Bloodfire Quest (The Dark Legacy of Shannara, #2)(58)

“Just be still while I do this,” she told him. “No sudden movements. There will be some pain. To help you stay still, I’ll have both Mirai and Seersha hold you. Don’t panic. It won’t take long. When it’s over, you will sleep.”

He nodded, waiting impatiently, the first twinges of doubt starting to erode his confidence. “Just do what you have to. I’ll be fine.”

She placed a cloth over his eyes and stroked his face. Then she placed both hands on his broken leg and began to move them lightly over the surface. She worked at this for a long time, and he could hear her murmuring softly. Once in a while her fingers probed.

Then a slow, steady ache began to build deep inside the bones of his damaged leg, rippling through him from thigh to ankle. The medication Aphen had given him dulled it, but did not prevent it. He could feel Seersha’s and Mirai’s hands tighten on his wrists and ankles. He held himself as still as he could manage, the pain building on itself in slow waves until eventually it was all he could do to keep from screaming. He clenched his teeth and focused on an image of Mirai—the image strong and alive in his mind. The murmuring and touching continued and the pain raged on, but he forced it all away and went down inside where his heartbeat gave him a lifeline to grasp and Mirai’s voice whispered over and over, I like you better when you’re gentle.

Then, finally, he lost consciousness and slept.



For Arling Elessedil, it was a traumatic day on several fronts. Her visit to her grandfather and Uncle Ellich, followed by her sister’s argument with Seersha, had been troubling enough, but later she was forced to call a meeting of the Chosen to discuss the deterioration of the Ellcrys. It was becoming apparent that there were problems with the tree. The first signs of wilt and decay had begun to appear, and while the Chosen worked diligently to heal the damage, all of them suspected the same thing. The tree was failing and needed to be renewed.

They knew as well that for a renewal to happen, one of them must be given the Ellcrys seed and sent in search of the Bloodfire.

Once, such knowledge had been carefully hidden from virtually everyone, the myth of immortality part of the old legends of the creation of the Forbidding and the locking away of the demonkind. But that had changed during the reign of Eventine Elessedil, when the last Ellcrys had failed and the truth about her regeneration become common knowledge.

Now there were enough who knew the truth of things that pretending the tree could never die or need replacing was pointless.

Arling and Aphen had discussed earlier in the day how the meeting should be handled, and they had agreed that Arling should keep the fact that she had been selected to go in search of the Bloodfire to herself. Doing so would provide another of the order the opportunity to step forward and volunteer to do what she could not.

She was still not ready to accept that she was the right choice to become the tree’s successor. She had talked with the Ellcrys nightly after Aphenglow’s departure for the Breakline, trying to convince the tree that choosing her was a mistake. But the Ellcrys had deflected her efforts, continuing quietly to insist that she was the only one who would do. Nothing Arling had said during their discussions seemed to make any difference at all.

But now, perhaps, confronting the other Chosen with the enormity of the need facing them all might cause one among them to step forward and indicate a willingness to act as bearer of the seed.

This turned out to be wishful thinking. The other members of her order listened patiently, but none of them offered to be the one who bore the seed to the Bloodfire. If anything, they were reluctant to believe that the need was immediate. Surely there was more time than Arling believed. Shouldn’t they examine the tree more thoroughly? Weren’t there healing skills and medicines that could be employed? Objections were raised and questions asked, and the dismay that settled over those assembled seemed to inhibit any of them from doing more than listening.

By the time they had disbanded to go home for the night, not a single Chosen had seemed ready to accept what she had told them.

They were not so different, she realized afterward, from herself. She had been no more willing to believe when the tree had revealed its condition. She had been no better prepared for it, no more anxious to act on the tree’s behalf, no more eager to wish for selection. Oddly, she was not surprised. If anything, it only deepened her growing sense of fatalism.

At midnight, when the rest of those staying in her little cottage were asleep, she slipped out the door and went through the nighttime darkness to the Carolan and down into the Gardens of Life. She crept through the flowering shrubs and bedding plants, through the trellis vines and ornamentals to where the Ellcrys stood alone, shining crimson and silver in the moonlight. She knelt beneath her canopy.

“I am here, Mistress,” she whispered.

A slender branch lowered and came to rest on her shoulder.

–You are still afraid, child. You are feeling so alone. No one wishes to take from you the burden I have given you to carry–

“I told them what is happening. They could not bring themselves to believe it. I wanted one of them to say they hoped they would be the one you selected. I wanted just one to show a little of the courage I lack. It did not happen.”

–At the time of your choosing, when I laid my branches on each of your shoulders, I sensed there was something that set you apart. Even then, I knew–

Arling did not believe she could be the only one; she had never believed it, although the tree had said so repeatedly during their nighttime discussions. In her efforts to reassure Arling, the Ellcrys had said this was always so. The choosing was the time in which she was best able to determine who should serve as her successor should she become too ill to continue. It was no different for her as a sentient tree than for Elves or Humans: The elders of a species always measure the fitness of the young to take their place.