After that, after finding her and bringing her back inside, he had found Simralin awake, bloody and groggy but alive. Seeing the condition of the Knight of the Word, she had urged him to go to work on Angel at once. While he did so, his sister had cleaned away the blood from her own injury and bound it with a crude bandage, saying little to him while he labored over Angel, not wanting to distract him. Only once had she spoken to him, and that was to ask about the silver cord and rings. Kirisin had explained what they were intended to do, how they were meant to bind him to the demon and would have done so if she hadn’t stabbed it and given Kirisin a chance to use the Elfstones to incinerate it.
“I wish I could have done it myself,” she had muttered before settling back and dozing off.
He had worried about her falling asleep with a head injury, but had been too preoccupied with treating Angel to do anything about it until after he had finished. Now and then he had paused in his healing work to call over to her, waking her from her sleep long enough to force her to grunt angrily and mutter something about leaving her alone. But at least he could be certain each time that she was still alive.
Even so, he had been relieved when she finally woke up for good and began speaking with him again.
“He planned to take me back to the Cintra and use the Loden to imprison Arborlon, the Ellcrys, and the Elves,” he explained. “Once he had all of the Elves in one place, the demons could take them out at their leisure and do what they wanted with them. He would use me as his tool for accomplishing this, and I don’t think anyone would have stopped him. No one would even have known what was happening.”
He glanced down at the bulge in his pocket—the bag that contained the Elfstones. “You know something, Sim. I hadn’t thought about it before, but the Stones are as dangerous to the Elves as to anyone else. The magic doesn’t recognize race or measure intent; it treats everyone the same. All Culph had to figure out was how to find an Elf who could be persuaded to use it.”
Simralin’s smile was tight and bitter. “Don’t be too quick to blame yourself, Little K. None of us understood the rules of the game being played. Not until now. None of us even understood the nature of the magic being put to use. That ghost in the Ashenell, Pancea Rolt Gotrin, she knew. She understood. That was why you were given those warnings. If Angel had died on the slopes and Culph had killed me, you would have been left on your own and not been master of your own behavior. And we almost let this happen. All of us.”
“Well, it won’t happen again,” Kirisin declared softly. “I promise you that.”
“I’ll hold you to your word. We still have a ways to go before this is over. First we’ve got to get back to Arborlon.”
“Wait a minute!” Kirisin exclaimed suddenly, his eyes widening. “I just remembered something. Culph said that he—the demon said that it had summoned an army to Arborlon to make sure no one escaped before it returned with me to imprison the city in the Loden! It bragged about it while it was busy using that cord and those rings to hypnotize me! An army of demons and once-men, Sim! It’s probably already there, waiting!”
Simralin straightened, winced from the resulting pain, and quickly lay back again. “All right. Then we need to warn Arissen Belloruus and the High Council. We need to tell them to get everyone out of there.”
“How are we going to do that?” Kirisin demanded. “The King and probably the entire Council think that we killed Erisha! They think we’re some sort of traitors! They won’t believe us!”
His sister stared at him a moment, then said, “We’ll make them believe us.”
“Oh, that shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“Wait a minute, Little K. Maybe we don’t have to tell anyone. Think about it. An entire army moving on the Cintra? The Elves probably know about it already. Their scouts and sentries will have told them. They’ll have seen something that big coming from miles away.”
Kirisin shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know how they planned to do this. Maybe the army isn’t supposed to get close until the Elves are trapped in the Loden.”
His sister nodded. “Maybe. Maybe nothing is supposed to happen until you get back. The other demons can’t know that Culph is dead. Or his four-legged companion, either. They have to wait to see what happens. That gives us a chance.”
“A chance to get ourselves thrown into the cells by the King,” Kirisin said. “I still don’t know how we’ll ever convince him that we’re speaking the truth. Even if he sees the army coming, he’ll probably think we had something to do with it. I bet he’s already made up his mind about that, too.”
Neither said anything for a moment, looking at each other across the silence of the cavern chamber, the darkness and cold pressing in around them. Kirisin was thinking that they were all alone in this; there was no one they could turn to, no one who would help them. He was thinking that it wasn’t likely anything would change this.
“We’ll be all right,” his sister said softly.
Sure we will, Kirisin thought. Assuming we can learn to fly and disappear into thin air.
“I know,” he said instead. He yawned. “I’m exhausted, Sim. I’m going to get some sleep. Maybe you should, too.”
Simralin didn’t say anything. She just sat there, staring at him. After a moment, she said, “You’ll see, Little K. We’ll be fine.”
She was still sitting there, staring, when he fell asleep.
HE AWOKE TO SHARDS OF DAYLIGHT spilling down the cavern passageway through ice-frozen cracks in the ceiling. Simralin was moving quietly about the chamber, gathering up their gear and redistributing it into two packs. She looked pale but steady as the light caught the planes and lines of her bruised, ravaged face.
“Sleep well?” she asked without irony. She still had her makeshift bandage wrapped about her forehead and her all-weather cloak wrapped about her shoulders. She looked like a wraith. She caught him staring at her and said, “What’s wrong?”
“Well, you are, for starters. You look like you’ve been blood-drained. Are you all right?”
“Right as can be under the circumstances. Better get yourself up. We leave as soon as I’m finished.”
He pushed himself up on one elbow, and the residual effects of yesterday’s struggle recalled themselves painfully. “Leave for where?”
She nodded toward the passageway. “Back outside and down the mountain. You did the best you could with Angel, but she’s in need of someone better trained in the art of healing.”
Kirisin glanced over to where the Knight of the Word was still sleeping. Except for her face and hands, she was buried in the folds of the coverings in which they had wrapped her the night before, and he couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not. She was wearing fresh clothing; his sister must have dressed her while he slept. He studied her a moment, then said to Simralin, “Is she still alive?”
“She was half an hour ago. Why don’t you have a look?”
Kirisin pulled himself to his feet, fighting off the stiffness and the pain that ratcheted through his muscles and joints and made him feel as if he had been hammered with rocks. Dropping his cloak, he stumbled over to Angel and knelt down. He could just discern the slow rise and fall of her chest. Her face was purpled with bruises, and the knuckles of her hands were scraped raw. That was just the surface damage. The damage beneath the coverings was far worse.
“How do we get her back down the mountain?” he said.
“We make a sling and carry her. We can’t afford to try to slide her down. The terrain is too rough for that. She’s damaged internally—ribs broken, maybe more. We can’t risk knocking her around by dragging her along the ground. We have to keep her elevated and still. We’ll use her staff as a support for the sling. Why don’t you see if you can pry it loose from her fingers so I can get to work?”
Kirisin glanced down. Angel gripped the black staff tightly with both hands and didn’t look ready to let go. Nevertheless, he reached down carefully and tried to slide the staff free.
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Instantly the Knight’s eyes snapped open. “Kirisin,” she whispered in a voice dark with warning. “Don’t.”
He pulled back quickly. “Sorry. But we need your staff to make a sling to carry you back down the mountain so that we can . . . we can find help for you . . .”
He trailed off, realizing suddenly that he didn’t know how that was supposed to happen. He looked over at Simralin, who had stopped what she was doing and was watching them. “I guess I don’t know what happens when we get back down the mountain.”
His sister rose and came over to them, kneeling next to her brother. “Once we reach the meadows, we’ll use the hot-air balloon to fly ourselves out of here.” She bent close to Angel. “Here’s the truth of things. Kirisin has done what he can for you, but his training is in healing plants, not people. I don’t know how bad your injuries are, and neither does he. We need someone more skilled than we are to determine that. How bad do they feel to you?”
Angel shook her head. “Broken ribs, maybe my arm. Or maybe they’re only cracked. Hard to tell. Everything hurts, even when I don’t move.” She wet her lips and shifted her gaze to Kirisin. “Did you find the Loden?”
He nodded. “I have it.”
“Tell me what happened.”
He glanced at Simralin, who nodded. Quickly he sketched out the events that had led to the unexpected appearance of the demon Culph and the discovery of its complex deception. He told of entering the ice dragon’s maw and gaining possession of the Loden, then emerging to find the old man waiting. He related how the demon had tried to hypnotize him using the silver cord and rings, intending afterward to transport him back to the Cintra and there use him to summon the Loden’s magic and imprison the Elves and their city. Simralin had saved him by stabbing the demon in the leg with her knife, disrupting his concentration and allowing Kirisin to break free of the spell that bound him and use the magic of the blue Elfstones.
He quite deliberately said nothing of the strange euphoria he had experienced when he summoned and gained command of the Elfstone magic, not yet certain how he felt about it, keeping it a secret even from Simralin. He wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, wasn’t ready to admit what it might mean.
“You were incredibly brave,” she told them. “Both of you. I thought that if I didn’t reach you, the demon would finish you both. But I was the one who needed saving.”
“Tell us what happened after we left you,” Simralin urged her.
So Angel related the details of her battle with Culph’s companion, the four-legged demon that had tracked her all the way from Los Angeles, first as the spiky-haired blond female and later as a wolfish beast. How much farther it might have evolved was a matter of speculation, but it had been dangerous enough at the end to almost finish her. As it was, she had been unable to do more than crawl uphill in the general direction of the entrance to the ice caves before she passed out.
For her part, she said nothing of her dream of Johnny and the sense that he had led her to a waiting death to which she had been willing to give herself over.
She took a deep breath against the inevitable pain and tried to raise herself to a sitting position. She failed and lay back again. “You’ll have to help me up,” she told them.
“We’ll have to carry you, is what we’ll have to do,” Simralin observed. “Don’t try to rush this.”
“I’m trying not to. But I know what’s at stake. Kirisin has to get back to the Cintra. He has to use the Loden to save the Elves. Otherwise, this has all been for nothing.”
Simralin nodded. “Kirisin will get his chance. But first we have to do something about you.”
“You have to take me with you.”
Simralin actually laughed. “Now there’s a good plan. Why didn’t I think of it?”
“I mean it, Simralin. You have to take me with you. It is the mission I was given—to be your protector. I can’t let you go alone.”
“Well, I don’t think this is your decision.” The Tracker bent close again. “I’ve seen dead people in better shape than you are. If you try to go with us, you’ll be more hindrance than help. I can’t protect you and him. And you can’t protect either of us until you’re healed. I’m taking you to someone who can make you well again. Then I’m taking Little K back into the Cintra where he can do what he is supposed to do.”
Angel shook her head stubbornly. “Not without me.”
Simralin sighed. “I thought you promised not to make this so hard on us.”
“I don’t care what I said. I’m going.”
“I’m afraid not, Angel.”
She reached down, pressed her fingers into the other’s exposed neck at the base of her skull, and held them in place. Angel’s eyes fluttered momentarily and closed.
Simralin stood up. “She’s unconscious. I’ll give her something in a little while to keep her that way. Stubborn, isn’t she? Determined. No wonder she’s still alive.” She motioned to Kirisin. “Take the staff from her hands, Little K. Be gentle.”
Together they made up the sling using the staff and one of the cloaks, tying and looping the sleeves and the loose ends of the flaps to form the cradle. Then they fitted Angel inside, shouldered their packs, and picked up the sling. It felt to Kirisin as if Angel weighed three hundred pounds.
“Don’t worry,” Simralin grunted from the other end of the staff. “We’ll stop and rest on the way. Just let me know when it gets to be too much.”
It was already too much, Kirisin thought. But he didn’t say so. He just nodded. He would do what it took to get Angel down the mountain. She would have done the same for them.
She would have given up her life.
Half an hour later, they were back outside the caves and making their way across the ice fields toward the snow line and the meadows that lay below.
FOUR
I T TOOK KIRISIN AND SIMRALIN almost four hours of hiking interspersed with frequent rest stops to carry Angel Perez back down the slopes of Syrring Rise to the meadow where they had left the hot-air balloon. Their trek was lengthened by the need to take a circuitous route in order to avoid the rougher terrain. By the time they reached the edge of the ice fields and stepped off the glacier onto visible ground, it was already midmorning. When they came in sight of the balloon, the sun was directly overhead and midday was approaching.
The day started out bright and clear, but as the hours wore on it turned hazy and the sky began to fill with clouds. A storm was forming over the mountain, and they had to get away before it struck or they would be trapped another night. Simralin pushed hard to keep Kirisin moving, even after he told her that he didn’t think he could go any farther. He surprised himself by putting aside any thought for his own discomfort and responding to his sister’s urgings and his own sense of duty to the injured Knight of the Word.
If Erisha were there, he comforted himself, she might even tell him he was finally growing up.
Angel, for her part, slept the entire way, drugged by the sleeping potion Simralin had prepared and trickled through her lips and down her throat, a powerful medicine meant to keep her unconscious until well into the following day. It might have been dangerous to give her such a strong potion, but Kirisin understood that it would be more dangerous still to have her awake and struggling to change their minds about not taking her with them. However determined she was, however well intentioned, she was not capable of helping them in what they had to do. He understood how she felt about carrying out the mission given to her by the Word, of fulfilling her duty as one of its Knights, but that alone was not enough to see her through what lay ahead. Simralin was right: Angel had to stay behind.
Once they arrived at the meadow, they lay Angel down on a soft patch of grass and went to work on enabling the balloon. No one had disturbed its various parts, and within a short time they had the blower operating and the bag filling with hot air. Simralin worked to secure all the stays and ties while Kirisin monitored the blower. The meadow and its surroundings remained othe
rwise empty and quiet, but the sky overhead continued to darken. It seemed odd to watch a storm develop; it had been years since weather this threatening had come to the mountains of the Cintra. A little rain now and then, but nothing like this. Still, Syrring Rise was special, and the work of the Elven caretakers on the forests and plants had created a climate peculiar to the mountain. Kirisin found himself wondering what it would be like to live and work here, to be one of the caretakers rather than a Chosen. Here the challenges were greater and the skills needed to keep the mountain free of disease and poison more demanding. Kirisin knew he was good at healing and possessed both learned and innate understanding of the ways in which he could protect the native vegetation. Working here on the slopes of Syrring Rise would be a thoroughly satisfying experience.
Though now, it seemed, he would never have a chance to find out, since the Elves would be leaving the mountain and the world of Syrring Rise was ending.
How much of that world, he wondered, would survive in the aftermath of the predicted destruction?
He thought about that as he worked, about how it would be for the Elves once they were no longer living in the Cintra—or perhaps anywhere else that they knew about or could even imagine. The new world might be entirely foreign to them. He wondered how life would change when the disaster foretold by the Ellcrys came to pass. He didn’t bother using the word if in reference to the prediction. He accepted the inevitability of the world’s passing in the same way he had come to accept everything else the tree had told him. The presence of demons among the Elves had convinced him that a new way of looking at things was necessary. The deaths of Ailie and Erisha had only reinforced that conviction, providing sharp reminders that the life he had once taken for granted was coming to a close. This period in the history of the Elves was over, as much so as that long-ago time when magic had ceased to be a part of their lives and humans had become the dominant species. No Elf wanted to think this way, least of all Kirisin, who still wanted to believe that the Elves, as the first people, would one day regain their elevated position in the order of things.