He trailed off reluctantly, then turned to look at Ander. “Well, we must do what we can. With Arion gone to the Sarandanon, I will need your help.” Ander flushed at the unintended rebuke. “Go with Lauren and question the Chosen carefully. See if there is anything more that may be learned. Anything. I will have the old histories moved up from the vaults and examine them.”
“Do you think there might be something there—or in the old world maps?” Ander asked doubtfully.
“No. You have read them more recently than I, but I can remember nothing. Still, what else can we do? If we are to have any chance at all of finding the Bloodfire, we must have more than what Lauren has been able to tell us.”
He nodded in dismissal. Ander went out to join Lauren, to return with him to the tree where the other Chosen would be waiting. There he would attempt to discover something more of the mysterious Safehold. It seemed a hopeless effort. But, as his father had said, what else could they do?
4
The summer day ended with a brilliant burst of red and lavender that flooded the whole of the western skyline. For long, beautiful minutes, the sun seemed to hang at the crest of the Breakline, lighting the roof of the Westland forest and weaving shadows that draped the wooded earth with still, soft bands of darkness. The air cooled slowly, the midday heat fading now as an evening breeze rippled and sighed through the great, silent trees. Then daylight slipped into dusk, and night washed the color from the sky.
The people of the Elven city of Arborlon drifted wearily toward their homes.
Within the Gardens of Life, Ander Elessedil stared upward at the Ellcrys. Seen now against the evening light, the great tree seemed normal, deceptively unchanged. Yet before the sun had set, traces of the sickness that was destroying her had been plainly evident.
The disease was spreading rapidly. On a scattering of smaller limbs, rot had begun to eat away at the silver-white bark. Broad clusters of leaves hung limp with wilt, curling at the tips, the deep red color turned black. The Chosen had scrubbed the bark carefully with herbal salves and plucked the damaged leaves, hoping against reason that the disease could be contained, knowing all the while that it could not. Ander had seen the truth reflected in their eyes. They could not heal the Ellcrys. No one could. She was dying, and there was nothing that anyone could do to prevent it.
He sighed and turned away, not sure why he had made this last visit of the day to the Gardens. The Chosen had returned to their compound an hour earlier, tired and discouraged, silent in their sense of futility. But he had come anyway, drawn by an unreasoning hope that somehow the answers they so desperately needed could be found here. He had not found those answers, of course, and with the coming of nightfall there was little sense in staying longer.
As he passed out of the Gardens, he could feel the sentries of the Black Watch staring after him. They remained unaware of the damage to the tree, but they could sense that something was wrong. The activities of the Chosen had told them that much. Word would soon be spreading, he thought—rumors growing. Soon the people would have to be told.
But for the moment, at least, all was quiet. Lights were already going out and many windows were darkened as the people prepared for sleep. He envied them. There was little chance that he would sleep that night—he or the King.
He sighed again, wishing that there was something he could do for his father. Eventine had always been so sure of himself, had always been so supremely confident that a solution could be found to any problem. But now, in the two visits Ander had made to report his lack of progress, the old King had seemed lost somewhere within himself. He had tried half-heartedly to mask it from his son, but it was obvious that he was looking with despair on the ending of everything he had worked all his life to accomplish. Here, at last, was a challenge that was beyond all his powers. With barely a word to his son, he had sent him back to continue aiding the Chosen in any way he could.
It had proved a futile task. Ander had questioned each of them carefully, then assembled them and probed their collective memory, searching for any small piece of information that might lead to Safehold. But he had learned nothing more than what he already knew.
A search of the carefully preserved records of their Order had yielded nothing, either. He had studied histories that dated back centuries, checking and rechecking. There were repeated references to the sacred Bloodfire, the life source of their world and all its living things. But nowhere was there even the briefest mention of the mysterious place called Safehold.
Nor had the Ellcrys given them any further assistance in their search. At Ander’s suggestion, the Chosen had gone back to her again. They had gone to her over and over, one by one and all together, begging her to give them something more to further their understanding of her images. But she would not speak to them. She remained silent.
As he came near the compound of the Chosen, he saw that all the lights were out. Routine had apparently taken over and they must have returned to their sleeping quarters at their usual time, shortly after finishing their evening meal. He hoped they would find some relief in sleep. Maybe they would. Sometimes hopelessness and despair were even more fatiguing than physical labor, and they had experienced little else during the long day.
He was moving quietly past their compound, following a pathway that led toward the manor house to make one final report to his father, when a dark shadow moved from under a low tree beside the path.
“My Lord Prince?”
“Lauren?” he asked. Then, as the figure moved closer, he saw that it was indeed the young Elf. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. I … I saw you go up to the Gardens and I hoped that you’d come back this way. Prince Ander, can I speak to you?”
“You are speaking to me, Lauren,” Ander reminded him. But his brief attempt at amusement did nothing to lighten the seriousness of the other’s expression. “Have you remembered something?”
“Perhaps. Not about what the Ellcrys told us, but something I think you should know. Can I walk with you a ways?”
Ander nodded. They turned back along Ander’s chosen path, moving slowly away from the compound.
“I feel as if I ought to be the one to solve this problem,” Lauren began after a moment. “Maybe it’s because the Ellcrys spoke first to me; that makes finding Safehold seem almost my personal obligation. I know that’s probably giving too much importance to myself, but it’s the way I feel, nevertheless. In any case, I don’t want to overlook anything.” He glanced at the Prince. “Do you understand what I am trying to say?”
“I think so. Have we overlooked something, then?”
“Well, something has occurred to me. I thought I should mention it to somebody.”
Ander stopped and looked at the young Elf.
“I didn’t want to say anything to the King.” Lauren’s uneasiness increased. “Or to any of the others. I’m not really sure how much of this they know … and we don’t talk about her …”
He trailed off. Ander waited patiently.
“It’s about Amberle. My Lord, after her choosing, she spoke with the Ellcrys many times—long conversations.” The words came slowly. “It was different with her than with the rest of us. I don’t know whether she ever realized that. We never really talked about it …”
Ander had stiffened sharply. Lauren saw his reaction and hurried on. “But maybe the Ellcrys would talk to her again. Or she might understand better. Perhaps she might learn something we could not.”
There was a long moment of silence as the two faced each other. Then Ander shook his head slowly. “Amberle can’t help us now, Lauren. She’s gone. Even her mother doesn’t know where she went. There’s no possible way we could find her in time to make any difference.”
The red-haired Elf nodded slowly, the last trace of hope leaving his face. “It was just an idea,” he said finally, then turned back toward the compound. “Good-night, Prince Ander.”
“Good-night, Lauren. Tha
nk you for telling me, anyhow.”
The Chosen nodded again before moving back up the pathway, his white robes rustling softly as he disappeared into the night. Ander stared after him for a moment, his dark face troubled. His father had asked for any hint—anything—that might offer a clue to the location of Safehold. Yet there was really no hope of finding Amberle. She might be anywhere within the Four Lands. And now was hardly the time to bring her name up to Eventine. She had been his favorite, the granddaughter whose choosing had filled him with deep pride and joy. But her betrayal of her trust had been harder for him to bear than even the death of her father Aine.
He shook his head slowly and continued on toward the manor house.
Gael was still on duty, his face drawn with fatigue and his eyes troubled. It was inevitable that he should come to know of the problem they faced, but he could be trusted to maintain secrecy. Now he started to rise, then sank back again at Ander’s motion. “The King is expecting you,” he said. “He’s in his study, refusing to retire. If you could persuade him to sleep, even for a few hours …”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Ander promised.
Within his private study, Eventine Elessedil looked up as his son entered. His eyes studied Ander’s face momentarily, reading the failure written there. Then he pushed himself back from the reading table at which he had been seated and rubbed his eyes wearily. He rose, stretched, and walked slowly to the curtained windows, peering through the folds into the darkness beyond. On the book-littered table, a tray of food had been pushed aside, hardly touched. Candles burned low, their wax dripping and puddling on the metal holders. The small study was still and somber, its oak bookcases and tapestry-covered walls a dim mix of faded colors and shadow. Scattered about in piles lay the books that Gael must have spent the day bringing up from the vaults.
The King looked back momentarily at his son. “Nothing?” Ander shook his head silently. Eventine grimaced. “Nor I—” He shrugged, pointing to the book that lay open on the table. “The last hope. It contains a single reference to the Ellcrys seed and the Bloodfire. Read it for yourself.”
The book was one of more than a hundred volumes of the histories kept by the Elven Kings and their scribes from days that were lost in myth. They were worn and old, carefully bound in leather and brass, sealed in coverings that served to protect them against the ravages of time. They had survived the Great Wars and the destruction of the old race of Man. They had survived the First and Second Wars of the Races. They had survived the ages and ages of life and death that they chronicled. They contained the entirety of the known history of the Elven people. Thousands and thousands of pages, all carefully recorded through the years.
Ander bent to the open pages; the ink had turned brown with age and the script was of an ancient style. But the words were clear enough to read.
“Then shall the One Seed be delivered unto the Bearer that is Chosen. And the Seed shall be borne by the Bearer to the Chambers of the Bloodfire, there to be immersed within the Fire that it might be returned to the earth. Thereupon shall the Tree be Reborn and the Great Forbidding endure forever. Thus spake the High Wizard to his Elves, even as he did perish, that Knowledge be not lost unto his People.”
Eventine nodded as Ander looked up again. “I have read through every one of those books, studying every passage that might apply. There are others—but none tells more than the one you read.”
He walked back to the reading table and stood fingering the gilt-edged pages of the volume idly. “This is the oldest volume. It contains much that may be only myth. The tale of the ancient war between good and evil magics, names of heroes, everything that led up to the Forbidding. But no mention of Safehold or of the location of the Bloodfire. And nothing on the nature of the sorcery that gave life to the Ellcrys and to the power of the Forbidding.”
The last omission was hardly unusual, Ander thought. His ancestors had seldom placed the secrets of their magics in writing. Such things were handed down by word of mouth so that they could not be stolen by their enemies. And some sorceries were said to be so powerful that their use was limited to but a single time and place. It might have been so with the sorcery that had created the Ellcrys.
The King lowered himself back into his chair, studied the book a moment longer, then wordlessly closed it.
“We will have to rely on the little we have learned from the Ellcrys,” he said quietly. “We will have to use that to determine the possible locations of the Bloodfire and then search each of them out.”
Ander nodded wordlessly. It seemed hopeless. There was only the smallest chance that they could find Safehold with nothing more than that vague description to aid them.
“I wish Arion were here,” his father murmured suddenly.
Ander said nothing. There was good cause for the King to have need of Arion this time, he admitted to himself. For the leadership that would be required in directing and furthering the search, Arion was the proper choice. And his presence might give some comfort to their father. Now was no time to begrude him that.
“I think you should sleep, father,” Ander suggested after a moment of silence. “You’ll need rest for what lies ahead.”
The King rose once more and reached out to extinguish the candles on the table. “Very well, Ander,” he said, making an effort to smile at his son. “Send Gael in to me. But your day, too, has been a long one. You go on to bed as well and get whatever sleep you can.”
Ander returned to his cottage. To his surprise, he did sleep. While his mind spun dully in useless circles, sheer physical fatigue took over. He awoke only once during the night, his rest broken by a nightmare of indescribable horror that left him damp with sweat. Yet within seconds of waking, he drifted back asleep, the dream forgotten. This time, he slumbered undisturbed.
It was already dawn when he came awake again, slipping hurriedly from the bedcovers to dress. A sense of renewed determination strengthened him as he breakfasted hastily and prepared to leave his house. Somewhere there was an answer to this dilemma, a means by which Safehold could be found. Perhaps it lay with the dying Ellcrys. Perhaps it lay with the Chosen. But there was an answer—there had to be an answer.
As he went down the gravel walkway, he could see the early morning sunlight seeping through the screen of the surrounding forests as the new day began. He would go first to the Chosen—they would be in the Gardens of Life by now, their day already begun—in the hope that by talking once again with them something new would be discovered. They would have been thinking about the matter, turning it over and over in their minds, and possibly one of them might have recalled something more. Or perhaps the Ellcrys would have spoken to them again this morning.
He stopped first at the manor house, where Gael was already at his post. But the young Elf raised a finger to his lips, indicating silently that the King still slept and should not be disturbed. Ander nodded and left, grateful for any rest his father might find.
Dew still glimmered on the palace lawn as he moved toward the gates. He glanced expectantly at the gardens as he passed and was surprised to see that Went was not at work. He was more surprised still to see a scattering of the old fellow’s tools at the edge of the rose beds, dirt still fresh upon their metal. It was not like Went to leave a job half done. If he was having that much trouble with his back, he should be checked on. But that would have to wait. There were more pressing concerns at the moment. He glanced through the shrubbery at the flower beds a final time, then hurried on.
Minutes later he was striding past the ivy-grown walls of the Gardens of Life, following the worn pathway that led to their gates. From atop the Carolan—the towering wall of rock that rose abruptly from the eastern shore of the Rill Song, lifting Arborlon above the lands about it—he could see the vast sweep of the Westland stretched forth below: to the east and north, the towers and tree lanes of the Elven home city, wrapped close within the dense tangle of the forestland; to the south, the distant mist-gray crags of the Rock Spur a
nd Pykon, laced with bits and pieces of blue ribbon where the Mermidon River cut apart the aged rock on its long passage eastward into Callahorn; to the west, below the Carolan and beyond the swift flow of the Rill Song, the valley of the Sarandanon, the breadbasket of the Elven nation. The homeland of the Elves, Ander thought with pride. He must find a way, he and the Chosen and his father, to save it.
Moments later he stood before the Ellcrys. There was no sign of the Chosen. The tree stood alone.
Ander stared about in disbelief. It seemed impossible that the Chosen could have all overslept, even though their routine had been so upset by the revelation of the Ellcrys. In hundreds of years, the Chosen had never failed to greet the tree at the first touch of morning light.
Ander left the Gardens hurriedly and was almost running as he came within sight of the walled compound of the Chosen. Evergreens surrounded it, flower gardens banked its stone and brick walkways, and vegetable patches ran in even rows along its backside, the black earth dotted with green stalks and sprouts. A low wall of worn rock enclosed the yard, breached on each side by white picket gates.
The house itself was shadowed and still.
Ander slowed. By now, the Chosen must surely be awake. Yet there was no sign of life. Something cold seemed to settle into the Elven Prince. He moved ahead, eyes peering into the shadowy dimness beyond the open door of the house, until at last he stood at the entrance.
“Lauren?” He spoke the young Elf’s name quietly.
No answer came. He stepped through the entry into the darker shadows beyond. A flicker of movement registered at the edge of his vision, movement that came from somewhere within the surrounding evergreens. A sudden apprehension swept through him, leaving him cold all over. What was back there?
Belatedly he thought of the weapons he had left within his lodgings. He stood motionless for a time, waiting for something more. But there was no further movement, no sounds betraying the presence of another living being. Resolutely he went forward.