Bloodfire Quest (The Dark Legacy of Shannara, #2)(15)
But the decision wasn’t his to make, and he could feel the despondency and loss of hope that appeared to infect the others working its way through him, as well. He wished he had never agreed to come with the Ard Rhys but instead had remained behind with Railing. He wondered how Railing was. At least his brother wasn’t inside the Forbidding like he was, but matters might not be going so well on the other side of the wall, either. After all, those Goblins would still be hunting them, and possibly other things by now, as well. They were still deep in the interior of the Fangs, and if Seersha didn’t get word to Mirai to come rescue them, it would be a long and dangerous trek back out again.
And Railing couldn’t walk with his broken leg. He would have to be carried. Helpless.
Redden walked in silence for a long time, watching Pleysia lead them—almost as if she knew where she was going. He tried to imagine Oriantha as the Elf Druid’s daughter and failed. They seemed nothing alike. Yet there was a clear connection between them, one that went beyond friendship. He shifted his gaze to Carrick and watched the tall Druid for a time, his aspect somber and detached. Then he glanced over at the Trolls, muttering among themselves as they lumbered along.
Finally he moved up alongside the Ard Rhys.
“Do you think one of the others might come looking for us?” he asked her quietly, “Maybe Seersha or Skint?”
“Maybe. If they do, the tag I left on the opening will alert me. If it’s Seersha, she will recognize it and know it for a warning to stay back until I return for her.” She glanced over. “Is that what you were wondering? If I made a mistake in deciding to leave and come along with Pleysia?”
He flushed. “It had crossed my mind.”
She smiled, the wrinkles in her face smoothing in a way that made her seem decidedly younger. “I thought so. I considered staying where we were. But we would have had to come looking for Oriantha and Crace Coram eventually. We couldn’t leave either of them behind.” She paused. “You have your wits about you, Redden Ohmsford. You’ll be fine.”
He nodded, not so sure about that. “So you think the Elfstones are really in here somewhere? Like you were shown by the vision?”
She nodded. “It would explain why they couldn’t be found for so long. Aleia Omarossian’s Darkling boy must have had the missing Elfstones in his possession when the Forbidding went up. The magic took all the dark creatures and whatever possessions they had on them and locked them away. Others trying to find the Stones after that wouldn’t have been looking in the right place—not even in the right world. And the seeking-Stones wouldn’t have been able to penetrate the wall of the Forbidding until now, when it’s begun to fail. The blue Stones found a chink in the armor. Too bad we didn’t recognize it for what it was.”
“But at least now we know where they are, and we have a chance of finding them.”
“Maybe we know. Maybe we have a chance. But finding the missing Elfstones isn’t necessarily what we need to do at this point. Even if we found them, we couldn’t be sure they would help us get out of this mess. With the Forbidding crumbling, our priorities have changed. If the wall goes down, everyone in the Four Lands is at risk. We need to escape and give warning of the danger. We need to find out why this is happening.”
She shook her head, as if to emphasize the dilemma. “I would like nothing better than to complete our search. But to find the Stones now, we would need time to search them out—and that’s time we don’t have. Even then, I wonder if it would be worth it. I wonder if any of this has been worth it.”
There was more than a hint of discouragement and frustration in her voice. He walked on with her for a few minutes more and then dropped away, leaving her to her own thoughts, thinking how hard it must be for her to know she had been seduced and deceived by the vision. Lives had been lost because of it, and more still might be lost before this was over.
His own among them.
The trek continued through the remainder of the day, but there was no sign of the dragon or their missing companions. They came down from the mountains to the plains of the south, moving in the general direction the dragon had taken. The terrain was barren and empty, a mixture of rutted earth dotted with scrub and rock, and forests in which leaves and grasses had turned gray and the trees had a skeletal look. There was no sign of water. There was no movement on the ground or in the air. The land looked dead and broken.
Every so often, the Ard Rhys or one of the other Druids would use magic to search the countryside ahead, but each time the effort failed. Once, they caught sight of something huge in the distance, a massive creature lumbering across the plains toward the mountains beyond. The Ard Rhys had them stop and hold their positions until it was safely past before allowing them to continue on. More than once, they came across piles of bones, sometimes acres of them. It was hard even to guess at their identity from what remained, and they skirted these killing grounds warily.
By nightfall, they were confronted by an impassable wilderness of swamp and saw grasses, and they were forced to turn west to seek a way around. After walking awhile longer, the Druids agreed they should make camp before it got too dark to see. The Ard Rhys chose a patch of desiccated spruce that offered cover and at least marginal protection from the things that might be hunting them. No one felt comfortable spending the night in such an exposed position, but there was nothing better anywhere close at hand. The Ard Rhys strung a warding chain around their sleeping ground that would sound an audible alert should anything try to attack. The company agreed to set a watch that would work through the night in two-hour shifts.