Wards of Faerie

29

By the time she regained the ground floor of the main tower, safely out of the black pit that housed the ancient magic she had gone to find, Aphenglow Elessedil was a mess. Her clothes were disheveled and stained with damp and sweat, her face and hair were smudged with dirt, and her leg ached so badly she could barely walk on it. She limped from the tower to the adjoining courtyard and crossed to the steps leading up to the ramparts of the Inner Wall, searching for anyone at all. She was scared and frantic and desperate to impart what she knew.

She had so little time, she kept thinking. So very little.

She was close to collapse when she encountered Krolling descending the stone stairway she was coming up.

“Aphenglow?” he questioned in shock.

Everything was spinning. She toppled over and he caught hold of her. “Call the others,” she gasped. “I have something … I have to tell …”

Without a word, he picked her up like a child and carried her back up the stairs and along the ramparts. On the way, they found Bombax and several more of the Druid Guard, who fell into line behind them. Krolling took her all the way to the tower where her sleeping chambers were located and then into her bedroom, where he placed her carefully on her bed. By then, Arlingfant and Cymrian had appeared as well. Her sister ran out of the room in tears, but quickly returned with warm water and cloths and set about cleaning her up.

“What happened?” Bombax demanded, looking as if he wanted to inflict serious pain on someone. “Who did this to you?”

She shook her head. “No one. Find Woostra. I need … him here, too.”

She lay back again, closed her eyes, and gave herself over to Arlingfant’s tender hands, soothed by the feel of the damp cloth on her face, catching stray drops of water on her tongue and feeding them into her parched mouth. She couldn’t remember how she had gotten to this state, couldn’t imagine she had missed it happening. What she could remember was the descent into the pit, following the whispering of the voice, the lure of its beckoning, as she tried to discover what it wanted. What she could recall were the darkness and damp and the presence of the terrible thing that lived within them. She kept hearing its voice in her mind—the one that had spoken so clearly at the end—shrieking at her. She kept hearing it repeat the same words over and over.

Get out! Now!

Woostra came through the doorway, and they were all present save for the Trolls still on watch atop the Inner Wall. She forced herself to sit up, gently moving Arlingfant away. “Later,” she told her sister, silencing her protests.

“We’re compromised,” she told them, keeping her voice calm and steady. “The Federation is tunneling under Paranor’s walls out where we can’t see what they’re doing. They aren’t building siege machines; they’re burrowing into the Keep. They’ve discovered the magic that wards us doesn’t extend below the walls. We have to get out of here right away. I don’t know how much time we have, but I don’t think it’s a lot.”

“Aphen, wait a minute!” Bombax interjected. “How do you know all this?”

“The Keep told me.” She saw the mix of confusion and disbelief in his eyes. “Don’t doubt me on this, Bombax. Paranor has always spoken to me. The voice was always there. It was Woostra who suggested I might be hearing the old magic that dwells in the pit beneath the main tower. He told me it might be trying to tell me something and was doing so because Grianne’s wards were failing.”

She turned to face Woostra. “You were right. When I went into the tower, the voice began to whisper to me right away. At first, I couldn’t understand what it was saying. I went down into the pit. I went so far down I couldn’t see where I’d come from. The farther down I went, the clearer the whispering became. I began to understand words and then phrases. I could tell the voice was coming from the thing that lived in the pit, from the old magic conjured when Paranor was built. I could feel it stirring; I could see it moving …”

Bombax reached for her arm. “Aphen, calm down. Maybe you just thought …”

“Don’t patronize me, Bombax!” she shrieked at him in fury. “Just listen! I heard it! I saw it! It was real! And the last thing I heard was so terrifying I ran back up those stairs …”

She caught her breath, shook her head. “It wants to come out of there, whatever it is, whatever it intends, and it’s telling us we don’t want to be here when it does.”

Bombax nodded slowly, chastened. “All right, calm down. I believe you. I do. Don’t be angry with me. I just needed to be sure you believed yourself. You’re asking us to leave Paranor, Aphen. To abandon her to the Federation.”

“It isn’t exactly what she’s asking,” Woostra said, pursing his lips thoughtfully, giving the big Druid a long look.

Bombax hesitated. “You think the old magic won’t let that happen, that it will stop the Federation?”

“I think it will do whatever it needs to do to protect itself. I think it wanted Aphenglow to grant it permission to come out of the pit and put a stop to what’s being done to it. And it is warning us not to be here when that happens.”

“But we can’t allow that! Not without the Ard Rhys giving permission for it! Not without her even knowing!”

“We have no idea where she is,” Aphenglow pointed out. “And we don’t have time to find her.”

“She’s beyond helping us,” Woostra added. “Beyond even advising us. We have to make this decision on our own.”

There was a long silence as those gathered looked from face to face. “The first thing we have to do,” Aphenglow said finally, “is figure out how we’re going to get out of the Keep without getting killed.”

“We can use the tunnels,” Cymrian offered.

She shook her head quickly. “Not without chancing an encounter with the Federation. They’re inside already—or if not, close to being so. We don’t know which of the tunnels they are in. Probably, they are in more than one. Maybe, they are in all of them. Some of us might make it. But we have wounded and injured to consider. If we go, no one gets left behind.”

“If we split up, we might have a better chance of avoiding them,” Cymrian pressed.

“If we split up, we reduce our strength.” Bombax shook his head. “Then we risk being cut apart piecemeal. Besides, how will we ever find one another again once we’re outside?”

“If we get out, we still have to cross through the forest on foot to reach the Dragon’s Teeth,” Krolling added. “We’ll be hunted down by Federation flits.”

“Not if we’re careful enough to—” began Cymrian.

“But maybe the Federation will be too busy worrying about what’s coming after them in the—” interrupted Bombax.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Aphenglow exclaimed impatiently, cutting through the jumble of voices and silencing them. “We’ve forgotten something. What about the Druid Histories? Can they be protected?”

“Of course!” Woostra sounded almost indignant. “The Histories are protected by a magic that cannot be breached by anyone who isn’t a Druid. They’ve survived attacks on Paranor before. They’ll survive this one, too.”

“So how do we escape before this happens?” Bombax asked, looking at Aphenglow for an answer.

She pushed herself into a sitting position. “I don’t know. You and Cymrian figure it out. Arling, help me up.”

“But, Aphen—” her sister started to object.

“Help me up!” Aphen snapped.

She had spoken more harshly than she had intended but it was too late to take it back. Arling looked stricken, but moved to help her rise.

“I’m sorry,” Aphen whispered as her sister put her arms around her and lifted.

“It’s all right,” Arling whispered back.

Leaning on her sister, Aphen moved toward the sleeping chamber door. “I won’t be long,” she called back to the others. “Start packing whatever you think we might need to take with us. We leave as soon as I get back—one way or the other.”

She had gone all the way down the length of the hall and was turning up the stairs that led to the cold chamber and scrye waters when she realized she could have had Krolling carry her and been there in half the time. But she didn’t want anyone carrying her, didn’t want to be reminded of her weakness, and liked being close again to Arling, so she let it be.

They climbed two levels of stairs and turned down the passageway that led to the cold room. It was hard going because Aphen was still exhausted from her encounter in the pit, and her leg ached from the hard use to which she had put it. But she pushed ahead wordlessly, letting Arlingfant provide support and encouragement, thinking as she did so how much she loved her. She hated herself for snapping at her sister; even those few words were too many. She would not do that again, she told herself. No matter how angry or upset she got, she would not take it out on Arling.

They reached the cold room, and she turned to her sister. “I have to do this alone. No one who isn’t a Druid is allowed in the cold room. Will you wait for me here? I shouldn’t be long.” She paused, seeing the look on her sister’s face. “Don’t worry. I’ll be all right.”

Arlingfant gave her a hug and stepped away. “I’ll be waiting.”

Aphen slipped inside and closed the door behind her. The room was draped in shadows that resisted the intrusion of even the small amount of light filtering through the windows high up on the only exterior wall. The air in the room was chilly and damp, and Aphen shivered involuntarily.

She moved as quickly as she could to the stone basin set at the center of the room, climbing onto the platform that supported it so she could read its strange greenish waters. She had not used the scrye since she had sought to find traces of Bombax when he had failed to return to the Keep, but now she would attempt to determine the whereabouts of the Ard Rhys and the expedition she led. If the Druids must abandon Paranor—no matter the cause—the others must be told. She and Bombax must find them and give them warning. To do that, she must read the waters and determine from traces of magic expended approximately where they were.

She stood over the basin and stared down into the scrye, watching as the greenish waters stirred sluggishly in their familiar clockwise manner around the walls of the stone container. The basin was shallow, and she could see the extended map of the Four Lands and surrounding territories etched in its base. Extending her arms so that her hands were poised just above the surface of the waters, she began her search, reading the lines of power that stretched across the earth, probing for any disturbance. Concentrating on the Westland, where the Ard Rhys would ultimately have gone, she quickly found what she was looking for. Traces of expended magic could be traced across miles of unsettled country far west of the Breakline.

Attacks of some sort, Aphenglow concluded. Some of the traces were older than others, so the attacks most likely had taken place on separate occasions over a series of two or three days. She marked in her memory where the last of them ended. That would be the starting point for those fleeing Paranor.

Then she cleared her efforts with a wave of her hand, and the waters of the scrye returned to their former state, their movement slow and steady and placid once more.

When she departed the cold room, closing its door one final time, she knew she might be closing it on a part of her life, as well. It was almost more than she could bear.

Night had fallen, the sunset an hour gone.

“If we can’t walk out of here, we’ll have to fly,” Bombax announced.

Aphenglow had returned from the cold room and the company of defenders had gathered once more in her sleeping chamber. It seemed odd to her that her private space had become their war room, but by unspoken mutual consent that was what it was.

“How do we do that without an airship?” she asked. “Ours are all in the hands of the Federation.”

“We steal one back,” Cymrian answered. “Bombax and I have been talking it over. We think we can manage it. Especially now that it’s dark, we won’t be so easy to spot. If we can get out onto the landing platform we can take control of at least one airship before they have a chance to stop us.”

“The Federation still guards the platform and our ships, but they aren’t putting much into the effort,” Bombax continued, leaning forward, his expression eager. “They’ve got maybe a dozen guards up there, and they’ve blocked off the ramp leading out of the Keep. They think that’s enough to keep us off the landing platform, but they’re wrong. There’s a metal catwalk attached to the underside of the ramp, and if Cymrian and I can sneak across it we can come up on them from behind.”

“You and Cymrian,” she repeated.

The Elf nodded. “Bombax and I are best suited for the job. Everyone else will be needed to help the injured Trolls onto the ship once we’ve seized it. We’ll have to move quickly. Once they see us—”

“I know,” she interrupted. “But it’s not the Federation we have to worry about.”

“The thing in the pit,” the other guessed.

“It won’t take long for it to reach the Keep proper once it starts to come out.”

“When will that happen?” Bombax asked.

Aphen shook her head. “I don’t know. It might be happening already. Woostra? What do the Histories tell us?”

The keeper of the records shrugged. “Not much. It takes a summoning to release the ancient magic, and you’ve already provided that.”

“Surely it won’t do anything until we’re safely out of here,” she said. “It made a point of warning us to go. Won’t it wait until we do?”

Woostra fixed her with a baleful eye. “Would you like to risk finding out? Delay long enough, and you might.”

They moved quickly after that, gathering everyone together at the north end of the Keep just inside the doors that opened onto the ramp leading to the airships. They pulled the last of the able Druid Guards off the walls and brought the injured ones up from the sickroom. Since the Druid airships were kept well supplied, they took nothing with them but their weapons, personal possessions, and the clothes on their backs.

“I cannot believe we are doing this,” Aphenglow said to Bombax at one point, standing close to him in the midst of the chaos surrounding their efforts to prepare for departure. There were tears in her eyes and her face was stricken. “How did we let this happen?”

The big man put his hands on her shoulders. “No one let this happen.”

“I think maybe I did. I think maybe I caused it when I brought that diary back.”

“You’ve had a rough time of it, Aphen. You’ve been forced to take on a lot. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

She hugged him to her, feeling his arms enfold her as she did. “You’ve been through a lot, too.”

“We’re Druids,” he said. “And these are extraordinary times.”

She shook her head. “No, these are terrible times.”

They were close again, at the beginning of a fresh start in their too-often strained relationship. Her life partner, her love; she wanted his support. She needed him to be with her when they were forced from their home and had everything they knew taken away from them.

That it was necessary to leave was difficult enough. That she should have to endure it without him would have been unbearable.

“We’ve been given no choice,” he told her. “If there had been another way, you would have been the first to recognize it.”

“There is no other way. I know that.”

“You didn’t want to be the one to do this,” he added.

“I didn’t want any part of it.”

His arms tightened about her. “Nor I. But here we are. And we can’t change things, no matter how much we might wish we could. Which reminds me.”

He picked her up without a word, hushing her when she started to object, and carried her down the hallway, cradling her in his arms. Knowing he had his mind made up about whatever it was he intended, she pressed her head into his shoulder and let him go.

When they reached her sleeping chamber, he set her on her feet and disappeared into her room. When he came out again, he was holding Aleia Omarosian’s diary. “You almost left this behind,” he said, handing it to her.

In truth, she had. In the rush to make preparations for leaving, she had forgotten it completely. She leaned forward and kissed him hard. “Thank you so much.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think we’re quite done with it. Do you?”

She smiled and hugged him. “Not quite.” She leaned away so she could look at him. “But you didn’t need to carry me all the way back here to retrieve it. You could have just brought it to me.”

“And missed having you all to myself, even if just for a few minutes? Do you think I’m crazy?”

Then he picked her up again and carried her back down the hallway to where the others were waiting.