by Terry Brooks
Everyone was listening closely now, intrigued by this unexpected possibility. Railing, rendered silent and immobile, seethed at his predicament, but listened anyway.
“The Ulk Bog who found Crace Coram and Oriantha was very insistent that the Straken Lord seeks a way to bring Grianne Ohmsford back into the Forbidding so he can breed with her. He has retained this fixation for more than a hundred years, and it appears to remain undiminished. This is not a rational expectation, but the Straken Lord does not appear to me to be a rational creature. So what if we could find a way to make it happen? What if we could produce Grianne?”
“Wouldn’t she be dead and buried by now?” Skint asked doubtfully.
“Not if she used the Druid Sleep. Not if she retains her magic and her Druid skills. She could still be mentally and physically strong enough to be every bit as effective as she was when she escaped him before. If so, she becomes a very potent weapon we could use against him. We have two considerations here. First, saving our friends, and second, putting an end to the threat of an invasion by the Jarka Ruus into the Four Lands. What if Grianne Ohmsford could provide both?”
She looked around the room, ending with Railing. “I want you to find out if this might be possible. Go with Woostra and search the records at Paranor to see if we can find out what happened to her. Take Mirai and Skint with you. If you find anything that tells you where she can be found, go to her and tell her what is happening. If half of what I’ve read about her from the Histories is true, she will want to help us. You are her descendant—you and Redden. You are all Ohmsfords. Talk to her. Persuade her. Bring her back and let us face him together.”
There was a long silence.
“This seems something of a stretch,” Skint said finally.
Seersha nodded. “Everything we try at this point will be something of a stretch. Even finding a way back into the Forbidding and into the Straken Lord’s fortress to free the Ard Rhys and Redden Ohmsford seems unlikely. But it’s too late for what’s possible and what’s not to suddenly become a concern.”
“But hasn’t Woostra already studied the Druid Histories at length?” Mirai asked. “Is there is anything new to find?”
Seersha gestured at the little scribe. “Woostra and I have already discussed this.”
Woostra shrugged. “The Druid Histories say nothing about what became of Grianne Ohmsford after she left Paranor. But there are writings from both Grianne and Khyber Elessedil in the archives from that time period. I have not researched all of these. There might be something there.”
Skint was not persuaded. “But no one’s heard anything about her—anything—for more than a hundred years. Is this even a possibility?”
“I’ll admit it feels like the beginnings of the search for the missing Elfstones all over again,” Seersha replied. “A hunt through old journals, diaries, writings of people dead and gone, lost to us for too many years. But maybe this time we can make something good come of it. The Elfstones are still lost to us, but maybe Grianne isn’t. She was a powerful witch and a fierce Ard Rhys during her life. Perhaps she’s still something of both.”
She moved to an empty chair and plopped down. “What else do we have to do but find out? Go back to the Forbidding and try to get inside again? Go back into that madness that has already killed most of us and hope it does not take the rest?” She gestured at Railing. “What do you want to do, Railing?”
The boy discovered he was free of his restraints. He could move again, and he could talk. Still, he hesitated. “What I want to do is whatever it takes to save Redden. Do you really think this might be the way?”
“I think if it isn’t, there’s still time to try another. The Straken Lord made prisoners of the Ard Rhys and your brother for a reason. Whatever we do, we have to hope that means he wants to keep them alive and well long enough for us to save them. We have to hope there’s a way. While you search for Grianne Ohmsford, Crace Coram and I will search for a way back inside the Forbidding. We will attempt to bring your brother and Khyber out. We won’t just be sitting around with the Elves.”
“Remember that Oriantha is still in there, as well,” the Dwarf Chieftain added. “I saw what she could do when that dragon carried us off. She is someone to be reckoned with, and she is looking for your brother, too. I think Seersha is right. Nothing you could do at this point by way of searching for him would add to our chances. Stay here and look for the Ilse Witch.”
Seersha looked at him sharply. “Don’t use that name. The Druids don’t call her that anymore.”
Crace Coram nodded. “Doesn’t matter what the Druids call her. That’s who she was, like it or not. That’s who she still is—if she’s still alive—somewhere deep down inside. Maybe that’s who you want to find if you expect her to stand up to the Straken Lord.”
Railing was thinking it through. He had listened to the Dwarf Chieftain relate the story of his experiences inside the Forbidding several times. He had heard him speak of Tesla Dart and of what she had insisted was true about the Straken Lord and his obsession with Grianne Ohmsford. It seemed clear enough that he would do anything in his power to bring Grianne back, and that almost everything else was secondary. It was a fresh form of madness, and it might make him vulnerable. They needed to find a way to breach his defenses and undermine his control over the Jarka Ruus, and perhaps by doing so disrupt things enough to allow them to reach Redden and Khyber Elessedil. All that was true.
But it was also true that every day he was kept away from his brother left him riddled with guilt. Every day seemed to increase the chances they would never be together again. The Speakman’s prediction still haunted him. Only one would return. Only one. What if that one was Crace Coram, and those still left inside the Forbidding—his brother included—would not be coming back?
The others were talking again, Skint questioning Woostra further on the chances of finding anything new about Grianne Ohmsford and Seersha adding something about Aphenglow’s experience with the Elven writings. But Railing wasn’t listening.
“If you go,” Mirai said quietly, leaning close to him, “I will go with you.”
He nodded without looking at her. He knew she would. He would have been surprised if she’d said anything else.
But this felt like such an impossibility that he couldn’t make himself believe there was any real chance of it coming to pass. Could he abandon his plans, however ill formed, for rescuing his brother immediately? Could he put off what needed doing yesterday and gamble on finding someone missing and long presumed dead, hoping she could alter the course of events if she appeared, but not knowing if she would even consider doing so? Did this make any sense at all?
“What do you say, Railing?” Seersha repeated.
But nothing was clear to him anymore. Everything that had made sense in his life had been left behind at Bakrabru when he had flown west into the Breakline with the ill-fated Druid expedition.
“I’ll go,” he said, just like that.
“And I,” Mirai said at once.
Skint gave a curt nod of agreement, and Woostra said, “I’ve already said I would go. How soon do we leave?”
“An airship will be arranged for you,” Seersha said, getting to her feet. “You can leave as soon as you want.”
When she left, Seersha took Crace Coram with her for a meeting with Sian Aresh to discuss preparations for their departure for the Breakline. The two old friends walked side by side in silence toward the city proper and the compound that housed the Home Guard. Elves passing by gave them covert glances, these two Dwarf warriors, scarred and worn from hardship and years. “You don’t believe anything you told that boy,” the Dwarf Chieftain said finally.
“A little of it,” she answered. “Enough of it that I could speak the words without feeling they were a lie.”
“Do you really think that Grianne Ohmsford is still alive? What chance is there of that?”
“What chance is there that his brother is still alive? Or Khyber? It’s all t
he same.”
“But you gave him hope.”
“Hope is all we have.” She stopped and faced him. “I told Khyber—I promised her, when she left with the rest of you to go through that waterfall that wasn’t a waterfall at all—that I would not let anything happen to Railing Ohmsford. He already had a broken leg and she was taking his brother with her. She knew it would be dangerous and she might not come back, and that Redden Ohmsford might not come back, either. She did not want both brothers to die. She had told their mother she would bring them back, and if she could not bring them both back, she would at least bring one. She was insistent about this. She would make certain at least one of them returned home.”
“So you’re sending him on this hunt for ghosts and shadows to keep him safe? To keep him from going into the Forbidding?”
She reached over and tapped him lightly on the forehead. “And to think they say you’re slow-witted.”
They started walking again, moving off the smaller pathway they had been following onto the main road. “He won’t appreciate it once he finds out what you’ve done.”
“He’ll appreciate it if we bring his brother out of the Forbidding,” she said. “And if we don’t, likely we won’t be around to hear about it, will we?”
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
Still sitting in the common room with his companions after the Dwarves had departed, Railing watched dust motes floating in the sunshine that streamed through the window. “You think trying to find Grianne Ohmsford is a waste of time, don’t you?”
Skint grunted. “If we thought this was a waste of time, we wouldn’t be going with you.”
“Seersha was adamant that I do this,” he said.
“She does seem to have made up her mind that you’re not going into the Forbidding with her,” Mirai agreed.
“She thinks I would be underfoot. She worries I would do something foolish because I want to help Redden so badly. She thinks I’m young and impulsive and don’t have enough experience.” Railing shook his head. “I can see her point, even though she’s wrong.”
“I’ve always wondered about the Ard Rhys Grianne,” Woostra said quietly. “What happened to her?” He was still sitting at the back of the room, separated from the others by more than the distance between them, an outsider suddenly pressed into service with them. “She vanished completely after Shadea a’Ru and the rebel Druids were dispatched.”
“She must have said something about her intentions to someone,” Mirai said.
“Not a word. She gave over the leadership of the order to Khyber and a couple of others, then boarded an airship and left. It’s all in the Druid Histories. But there’s nothing written about what happened to her after that. Not that I’ve been able to find, and I’ve read it all at one point or another.”
“So this is a waste of time, after all.”
Woostra got up and came forward to join them, taking the seat vacated by Crace Coram. “I don’t think so. She kept a journal; Khyber once told me so. Grianne gave it to her for safekeeping when she left the order. But Khyber put it away, and no one ever saw it afterward. I asked her about it once, and she said it was where it belonged. It’s worth taking time to look for it.” He shrugged. “And there might be other writings. Khyber kept a journal, as well, tucked in a drawer in her sleeping chambers. I’ve never read it—never thought I had to right or the need to do so. But I’m willing to take a look at it now.”
“But even if you find something, even if Grianne Ohmsford is still alive out there somewhere, what sort of shape is she in?” Skint pressed. “I heard what Seersha said about the Druid Sleep and the magic and all that, but even so Grianne would be more than a hundred and fifty years old. I don’t care what you do to help yourself, what sort of magic you command, you aren’t going to be as fit and strong as you were a hundred years earlier. What help is she going to be able to give us?”
“I considered that,” Railing said quickly. “But then I thought, maybe she knows something about the Straken Lord that would help us get Redden back. Maybe she knows a weakness that even now, a hundred years later, she could use to destroy him. Or maybe she knows a way to outwit him. Or confuse him enough to give us a chance.”
He threw up his hands. “What I know for sure is that I can’t sit around here doing nothing! If I can’t go into the Forbidding with Seersha, I’ll do this.”
“I just think we need to be realistic about our chances,” the Gnome Tracker muttered.
“Maybe we should talk about who else is going,” Mirai said, clearly anxious to turn the conversation in another direction. “We should take a crew to man the airship and maybe a few Elven Hunters for protection.”
“No,” Railing said at once. “I don’t want anyone to go with us. It should just be the four of us.”
Skint made a rude noise. “That’s just nonsense, boy. Woostra and I don’t know anything about airships, and if something happens to you, Mirai would be left to manage alone. You’re supposed to be healing, remember? We need a crew to keep things running smoothly. And a little protection wouldn’t hurt.”
“He’s right,” Mirai cut in before Railing could object further. “We don’t want to try this without help. We don’t know where our search will take us. Let’s be smart about this.”
“How do we know who to trust?” Railing replied. “Look what happened to Aphenglow.”
“That was about something else—probably to do with the search for the missing Elfstones and that journal she found. We’re on a different mission entirely.”
“We can be careful about who we take with us,” Skint said. “We can find people we can trust. That Rover fellow. Farshaun Req. Why don’t we send word to him and ask to come with us? He’s someone you trust. He can bring his own crew of Rovers, too. Skilled fliers, those fellows. Then we can spend our time worrying about what it is we’re trying to do and let them fly the ship and watch our backs.”
Railing immediately thought of Austrum and Mirai, and he almost dismissed the idea out of hand because of what he feared might happen if the two were brought back together. But that was foolish thinking; if Mirai wanted to be with the big Rover, it would happen one way or another. She would make it happen.
“Getting him here will take time,” he said instead.
Skint made a dismissive gesture. “A day, maybe two, at the most, if we send word now.”
Railing looked from face to face, seeking and finding approval. Still, he hesitated. This search was what he had agreed to, yet he remained uncertain. There were reasons to reject it, even now, even after he had verbally committed to the idea and made it his own. Layers of doubt clouded his confidence, making him wonder if he shouldn’t take this last chance to abandon the plan and try something else.
But what else was there to try? What other road was there left for him to travel?
“Send word to Farshaun,” he said finally. He was speaking to Mirai. “Tell him to bring Quickening. Tell him we’ll be waiting.”
23
They flew out of Arborlon two days later with Farshaun Req at the helm and a crew of four men he had brought with him from Bakrabru working the lines. It was early morning, and the skies were bright and clear. The Rovers had arrived in Arborlon at twilight of the previous night, much faster than Railing had expected, and they had already stocked Quickening with supplies, weapons, and spare parts so that she was ready to depart at once. Railing was tempted to do so, to leave under cover of darkness to avoid the chances of being seen by unfriendly eyes. But common sense won out, and after consulting with Farshaun and Mirai it was agreed that allowing the Rovers a meal and a good night’s sleep was the better choice.
Standing in the pilot box with Farshaun as the buildings of Arborlon dwindled and disappeared behind them, he leaned close and said, “I didn’t know if you would come.”
“Why wouldn’t we come?” the old man asked in surprise. “Redden is one of us, as much a part of our family as he is of yours. We want him
back safe, too.”
“But after what happened in the Fangs? You lost all your men, friends and family both—all but Austrum—when the Walker Boh went down.”
A shrug. “We’re fliers, Railing. We’re used to losing men to the skies. We don’t measure our loyalty or our sense of responsibility by things like that. We know the risks, and the risks never change.”
Railing watched the Rovers scurry about forward of them, tightening the radian draws on the mainsail. The sailcloth billowed in the favorable following wind, and the lines sang with the strain.
“You know what? Austrum never said a word about the Walker Boh when I asked him,” Farshaun continued. “Just said he would find three more men and be ready in two hours. Good as his word, too. That boy has grown up a considerable amount since saving our skins in the Fangs.”
Railing nodded wordlessly. He didn’t like to be reminded of the virtues of the big Rover, but he wasn’t the sort to diminish another’s accomplishments or disparage his contributions. Austrum had saved them, and he did seem somewhat less bombastic this time around. What was even more unexpected was how distant he and Mirai acted toward each other. They had greeted each other coolly, and since then when they spoke it was without any particular heat or special sign of interest. Railing had watched for something more, but it hadn’t been there.
So now they were on their way, and the enormity of what they were undertaking was blocking out other concerns. Its weight pressed down anew every time he considered the odds against finding Grianne Ohmsford. Since he was already riddled with guilt for not going after his brother directly, the weight seemed even heavier.
At one point, he left Farshaun and went back to talk with Woostra, who was huddled in a niche between crates of light sheaths lined up along the stern railing. The gawky, angular scribe looked very out of place. Railing walked over to him and sat down.
