Bloodfire Quest

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.

“What happens when we get to Paranor?” he asked.

Woostra cocked his head and stared off into space as though he had not considered the matter and needed a moment to think it through. Then he shrugged. “We go inside.”

“But then what?”

“We look around.”

“But isn’t there magic that protects the Druid’s Keep?”

Woostra gave him a look. “Don’t overthink this. When we get there, you and I will go into the Keep and study the readings. No one else—just the two of us. Only Druids are allowed within, and I can’t have a bunch of Rovers and such tramping through the halls. I’m only taking you because you’re an Ohmsford and you might see or recognize the importance of something that I would miss. You’ll bring fresh eyes to the effort, and you share a family history with Grianne. Don’t worry about the Keep’s magic; it’s no longer warding against entry. Aphen took care of that.” He paused. “At least, I hope she did. I guess we’ll find out. In any case, you and I will go in alone.”

Railing wasn’t reassured in the least by any of this, but he wasn’t in a position to argue. Woostra was the only one of them who could access Paranor, and he would just have to hope the scribe was right about the Keep’s magic being back under lock and key.

Toward midday, after spending the morning alternating between conversations with Farshaun and taking his turn at the helm, he found a moment to be alone with Mirai in the pilot box. They had almost completed their crossing of the Streleheim Plains by then, and the peaks of the Dragon’s Teeth had come into view—a jagged, broken line that stretched across the eastern horizon.

He stood beside her as she worked the steering and for a moment didn’t say anything. She reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. “It will be all right, Railing. We’ll get him back.”

“I can’t stop thinking that this might all be a waste of time,” he confessed. “I’m flying away from Redden, not toward him, and it might all be for nothing. I know rationally what we’re doing. I understand the reasons for it. I even believe it has value. But it just feels so …”

He trailed off, unable to find the words.

She squeezed his shoulder reassuringly, and that alone was worth anything she might have said to try to comfort him. They stood in silence for a while longer before she spoke again.

“If we don’t find anything at Paranor, if you don’t feel right about what we’re doing at that point, we can go back and find Seersha. We can travel all the way to the Breakline, if you want. I’ll go with you. I’m not giving up, either.”

“I know that. I never thought you would.”

She smiled at him. She was so pretty, he thought. He wanted to tell her so. He wanted to lean over and kiss her. But they were standing out on the open deck with people all around them, and he couldn’t make himself do it. He loved her, but he wasn’t sure enough of himself to risk finding out that she didn’t love him in return. At least, not in that way.

He stared off into the distance. If he were Austrum, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have just done it.

But instead he made up an excuse about needing to talk to Woostra and left her there alone. Conflicting thoughts jumbled together in his head. How can I even be thinking about Mirai like that when Redden’s life is at stake? How can I be so selfish? Why didn’t I go ahead and kiss her? She wouldn’t have minded. She didn’t mind Austrum doing it. But it doesn’t matter about Austrum. What matters is Redden, and I can’t let myself think about anything else.

He raved on for a few moments more and then angrily swept everything aside and went down into the hold to sleep.

He was awake again when they reached the Dragon’s Teeth, and then all the way through the peaks and across the Forbidden Forest to the spires of Paranor. By then the day was easing toward sunset, and the sky to the east was darkening. Woostra had them set down in the same clearing where he had landed with the Elessedil sisters and Cymrian weeks ago when returning to discover information about the Bloodfire.

Then, leaving the others to keep watch, the Druid scribe departed with Railing for the tunnels that led into the Keep.

It took them little time to find the hidden entrance and make the underground journey into the fortress. Torches helped them navigate their way through the darkness, and no obstacles appeared to hinder their progress. Although Woostra proceeded with no apparent concern for what might be lying in wait, Railing couldn’t help listening for noises and searching for movement. He couldn’t seem to help himself, even though he knew that if anything were hiding in these tunnels, it would be on them before he could do anything about it.

But nothing happened, and once inside the walls of the Keep and aboveground, Woostra started directly for the tower where the Druid Histories and accompanying papers were concealed and where Khyber kept her sleeping chamber. Evidence of the Federation’s attack on the Keep had not been removed. Debris from broken walls and parapets still littered the courtyards through which they passed, and damage from fire launchers and rail slings still scarred the buildings surrounding them. Bodies lay everywhere, picked apart by birds of prey and other scavengers. The Keep itself was silent and devoid of life, and it was clear that the Federation had made no further attempt to occupy it.

“Guess the scavengers decided they could feast on the dead after all,” Woostra muttered. He glanced over. “Stay close to me. Don’t wander off.”

Fat chance of that, the boy thought. The heaped bodies and the extent of the carnage inflicted by whatever magic warded the Keep unnerved him. In the best of times, Paranor would be an intimidating place—cold and cavernous and filled with strange sounds. But turned into a charnal house, it was terrifying. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and as they passed down the lifeless corridors he could feel cold spots that froze his blood.

“Why isn’t the Federation army anywhere about if the magic’s gone back to wherever it came from?” he whispered.

Woostra glanced over. “They don’t know that Aphen has locked the magic away again. And they have no way of knowing what’s here without coming back inside the walls. They’re not about to do that after what happened to their fellows.” He paused. “Besides, Drust Chazhul is dead. Without his insistence on pursuing the attack, they’ve retreated to Arishaig. Edinja Orle will have a different take on things.”

Railing listened to the silence, unbroken save for the sound of their footsteps as they climbed flights of stairs and traveled down empty, echoing passageways crisscrossing the building. Rooms came and went, all of them deserted. Paranor felt as if it had been abandoned for centuries and not weeks. He tried to imagine what it would be like to live here, to be a Druid in residence, and he could not do so. It felt too closed away, too claustrophobic. He was a creature of open air and sunlight, and walls felt unnatural and unfriendly. He thought of his great-aunt living here, of her days as Ard Rhys, but any image he could form was incomplete and tinged with what he knew of her dark life, and it felt forced and unreal.

“Here,” Woostra said, many floors and passageways later, standing at a set of heavy doors that were closed and locked. “We begin our search in these rooms.”

He manipulated the locks, and the doors opened to admit them. Together they entered the first of what Railing could see was a series of rooms with wall-to-wall bookshelves and cabinets and floor space crammed with worktables and desks. He looked around in dismay. How in the world would they ever find anything in this jumbled mess?

“We’ll begin here,” Woostra announced. “We won’t need to look through the Histories themselves; I’m familiar with what they contain, especially regarding recent times. There’s nothing in them that will help.” He saw the look on the boy’s face. “Don’t worry. I know where to search for what we need.”

So search they did, through notebooks and journals, through stacks of letters, files thick with official Druid documents and piles of odd notes and scraps of paper with cryptic comments. They did not find Grianne Ohmsford’s private diary as they had hoped to. They found, in fact, exactly nothing that would help explain what had become of Grianne after she left Paranor.

It took them all night to discover this, and at the end Woostra simply shrugged. “Unfortunate. We’ll try the sleeping chamber of the Ard Rhys.”

They left the document chambers and went up another flight to Khyber Elessedil’s private rooms. Woostra took the boy inside, and together they resumed their search. There was a desk and a writing table, but neither yielded anything of value. Because this was primarily a sleeping chamber, the search went quickly and finished when Railing, looking through a nightstand, found a series of journals belonging to Khyber Elessedil beneath a false bottom in a drawer containing a collection of loose documents.

He thought at first he had found what they were looking for, flushed with anticipation as he handed the journals to Woostra.

But the Druid scribe, after carefully paging through each, shook his head. “These were written by Khyber Elessedil. And they aren’t what we want. They don’t go back far enough. There is at least one missing, the oldest. That’s the one we need to find.”

So they went back to looking, working their way from the obvious places to the least obvious, trying to work out where the Ard Rhys could have hidden another journal. They looked for the better part of an hour but in the end came up empty-handed.

“I don’t understand it,” Woostra admitted. “Why would she hide one journal and not the others?”

“Maybe there aren’t any besides the ones we’ve found,” Railing said. “Maybe that’s all there are.”

Woostra shook his head. “I don’t believe that. She would have started keeping a journal right from the start of her term of service if she was going to keep them at all. She’s always been very thorough. She’s hidden that one deliberately. We have to look some more.”

Railing glanced around at the already ravaged room. “Where? Should we start tearing out the walls?” He paused. “Wait a minute. Could she have used magic to hide it? Redden and I used to do that with all sorts of stuff. If the journal’s so important …”

Woostra was on his feet. “That’s exactly what she’s done. She’s done it before with important documents.” He looked around expectantly. “Can you use your magic to look for it? Can you try uncovering it that way?”

Railing stood up quickly. “I think so.”

He glanced again at the journals they had already read through. All of them looked the same. So he pictured another like them and began to hum, calling up the wishsong. He felt the magic respond, felt the familiar warmth and the tingling at his fingertips. Holding the wishsong steady as he hummed, he began a slow scan of the room. He felt the magic spread away from his hands, lighting here and there, revealing patches of color, bits of detritus from earlier magic. The room was filled with it, and he realized he was sweeping over years of magic use, all of which probably related to the journals in one way or another and none of which gave him a clue as to the whereabouts of the one missing. The leavings were especially thick around the writing desk, which confirmed his thinking.

He stopped his search and told Woostra what was happening. “We have to find another way. Something that will set the hiding place of the journal apart from all this other stuff.”

They considered the problem in silence for a long time, and then Woostra said, “If she hid it, she must have left a way to find it. A way that a Druid would understand. But we don’t have a Druid with us to ask.”

“What if she put something in one of the other journals?” Railing asked. “A key to the one that’s missing.”

“She would have done that right at the beginning, assuming she wanted it hidden right after Grianne left the order.” Woostra took out the earliest journal and paged through it quickly. “Nothing written in here that stands out.”

“It wouldn’t be something written.” Railing took the journal from him and studied it. “Let me try another approach.”

He called up the wishsong a second time, humming first, and then shifting into words that just came to him as he envisioned a link between this book and the one missing. He sang of a need for rejoinder, for assembling all of the journals as a unit, for a reunion and an end to separation.

At first, nothing happened. But then he felt a tugging and the sudden launch of the blue light, flaring out and sweeping through the room. Almost immediately it settled on the stone blocks of the south wall about midway up, flaring once as it revealed a series of red lines, then consuming the lines and turning dark again.

Woostra crossed quickly to the place in the wall upon which the magic had settled and began fingering the surfaces of the stone blocks and the crevices between. It took him only moments to discover what he was looking for, and abruptly one of the stone blocks popped loose, extending out far enough for Railing to pull it free and set it aside.

There, in the space behind the stone, was the missing journal.

Together they sat down and began to scan the contents.

Railing brushed strands of his unkempt hair out of his eyes. “I can’t read any of this. What language is this?”

“Old Elfish,” Woostra answered, giving him a look. “Interesting that she changed languages after filling up this first journal. She made a choice at that point to make the others more readable, so that they would be more accessible to anyone who found them. Why not this one?”

He scanned a few pages, searching.

“Read me something,” Railing pressed. “How does it start?”

Woostra sighed, a hint of irritation flashing across his seamed face. “All right. First page, first entry. She uses a dating system I don’t recognize. But here’s what she’s written.”

“This is what we’ve been looking for!” Railing exclaimed excitedly. “Isn’t it?”

“It appears so.” Woostra seemed less enthused. “But let me look ahead and see if the answer we seek is actually here in these pages. Be patient a moment.”

He began scanning the journal’s pages, reading carefully, taking his time. He turned the worn sheets one by one, and with each Railing waited to hear that the answer they sought had been found. But Wooster just kept reading, shaking his head, muttering to himself, pausing now and then to decipher something that was unfamiliar to him.

“Some of this language is obscure, even to me,” he said finally, looking up. “Most of it I can translate. She talks about how she will reform the order. She sets out the parameters and goals she intends to adopt. She mentions Grianne frequently, drawing strength from her example, repeating how she will …”

He was still scanning as he was talking, and suddenly he stopped doing both. He held up one hand to silence Railing and read the page he was on carefully. Then he went back and read it again.

He looked up, distraught. “Listen.”

“So the journal isn’t even here?” Railing asked in disbelief.

“I would guess that it is somewhere in your home,” Woostra answered. “If it hasn’t been destroyed.”

Railing thought a moment. “We have a trunk in which writings made by Ohmsfords since the time of my great-grandfather have been kept. Everything before that was lost during a period when it seemed all of the Ohmsfords had died out. The trunk came to us and my father took it into the attic of our home and left it there, bound and locked. We have been careful to preserve everything in it ever since.”

“But you must have looked in it?”

“I don’t think anyone has. Not since my grandfather died.” Then he paused suddenly, and a startled look crossed his face. “Except for …”

Realization flooded his eyes. “My mother.”