Bloodfire Quest (The Dark Legacy of Shannara, #2)(6)
“The Special Chosen are all a part of the same bloodline?” Arling demanded. “My choosing as a bearer of the seed was preordained?”
“In a sense, yes.”
There was a stunned silence as Arling and Cymrian exchanged a quick, uncertain look.
“But what does this have to do with the missing Elfstones?” Arling pressed. “Aleia and I might both be Chosen, but even if I must …” She paused, the words too bitter to speak. “Even it turns out I must take her path, what does this have to do with the Stones?”
“Does it go beyond the fact that she sacrificed herself to make up for losing the Elfstones to that boy?” Cymrian pressed. “That she became the Ellcrys so her people would be protected?”
“I don’t know,” Aphen admitted. “I’m not sure the two have any connection beyond the fact that Aleia Omarosian was responsible for both.”
In truth, she hadn’t been able to give enough thought to any of this to understand all the ramifications. What she needed to do was to get word to the Ard Rhys and the other Druids so that they could puzzle it through. By now, perhaps, they had found the missing Elfstones and would have answers to these questions. But before going after them, she had to help her sister absorb the immediate impact of what the Ellcrys was demanding of her. What was happening with Arling and the tree that maintained the Forbidding took precedence over everything else.
“Have we searched everywhere we can think of to learn about the transformation of those Chosen who became the Ellcrys?” Cymrian asked.
That was when Aphen remembered Woostra.
“Maybe not,” she answered. She got to her feet quickly. “I want you to finish up here. Keep the Chosen logbook; take it with you. Wait for me back at the cottage.”
Leaving Arling and Cymrian to put away the Chosen records, she raced off to speak with the keeper of the Druid Histories. Perhaps he had encountered something in his years of study of the Druid writings that would help them. Or at least he might know where else they might look.
She found Woostra at the inn where they had agreed he would await her return from her now-aborted search for the Ard Rhys. She knew that if she were too obvious in asking the necessary questions about the Ellcrys and the transformation, she would risk involving Arling, so she decided to approach the matter from another angle, leaving Arling out altogether.
“Aren’t you supposed to be flying west by now?” he asked, setting aside a book as she approached.
She sat next to him, smiling. “Something’s happened, and I’ve decided to delay for a day or two. I had Arling gain access to the records of the Chosen, and I discovered that Aleia Omarosian was not just one of them, but the very first. She was the one who originally agreed to sacrifice herself to create the Ellcrys. She would have done so to help make up for losing the Elfstones and shaming her parents. So I need to know more about the history of the Chosen. I have searched the whole of the Elven records, but there is little on the actual transformation process. Do you think there might be something more on this in the Druid Histories?”
He stared at her. “Are you telling me you want to return to Paranor? After having just barely escaped with your life?”
“I’m telling you I will do whatever is necessary to find a way to help the Ard Rhys.”
He admitted then that there were places in the Histories where the purpose of the Ellcrys was documented. Including, he believed, a description of how to reach the Bloodfire, the magic of which would quicken an Ellcrys seedling and allow the transformation to take place.
“So I’ll have to go there to find out,” she finished.
He snorted. “You mean we’ll have to go. It would take you days to find what you needed without me.”
She returned to Arling and Cymrian to tell them what she intended to do. Both would go with her, the latter because an additional pair of hands were needed to fly Wend-A-Way, the former because Aphen wanted to keep her close.
“I don’t know what we’ll find,” she hastened to add. “I don’t know if we’ll find anything. But I think we have to try. As things stand, we know almost nothing about what’s needed if we’re to save the Ellcrys.”
“We know it wants Arling to be her successor,” Cymrian pointed out bluntly. “And we know Arling’s not happy about it. How are we going to resolve that?”
“We’ll find a way,” Aphen snapped back, and immediately regretted the sharpness in her tone. “I don’t know,” she added.
They departed the next morning for Paranor, a company of four. Admittedly, there were real concerns about taking Arling away from her Chosen duties. She was conflicted about it herself and had already told them so. But in the end it was agreed she was better off coming with them than being left alone in Arborlon. She would stay aboard ship during the incursions into Paranor and whisked away quickly if threatened.
Aphenglow didn’t attempt to minimize the danger of what she was doing. Getting back into the Druid’s Keep meant circumventing whatever forces the Federation had left behind to guard it and then, once that was accomplished, eluding or banishing altogether the dark magic she had released from the Keep’s lower reaches. It was a formidable challenge under the best of circumstances, but she couldn’t convince herself that delaying the attempt until she had found the Ard Rhys and the others and brought them back into the Midlands was a good idea, either. There were too many variables that might prevent this, and just knowing the location of the Bloodfire was crucial. It might not be Arling who ended up making the journey, but whoever went would need to know where to go.