Bloodfire Quest (4 page)

They entered a corridor formed of stone blocks and plank flooring that led to a second door, this one less formidable. Aphen led the way through, and they found themselves inside the stone well of the furnace chamber. Its circular walls rose into the body of the Keep, where heating ducts carried warmth to the various rooms of the fortress, and dropped away into the pit where the earth’s fires provided that warmth. Once, tenders had been used to mind those fires and control their output. But during the time of Grianne Ohmsford, the Druids had devised a system that tended the fires automatically. With the Keep deserted, the heat was diminished and the fires reduced to a dull red glow.

A long circular metal stairway, its interlocking sections connected by catwalks and platforms that formed ramps and thresholds to dozens of closed doors, wound in serpentine fashion about the stone walls.

“We need to go up,” Woostra advised.

They began to climb, ascending the steps at a cautious, steady pace, listening for sounds and watching for movement that would signal danger. But as the minutes drifted past, nothing happened save for the echo of their footfalls on the stairs. The pit was silent, and the Keep empty of everything but ghosts.

When they reached a door that opened onto the ground floor of the fortress, Aphen took the lead, her magic summoned and poised at her fingertips. They stepped out of the furnace room into a long corridor where dozens of bodies lay piled atop one another, twisted into positions that clearly indicated they had suffered an agonizing death. Federation soldiers, all of them, clumped against the walls for as far as the eye could see. From the marks on the stone and the damage to their hands, it could be deduced they had died trying to claw their way out. Some of them had worn their fingers down to the first and second knuckles. Some of them had torn out their own throats.

Aphen bent close to her companion. “Can we find a way to go other than through this?”

He nodded wordlessly and led her into a short corridor that branched off to the right and from there through a doorway to a narrow set of stone steps leading upward. Again, they began to climb. There were still no sounds, no signs of life anywhere. But Aphen sensed something once again—the warning stronger this time. A presence, unseen but lurking close. She hunted for it as they ascended, but couldn’t track it. The magic, she thought. It was there, and it was aware of them.

They reached the floor on which the Druid Histories were housed and made their way down the empty, cavernous hall, pressing through the weight of the silence.

Aphen.

The voice whispered in her head.

A voice she knew well.

I am here
.

She kept moving, saying nothing to Woostra, who might have heard it as well but wasn’t acknowledging it.

Aphen.
She caught her breath.
I see you.

This time Woostra glanced over his shoulder, and there was no mistaking the look he gave her.

Reaching the door to the archive room, the old man released the locks and let them inside. Then he carefully closed the door and relocked it. He led the way through his office and a series of reading rooms into the storage vault—a box with bare walls and a massive wooden table set at its center. Once upon a time, only Druids had been granted access to this chamber and possessed the magic that would reveal the hiding place of the books. But Grianne Ohmsford had changed that, too, when she had become Ard Rhys. Now there were keepers of the records who were not Druids themselves but in service to the order. Woostra was the most recent of these, and like his predecessors he knew the secret of the books and the magic that would reveal them.

He used that knowledge now in Aphen’s presence, touching the wall here and there in a complex sequence that dissolved the concealment and revealed hundreds of tomes shelved in the stone, the whole of the Druid Histories emerging into the circle of light cast by their smokeless torches.

Woostra went straight to the book he wanted, pulled it out, set it on the table, and began to page through it. It took him several minutes before he found what he wanted. “Here,” he said, indicating where he wanted Aphenglow to read.

She bent close and did so.

The Forbidding endures only so long as the Ellcrys. The tree lives a long time, through many generations, but not forever. When it begins to fail, it selects one among the current order of service to carry its seed to where the Bloodfire burns, there to be immersed and quickened so that Chosen and seed can merge and become one. The old Ellcrys passes away and the new takes root, keeping the Forbidding intact or, in the case of a diminishment, restoring its former strength.

The Bloodfire can be found in only one known place in the Four Lands. It burns deep underground within the Safehold, warded by the mountain of Spire’s Reach in the country of the Wilderun within the middle regions of the Westland.

Written in the aftermath of Amberle Elessedil’s choosing and transformation.

I am Allanon.

“A transformation many witnessed,” Woostra said, “but which few now believe actually happened.”

She looked at him. “There are any other entries that you have found?”

He shrugged. “A few, but nothing more revealing. I think Allanon determined the exact location from Wil Ohmsford, who made the journey with Amberle, thinking that a more complete record of where the Bloodfire could be found might help when it was needed again. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened.” He paused, studying her. “Yet.”

Aphen said nothing. She could tell he suspected. She read a few more entries from farther back in time, ones that Woostra pointed out to her, but he was not mistaken in his assessment of their worth. All were cursory, almost negligible references to things that were already common knowledge about the value of the tree.

“Since you already searched for any mention of Aleia Omarosian and her parents,” she said, “I assume you found nothing regarding her connection to the Chosen?” She wanted him to continue to think that this was the object of her search.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

She closed the books and helped him reshelve them. She had memorized the passage detailing the location of the Bloodfire and could help Arling make the journey if it came to that. But she had discovered nothing that would prevent it from being necessary, nothing that would provide her sister any way out of this mess.

Woostra resealed the books within the walls of the room, and everything disappeared once more.

He turned to her. “The magic is waiting for you. It knows you are here. I believe it has something to say to you.”

“I know. I sense it, too.”

He sighed. “Are you ready?”

She nodded. “I want to go to the south wall to see if the Federation still watches the Keep. I’ve sensed no human presence anywhere since we left
Wend-A-Way
. I’m not even sure anyone from the Federation is out there now. But I need to know if they are. It might change my mind about what we need to do.”

He led her from the room, relocking first the vault and then the door leading into the chambers of his office. They walked down the hallway in the opposite direction, south toward the parapets of the Inner Wall. Suddenly tinges of a misty greenish light began to appear, pulsing softly against the surface of the walls, emanating from deep within the stone.

Aphen noticed Woostra hesitating as he caught sight of the eerie glow. “Keep moving,” she said.

Once outside the Keep, they rushed across the courtyards to the Outer Wall. Bodies lay everywhere, scattered like windblown stalks of corn in an abandoned field. No birds pecked at them, and no four-legged scavengers fed. Nothing had disturbed them since they had died. They were twisted and broken, but their remains had been left alone.

“Nothing living wants any part of these poor dead creatures,” Woostra muttered as they hurried past.

Aphenglow was looking around, searching the shadows and listening for the voice, but everything was silent and blanketed in soft, white light. The night was clear and empty of everything but a quarter moon and stars. Shadows cast by the towers, the walls, the parapets, and the trees of the forest themselves draped the stones of the Druid’s Keep.

Climbing to the battlements where they could peer over the side of the Outer Wall, they crouched in silence while Aphenglow used both her senses and her Druid skills to layer a skein of magic over the surrounding forest. She found no evidence of a human presence. She found scant evidence of any life at all.

She looked at Woostra when she was finished and shook her head. Nothing. Nodding, he motioned for her to follow him down again. Together they descended the battlement steps.

They were halfway across the courtyards and heading back toward the Inner Wall when tendrils of greenish mist began seeping out of the stone ahead of them. The mist advanced toward them, reaching the clusters of dead, penetrating the lifeless bodies and turning them to dust. Aphen and Woostra began to run, skirting the mist until they had passed once more into the Keep. Winding through a series of secondary corridors, they found their way back to the furnace tower and its metal catwalk.

That was when they both heard the voice.

Aphen.

They stopped as one, looking at each other.

None can leave.

Aphen felt her heart catch in her throat.
We are not like the others.

All the living are the same. All must become the dead.

She saw Woostra close his eyes in mute acceptance of his fate. He knew this was the risk they had taken. As did she, but she refused to embrace it.

Your task is finished here. The Keep is intact. The Druids are safe. Let us be.

Then release me!

Its scream shook her to the soles of her feet, reverberating through her body like a shock wave. She could feel pain and rage emanating from the words. But what was it asking of her? She had released it already.

You are released already.

No!

She hesitated, having no idea what her response should be. What was it seeking from her? She could feel its presence now, pushing closer, drawing near. She glanced down into the pit and saw the greenish mist rising from the depths. Instinctively, she backed away, flattening herself against the stone of the chamber wall. Woostra was beside her, his face drawn and gray.

The voice screamed again.
Release me now!

It was coming for them, and there was little doubt of what it intended once it reached them. She started to summon the magic she could use against their attacker. Release it? Release it how?

Then abruptly, she saw what it was asking of her. She rushed to the railing, looking down at the approach of her own death.

“I release you back into your resting place! Listen to me. The Druids are returned!” She screamed the words, the sound echoing off the walls of the Keep. “I release you from your task and send you back!”

There was a long, deep, endless sigh, and the greenish mist began to recede back into the gloom, withdrawing into the depths, a roiling haze slowly losing color and presence until it was gone.

Aphenglow felt the tension and fear recede within her, and she exhaled slowly in response.

“Hurry,” she told Woostra.

She was thinking of the future now, of what it meant to leave Paranor. The Druid’s Keep would be abandoned, with no Druids in residence and no immediate prospect of any returning. With the magic that warded the Keep sent back into seclusion, all of Paranor was again at risk. But there was nothing to be done about it. Not when so much else was at stake, as well.

Unspeaking, they made their way down the circular stairway to the entrance of the underground tunnel, passed through, and went back out into the world.

Aboard
Wend-A-Way,
Arling Elessedil waited all night for the return of her sister and Woostra. She did not sleep much, but sat with Cymrian on the forward deck of the airship, staring out into the darkness and worrying about Aphen. She was dismayed that she was the cause of everything that was happening, but at the same time was grateful that Aphen had come to her aid.

She was not meant to be a Chosen; she had decided that some time ago. She was meant to go to Paranor and become a Druid like her sister. The heart-stopping news that she had been chosen to replace the tree—a fate she could not have imagined in her wildest dreams—simply reinforced her conviction. If Aphenglow could find a way to help her walk away from this, everything could be as it was meant to be. It wasn’t that she felt no obligation toward the Chosen order or her service. It was just that there was a limit to what could be expected of a person no matter what you had agreed to do or how much you wanted to do it. She had found hers yesterday at sunrise.

There would be others among the Chosen who would better serve the needs of the Ellcrys in this business. If she was truly dying—a conclusion that Arling was not yet ready to accept—another descended from the Omarosian bloodline could carry her seed to the Bloodfire and make the transformation to replace her. Another who was more devoted and spiritual than Arling and better prepared to do what was needed.

She cringed at her own thoughts, but at the same time could not shake the certainty that she was not ready for this. She was still a young girl with her whole life ahead of her. She had entered into the Chosen order with the expectation of serving a single year. It was a much-sought-after honor, and she had embraced it readily enough. But never with the expectation that more would be required of her than was required of anyone else.

“Are you all right?” Cymrian asked her at one point. “It’s cold out here. Would you like a blanket?”

She was wrapped in her travel cloak, but even so she was shivering. “I would,” she admitted.

He left her side to retrieve one and was quickly back again, placing it about her shoulders then sitting close with his arm around her to help keep her warm. She leaned into him, grateful for his reassuring presence. She wished Aphen would return. She felt so much better when her sister was close.

“You must not think much of me right now,” she said.

“Because you don’t want to be a martyr for our people? Because you don’t want to transform into the Ellcrys?” He shook his head. “I don’t know anyone who would want that. I certainly wouldn’t.”

“But I have been asked, and there is so much at stake. What if there is no one else who can do this? Or no one who will?”

“We don’t know enough yet to be certain of anything. Give Aphen a chance to see what she can discover.”

She lowered her face against his shoulder. “I’m just so scared.”

The hours slipped away, and for a time she dozed. She felt Cymrian holding her, never moving. Each time she drifted awake he was there, keeping her warm and safe, protecting her as he had promised he would. One day, she thought drowsily, she would find someone like Cymrian to love.

It was still dark when she heard voices whispering and sensed movement on the deck of the
Wend-A-Way
. She opened her eyes to find Aphen smiling down at her with Woostra looking on.

“Time to go,” Aphen told her.

They sat together while Cymrian went off to release the mooring lines and take the airship back to Arborlon. Woostra retired to the aft deck to give them some privacy.

“The Federation has left Paranor,” Aphen told her. “Not one soldier remains. I don’t understand it. They wanted it so badly. Hundreds died to take it. But now only the dead remain. Something unexpected has happened, I think.”

“The magic frightened them away?” Arling was fully awake now, anxious to hear what her sister had learned.

Aphen shook her head. “But they would have left guards, wouldn’t they? Even if they remained outside and didn’t try to go back in, they would have wanted to keep watch to see what happened.”

“I don’t know, Aphen.”

Her sister smiled. “Did you get some rest while I was away?”

“Not much. What did you find out?” Arling could keep still about it no longer. “Was there anything about the Ellcrys in the Druid Histories?”

“A little. Most of it had to do with where the Bloodfire could be found. There wasn’t much on the transformation or how the choosing is made.” She leaned forward quickly and put her hand on Arling’s shoulder. “But we’re not finished. This matter isn’t settled yet.”

Arling shook her head, discouraged. “Where else is there to look? What else can anyone do?”

Aphen hesitated. “I don’t know. I only know that we are not giving up.” She took her hand away and rocked back. “I need to find Khyber Elessedil and the others and ask them. I need to bring them back to Arborlon—both because of this and because of what’s happened at Paranor. They need to give up this search for the Elfstones and reclaim the Druid’s Keep. And they have to help you. I will insist on it.”

She tightened her lips and exhaled sharply. “While I’m gone, I want you to go back to the Ellcrys and speak to her again. I want you to tell her how you feel. She needs to know you are not ready for this. You have to tell her you want to seek a place in the Druid order. It may help if she understands how strongly you feel about this.”

“I fled from her,” Arling answered. “She already knows.”

“She knows you are frightened, but she doesn’t necessarily know the rest of it. Besides, you don’t want to leave things like this. You have been a good and faithful servant to her; she will expect you to come back and explain yourself. You owe her that much, Arling. You owe yourself. Go speak with her again.”

Arling didn’t want to do any such thing. She was afraid of going back to the Ellcrys. It was a nameless, pervasive fear that originated in her mix of shame and disgust at having fled. But she knew it was the right thing to do, and she would not disappoint her sister. Aphen expected her to be strong enough to confront the Ellcrys and try to convince it to choose another. If she did not, Arling would live out the rest of her life knowing she was a coward.

“I will,” she said to Aphen.

Then she hugged her sister and tried not to think of what a second encounter might mean.

A day later, Arling joined Woostra on the Elven airfield to bid farewell to her sister and Cymrian.
Wend-A-Way
had been resupplied, and the journey to find the Ard Rhys and the Druids was about to begin. The sisters hugged and kissed, facing each other with smiles and tears in the early-morning light.

“Look after yourself, Arling,” her sister told her. “Do what you need to do. Be strong.”

Arling nodded. “I can be strong as long as I know you are there for me.”

Aphenglow looked stricken. “Oh, Arling. I will always be there for you. You know you can depend on that. We will be there for each other.” She paused and wiped away her tears. “Will you speak to the tree today?”

Arling hesitated, wanting more time and space to consider. But she knew that she was only putting off the inevitable, and there was nothing to be gained by doing so.

“Tonight. When the other Chosen are asleep,” she promised. “I will try then.”

“It won’t be so bad. She’s an old friend to you, a companion. She’s asking for your help. If you can’t give it, she will understand.”

“I know,” Arling said, but she did not know anything of the sort. “Please come back soon.”

Aphen’s strong features tightened. “As quickly as I can. But you need to remember something while I am gone. Someone in the Elven community is hunting me and now, perhaps, you. I want you to be especially careful. Cymrian thinks you are safe enough for the moment, but I am not so sure. I thought I was safe, too. So stay alert. Do your work as a Chosen and keep to yourself. If you have a problem, go to Uncle Ellich or Grandfather and ask for help. Do not take chances. Promise me.”

Arling nodded, beginning to cry anew. She embraced her sister and held her close for a long time before releasing her. “Good-bye, Aphen. Please be safe.”

She stood then with Woostra and watched as her sister and Cymrian boarded
Wend-A-Way,
released the mooring lines, and lifted off into the brightening morning.
Wend-A-Way
swung about until she was facing west and slowly picked up speed.

Arling stood watching until she was out of sight and the sky was empty once more.

Woostra cleared his throat. “If there is something I can do to help you while she’s gone, you have only to ask me.”

Arling nodded, not looking at him. “Thank you.”

“She didn’t say what is happening, but it is clearly important to her. I don’t need to know what that something is. I’m not asking you to confide in me. But Aphen is dear to me, and I will do what she expects of me in her absence.”

It was a strangely formal proclamation, and Arling almost smiled in spite of herself. “I will see to it when she returns that she knows you offered. And I will come to you if it is needed. I appreciate your offer, Woostra.”

He shrugged. “I’m just doing what I know Aphen would want.” He hesitated. “I saw how you were when the Keep was attacked and we were struggling to hold the Federation back. You were as brave as anyone. I respect you for that. You are much the same person as your sister.”

Maybe not, Arling thought. Not so brave, not so certain about herself, not so confident in who she was. Not like Aphen. She had never compared herself favorably to her sister, always aware that Aphen was older and had accomplished so much more in her life, even in the face of criticism and disapproval. Even though she was alienated from their mother and much of the Elven community. Arling could never have done that. She wasn’t brave enough.

She gave Woostra a quick smile. “I have to go now.”

She was aware of the old man’s gaze as she walked away, though she did not look back.

The remainder of the day was spent working in service to the Ellcrys. She returned to the Gardens of Life and was warmly greeted by the other Chosen. Before flying off to Paranor, she had explained her absence by leaving word with Freershan that she had been taken with a fever and stomach sickness that would put her in bed for a few days. When one of them asked why she didn’t answer her door when they had come to check on her, she covered by saying she had gone to stay with her mother. No one questioned her further. She was given hugs and kind words and welcomed back. It made her feel like a liar and a cheat; it made her feel ashamed of herself. But she got past it as quickly as she could and spent the remainder of the day absorbed in her tasks, keeping her head down and her thoughts to herself.

When her work was finished, she went to see her mother. It was not something she particularly wanted to do, but she craved the reassurance that being in her mother’s house—the house she grew up in with Aphen—would provide. But on this day Afrengill was dark-tempered and distant, moving like a ghost through the cottage while Arling sat watching, saying almost nothing to her daughter, so far gone inside herself that she almost wasn’t there. Arling tried speaking with her, hoping for just a few words in response that would make her feel as if she belonged here. But her mother couldn’t give her those words, and after a short while she left feeling none the better for having come.

She ate dinner alone, listening to the silence of the cottage and thinking of her sister. She glanced out the window repeatedly, watching as the light dimmed and the darkness settled in, knowing what was coming, what she must do. She tried more than once to rationalize her way out of going to the Ellcrys. What harm could it do to wait another day? Or even two? But she knew better than to give in to such arguments. Waiting would only make it harder and confirm that she was as much a coward as she feared. She could not afford to feel any less secure and capable than she already did. As frightened as she was of doing this, she was even more frightened at the prospect of what it would mean if she gave in to her fears. She might not want to do this, but doing nothing would be even worse.

So when it was suitably dark and most of the city’s inhabitants were in bed or on their way there, she wrapped herself in her travel cloak to ward off the chill and headed toward the gardens. She walked quickly, afraid that any delay or diversion would be enough to tip the scales and send her back to the refuge of her home. It took only minutes before she found herself standing on a slight rise at the eastern edge of the gardens, looking down to where the Ellcrys glimmered crimson and silver in the pale moonlight. She hesitated then, trying to think what she would say, to gather her thoughts so she could make the best argument for asking that another be sent in her place. Even the thought of trying to do so made her queasy, her stomach churning at the idea of seeking to be relieved of a responsibility she already knew was hers.