Wards of Faerie

14

“Aphenglow!”

She hadn’t quite reached the Council chamber doors when her uncle’s voice brought her about. Ellich was coming toward her, beckoning for her to wait for him. The other members were filing out, moving past her without glancing over, their expressions grave.

When Phaedon walked by he gave her a smile that was neither pleasant nor encouraging. “Good luck, Aphenglow,” he whispered.

Ellich hurried over. “Your grandfather wants to see you in his private chambers at the palace. I’m to take you to him.” He glanced over at Phaedon’s departing back. “My nephew. What a waste. Ignore him. Everyone else does.”

She didn’t believe it for a minute, but she appreciated his efforts at trying to cheer her up. She was still trying to come to terms with her grandfather’s decision to let her use the Elfstones but only here in Arborlon. She had thought all along that she would either be given the Elfstones to take with her or refused altogether. Given this new wrinkle, she would have to readjust her thinking. She would get half of what she had asked for, and she would have to make the most of it.

“I’m fine,” she told Ellich, giving him a reassuring smile.

“I doubt that. You were counting on your grandfather to do the right thing, and he allowed himself to be swayed. That can’t be easy to swallow. But what just happened is typical. A request is made. A proposal offered. Phaedon inevitably objects to all or part of whatever is voiced. My brother then splits the difference in the best way he can devise. But he will not go up against his son. There is a part of him that knows he should—even that he must—but he can’t seem to find his way to doing so.”

They were outside the Council chamber now, walking down the exterior hallway. She caught sight of Cymrian slipping through a set of doors far down the hallway. He glanced her way, gave a quick nod, and was gone.

“How long have things been like this?” she asked.

Ellich shrugged. “What year is it?”

So it was that bad. She should consider herself lucky, she realized. It could have been much worse. Fatal to her efforts, if her request had been denied altogether. She supposed she had never really thought that would happen, but she had been foolish not to anticipate that it might. Phaedon’s control over his father was much stronger than she had been led to believe.

At least she would get one chance to discover where the Elfstones could be found—one chance to look at where they might be hidden.

She would have to make good use of it.

They walked down the steps leading from the Council Hall to the roadway and started for the palace. All around them, Elves were going about their business, paying no attention to Aphenglow, oblivious to everything in which she was involved. No one greeted her; no one even seemed to know her. She felt like an intruder. She felt again how alone she was, how far removed from her home and her people. Maybe it was the Druid robes. Or maybe it was simply that Phaedon was right and she no longer belonged. It was a bitter admission, and she refused to make it.

“You made the best argument you could, Aphen,” her uncle said quietly. “I can’t think of anything else you could have said. The problem is not in your presentation or even the rightness of your cause. It lies with an innate distrust of the Druid order, a distrust that has been in place since Grianne Ohmsford’s days as Ard Rhys.”

She moved closer to him, keeping her voice down. “I can understand their distrust of Grianne. She gave everyone reason to distrust her. And to fear her, as well. But she has been gone a long time. Khyber Elessedil is one of us. She’s done nothing to earn such distrust. If anything, the Elves should be supporting her. And the Druid order. We should be allies, not antagonists.”

“You are entirely right. We should.” Ellich kept his head bent, but his eyes shifted this way and that. “But we aren’t and we won’t be anytime soon. Once settled in place, distrust is hard to dislodge. Especially when the Druids keep themselves so isolated from the rest of us. They deliberately hold themselves apart. Oh, I know the reasons for it. But that doesn’t change the impact it generates. It is the appearance of things that matters. It looks elitist. It fosters resentment and suspicion.”

She knew it was so. But having lived these past ten years with a foot in both camps, she also knew how wrong such thinking was. If anything, the Druids wanted to be accepted as allies by all of the Races. But it must be all. Any display of favoritism compromised their credibility. Staying aloof from the everyday lives of the Races was one way to reinforce their determination to remain impartial. The problem was that no one saw it that way. It felt to the average citizen as if the Druids considered themselves superior and preferred their own company to that of ordinary people.

When they arrived at the palace, Ellich led Aphenglow around to the north side and down a narrow pathway through tall hedges and flowering vines tied onto a series of trellis frameworks. Weaving their way through the maze, they arrived at a small, windowless door that was completely hidden from any other approach. Ellich stopped and knocked twice, paused and knocked once more. She heard a stirring on the other side; then the door opened and her grandfather stepped forward to embrace her.

“Aphenglow,” he whispered as he hugged her close. “Child of light.”

It was the meaning of her Elven name, but only her grandfather called her that now. Her father had done so when he was alive and her mother until she departed to join the Druids, and she was surprised to discover how much she missed it.

“Grandfather,” she replied. “Thank you so much for helping me.”

He stepped away from her, shaking his head. “We both know I could have done more. But doing more would have risked a confrontation with Phaedon and the other members of the High Council over the purpose of your request. It was vague enough that I couldn’t put it to a vote, but not so vague that I couldn’t do what I did. One opportunity, one time. I hope you understand.”

She smiled. “Of course I understand. It isn’t much different with the Druids. We argue all the time about what we should be doing and how we should be going about it. Everything is maneuvering and compromise. Are you well?”

He shrugged. “Well enough.”

He brought her inside the room, one hand clasped possessively about her arm, and led her over to a sofa where he sat them both down. Ellich followed, closing and locking the garden door behind them.

“I have missed you so much, Aphen,” her grandfather said. “You can’t imagine. I think often of those days when you were a little girl and I was still young enough to play leapfrog with you. Do you remember? Of course you do. You used to laugh so.”

She smiled and nodded with him, delighted by this memory, a favorite of her own. “We both laughed, Grandfather.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, and his face grew grave. “Now tell me, child. Is there nothing more you can reveal to me of this search you will undertake? Of the nature of the magic you are seeking to recover? Here, in the privacy of my chambers, with only you and I and Ellich to hear, couldn’t you tell me something more? Only just a little? It would help so with what I might be able to do for you.”

Tears flooded her eyes unbidden. “I am sworn to say nothing,” she repeated. “I gave my word to Khyber. Otherwise I would.” She saw the hope that had momentarily glinted in her grandfather’s eyes disappear. “I can tell you this much,” she said hurriedly, not wanting to leave him with nothing. “What we seek is powerful and has the potential for doing much good. But it is an unknown quantity, and therefore very dangerous. Until we find it and examine it—possibly until we use it—we cannot know for certain the consequences of employing its power. What we do know is that if word of this reaches the wrong ears, it will likely encourage unwanted interest in our efforts.”

Her grandfather leaned close, as if anxious to make certain. “And are you convinced of this, Aphen?”

She nodded. “I am. Knowing what I do of the possible impact of this magic, I think the danger is very great.”

“Then perhaps this magic should be left where it is.”

It stopped her for a moment, the possibility that he was right. What if they simply left well enough alone? But they were committed to recovering all of the lost magic of Faerie, of gaining possession so that it could be protected from those who would abuse it. Yet this was Elven magic, and only Elves could use it. Wasn’t she admitting that the danger they were seeking to avoid lay entirely with her own people?

“I think we ignore the potential for destructive uses of any kind of power at our peril,” she said finally. “But especially here.”

“She is right, Emperowen,” Ellich broke in. “We have learned that lesson often enough in the past. Every time we thought that by stepping back or turning away things would work out on their own, they didn’t. They just got worse. That has been our history as Elves.”

The King gave his brother a look. “I sense a rebuke in those words, Ellich. As if, perhaps, you might be referring to something other than Aphen’s search for this lost magic. Something closer to home, perhaps?”

Ellich shook his head slowly. “No, brother. You don’t need me to rebuke you. You need me to support you. So that is what I do. That is what I will always do.”

The King turned back to Aphen. “What will you do with this magic if you find it?”

“Keep it safe,” she answered at once.

“With the Druids?”

She nodded.

“When it is an Elven magic you seek? When it belongs to us?”

“It was lost by Elves. By our ancestors. Or given up, Grandfather. That road was traveled long ago. Magic no longer belongs only to the Elves; it belongs to everyone. It isn’t meant for only one people. It must be used for the good of the people of all the Races.”

“But only Elves can use Elven magic.”

“Then other Elves besides those few already in residence must come to Paranor to train with the Druid order. I have asked for this before, but it seems that to go to the Druids is to become an outcast.”

Her grandfather shook his head. “I cannot change the feelings of the Elven people, Aphen. I cannot alter history. When the Druids give us reason to trust them again, perhaps things will change.”

There was no point in pursuing this argument, and so she simply leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “At least we trust each other,” she whispered in his ear. She glanced at Ellich. “At least, the three of us share that trust.”

Her grandfather nodded, smiling. “We must make the best of things, mustn’t we, child?” He gripped her shoulders anew, then released her and rose. “I will give you the Elfstones now. Freely and willingly, in the way required, so that you may use them once, here within the confines of Arborlon. One time only, Aphen. Are we agreed?”

She smiled back. “We are.”

“Wait here.”

He disappeared through the chamber door and down the hallway leading deeper into the palace interior. She watched him go, and then sat quietly with Ellich, waiting for his return.

“He is doing what he can,” her uncle said finally.

“I know that.”

“He loves you.”

“I know that, too. I do not blame him for anything he does. I am grateful he does this much.”

“Not exactly what you had hoped for, though.”

“It will have to be enough.”

They sat together in silence after that, listening to the muffled twitter of birdsong from the gardens and trees outside and the murmur of voices from somewhere deeper within the palace. Aphenglow stared out the chamber window at a fleet of passing clouds and wondered how she could best use the Elfstones. What strength would it require to summon the magic, what images should she attempt to conjure, what interpretation might she need to employ to understand what she was shown? She knew how the blue Elfstones were meant to work, but she had never seen them used or ever thought that she would be the one to use them.

It should be the Ard Rhys who summons their magic. It should be Khyber Elessedil doing this.

But that choice had not been given her. She was the one who would have to manage the summoning, and she was not at all sure she was equal to the task.

Her grandfather, when he returned, came through the door quickly and quietly, almost as if fearful that he had been followed. He locked the door behind him, sat down again beside her, and held out his hand. His fingers gripped the drawstrings of a small leather pouch.

“Promise me, Aphen,” he said. His aging face was troubled. “Promise me that you will not betray the Elves. That you will do your best to protect our interests as well those of the Druid order. Can you do that? Can you make me that promise?”

She nodded, her eyes locked on his. “I promise. The best I can do, I will do.”

He lowered the bag gently into her open palm. “Then take the Elfstones and make use of them. You have until sunset to do so. Then you must return them.”

He released his grip on the drawstrings and leaned back, waiting for her response. Her fingers closed about the bag, gripping it tightly. She leaned forward and kissed him on his cheek once more. “I love you, Grandfather.”

Then she rose and went out the garden door with Ellich following close behind.

They walked together for a short distance, neither of them speaking, lost in their separate thoughts, and then she turned to him. “I need to do this alone, Ellich. I’m sorry.”

He smiled, nodded. “Don’t be. I expected as much. But be careful, Aphen. You have been attacked twice already. Oh, don’t look so surprised. Arlingfant told me. You knew she would. She worries for you. As do I. So, please be careful.”

He left her then, turning away for his own home. She was surprised to realize that she had pushed any thoughts of the prior attacks so far back in her consciousness, she had all but forgotten them. It was easy for her to acknowledge her status as an outcast—if not so easy to accept it—but difficult to think of herself as threatened in the city in which she had been born and raised.

She started walking again, mulling over her uncle’s words. Would she be attacked yet a third time? Was that at all likely? Would they dare to come at her in broad daylight, with other Elves all around? If so, would they try to stop her from using the Elfstones? Would they attempt to steal them?

Well, she thought darkly, she was ready if anyone tried.

“Is it your intention to make things easy for any possible attackers by daydreaming?” Cymrian asked her, appearing suddenly at her elbow.

She glowered at him. “Isn’t it your job to keep me safe? Do I need to be worried that the effort required is beyond you?”

“I can protect you. But it would help if you were to offer a modicum of assistance.”

She hated that he had surprised her like this. She hadn’t heard him until he was right on top of her, and that shouldn’t have been possible. She took a deep breath, exhaled, and nodded.

“You’re right. I wasn’t helping. I can’t seem to get used to the idea that here, in my home city, among my own people, I am in danger.”

He nodded wordlessly, keeping pace at her side, his lean face grave. “Well, you might want to start.”

“Where have you been, anyway?”

“Shadowing you.”

She decided not to ask how he had managed this, but simply to accept that he had. She looked over at him. “You followed me after I left the Council chambers?”

“Isn’t that my job?”

“Did you hear what was said?”

He shrugged. “I don’t need to eavesdrop to protect you.”

“You can’t come with me.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I have to do something, and I have to do it alone. No one else can be present.”

He smiled, shrugged. “Where will you go to do this secret something?” He saw her hesitation. “Not so I can eavesdrop, but so I can make a reasonable effort to protect you. I need to be close enough to reach you if there’s trouble.”

She gave him a look. “I don’t think anything is going to happen, Cymrian.”

“It won’t if I’m close enough to prevent it.”

She almost told him what nonsense it was to insist on this, but it would have involved an argument she did not care to engage in. “Very well. I will go to the south end of the Carolan, where the big oaks grow and it is sheltered enough for me to have privacy. Fair enough?”

He bowed his head, pursed his lips, and nodded silently.

“So you can leave me now and let me go on alone. And do not let me catch you spying on me.”

He moved away from her and disappeared soundlessly. She walked on, using her heightened senses to track him, to make sure he hadn’t lied. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him; it was that she understood how great the temptation would be to watch. He was good at moving unseen and unheard, but she would not allow it this time.

When she was certain she was alone she stepped off the path into the trees and crept away.

She did not go to the Carolan. She had never intended to go there in the first place, but it was best if he thought otherwise. She went instead to the north edge of the city where the wildness crept close to the bluff edge and the forest was dark and deep. She worked her way through the trees to the small clearing to which she had gone to be alone when she was a child. It had been years since she had visited her secret hiding place, but she remembered well enough how to find it. The years fell away as she threaded her way through deep undergrowth and ancient trees, finding familiar memories all along the way, some in the form of recognizable terrain, some in the ephemeral form of abandoned dreams and lost hopes.

Soon enough she had arrived, and she was back in her childhood for a few precious moments before taking out the pouch with the Elfstones and spilling them into her palm. She stood staring down at the perfectly formed gemstones, admiring the simplicity of their design, the stunning depth of their blue color, and the play of light through their smooth facets. She had never seen them, had only been able to imagine how they would look. Her imagination had not been equal to the task.

She took a deep breath. What should she do next?

Three stones—one each for the heart, mind, and body of the user, representing a combination of personal strengths that must be brought to bear. The weight and intensity of those strengths would determine the success of her effort.

But she had no image she could bring to mind of what it was she sought. She knew nothing of the place in which the missing Elfstones might be hidden, or even what they looked like. Those who had lived at the time they’d been stolen were long dead.

On what could she focus that would reveal what she wanted to know? What image would it take?

For a moment, she felt overwhelmed. What she had been given to do was so important that even the thought of failure was debilitating. This was the only chance the Druids might have to find what they sought, the only opportunity that might be given to them. And the opportunity belonged to her. What she made of it might well influence everything that happened afterward. She could not afford to make a mistake.

But what must she do? What image must she attempt to summon?

She stood lost in thought for a long time, considering her choices, finding them weak or convoluted or simply useless. Why was she finding this so difficult?

Finally, she walked over to a fallen log and sat down to think. She knew she was distraught, confused, worried, and a dozen other things and all of these were working against her. She took a moment to distance herself from the present, recalling the times she had come here as a child. She looked out across the few segments of the Rill Song that were visible through the trees where the river snaked its way west, a silver thread amid the deep greens. She looked at the sky, streaked with wisps of clouds and washed with sunlight. The day was bright and clear and smelled of home.

She wondered suddenly if perhaps she did belong here among her own people rather than at Paranor with the Druids.

Perhaps Ellich and the others were right.

Abruptly she was back on her feet, pushing the thought aside, burying it. Elfstones tightly clasped, she stretched out her arm, eyes closed, summoning an image of three blue Elfstones nestled among a collection of others, their colors varied and shifting, all of them back-dropped by a wash of whiteness that caused everything else to disappear.

She focused her thoughts on the image, allowed her breathing to slow and her body to relax and disappear into herself. Where are you?

She felt a slow, insistent heat begin to rise. The magic was awake, an unmistakable presence within her. It stirred sluggishly, troubling her like an itch, then began to spread, flowing from her hand into her outstretched arm, into her chest and through her body, filling her up until she was consumed. She felt no fear as this happened; she experienced no distress. If anything, it felt natural to her. It felt familiar in the way that something you have never seen but always known in your heart feels familiar.

Show me what I need to know.

The heat turned to a brilliant blue light that enveloped her fist, swallowing it. The light intensified, building strength. She watched it happen, fascinated. The light pulsated; its steady throbbing seemed to match the beating of her heart.

Then the light broke free and shot away into the afternoon light and took her with it.

Surrounded by the blue glow of Elven magic, she rides it across the landscape of the Elven Westland, a passenger aboard a swift bird in flight. She is frightened at first, but almost as fast as it appears the fear is gone. She senses she is in no danger; she can feel the rightness of what is happening to her. She has summoned the magic, communicated her wishes, and now she is to be shown what she has asked to see. She need only pay attention to the signposts along the way. She need only take note of the path that the Druids would soon be required to follow. She must remember everything to help them do so.

She is whisked across the Rill Song and into the broad valley of the Sarandanon, the bread basket of the Elven nation. Planted fields and orchards spread away in patchwork fashion, squares and rectangles. Men and women work those fields. Livestock graze them. Homes and barns and pens mark the beginning and end of territories claimed and cultivated. Sunlight bathes the landscape, and time slows.

Then she is past the farmland and heading for the stark wall of the Kensrowe Mountains, the light suddenly angling north of the passes at Halys Cut and Baen Draw, north of the broad flat surface of the Innisbore. She is being taken into territory she has never seen, farther north still toward the juncture of the Breakline and Hoare Flats. This is Troll country, wild and mostly unexplored. The light angles this way and that through the mountain peaks, dropping far enough that she can see clearly the features of the ground beneath her. She sees strange, remarkable formations. A trio of rock columns have the look of sentries. A deep depression in the earth is riven with gullies and splits. Marshland is cradled between huge mountains and given life by a microclimate peculiar to a piece of land that cannot consist in total of more than a dozen miles.

The light carries her farther still, deeper into the mountains, much closer to the earth than earlier. She is skimming the ground like a swimmer riding the crest of a wave. She feels heat and cold envelop her in sudden bursts, unaccounted for by anything she is seeing. The mountains surround her, vast and immutable. Ahead, beyond the Breakline and Hoare Flats, lie miles of bleak wilderness that eventually lead to the Blue Divide. Only Wing Riders venture this far into the mountains, able to fly safely overhead aboard their Rocs, and even they come only when it is necessary. This is dangerous country, a treacherous landscape filled with creatures and strangeness that Elves have only heard about and no one she knows has ever seen.

But this is where she has been taken, so this is where the Druids must come.

Then everything begins to happen very fast. The blue light seems to pick up speed and the landscape to blur. The mountains and their distinctive formations lose shape and sharpness, and everything flashes by so quickly that she loses her sense of direction entirely.

Ahead, something shimmers in the darkness.

A curtain of some kind. A waterfall, perhaps.

But it is dark and troubling.

The blue light spears directly toward the shimmering, carrying her in its grip, a suddenly unwilling passenger fearful of what is about to happen. She feels an unmistakable urgency and finds herself holding her breath.

Caught up in the Elfstone magic, she strikes the shimmering surface and passes through. She feels no impact on doing so, but senses an odd change in her makeup—as if she has lost some part of herself.

Things get even stranger after that.

The blue light carries her through forests and over mountains and plains and across rivers and lakes. None of them look familiar. There is a fresh sense of urgency to the light’s movement. A fortress flashes past, dark and scarred and jagged, and then something else—something she cannot identify—vast and circular and menacing. Down she sweeps through an opening in the earth, down into depths so dark she can see almost nothing. A flash of stone steps startles her, what appears to be a passageway follows, then a cavern, and then something massive and alive that stirs in recognition of the magic’s intrusion.

And finally she spies a small metal box on which is carved a crest of crossed blades athwart a field of wheat with a bird flying overhead.

An instant later the blue light fades, the magic dies away, and she is back in her forest sanctuary staring out at the sunlit sweep of the Elven Westland.

She stood where she was for a moment, still caught up in the swiftness of her journey, stunned by the abruptness of her return. She stared out across the plains west from her vantage point on the heights, knowing she must remember everything.

It was all a jumble of images, but she knew she had to sort those images out, had to place them in sequence and store them carefully.

She was attempting to do so when she sensed movement behind her.

She turned just as the five black-garbed figures came at her out of the trees. They carried iron bars and wooden cudgels, and there were too many of them. She would have been finished if she hadn’t still been holding the Elfstones. Her fear and desperation triggered their magic instantly. A fireball of blue light exploded from her clenched fist and hammered into her attackers, stopping them before they reached her, tossing them aside as if they weighed nothing.

She hesitated only an instant before bolting for freedom.

It was an instant too long.

They lay scattered about her in various stages of semi-consciousness, and she had thought to get past them before they could recover their wits. She ran hard, dodging bodies and limbs, but she missed noticing the man who had been farthest away from the blow dealt to the others. He was on his knees, crouched and ready as she sped past him. She was well within reach of the iron bar he gripped, and he swung hard at her as she fled, the bar connecting with her left leg. She went down screaming in pain, her shinbone broken, and he was on her instantly.

Sitting astride her chest, pressing the bar down hard against her throat so that she could not breathe, he whispered. “Give me the Elfstones. Quick now, or I’ll break your neck, too.”

Her air cut off, her body pinned, black spots obscuring her vision, she opened her fingers.

In the next instant, the man disappeared, his weight gone as he tumbled away. She gave out a gasp of relief, able to breathe again, and tried to see what was happening. A battle was being fought between her attackers and someone else. But there were bodies flying everywhere, and forest shadows were mixed with black-clad attackers. She could hear grunts and cries, the sounds of metal on metal and the sharp hiss of life suddenly cut short. Several of her attackers went sprawling anew, and this time they did not get up. Two—she thought them the last—fought in silent desperation against a newcomer. No one spoke. The battle was swift and brutal and final.

In seconds all of those who had sought to hurt her lay still, and Cymrian was kneeling next to her.

“You test my patience, Aphen.”

She struggled to rise, but he pushed her down. “Don’t do that. Your leg is broken and needs to be set.”

She nodded and lay back obediently. “Thanks for coming,” she whispered.

“I would have come sooner if I had known where you were.”

She nodded again. “I know. It was foolish not to tell you the truth. I’m sorry.”

“Just promise me you won’t lie to me again.”

“I promise.” She met his gaze and held it. “I do.”

He reached down and handed her the Elfstones. “I think it would be best if you kept these.”

She took the Stones from him, fumbled them into her pocket, and watched in silence as he began the work of splinting her leg.