Bloodfire Quest

3

After she finished telling Arlingfant and Cymrian of her discovery of Aleia Omarosian’s diary and how it had triggered the search for the missing Elfstones and all the attendant consequences—including the attack on Paranor—Aphenglow apologized.

“I should have told you sooner. But I was following the dictates of the Ard Rhys, who made me promise to keep everything a secret, even from you. There wasn’t really a reason to reveal it before. But now there is.”

She gave them the slender logbook that chronicled the names of the Chosen who had transformed into the Ellcrys. Arling went white at the sight of those names, clearly envisioning her own being added to the list, but somehow she managed to tamp down her fear.

“What does all this mean?” she asked.

“There is more to the connection between yourself and Aleia than the fact that both of you served as Chosen. More than that she transformed into the Ellcrys centuries ago and now you are being asked to do the same. It has to do with the fact that she was the first to become the tree, the one who established the Forbidding and locked away the demonkind of Faerie.”

“And what is it?”

Aphen took a deep breath. “After finding the diary, I made it a point to search out the details of the Omarosian family tree. I found a direct connection to the Elessedils. The surnames of the various generations of the two families clearly link them intimately. And those surnames appear again and again in the list of Chosen that appear in the logbook you are holding.”

“Wait a minute!” Cymrian jumped in. His bewilderment was obvious. “Are you saying that this girl and Arling are related?”

“I’m saying more than that. I’m saying that by becoming the first of the Chosen, the original flesh-and-blood Elf transformed by magic to become the tree, Aleia apparently set in place the genetic blueprint for all those who followed in her footsteps. Without checking the lineages thoroughly, I can’t be certain, but what little I’ve seen suggests I am right. I think every new generation of Chosen contained at least one who bore the blood of the Omarosian line—which includes the Elessedils—so that the tree could be assured of a successor should the need arise.”

“The Special Chosen are all a part of the same bloodline?” Arling demanded. “My choosing as a bearer of the seed was preordained?”

“In a sense, yes.”

There was a stunned silence as Arling and Cymrian exchanged a quick, uncertain look.

“But what does this have to do with the missing Elfstones?” Arling pressed. “Aleia and I might both be Chosen, but even if I must …” She paused, the words too bitter to speak. “Even it turns out I must take her path, what does this have to do with the Stones?”

“Does it go beyond the fact that she sacrificed herself to make up for losing the Elfstones to that boy?” Cymrian pressed. “That she became the Ellcrys so her people would be protected?”

“I don’t know,” Aphen admitted. “I’m not sure the two have any connection beyond the fact that Aleia Omarosian was responsible for both.”

In truth, she hadn’t been able to give enough thought to any of this to understand all the ramifications. What she needed to do was to get word to the Ard Rhys and the other Druids so that they could puzzle it through. By now, perhaps, they had found the missing Elfstones and would have answers to these questions. But before going after them, she had to help her sister absorb the immediate impact of what the Ellcrys was demanding of her. What was happening with Arling and the tree that maintained the Forbidding took precedence over everything else.

“Have we searched everywhere we can think of to learn about the transformation of those Chosen who became the Ellcrys?” Cymrian asked.

That was when Aphen remembered Woostra.

“Maybe not,” she answered. She got to her feet quickly. “I want you to finish up here. Keep the Chosen logbook; take it with you. Wait for me back at the cottage.”

Leaving Arling and Cymrian to put away the Chosen records, she raced off to speak with the keeper of the Druid Histories. Perhaps he had encountered something in his years of study of the Druid writings that would help them. Or at least he might know where else they might look.

She found Woostra at the inn where they had agreed he would await her return from her now-aborted search for the Ard Rhys. She knew that if she were too obvious in asking the necessary questions about the Ellcrys and the transformation, she would risk involving Arling, so she decided to approach the matter from another angle, leaving Arling out altogether.

“Aren’t you supposed to be flying west by now?” he asked, setting aside a book as she approached.

She sat next to him, smiling. “Something’s happened, and I’ve decided to delay for a day or two. I had Arling gain access to the records of the Chosen, and I discovered that Aleia Omarosian was not just one of them, but the very first. She was the one who originally agreed to sacrifice herself to create the Ellcrys. She would have done so to help make up for losing the Elfstones and shaming her parents. So I need to know more about the history of the Chosen. I have searched the whole of the Elven records, but there is little on the actual transformation process. Do you think there might be something more on this in the Druid Histories?”

He stared at her. “Are you telling me you want to return to Paranor? After having just barely escaped with your life?”

“I’m telling you I will do whatever is necessary to find a way to help the Ard Rhys.”

He admitted then that there were places in the Histories where the purpose of the Ellcrys was documented. Including, he believed, a description of how to reach the Bloodfire, the magic of which would quicken an Ellcrys seedling and allow the transformation to take place.

“So I’ll have to go there to find out,” she finished.

He snorted. “You mean we’ll have to go. It would take you days to find what you needed without me.”

She returned to Arling and Cymrian to tell them what she intended to do. Both would go with her, the latter because an additional pair of hands were needed to fly Wend-A-Way, the former because Aphen wanted to keep her close.

“I don’t know what we’ll find,” she hastened to add. “I don’t know if we’ll find anything. But I think we have to try. As things stand, we know almost nothing about what’s needed if we’re to save the Ellcrys.”

“We know it wants Arling to be her successor,” Cymrian pointed out bluntly. “And we know Arling’s not happy about it. How are we going to resolve that?”

“We’ll find a way,” Aphen snapped back, and immediately regretted the sharpness in her tone. “I don’t know,” she added.

They departed the next morning for Paranor, a company of four. Admittedly, there were real concerns about taking Arling away from her Chosen duties. She was conflicted about it herself and had already told them so. But in the end it was agreed she was better off coming with them than being left alone in Arborlon. She would stay aboard ship during the incursions into Paranor and whisked away quickly if threatened.

Aphenglow didn’t attempt to minimize the danger of what she was doing. Getting back into the Druid’s Keep meant circumventing whatever forces the Federation had left behind to guard it and then, once that was accomplished, eluding or banishing altogether the dark magic she had released from the Keep’s lower reaches. It was a formidable challenge under the best of circumstances, but she couldn’t convince herself that delaying the attempt until she had found the Ard Rhys and the others and brought them back into the Midlands was a good idea, either. There were too many variables that might prevent this, and just knowing the location of the Bloodfire was crucial. It might not be Arling who ended up making the journey, but whoever went would need to know where to go.

Standing at the railing several hours into their flight, watching the Dragon’s Teeth draw steadily closer, she allowed herself a moment to accept how small their chances of changing Arling’s fate were. There was no record of any Chosen selected to serve as the Ellcrys’s successor having failed to do so. What she might do—what any of them might do—to release Arling from her obligation was impossible to imagine. It was only her love for her sister and her dislike of destinies dictated by factors beyond her control that made her determined to press ahead. She knew this visit to Paranor was ill advised, but Arling was precious to her and terrified of what she was being asked to accept, and Aphenglow would do whatever she could to find another way.

Even risk her life, as she was doing now.

Even give up her life, if it came to it.

She would do anything for Arling.

They brought Wend-A-Way in from the north, after sunset, using the deep gloom of the Northland skies to shield their approach. Aphen knew of a clearing within a mile of the Keep, well back from where they might be spotted in the darkness, and they set the airship down there, within the shelter of the ancient trees of the Forbidden Forest.

The plan was to get back into the Keep by means of the secret tunnels that linked the fortress to the outside. Any direct approach to the walls or gates would almost certainly risk detection. But entering through the underground passageways—while it would risk an encounter with the dark magic Aphenglow had released when they departed—was at least marginally safer. She did not believe the Federation had been able to find a way to penetrate the walls and survive what was now waiting there for them, but that didn’t mean Drust Chazhul and his minions would have stopped looking.

In any case, she was prepared to deal with the magic. After all, she had released it; there was at least a chance it would recognize her and let her pass safely. Whatever the case, only she and Woostra could risk trying to enter the Keep. Theirs was an established presence, and the magic was less likely to attack them. Arling and Cymrian would be viewed as intruders and dispatched without a second thought. Even Woostra was at some risk, she had to admit, given that he was not a Druid. But he insisted on coming, and Aphen knew that without him there to help her, she would be left at a severe disadvantage. She would do her best to keep him safe. She would ward him with magic of her own.

His response was a dismissive snort and a curt insistence that he didn’t need any warding in his own home.

Leaving Arling and Cymrian with the airship, the Druid and the keeper of the records crept through the trees to where the nearest entrance to the tunnels was concealed. By then, they were within a hundred yards of the fortress walls, but still had not encountered anyone at all. Woostra, leading the way, had no trouble finding the trapdoor, but it took him a while to release the hidden locks. Whether due to rust or weather or the tightness of the seals, they refused to budge at first. But eventually, his efforts prevailed and the locks released.

Pulling back on the hatch cover, he led the way inside.

They stood next to each other, searching the gloom. A rack of torches was fastened to the bedrock of the wall, and Aphen and Woostra each removed a pitch-coated brand and ignited it. From there, they wound their way ahead, descending several sets of stairs until they were deep underground and far enough forward of where they had entered that Aphenglow was certain they were beneath the Keep proper.

Woostra stopped. “Do you hear anything?”

She shook her head.

“Good. But keep listening, anyway.”

“I sense something, though.”

He looked at her. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

They stayed where they were awhile longer as Aphen struggled to decide what her instincts were telling her.

“We’d better keep going,” she said finally.

Not long after, they reached an ancient iron door set into the rock with pins and metal plates, its surface overgrown with mold and crawling with insects, its metal dulled and rusted. She brushed off the handle, seized it with both hands, and twisted hard.

Nothing.

She looked at Woostra. “What’s wrong?”

“There are locks in the plates above and below the handles,” he told her, peering closely at the door. “A combination of touches to the pins releases them. Here, let me try.”

Moving ahead of her, he worked the pins in a particular sequence, then seized the handle and twisted. The locks released at once, and the door opened.

He gave her a look, cocking one eyebrow. “It’s all in the wrists.”

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.

“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.