So they passed through the opening, leaving the rain and the forest behind, and found themselves in chilly darkness. Aphen led with Arling following her and Cymrian acting as rearguard. Their torches cast hazy, narrow beams into the gloom to reveal a rough-hewn entry chamber and a maze of tunnels leading away from it. After brushing the rain from their cloaks and giving Cymrian a moment to search for any sign of hidden traps and snares, Aphen chose the passageway she believed the Elfstones had revealed in their vision and the three companions set out.
They walked for a long time through the tunnels without reaching an end. Aphen was surprised to discover she remembered almost all the twists and turns she was meant to take. Only once was she required to employ the Elfstones to reassure herself she was making was the right choice. The rest of the time her memory was good enough that using the Elfstones wasn’t necessary.
Even so, she was carrying them in her hand now, ready to help Cymrian if matters suddenly turned dangerous. They had come so far and gone through so much that she was not about to let anything stop them now.
It was this determination that led her to reflect on the fact she was leading her sister to the very fate she had promised to save her from. She could pretend otherwise, could say she was only doing what they had all agreed on and what Arling herself had decided, but the end result would be the same. When they reached the Bloodfire and the Ellcrys seed was immersed, Arling’s future was as certain as the rising of the sun. She would become the Ellcrys and cease to be human.
And Aphenglow would have helped bring that about.
She sensed this was wrong—a twinge of recognition amid all the thoughts and deliberations on why it was both right and necessary. She sensed it even while telling herself she shouldn’t. It made her want to turn around and go back in spite of everything that insisted she do otherwise. It made her want to abandon reason and resignation and give in to the white-hot mix of emotions she was experiencing.
The guilt that tore at her deep inside.
The despair that filled her at the thought of losing Arling forever.
Turn back. Give up on all this.
They reached the opening to the stairway leading down into the earth, and with her emotions still roiling and her feet moving as if of their own accord, she started down. They heard no sounds other than the ones they were making as they walked. No one had spoken since they had set out. There was a disconnect among the three, as if they were strangers on a journey that could not be discussed and was being undertaken for reasons that were not entirely clear.
At one point, Aphen found herself in tears and was forced to wipe them away surreptitiously, to muffle the sobs that kept rising in her throat.
Their descent continued for a long time. They traversed hundreds of steps, perhaps thousands. She lost track of time. She only knew to keep going, to place one foot in front of the other and try not to think about what she was doing—the first an endless struggle, the second a hopeless task. She did it because she knew there was no other choice now and because she had lost the will to resist. Her fate was inescapable. She was her sister’s guide and accomplice both; she would be the source of both her salvation and her undoing.
At the bottom of the steps was a passageway, and they followed it to a huge chamber constructed of stone blocks and supported by massive columns within which ancient benches spiraled out from the raised platform at the chamber’s center. The cavernous space smelled and tasted of stale, damp air. Large pieces of it lay in ruins. Together the Elves navigated its debris and crossed to the dais and from there to the massive stone door Aphen had described. It stood ajar, just as it had in her Elfstone vision, and they slipped through its opening to where a short set of additional steps descended to another passageway.
At the end of this new passageway was the second cavern, this one very different from the one they had just left—a rock chamber formed by nature’s hand, carved out over endless amounts of time, rugged and damp with moisture. Huge stalactites hung from the ceiling in clusters, stone spears poised to impale should they fall. Chunks of broken stone lay scattered about the uneven floor, the leavings of earlier formations that had already given way and shattered.
The Elves glanced around, searching the gloom with the glow of their torches.
Then Cymrian called out and pointed, and all three focused their lights on a glass door set into the far wall between a pair of towering boulders, its smooth surface rising to where a rippling dampness higher up revealed a steady flow of water.
“That door isn’t glass,” the Elven Hunter said after a moment’s study. “It isn’t even a door. It’s a sheet of water.”
Aphen saw it, too. The supposed door was actually a thin, smooth screen of water that spilled from a trough in a curtain so still it barely shimmered at all.
“The Bloodfire is there,” Arling said suddenly, pointing at the opening. She took a step away from the other two. “Beyond the waterfall, inside that opening. I can feel it now, tugging at me. It senses the presence of the Ellcrys seed.”
She took another step away. “I have to go to it.”
“Not without me,” Aphen said at once, and started after her.
But her sister held up her hands. “No, Aphen, I have to go alone. I have to do this by myself. I want you to wait for me here. You and Cymrian both.”
Aphen started to object, but then saw the determination mirrored in her sister’s eyes and thought better of it. Of course she has to go alone. Of course she has to do this by herself. She understands the importance of finding the strength she needs to carry this through. She knows how hard it will be, and because she knows she will face it on her own terms and prove to herself that she is ready.
“Aphen?” her sister whispered.
Cymrian was looking at her, waiting to see what he should do. “All right,” she said finally. “We’ll be waiting for you.”
Arling turned, crossed the chamber to where the waterfall waited, ducked through its thin curtain without a backward glance, and was gone.
Twenty-four
When she was through the thin curtain of water, Arlingfant paused a moment to brush the droplets from her hair and shoulders before continuing on down the short passageway that opened before her. At its end she found yet another cavern, although this one was much smaller than the other two and considerably warmer and drier.
It was also empty.
The floor of the chamber sloped upward before her, ascending gradually in a series of broad shelves that wrapped right and left of where she stood from wall to wall. She shone her smokeless torch into the gloom before her, but there was nothing to be seen higher up but more shelves and deeper darkness.
There was no sign at all of the Bloodfire.
But it was here. She could sense its presence, even without being able to explain why. It was calling to her soundlessly, continuing to tug her forward into the chamber.
So she began to make her way upward from shelf to shelf, using her torch to light the way, searching carefully as she went. Even though she wasn’t entirely conscious of what she was doing, she stretched out her right hand and her fingers groped at the air as if there were something of substance to which she might cling. She continued on until she was almost to the back wall of the chamber. She was far enough along that only two more levels of stone risers remained when she stopped on one that was much smaller and set at the exact center of the larger one beneath it.
Just to one side of the shelf was a large boulder.
Here, she said to herself. The Bloodfire is here.
She knew it instinctively. Acting on her certainty, she moved over to the boulder and touched it experimentally. Nothing happened. Then, on a hunch more than anything else, she placed both hands on the huge rock and put her weight behind the effort. To her surprise, it began to move, even as slight as she was and as massive as it was. It rolled smoothly out of its shallow seating and her momentum carried her after it so that now she was standing where the boulder had been
.
Instantly the floor beneath her feet exploded into flames, and she was enveloped in a brilliant white fire that reached all the way to the ceiling. Frozen in place, shocked by the suddenness of it, she cringed in anticipation of the expected pain. But the fire did nothing to harm her. The flames exuded neither heat nor smoke; nor did they burn, but instead enfolded her in a blanket of warmth and comfort. The worries and the stresses of the days she had spent coming to this place faded away as if they had never been. Everything around her disappeared, and she was surrounded by an impenetrable brightness that first flared as white light and then slowly became crimson.
She was inside the Bloodfire.
How odd, she thought, that I can stand in a pillar of fire and not be burned. She glanced down at herself to be sure she was not mistaken, but her body was whole and her flesh undamaged.
What is happening to me?
She wondered again at the way in which she had been brought to this place, drawn to it by something larger than herself. She thought at first it must be the fire, but then she realized the fire had been summoned by her presence as the bearer of the Ellcrys seed and was no more than an impersonal magic that responded to her appearance. She was the source of the summons—the Chosen of the tree, the bearer of its seed, a young girl wrapped in cool flames.
She experienced a sudden revelation, a door opening back on her life that filled her with a terrible understanding.
There had never been any choice in this matter for her.
She had never been able to walk away from her fate.
Her life’s story had been imprinted on her from the moment of her birth.
She was one of the Omarosian Chosen, an Elessedil carrying on the line so that the magic that kept the Forbidding whole and the demons imprisoned would not die out. She was the descendant of a girl who—desperate to atone for a tragic mistake—had given up her life so her people could be made safe. That was who and what she was. That was the life she had been given to live should the Ellcrys fail.
As it had failed. As it must have sensed, not so long ago, it would.
Unbidden and unafraid, she reached into her tunic pocket and closed her fingers about the Ellcrys seed. The smooth orb was warm against her skin, and she could feel it pulsate softly. She stared at the scarlet fire surrounding her, wondering what she was supposed to do next. Shouldn’t something already be happening? Why wasn’t the seed responding in some more dramatic way to the Bloodfire?
She wondered suddenly if she had misjudged things. Was there something more to the ritual of immersion? Perhaps she lacked some piece of knowledge that was crucial to the process. Or perhaps the seed was failing to respond because she was not the one intended to produce it. Perhaps the Ellcrys had been mistaken after all. Perhaps the seed was not hers to bear beyond this point, as she had hoped all along. She was meant to bring it here, where it would be quickened, and then to return it to the tree so that the proper Chosen could be summoned and …
She trailed off abruptly, aware of what she was doing.
Denying herself. Equivocating. Looking to escape the responsibility she had been given.
None of which was right. She was the one. She knew it.
Ignoring the persistence of fears and doubts, hardening herself for whatever would happen next, she brought the Ellcrys seed all the way out of her pocket and held it forth, fully exposed. Instantly, the flames brightened around her and the seed blazed in their reflection. A feeling of connection between the seed and the fire bloomed within her, revealing that she was not wrong in coming here and that the Ellcrys had left nothing to chance. Tendrils began to weave and lace within her body, and images appeared before her eyes.
The images filled her with understanding and hope.
She dropped to her knees and brought the Ellcrys seed close against her breast.
And gave herself over to its power.
On the other side of the doorway to the Bloodfire chamber, Aphen sat with Cymrian on a large rock, eyes fixed on the thin sheet of water that separated her from her sister. It felt like hours had passed.
“She should be back by now.”
Cymrian shook his head. “You can’t know that. We have to be patient.”
“I don’t want to be patient.”
“I don’t blame you. You don’t even want to be here. None of us does. This whole business is terrifying.”
“Perhaps she isn’t the right one. Perhaps someone else is. Perhaps there’s been a mistake.”
“Perhaps.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“Arling doesn’t think so. And that’s what matters.”
They went silent again, waiting. Aphen found her thoughts straying to other times—to when the girls were young and played together every day, when life was simpler and less threatening and the world was a better place. She couldn’t help herself. She knew it was pointless to wish for something that was gone. It was pointless even to think about it. She was going to lose her sister and she would never get her back.
Arling would never see twenty. She would never take a lover. She would never bond and have children. She would never see even as much of life as Aphen had.
She would never return to her home. Aphen would have to be the one to tell their mother what had happened. Whatever that turned out to be.
“I don’t feel as if this is enough to change what is happening with the demonkind. I don’t sense that this will do what we think. Something is wrong, Cymrian.”
The Elven Hunter nodded. “Everything is wrong. That’s the problem. Nothing feels right.”
“It shouldn’t be like this.”
He looked over at her. “I thought that once about you and me, back before you agreed to accept me as your protector. I loved you, and you didn’t know it, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. But I always believed that one day everything would change. Now, maybe, it has. Because we love each other and things feel right again. Do you see what I’m saying? Sometimes we just have to trust that time and fate will bring us back to where we are supposed to be. Sometimes patience and belief are all we have.”
She stared at him. “I couldn’t have done this without you. You have made all the difference. You kept me from falling apart.”
“I think we did that for each other. I think maybe we always will.”
She smiled. “I hope that, too.” She paused. “But I don’t know. I don’t know about anything now.”
They were silent again after that, eyes fixed once more on the waterfall entry, watching and listening. The minutes passed, and nothing happened. All around them, the gloom hovered like a specter’s cloak spread wide. They had kept their diapson-powered torches turned on, but the slender beams did barely enough to illuminate a narrow span of the cavern’s blackness and nothing to brighten the whole.
Somewhere behind them, back the way they had come, water was dripping in the stillness.
Abruptly, Aphen stirred. “I’ve waited long enough. I’m going in after her.”
But it was Arlingfant Elessedil who came to her instead, emerging through the screen of water like a ghost, thin and wan in the gloom and damp, somehow less substantial than before—so diminished that it seemed as if the light from their hastily redirected torches shone right through her.
“Aphen?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
Aphenglow was on her feet instantly, racing toward her sister until she had her firmly gripped in her arms and held close. She was shocked at the other’s lightness. Arling seemed like a rag doll, her bones gone and her body emptied out. She hung on Aphen, clung to her like it was all she could do to remain upright.
Cymrian rushed over to help. “What’s happened?” he demanded, lifting the girl into the cradle of his arms.
Arling’s eyes found his. The formerly dark orbs were blood red and glistening. “The fire …,” she began, and then her eyes closed, and she was unconscious.
“Let’s get her out of here,” Aphen said at once.
&
nbsp; Cymrian nodded and turned back the way they had come. “Wait,” he said, stopping. “Where is the seed?”
But Aphen only shook her head and motioned him on. “Doesn’t matter. She’s done whatever she could. That’s enough.”
In truth, she didn’t know if she could bear to find out where the seed had gone. It wasn’t in her sister’s open hands, but she was certain Arling had done whatever was required to quicken it.
Yet when they had reached the far side of the cavern and were about to enter the short passageway leading back into the chamber formed of stone blocks and columns, Aphen grabbed Cymrian’s arm and brought him to a halt.
“Let me have a look at her,” she said.
With the Elven Hunter kneeling and Arling resting in his arms, Aphen searched through her sister’s clothing, checking pockets and even the folds of her tunic, trying to find the seed.
But it wasn’t there.
She exchanged a worried glance with Cymrian. “She couldn’t have lost it. Not after all this.”
“She was in shock, disoriented,” he reminded her.
“But she mentioned the Bloodfire just before she passed out. She was aware enough to do that much.”
Cymrian shook his head. “Wake her. Ask her.”
Aphen was loath to do this, but she couldn’t continue on without knowing. Too much was at stake. Using a healing magic with which she was intimately familiar, she brought her sister awake. Arling’s eyes fluttered open, and her scarlet gaze slowly came into focus.
Aphen forced a reassuring smile. “Arling, where is the seed? Do you still have it?”
Her sister gave a small nod. “Safe inside.” She lifted her hand and placed it over her heart. “She knew what was needed. She was right to tell me to come.”
“Don’t talk. I just needed to be sure. I was afraid you might have lost it.”
“I lost other things. Not that.” She rose to a sitting position. “Aphen, we have to go. We have to get back to Arborlon.” Her voice was urgent. “Now, Aphen! We have to hurry! There’s no time!”