by Terry Brooks
Last, and once only, she reminded herself. She had no real experience with this magic. She would be testing herself when she called on it now. She must be wary.
She must be respectful of their power.
Mistral had intended the Elfstones for her, had died to give them to her so that she might use them to help the Elves. Phryne still couldn’t imagine how she would do this. But none of that mattered now. What mattered was finding a way out of the underground. Nothing she did would help the Elves until she was back in Arborlon.
She cupped the Stones in her hand, wrapping her fingers about them, feeling them press against her flesh as she closed her eyes and began to picture where it was she wanted to be. She thought of Arborlon first, of its buildings and trees and gardens, of its people old and young. She thought of Tasha and Tenerife. Nothing happened. She shifted her thinking to blue sky and green grasses, to trees and rivers, to the fresh smells she knew from home. She tried to keep her thoughts straight and focused, but she had difficulty doing so. Her mind kept playing tricks on her, shifting from one picture to the next, from people to creatures to plants to places, back and forth. Everything seemed to morph into something else.
But finally the Elfstones responded, their warmth increasing, their magic abruptly surging into her. She opened her eyes as the blue light exploded out of the Stones and flashed down the tunnel’s length, ripping through the darkness for unimaginable distances, piercing a barrier of something that looked to be a thin sheet of clear water, and flashing onward from there to an opening that led out into a forest she did not recognize—the trees old and huge and hoary—before winking out.
“What was that?” Pan asked softly. He’d seen it, too. He looked at her in wonder. “I’ve been everywhere in the valley and never seen a forest like that one. Are you sure about this?”
She almost laughed. “I’m not sure about anything. I’m not sure where we are or where we’re going or how we will get there. I’m not sure that what we just saw is where I asked to go. But the Elfstones say this is what we’re supposed to do.”
“That isn’t how we got here,” he pointed out. “This tunnel, the one the Elfstones showed us? That’s a different way out entirely. Why is that? Why not take us back the way we came?”
“There’s no point in asking me, Pan. I only got to use the Elfstones one time, when I asked them to find …” She hesitated, realizing what she was about to say. Then she shook her head and dismissed her reticence. “When I asked them to find you—a test Mistral insisted on—they worked fine. But this time, I don’t know.”
She felt a flush creeping up her neck as she admitted she had spied on him, and quickly said, “Maybe they don’t work as well down here, so far underground, so close to the tombs of the Gotrins and their magic. Maybe they don’t respond the same. Or maybe I didn’t ask them in the right way. I don’t know.”
He reached out and closed her fingers back around the Stones. “I think we’ll be all right. Let’s see where this tunnel leads.”
She shoved the Elfstones back into the pouch and the pouch into her pocket, and they set out once more. Movement seemed to help ease her grief. She was still thinking of Mistral, of the way she had just evaporated into nothing, of the loss of the last member of her family. But she was past her shock and despair now, beginning to accept what had happened. She wasn’t sure how strong she was, but she knew that she could function again, that her panic was banished and her common sense restored.
She knew, as well, that while Panterra Qu was with her, she would be stronger still. But she was ambivalent about how that made her feel. She didn’t want to be dependent on anyone at this juncture; she felt she needed to be strong in her own right, able to face up to and respond to the dangerous challenges that threatened without having to rely on someone else. But there was something about the Tracker’s presence—something in his demeanor and attitude—that was reassuring and comforting. She knew she liked him; she had known that from the first time she saw him. But now she was beginning to wonder if what she felt was something more.
Maybe something much more.
The thought tweaked at her as they walked, nudging this way and that inside her head, giving rise to possibilities that went way beyond anything she had ever imagined. Some of those possibilities made her blush, but the darkness hid that from the boy. Some gave her pause in a way nothing had for years. She let it all take hold and then released it and washed it away.
It didn’t hurt to consider things that might one day be. Or even things that might never be.
When they had walked for so long that she was almost falling down with fatigue, Pan had them stop. He produced food from the backpack he had carried down from the Ashenell, sharing what he had, giving them both a long rest. While they recovered themselves, he talked of the changes to Prue and the fears he had for her.
“She said she was willing to give up her sight in order to help me, but I don’t know. Not being able to see colors anymore doesn’t sound so bad, but I think it is. Especially for a Tracker, for someone who spends her entire life outdoors. Seeing colors is important to what we do. It helps identify things. It blends with smell and taste and feeling and hearing. They all work together to tell us what we need to know. She doesn’t have that now. Not like she did.”
“She would do anything for you, Pan.” She gave him a long look as she took the last bite of the bread he had given her. “You know that. You shouldn’t be surprised by her sacrifice.”
“I’m not surprised, but I don’t like it. She wasn’t aware of what she was giving up. She doesn’t even know for sure if it will make a difference. She doesn’t know how to help me. No one in the valley has ever come up against a demon. No one knows anything useful—how to defend against them or what it would take to kill one. How can she know what to do?”
Phryne shrugged. “You can never really know, can you? Not even if you know that it’s coming and when it will come. Not even if it’s something you’ve faced before. You go on instinct. That’s what she’ll do here. That’s what you’ll do, too.” She paused. “I don’t think the King of the Silver River would have given her this … this burden if he didn’t think she was able to carry it. He must have some reason for thinking she can make a difference. Otherwise, the whole exercise is pointless.”
“I know. I know that’s so. Rationally, I know. But emotionally?” He shook his head. “The King of the Silver River is a spirit creature, a being out of the old world of Faerie, and who knows what he’s thinking or what he has planned? It might not be what we think.”
She gave him a smile. “So it’s good that everything else that’s been shoved on us is so well sorted out, isn’t it? You with your black staff and its magic and me with my Elfstones and their magic, all of it so perfectly understandable and easily managed—no troublesome uncertainties at all.”
She watched her smile transfer itself to his face. “Well, when you put it that way …” He got to his feet. “When you put it that way, I guess it’s time to start walking again.”
They set out shortly afterward, leaving further discussion for later. They both knew how hard this was going to be, and they knew as well how the odds were stacked against them in a way that did not offer a great deal of hope. But sharing the uncertainty and danger made it more manageable than it would have been otherwise, and that was something that Phryne was clinging to.
After what seemed like hours—though it was impossible to tell how much time had passed—they reached the place shown them by the Elfstones and found the way forward blocked by what appeared to be a transparent curtain of water spread across the entire width of the passageway. Except that, on closer inspection, they discovered it was not water at all. It was something else, more like spiderwebbing, more fibrous than liquid. It rippled gently, fastened to the rock all the way around at the edges, no gaps at all, its membrane clear enough that they could see colors and shapes on the other side.
They could see the end of the tunnel.
Panterra nodded wordlessly. He stepped forward and touched the curtain experimentally with the end of his staff. The membrane shivered, and then the staff passed through, as if the surface were liquid after all. He drew the staff back again, looked at it, touched it where it had penetrated and shook his head.
“Nothing. No film, no dampness, nothing.” He looked at her. “Want to try just walking through?”
She nodded. “I think we have to.”
She took his hand. Together, they stepped toward the strange transparency and passed through.
There was a moment of dislocation, of being in one place and then another. The temperature warmed, the light brightened, and the smells that filled the air freshened. All of a sudden they were no longer underground, the passageway and the cavern they had fled as distant as yesterday. Instead, they stood at the mouth of a cave that opened out onto the forest they had seen while still on the other side of the strange transparency.
Phryne looked back the way they had come. The curtain and the passageway it had barred were gone. She was looking at a solid rock wall that formed the back of the cave in which they now found themselves. It was clear that magic had allowed them to leave, but would not allow them to reenter.
“I didn’t want to go back, anyway,” Phryne said softly, knowing there was no longer any reason even to consider it.
Leaving the cave and its sealed entrance to the underground tombs of the Gotrins behind them, they set out anew, emerging into the light of day and a forest of tall, multi-limbed trees that looked like oaks, but were something else entirely. Huge, hoary old growth, they formed a forest that stretched away from the cave and the hillside into which it burrowed for as far as they could see. Moss and lichen formed an eerie second skin over trunks and branches, the colors a mix of contrasting greens that allowed only bits and pieces of the graying bark beneath to show through.
“What are these?” Phryne asked.
Panterra shook his head. “Whatever they are, they’re dead. Look at the branches. Lichen and moss everywhere, but no sign of buds or leaves. The whole forest is dead, probably a long time for this much covering to spread. This doesn’t look like anyplace I’ve ever—”
He stopped in midsentence and looked at her, and she knew at once what he was thinking. “We’re not inside the valley anymore, are we?” she said. “We’re outside again.”
“I think so. I don’t understand it. The time and distances are all wrong. It must be the magic that made it possible for us to come this far in such a short time. We couldn’t have walked it in less than a day or two.” He paused. “But why would the Elfstones bring us this way? Why didn’t they keep us inside the valley? Phryne, did you do something … I don’t know, something that … something different …”
She gave him a look that silenced him at once. “I did exactly what I was told to do by Mistral. I did the same thing I did when she told me to test it the first time by trying to find you!” This time she didn’t blush. She was too angry. “Don’t you try to put this on me!”
“I was just …”
“You were just suggesting I did something wrong!”
“But I wasn’t …”
“Wait a minute.” She held up one hand, palm out, to silence him. She stood frozen in place for long moments, thinking. “Just wait. Maybe this is my fault. I was supposed to focus on where I wanted us to go. But I didn’t use just one image. I used images of Arborlon and Tasha and Tenerife and trees and sky and a lot of other things. I couldn’t seem to keep one thought steady. I didn’t know what image I should use.”
She paused once more, shaking her head in frustration. “Except that nothing I pictured in my head was this. Everything was the valley. So why are we out here?”
Pan’s voice softened. “Maybe the Elfstones made a decision of their own on where they wanted us to be. All magic is unpredictable. We know that much. So maybe …”
She moved close to him, taking his wrists in her hands, gripping tightly. “This is my fault, isn’t it? I’m the one who uses the Elfstones, so it has to be my fault.” Fresh tears filled her eyes, and her composure broke. “I’m sorry, Pan. I did the best I could, but I don’t think it was enough. I let myself be distracted. I didn’t prepare. I was still thinking of Mistral and what she …”
She was sobbing and rambling both at once, shaking her head and jerking at his arms as she held on to him, unable to stop herself. Pan stood motionless before her, looking distraught, and then all at once he freed himself with a quick twist of his wrists, put his arms around her, and pulled her against him. “That’s enough, Phryne,” he whispered, his face pressed against her hair. “Don’t say any more. You don’t have to apologize to me.”
He held her for a long time, even after she had gone quiet and was holding him as tightly as he was holding her. She had her face buried in his shoulder and she was content to stay there, happy just to be held and comforted by the warmth of his body and his words and to not let anything disturb the moment.
But then he eased her away from him, and she looked up to meet his steady gaze. “Wherever we are, we’ll find our way back to where we need to be. It doesn’t matter how this happened. It only matters that we’re safe now, that we’re free of the Gotrin shades and the underground tombs. That’s enough for us.”
She nodded, swallowing hard. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I never behave like this. I never fall apart.” She shook her head in dismay. “It’s losing Mistral or using the magic or …”
“Or both and the fact that you’re exhausted.” His eyes fixed on hers. “How long since you’ve slept for more than a few hours?”
She shook her head, unable to remember. “I don’t know. A long time. Days, I guess.”
“You’ll sleep tonight, I promise you. Come on. Let’s start walking. We have to get out of this forest in order to see where we are.”
They set out through the maze of moss-and-lichen-covered trees, through the skeletal remains of the dead hardwoods, the remnants of the old world and reminders of what had been lost. Once, this forest must have been beautiful, so many huge old giants clustered together, their interlocking boughs covered with leaves, sunlight filtering to the earthen floor. There would have been clusters of wildflowers and ferns and flashes of small animals and birds. That was all gone now, the forest dead and deserted of life, a graveyard every bit as empty and bereft as the one they had just escaped.
“This is taking too long,” Phryne declared not long after, drawing up short. She was recovered by then from her breakdown and better able to think about what was needed. “I should try using the Elfstones again.”
Pan stopped and faced her. He looked unconvinced. “I don’t know,” he said carefully. “Using their magic might call attention to our presence. We don’t know what might be attracted.”
“But how much more trouble are we likely to get into if we just wander around in here? We could be going in the exact wrong direction.”
“I don’t know,” he repeated.
She took his hand and squeezed it. “Please, Pan. Let me try. I know I can do this. I’ll be careful.”
He squeezed her hand back, persuaded. “All right. Do it.”
Once more, she produced the Elfstones, dumping them out of their pouch and into her open palm. This time, she formed a steady image of Arborlon, dismissing all other choices as she closed her eyes. The familiar warmth rose from the Stones into her fist and arm and from there into her entire body. She felt the magic strengthen as it surged through her, and her eyes snapped open.
Blue light lanced from her closed fingers in a different direction from the one they had been taking, angling off to their left and cutting through the trees until it found open country, blasted and barren, where clusters of rocks and dead trees dominated ravines that crisscrossed to foothills that bordered mountains she recognized immediately.
The flow of the magic dissipated, and the bl
ue light died away. “Did you see?” she asked him excitedly. “Did you see those mountains? Aphalion Pass cuts right through them into the valley. Arborlon is just beyond!”
“I saw,” he answered. “Now we know. Everything is all right. We know where to go. Thanks to you, we know.”
For a moment, they stared at each other without speaking, both of them smiling and giddy. Then at the same moment he reached for her, she moved into his arms and kissed him on the mouth. She kissed him for a long time, hungry for it, for him, wanting the closeness, the feel of him. She didn’t care what it meant or how it had happened or even what it would lead to. She just wanted to do this—something she had secretly considered for longer than she could remember—without having to give it thought or measure its consequences.
She liked it that she was the one who broke the kiss. She stepped back from him, still holding his arms, and she saw at once the confusion in his eyes. “I didn’t mean … it was just …”
“I wanted to kiss you,” she said, cutting him short. “I did it because I wanted to, and I’m glad I did.”
He nodded quickly. “Me, too. I wanted to kiss you, too.”
She took his hand and began walking in the direction that the Elfstones had showed them. “I might want to kiss you some more,” she told him after a moment, giving him a wicked smile. “Maybe a lot.”
He took a long time to respond. “I might want that, too,” he said.
THEY HAD WALKED A LONG WAY INTO THE SKELETAL bones of the forest, the fecund smells of decay and ancient earth assailing their senses—already spinning from the kiss—before Pan made himself let go of Phryne’s hand. He did so reluctantly, but with a sense of relief, as well. He couldn’t seem to think straight when she was holding on to him like that. His memory of the kiss kept crowding out everything else, and in country like this he couldn’t afford the distraction.