Wards of Faerie

  To my surprise and consternation, I found I could not agree to this. I want to be with him, but I cannot leave my home and my people. I told him so. I begged him to reconsider. I pleaded. If we could not be together as often, we would simply be together when we could. But even as I spoke the words, I could detect in his expression his refusal to accept this and I knew he would never be satisfied until he took me away.

  What am I to do? I know I am going to lose him and cannot bear it. Please, let him see reason! Please, let him stay!

  18, MONTH 8

  I am ruined. I am the most wretched and miserable creature alive. I have betrayed everyone by my foolish, selfish behavior, and I cannot begin to imagine the price that others will pay because of it.

  My boy is gone. My beautiful, wonderful lover and friend has abandoned me and perhaps worse. I do not know what I should do. I am reduced to writing down what has happened in an effort to understand. But perhaps I only delay the inevitable recognition that in the end nothing can be done.

  Earlier today, we met for the last time. I took him to my room and to my bed and spoke the words I thought I would never speak. I told him I could never leave my people and we must end our assignations and our hopes for a future life. What he wanted, I had already refused him. What I wanted, he would never accept. What point in continuing what was clearly doomed?

  I did this in a misguided effort to change his mind, hoping that the prospect of losing me would be as painful for him as it would for me to lose him. I did so out of desperation but also with an understanding that when I told him I could not leave my home and my people, I was telling him the truth.

  Amid tears of despair and hurt so deep I thought I would never be well again, we coupled a final time, and then he left me in my bed, sated and sleeping and thinking that perhaps I had won my victory and he would stay.

  I was wrong. I had won nothing. He did not leave the house when he left my bed. What he did instead is the cause of my humiliation and despair. Because he was a Darkling, I knew he had use of magic. Because I loved him, I never asked its nature. It seemed irrelevant to our relationship and to our love. I knew it was there; I did not care that it was.

  But when I woke later that afternoon, I found a note lying next to me. It read thus:

  I cannot give you up.

  You must come to me.

  Use these Elfstones to find me

  And to reclaim the other stones

  Which I hold hostage.

  I love you that much.

  Lying beneath the note were the three blue Elfstones, the seeking-Stones of the five precious sets.

  I rushed at once to where my father kept the Elfstones hidden and secured, dreading what I might find. Releasing the locks embedded in the stronghold by using the words of magic with which they were imbued, I discovered to my horror that my Darkling boy had not lied. The Elfstones were gone—all but those three he had left me.

  At first, I did not understand. That he was gone and asking me to come after him was clear enough, the rest less so. The implications of his wording were dark and dangerous; I was unsure of what conclusion to reach. Had he taken the Elfstones only for the purpose of persuading me to follow him, or had he stolen them for a different reason entirely—to aid his people, to give them the magic they lacked as servants of the Void? The first bespoke a rash and desperate act. The second was purposefully evil. I could not believe that of him. But if I were wrong, what then? What did he know of the Elfstones? Did he know that he could not use them—that none of his Darkling kind could? Did he realize that it required a true Elf to make the magic come alive? Did he know that the Elfstones must be freely given if they are to serve the holder?

  What was the true reason he had taken them?

  I had told him nothing of where they could be found or how to get to them. Of that much, I was certain. Yet somehow he had known. How much more did he know of which I was unaware? How much that I thought I knew about him was false?

  I am made very nearly hysterical by my uncertainty. I cannot see how to resolve the matter in any way that is satisfactory. I cannot go to him not knowing the truth about his intentions. How can I be certain of what he has planned? Has he betrayed me or does he honestly think that this theft will bring me to him?

  If he is the boy I think he is—the one I fell in love with—it is the latter. But why hasn’t he trusted me if what he wants is for us to be together? Why has he resorted to this desperate act? Surely he realizes the position in which he has put me? Does he think I can escape the blame that will attach for his theft or do I no longer matter to him?

  What am I to do?

  25, MONTH 8

  Days have passed since I have written here, my thoughts too poisonous to be recorded. I have told no one of what has happened. Those who need to know will find out the truth soon enough. But not yet, it seems, for I have heard nothing of the theft. I know where he has taken the Elfstones, but I cannot think how I should go about getting them back.

  So I wait. I sit for hours thinking on what I must do. The longer I deliberate, the less clear my course of action becomes. In spite of what I feel for him, I cannot trust my emotions to guide me. I must find a way to set things right, and to do that I need to make certain that my failures of judgment will not bring harm to my people. It is bad enough that my parents should suffer for my transgression; it is unbearable to think that the Elven people should pay for my foolishness, as well.

  Perhaps even with their lives.

  I could not bear that.

  28, MONTH 8

  I know now what I must do. I have considered long enough. I must risk all and use the blue Elfstones to go in search of the others and of my Darkling boy. I must know the truth about him, and I must set right what he has made wrong. I leave in the morning with a small contingent of Elven Hunters, having given my father a false story of what I intend—a fresh transgression added to the others. But what is one more by now?

  24, MONTH 9

  I have returned empty-handed. In the course of my search, I found neither the Elfstones nor the boy. No amount of effort or use of magic could help me recover my treasures. It is as if they have vanished off the face of the earth. Inquiries yielded nothing. Someone may know what has become of them, but no one is saying. I have given the blue Stones back and admitted all. I am disgraced and undone.

  Yet events conspire to make possible a chance for redemption, and I will take the chance offered. Perhaps history will remember me for doing what was right and so provide me with a measure of grace.

  I beg your forgiveness, my dearest Mother and Father. Let no one accuse Meresch and Pathke Omarosian of not sufficiently loving and embracing their wayward daughter. Let it be known here, in these pages, that I will treasure forever the life I have shared with you. If you should read this, as one day I hope you will, be not sad for me. Be happy that I have found peace. I have found my second chance and I go now happily to embrace it.

  All Honor, Your Daughter Aleia

  2

  APHENGLOW DEPARTED THE PALACE, NODDING AMIABLY to the guard who stood just outside the door to the archives as she passed, and crossed the palace grounds to the divergent paths that led into the city proper, covering the ground in long, smooth strides. She had trained once upon a time to be a Tracker, back when she was still a girl. But her real skills lay with her enhanced instincts and her unusual connection to the magic of the elements found in earth, air, water, and fire—and so she had been invited to join the Druids at Paranor. She had accepted almost without thinking about it, excited at the prospect of exploring magic’s limits and of finding fresh ways to bring healing and the chance for a better life to the Races and their homelands.

  In retrospect, she had acted without sufficient forethought, ignorant of how the decision would impact her life. The Druids were held in low regard by the Elves, and those who chose to join them were seen as lacking in both common sense and moral balance. Once you chose to side with the Druids, you were automatically
considered to have sided against the Elves. This was the common thinking of her times, and Aphen’s assumption that as a granddaughter of the King she would somehow be treated differently proved optimistic. If anything, it infuriated the Elves even more.

  Now, six years later, she was back in Arborlon and thoroughly disappointed to discover that nothing much had changed when it came to how her people viewed her. Slow to anger, they were even slower to forgive, and her return had not generated much in the way of good feelings. Even her family—her sister and uncle aside—had seemed less than pleased to see her. But she had come for a purpose, and she intended to see it through. It was an effort supported by her fellow Druids, who instantly saw the value in it, but was regarded by everyone else as a waste of time. The King, her grandfather, had granted her the permission she requested, but only after making it clear that the same search had been conducted repeatedly by others over the years and that even if she found something useful her discoveries would belong solely to the Elves and not to anyone else—especially not to the Druid order.

  She understood the reason for the prohibition. Hard feelings endured from the time when Grianne Ohmsford had served as Ard Rhys and the Elven nation had been threatened by the Southland and its Federation armies. Though it was Grianne who had put an end to that threat, various members of her order had allied with Federation Prime Minister Sen Dunsidan, and both she and the order had been tarnished by the perceived treachery. Queen Arling Elessedil, already harboring a deep dislike and distrust of the Druids, had cut all ties to the order.

  It didn’t matter that Grianne Ohmsford had been gone for more than a hundred years, or even that her successor as Ard Rhys was herself a member of the Elessedil family. The old King, Arling’s son, held fast to his mother’s beliefs where the Druids were concerned, and it was only because Aphenglow was an Elf and his granddaughter that she was allowed to conduct her study.

  Many others thought she should take her studies and her practices elsewhere if she could not remember where her loyalties should lie.

  Head up, eyes sweeping the landscape watchfully, she left the palace grounds behind and moved down the pathway that led to the cottage she shared with her younger sister. Wherever she went in Arborlon, she paid close attention to what was happening around her. The city might have been her home once and it might be so again one day, but for now she was no better than a visitor from a foreign country. There were enough Elves who mistrusted her presence that she could not afford to take her safety for granted.

  Especially not tonight, when she was carrying that which she was expressly forbidden from having. One of the agreements she had made was that she would take nothing from the storerooms. Not at any time. Not for any reason. Yet buried amid the collection of notes and papers contained in her pack was the diary.

  And if she were caught with it …

  She shrugged the matter away. She had done what she needed to do. The diary was important—perhaps the most important piece of information that had been uncovered since the First Council of Druids convened.

  Everyone knew about the existence of the missing Elfstones, of course. But only in the abstract and not in the specific. They knew primarily because the blue Stones, the seeking-Stones, had survived whatever had become of the other sets. There were three stones in each set—one each to reflect the strength of the heart, mind, and body of the user. No one knew what had become of the other sets. No one knew their colors or their functions. No written record of their history had ever been found, save vague references to a time in ancient Faerie when all the Elfstones had been crafted—just enough to indicate that there had been five sets altogether and that by their absence it could be concluded that four had been lost. It was the great mystery of all Elven magic.

  Yet after virtually everyone had decided the missing Elfstones were gone and would never be recovered, now there was this—a diary written by a girl named Aleia that might at last solve the mystery.

  She could hardly believe her good luck in finding it. Imagine, if they could recover the Stones! She smiled at the thought. Everyone knew about the power of the blue Stones. But no one knew the first thing about the other four sets; no one even knew their colors. No records existed that described them. Or at least, none that had been uncovered. It was all so long ago, so far back in time. It was as Ellich had said. The Elves were a different people then. The world was different. The other Races hadn’t been born. Only the Faerie people were alive, imbued with various forms of magic—some of which they shared with creatures now consigned either to mythology or by powerful magic to the dark world of the Forbidding.

  It gave her pause. All those who had followed or sworn to the Void were imprisoned in the Forbidding—Darklings, Furies, Harpies, dragons, Goblins, and others. Yet the author of this diary had fallen in love with one of them. She had found him beautiful and enchanting, had given herself to him freely and had envisioned a life with him.

  With a creature of the Void.

  It didn’t seem possible, but sometimes Aphen wondered if those viewed as evil were in fact only those who had lost the war and were tarnished by the victors. She understood that reality wasn’t as simple as everyone wanted to believe, not as straightforward or as easily explained. Not black and white, but mostly gray.

  She reached the cottage, dark now and apparently empty. Perhaps her sister was in bed or perhaps she was not home yet. Her work as a Chosen of the Ellcrys was difficult and demanding, and sometimes her days were eighteen hours long. Aphenglow didn’t think she could ever do what that job demanded. But she guessed there were those who didn’t think anyone could do her job, either, or even be what she was.

  She opened the door and went inside, pausing for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. The silence enfolded her, and she gave herself over to it, using her senses to detect her sister’s presence. She found the signs quickly enough—a gentle breathing, a stirring beneath sheets, a rustle of bedclothes—just up the stairs in the bedroom they shared whenever she was home, which was not often these days. Aphen sighed and sat down, her mind still mulling the entries in the diary and the questions they raised about the fate of the missing Elfstones.

  She wondered first and foremost how the Stones had disappeared. Apparently, Aleia had tried and failed to find either them or her Darkling boy. That seemed odd, given that she had the use of the blue Elfstones to seek them. But of course, if she wasn’t trained in their use—which was likely—then she might have lacked the sophistication to detect them.

  Still, hadn’t others tried to find the missing Elfstones since? Hadn’t the Elves themselves used the blue Stones to attempt it? She couldn’t imagine that efforts hadn’t been made. And yet in all those years, no one had found a thing.

  She put her deliberations on that subject aside and gave consideration to what had become of Aleia after her return to Arborlon. She had indicated in her diary entry that she had been given another chance at making things right, one that she hoped might give her a measure of redemption. But what sort of chance? The diary didn’t say.

  And what was the truth about the Darkling boy? Had he taken the Elfstones solely as a means of forcing her to come in search of him? Was he motivated entirely by his love for her, as she so desperately wanted to believe? Or had he intended all along to steal the Elfstones or whatever other magic he could lay his hands on? Was he the dark creature she feared he might be, his seduction of her purposeful and lacking in any real feeling or passion? Had he been pretending the whole time? There were arguments both ways. She had a feeling this was something no one would ever know.

  Which was perhaps for the best. It would be sad to discover that Aleia had been deceived, that she had given herself to a liar and a thief.

  Aphen leaned back in her chair and stared out the window. There were so many questions—and so many needing answers when answers were in short supply. Tomorrow she would look into the records of the Kings and Queens of Faerie, at the carefully recorded lineages of royal
parents and children. Most were still intact. Aleia and her parents would be listed somewhere. There would be little information beyond the names, but it was a start to the search she now knew she had to undertake.

  Her hand strayed to her pack where it rested by her side, her fingers finding the flat surface of the diary where it nestled inside.

  “Coming to bed anytime soon?”

  Arlingfant stepped into the room, small and delicate and wreathed in silk. She came over to her sister and knelt in front of her as if in supplication. Her perfect face—oval in shape, and dominated by her dark eyes and pronounced Elven features—canted upward, a smile appearing like a crescent moon come out from behind a cloud’s shadow.

  “I heard you come in. My senses are every bit as good as yours, Aph.”

  “Everything about you is as good. Were you sleeping or just lying awake waiting for me?”

  “Lying awake. I was thinking.” She brushed away loose strands of her dark hair absently. “The tree is so mysterious to me, even after almost eight months of caring for her. She almost never communicates, even in the smallest of ways. She relies on us to do what is needed, and we are expected to anticipate what those needs might be. It seems impossible that anyone could do this. Even though there are twelve of us serving her, we might miss something. We might interpret what we see the wrong way. We might do any number of things to cause her harm. Yet somehow we don’t. But that doesn’t mean we don’t spend every waking minute worrying about it.”

  She looked away. “Today, while I was cleaning her bark, working at the things that might sicken or mar its surfaces, I had the oddest feeling. I thought I heard the tree say something. The voice just came out of nowhere, like a whisper in my ear. I knew it wasn’t one of the other Chosen because I know their voices and this wasn’t one I knew. I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone near and didn’t hear the voice again. But later, I mentioned to Freershan that I thought one of the tree branches had touched me. The tip of a branch, reaching down to touch my shoulder. But when I turned to look, there wasn’t anything there.”