The hillside crumbled under their feet as they ascended and they helped each other climb.
“Nothing threatening that we know of!” Dalloway replied. His sharp eyes raked the surrounding area. “At least you should be able to forewarn us then if someone or something approaches. It’ll be obvious, right?” The sand sucked at his foot and it sank into the powdery surface. He yanked it out. “I hate carrying this scroll around. I think we should dispose of it as soon as we can.” He fingered the leather container underneath his cloak. The case was warm to the touch.
“Do you think Tamara and my father have reached the Tower yet? Does the boy have the shard, I wonder? I have no sense of it now.” It was so quiet in this place.
“He’ll guide her well. He knows the lay of the land better than anyone,” Dalloway replied.
Caroline’s eyes clouded over and her breath came in barely perceptible spurts. “Davmiran will quest for the First and we’re about to destroy the only directions to it anyone knows of. How odd it seems,” she whispered.
“Don’t pass out on me now,” he moved to support her just in case. “Are you okay?”
She blinked and looked at him. “Yes. Yes. I’m fine. Just a little dizzy. It’s the air I think. It’s dry, it hurts when I inhale. And thin too, I can’t get enough of it.”
“Lean on me then. It’s hard to walk on this stuff.” Side by side, they continued on. “Have you doubts about what we’ve been instructed to do?” Dalloway asked. “I never questioned why the map needed to be destroyed. But it’s strange now that you mention it. Did Tamara tell you anything else when you two were alone?”
“No. Her instructions were simple. She seemed not to know more herself. Apparently, it’s too dangerous to allow the map to exist,” Caroline replied. But something didn’t feel right. She couldn’t explain it, but something was wrong.
“If she had to return the shard to the heir, why not bring him the map as well? Is one less dangerous to carry than the other?” Dalloway reasoned. A feeling of discomfort rose in the pit of his stomach as the map pressed against it.
“Why did we not discuss this before?” Caroline asked. “Does it seem that we left too quickly? It feels as if these thoughts were blocked from surfacing for some reason, as if we weren’t supposed to talk about them. The four of us spent days together, and yet we didn’t question this then? Why not Daly? Why not?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “And all I’ve thought about was getting rid of it!” Their surroundings began to take on a new meaning. “Carrying it makes me feel as if I’m calling out to the enemy. I feel like I have a beacon in my pocket I can’t conceal.” Dalloway slumped his shoulders and sunk lower into the black sand. He was always sure about things. Certain.
“The desolation of this place makes us stand out even more.” She glanced around herself, half expecting something to shatter the silence. “It’s strange, but I didn’t think about what we were coming here to do either. How curious,” Caroline realized.
“I can’t stand having doubts about this! I was determined to reach Odelot. I thought of nothing else, and now that we’re finally here, I wonder….”
“Me too, Daly,” she said, squeezing his arm. “Me too.”
“Do you think…”
“Watch out!” she yanked him to the side. An area of smooth sand collapsed next to him and disappeared into a hole. They scrambled up the hill together, away from the small landslide that was about to swallow them.
“What’s under here? It’s the softest sand I’ve ever seen, like ashes.” So opposite of what he knew, and he didn’t trust it. Seramour was a city in the clouds, verdant and lush, nothing like this. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing Caroline? Could the sister have been wrong?”
“There’s something about this place….It’s making me uneasy.” Caroline’s life before this was sheltered and protected, her father made certain of that. Most of the conflicts she encountered were among her animal friends and easily reconcilable or usually forgotten. Issues like this never plagued her before.
“We shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts,” Dalloway said, trying to push them from his mind. “We know what we’re supposed to do! If the map was meant to be in Parth, then Tamara never would have left there with it to begin with. We can’t second guess ourselves now.”
“Still…” she hesitated. “What if she was wrong? What if the boy really does need the map?”
“I can understand their urgency to remove it from Parth and hide it away somewhere else. There was no question Caeltin would have been there soon enough to claim it for his own. Somehow he knew the sisters had it in their possession,” Dalloway said.
“But he also knew she left the Tower with it!” Caroline reminded him.
“Yes, you’re right. That traitor he sent almost wrested it from her. If we hadn’t arrived when we did, that miserable elf would be on his way back to Sedahar with the scroll and the shard, and Tamara would be dead.”
“It wasn’t luck that brought us to her side. Remember Sidra’s medallion? She knew the sister was in danger. She led us to her.” Sidra again. Always Sidra. “Do you recall anything more about the time you spent with her before my father and I found you?”
“Very little. After you helped me recover my memory, there were still gaps. Even now I grasp for the threads, but it’s like trying to remember a dream; the memory is just beyond my reach though I know it’s there.” His fingers toyed with the amulet hanging from his neck. “She guided us here too.”
“Yes, but her light’s faded now. Look at it.”
Lifting the medallion before his eyes, Dalloway gazed upon it as if unaware he’d been holding it. It was dull and pale in color. But the black sand glistened in the sun, slithering underfoot.
“It’s left to us to decide what to do then,” Caroline said, stepping carefully.
“We were told what to do! Can we take it upon ourselves to do otherwise?”
She shook her head, frowning. “How well do you remember the poem Sidra implanted in your mind?”
“I’ll never forget it again,” he said, grimacing. “It’s etched in my brain now,” Though the weeks with Sidra were still impossible to recollect.
“It said to pluck it from their hands. It said that ‘the sisters know not what they do’.”
“It also said that ‘the Drue keep what they find’. But they didn’t keep the map!”
“No. But they kept Angeline!” Caroline replied.
“That never occurred to me,” Dalloway admitted. He climbed a low hill and helped Caroline up and over it. “So you think Sidra wants us to keep the map? That she guided us here for another reason?”
“I don’t know if she wants us to keep it or not. But I have a feeling she doesn’t want us to destroy it in the way that Tamara was going to; by dropping it down the well.”
“And have it land upon the daemon’s chest, you mean?”
“Exactly. It was a Lalas who told Tamara to seek the well. And Sidra seems to be telling us that the Lalas are confused somehow, blinded by some temporary need.” Digging her toe into the loose surface, a small cloud of dust circled around her like a ghost from below.
“Don’t do that,” he pulled at her arm. Caroline stared at him worried, and looked down at the sand. What did he expect she would uncover?
Dalloway closed his eyes and recited the entire poem that only weeks before was buried in his subconscious and he could not even recall a single word of it:
“So much you can, so much you can’t
Choose those things you must.
How loud you rave, how loud you rant;
We all return to dust.
Do what you may along the way,
Be brave, be strong, be true.
‘Tis not enough, idly by to sit
When destiny beckons you.
Seek it now, the blighted map,
Pluck it from their hands,
Lest it fall forever lost
Upon the daemon’
s chest to land.
The sisters of the sacred place
know not what they do,
Forgive them the words their actions speak,
They are noble, through and through.
Lost in a moment of what he needs;
“The well at the end go seek!”,
Not all can be arranged just so,
The Drue find, the Drue keep. “
He looked hard at Caroline, waiting for a response.
“How grave is the need of this Lalas that it gave such ill-conceived instructions to Tamara?” she asked. “Are they ill-conceived? I don’t even know anymore.”
“And I don’t understand what she meant by that. How could the tree be misguided? That seems unlikely. A Lalas can’t be wrong, can it? But they’re dying, Caroline. Maybe they’re just becoming frightened like the rest of us, frightened and confused,” Dalloway replied. Questioning a Lalas? He’d never done that before.
“Why couldn’t it be wrong? Maybe it just doesn’t know everything. Tamara said they’re worried. They can’t communicate like they did in the past.” Her features were strained and edged with fear. “My father told us Sidra could be trusted. He wouldn’t have said that if it weren’t true.” Would he? What did she really know of his fears? He wanted to protect her more than anything. She realized that after learning of her mother’s death. Still, she wondered, what more had he kept from her?
“And you think the Lalas can’t be trusted?” Dalloway winced.
“It’s not only a matter of trust, Daly. Maybe the trees are suffering so much from their losses that they can’t see things as they used to. But they could be wrong too, couldn’t they? Isn’t that possible? And what if Sidra knows this?” Caroline speculated.
“And we’re supposed to determine who is correct? The sister was instructed by the Lalas itself to drop the map down the well, and that’s what she told us to do,” he said, puzzled.
“Yes. And you were instructed that the Lalas was ‘lost in a moment of need’, weren’t you?” Caroline paraphrased Sidra’s words. “So we are the ones who must decide,” she concluded. “We can’t just ignore Sidra’s admonition either.”
“Could Caeltin D’Are Agenathea be here in Odelot?” Dalloway asked. His heart skipped a beat. “Do you think he’s waiting for us? He mustn’t gain possession of the map no matter what we decide to do with it!” The shifting sands looked more and more forbidding. Each step was difficult.
“He can’t possibly know who we are and where we are, could he? He can’t see into the forbidden places remember, and his assassin is dead,” Caroline paled. “The only others who know of our journey are Sidra, Tamara and my father.” The Dark One? She didn’t feel him here. She didn’t feel anything here.
“If he’s in Odelot, someone else had to advise him of our presence,” Dalloway stated.
“But no one else knew,” Caroline repeated.
“Oleander knew!” Dalloway said.
“Oleander? What are you saying, Daly? Why? Why would one of the Lalas inform Colton of such a thing?”
“I don’t know, Caroline. Truly, I don’t. But it could be true.” May the First help us if it is, he thought.
“Then who’ve we left to trust?” she wondered. Her fingers grasped his sleeve so tight his arm numbed.
“We’ve come this distance in order to drop the one object that would help Davmiran the most down the well so that it will be lost forever,” he said.
“Or be found by Colton!” she said. “Which has to be worse.”
“How could Sidra know what the Lalas did not?”
“I think we should keep it, Daly,” Caroline said. “Everything changed when we arrived. What was right for the sister may not be for us. Once it was put in our hands and Tamara left with the shard, the circumstances changed too.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Yes, I do!” she said, more certain this time. “I just don’t know what we should do with it if we keep it.”
He pulled hard on her arm. “We’ve got to find the well as fast as we can.”
Chapter Three
She has grown far stronger than I ever imagined, Blodwyn said.
And that disturbs you? the magnificent tree replied.
In a way, yes, she admitted. She chose not to honor the bond. She lives independently of us, and she pays no heed to our precautions, our warnings nor our attempts to contact her. I don’t trust her.
Yet she protects the heir and his brother, Lilandre said.
A soft wind blew through the heavily laden branches, rustling the leaves. They sang in the wind.
So it seems, she replied, though with skepticism in her voice.
Blodwyn chose her enemies carefully and her friends even more so, yet Sidra remained an enigma. She folded her arms and stared at the ground, barely noticing the tree’s efforts to soothe her worries.
Do you doubt what she is doing is for our benefit? Lilandre asked.
It is not doubt that plagues me, Lilandre, she said, looking up with imploring eyes at the huge Lalas she stood under. Its branches sheltered her but she still felt ill at ease. What she is doing is brazen and provocative. She flaunts her power, as if she can do what she wishes without any fear of recrimination. What has changed? Does she think we are too weak or preoccupied to respond?
The tree lifted its branches as if shrugging, and a few silver tinged leaves drifted to the mossy surface.
So you believe our power is waning, Lilandre stated in response.
Blodwyn jerked her head up. Her long braid smacked against her back.
I did not say that! Defiance marked her tone and she drew her cape tight around her body.
You did not have to, the tree responded. ‘Tis true nonetheless.
What? That I believe it or that it is a fact?
Lilandre’s silence was deafening. The leaves fluttered and the branches swayed, and the odor of Lalas was sweet and strong, but no voice spoke within Blodwyn’s mind.
You are not going to answer my question, are you? Blodwyn asked. Why, Lilandre, why? What are you hiding from me? The shielded thought flitted through her head.
A finger-like tendril reached out and caressed her cheek and she flinched and backed away. She was in no mood to be patronized, but Lilandre was persistent.
It was you who did not answer my question, Blodwyn, the tree whispered inside her head. Do not be afraid of what you believe. It is faith that drives the world forward. You cannot always choose what your heart embraces. It comes not of thought and contemplation but of instinct and emotion. Don’t refuse it. The seeds of resent and unhappiness are nurtured within the rank soil of denial.
And it is faith that blinds us, is it not? I admit I fear for the trees, and for you as well, she said, allowing the Lalas’ touch. How many have we lost this past tiel? Nine?
The branch wound around her arm and looped over her ear. She sighed and gave in to its embrace.
Yes, nine, Lilandre replied somberly.
The number resonated in her head. Nine trees dead in six years.
Nine trees. And now the total has reached eleven, Blodwyn said. How can we sustain such losses? It seems impossible.
It is, Blodwyn. But we do not lament. Everything that occurs does so for a reason. The 11th shard has been secured. As we become weak, others grow stronger.
Surely you cannot mean… she replied, shuddering at her tree’s words.
No, Blodwyn. I am not referring to Colton. Though his power is increasing, it is not because ours is fading. Soon, the heir will have what he needs. Our hopes lie with him.
Yet Colton is bolder each day and his reach is greater than only weeks ago. He believes the trees have forsaken the earth, the Chosen said. Of what significance then is the 11th shard? And it was a sister from Parth who stole it out from under his nose? she asked, still surprised at this occurrence. I had always believed none but Premoran and his kind could do such a thing.
Ah, belief. This word will not leave us today
. You believe and he believes and they believe, the tree said as if to mock her. Colton cannot control what he believes any more than you can. Just because you embrace something, does not make it correct, no matter how much it may feel as such. There is a basis for what we come to believe, a cause, blind though we may be to it. Colton did not anticipate being thwarted when Mintar passed. His plans were a long time in the making and he expected to be successful. Sidra’s thread has already woven itself into the fabric, and though its hue is unique, he was unable to discern its presence in time to help himself.
I do not understand what you are telling me, Blodwyn confessed.
The fact he is so obtuse allows him to accept some things that others might question. It is important for us to do whatever we can to persuade him to act in certain ways, to enforce his inclinations. He has feelings nonetheless, and he is susceptible to them. In fact, they have driven him mad. He embraces the belief that we falter and fade, which causes him great joy. In order to nurture this belief we take many risks.
Would acceptance then be the cause of his undoing?
Acceptance, hubris and arrogance all contribute to an abeyance of power.
His power? Blodwyn asked, staring straight into the center of the massive tree.
That I cannot tell. The fabric weaves of its own will, Lilandre reminded her.
Cannot tell or will not tell? she said, her frustration was rising, and her anger along with it. Are you doing this on purpose? Confusing me? Why? she asked.
Blodwyn felt suddenly alone. The Lalas withdrew her touch.
You and the others have planned this in some way then? Is that what you are saying? You’re drawing him into a trap? Are sacrifices this grave now necessary? If your brethren are actually choosing to die, is this the reason? It is not because the Gem’s light is being withheld from us, as we have been led to believe? she asked, astounded. He is so powerful the only way to stop him is to forfeit ourselves?
Withdrawing her branch, the space around Lilandre solidified. The density of its surface made it impossible for Blodwyn to see beyond it. She reached out, but Lilandre didn’t respond. Her skin grew cold as her overtures failed and a shadow passed over her, shocking her and rending her heart. Never before had she been refused when she was so full of need.
The Revenge of the Elves Page 2
