She was still watching when she became aware of a second presence, this one much stronger and closer, approaching her from behind. It took her only a moment to remember that there was another demon, the one from the Council chambers, the one disguised as an Elf.
She had time for a single thought.
Flee!
And then there was no time at all.
DELLOREEN PADDED over to where the remains of the Faerie creature were already fading, sinking back into the earth from which she had been formed, leaving only the thin white garment she had been wearing. Delloreen licked at the cloth, tasting its dampness, and then glanced over to where the second demon was wiping its hands on the grasses of the burial grounds.
“Remember what I told you,” the other said, fastidiously cleaning away what remained of Ailie. “We have a plan, and the plan is not to be changed. Kill only the one. Leave the others for later. Can you remember?”
Delloreen snapped at the air between them, showing all of her considerable teeth. She could remember as much as she needed to.
Head hunched between her shoulders, body stretched out so low that it almost touched the ground, she crept toward the deep shadows and her unsuspecting kill.
TWELVE
A S KIRISIN AND HIS COMPANIONS stared down into the black hole left by the opening of the stone slab, two things happened in immediate sequence. First, torches fastened in iron stanchions secured to the rock walls of the stairwell flared to life, allowing them to see that the stairs themselves wound so deep underground that their end was invisible. Second, as they took their first cautious steps down those stairs, leaving Ashenell behind, the stone slab slid back into place with a fresh grating sound that froze them in their tracks. There was no time to turn back, and no chance to escape. The slab filled the gap anew, blotting out the night sky, and they were left shut away in the earth.
“Already, I don’t like any of this,” Simralin said.
“We are not meant to go back,” Angel said. “No mistaking that.”
They glanced at one another. Then, reaching an unspoken common consensus, they resumed their descent. Kirisin had started out in the lead, but Simralin quickly passed him by, giving him a look of warning as she did so. If there was to be any sort of trouble, the look said, she was better equipped to deal with it. He found that hard to argue with and dropped back to walk beside Erisha. He was thinking that they had brought almost no weapons at all with which to defend themselves.
“It would be good if we stayed close together,” Angel observed from just behind them.
Kirisin glanced back at her. The runes carved in her staff glowed faintly in the dark, pulsing softly. Her face was tight with concentration, and her eyes shifted restlessly as she descended, her footfalls soundless in the near silence. Perhaps in the company of a Knight of the Word, they needed no other protection.
He listened to his own breathing, which seemed to him the loudest sound in the stairwell. He tried to quiet it and failed. The pumping of his heart was a steady throbbing in his ears, and he tried and failed to quiet that, too. The air grew steadily colder with their descent, changing from a dry woodland smell to the scent of damp rock and rain-soaked leaves. Somewhere farther down, he could hear water trickling over rocks. It reminded him of the mountain caves he had explored as a boy and of the graves of the dead on days when burials had to be held in the rain.
The stairs tunneled downward for a long time before ending in a narrow corridor that leveled off into what appeared to be a natural opening. Burning torches continued to mark their way, small flickering dots disappearing into the darkness. They moved ahead cautiously, listening to the silence that surrounded the soft sounds of their breathing and their footfalls, their senses strained and their expectancy heightened. There was something down here, something they were meant to find once they had made the decision to enter. The still-unanswered question, the fuel for their doubts and fears, was whether it was something that would prove dangerous.
Suddenly Simralin held up her hand, bringing them to a stop. “Wait.”
They stood silently, listening. After a moment, they could detect a faint sound from somewhere ahead, a soft, sibilant whisper. Kirisin tried and failed to identify it. He felt instinctively and for reasons he could not explain that it was a warning, but he could not tell what it warned against.
Simralin held them in place a moment longer, glanced back to make certain they were alert to the strange sound, and then started them forward once more. The passageway turned sharply left and straightened right again. It began to open up, the ceiling rising and the walls widening. Stalactites began to appear, small at first and then large enough to dwarf the people passing beneath them, huge stone spears from which droplets of water fell, stinging with cold as they struck Kirisin on the face. He glanced up and found himself staring into a forest of tapering stone spirals clustered so thickly that he could no longer see the ceiling at all.
The passageway ended at a cavern dominated by a black water pool that filled a broad depression at its center. The surface of the water was flat and still, as if it comprised not liquid but opaque glass. The chamber itself was so large that its walls receded into blackness, invisible save where tiny pinpricks of torch fire burned bravely in the heavy gloom.
But it wasn’t the chamber or the pool that drew everyone’s eyes. It was the cluster of stone crypts and sepulchers that sprouted from the cavern floor. Those that were closest had writing that could be read in the flicker of the torchlight. Some had been carved with the letter G. Some bore the name GOTRIN.
Kirisin stared openmouthed. How many of them were there? Dozens and dozens, it seemed. Perhaps more than a hundred.
“They are all buried down here,” he said, speaking aloud the words he was thinking, words that had come to him unbidden. “Those from Pancea’s time, they are all buried here. The tombs aboveground do not belong to them.”
He didn’t know how he knew this; he simply did. He was already walking ahead, moving into that stone garden, feeling his way in his mind to the tomb he wanted. He couldn’t have said why, but he felt it calling to him, drawing him on as if a voice speaking. He moved in response to that silent voice, conscious of almost nothing else. The others followed, glancing at each other in bewilderment, but letting the boy go where he chose.
He walked down almost to the edge of the pool and stopped before a triangular-shaped block of stone. Carved into its head, on the short, flat side of the triangle, were the letters P, R, and G.
He became aware suddenly that the whispering he had heard earlier was coming from here. But the pitch and tone had changed, and now it was less an unidentifiable sound and more a recognizable voice.
“She is here,” he said.
Even as he finished speaking the words, the torches all about them began to flicker and dim and the pool of black water to swirl. There was wind where before there had been only stillness, a sudden rush that whipped down out of the ceiling rock and swept across the cavern floor. It was momentarily fierce, causing the four intruders to drop into a crouch and shield their eyes. Kirisin took refuge behind Pancea’s tomb, bracing himself with one hand against the cold stone, head lowered to protect his eyes.
“Kirisin!” he heard Erisha gasp.
–Why are the living come to me–
The voice was low-pitched and gravel-rough, and it echoed through the cavern in the wake of the wind’s departure, the silence returned anew, deep and abiding.
He lifted his head and found himself staring at the shade of an old woman.
The shade stood atop the tomb of Pancea, and he knew in an instant that it was her. She was small and wizened, bent at the shoulders as if the bearer of a great weight, her face so wrinkled that it had the look of leather crumpled by time and use. But her eyes were sharp and steady as they regarded him, and her talon-tipped fingers gripped a staff with strength that belied her seeming frailty.
He had never seen a shade. He had heard rumors of them, but they had always seemed t
o him to be the product of overactive imaginations. He swallowed hard. He would think differently after this.
The light of the torches, steady once more, passed through the old woman’s transparent form in a shimmer of refracted light, and her image wavered and settled like mist.
–Why are the living come here. They do not belong–
She spoke again, the question repeated. Her voice scraped and dragged over the words. Her eyes changed color, gone from black to a dangerous green.
“We had no choice,” he answered, knowing he must say something. “We are searching for the blue Elfstones, and a journal we uncovered said they could be found in the tomb of Pancea Rolt Cruer.”
She regarded him without speaking, her gaze steady.
He waited a moment, and then asked, “Are you her? Are you Pancea Rolt Cruer?”
–I am Queen Pancea Rolt Gotrin. Show me respect–
“I apologize, Your Majesty,” he said quickly. He tried to think what to say next. “I am a Chosen. She is another.” He pointed to Erisha. “The Ellcrys sent us to find the blue Elfstones. There is a terrible struggle taking place on the surface of the world between demons and their allies and Elves and Men. The demons are winning. The Ellcrys says that she is threatened and must be moved. She says we must use the blue Elfstones to find the Loden and place her inside.”
He hesitated, and then gestured at Angel. “This is a Knight of the Word, sent to warn us that our world will be destroyed. The Word says the Elves must leave the Cintra. To do that, we must take the Ellcrys with us. So we’ve come here, looking for a place to start.”
–You would start your journey with the dead? Is that not strange? The dead have nothing to offer the living. The dead are of the past and never of the present. The dead do not pretend to care about what is or will be. The dead seek only to keep what is theirs–
She lifted a hand and pointed at them, one by one. As she did so, Kirisin felt a stab of cold rage spear him, projected from the shade’s own dark heart.
–You trespass where you do not belong. You have entered sacred ground and defiled it. Your arrogance is offensive to me–
Her hands lifted and swept the air on both sides, sending strange trailers of light scattering from her fingertips. The light fragmented and settled atop the surrounding tombs, flaring as it touched each crypt.
Then the air itself shimmered, and the shades of the Gotrin dead began to rise out of their resting places, lifting into the near darkness in ghostly white transparencies, the outlines of their bodies and faces a liquid shimmer, the whisper of their awakening a cacophony of hissing that matched that which had first drawn Kirisin and his companions. One by one, they appeared, shades of all sizes and shapes, ghosts come out of the stone that housed their mortal remains.
Kirisin took a step back. He could feel the threat implicit in their presence, as dark and cold as the rage that Pancea had projected from her heart. The dead did not want them here. The dead did not want the living in their private sanctuary, and they were prepared to reveal in no uncertain terms what his intrusion meant.
“We came because we had to!” he repeated desperately. “Would you wish the living as dead as you? Do you think we are wrong to try to save them?”
The shades of the Gotrins began to creep closer, floating on the cold cavern air, tightening their circle. Simralin was standing next to him by now, and he was aware of Angel and Erisha coming up as well. He caught a glimpse of Angel’s black staff out of the corner of his eye, its runes glowing with white fire.
“If you do not help us, all the Elves will die!” he insisted.
–The dead care nothing for the living and their problems–
She rose from the lid of her crypt and settled to the ground. She was small, but he could feel her power radiating out from her ethereal form in cold waves.
“Get back from her, Kirisin,” his sister ordered. “Get back right now!”
When he failed to move quickly enough, she took him roughly by his shoulder and dragged him away. But the shade of Pancea Rolt Gotrin kept coming, her advance slow and inexorable as she glided across the darkness that separated them.
“What about the magic?” Kirisin demanded, desperate now. “The magic you tried to preserve? If the Elves die, the magic dies, as well!”
–The magic cannot die. The magic lives even beyond death–
“Not if there is no one left to wield it! Without the living, it cannot grow or change! It cannot evolve in new ways. It remains static and dormant! Eventually, it will weaken from lack of use and disappear completely!”
He barely knew what he was saying, acting on instinct, speaking whatever words he thought the shade might respond to. He couldn’t tell what they might be; he only knew he had to find a way to reach her.
To his surprise, she stopped moving. Behind her, the other shades stopped, as well. The ripples of ice emanating from their ghostly forms softened ever so slightly. Pancea Rolt Gotrin studied him. One withered hand lifted and pointed.
–What will you do with the Elfstones if I release them to you? To what use will you put them–
“I will use them to find the Loden Elfstone, and use the Loden to save the Ellcrys and her people.” He hesitated. “And then I will do whatever I can to persuade the Elves to find the magic they have lost.”
–You seek to placate me. The Elves will never find their magic again. They have forgotten its purpose. They have changed their way of life and by doing so have lost the magic forever–
“The old world is ending,” Erisha said suddenly. “In the new, they may have need of the magic again. If they are to survive, they will be forced to start over.”
“If there are no Elves left, if there are no humans, if there are only demons and demonkind, what is the point of the magic in any case?” asked Kirisin. “The magic needs our people to wield it if it is to serve a purpose. Can we not recover it somehow? It cannot be completely out of reach.”
–The magic lies deep within the earth, where it has always been. The magic is elemental, and the Elves had use of it until they gave way before the humans. Why would this change–
She was still not persuaded, but she was listening now, giving consideration to what he was telling her. Kirisin felt a surge of hope. Perhaps there was a way to change her thinking after all.
But just as he was ready to believe that the shades guarding these tombs and their secrets might be willing to share what they kept hidden, Pancea started toward him again, hand outstretched.
–Let me touch you–
He shrank from her. If he was touched by the dead, by a shade, what would it do to him? Was just that touch enough to steal his life? He didn’t know, and he didn’t care to find out.
He held out his hands. “I don’t think you should do that.”
“Get away from him!” snapped Simralin, stepping in front of her brother.
The shade turned to her, outstretched arm shifting slightly.
–Foolish girl–
The words hung frozen on the air in the ensuing stillness. Then Pancea’s arms swept out and Simralin flew backward, taking Erisha and Angel with her, and leaving them scattered like leaves caught in a strong wind. They lay where they had fallen, unmoving.
Kirisin tried to turn and flee, but found he couldn’t move. He panicked, thrashing against his invisible bonds. Nothing helped.
–Let me touch you–
The shade was right on top of him now. It took every ounce of willpower he could muster, but he quieted himself and straightened. If he couldn’t avoid this, he must do his best to face it in the right way. “Please don’t hurt me,” he whispered.
The shade stopped right in front of him. Eyes as blank and empty as white stones stared out of an aged, ruined face.
–If you lie, I will know. If you deceive, I will know. If you lack heart or courage, I will know–
Her hand stretched out to him, touched his chest, and passed inside. He could feel the intrusion, a wash of cold that w
as deep and aching. He flinched, but held himself steady, watching the hand, then the wrist, and finally the forearm disappear inside his body. The cold radiated out, filling his chest and stomach, ranging farther to his limbs and finally into his head. It was a different kind of cold, one that he had never experienced, one that he could not compare to anything he knew.
He waited to die.
Inside, he could feel a shift in the cold, which seemed to correspond to the slow movement of her arm through his chest.
I am not afraid, he told himself, and wished it were so.
Then she spoke.
–Kirisin Belloruus. You do not lie. You do not deceive. You do not lack heart or courage. You are young, but your word is good. I feel in you a reason to believe again. I sensed it when you touched the letters of my name carved on my family tomb. I sense it now–
Her pale form shimmered and drew closer, until her wrinkled ghost’s face was only inches from his own.
–You are indeed Chosen. You are the one. You have the magic inside you, your past and your future. You have the gift–
Slowly, she withdrew her arm from his body. As she did so, the cold dissipated and was gone. Her blank eyes stared at him.
–I will give you what you seek. I will trust you to keep your word. Save the living, if you can. Find the Loden. Take the Elves to safety. But remember your promise. When that is done, you will persuade them to find and make use of their magic once more. You will recover the old ways–
She waited on him, and he nodded. “I promise.”
–You must do this alone–
He hesitated. “I have my friends to help me, Erisha and Simralin and Angel Perez, the ones who came with me.”
Her mouth opened and closed in what looked to be a soundless scream. Her arms fell away to her sides.
–You must do this alone–
She glided backward toward her tomb, and as she did so the other shades withdrew as well, dozens of ethereal forms retreating into the darkness. One by one they reached their stone resting places and disappeared.