Bloodfire Quest

12

With the new day brightening in a haze of gray mist and dull light and the remnants of the Druid expedition gathered about him, Crace Coram told his story. He had climbed up to the ledge to join the little company, the light through which he had passed having disappeared the moment he emerged from it. Now they were arrayed in a tight circle—Railing, Mirai, Seersha, Skint, and Farshaun Req—listening intently to the Dwarf Chieftain.

Oriantha was still inside the place in which they had all been trapped, he began, but he would get to that in a minute.

When the dragon lifted off in the midst of its battle with the members of the expedition, the Dwarf Chieftain, still riding its back and trying to bring it down, was caught by surprise. He tried to jump clear, but his clothing was tangled in the dragon’s spikes, and by the time he had torn himself free the dragon was already too high up. All he could do at that point was to hang on and try not to fall off.

It helped that he was immensely strong, but even so it took everything he had to keep his balance as the dragon’s wings rose and fell and its long body undulated like a snake’s. The wind whipped at the Dwarf, threatening to tear him loose, and he flattened himself against the scaly body to reduce its force.

At some point during his flight, he became aware of someone else clinging to the dragon, a flash of movement or color drawing his attention. When he glanced back down the dragon’s body, he found a creature he didn’t recognize plastered against its hindquarters, a thing that looked half human, half wolf. Its face lifted to find his, and for just an instant he saw the girl Oriantha looking back at him. Then the green eyes narrowed and the creature’s jaws drew back in a snarl, and what he might have thought was human disappeared.

But the creature did not try to advance on him, and so the Dwarf let it be and used his energy to fight back against the wearing demands of keeping his seat. He did his best to try to get a fix on his position during his flight, sighting various landmarks that he thought he might be able to use to find his way back once he got down off the dragon—something he never doubted would happen eventually. There were distinctive mountain peaks and a huge lake and a large stretch of rugged wilderness, and he could determine where he needed to go by noting where these lay.

But heavy clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, hiding the sun and making it impossible to determine the direction in which he was moving. When the dragon underwent an unexpected shift in its flight pattern, his landmarks disappeared into a range of mountains that eventually obscured everything he had memorized and left him totally turned about and unable to determine how he had gotten to where he was.

The dragon flew on until finally it reached a forested lake and made an abrupt downward plunge. Crace Coram barely had time to register what was happening before the dragon was diving into the lake waters and he was forced to fling himself clear. He landed with an enormous splash, struggled back to the surface gasping for air, and immediately began swimming toward a spit of land several hundred yards away. Burdened by his mace, which was shoved into his belt, and by his heavy clothing, he nevertheless completed the journey in record time, looking back only once when he heard the dragon surface with a thrashing that sounded like a thousand waterbirds taking flight.

But the creature began moving in another direction, and once the Dwarf Chieftain was certain it was not coming back, he continued his swim until his feet were again on solid ground. He collapsed momentarily but quickly hauled himself upright and off the exposed shoreline until he was hidden in the trees. Out on the lake, the dragon had reached a small island and was disappearing into a rocky stretch at its center—a place in which the Dwarf assumed it might have its nest.

He lay back, his heart pounding, exhausted by what had happened, safe for the moment but wondering how he was going to find his way back to the others.

Then a shadow fell over him, and he jerked upright to find Oriantha standing next to him, her young face bruised and her clothing ripped almost to shreds. She looked pale and disoriented, and without saying anything she dropped down next to him and looked back out across the waters of the lake to the island where the dragon had gone.

“Why did you do it?” he asked her after a minute.

She looked at him with her strange eyes. “What?”

“Grab hold of the dragon and let it carry you off as it did me. That was foolish.”

“I didn’t think about it. I just did it.”

“So that was you I saw back there hanging on to its hindquarters, wasn’t it?”

She nodded. “My other self. I had to stay that way in order to keep my grip. I am much stronger that way.” She paused. “You know what I am, don’t you?”

“A shape-shifter. I’ve seen one or two. But you’re no full-blood. You’re a Halfling.”

“Human mother, shape-shifter father. Hard to tell the difference between them, though, sometimes.”

“But Pleysia must have known the truth when she brought you along. Why did she keep it secret from the rest of us? Why did you?”

Oriantha hesitated. “I don’t suppose it will hurt to tell you at this point, since the Ard Rhys already knows. Pleysia is my mother—a full-blown witch who mated with a creature of magic and produced me. All this before she came to live with the Druids. But she never told anyone. She wanted me to follow in her footsteps. She wanted to bring me to Paranor when I was older and offer my skills to the order in exchange for being admitted as a member. Then she found out she was dying. She suffers from a rare disorder that is eating her body from the inside. There is no cure. So she brought me along on this expedition, thinking that if I distinguished myself I might gain admittance after she was gone. That the Ard Rhys would have to take me in.”

The Dwarf nodded. “She didn’t think she was coming back from this, did she?”

“She was certain she wasn’t. But she made me promise to say nothing until we were far enough out that the Ard Rhys couldn’t make me return. I think a few of the others saw what I was during the attacks in the Fangs, though. Those boys saw me, I know.”

Coram nodded. “The Ohmsfords, Redden and Railing. Those two don’t miss much, even if they’re still a bit on the new side of knowing. But they didn’t say anything to the Ard Rhys?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

He looked down at his boot tops and scuffed his feet along the earth absently. “How are your tracking skills? We have to find our way back, but I don’t think I know where we are.”

“I don’t think I do, either,” she said, “but I might be able to get us back anyway.”

He shifted his stocky body to a different position. “How?”

She shrugged. “Look at me. I am half animal, maybe more. I can find direction as my animal self much better than any human could. I can sense how and where to go. But you will have to bear me looking the way you saw me on the dragon.”

“I’ve borne much worse in my time.” He paused. “Tell me. Which is the way you really are?”

She laughed softly. “There is no one way with me. I am both ways and others, too. I have no real self. I shift back and forth as need dictates. But each form gives me something that helps me. So I just accept that I am not one thing or the other, but many.”

He gave a quick snort. “You can be any one or all at once if it helps us find our way to the others.” He fumbled his pack off his shoulders and began fishing through it. “I have some food. We ought to eat something before we start out.”

They sat together in silence, the burly Dwarf and the young girl, sharing a little of the food stash that had survived the dragon ride and lake plunge, keeping an eye on the distant island and an ear pricked for other predators. When they were finished, they rose and faced each other. Oriantha smiled at the Dwarf almost apologetically and then abruptly changed into her other self, wolfish and dangerous. The young girl was gone completely, and the predator returned from hiding once more.

The Dwarf only barely managed to hold his ground until the shape-shifter wheeled away with a snarl.

Their journey took them through the remainder of the day. Oriantha’s animal self took the lead, loping ahead of the slower-moving Dwarf, seeming to sense which direction they needed to go even without knowing either their destination or the distance they must cover. Now and again, she circled back to him, her wolfish face staring up at his, looking savage and hungry enough to give him pause. But each time she wheeled away quickly and was off again.

They encountered no visible threats that day, perhaps because they were in the dragon’s territory and nothing it might want to eat chose to live so close by. They did not see the dragon, either. Perhaps its struggle with the company had been enough for one day; perhaps it had flown off again in another direction. Whatever the case, they made good progress and avoided any confrontations.

That night they took turns keeping watch, finding shelter within a rocky overhang that enclosed them on three sides and required only that they defend themselves from the front should something come after them. But nothing did, and when morning returned they were well rested.

“Where do you think we are?” she asked him as they ate a little dried beef and fruit from the stores he still had in his pack. She had changed back again to the girl, and there was a winsome quality to her that made her seem little more than a child. “What part of the Westland is this?”

Crace Coram had been wondering that, too. “I’ve never seen or heard of country like this. Nor of dragons. Not for a long time. They were all sent into the Forbidding, weren’t they? Back in the time of Faerie?”

“It is said. But they must have missed this one.”

“Those creatures that attacked us in the Fangs—the four-legged ones with all the teeth?” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen them before, either. Where did they come from that no one has ever run across them before now? You would think the Elves might have encountered one or two at some point, no matter how deep inside the Westland they live.”

His face clouded. “If we find our way back, I’m not going on. This is madness. If the Ard Rhys wants her Elfstones so badly, she can go get them herself. I’ll tell Seersha I’ve had enough.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “Will you?”

He started to say something and stopped. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He paused. “But that’s what I should do. What we all should do.”

They set out again shortly afterward, heading toward a line of mountains that provided the only landmark they recognized, traveling through bleak country marked by stretches of dead and dying trees and rocky flats empty even of that. They found no other water on their way, not even a stream, and the mountains seemed as distant today as they had the day before. Crace Coram could not be certain, but it seemed to him they were weeks away from where they needed to go.

On this day, they encountered a huge horned beast that resembled a bull crossed with a lizard. They saw it coming from a long way off, lumbering across the flats, slow and ponderous, and had plenty of time to avoid it. They did not have quite so much warning of the cat creatures they caught sight of several hours later from atop a rise overgrown with dead grasses, which was probably what saved them. The cat things found something else to occupy them—a thing that neither the Dwarf nor the girl ever had a chance to identify—converging on their victim and tearing it to bits in short minutes.

Afterward, safely off to one side as the cat things moved on, the Dwarf said, “Those aren’t anything I’ve ever heard of or seen, either. Not anywhere in the Four Lands.”

She was silent a moment. “I don’t think that’s where we are,” she answered quietly.

It took him aback. “What do you mean? Where else would we be?”

Her face began to change again, the wolfish side emerging. “Somewhere no one has ever been, maybe. Somewhere bad.”

He thought about it for a moment. They hadn’t crossed any large bodies of water, so they had to be still on the mainland. She was saying they were in a place within the Four Lands—or maybe just outside the known boundaries—that no one had been before. But even that didn’t feel right.

“Wherever we are,” he finished, climbing to his feet again, “we shouldn’t be there.”

They walked for the rest of that day and for two full days afterward and still didn’t reach the mountains. Time and again, they encountered new dangers, ones that neither had come across before. A huge lizard attacked Crace Coram, and it took all of Oriantha’s animal skills and strength to drive it away. A strange plant threw spikes at the shape-shifter, and the poison on the tips of the three that penetrated her animal hide would have killed her if the Dwarf hadn’t cut into her skin with his hunting knife and sucked it out. Twice more they encountered the cat things, and once they saw the dragon fly overhead, scouring the ground below for food.

It was becoming increasingly apparent that the chances were shrinking of finding their missing companions—if they were even still alive, which Crace Coram was beginning to doubt. Sooner or later, something bad was going to get one of them—or, more likely, both at once—and that would be the end. He kept his thoughts to himself, but they burned like live coals in the back of his mind.

Then, midway into the fifth day, Tesla Dart appeared.

They saw the small lizard first, a swift, momentary glimpse of it as it raced toward them and then away again. Because it was not threatening, they paid little attention. Even when it reappeared several hours later for a second look and a second quick disappearance, they barely gave it a thought. They were trudging along as before, trying to keep themselves alert enough to watch for predators, trying to stay focused in spite of the fact that their food had run out and their water was down to a single skin they had filled two days ago at a tiny stream where they saw other creatures drinking. They had ceased talking to each other except when it couldn’t be avoided, conserving their strength, knowing it was seeping away with each hour’s passing.

Oriantha was in the lead, as usual, reverted to her lupine shape, her attention riveted on the landscape and the things that lived there. They had gone all morning without a threatening encounter, and there was reason to think they might reach nightfall without having to endure one. This day was darker than those that had preceded it, and a misty rain had been falling since first light.

They had just crested a low rise, climbing through jagged rocks and loose stone, when they first saw Tesla. Neither knew who or even what this new creature was, and they stopped where they were. Tesla was sitting just ahead of them, back resting against a stump, watching them. Crace Coram had the distinct impression that Tesla had been waiting for them, but he could not imagine how that could be. Even so, his hand tightened on the iron mace as he made a quick survey of his surroundings.

The Ulk Bog rose and waved. “Greetings, friends of Straken Queen! Come speak with me.”

“Straken Queen?” the Dwarf muttered.

Oriantha had come loping back to him and was changing to her human self, her feral features fading as she stood upright once more. “Nothing hides here,” she said. “The girl is alone.”

“Girl?” He snorted. “How can you tell what that is?”

Oriantha gave him a look. “Who are you?” she called out to the creature. “Give us your name!”

“I am Tesla Dart! I am Ulk Bog. Like my uncle, Weka Dart? You know of him? Come here! I have searched for you for two days! What are you doing out here?”

The girl and the Dwarf walked over to her, and she rose to greet them—a mass of bristling black hair that seemed to grow in clumps, a gnarled body that was wiry and misshapen, and some very sharp teeth that revealed themselves when she attempted what appeared to be a smile.

“You are in dangerous country,” Tesla Dart advised, looking from one to the other. “You need to come with me.”

“Why were you searching for us?” Oriantha asked her. “How do you know of us at all?”

“The Straken Queen tells me you were lost. We looked for you, she and I and the others. For several days. But then I left them and went ahead to see if you were in a dragon’s lair. But you were not. So I know it is a different dragon that takes you away, even though I think it was this one. You can never be sure about dragons.”

“The Straken Queen?” Oriantha was suddenly animated. “You mean the Ard Rhys? Khyber Elessedil?”

Tesla Dart frowned. “She is the Straken Queen. She says not, but she is. These others, I don’t know of these names. But nothing matters now. They are all gone.”

Crace Coram exchanged a quick glance with Oriantha. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Gone where?”

The Ulk Bog wrung her hands in a peculiarly helpless fashion. “I tell them to wait for me. I tell them not to go anywhere until I come back. But the creatures that serve the Straken Lord come. His Catcher sees something that tells him they are close and is waiting for them. I wish to warn them, but I must hide until it is safe. But they do not wait as I say, and then they turn back. Tarwick is waiting. A trap.”

She clapped her hands together to demonstrate the trap closing, the emphasis clear.

“Are they dead?” Oriantha asked.

Tesla Dart nodded. “Dead. All but the Straken Queen and the boy. They are Tael Riverine’s prisoners now, taken by Tarwick to Kraal Reach. Lost to us.”

“All of the others dead?” the girl pressed. “All of the rest? You are certain of this?”

“Certain.”

Oriantha exhaled sharply. “Mother,” she whispered.

The Dwarf could not believe what he was hearing. The entire Druid expedition was gone? All those who had come with them through the cleft in the rock and the shimmer of light were dead save Khyber Elessedil and Redden Ohmsford? He felt his throat tighten and his stomach clench, and he saw again, clearly and unequivocally, how wrong it had been for any of them to come on this journey.

“Wait!” Oriantha said sharply. “You said it was Tael Riverine? The Straken Lord?” She had a frantic look in her eyes as she wheeled abruptly this way and that. “Where are we? What is this place?”

The Ulk Bog was taken aback. “Why do you ask such a stupid question? This is here! The land of the Jarka Ruus! We are the free peoples. Ca’rel orren pu’u!”

Crace Coram watched the shape-shifter’s young face undergo a terrible transformation. “Oriantha!” he snapped at her. “What’s happening here? I don’t understand any of this! Where are we?”

Austrum, who had been asleep for most of the discussion—exhausted from his efforts to find them—now woke up and wandered over. “What’s this all about?” he asked, looking from face to face. “Has something happened?”

The others hushed him, their collective attention on Crace Coram.

“You were inside the Forbidding!” Seersha exclaimed.

The Dwarf Chieftain nodded, the weariness returning to his face. “Oriantha said so. She learned the name from her mother. Jarka Ruus. The free peoples.” He shook his head. “There was no mistake.”

“Is my brother still in there?” Railing demanded.

“We couldn’t get to him. Tesla Dart said he had been taken with the Ard Rhys to the Straken Lord’s fortress at Kraal Reach. She said no one could get in there, not even with the use of magic. She told us we had to get ourselves out, that it would be hard enough just to do that.”

“And the rest are all dead?” Skint pressed, his narrow features twisted in disbelief. “All of them?”

“Killed at one point or another along the way. Apparently Redden told this to the Ulk Bog.” He looked at Seersha. “It was suicide going in there. It was a mistake we should never have made.”

“Coming into the Fangs at all was a mistake,” she agreed. “But we’re here, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” She paused. “I want to get the rest of you safely away, but I have to go back for the Ard Rhys.”

“What are you talking about?” Skint demanded angrily. “Don’t you realize what’s happening? If the Forbidding is opened, it means the demons locked inside are breaking free! The Elves have to be told of this and then do something to stop it! And the other Races have to come together to defend the whole of the Four Lands in case doing something isn’t possible!”

A rush of objections and protestations followed, but Crace Coram quickly silenced them. “You had better hear the rest of my tale first. Then you might want to rethink everything.”

Tesla Dart led them on through the remainder of the day, still pointing toward the mountains, and found shelter for them for the night, kept watch while they slept, and at daybreak marched them ahead once more. She talked incessantly, mostly about Ulk Bogs and herself, but sometimes about the other peoples and the Straken Lord. She responded to questions, but her answers were frequently vague and meandering.

On one point, however, she was very clear.

“The Straken Lord seeks Grianne Ohmsford and will not rest until she is his. If the woman he has now is not her, he is ut disonqjer—very displeased. He searches again, not just in the land of the Jarka Ruus. The wall of our prison comes down; everyone knows. Tael Riverine will lead his armies out and find the Straken Queen, wherever she is.”

“That might be difficult,” the Dwarf observed.

But before he could say more, Oriantha motioned for him to be silent. “She is the Straken Queen no longer. She lives in a faraway place now.”

Tesla Dart shrugged, her twisted features tightening. “Doesn’t matter. He finds her. He does not give up. He brings her back. His mind is set on this. She bears his children as his Queen. Tael Riverine is the Straken Lord. He has whatever he wants, and he wants her.”

The girl and the Dwarf exchanged a quick look, but said nothing. It would not help things if the Straken Lord were to learn that Grianne Ohmsford was dead.

Or was she dead? She had disappeared, but who knew what had become of her? Pen Ohmsford had gone with her on that last flight, but whom had he told of her fate? Did Khyber Elessedil know?

“I will lead you out,” Tesla Dart told them. “When you are free again, you find the Straken Queen Grianne and bring her. Let her face him. He will free the others, if you do.”

She paused, grinning broadly enough that all her teeth showed. “Then she can kill him and take his place!”

She scampered ahead at every opportunity, all energy and excitement, constantly moving, never still. Oriantha and Crace Coram followed dutifully, but with mixed emotions. Getting out of the Forbidding was a desperate need for both, but leaving Khyber Elessedil and Redden Ohmsford behind felt like a betrayal. Oriantha was grieving for her mother, and the Dwarf could tell she was tremendously shocked and distressed by the loss. He saw her cry only once, late at night, when she must have thought he was sleeping, and did not otherwise give herself away. But her grief was mirrored in her eyes and present in her voice, and though she might appear stoic otherwise she could not hide the truth from him.

Later that day Tesla Dart told them to wait and disappeared toward a cluster of hovels and outbuildings. Within minutes, she was back driving a wagon drawn by a pair of four-legged creatures that might have been horses but for their burly bodies, shaggy coats and tusks. She urged them to climb aboard quickly, glancing back at the buildings from which she had driven away before whipping the creatures hard enough to send them galloping away into the haze.

A day later, after long hours of travel, they reached the place from which the Druid expedition had emerged from the shimmering light nearly a week earlier. The mountains were still hazy and distant, and the gloom from clouds and shadows uniform across the landscape from horizon to horizon. Stiff and sore, Crace Coram and Oriantha climbed down from the wagon and faced Tesla Dart.

“Go quickly,” she said. “When you return, come here. The way will be open again. But for now, once you pass through, it will close behind you. It is the Straken Lord’s magic that makes this protection. Entry allowed, but no exit until later. Do you see?”

She brushed at the scrub of hair bristling from the top of her head, eyes shifting from one to the other. “Find the Straken Queen. Quickly. If you do not, Tael Riverine brings his armies into your land and finds her himself. He plans this already. His armies assemble already. Time is very short for you.”

“Why are you helping us?” Oriantha asked her.

The Ulk Bog looked confused. “Weka Dart is my uncle.”

Oriantha shook her head. “I don’t understand. What does he have to do with you helping us?”

“Weka was Straken Queen Grianne’s friend. He helped her escape. She said she would come back for him.”

“But what if she can’t come back for him?” Crace Coram interjected. “What if we can’t find her?”

Tesla Dart cocked her head, her strange face taking on an entirely new look. “Weka is dead. When the Straken Queen leaves him, he goes to hide in Huka Flats. But Tael Riverine hunts him down and kills him. Weka dies for helping her. Now she must come back and revenge him. This is a debt she owes.”

She pointed toward the shimmer of light. “Tell her my words. Tell her she must pay it.”

“So now we must find a dead woman in order to keep the Straken Lord from invading the Four Lands?” Skint summarized. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“The Ard Rhys is not necessarily dead,” Seersha said quickly.

“She’s not?” Railing asked in surprise. He had always thought she was. Both he and Redding had thought so.

Seersha made a dismissive gesture and shifted her gaze to Crace Coram. “What happened to Oriantha? Why isn’t she with you?”

The Dwarf shook his head. “She wouldn’t come. Right at the last, she said she was staying.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She said she was going back for the Ard Rhys and your brother.” He looked over at Railing and shrugged. “If you spent as much time with her as I have, you might understand the why of it.”

“She wants revenge for her mother,” Skint declared. “She’s going back to find Tael Riverine and kill him.”

Crace Coram nodded slowly. “That’s what Tesla Dart said. That’s why the Ulk Bog agreed to go with her.” He looked back at Seersha. “Madness.” He took a deep breath and exhaled wearily. “Do you have anything to eat?”