The Elves of Cintra

CHAPTER THIRTY

ANGEL PEREZ WAS AT PEACE. A deep, pervasive calm had settled inside, an infusion of a sort that she hadn't experienced in years. She couldn't explain it. Nothing justified it. If anything, she should have been riddled with fear, terrified of what waited in the rocks below. Her nerves should have been all sharp–edged and raw.

After all, she was probably going to die.

She walked toward the cluster of huge boulders, the mass of dark stone like the jaws of the earth amid the whiteness of the snow, wait–ing to devour her. The runes carved in the gleaming surface of her black staff glowed brightly. She knew what was hiding in the rocks. The demons. The spiky–haired female that had transformed into a four–legged horror and tracked her north from her home, and the compan–ion it had found in the Cintra. Somehow the pair had discovered their destination and caught up to them. It shouldn't have come as a sur–prise, and in truth it didn't. She had suspected all along that the demons were one step ahead of them, ever since Ailie and Erisha had been killed in Ashenell. She had known it for sure when they had reached the hiding place for the hot–air balloons and found one of them missing. She had known right away who had taken it. There was no way of determining the truth of it, yet she had known.

She had been waiting ever since for them to surface, knowing that they would in the same way she had known that the struggle between them would end here. Standing on the hillside as Simralin assured them they were almost to their goal, she had felt the demon presence and known it was time. She had been anticipating it ever since she had escaped the last attack, deep in the ruined forests of California, where only Ailie's warning had saved her. She had said nothing to her com–panions, but she had been waiting for it. Now it was here. The con–frontation she had always believed to be inevitable had arrived.

Still, she was at peace.

She did not want Kirisin or Simralin to know what was happening. If they found out, they would want to stand with her. They could not help. She would worry for them, seek to protect them, and thereby lessen her own chances of surviving. Those chances were small enough as it was. If she faced only one of the two, she might be able to kill or disable it. If both were waiting for her, the best she could hope for was a quick death. She had no illusions. In all likelihood, she was not com–ing out of this.

She thought it very odd that she wasn't frightened. She had been terrified after her last encounter with the female demon, so afraid that she could barely think clearly when she and Ailie fled its attack on the Mercury 5 for the Oregon border. She had known then–had known— that the next time she was forced into a confrontation with this partic–ular demon, she was going to die. Twice she had escaped it, but only barely. The third time would be the end of her. She was tough and skilled, but this creature was more than she could handle. She had been extremely lucky before. She could not expect to be so lucky again.

It almost made her smile. Perhaps the inevitability of what waited had leached all the fear out of her. Perhaps by knowing that she must stand and fight, she had become resigned to what that meant. She was not afraid of dying or even of what dying meant. She was not afraid to face this monster, even though she might suffer in ways she had never imagined possible. If this was the death that had stalked her since birth–as some form of death stalked everyone–if this was where it was meant to end for her, she could accept it. She could not explain this willingness to embrace her fate, but she found comfort in it. She had found grace.

She reached the cluster of rocks and stopped. At least one of them waited within, just out of sight. The wolfish one, the one that served the old man. It had made no effort to disguise its coming. It had re–vealed itself openly, knowing she would respond as she had. Or per–haps it had hoped she would try to flee so that it could give pursuit and take her down from behind, a rabbit caught by a predator. Whatever the case, it wanted her to know before she died that it had found her and she could not escape. It took pleasure in forcing her to anticipate her own death, to know there was no escape.

She wished suddenly that Johnny were there to stand beside her. It would make this so much easier, knowing he was there. But then, she thought, perhaps he was, in spirit if not in flesh. Perhaps he was there still, her guardian angel.

She remembered a time not long after he had first found her–she might have been nine or ten–when he had told her he was going out for longer than usual and that she must wait alone until his return. She was instantly terrified, certain that he would not be coming back, that he was leaving her. She threw herself against him, sobbing wildly, begging him not to go, not to abandon her. Carefully, gently he soothed her, stroking her long black hair, telling her it was all right, that he would be back, that no matter what happened he would never leave her.

When she had quieted enough that she was coherent again, he had said, ”Yo no abandono a mi I would never leave my girl, little one. Wherever you are, I will always be close by. You might not see me, but I will be there. You will feel me in your heart."

She supposed that it was true: that he had never really left her and had always been there in her heart. She could feel his presence when she was lonely or frightened if she searched hard enough. She could re–assure herself by remembering that his word had always been good. Even when he was gone from her life and from the world of the living, some essential part of him was still there.

It would be so this time, too. He would be there for her.

She walked to the edge of the boulders and stopped, searching the air for the demon's smell. She found it almost immediately, rank and poisonous, the stench of something that had cast aside any semblance of humanity. The air was thick with it, the sweet clean scent of the mountainside smothered under its heavy layers. It crouched within the rocks, still hidden, waiting on her. She could feel its rage and hatred and its need to sate both with her blood.

How should she handle this?

She stared into the black shadows of the boulders, searching the twisting passages that wound between. She did not believe it would be smart to go in there. Better to wait out here, to make it come to her.

Then she saw the first of the feeders as they slid like oil from out of the rocks, their shadows splotches of liquid darkness. They seemed in no hurry, their appearance almost casual. But where only a handful sur–faced at the outset, there were soon a dozen and then a dozen more.

She glanced back up the mountainside to where she had left Kirisin and his sister. They were no longer in view. With luck, they were no longer in hearing, either.

It was time to get this over with.

"Demon!" she shouted into the rocks.

Then she waited.

KIRISIN CAUGHT UP to his sister, who glanced around as he reached her and said, "Where's Angel?"

He shook his head. "She said she had something she needed to do." "Did she tell you what it was?"

"She just said we should go on without her. I told her we could wait until she was done with whatever she had to do. But she wouldn't allow it. She was pretty insistent." He shook his head. "I don't know, Sim. It doesn't feel right."

"No, it doesn't." His sister looked back down the mountain slope to where they could just make out the Knight of the Word as she stood before the cluster of massive boulders they had come past earlier.

"What do you think she is doing?" he asked her.

She hesitated a moment, and then said, "I think she's protecting us. I think that's the way she wants it. We'd better do what she says. Come on. The caves are just ahead."

They climbed the gradually steepening slope, relying on the cram–pons and ice axes for purchase. It was a slow and arduous trek, but they pushed ahead steadily, working their way across the ice field. Kirisin watched how his sister used the ax, driving it into the ice and then pulling herself forward, and he did the same. Once or twice, he glanced back to look for Angel, and each time he found her right where he had seen her last, poised and waiting at the edge of the boulders. Once, he thought he heard her shout something, but the wind blowing down from the higher elevations masked her words.

Again, he almost turned back, the need to do so suddenly com–pelling. But he kept moving anyway, putting one foot in front of the other, hammering his ax into the ice and pulling himself ahead.

Then he topped a rise that led onto a rocky flat, and he couldn't see her anymore.

"Kirisin!" his sister called back to him, shouting to be heard above the wind. She pointed ahead.

The entrance to the caves was a black hole almost buried within a cluster of snow–shrouded boulders, shards of ice hanging off the open–ing like a frozen curtain. From where they stood, it looked small and al–most insignificant against the broad sweep of the mountain, as if it might be no more than the burrow of some animal. As they drew closer, it became steadily larger, taking on more definition. When they reached it, they stopped for a more careful look. It was hard to deter–mine much from the outside. The entrance sloped downward into the mountain, narrow and low enough that they could tell they would have to stoop to get through. Farther back, it seemed to widen, but the shadows made it hard to be sure. Beyond that, it was too dark to see anything.

Simralin looked at him. "Ready, Little K?"

He nodded, not at all sure that he was, but determined to finish this no matter what.

His sister took out her solar torch from her pack and switched it on.

With a final glance at Kirisin, she started ahead, stooping to clear the entrance, shining the broad beam of the torch into the blackness ahead. Kirisin followed wordlessly, his own torch in hand. In moments they were inside, swallowed by the shadows and the rock, the snowy slopes of the mountainside left behind.

To Kirisin's surprise, the way forward was bright enough that their torches were unnecessary. Light seeped through cracks in the tunnel rock, diffused by ice windows that had frozen permanently beneath the outer layers of snow. Ice coated the walls and ceiling of the cave, sculpted as in the visions shown him twice now by the Elfstones, sym–metrically formed scallops running back along the walls and ceiling for as far as the eye could see. The light reflected off the scallops in strange patterns that lay all across the surface of the cave. Here and there, rain–bow colors flashed, formed of unexpected and random refractions, small wonders amid the gloom.

Fifty yards back, a frozen pillar of ridged ice rose from the cavern floor to a gap in the ceiling. A waterfall had tumbled through a hole in the cavern ceiling in another, warmer time, freezing in place as the cold set in, creating this strange column. Sunlight channeled downward by the ice created the impression that the column was lit from within. Kirisin stepped close and peered into the ice. Within its cloudy depths, tiny creatures hung suspended in time.

The caves grew darker after that, the sources of light fading one by one, the gloom enveloping everything. The solar torches became neces–sary, and the way forward could only be glimpsed in patches as the beams crossed from one place to another. The cold grew deeper and more pervasive, matched by an intense silence. If not for the crunch of their crampons digging into the ice–coated cave floor and the huff of their rough breathing, there would have been no sound at all.

Ahead, the walls of the cavern began to broaden and the ceiling to lift. Stalactites dripped and became ice–coated spears, some as thick as a man's leg, some longer than Simralin was tall. The shadows rippled in the glow of the solar torches, and the sheen of ice that coated every–thing glimmered with colors that danced like flames. From deeper in, still beyond the reach of the torchlight, water rushed and cascaded over rocks.

Simralin stopped. "I think you should use the Stones, Little K." She flashed the beam of her torch right and left. "Do you see? Tunnels branch off in several directions from here. We need to know which way to go."

Kirisin nodded, but looked around doubtfully. He didn't care much for the idea of trying to summon the magic of the Elfstones in this con–fined space. Who knew what it might do underground? But he duti–fully fished out the Stones, dumped them into his palm, held out his fist, closed his eyes, and formed a mental picture of the Loden. The re–sponse was so instantaneous that it made him jump in surprise. The Elfstones flared sharply, and the blue light shot from his hand and down the corridor directly ahead to illuminate something crouched in the middle of a massive cavern chamber, something that was more nightmare than vision.

The light from the Elfstones dimmed and vanished. Kirisin stood in shocked silence with his sister, staring down the black hole of the cave tunnel.

"Did you see?" he whispered, shaken.

"I saw something," she replied. "But I don't think it was real." "It looked real to me."

"No, it was just a carving. Out of ice and rock."

"It was a dragon, Sim."

She shook her head. "There aren't any dragons. You know that."

Well, he did, but that didn't make him feel any better about what he had seen. He tucked the Elfstones back in his pocket beneath his all–weather cloak, suddenly wishing he were wearing something more pro–tective.

"Let's go have a look," she said, and started ahead once more.

They passed down the corridor, moving from one chamber to an–other, winding their way deeper and deeper into the mountain. The beams of their torches cut through the darkness, giving them some re–assurance that they were not about to be set upon. Time slipped away, and still the tunnels and caves continued and there was no sign of the chamber and its dragon. Kirisin began to wonder if he really had seen a dragon. He began to wonder if the altitude had affected him and he was starting to see things that weren't there.

And then suddenly they passed out of a broad tunnel into a huge cavern, and there it was.

They stopped the moment they saw it, tiny figures in its presence. The dragon was huge, fully thirty feet tall if it was an inch, crouched down on four legs at the chamber's very center, its body covered with scales and horns, leathery wings folded back against its body, claws ex–tended at the ends of its crooked toes, spiked tail curled back around its hindquarters like a giant whip.

But it was its mouth–or more accurately, its jaws–that drew their immediate attention. The great head was lowered so that the lower jaw and long, forked tongue rested on the cavern floor. The upper jaw was stretched open to the breaking point, so wide that a man eight feet tall could have walked upright to the back of its throat. Teeth ridged the jaws in double rows, top and bottom, front to back, like bars across a gate leading into a dark fortress.

Kirisin stared at the monster, transfixed. Simralin had been right: a layer of ice covered over what appeared to be chiseled stone, every–thing frozen in place. It was not alive; it was only a sculpture.

But what was it doing here?

He looked suddenly at its eyes, cloudy orbs within its fierce face. A shiver ran down the back of his neck, and he took an involuntary step back.

— Kirisin Belloruus

The voice whispered to him, hushed and disembodied, the voice he had heard earlier that same morning when he had used the Elfstones to find the cave entrance. Calling to him. Summoning him.

He took a quick breath. "Sim," he whispered. "Did you hear … ?"

"Use the Elfstones," she interrupted, not listening to him.

"This has to be where it is."

Kirisin already knew that. He already knew a whole lot more than he wanted to. He couldn't have explained it, not in a rational way. He just knew in the way you sometimes knew things. By how being close to them made you feel. By how logic took a backseat to instinct. He wished it weren't so, but there it was. He just knew.

He didn't have to use the Elfstones to find out where the Loden was. It was inside the dragon.

This was more of Pancea Rolt Gotrin's work. Magic of a kind that no longer existed had been used to create this dragon and to place the Loden within. The dragon was the Elfstone's protector. It was its keeper and its warden. If you wanted to take possession of the Loden, you had to brave the dragon's maw. You had to accept on faith or what–ever reasonable argument you could make to yourself that it would let you pass.

But how would it know who to admit? There had to be a way, a trigger for determining whom it should be.

"The Loden is inside the dragon," he said to his sister. "I have to go in after it."

She shook her head at once. "Oh, no. That's entirely too dangerous. We have to be certain about this first."

She walked forward to stand right in front of the dragon's mouth, shining the beam of her solar torch through the rows of teeth and into the throat. The beam shone to the front of the throat and stopped as if it had encountered a wall.

"There's nothing back there," she announced, leaning forward to peer inside.

Kirisin knew that this wasn't so. But Sim would have to be con–vinced. He reached into his pocket and took out the Elfstones. Then he walked forward to stand next to her. He let her see what he was hold–ing, then closed his hand about the Stones, squeezed his eyes shut, and went inside himself once more, searching for an image of the Loden. He had his vision in place quickly, and his response from the Elfstones more quickly still. The magic flared within his fist, and its blue light ex–ploded down the dragon's throat, past where Simralin's torchlight had stopped and then down farther still, traveling a distance too far to de–termine, coming to rest finally on a pedestal that cradled a white gem–stone blazing as brightly as a small sun.

The light from Kirisin's Elfstones died away, and he looked over at his sister questioningly.

"Okay," she said. "But I'm going with you."

He shook his head. "I don't think you can. I don't think it's allowed. This dragon is some kind of watchdog. Pancea Rolt Gotrin and her fam–ily probably constructed it with magic. They put the Loden Elfstone inside to protect it. It keeps out everyone who isn't permitted to enter. A moment ago, I was wondering how the dragon would know who to let in. I think the blue Elfstones are the key. I think that's one reason Pancea's shade gave them to me. Whoever holds the Stones is allowed inside. Everyone else gets …"

He trailed off, shrugging. "Eaten or something."

"You think this, but you don't know it," she pointed out.

He shook his head. "I think it, but I also feel it." He tapped his chest. "In here."

His sister gave him a long, hard look. "I don't like it. What if you're wrong?"

"Then you can come get me out. That's what big sisters are for. Meanwhile, you can wait here for Angel. She should be along any mo–ment now. She needs to know what we're doing."

He could see Simralin struggling to find something more to say, still unhappy with what he was proposing. But they both knew there wasn't any other choice if they were to have a chance of gaining pos–session of the Loden. And after all, that was what they had come this far to do. In the final analysis, that was what they must do.

She gave a deep sigh and nodded. "Be careful. If there's magic at work, you won't have much protection."

"About as much as I had in the tombs of Ashenell," he replied, smil–ing. "Keep the faith, Sim."

She smiled back. "You keep it for me, Little K."

He turned back to the dragon. Its jaws yawned before him, an invi–tation to enter the blackest of maws. He gave a quick glance at its rows of teeth and then at the strange glassy eyes, wondering again if he had seen them move.

Then he started forward, the blue Elfstones held out before him like a talisman.