by Terry Brooks
Maybe.
How could she know? How could she know anything?
Then her eyes adjusted to the change of light, to this new darkness, and she began to see where she was. She was in a broad cavelike tunnel, its rock walls rugged and rough, bits of roots and vines trailing from its ceiling, broken rocks and pockets of damp littering its floor. Veins of something phosphorescent glowed softly through its length, running on into the distance until they could no longer be seen clearly. From somewhere not too far away, water dripped in slow, steady cadence. When she breathed or scraped her boots on the stone, the sounds echoed loudly.
Otherwise, everything was silent.
She looked around, taking stock of her situation. The passageway in which she stood ran both ways for as far as she could see. There was no sign of how she had gotten here, nothing to indicate the portal that had allowed her to enter. She might have been picked up and deposited by a giant’s hand as easily as not. The walls about her offered no doors or alternative passageways. She could either stay where she was or go forward or back, but that was it.
She had retained enough presence of mind to know which was which, so she chose to go forward. But then she stopped herself, turned, and walked back for a short distance. Perhaps she could return to where she had been just by reversing her steps.
But when she’d gone twenty feet and nothing had happened, she realized there was no going back. Not that way, at least.
So she turned around and continued on. She walked for a long time, the sound of her breathing harsh in her ears, her footfalls echoing in the silence. She wished she’d thought to bring food and water, but then realized she hadn’t had any to bring in the first place. What she had were the clothes on her back, the long knife Xac Wen had given her, and a desperate need to find her grandmother.
She would have felt better about things if she’d had any clue as to where she was. Sure, she knew she was in a cave passage. She knew she was underground. But where? Somewhere in Arborlon or somewhere else entirely? Magic was at work here—of that much she could be certain. But had it worked to her advantage or not? If it was Mistral’s, she was not in danger. But if it were someone else’s, how could she be sure of anything? She couldn’t even be certain she was still inside the valley. She might have been transported. She might be anywhere.
But who would do this if not Mistral?
She forced herself to think it through logically. Mistral’s avatar had come to her to warn her of the danger and of her need to retrieve and take up the Elfstones. Her message, emblazoned in fire across the air inside her little cottage, had summoned Phryne to the Belloruus Arch. So it was reasonable to think it was her grandmother’s magic and not someone else’s that had brought her to where she was. Otherwise, this was an elaborate trap set by an unknown person or persons, and that just didn’t make any sense.
She walked with more confidence now, having decided everything was happening as intended, that her grandmother had arranged all this for a reason. Phryne was where she was supposed to be and doing what she was supposed to do. She wasn’t entirely reassured there was no danger, but she did think she was better off than she had first believed.
Time passed, and the tunnel wound on. Not once did it branch or offer any other way to go but forward or back. She felt as if she must have walked miles. But how could an underground passageway—even one as big as this—run so far? Nor was there any suggestion of an end to it. Everything kept looking exactly the same, the walls never changing and the light never altering. She might have been walking in place for all the progress she seemed to be making.
Her thoughts drifted to the events that had brought her to this place and time, beginning with her impulsive decision to go with her cousins and Prue Liss and Panterra Qu to Aphalion Pass and ultimately beyond into the outside world. How different things would be if she had stayed in Arborlon. She was aware of how everything in life could be changed by a single choice, had known it to happen to others, but had never thought she would experience it herself.
Now she wished she could take it all back. Her father might still be alive and her stepmother nothing more than the baker’s daughter who had married an Elven King and worked with the sick and injured. But Phryne guessed that she was dreaming. Events would still have turned out somewhere close to where they were. The Drouj would still have found their way to the valley, Isoeld would still have found a way to murder her husband so that she could make herself Queen, and her own sorry state of affairs would still have come to pass.
Of course, there was no way of knowing for sure and nothing to be gained by speculating. You lived the life you were given, good or bad. She let the matter drop.
Ahead, the tunnel began to narrow. She hurried a bit to see what was going to happen and soon found that it tightened into a much smaller passageway that branched in three directions—one each to the left and right and a third between the other two that became a stairway leading down. She hesitated a moment before choosing the middle path. She couldn’t have sworn to it, but it seemed to her that something was tugging her that way. Not a voice or a presence or anything quite so substantial; it was more instinct than anything, and she decided to heed it.
The stairway descended in circular fashion, the walls close enough that Phryne could feel the cold radiating off the stone and could see the damp glistening in broad patches. The dripping continued as well, droplets falling on her head or striking her face in icy splashes. The tunnel was windless, the air stale and damp to the taste. She had to duck to avoid low spots in the spiraling underside of the stairs. But she pressed ahead, determined to find an end to her journey.
She found it almost before she was ready. The stairs ended in another tunnel, this one as narrow as the passageway leading down, and she was forced to proceed in a crouch. Water ran all along the floor in tiny rivers and dripped steadily from the ceiling. She was soon very wet about her head and shoulders and shivering with the cold.
Then, suddenly, she heard a faint, dry hissing, a sound flat and empty of life, as if snakes held imprisoned might be pleading for release. It was vast and endless, and it grew in strength the farther down the passageway she went. She tried to make sense of it, but failed. It might have been snakes, but she knew it wasn’t. It might have been the sound of water falling in a thin, soft sheen from a great height, but it wasn’t that, either. It might even have been a dying breath, the sound of life leaving the body, but she knew that was wrong, too.
Now the passageway was widening out and taking on a different look. Stalactites appeared on the ceiling, each larger than a man, great stone spears on which mineral deposits had found purchase, their encrusted lengths shedding water in slow drippings that stained the tunnel floor. A forest of these formations filled the spaces above her head and left her feeling as if she were in a deadly trap with jaws that might close on her at any moment.
She quit looking up, directed her eyes straight ahead, and pushed on.
When the tunnel finally ended, she was standing at the opening of a massive cavern, a chamber so vast she could not see its far walls and could only barely make out the stalactites clustered on its ceiling. Torches burned through the darkness like tiny fireflies, their glow revealing bits and pieces of the chamber’s terrain. A lake at its center dominated everything, broad and sprawling, its waters a strange greenish color, their surface flat and still, mirroring the ceiling and parts of the walls. Massive rocks chiseled into rectangles and pillars rose here and there along the perimeter, remnants of another age.
But what drew Phryne’s attention instantly were the tombs clustered around the lake’s edge, markers and sepulchers of all sizes and shapes, some with script cut into the stone bold and deep, some with tiny runes she could only barely make out, and some with nothing more than one or two huge letters carved in the ancient Elven language. She had studied that language and learned its characters, and so she could identify what she was looking at, even if she could not interpret its meaning.
> She stood for long moments at the cavern entrance, trying to decide what to do next. Then slowly, cautiously, she began to make her way down toward the edge of the lake.
But she had not gone more than a dozen yards before the hissing that had tracked her progress with its steady, insistent buzzing—the hissing she had gotten so used to she had almost forgotten it was there—suddenly increased in intensity. The volume rose abruptly, as if to acknowledge her presence and make known that it recognized her purpose. She stopped where she was, realizing suddenly what she was hearing.
It was the sound of voices whispering—hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, all speaking at once.
She held her ground a moment longer to see if anything else was going to happen, but after a few minutes in which nothing did, she moved ahead once more. Shadows layered the cavern floor in strange shapes, elongated and twisted in the bits and pieces of light, and she could have sworn that some of them moved. But she could find nothing living in the mix of light and dark, and even the sources of the whispering refused to reveal themselves. She walked alone, down through the tombs, down through the shadows, down to the edge of the green, still waters of the lake.
There she stopped, waiting.
Phryne, a voice called out to her.
Even though she had been expecting something to happen, she nearly jumped out of her skin. She wheeled right and left, searching for the speaker, the sound of her name echoing all through the chamber so that it was impossible to trace.
I am here, child.
And there was Mistral. Her grandmother stood next to a huge stone marker not twenty feet away, wrapped in her favorite cloak, the one into which she had woven impressions of the flowers of her gardens. She looked diminished standing in the shadow of the marker, a tiny figure, frail and old, her years a weight upon her shoulders.
She also looked dead. The faint light of the torches passed right through her, revealing her transparency, her changed state of being. She could no longer be seen as one of the living, even by Phryne, who very much wanted her to be. Whatever had happened aboveground, she had crossed over into the spirit world, her life come to an end.
Phryne gave a low moan of dismay and felt tears spring to her eyes. “Oh, Grandmother, no,” she whispered.
Her grandmother made a placating gesture. I know you are disappointed not to find me still among the living. But I am as you see me, my life complete. I was alive when I made the avatar I hoped would bring you to me. I was alive when I made my escape from my home. But there were minions of Isoeld waiting for me, sent to kill me and take from me the Elfstones. She couldn’t know for certain I had them, but she certainly suspected. Her creatures would find them on me or find them when they searched the cottage.
She sighed, a deep exhalation. My faithful friends, my oldsters from so many years, friends and lovers and servants, fought to save me and died doing so. I escaped because of their sacrifice but was grievously injured. Knowing I would die and pass from this world without ever having told you what I must or done what I had promised, I came here, down beneath the Ashenell, down to where the most powerful of the Elven spirit Queens dwells with her people. Here, I could maintain a presence long enough for you to find me.
She made a curiously compelling gesture with one white hand. And you have found me, child. My trust in you was not misplaced. But your struggle has been every bit as difficult as mine, and for that I am sorry.
Phryne took a step toward her, wanting to embrace her, to feel the old woman’s arms around her one final time. But Mistral held up her hands in warning. You cannot touch me, Phryne. You must not. We can only talk now, nothing more.
“Grandmother, I just want—”
No, Phryne! Don’t say it! She made a quick, warding gesture. Things aren’t as they seem. We have to hurry. Now talk to me. Tell me what happened to you after your escape.
The urgency in her voice was unmistakable. It caused Phryne to glance around hurriedly, searching for its source. But she found nothing different than it had been. The tombs were unchanged, the waters of the lake still, the torches casting shadows as before, the cavern vast and silent.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she answered her grandmother. “I escaped with the help of the Orullian twins and a young boy. The boy brought me to your cottage, which had been searched and abandoned. Your avatar appeared and directed me to the Belloruusian Arch. I fled there when Isoeld’s soldiers came to the cottage. At the arch, I passed through into the tunnels that led to this place.”
She took a quick breath. “But what am I to do now? I will not let Isoeld blame me for killing my father. Can you help me, Grandmother? Can you do something to help me expose her?”
Mistral Belloruus shook her head. I am of the dead now, and I can do nothing to aid the living. I lack substance, and I am confined to this place until I am allowed passage to the world of the dead and my final rest. I can do only one thing for you. I can give you the blue Elfstones. I have them with me, and they are meant for you. Take them and use them to help our people. You will find a way. You must.
She fumbled in her clothing and produced the familiar leather pouch. It was more substantial than the shade who held it and instantly recognizable.
Come closer, she said.
Phryne started toward her, but had taken only a few steps when a sudden wind rose out of nowhere, gusting through the chamber with such force that the torches were nearly extinguished and Phryne was forced to drop to one knee and shield her face. The whispering rose to a new crescendo, filling the immense cavern with a wailing at once so terrible and so sad that it defied belief.
“Grandmother!” Phryne called.
But Mistral Belloruus had shrunk back against the stone marker where she had first appeared, her face twisted with emotions Phryne could not read. She still held the pouch and the Elfstones clutched in her hands, clearly visible through the ephemeral trappings of her diminished body. But no longer was she making any effort at handing them to Phryne.
A voice spoke, harsh and cutting, managing somehow to rise above the wailing of the voices and the wind.
-You are of the living, girl, and do not belong here-
Phryne’s throat clenched and her blood turned to ice.
“REMEMBER WHAT I TOLD YOU,” Panterra was telling Xac Wen as they neared the Elfitch and the city of Arborlon. “If we’re stopped, just say that we’re visiting old friends and hope to do some hunting in the eastern wilderness while we’re here. You don’t have to say anything more.”
The boy scowled at him. “I know what to say, Pan. You don’t have to worry; I won’t make a mistake.”
He sounded so fierce about it that Panterra had to smile in spite of himself, but he managed to mask it with a sudden fit of coughing.
Prue, following a pace behind them, stepped forward and placed her hand on Xac’s shoulder. “He knows that. He just needs to reassure himself because he’s afraid for Phryne. Don’t be angry with him.”
Xac Wen glanced over at her and scuffed the toe of his boot as he walked. “I’m not angry at anyone. I just don’t want to be treated like a child. I’m big enough to do what’s needed. I rescued Phryne, after all. I got her out of that storeroom where they were keeping her.”
“Which was a very difficult and dangerous thing to do,” Pan said. “I don’t know if any of us could have done it. So I’ll tell you what. I’ll stop telling you what to do and just assume you already know.”
The boy nodded. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing with the Gray Man’s staff? You could tell me about that, and I wouldn’t get a bit angry.”
Panterra rolled his eyes.
While they crossed the meadow to the base of the bluff on which Arborlon sat and climbed the broad ramp of the Elfitch, Pan repeated the story of the death of Sider Ament and the passing of the staff to himself one more time. Xac Wen listened intently, alternately nodding and grunting until Pan was done.
“Can you do stuff with that staff?” he asked. �
��Magic stuff? Some say the bearer can. Is that true?”
“It’s true,” Pan told him.
“Can you show me?”
“Leave him alone, Xac,” Prue interrupted. “He doesn’t need to show you anything.”
Elven Hunters doing guard duty looked them over as they ascended the various levels of their climb, but let them pass. One or two greeted Xac by name, and he responded with a word or a wave but never anything more. At the top, they left the Elfitch and went into the Carolan Gardens, working their way along the pathways that crisscrossed the flower beds, trellis vines, and hedgerows to reach the city proper.
As they passed out of the gardens and crossed a bordering lawn toward the city roadways, Xac Wen said to Prue, “What happened to your eyes? And don’t tell me that it has anything to do with being in disguise.”
“I lost some of my vision,” she said. “Just a part of it. That’s why my eyes look like this.”
“What part did you lose?”
“The part that sees colors. I can’t see anything but shades of gray anymore.”
“How did that happen?”
“Magic. I traded off being able to see colors for having the use of instincts that are valuable in protecting myself and those with me.”
“What sort of instincts?”
“Ones that let me sense danger when it is near so that I can be ready for it and maybe avoid it.”
The boy studied her for a long moment in silence and then shook his head. “That explanation is worse than the one you gave before. I’ll ask you again later.”
At one point, they encountered an Elf whom Xac Wen knew, a young woman close to Pan’s age. Xac stopped her and asked for word of Phryne. He was told there was no news of the Princess, that since her escape she had not been seen.
“Just wanted to be sure she hadn’t returned from wherever she disappeared to,” he advised his companions as they left the young woman and walked on.
