He struck at her a second time, now using the magic of the scepter, fire lancing from its intricately shaped iron head, burning through the witch and turning her to ash and smoke, but again she wasn’t there. When the fire diminished and the smoke cleared, the witch was standing off to the other side, her white, ragged form untouched.
The Straken Lord nodded to himself and went into a crouch. “If you refuse to let me come to you, Grianne-that-once-was, then why don’t you come to me?”
His spines lifted off his back and down the sides of his arms and legs, and he gestured for the witch to approach. Railing felt Mirai pulling on him, urging him to back away. He shook his head. He was not ready to go. He was not willing to miss any of this.
In front of them, not thirty yards away, the witch wraith was moving. It was a slight shifting of position, one that caused the Straken Lord to go still in expectation. Railing had no idea what she was doing. She had avoided Tael Riverine’s attacks twice now, seeming to be one place while actually in another. But she hadn’t fought back. She hadn’t shown any intention of doing so.
Until now.
Casually, with a movement so languid and relaxed it appeared to offer no threat at all, she advanced on him.
It seemed suicidal. She was making no move to attack and was doing nothing to defend herself. She had assumed a submissive posture, hunched a bit, head down. It was as if she were conceding his dominance and had decided there was no point in prolonging the inevitable.
The Straken Lord’s hand dropped to his side, and when it lifted again he was holding a conjure collar. He meant to bind her to him by means of complete and deliberate subjugation. Apparently he had abandoned his plan to disable or kill her and was now seeking domination, perhaps to demonstrate his superiority to his followers or perhaps to reaffirm it to Grianne Ohmsford, whatever incarnation she had assumed.
When she was within several yards of him, the witch wraith dropped to her knees and began to crawl forward, a penitent ghost begging for mercy. Railing knew all the stories of her imprisonment by Tael Riverine and her fierce hatred of him and could not believe what he was seeing.
“What is she doing?” Mirai gasped.
Railing had no idea, but he felt the last of his hope slipping away as the witch continued to crawl to her doom.
When she was right in front of the Straken Lord, she lifted herself onto her haunches, head still lowered in a posture of subjection. The Straken Lord bent down, holding out the conjure collar to fasten it around her neck.
“Perhaps you are her,” Tael Riverine mused, surprise and disgust reflected in his voice.
But an instant later she had snatched the collar from his hands and snapped it around his own neck. He jerked backward in shock and dismay, but it was too late. Railing and Mirai, who were the closest, barely saw the movement of her hands; her quickness and strength left them blinking in disbelief.
The witch rose and stood with her face so near to his, it seemed she might offer him a kiss. “Am I close enough now?” she asked. She laughed softly. “You will do nothing without my permission, Tael Riverine. Do you understand? You belong to me now, as I once belonged to you.”
He struggled anyway, thrashing to reach her. But the collar reacted instantly and the Straken Lord cried out in anguish, dropping to his knees.
She stood over him a moment as his body convulsed and his face twisted, and then she reached down for his scepter, retrieving it from where it had fallen. She studied it a moment, as if considering its use. Then she turned toward the Jarka Ruus, scepter in hand, and held it overhead for all to see.
A babble of murmurs and hisses filled the momentary silence as the creatures of Tael Riverine’s army gave voice to what they were feeling. Uncertainty and fear turned to amazement and the beginnings of a shift in loyalty. The Straken Lord had ruled through strength; that was the law of the Forbidding. But now someone stronger had subdued him with almost no effort at all.
Abruptly, Railing Ohmsford remembered something Crace Coram had said many weeks ago, after Seersha had rebuked him for calling Grianne Ohmsford the Ilse Witch.
“That’s who she still is somewhere deep down inside. Maybe that’s who you want to find if you expect her to stand up to the Straken Lord.”
The murmurs and hisses grew to a steady roar.
With that, the witch turned back toward the pain-racked Straken Lord and struck him with the butt of the scepter. Tael Riverine collapsed, dazed from the blow. Recognizing his peril, he fought anew to break free of the conjure collar, struggling violently against the witch wraith’s magic, his entire body quaking and shuddering. But even the howls that rose from his throat came out as little more than subdued gasps.
The witch wraith stood over him, raised his steel-tipped scepter over her head, and brought it down with a lunge. The steel tip penetrated Tael Riverine’s black armor and then his body, driven all the way through and into the ground. The scream the Straken Lord emitted was blood chilling, but reached new heights when the witch pulled the shaft free and then drove it through him once more.
He fought only a few seconds longer and then lay still on the blood-soaked grass.
Another roar rose from the Jarka Ruus. The roar was of satisfaction, of recognition that an old order had passed and a new one had risen. Strength had prevailed over weakness, and once again there was a new leader.
Railing was rooted in place, unable to look away even though Mirai was yanking on his arm and shouting in his ear. “Turn around!” she screamed.
Finally, he did so, and for a moment he could not catch his breath.
His brother was standing right in front of him.
Thirty-three
Edinja’s confiscated Sprint was almost to Arborlon, the roofs of the city’s buildings coming into view through the treetops, when a sickening realization of what was about to happen struck Aphenglow with dismaying suddenness. Her time with Arlingfant was almost over. She was about to lose her sister forever.
Since her breakdown over Cymrian’s death, Aphen had traveled all day and all night trying to make up for her lapse, flying straight through from the Wilderun with as brief stops as she could for food and drink and the occasional snatches of sleep when she could no longer keep her eyes open anymore. She had found it necessary to change out the diapason crystals that powered their craft only once, even with the thrusters opened all the way. And aware of the dangers posed by the Straken Lord’s army to the east, she had kept them well clear of the Tirfing and the Streleheim, coming up west of the Matted Brakes and Drey Wood to cross the Rill Song just below the Sarandanon in order to reach the Elven home city safely.
Still, it was a grueling journey, with no one but herself to depend on. Arling had slept most of the way. Weakened by her wounds and all she had been through while bearing the Ellcrys seed to the Bloodfire, she had barely spoken since their departure. For the past several hours, she had been asleep in the seat just behind Aphen, bent forward in her harness with her head resting against her sister’s back. Aphen had tried hard not to disturb her, wanting to leave her as she was, to feel Arling pressing up against her. There was an undeniable comfort in keeping her close for the time that remained to them.
The loss of Cymrian had stripped Aphen of strength and courage both, undermined her sense of hope, and left her emotionally drained. She had never thought she would lose the Elven Hunter, her companion through so much. She had only just come to understand how much he meant to her, and now—in what seemed the blink of an eye—he was gone. She could still picture him alive and well, his wild white hair blowing, his striking blue eyes fixed on her, the angles and planes of his strong face shaped by the sunlight, just his presence a powerful reassurance.
All of it more was compelling than it had ever been with Bombax, and yet her relationship with Cymrian had been so abbreviated, ending so abruptly and cruelly. She had cried for him until it felt as if there were no tears left. His death had dominated her thoughts from the moment she had begun fl
ying Arling back to Arborlon, which was why now, as they approached the Elven city, she found herself confronted for the first time with the inescapable knowledge that the worst wasn’t over.
Arling, possessed of the Bloodfire-quickened seed of the Ellcrys, was about to be taken from her. And she would be left with a future in which the two people she loved the most would have no part.
It was all she could do to keep her hands steady on the Sprint’s controls. A part of her thought simply to turn the ship around and fly another way—even as she knew this could never happen. Even aware of how impossible such a thing was.
She was suddenly awash in despair. The unfairness of what was happening was inescapable. She had gone through so much, endured so many losses and disappointments, seen so many companions die, and found so many bitter truths along the way that she could not face her situation with anything resembling grace. She should be stronger; she should be so for herself and her sister both. But all she wanted to do was to scream out the rage and hurt she was feeling.
Which was selfish, and she knew it. But even knowing she should be thinking of Arling was not enough to leaven the pity she felt for herself.
Farther ahead, visible now through the darkness, the new day was beginning to brighten the eastern sky. Were they in time? Was the old tree gone by now and the Forbidding collapsed completely? She knew that the demonkind army would be on the move again; Arishaig would have fallen and its citizens would have been destroyed or driven out. Some would survive, but many would not. That was the fate that awaited Arborlon and the Elves, too, and she had no way of knowing how much time remained before it found them.
All too soon, she thought.
Bile rose in her throat, and she forced it down. She banked the Sprint toward the treetops and in the general direction of the Gardens of Life. Her hands moved mechanically even as her brain shut down and fresh tears filled her eyes.
“Little girl,” she called over her shoulder to Arling. She felt her sister lift her head. “We’re almost there.”
At first, there was no response. Then, clear and steady, came Arling’s voice. “I’m ready, Aphen.”
The words broke Aphenglow’s heart, but she managed to keep it from showing. “Do you have the seed ready?”
In truth, she had not seen it since Arling had emerged from the cavern that contained the Bloodfire. She still didn’t have the faintest idea what was to be done with the seed once they were on the ground and in the presence of the Ellcrys. There had been no explanation in any of the tomes she had studied or recitations she had uncovered. Arling had not said one word about what she knew. She had barely referred to her most precious possession. There was a black hole in Aphen’s understanding of what was to happen next, and she felt a wrenching need to know.
“What will you do when we land?” she asked her sister.
A long silence. “Go to her.”
The tree. “You will give her the seed?” Aphen pressed.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“But you do have it? You brought it out from the cavern, didn’t you? You can pass the seed on?”
“Aphen,” Arling whispered, leaning forward again, her lips close to her sister’s ear. “There will be no passing. The Ellcrys seed is inside me. The Bloodfire put it there. It is a part of me now.”
Aphen squeezed her eyes shut, knowing at once what that meant. Tears leaked from her eyes, but she managed to cry silently, keeping her body still. “I will be there with you all the way,” she whispered back.
Arling’s voice grew softer still. “I would like that.”
They descended into Arborlon, Aphen reading the terrain, seeking their destination. She found the gardens easily enough—a part of the Carolan Heights, far west at the edge of the city overlooking the Rill Song. She chose a place where the bluff was grassy and open and landed the Sprint on its billowing softness, using wind and sails to ease her into place before cutting power to the parse tubes and locking down the thrusters.
Elven Hunters placed on sentry duty swarmed the craft, but when they saw the sisters emerge, clinging to each other as if a strong wind might blow them apart, they didn’t seem to know what to do. They stared at the Elessedil women and at one another as they waited to discover what was happening.
“Stand away, please,” Aphen demanded, determined to care for Arling by herself. “Go back to your watch.”
She helped Arling cross the Carolan to the Gardens of Life, pointing them toward a gap in the bordering hedgerow that sheltered against the strong west winds. Once inside, they made their way through the flower beds and bushes to where the Ellcrys stood on a rise near the gardens’ center. The gardens were shadowed, the new day coming awake with the sunrise, and Aphen let Arling set her own pace. Her sister was unsteady on her feet; the unexpected strength she had found after emerging from the Bloodfire cavern had faded.
At one point, she stumbled and nearly fell. Aphen only just managed to catch her. “You will stay close to me, won’t you?” Arling asked, lifting her face momentarily, her strange red eyes blinking rapidly.
“All the way,” Aphen whispered back, repeating her earlier promise. “Do you need to rest?”
Arling’s trademark smile was quick and rueful. “Lots of time for that later, Aphen.”
When they reached the gardens, they found the other Chosen gathered, but it was hard to tell for certain if they had just arrived or had perhaps been there all night. They ringed the tree, preparing for the morning greeting. It was clear they had done what they could, but none of their efforts seemed to have been even the least bit effective. The Ellcrys was a skeleton by now, a shadow of what she had been. Emaciated, withered, her bark turned crusty and her scarlet leaves black, she was in the final stages of her life. In the retreating darkness, lit only by the first rays of the rising sun, she seemed diminished to the point of nonexistence.
Freershan and the others saw the sisters approach and, after a moment of shock, leapt to their feet and came running. They gathered around, all talking at once, trying to find out where Arling had been and what had happened to her. But Arling said nothing. She didn’t even look at them, her head lowered and her scarlet eyes closed.
“She can’t speak with you now,” Aphen said quickly, realizing her sister lacked the strength and perhaps the desire to communicate with others. “Please move back. Let us go ahead alone. We are here to help the tree.”
She badly wanted to ask about her grandfather, about the city and its danger, about a dozen other concerns that crowded to the forefront of her mind. But she knew that any discussions would only slow them further. And in point of fact, what difference did it make? All that mattered now was restoring the tree.
Rebuilding the Forbidding and hastening Arling toward the end of her human life.
The words burned in her mind like live coals, but she endured them, facing the truth about what she was doing. There was no point in turning away. That would be disrespectful and cowardly, and a clear attempt to repudiate her sister’s decision.
The Chosen fell away, and she moved Arling ahead again, advancing on the skeletal form of the Ellcrys. The sun was cresting the horizon, its brilliant light splashing across the sky, penetrating the shadows and layering the tree in golden streaks. But the effect simply revealed even more of her damage.
When they reached the base of the rise, Arling stopped. “I must go alone from here, Aphen.”
“I can help you a little farther …,” Aphen started to say, but stopped when she felt Arling’s fingers dig into her arm.
“No. You must wait here.” Her sister’s head lifted, and the scarlet orbs of her eyes stared out from her stricken face. “I love you, Aphen. I always will, wherever I am, whatever happens to me.”
Aphen tried to speak and couldn’t. Instead, she wrapped her arms about Arling and held her close.
Her sister was crying now. “I wish we had more time. I wanted so much to be with you in Paranor. To be Druids together, you and I. I wanted
nothing more than to be like you.”
“No.” Aphen shook her head, still holding her sister tight. “You were always better than me. Always.”
“Tell Mother, Aphen. Try to be there for her when she finds out. Be kind to her, no matter …”
She trailed off uncertainly. “I will,” Aphen promised.
They held on, unable to let go, unwilling to break the connection. Seconds slipped by, and Aphenglow felt the hurt of what was about to happen so badly it was physically painful. Even without knowing the details, even as uncertain as she was about what she would witness, she could hardly bear it.
“Come see me often?” Arling whispered, making it a question.
“Yes,” Aphen answered, and broke down completely, crying openly.
Arling hugged her once more and then pushed her away. She stumbled up the rise, a frail figure in the growing light of the sunrise, making her uncertain way toward the Ellcrys. Aphen watched helplessly, a part of her screaming that she should go after her sister. But she did as she was told and remained where Arling had left her, watching and waiting.
At the crest of the rise, Arling paused for a moment, staring at the desiccated tree. Then she moved closer, reaching out her hand and touching the blackened trunk. The Ellcrys shivered, more dead leaves falling away, more bark sloughing off. But it seemed to Aphen the tree was responding, recognizing who Arling was and what it meant to have her there.
Arling held her ground for a long moment, then moved close to the Ellcrys and wrapped her arms around her, leaning in.
A second later, the tree disintegrated completely, turning into a fine dust that showered down on Arling until she was completely covered.
Arling stood where she was for another few seconds, becoming a gray ghost, before lifting her arms skyward and uttering a long, mournful cry.