Catcher were beginning to edge forward, no longer content to stand and wait. The volume of their cries was increasing, and the gnarled bodies were edging closer, pressing them backward toward the niche.
“I will get serpents and throw!” Tesla Dart insisted.
“Stay where you are,” Redden said.
He was gathering himself, trying to make certain that what he did next would achieve the result he sought—or at least something close. He was seeking a way to shape it into something formidable through the use of his magic, through strength of heart, mind, and body.
With so little of each to call upon, he must be certain he found enough of each if they were to survive.
Something dark flashed through a wash of torchlight to the left of where he stood, and Oriantha tore into a clutch of attackers. Redden’s arm rose instantly, extending like a weapon, and his voice filled the cavern with a roar that sounded like a mountain coming down.
At the same instant, red light blossomed from his clutched fingers, turned to fire, and exploded into their attackers. Two forms of magic at once, one feeding the other, wishsong and Elfstone magic blended into a firestorm of light and sound. He felt them tear out of him, generated not just from throat and hand, but from everything he was, as well. A strange, terrible wrenching shook him to the soles of his feet, and he could tell that something unpleasant was happening.
But the result he had been seeking was achieved. Red light surrounded and absorbed the creatures of the Straken Lord. Tarwick and his minions were snatched up like toys, wrapped in unbreakable chains of magic. Shuddering and thrashing, they were encased in red fire.
It happened quickly, a leaching away of substance—of flesh and blood and bone. Through a miasma of pain and shock, his body shuddering from what the combined magic of wishsong and Elfstones was doing to him, Redden Ohmsford watched it unfold. Some essential part of him was disappearing, disintegrating with the power he was releasing. Another almost physical form of disintegration was taking place among the demonkind. Bodies lurched and shook and convulsed as if jerked by invisible strings. The sounds the stricken creatures made were terrible to hear, and the boy knew he would never be able to forget them. Screams and howls and shrieks; they were burned forever into his memory. His own sounds were equally terrifying, for what was emanating from them seemed to be coming from him, as well.
He was going to die. He knew he was. By ending their lives, he was ending his own.
But it was worth the price. It was worth any price.
Then his voice and his strength gave out. The light and the sound collapsed, and the magic faded. Redden sagged to his knees, drained of strength and in shock, but still alive. In the flickering of torchlight he saw the predators that would have torn them apart reduced to heaps of ash and scraps of clothing. There was nothing left of any of them.
Tesla Dart bent close, bracin
g his shoulders, speaking to him. He couldn’t hear what she was saying and stared at her blankly. Oriantha reappeared out of the darkness, having escaped the fate of the Straken Lord’s creatures. He had hoped to keep her safe, but he hadn’t been sure he could make that happen. He hadn’t been sure of anything.
He found himself crying at the sight of her, whole and unharmed. She was changing back into her human form even as she approached, her strange eyes fixing on him, reflecting her disbelief and awe.
“Had to try,” he gasped as she knelt before him.
He opened his hand, and the Elfstones glittered through the darkness like drops of blood.
She supported him with an arm wrapped about his waist when they set out again, leaving the cavern and its dead behind. Little was said as they departed; even the normally gregarious Tesla Dart had gone silent. Lada, who must have gone into hiding at some point, scurried out to meet them at the tunnel entrance before rushing ahead once more to scout the way.
“You shouldn’t have taken such a chance,” Oriantha whispered.
“I knew it would work,” he whispered back.
And he had, he realized now. He had known. But he had not reckoned entirely on the consequences. A feeling of having been dismantled and then reassembled in a different way still reverberated through him, refusing to pass. The magic of the Elfstones had done something inside him; he could feel it but not define it. At some unspecified point in the future, he would know. He did not particularly look forward to that moment, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
Up from the darkness they trudged, wending their way through caverns and tunnels, climbing the endless succession of steps to the platform where they had started, emerging once more into a daylight gray and murky beneath overcast skies. The Forbidding, rediscovered. They crawled out of the pit like burrowing animals into the light, blinking in confusion, making a hurried search for additional enemies, but none was in evidence. Apparently all those who had come after them had gone into the pit.
Oriantha lowered Redden to the ground, bracing him with her hands on shoulders. “Can you walk on your own from here?”
He nodded. Speech had pretty much deserted him, and he wasn’t rushing to retrieve it. The whipsaw feeling from using two forms of magic in combination still roiled inside, leaving him sick and disoriented. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t even want to think.
“Let’s be off,” Oriantha said, taking note of his reticence. Instead of pressing him, she simply walked him toward the stairs that led upward to the pit’s ragged lip. “I want to be out of this place and back in the Four Lands before another sunset.”
She was carrying the metal box containing all of the Elfstones save the crimson ones Redden had used earlier, which he had shoved deep into his pocket afterward. The shape-shifter must have seen him do this but had said nothing about returning them to the box. Apparently, she had decided that there was no hurry. Or perhaps she had thought it better just to let the matter be.
Redden shuffled ahead once they reached the valley floor, eyes lowered to the path, watching for crevasses and drops, not wanting to fall into a bottomless pit after just climbing out of one. He clutched at himself as he walked, and the feeling of his own arms about his midsection seemed to help him manage the tumult inside. Walking was easier, too, if he kept his eyes downcast instead of trying to look beyond the next few steps. Peering up at the sky was impossible.
Ahead, while Lada chattered back and forth with Tesla Dart, the valley floor gave way to its walls and the air warmed.
Unable to help himself, he began crying.
Staying close by, Oriantha monitored his progress but kept her distance and made no effort to speak to him.
When they had climbed out of the valley and moved farther away from the pit, his crying stopped. It was all right now, he told himself. It was enough that they were all still alive.
But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true.
Twenty-nine
The army of the Straken Lord arrived shortly after sunrise on the fourth day after setting out on its lengthy journey from the ruins of Arishaig. The Elves could see it coming from miles away as it slowly materialized out of the morning haze that spread across the broad sweep of the plains all the way south to the horizon. Because the Jarka Ruus were of varying sizes and shapes and did not march in formation or with any particular regard for order but instead simply lurched forward in the manner of a massive herd in migration, it appeared to those watching as if the earth was undulating.
The first of them reached the pass through the skies, winged creatures flying ahead to announce the coming of the others. Predatory birds the size of small horses, giant bats leaking poison from their talons, and Harpies with bird bodies and witch faces, all hove into view and began to circle the defenders, crying out in shrieks and screeches, great black shapes swooping low enough that their faces could be clearly seen.
The Elves were entrenched at the mouth of the pass leading into the Valley of Rhenn—the only way through to Arborlon from the east for an army the size of the Straken Lord’s. Sian Aresh had mobilized the defenders within hours after Seersha had disabled Phaedon Elessedil, temporarily taking control of the defense of the city and its people and restoring some semblance of purpose and order. Holding the Rhenn was critical to the city’s survival, but Sian Aresh had determined early on that the most defensible positions were the passes at either end of the valley rather than the valley itself. Once that was decided, it became much easier to choose the nature of the defenses that would be employed. Building traps and snares or digging concealed pits or setting trip wires felt pointless against an enemy of this magnitude. The battle would be fought on the run, with shifting formations and quick attacks and retreats. Entrenchments beyond the passes themselves would likely fail to contain the creatures of the Forbidding, who were of multiple shapes and possessed of varied skills and abilities. Bolt-holes and concealments would be useful, but building barriers across the mouth of the pass at the eastern end of the valley to slow a massed attack, and erecting a barricade across the even narrower west pass, would be a more practical use of the time available.
In the end, their defenses ran all the way from the east pass, where the bulk of the Elven army had been gathered to defend against the initial assault, and down through the valley itself to the second pass, in which the opening through a pair of huge rock pillars had been closed off by a massive barricade. An army attempting the reach the city from this direction would have to breach the obstacles of the first pass, run a gauntlet of defenders entrenched behind concealments on the slopes of the valley walls, and then breach the barricade stretched across the even more forbidding and inaccessible second pass.
The backbone of the Elven defense, of course, was a fleet of warships several dozen strong, all manned and equipped for battle and waiting to engage. Except for flits passing overhead in reconnaissance, the balance of the airfleet was grounded just behind the second pass in an airfield set close to the valley proper. When the battle came, the warships would have the best chance of turning the tide by attacking from the relative safety of the skies.
Over the years, a number of attempts had been made to take the valley, but all had failed. No one could imagine it would be different now, not with the added strength of the warships and their weapons.
But then, no one would have thought that Arishaig could be taken, either.
The Straken Lord’s winged scouts, sweeping down through the valley in quick bursts, seemingly heedless of the missiles whizzing past them as they went, took full measure of the Elven defenders and their defenses. They flew as if oblivious to the flits that darted at them, easily avoiding their efforts to bring them down. They defecated on the defensive positions as they passed—a taunting that brought howls of rage and dismay from those hidden in the brush and trees and rocks.
“Can you put a stop to that?” Sian Aresh snapped at Seersha from within their concealment near the head of the pass.<
br />
The Druid shook her head. “I could, but that’s what they are hoping for. They want to know if you have the use of magic. Do you have anyone standing with you who has the same powers Khyber Elessedil did?” She gave him a look. “It would be best if we let him wonder for a while.”
Eventually, the flying creatures lost interest and flew away. Not one had even been injured.
The day dragged on after that in a desultory, anticipatory slog, tension heightening steadily as the enemy army drew closer, as it widened and deepened like a tidal wave and increasingly assumed definition. It was one thing to be brave in the face of something nebulous and distant. It was another entirely to maintain that postion when you could see the sorts of things that were coming for you—creatures with twisted limbs and crooked backs, teeth and claws that could rend you in a single swipe, and faces so gnarled and misshapen they resembled your worst nightmares fully realized.
It took the army all day to reach the mouth of the pass, and there they massed, widening out to either side of the mountain walls north and south for miles, and eastward until their end could not be seen. Dust filled the air and drifted over the Elves, clogging their breathing and obscuring their vision. The stench of enemy bodies spread in a sickening wave and left some defenders gagging and retching. There seemed to be no leaders, only beasts herded to this place like animals, brought to a halt and unable to do more than mill about.
Sunset was almost upon the Elves—their tempers frayed to the point of breaking—when the dragon flew out of the encroaching dusk. It came in a rush, its huge plated body rust and crimson beneath layers of shadow, its wings spread wide as it glided on the wind. Astride its neck, armored head-to-foot, was a creature no Elf had ever seen before. It was as black as moonless night, heavily muscled and ridged with spikes that poked through gaps in the armor that had been cut apart to afford them space and then chained back together with links. A huge scepter was clasped in one hand, its jagged head glowing a wicked green.
