by Terry Brooks
Phryne felt her breath catch as she read:
Go to the Ashenell
beneath the
Belloruusian Arch
With Xac Wen in tow, she went out the back door, across a small grassy open space, and into the gardens. Swiftly they gained the forest beyond, pausing there to crouch down and look back. Lights were moving inside the house, two or three, and she could hear the scrape and clump of heavy boots on the wooden floors. If she could have done so, she would have shuttered the house and trapped them inside. Buffeted by too many emotions to sort out all at once, she embraced the one that was strongest and made it her own.
Rage.
Someday, she would make Isoeld and those responsible for whatever had been done to her grandmother pay for their arrogance and their hateful disregard for any form of moral code. She would track them down and hurt them. She envisioned what she would do, but as she did so the anger leached away and tears filled her eyes. She brushed them away, not wanting the boy to see. When she looked over at him, though, he was looking back.
“Don’t worry, Phryne, she’ll be all right. Your grandmother, I mean. She got away from them.”
He was trying to help, to make her feel better, and she gave him a smile for his effort. But she wasn’t convinced that he was right. All she knew for sure was that her grandmother had created that avatar with magic Phryne hadn’t even suspected she possessed and left it behind to let the girl know where she had gone.
To the Ashenell. To the tombs of the Elven people.
There were few places in the valley she wanted to go to less. The tombs were dark and haunted, a resting place for the dead, but a reservoir for wild magic, too. Specters and ghosts roamed its grounds, and it was said that an old city was buried deep beneath the earth in which the oldest of the dead were buried. Once, centuries ago, when Arborlon was still settled in the Cintra, Kirisin Belloruus and his sister, Simralin, had gone down into those tombs to recover the Elfstones from the matriarch of the Gotrin dead, a wraith presence still able to cross over from the other side. She knew a little of the story, enough to be wary of venturing anywhere near of her own volition. Yet here she was, faced with the need to do exactly that.
She would go, of course, her fears and doubts notwithstanding. She had no choice unless she wanted to ignore her grandmother’s avatar and abandon her search. But she loved Mistral, and she knew she would not disobey her in this.
After all, she told herself, she would be aboveground in the cemetery. She would be among the dead, not beneath them as Kirisin and Simralin Belloruus had been all those years ago. She had no idea what she would do once she got there. She had no idea what to expect. Perhaps she would find nothing more than a clue indicating where she was supposed to go next. Or perhaps Mistral herself and not an avatar would be waiting this time.
She stared at her grandmother’s cottage a moment longer, watching the lights bob and weave through the darkened interior, and then she rose and whispered for Xac Wen to follow her. She went back into the trees, safely out of view, and began to circle the cottage at a distance that would keep her hidden. The boy slipped along behind her, a silent presence. She would have to do something about him soon. She couldn’t let him continue to follow her blindly. He had exposed himself to enough danger already, all to help her, and it was time for him to step aside.
“Are we going to the tombs?” he whispered once they were safely away from the cottage and walking back down the pathways toward the city.
She glanced back at him. “I should go alone, Xac.”
“So I won’t be in danger?” he guessed.
“That’s right. So you won’t be in danger. I know what you’re going to say about the Orullians, but they can’t expect you to do more than you’ve already done. You have to go home and let me carry on from here.”
He stopped walking and looked at her. “I thought we already agreed on this. I thought I was staying with you until you were safe.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We did. But that was before I realized how long this might take and how dangerous it might be. I can’t keep letting you risk yourself for me. Even Tasha and Tenerife would agree. There isn’t anything more you can do.”
The boy looked down at his feet, his young face a mask of disappointment. “Well, I don’t agree.”
She felt herself relenting, told herself not to, and then relented anyway. “Let’s make a bargain. You come with me as far as the Ashenell. I wouldn’t mind having someone with me when I go into that place. I don’t like it there. But afterward, you leave me and go back home.”
He looked up again quickly. “Agreed. Except that afterward, we talk about it some more.”
She started to object, but he had already turned away, walking quickly up the path, not giving her the chance. She stared after him for a moment, and then gave it up. She could deal with it later, after they had found whatever it was they were going to find in the tombs.
Dawn had appeared as a faint brightening on the eastern horizon, its vague coloration making just enough of a difference in the darkness to reveal it was on its way. Time was shortening for what needed doing in the tombs, and while Phryne had no desire to go into the Ashenell while it was still dark she knew that it would be much more dangerous once the sun came up. She picked up the pace, passing Xac Wen, who glanced at her in surprise, then hurried to catch up.
Together they wound along the pathways until they had arrived at the edge of the city on the north side and come up to the near entrance to the tombs. As they reached the gates, they drew to a halt and stood looking at what lay beyond.
The Ashenell was huge. It had been transported along with the city when Kirisin Belloruus used the Loden Elfstone to rescue his people after the Great Wars. In it were hundreds of thousands of Elves who had died over the centuries, some buried in huge stone mausoleums that held as many as a hundred members of a single family, some buried in the earth in layers that ran twenty to thirty feet deep, and some even buried standing up beneath inscribed flagstones measuring no more than three feet square. There were hundreds of thousands more who had been cremated and had their ashes stored in urns, sometimes entire families, preferring that their remains be joined for all time. No one knew for sure how many Elves were buried here. Some markers had been shattered or their inscriptions damaged so badly they were unreadable, and those to whom they were dedicated had been lost. Some of the tombs had collapsed, and some of the grave sites had been rededicated. Keeping track after so much time in a city that had existed since the dawn of Faerie was impossible. There were records kept in the palace archives, but even these had not survived entirely intact.
But it wasn’t this that made the Ashenell such a forbidding place for Phryne. It wasn’t the dead or their tombs and markers.
It was the dark magic that resided in the earth.
Everyone had heard the stories. Elves who had disappeared without a trace while venturing into the tombs after sunset. Elves who had tinkered with the markers and the writings and been found burned to a crisp. Elves who had wandered in thinking to find their way out again and been lost. Elves who had encountered things so terrible that it had cost them their voices and their sanity. Elves who had been changed into something unrecognizable.
She did not necessarily believe all those stories. But she had witnessed at least one incident firsthand, and that was enough. When she was a little girl, she had gone into the Ashenell on a dare, leaving behind her two cousins, Pare and Freysen. Girls like her, though older, they had given her a dare and she had been stubborn enough to ignore common sense and her own instincts and accept it. She had gone in with the intention of touching the tomb that housed the most recent members of the Amarantyne family. Her word that she had done so would be good enough for them, her cousins had agreed.
Phryne would not have lied in any case—not about this or anything else that had to do with accepting a dare. She was still trying to find her place in the family, her mother recent
ly dead, and her father already beginning to drift away. What confidence she possessed derived in part from her legacy as part Amarantyne and part Belloruus and from an iron resolve that got her through everything difficult. She employed that resolve on this night and went into the tombs and touched the one that belonged to her father’s people.
She was on her way back again, feeling strong and steady as a result of her accomplishment when she encountered the dog, a creature fully six feet high at the shoulder and perhaps a dozen feet long. It came out of nowhere to confront her, blood dripping from its jaws and eyes burning like live coals. She froze where she was, unable to move, unable to do anything but stand there and wait to see what it intended. For a long time, it regarded her, as if measuring her value against its interest. But in the end, it turned away and vanished.
She came out of the Ashenell shaking in terror, unable to do anything but run home and cower under her sheets. When morning came she was herself again and decided it must have been an apparition.
But then she heard that a man engaged in breaking into one of the tombs had been killed that same night, his wounds indicating that he had been torn apart by a creature the like of which no one could even imagine.
So she did not discount the presence of magic and of things born of that magic. She did not think the Elven people brought such things to life intentionally, but she did think their use of magic left a residue and a legacy that allowed such things to come alive on their own.
“You should wait here,” she told Xac Wen, looking at the dark shadows of the mix of trees and tombs and markers.
“You should stop talking and just follow me,” he answered back.
Without waiting to see what she would do, he walked right through the gates and into the Ashenell. That boy’s got more courage than good sense, she thought. But she hurried after him.
She caught up to him and took over the lead. She knew in what section of the cemetery the Belloruus family was buried; she had been there more than once, although always in daylight except for that one unfortunate time. She also knew about the Belloruusian Arch. Constructed not long after the city and its populace had been carried out of the Cintra and resituated in this valley, it was the monument that defined the section reserved for the whole of the family and its various members.
They reached it quickly enough—it wasn’t that far from the southern gate—taking a direct path through the tombs in an effort to reach their destination while it was still dark. Phryne found herself searching the shadows the entire way, memories of her encounter with the ghost dog suddenly as fresh as the day it had happened. But they encountered nothing and no one, and arrived without incident.
That should have been the end of it. She was where she was supposed to be, where her grandmother had told her to come. But Mistral was nowhere to be found.
Phryne stood at a distance of perhaps twenty feet from the Belloruusian Arch, weighing her next move. But she quickly grew impatient. Dawn was approaching, and people would be out and about. Unwilling to just stand in place any longer and resigned to whatever fate awaited her, she decided to take a closer look.
XAC WEN WATCHED HER GO, hanging back and studying the arch as if it might hold some clue he could decipher. He kept thinking something would appear that would explain the message from Mistral Belloruus. Why had she summoned Phryne here? What was it she wanted? He thought of Phryne’s grandmother the way most people did—a very peculiar, reclusive old lady who knew how to do things that other people didn’t. Like how to do magic, some of it dangerous. He kept wondering if Phryne’s insistence on finding her had something to do with that. After all, a little magic might be useful when you were dealing with people like Isoeld Severine.
Phryne was almost to the arch now, moving cautiously, taking her time. Xac didn’t think this was a trap, but he couldn’t be sure. He wished that Tasha were there. Big, strong Tasha, who was a match for anything. Or even clever Tenerife. But there was only Phryne and himself, and that seemed less than adequate given the extent of the danger they were in.
He started forward now, not wanting the girl to get too far ahead of him. He needed to be close if something happened, and he didn’t want to have regrets about that later.
He no sooner completed the thought than Phryne Amarantyne walked beneath the arch and disappeared.
For a moment, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. There one minute, gone the next—that wasn’t possible. Nothing had happened to cause it; she had just disappeared into thin air. He rushed ahead, blinking rapidly, trying to find her in the mix of gloom and shadows. But she wasn’t there. She was gone.
“Phryne!” he called aloud, throwing caution aside.
He plunged through the space beneath the Belloruusian Arch, but nothing happened. He wheeled back and rushed through again. He turned back once more and placed himself directly beneath the arch. He tried every different approach he could imagine, trying to put himself on the path she had taken, at one point even standing in the faint prints of her boots.
Nothing.
He stared around in dismay. What was he supposed to do now? How could he find her? Would she come back on her own from wherever she had gone, or was she in trouble?
He stayed by the arch all that day, waiting for Phryne Amarantyne to return. When she didn’t, he decided there was only one thing to do. He had to go back to Tasha and Tenerife and tell them everything that had happened. He had to get help.
At dawn the following day, a food sack and water skin slung over one shoulder, he set off for Aphalion Pass.
PANTERRA QU AND PRUE LISS TRAVELED NORTH out of Glensk Wood through the remainder of the night, following roads and paths that led toward Arborlon and the Elves. Prue was using a walking staff now, one cut from a hickory limb by Pan shortly after they had set out so that she could continue to give the impression that she was blind and needed help in making her way. They had agreed that even though she could see as well as any sighted person she would be better off not revealing the truth of this. It would lend others a false impression of how vulnerable she was and give her an advantage she might not otherwise have. Given the situation in which they found themselves, any advantage they could gain was not to be passed up.
Nevertheless, Prue continued to be decidedly unhappy about the price exacted. She was growing used to the idea that she could not discern colors, could only see shades of gray and white and black, but it did not ease the fresh pain that each new reminder of her disability created. She told herself that she should not let this bother her, that colors were lovely and sometimes even wondrous, but that being able to see, whether in colors or not, was what really mattered. And while this was true, it made the fact of it no easier to bear. There was a subtlety to the emotional pain she experienced that deepened as time passed and it became increasingly clear that not only was her ability to see colors forever gone but her inability to adapt to that loss was deepening.
She thought more than once to talk it out with Pan because she had always talked out everything with him. But she chose against doing so here because it would only remind him of the fact that he was the cause. Better that she suffer quietly and not make him share in her pain. In any case, he could never know the extent and nature of that pain, because it hadn’t happened to him.
So they talked of other things.
“There are still a good many old-world weapons out there,” she told him at one point. “Deladion Inch had some of them, all in good working order, all deadly. He had vehicles that ran on solar power and explosives that were no bigger than my hand but could destroy whole buildings. If he had them, others will have them, too.”
“But not so many maybe.” Pan was peering off into the forest, always paying attention to his surroundings. “Besides, they weren’t enough to save him, were they?”
“They might have been, if he hadn’t chosen to rescue me.”
Pan nodded. “For which I will always be grateful. It says something about him that he decided
to come at all. He didn’t know you, didn’t have any reason to make rescuing you his business. He did it for Sider.”
“Oh, I think he did it for himself, too.” She gave him a quick smile as he looked over. “No, it’s true. He liked challenging himself. I think that’s what made life worth something to him.”
He nodded and looked away. She wondered if the look of her eyes troubled him. He didn’t seem to want to focus on them. Maybe he found her ugly or a little less human now. She didn’t like to think that he would be this way, but she would understand if he were. She didn’t like it any better than he did. She didn’t want to look at herself anymore, either.
“I want you to know …” He stopped midsentence, shook his head, and kept walking. For a minute, he didn’t say anything more. Then he looked at her anew, and said, “I just want to say again how sorry I am that this happened.”
She gave him a fresh smile. “I know. But I like hearing you say it. It makes it all a little easier.”
“Do you think that what he did—the King of the Silver River—that it sharpened your instincts?”
She thought about it. In the time since she had returned from wherever the Faerie creature had taken her and resumed her trek home, she had been given ample opportunity to discover if she had been helped or not. It seemed to her that her instincts were fully restored. More than once, they had warned her of dangers she could not see, of creatures in hiding, sometimes directly in her path. When she changed course, the feelings would diminish.
“They are much stronger,” she said finally. “I could tell coming back to Glensk Wood. Are they strong enough to warn me consistently and accurately? I can’t be sure yet. I have to wait and see. I have to trust in what he told me. And I do trust him, Pan. I still think the exchange was a fair bargain.”
She had noticed something else, too, although she didn’t choose to talk about it just yet. As they walked, traveling through the gloom and shadows of the woods, alone amid the trees save for those things that lived there, she found she was able to detect, identify, and isolate almost everything that drew breath. She couldn’t always tell exactly what she was sensing, but she could tell if it was big or little, safe or dangerous, lying in wait or sleeping, hunting or simply moving about. It was a subtle thing, filled with nuances she had not recognized before, and it gave her insights that filled her with unexpected confidence.