Bloodfire Quest (The Dark Legacy of Shannara, #2)(100)

It could happen. It must.

He agonized until sunrise and then rose with the others, moving about the Quickening as if half dead, consumed by fears and doubts and confusion. He knew he should tell someone about what had happened to him during the night. He knew he should reveal what he had been told. But if he did so, the search was over. Skint, for certain, would turn back and try to persuade the others to do the same. Austrum and the other Rovers would give up, as well. Maybe even Mirai would abandon him, in spite of having said she wouldn’t.

“Ready to set out?” Farshaun Req asked him as they sat around on the foredeck eating breakfast.

All eyes turned toward him. He fingered the woven strands of the ring that he had kept concealed in his pocket.

He was surprised at how quickly he responded. “Ready,” he said, and felt the world drop away inside.





26





Amid a pungent haze of smoke and ash and mist, cloaked in gloom and wrapped in pain, Aphenglow Elessedil opened her eyes. Somehow she was still in one piece. The last thing she remembered was clinging to the railing of Wend-A-Way’s pilot box as the airship, shattered and burning, plunged earthward, completely out of control and seemingly doomed. She had been thrown backward off the railing with the last explosive attack of the fire launchers mounted on the Federation warship, and stayed conscious for only a moment or two afterward—just long enough to feel Wend-A-Way begin to fall. Then everything had gone dark.

What she knew for certain was that she shouldn’t be alive. She should be dead.

She looked around, still sufficiently dazed that she couldn’t seem to get her bearings. Where was she? She wasn’t aboard the airship any longer. She was lying on the ground; she could feel cool dampness of the earth and grasses beneath her. She shifted her position slightly and caught the red glow of dying embers through the haze. The remains of the airship, she thought.

Then she remembered Arlingfant and Cymrian and the Elven Hunters who had been aboard the airship with her, and she forced herself into a sitting position. A wave of dizziness swept through her, and she seemed to hurt everywhere at once. But when she tested her arms and legs, one by one, she could tell that nothing was broken. Her ribs were another matter. At least several were cracked and perhaps worse. She took a moment to use her magic to layer her midsection with a healing wrap that gave her some relief from the pain.

Then, ignoring what pain still lingered, she forced herself to her feet and took a few steps toward the glow of the embers. She could tell the airship had come down in a forest; the trees closest to her were scarred and ripped by the force of the crash. Pieces of the vessel lay everywhere, scattered about like the bones of a dead thing. She found one of the Elven Hunters only a few feet away, what was left of him barely recognizable. Shivering at the implications of what this might mean about her sister and Cymrian, she stumbled ahead more quickly, looking everywhere at once.

She found the larger part of Wend-A-Way some distance farther on, her hull holed in a dozen places by enemy fire and her decking collapsed. The glow she had seen earlier was emanating from sections of wood planking that were still smoldering. The masts were shattered, and lengths of them lay all around the wreck. One was even caught up in the branches of one of the trees. The parse tubes and light sheaths had been thrown all across the space where the airship had come down. Yards of radian draws hung from the trees like spiderwebs.

She found parts of another of the crewmen nearby, able to tell that it wasn’t Cymrian from the markings on the one remaining forearm. She pushed on through the haze, coughing as the acrid smoke and ash entered her lungs, peering about for signs of her sister and their protector. But she couldn’t find either. She was widening her search to the areas outside the immediate crash site when she remembered the Elfstones. She had chosen not to use them when they had been attacked, relying instead on her Druid magic. But where had she put them? She began searching through her pockets without success. If they had fallen out somewhere during the crash, she would never find them. They had to be on her somewhere.

And they were, tucked in an outside pocket of her pants, down along her thigh. She felt their distinctive shape through the fabric and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Aphen.”

She turned to find Cymrian coming toward her from out of the haze, his clothes soaked, wild and streaked with mud. Blood from a deep cut on his forehead ran down his face. She felt a sudden rush of emotion that surprised her—a sense of relief coupled with something much stronger.

“I can’t find Arling,” she told him at once. “Have you seen her?”

He shook his head. “I just now found my way to you. I was thrown off the ship when she came down. Right into a bog. Arling? I don’t know. She might be anywhere.”

“Let me see that cut,” she said, moving over to examine his head.

She cleaned the wound as best she could with the sleeve of her tunic and then used a small bit of magic to close the gash and initiate the healing. He stood quietly while she did so, his lean feature intense, his eyes turned away. “Are you all right?”

“Better than you, I think. Mostly, I’m just sore. We have to find her, Cymrian.”

He nodded as she finished and stepped away. “We will. Can you walk?”

“As far as you need me to.”

“Then let’s conduct a sweep of the area. Spread out from here. We’ll find her quick enough.”