The Elves of Cintra

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

FOR NEARLY TWO WEEKS, Simralin led her brother and Angel Perez north through the high desert east of the Cintra, following the spine of the mountains they had entered after fleeing Arborlon.

The days were hot, the nights cool, and the air dry and filled with the taste and smell of iron. They traversed long stretches of sandy soil studded with scrub brush and wiry trees whose branches had somehow kept their bristle–ridged leaves and rocky lava fields that suggested how the world might have looked when it was first being born. The miles disappeared behind them, but the look of the land never changed. After a time, Kirisin began to wonder if they were actu–ally getting anywhere or simply going in circles, but he kept his con–cerns to himself and placed his trust in his sister.

In any case, all his spare energy was tied up in keeping watch for the demons tracking them. He knew they were back there, following soundlessly and invisibly, waiting for their chance. Sooner or later they would appear, intent on killing them all, probably when least expected. He tried not to let his distress show, to be more like his sister and Angel

Perez, who were always so calm and steady. Nothing seemed to disturb either of them. Of course, they were more used to living like this, to being either the hunter or the hunted. They had learned long ago to co–exist with uncertainty and edginess. He was still trying to figure out how to deal with both, and the effort was draining him. He wasn't sleeping, he wasn't eating, and he was barely able to think of anything else. The repetitive nature of their travel only added to his sense of dread. Each day was a fresh slog through a forest of fears, a mind–numbing trek toward the disaster he knew was waiting. Nothing he did could dispel this certainty and the effect it was having on him. He could barely remember what life had been like before. His time as a Chosen, as a caretaker for the Ellcrys, might have happened a hundred years ago.

But there was an unintended and oddly positive aspect to his dis–tress that he had not anticipated.

He had begun this journey filled with pain and grief for the dead he had left behind. He had thought he would never feel good about anything again, haunted by what he had witnessed and how he had failed to prevent it. But day by day he found himself experiencing a gradual erosion of his despair, a wearing–away of the once seemingly unforgettable images of Erisha as she lay dying. He was able to stop trying to picture Ailie and old Culph in their final mo–ments, as well. It didn't happen all at once or even in a way that was immediately recognizable. It wasn't that he was healing, but that his hurt and grief had been crowded out by his fears and dark expecta–tions. There was no room for the former when the latter consumed his every waking minute.

The strength of his conviction that the King was responsible for all three deaths continued to grow. Perhaps it was that certainty and the anger that accompanied it that kept him from collapse. Each night, as they huddled together in whatever shelter they were able to find, they spoke of the killings and the reasons for which they were carried out. There seemed little doubt about any of it, save for the part that had al–lowed Kirisin to survive and escape with the blue Elfstones. Given the fact that they had been caught so completely off guard coming out of the underground tombs of Ashenell, it seemed that killing both Cho–sen should have been a sure thing. Angel thought that perhaps it was

Simralin's quick action that had saved him. Putting out the four–legged demon's eye and leaving the dagger embedded in the socket had worked just enough damage that it was only able to reach Erisha. Sim–ralin, on the other hand, thought that the demon had simply taken on more than it could handle, and that they had all contributed to its fail–ure to succeed.

Kirisin wasn't sure what he thought, save that he was certain the demon in hiding among the Elves was Arissen Belloruus. He wondered what they were going to do to reveal this even if they found the Loden and returned it to Arborlon and the Elves. How were they going to re–move the threat before they closed away the city and the Elves as the Ellcrys had asked of them?

"One step at a time, Little K," his sister replied when, after more than a week out, he finally managed to voice his concerns. "We can't solve it all at once and maybe we won't even know how to solve it until we get to that point. You don't want to look too far ahead in something like this."

They were seated on a ledge at the beginning of a downslope off the high desert, looking north toward the eastern slopes of the Cintra Mountains and beyond to the silvery thread of a wide river. It was after crossing the river that they would reach Syrring Rise.

"You didn't solve the secret of the hiding place of the Elfstones all at once," Angel pointed out. "You had to solve it piecemeal."

Kirisin screwed up his face. "It's just that I keep thinking we aren't going to have much time to do anything but use the Loden once we find it and get back to Arborlon. Maybe we will have to shut the demon away with our own people just because we can't figure out who it is."

"One demon, thousands of Elves," said his sister. "Pretty decent odds, even if it happens."

"Tell me something more of the history behind this tree we're try–ing to save," Angel asked suddenly. "What is it that makes it so impor–tant?"

Simralin and Kirisin exchanged a quick glance. "You tell her, Little K," his sister said. "You're the one who knows the story best."

Kirisin drew up his knees and hugged them to his chest. He didn't want to tell anybody anything, didn't want to talk at all. "This is what our histories tell us, so I'm just repeating," he said, forcing himself any–way. "But I think it is mostly true. Before there were humans in the world, there were Faeries. The Faeries were the first people. All sorts, all kinds, good and bad. Like humans. Elves were one of the stronger, more dominant species. They believed that all life had value and should be preserved. Others did not. The bad ones. So there was a war. The Faeries fought in the same way humans fight except that many had the use of magic and some of their magic was very powerful. Eventually, the practitioners of dark magic began to gain an advantage. Their inten–tion was to dominate the other species and redesign the world in a way that better suited them. They could do that, given enough time and space.

"The Elves led a coalition of Faerie creatures who opposed the dark magic users and their allies.

The war lasted a very long time. Centuries. In the end, the Elves and their allies prevailed. They created a talisman through the use of a combination of elemental and blood magic–the most powerful magic of all–to construct a prison for their enemies. The talisman was the Ellcrys, the only one of her kind, a tree that would live thousands of years and maintain a barrier behind which the Faerie creatures that practiced dark magic and their allies would be shut away. The barrier was called the Forbidding."

"And the Ellcrys is what keeps the Forbidding in place?" Angel in–terrupted. "Her magic is the catalyst?"

He nodded. "For the Forbidding to endure, the Ellcrys must be kept healthy and strong. The Chosen were formed after her creation to en–sure that she stayed so."

"So if the Forbidding fails. .

"The demons escape," Kirisin finished. "Back into our world. Faerie demons no one has seen in thousands of years. Monsters of all sorts. Creatures of dark magic. Worse than those the humans have spawned, maybe."

"Perhaps they would kill each other off," Simralin offered with a wry smile.

"Perhaps they would kill all of us off first," Angel replied. She shook her head. "How is it that these things are created? What permits them life? I believe in the Word; I have seen its power and spoken with its servants. The Word created everything. But I keep asking myself Why did it create things like this? Why does it permit demons to exist?"

Kirisin shrugged. "In the world of Faerie, the demons and their kind were always there. What difference does it make? They exist and they threaten us. Humans have done nothing about it. Humans don't even work to protect the world they live in like the Elves do. They don't seem to know how to stop the demons from claiming everything. That's why we're where we are now."

His anger surfaced and carried him away for a moment, and he re–membered too late to whom he was speaking.

"Little K," his sister said softly. "Angel knows."

He stopped talking abruptly as he felt the color of his embarrass–ment rise from his neck into his cheeks. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean it."

"It's nothing." Angel gave him a quick smile. "You meant it, and you were right to mean it. Humans have failed themselves and their world, and they are going to lose everything because of it. That's why we're here. Because all we can do now is pick up enough pieces to begin putting everything back together again."

"Seems that way," he mumbled, still ashamed of his outburst. "Tell me about the Loden, Kirisin."

He shook his head. "There isn't much to tell. No one knows exactly what it does. Not even old Culph knew. It is a powerful Elfstone, mined and formed in the early days of the Faerie world like the others. It op–erates alone–unlike most Elfstones, which work in sets. It disappeared a long time ago, and the histories don't say anything about it."

"That's odd, isn't it?" she asked. "That there's no mention of it at

Kirisin had thought that himself more than once. A talisman of magic as powerful and important as the Loden should have had a spe–cial place in the Elven histories. Why wasn't there any mention of it?

"I don't know why there isn't anything written," he admitted. He thought about it some more. "The Ellcrys said, when she spoke to me that first time, that I was to use the seeking-Elfstones to find it, then to carry the Loden to her and place her within it."

"Maybe the Loden acts as a sort of barrier in the same way as the

Ellcrys," Angel suggested. "But what are you supposed to do with it once you find out how to put the Ellcrys inside?"

"And what about the Elves?" Simralin finished.

There were no ready answers for any of these questions, and in the end all they could do was speculate. But it helped them pass the time and gave them a chance to examine anew the nature of their under–taking and its importance to the Elven people. Kirisin was already in–vested in the effort and Simralin, too, if less so. But Angel was a different story. Her commitment was tenuous, at best. She was still trying to come to terms with what she had been given to do. The boy understood her reticence and accepted it. The Elves were not her peo–ple and the battle not hers to fight. She had her own struggle against her own enemies. As a Knight of the Word, she was fighting for the human race, not for the Elves. She hadn't even known of the existence of the Elves before Ailie came to her. She had accepted what the tat–terdemalion had told her she must do, a charge given directly by the Word. It was in the nature of her service that she must do so. But that didn't mean she had embraced it emotionally. Her charge had been a different one until now. It wasn't as if she could simply walk away from it without looking back, without wondering if she had made a wrong choice, without asking herself if she had jumped from bad to worse.

Kirisin would have wondered the same thing if he had been in her shoes. He would have balked at helping the humans who had done so much to destroy his world and endanger his people. He might easily have refused. He gave her credit for not doing so. She was risking every bit as much as he had in believing that what she had been asked to do was important and necessary.

But her heart was not necessarily as committed as his sister's and his own to their undertaking, and he worried that at some point her reticence would prove a dangerous failing.

He worried, but unlike so much of what troubled him, he kept this particular worry to himself.

ANGEL PEREZ was indeed conflicted. Conflicted enough that she was becoming increasingly disenchanted with her place in the world. It wasn't that she didn't intend to do her best to help Kirisin and his sis–ter in their efforts to find the Loden Elfstone; it was that she wasn't yet convinced that this was what she should be doing. Ailie had said so, but Ailie, her conscience in this strange business, was gone. She had only herself to turn to for reassurance, and she wasn't finding much of what she needed by doing so.

She could chart her discontent like a map. She had gone from the East LA barrio and its residents to the magically enhanced Cintra for–est and its Elves in a matter of only days. She had gone with almost no warning or preparation. Everything with which she was familiar had been stripped from her. She had never been anywhere but the neigh–borhood and city in which she was born until now. She had never be–lieved in even the possibility of the existence of Elves. Since losing Johnny and finding O'olish Amaneh, she had fought a battle that in–volved helping children.

What battle was she fighting now? A battle to find a magic Stone that would help save a magic tree? Just thinking the words seemed to point out the obvious. She didn't understand them, didn't really know what obeying them was meant to accomplish. She was here because the Lady had sent her but, as Kirisin feared, that didn't mean she was emotionally committed to what she was doing. Commitment for her did not come easily and was not given without strong reason. Helping children from the compounds and on the streets of LA was something she understood. She had been one of those children. But these were Elves she had come to serve—Elves, who were a people of which she knew practically nothing. A people, she added quickly, who in large part did not like or trust humans. They looked and acted like humans, but their thinking was formed by centuries of life and experience that preceded human existence.

She was doing what she had been sent to do, but was she doing the right thing?

Her misgivings haunted her in a dull, repetitive sort of way, always present to remind her of her blind and possibly foolish trust in the words of a dead tatterdemalion.

She could not get past it.

THEY WALKED on into the second week, coming down off the slopes of the northernmost peaks in the Cintra Mountain chain and within clear sight of the river that separated the states of Oregon and Wash–ington. Humans called it the Columbia, Elves the Redonnelin Deep. Ahead, across the river and hidden by haze and distance, Syrring Rise waited.

As they stopped to assess the lay of the land they must travel through, Angel found herself thinking of the children she had left in the care of Helen Rice and the others, the children rescued from the Southern California compounds. Helen would be bringing them north to the Columbia as Angel had asked her to do and would wait there for help. What sort of help and from whom remained a mystery. It should have been her, but Ailie had left that particular issue in doubt. Angel felt consumed by helplessness. Had they gotten this far? Had they even gotten out of the state? Or had the demons and the once–men tracked them down? Those children were her responsibility and her charge to herself, and she had let herself be persuaded to give up on both.

"Not so far now," Simralin said quietly, passing Angel her waterskin.

"Far enough," Angel murmured, thinking of something else entirely.

The Elven girl glanced over. "We've done well, Angel. A lot that could have happened hasn't. We could have been caught and attacked by those demons, but we've managed to stay one step ahead of them."

"You don't think they've given up, do you?" Kirisin asked hopefully.

His face was haggard and worn, and his eyes had a haunted look to them. Angel did not like what she was seeing. The boy's physical con–dition had deteriorated since they had set out, and there was no way of knowing how he was doing emotionally. He looked worn to the bone.

Simralin was shaking her head. "No, I don't think they've given up. I don't expect them ever to give up. All we can do is make it as hard as we can to find us. Now that we're coming up on Redonnelin Deep, I have a chance to make it almost impossible."

Angel glanced over, her brow knitting. "What do you mean?" Simralin stopped and pointed ahead to the broad stretch of the river. "I mean that if we can get across before they catch up to us, we can hide from them where we come ashore. It could take them days, maybe weeks to find the right spot. If they can't track us to where we land, they won't know where we are going."

Angel shook her head. "I think they already know."

Simralin and her brother stared. "How could they?" the Tracker asked. "We didn't know ourselves until Kirisin used the Elfstones."

"Just a hunch." Angel handed back the waterskin. "Ever since this business started, they've been one step ahead of us. One of them tracked me all the way north from LA. It shouldn't have been able to do that, but it did. The other seems to have known what Kirisin and Er–isha were trying to do almost from the moment they did. I just have a feeling they know this time, too."

Kirisin gave her an exasperated look. "Well, what should we do, Angel?"

She smiled unexpectedly. "We do what we are here to do. When the demons surface, they become my problem. Yours–yours and Simralin's-is to find the Loden and use it in the way it is meant to be used and save your people."

They traveled through the rest of that day and into the next, a long, torturous slog through hot, dry, open country denuded of plant life and filled with the bleached bones of humans and animals alike. It was a graveyard of indeterminate origin, a grim memorial to the presence of the dead and the absence of the living. Finally, when they were within a mile of Redonnelin Deep, Simralin turned them sharply northeast.

"We're going to need help getting across," she announced. "We re–quire a boat."

"Aren't there bridges?" Angel asked. She was hot and tired and still sick at heart about the children she felt she had abandoned. She con–stantly found herself looking for some sign of them along the river–bank, even when she knew there wouldn't be any, that there hadn't been time for them to get this far. "A river this size, there must be one or two that would take us across on foot."

"More than that, actually. But the bridges are in the hands of mili–tias and some others that are even worse. We don't want to fight that battle if we don't have to." She gestured ahead. "Better to use a boat.

I know someone who can help us. An old friend."

"No one who sees us looking like this will want to help," Kirisin de–clared.

They were dust–covered and dirt–streaked from head to foot. They hadn't bathed in almost two weeks, traversing the high desert and lava fields with only the water they carried for drinking and nothing with which to wash. Angel looked at the other two and could only imagine how bad she must look.

But Simralin simply shrugged. "Don't worry, Little K. This particu–lar friend couldn't care less."

They trudged across the flats approaching the river through the heat of the afternoon and by nightfall's approach had reached it. There were houses along the lower banks, dilapidated and empty, docks to which boats had once been moored and now were crumbling, and weedy paths that meandered in between. There was no sign of life any–where.

The river itself was swift and wide, the open waters churning with whitecaps and the inlets thick with debris and deadwood collected and jammed together by deep rapids. In the fading light, the waters were gray and silt–clogged, and from its depths emanated a thick and un–pleasant odor that suggested secrets hidden below the surface of other creatures' failed attempts at crossing.

"Are you sure about this?" Kirisin asked uneasily. "Maybe a bridge would be safer, after all."

Simralin only grinned and put a reassuring arm around him before setting off anew. Angel wasn't sure, either, but the Tracker had gotten them this far without incident. She thought briefly of the children whom Helen Rice and the other protectors were guiding north and wished she could do the same for them. She glanced up and down the banks, and then looked behind her for what she knew she wouldn't see.

I can't seem to help myself she thought.

Afraid, as she thought it, that she would never see any of them again.