Armageddon’s Children

FOURTEEN

"KIRISIN," BIAT WHISPERED to him through the crack in the open door.

"Aren't you coming to bed?" The Elven boy looked over his shoulder at his friend and caught a glimpse of his thin, pinched face in the pale haze of the candlelight. "Just finishing," he said.

"Do you know what time it is?"

Kirisin shook his head. "It's not dawn, I know that."

There was a despairing sigh as Biat's face disappeared and the door closed. Kirisin went right back to writing.

He was sitting on the tiny veranda of the home that the six of them shared—Biat, Erisha, Raya, Jarn, Giln, and himself. Four were from the Cintra and two had traveled from other places to participate in the choosing. The greater portion of the Elven nation resided in the Cintra, but other, smaller communities were scattered around the world in similar forests. The Ellcrys could have settled on using only Elves who lived close for her Chosen. But something made it Pleasing to her that they should come from all over, and so it had been for as long as anyone could remember. She was who she was, after all, so she could have what she wanted.

When Kirisin saw her for the first time, it took his breath away. There were trees of great magnificence and beauty, and then there was the Ellcrys. She was tall and willowy and had a presence that transcended majesty or grace.

Silvery bark and crimson leaves formed an aura about her canopy so that the shimmer of her foliage suggested feathers and silk. She was magic, of course; what tree that looked like this could be otherwise? She was the only one of her kind, created centuries ago to maintain the Forbidding, the barrier behind which the demonkind had been shut away in the time of Faerie. So long as she lived, they could never break free. The Chosen were her servants, selected to safeguard her. It was an honor of immense proportions, but one that did not include questioning her motives or reasons. Service to the Ellcrys required a devotion and obedience that did not allow for satisfying personal curiosity.

Still, Kirisin wished he understood her better. So little was known, and most of that was what had been gleaned from years of service and passed down through generations of Chosen. The Ellcrys had been alive for thousands of years, but almost all of what had been written about her at the time of her creation was lost. Like so much of everything else that was Elven, he reminded himself. Like the magic, in particular. Once the world had been full of magic, and the Elves had commanded the greater part of it. But the Elves had lost their magic, just as they had lost their way of life. In the beginning, they had been the dominant species. Now they were little more than rumor. Humans populated the world now, and they had no understanding of magic. All they understood was how to savage the land, how to take what they wanted and not care about the harm it caused.

Humans, he thought suddenly, were destroyers. He brushed aside his mop of blond hair and wrote it down, adding it to his other thoughts. He wrote in his journal each night before going to sleep, putting down his musings and his discoveries so that he would have a record of them when his term of service was done. Maybe if others had done the same centuries earlier, there wouldn't be so much no one knew anything about now. Particularly where the Ellcrys was concerned.

The Chosen were the logical scribes to make those recordings, or course, but few did. Their period of service was brief. Selected during the summer solstice from among the boys and girls who had just passed into their first year of adulthood, they served for a single year and then relinquished the duty to a new group. The tree never chose more than eight or less than six. Just enough to perform the required duties of tending to her needs and caring for the gardens in which she was rooted.

The choosing itself was ritual. All of the candidates passed beneath the branches of the tree at dawn on the day of the solstice. Those who would become the new Chosen were touched lightly on the shoulder by one of the tree's slender branches, the only time she would ever communicate with them. How she made her choices, how she decided who would serve her for the next twelve months, was a mystery no one had ever solved. That she was a sentient being was not open to dispute. The lore made it clear that she had been created so, and that the nature of her creation, though vague in the histories that described it, required she experience a constant human connection. Thus the presence of the Elves who looked after her daily, and the ongoing protection of the community that relied on her.

He wrote the last few lines of his entry, put his writing materials aside, and rose to stretch. The sun would be coming up in a little more than an hour, and the Chosen would walk down into the gardens to greet the Ellcrys and welcome her to a new day. It was a formality, really. They did it because Chosen had been doing it for as long as anyone could remember. It was a custom rooted in a need to maintain a connection with the tree.

Odd, really. The Ellcrys was beholden to them, yet for the most part she did not even seem aware of their presence. That didn't seem right. He thought about it and then shook his head in self–admonishment. He was being unfair. She was a tree, and what tree had ever enjoyed a warm relationship with any two–legged creature who might on a whim decide to cut it down for firewood?

"What are you doing, Kirisin?" a familiar voice asked.

Erisha was standing right behind him. He hadn't heard her approach, which irritated him. She was good at sneaking around. She stood with her hands on her hips, a challenging tone in her voice, She was the oldest by five months and the designated leader of the Chosen. She was also the daughter of the King. Kirisin didn't mind this, but he wished she were a little less impressed with herself.

"Just finishing up on my journal," he answered, smiling cheerfully.

She didn't smile back. That was the trouble with Erisha. She didn't smile enough. She took everything so seriously, as if what they were doing transcended anything else they would ever do in their lives. It was a mistake to take anything so seriously. It aged you too quickly and drained you of energy and hope. He had seen it happen with his parents, who had fought so hard to persuade the King to establish a second enclave on the mountain slopes of Paradise, where there was cleaner air and water. But leaving the Cintra meant leaving the Ellcrys as well, a prospect few felt comfortable embracing. Most had never lived anywhere but close to her and couldn't conceive of doing so now. It didn't matter that only the Chosen were actually needed to care for her. Life outside the Cintra was for other Elves; the Cintra Elves belonged where they were.

His parents had wasted themselves in a futile effort to persuade the King to their cause. The King, after all, was his father's cousin and should have been willing to listen. But Arissen Belloruus had been unreceptive to the idea and instead had made it clear that while he was King and his family rulers of the Cintra Elves, no second enclave would ever be established. Whatever problems the Elves might encounter, they would solve them here.

Not that the Elves were solving any of the problems confronting them, of course. They had made no progress toward stopping the poisoning of the earth's resources. They had done nothing about the wars and plagues devastating the human population. Worst of all, they were ignoring the most dangerous threat of all–the new demons and their once–men soldiers. It hadn't been enough that the Elves had shut away the demonkind of Faerie; a new demonkind, one born of the human race, had taken their place. By absenting themselves from the world's affairs, the Elves had allowed this to happen. These new demons hadn't bothered with the Elves yet; maybe they didn't even realize Elves existed. But sooner or later they would find out, and when that happened the Elves would discover what burying your head in the sand got you.

It made him angry to think about it. It made him angrier still that Erisha wasted her serious attitude on small matters rather than on something that might make a real difference.

That was what daughters of Kings were supposed to do, wasn't it? Turn their attention to important matters?

But, then, cousins of Kings were supposed to be of a responsible disposition, too, so he could hardly complain.

"Do you know what time it is?" she asked him.

He sighed. "Close to dawn. I couldn't sleep."

"If you don't sleep, you aren't rested. If you aren't rested, you can't perform adequately your duties as a Chosen. Have you thought of that? You are distracted all the time, Kirisin. Lack of sleep could explain the problem."

They looked very much the same, these two–slender and Elven–featured, with slanted eyes and brows, narrow faces, ears that were slightly pointed at their tips, and a way of walking that suggested they might take flight on a moment's notice. They had the look of cousins, though Kirisin thought that facial resemblance aside they were nothing alike.

"You're probably right, Erisha," he agreed, still smiling. "I will try to do better starting tonight. But I'm awake now, so I think I will just stay awake until dawn."

"Kirisin …"

But he was already down off the veranda and walking away. He gave her a short wave as he disappeared into the trees, just to let her know that there were no hard feelings. But he didn't slow.

The Elves were the old people of the world. Some believed they were the prototype of humans, although Kirisin had always thought that nonsense. Elves, he told himself, were nothing like humans.

Yet they coexisted in a world on which both species had made an impact, for better and worse. At the moment, the impact was mostly human–generated and all bad. The humans had lost control of their world. It had happened over time, and it had happened to a degree that no Elf could comprehend. They had systematically destroyed the resources, poisoning everything, at first locally and eventually globally. They had begun warring with each other with such ferocious determination that after a century of violence more were dead than alive. Nature had responded, of course. Plagues and storms and upheavals had finished off what humans had begun. At first, the Elves had told themselves that much of what was happening was a part of nature's cycle, that things would eventually be set right. They weren't telling themselves that anymore. In fact, it had gotten bad enough that some were advocating that the Elves come out of hiding to try to set things right.

Of course, much of the fault for what had happened lay squarely at their own doorstep, Kirisin thought darkly. It had been their decision to go into hiding centuries earlier when the human population had begun to proliferate and the Elven to decline. Coexistence seemed a better possibility if the former knew nothing of the latter. Elves had always known how to disappear in plain sight.

It was not so difficult for them to fade into the forests that had served as their homes since the beginning of time. It was the wiser choice, the elders of that time had believed.

So they settled for surviving in a human world and did so mostly by keeping hidden. The humans called the Cintra the Willamette, and the land surrounding was called Oregon. It was remote and sparsely settled, and the Elves had little trouble staying out of sight. When humans came too close, they were turned aside. A slight distraction was usually enough—a small noise here, a little movement there. When that failed, intruders often woke from an unexpected fall or unexplained bump on the head. It didn't happen often; there was nothing in the deep woods that appealed to most humans. The Elves warded their homelands against the encroachments fostered by human neglect and poor stewardship, but their efforts of late were proving insufficient. Soon, something would have to be done. The matter was already under discussion in the Elven High Council, but opinion was divided and solutions scarce.

As the Elves were beginning to find out, absenting yourself from the affairs of the world was an invitation for disaster.

Ahead, the crimson canopy of the Ellcrys appeared through the trees, bright and shining even in the pale moonlight, a beacon that never failed to make the boy smile. She was so beautiful, he thought. How could anything be too wrong in a world that had given her life?

He stepped into the clearing where the Ellcrys grew and stood staring at her. He came here almost every morning before the others woke, a private time in which he sat and talked with her alone. She never responded, of course, because she never responded to anyone. But that didn't matter to Kirisin. He was there because he understood somehow that this was where he belonged. His time as a Chosen didn't start at sunrise and end at sunset. For the year that he had given himself over to her service, he owed her whatever time he could give her. That meant he could do as he pleased, so long as he carried out his assigned duties.

It was this lack of recognizable structure that drove Erisha to regard him as undependable. She believed in doing things in settled ways, in an organized and carefully regulated schedule. She did not like what she viewed as his undisciplined habits. But then she was not him and he was not her, something she seemed to have trouble understanding.

He spent these early–morning hours working on small projects of his own devising. Sometimes he worked at smoothing out and cleaning the earth in which she was rooted. Sometimes he fed her organic supplements of his own creation, both of food and antitoxins; that one would really drive Erisha wild if she knew about it. Sometimes he just sat with her. Sometimes, although not too often, he touched her to let her know he was there. He couldn't say why he found this so pleasing, why he actually looked forward to rising early and in secret spending time with a creature that gave nothing back. It just did. His connection with her was visceral, and it felt wrong not to respond to it. He only had one year to do what he could for her, and then it would be someone else's turn. He didn't want to waste a minute.

It helped that he was particularly good at the nurturing and care of living things. He possessed a special gift for such work; he enjoyed making things grow and keeping them healthy. He could sense what was wrong with them and act on his instincts. His sister said it ran in the family. His mother possessed unusual healing skills, and Simralin was uncanny at deciphering the secrets of the wilderness and the behavior of the creatures that lived within it. Trained as a Tracker, she had opportunities to use her gift in her work as an Elven Hunter, just as he had his opportunities here.

Which he had better get busy and make use of, he thought. The other Chosen would be coming along soon. He could picture their faces as they ringed the tree, their hands joined. He could see the familiar mix of expressions–eager and bored, determined and distracted, bright and clouded–that mirrored the feelings of each. So predictable that he didn't have to think twice on it. He kept hoping one of them would surprise him. Shouldn't there be a measurable transformation in the character of each Chosen during the course of his or her service?

Shouldn't that be an integral part of the experience.

He thought so, but he hadn't seen any evidence of it as yet. Nor had he himself undergone much of a change. You couldn't very well start throwing stones if you lived in a glass house, although that hadn't stopped him before.

He walked around the Ellcrys for a time, studying the ground, looking for signs of invasive pests or damaging sicknesses in the smaller plants surrounding her. Such things manifested themselves in these indicators first; it was one of the reasons they were planted— to serve as a warning of possible threats to her.

Not that much of anything got that far, given the attention the Chosen gave to the tree and everything square inch of dirt and plant life surrounding her. Not that there was any real …

Something touched his shoulder lightly.

—Kirisin—

The voice came out of nowhere, sudden and compelling. Kirisin jumped a foot when he heard it. A slender branch was resting lightly on his shoulder. The branch did not grip or entwine, but held him bound as surely as with chains.

—My beloved—

Kirisin felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, and he shivered as if chilled through, although the morning was warm and windless.

The Ellcrys was speaking to him. The tree was communicating.

—Why am I forsaken—

Forsaken? He cringed at the rebuke, not understanding the reason for it.

What had he failed to do?

—Pay heed to me. I have not lied. A change is coming to the land. The change will be devastating and inexorable and no one will be spared. All that you know will pass away. If you are to survive, I must survive. If I am to survive, you must help me. Though she chooses not to hear me, you must listen—

The voice was coming from everywhere–from outside Kirisin but from inside, as well. Then he realized that it wasn't an audible voice he was hearing; it was unspoken thoughts projected into his mind, lending those thoughts the weight and substance of spoken words.

Wait a minute. She? Who was 'she?'

—Your order has served me long and well, my beloved, my Chosen. You have stayed at my side since the time of my birthing, since the moment of my inception. I have never wanted. I have never needed. But I want and need now, and you must heed me. You must do as I ask—

Kirisin was listening intently, even as he couldn't quite bring himself to believe that it was real. The Ellcrys never spoke to anyone to save the Chosen, and she only spoke to them once–on the day of their choosing, when she called them by name. That she was communicating with him was mind boggling. What was it she had said? A change in the world? The end of everything they knew?

"What is this change?" he whispered, almost without realizing he had spoken the words.

—Humans and their demons are at war. It is a war that neither will win. It is a war that will destroy them both. But you and I will be destroyed, as well. If we are to survive, we must leave the Cintra. We must travel to a new land, to a new life, where we will find shelter and rebirth—

Was the tree answering him? Had it heard his question? Kirisin tried to decide, and then simply quit thinking about it and said what was on his mind.

"What can we do to help?"

—Take me from the Cintra. Do not uproot me, but carry me away still rooted in my soil. Place me inside a Loden Elfstone, and I will be protected. Use the seeking-Elfstones to find it, the three to find the one. Read your histories. The secret is written down—

Kirisin had no idea how to respond. He knew of Elfstones, for they were a part of Elven history. But the Elves had not possessed one for hundreds of years. No one knew what had become of them.

No one even knew for certain what it was they were supposed to do. They were magic, but their magic was a mystery.

He wanted to ask more. He wanted to know all about the Elf–stones and everything else he had just heard the tree reveal. Mostly, he wanted to hear the tree speak to him again. But he couldn't think what to ask, and before he could his chance was gone.

—Do not fail me, Kirisin Belloruus. Do not fail the Elves. Do what I have asked of you—

The branch lifted away and the voice went still. Kirisin waited, but nothing further happened. The Ellcrys was silent. He exhaled slowly, his mouth dry and his face hot. Everything that had just happened felt surreal, as if he had been lost in a dream.

"What am I going to do?" he whispered to the air.

HE WAITED UNTIL dawn, until after the greeting, until the rituals were satisfied, then gathered the Chosen together at the edge of the clearing and told them what had happened. They sat close, listening, their eyes skittering from face to face. When he finished, they stared at him as if he had lost his mind. The doubt on their faces was unmistakable.

"Don't you believe me?" he demanded angrily. He clenched his fists. "I know what I heard!"

"I know what you think you heard," Biat said, skepticism clear in his tone. "But maybe you imagined it."

A few of the others nodded in agreement. They wanted him to have imagined it. Kirisin shook his head angrily. "I didn't imagine anything! She spoke to me.

She told me some sort of change is coming, and it's going to destroy everything.

She told me we have to go somewhere else and take her with us. She talked about Elfstones and magic and histories and secrets. I heard her clearly enough."

"Sometimes whole groups of people think they see or hear something that never happened," Giln said quietly.

"The Ellcrys never speaks to anyone," added Raya. She shifted her dark eyes toward Kirisin. "Never."

"Never before, maybe," Kirisin said. "But she spoke today. You can pretend anything you want, but it doesn't change things. Stop talking about hallucinations and dreams. What are we going to do?"

"Erisha," Biat said suddenly. "What do you think we should do?"

Erisha didn't seem to hear him. But when everyone grew silent, waiting on her, she said, "Nothing."

"Nothing!" Kirisin repeated in disbelief. "Don't be ridiculous! You have to go to your father and tell him what has happened!"

Erisha shook her head. "My father won't believe any of this. I don't even know if I do!" She was suddenly angry. "I am leader of the Chosen, Kirisin. I say what we do and don't do. We need to wait on this, to make certain about it.

We need to see if she speaks to any of the rest of us. Then we can decide."

"That sounds sensible to me," Biat agreed, giving Kirisin a look that said, Be reasonable.

Kirisin couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Wait another day? See if she speaks to the rest of you? What sort of advice is that? She told me she depends on us for help! What sort of help are we giving her by waiting?"

"You don't really know what you heard!" Erisha snapped. "You just think you know! You daydream all the time! You probably hear voices all the time. You would be the first one to imagine something that never happened! So don't lecture the rest of us about what we should do in this matter!"

Kirisin stared at her, and then looked at the others. "Does everyone else think the tree didn't speak to me, that I imagined it?"

He waited for a response. There was none. Everyone looked somewhere else.

He couldn't tell whether they were on his side or Erisha's. In truth, it didn't matter. They could sit around talking about this until the cows came home, but it wouldn't help. What they had to do was to find out if there really were Elfstones. They had to discover if anyone had ever heard of a Stone called a Loden. Mostly, they had to do something besides bury their heads in the sand.

He refused the possibility that he might have imagined the Ellcrys talking to him. His mind was made up on that point. The humans and demons had found a way to destroy everything, and the Ellcrys was warning them that they had to do something about it. It was their job to protect and preserve her. She depended on them for that. Unless they were intending to abrogate their responsibilities toward her, they had no choice. They had to do what she asked.

Kirisin stood up. "The rest of you can do what you want. But I'm going to speak to the King!"