Then the trail ended, and he was at the bottom of the ravine. A vast tangle of roots stretched away before him. The smallest of them were closest, some no larger than strands of human hair. The largest were farther back, barely visible through the enfolding darkness and the pale wash of diffused sunlight, and many were thicker than his body. They lay in twisted heaps, loose and coiled, half-emerged from the earth in which they had buried themselves.
Pen drew to a halt, uncertain about what to do next. All around him now and no longer moving forward, the aeriads hummed and sang. He glanced about for help, but there was no help to be found. He had gotten as far as he was going to get without doing something on his own, and he had no idea what that something should be.
“Cinnaminson?” he called softly.
Ahead, the tree roots shifted, and in their slow grating and scraping he heard the sound of his own death. Like snakes, they were coiling and uncoiling in anticipation of wrapping about him, of squeezing him until there was no breath left in his body. He felt himself begin to shake as the image eroded his courage, and he tightened his grip once more on the darkwand.
“Cinnaminson!” he called again, louder.
As if in response to his cry, the tree roots parted where their wall was thickest, and he saw revealed in the pale trickle of sunlight and tiny flashes of iridescence the bodies of dozens of young girls. Thousands of tiny roots wrapped about them, cradling them in nests of dark, earth-fed fiber, their ends attached to the exposed skin where clothing had rotted and fallen away. Their eyes and mouths were closed, and they appeared to be deep in sleep, locked in dreams that he could only imagine. They must have been breathing, but he was too far away to be certain.
Then he saw Cinnaminson. She was off to one side in an area in which the tendrils had not yet grown so thick, and her body was still mostly exposed and unfettered. She slept the sleep of the others, and most probably dreamed their dreams. But her place among them was newer, her coming clearly more recent.
He didn’t stop to think about what he should do. He simply started toward her, compelled by his determination to get close enough to touch her and, by doing so, to wake her and then to free her. He didn’t know how he would manage it or even if he could. He only knew he had to try.
–Pen, no– Cinnaminson cried out, her voice separating suddenly from those of the other aeriads.
Instantly, the tanequil’s roots began to shift, the rasp and scrape of fiber on earth and stone so menacing that Pen froze in midstride and brought the darkwand up like a shield. The wall had re-formed in front of him, barring him from getting any closer, telling him in no uncertain terms that he had transgressed. Tendrils stroked the exposed skin of his hands as the tree roots closest to him lifted out of the earth. In his mind, he could hear a hiss of warning, a sound so soft it was like the rustle of sand on old wood.
–Don’t come any closer– It was the sound of a serpent’s tongue sliding from a scaly mouth. –Go back to where you came from–
–Please, Pen– he heard Cinnaminson whisper. –Please, go away. Leave me where I am–
He wanted to ignore the warning, to go to her, to reach out to what was still real and substantive about her, to free her of that nightmare. The tanequil had given her the boundless world of an unfettered spirit, of the aeriads for whom it provided such freedom, but it was feeding on her, as well. He could tell that much just from looking. Did she realize that? Did she understand what was happening to her?
But he sensed, even as he asked these questions, that it didn’t matter what she knew or how she might respond to knowing. What mattered was that she was content. She was the tree’s captive, a slave to the roots that formed its feminine half, and they were not about to let her go for any reason. If he tried to take her, he would be killed. Then no one would know what had happened to her and no one would ever come to set her free.
He closed his eyes against what he was thinking, against his feelings of frustration and helplessness. He should do something, but there was nothing he could do. He had lost her all over again.
–Good-bye, Penderrin– he heard her say to him.
Her voice rose and fell to blend with the voices of the other aeriads before finally disappearing into them completely. Then the voices faded entirely, and she was gone.
Cinnaminson.
Aware of the sudden silence, he stood staring into space. Even the tree roots had gone still. Their tangled lengths lay limp and unmoving before him, a wall that he must breach. But he lacked the means to do so. He looked down at the darkwand, wondering anew if it might provide him the magic that was needed. But the purpose of the talisman was to help him gain access to Grianne Ohmsford, not to Cinnaminson. The darkwand could breach the wall of the Forbidding, but not the wall of the tanequil’s roots. Nothing had happened to suggest otherwise. No magic had surfaced when his passage through the roots had been denied. No magic had emerged to help him.
His throat tightened as he realized that there was nothing more he could do. He would have to abandon his hopes of freeing her. He would have to leave her where she was. He would have to take the darkwand and travel to Paranor. He would have to attempt to cross over into the Forbidding and rescue the Ard Rhys. Cinnaminson had given herself to the tanequil so that he might do so. What was the point of her sacrifice if he failed to take advantage of it?
But it meant risking the possibility that he might never have a chance to come back for her.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Good-bye,” he said softly to the darkness.
Then he turned away, walked back to the trail that had brought him down into the ravine, and began to climb.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The hand shook him gently awake, and Drumundoon’s familiar voice whispered, “Captain, they’re coming.”
The Federation army. Preparing to attack.
Pied Sanderling opened his eyes to dawn’s faint glow on the eastern horizon, scanned the maze of hills and ravines that surrounded him, and waited for the buzzing in his ears to quiet. Every muscle and joint in his body ached, but he couldn’t very well complain. He was lucky to be alive at all.
He closed his eyes again, remembering. The explosion of fire, rocking the Asashiel, sweeping away railguns and deck crew. The plummet of the craft toward the earth as he clung to his safety line and called in vain for Markenstall. The impact of the airship as it slammed into a grove of wide-limbed conifers, breaking them apart, leaving him hanging from their shattered boughs. Miraculously, in one piece. No broken bones or severed limbs and no cuts or slashes deep enough to bleed him dry while he waited to be found.
And found he had been, almost at once, by Elven Home Guard in retreat from the airfield, who had watched his vessel fall out of the sky. His own troops, who had recognized him instantly and cut him down, pleading with him not to die, begging him to hold on until they could get help. He had been half-delirious then, burned and shocked, fighting demons that he imagined still flew overhead and hunted him as a hawk would a mouse seeking refuge where there was none to be found.
He had come around eventually, sometime during the long nighttime retreat through the cut to the hills north of the Prekkendorran, getting his first good look at the ragtag condition of his valiant Home Guard. Obedient to his orders, abandoned by Elven army regulars, they had stood alone against the hordes of Federation attackers that had swept across the airfield. The Home Guard had tried to hold their position, a hopeless task that, in the end, had failed. He had learned this much from Drumundoon, who had found him somehow during the night and stayed with him. He had learned, as well, that the Elven sector of the Prekkendorran was lost and that the Free-born allies, besieged on three sides, were in danger of being overrun. The battle was still being fought, a mix of Bordermen, Dwarves, and mercenaries fighting under the command of the charismatic Dwarf Vaden Wick. But disheartened by the death of their King, broken by the swiftness of their defeat, the Elves had abandoned the field.
“We need you,
Captain,” Drum had hissed at him, bent close so that only Pied could hear. “We need you desperately.”
Pied could not quite understand why his aide was saying that. There was no longer anything he could do. He was a Captain of the Home Guard relieved of his command, reprimanded and humiliated by his King in a way that left no doubt about his future. Nothing could change that, especially with Kellen Elessedil dead and the Elven army scattered to the four winds.
But that was just the point, Drum had said. Kellen Elessedil was dead, and so was everyone who had heard him dismiss Pied as Captain of the Home Guard. The whole incident might never have happened, and in truth it would be best if everyone thought it hadn’t. Look at how matters stood. Stow Fraxon, who commanded the Elven army regulars, was dead, killed in the Federation assault during the night. All of the airship commanders were dead. Most of the other commanders were scattered or lost. Of all Elven army units assigned to the Prekkendorran, only the Home Guard was still intact, and only Pied Sanderling was still with his command.
“We have Elven Hunters coming in from all over, Captain,” Drum whispered. “They think you are their only hope, the only commander of the only unit still making a stand. Think about it. If they can’t depend on you, who can they depend on? You still command, no matter what Kellen Elessedil might have said. Besides, a dead King can’t do anything to save us from his mess. Only a live Captain of the Home Guard can do that.”
Pied slept for a time, too tired to argue the point. When he woke, it was midday, and the Home Guard was deep in the tangle of hills north of the flats, pulling together the strays and the lost, linking up with other units that still looked to stand and fight somewhere, in spite of what had happened the night before. Most were in shock, but word had spread that Pied Sanderling had led a successful counterattack against the Federation and damaged the airship and weapon that had destroyed their fleet. While others had run, the Captain of the Home Guard had stood his ground. If there was any hope for the Elves, it lay with him.
Pied heard the talk, even though the words were whispered and the looks cast his way furtive. Drum hadn’t exaggerated—everyone was depending on him. He might have been an ex-Captain of the Home Guard twenty-four hours earlier, but he was back in harness, like it or not. He could choose to set the record straight, but what good would that do? The Elven army needed confidence and determination; he knew better than most how to provide that, and he was in a position to do so. To forgo that responsibility would be to commit a violation of trust worse than anything Kellen Elessedil had ever imagined.
So he had called together his subcommanders and Lieutenants and devised a plan that would give them a chance to stall the Federation advance. In these hills, the Elves were a less visible target than on the flats or in the skies. Here, they could be more elusive as the terrain better suited their style of fighting. The Federation army was advancing on them with the intention of crushing any final resistance they might offer, then flanking and surrounding their Free-born allies. Putting a stop to their effort might very well determine the outcome of the entire war.
With a plan in place and the army regrouped, Drum had persuaded Pied to go back to sleep. He was still battered from his tumble out of the sky, still exhausted enough that he needed to rest. Nothing he could do now was more important than what he would do when the Federation found them.
And now, he thought, opening his eyes once more to stare up into the still-darkened sky, it has.
He looked at Drumundoon. “Any sign of their airships?” He pushed himself up on one elbow with a grunt. The resulting aches and pains gave evidence of the time and distance he must travel still before he healed. “What about that big ship that was carrying their weapon?”
“No airships in sight at all,” his aide responded, reaching down to pull him all the way up and handing him the chain-mail vest he always wore in battle.
Pied stared in disbelief. “How in the world did you find this?”
“I never let go of it, Captain,” the other man advised, giving him a wry smile. “I knew you’d be needing it when you came back.”
That he believed Pied would come back spoke volumes about his faith in his commander. Pied pulled on the vest, buckled on the leather greaves and arm guards that Drum had also somehow salvaged, strapped on a short sword and long knife, and slung his bow and arrows across his back.
He shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me, Drum.” He stretched, adjusted the armor and weapons, and nodded. “All right. Lead the way.”
They went down through the camp to cheers and waves from the Elven Hunters and Home Guard. The ranks of the previous day had swelled to double and, in some cases, triple what they had been, units that had been broken and scattered re-formed and made whole again overnight. The day was clear and the sky cloudless, but the light was pale and silvery on the horizon, the sun still down behind the hills. When it lifted into view, it would blind those walking into it.
Accordingly, Pied had set his defensive line on a low rise that placed the Elves with their backs to the sun and required their enemies to come at them from out of a wide draw that was flanked by high hills on either side. The draw led out of a ten-mile-long cut that twisted through the twin plateaus of the Prekkendorran, a natural passage that seemed to those marching north to be the beginning of a clear opening to the land beyond. But the look was deceptive; after entering the draw, it became apparent that navigating a series of narrow defiles was then necessary to reach open terrain.
Pied was hoping that whoever was leading the Federation pursuit force did not realize that. It was a realistic hope, given the fact that no Federation force had penetrated that far north in almost fifty years. Airships scouting the Prekkendorran might have noticed the lay of the land, but surveys so far north would have been deemed unimportant or, even if made, long since forgotten or lost.
He put his archers on the flanking heights and his Home Guard and regulars within the draw in two ranks, splitting each into a series of triangles that could attack or retreat in sequence. He was counting on a shifting, three-sided Elven counterthrust to slow the expected full-frontal assault by the larger Federation force. He was counting on being able to turn the attacker’s left flank into its main body. He was counting on the resulting confusion and the blinding sunrise to allow the Elves to inflict enough damage to force a retreat. The Federation, he believed, would be relying on superior numbers and brute strength to break the back of the Elven defense. Its perception would be that Elven morale was low after the previous night’s debacle and that not much would be needed to put an end to whatever resistance remained.
In truth, Pied was not entirely certain that that wasn’t exactly what would happen. He believed the Elves had recovered their pride and sense of purpose, but he also remembered his own assessment of two days earlier, when he had judged them ill prepared and poorly motivated. He had to hope that things had changed, that their defeat on the Prekkendorran, rather than disheartening them, had given them fresh courage.
But it was only in the heat of battle that he would discover which way the tide was running. By then, the die would be cast.
Sen Dunsidan stalked the perimeter of the cordoned-off shipyard where Federation workers were crawling all over the Dechtera in an effort to get her back in the skies. She had suffered damage to her steering mechanisms and several of her parse tubes, and he did not want to risk taking her up again until he was certain she was not in danger of going down behind Free-born lines, where his enemies could get their hands on his precious weapon. Nor did he want to risk the possibility of further damage if there was a way to protect against it. So he was impatiently biding his time while the airship engineers worked on repairs and improvements, all of them aware of what would happen if they failed in their efforts.
Sometimes he wished he were sufficiently skilled and knowledgeable to solve all of his problems himself, knowing that the job would get done quickly and efficiently. He hated relying on others, hated waiting to di
scover if they would succeed or fail, and hated the fact that members of the Coalition Council and the public alike would attribute their failures to him and their successes to anyone but.
Still, what was the point of being Prime Minister if you couldn’t delegate and command the services of those you led?
He stopped his pacing and stared north. He could take considerable pleasure in what his leadership had accomplished so far. The trap he had set to snare the Elven warships had been more successful than even he had believed possible. In a single night, he had destroyed the bulk of the enemy fleet and killed the King and his sons in the process. The latter was an incredible stroke of good fortune, for it left the Elves not only without a fleet but without their titular leader and his chosen successors, as well. He couldn’t imagine what had possessed Kellen Elessedil to do something so foolhardy, but he was grateful for the unexpected gift. Like his father before him, Kellen was given to rash acts. That his last had come when it could be capitalized on so completely was a sign to Sen Dunsidan that his fortunes were about to turn.
But not if he failed to finish the job. Not if he failed to destroy what remained of the Elven army so that he could surround and annihilate its allies. Not if he failed to get the Dechtera back into the skies.
He caught sight of Etan Orek scurrying across the platform that housed the weapon he had invented, checking fittings and surfaces, making certain that everything was sound. He had brought the little engineer out to the battlefield with him when he flew the Dechtera from the shipyards in Arishaig, deciding that he should be close by in case anything went wrong with the weapon once it was put into use.
A needless concern, as it turned out, but how was he to know? The prototype had performed as expected—better than expected, really, given the destruction it had wreaked on the Elves. It was the Dechtera that had fallen short of her goal. Still, a delay was not so costly at this point. The Federation army had penetrated the Free-born lines, taking command of the west plateau and sweeping all the way north into the hills in which the remnants of the Elven Hunters hid. The Free-born allies still held the east plateau, but they were surrounded on three sides. More to the point, they were confused and hesitant to counterattack. Having witnessed the destruction of the Elven fleet, they were terrified for the safety of their own. As well they should be, he thought. Because once the Dechtera was airborne again, it would be a simple matter to burn the allied vessels to cinders while they sat on the ground and cut apart the Free-born defensive lines to allow the Federation army passage through.