The Elves of Cintra (25 page)

“And now they hunt us,” Simralin said quietly.

Angel Perez smiled bleakly. “Now they hunt us.” She paused, her expression changing suddenly. She pointed down the slopes of the mountain. “In fact, they hunt us even now.”

Kirisin felt himself go cold as he looked to where she was pointing, somewhere off in the heavy forests of the lower slopes. But he saw nothing. Simralin, however, was on her feet. “Movement,” she acknowledged. “You have good eyes, Angel. We must go at once.”

They set out anew, working their way ahead through the peaks, still traveling east. Their progress was steady, and the long sweep of the western forests soon disappeared from view behind them as they began their descent of the eastern slopes. Ahead lay miles and miles of high desert—the trees sparse, the soil a mix of volcanic emission and dust, and the land arid and barren. If they were forced to travel through it, the going would be difficult. There would be little to eat or drink, and little cover.

They walked until the eastern sky turned dark and twilight began to settle in across the mountains, the shadows lengthening and the air cooling enough that they could see their breath. They were close to the edge of the mountain range, but still high up on the slopes and far from the desert flats. Behind them, nothing moved against the wall of the mountains. Neither Simralin nor Angel had said another word about their pursuers, so finally Kirisin asked.

“It might be that they have turned another way or stopped in the cradle of the peaks for the night,” his sister suggested when he asked her of the danger. She smiled. “Don’t worry, Little K. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He wished she wouldn’t make it sound as if he were so needy, as if he were still just a boy and not capable of looking after himself. But he held his tongue. Sim was only trying to reassure him that he wasn’t alone in this. She was just being his big sister.

It was almost dark when they finally stopped on her signal. She stood looking back up the slopes of the mountains behind them, searching for movement, for an indicator that there might be pursuit. Kirisin sat down heavily, his legs and back aching, his stamina sapped. He felt drained, both physically and emotionally. For all that he knew he could take care of himself, it had been awhile since he had been forced to do so and longer still since he had made so demanding a trek. A trek, he reminded himself, he was just beginning.

Angel walked over and crouched down so that they were at eye level. “I think we have gone as far as we can without knowing something more about where we need to go.” Her dark eyes held his. “Can you make your Elfstones reveal where the Loden is concealed?”

Simralin looked over at them. “She’s right. We need to figure out how the Stones work. Do you have any ideas? Did the histories or Culph tell you anything that would help?”

Kirisin shook his head doubtfully. He didn’t know anything, of course. All his energy and attention had been directed at finding the blue Elfstones. He had given little thought to what would happen once that goal was achieved.

“I guess I can try,” he said.

He reached down into his pocket and extracted the Elfstone pouch, loosened the drawstrings, and spilled the contents into his hand. It was the first time he had looked at the Stones since he had come into possession of them. Three identical gems, cut to the same shape and size, glowing a bright blue, they glimmered softly in the failing light. With the other two peering over his shoulder, Kirisin studied them intently, drawn by their rich color and almost transparent quality.

What to do? He held the stones out in the palm of his hand, where all three companions could admire and consider them. But looking at them did nothing to alleviate his confusion. He glanced at the others, and then closed the stones away in his fist. He tried squeezing them, then rolling them between both palms, and finally jiggling them softly in the cup of his hand. The Elfstones did nothing. He tried casting them on the ground, rolling them as he might a set of dice. Nothing happened. He tossed them and caught them. Nothing. He tried using them one at a time. Still nothing.

“I don’t know what else to do,” he admitted finally.

“Keep trying,” Simralin urged.

“I don’t know anything about Elven magic,” Angel said quietly, “but with the Word’s magic it is first necessary to visualize what it is that you want to happen.”

Kirisin looked at her, thinking about how that might work.

“We want them to show you how to find the Loden,” Simralin cut in. Her eyes continued to scan the mountainside, which was very nearly dark now with the westward passing of the sun. “Try picturing that.”

“But I don’t know what the Loden looks like.”

“Maybe all you need to do is to imagine the Elfstones showing you the way to where the Loden is hidden,” Angel suggested. “Maybe knowing exactly what it looks like isn’t important. There must be a great many things that someone using these Stones wouldn’t have seen before.”

“She’s right,” Simralin interjected quickly. “They’re seeking-Stones. They should be able to find anything you can put a name or a face to. Just try.”

“But what am I…?”

“Try.”
Angel added emphasis to the word. “I don’t want to frighten you, Kirisin, but we don’t have much time. I just caught another glimpse of whatever follows us coming out of the pass and across the open slopes.”

Kirisin glanced westward into the mountains despite himself, a chill running down his spine. He wanted to ask what their pursuer looked like, but knew it could not appear as more than shadowy movement from this distance.
Demon or Elven Hunter?
He glanced down at his fist and brushed at his mop of dark hair in frustration, wishing he understood even a little of the skills necessary to what he was trying to do. But no one had held a set of Elfstones in thousands of years, so there wasn’t much point in wishing for help of any sort. Someone had to learn the process anew, and it looked like it was going to be him.

He thought about it a moment more, his brow furrowed, the Elfstones clutched tightly.
Picture what it is you are looking for. Put a name to it.
How difficult could that be?

He held out his hand and closed his eyes. His concentration locked down on what it was he wanted the Elfstones to do.
Show me where the Loden is hidden. Show me how to find it.
He pictured the three of them traveling toward another Elfstone, one that glowed as brightly and deeply as these, one just as perfectly formed. He gave it a color, and then changed it several times. He imagined the forest and the mountains giving way before them. He imagined darkness and mist falling back before sunlight.

His hand tightened further.

Suddenly he felt something change, a shift that he could not put a name to. Then he heard a sharp intake of breath from one of the women.

His eyes snapped open.

His entire fist was bathed in a deep blue glow. He almost dropped the Elfstones in shock, but managed to keep from doing so by reassuring himself that the glow wasn’t hurting, that his hand felt all right, that this was what was supposed to happen.

In the next instant, a shaft of blue light exploded from his fist and lanced away into the darkness north, cutting through everything that lay in its path—through trees and mountains and earth, just as he had imagined it would—dissolving away all obstacles to stretch into a distance that he could not begin to measure. From the speed it maintained and the ground it covered, it seemed a long way, a vast reach through the night to a singular peak that rose in snowcapped magnificence against a clouded sky. The light found the peak, held it momentarily, and then moved high up onto its slopes and into caverns that were studded with stalactites dripping with moisture and brightened only faintly by phosphorescence glowing in bright streaks along their walls. The light held this vision for a long moment, flared once as if to punctuate the importance of its revelation, and then went dark.

Kirisin had held his ground through all of this, but now took a step back, nearly falling over in the aftershock of what he had witnessed. Simralin caught his arm, steadying him as she did so.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he gasped, swallowing.

“Did you see that mountain, Little K?” his sister whispered.

He nodded. “I saw. A mountain with some caves. A long way off, I think.”

She grinned, sharing her pleasure with him. “Not so far. I know that mountain. I know where it is and how to get there.”

“Then maybe it would be a good idea if we got started,” Angel suggested, nodding toward the darkness of the Cintra and whatever was tracking them.

Without waiting for their response, she shouldered her pack and started away, moving north.

Kirisin dumped the Elfstones back into the pouch and shoved the pouch into his pocket. “You know that mountain?” he asked Simralin, falling into step beside her as she moved after Angel.

His sister glanced over. “You know it, too, even though you’ve never been there. That’s the mountain where Father and Mother wanted to establish the new community of Cintra Elves before Arissen Belloruus rejected the idea.” She smiled broadly and reached out to squeeze his shoulder affectionately. “That’s Syrring Rise, the mountain our parents called Paradise.”

H
IGH ON THE SLOPES
above them, lost in the darkness of the thinning forest line, the demon put its hand on Delloreen to stop her forward progress. She responded immediately, a shiver running through her. Once, had anyone or anything touched her, she would have responded much differently. But this one knew how to touch her in a way that gave her such pleasure, even in the smallest brushing of clawed fingers, that it made her instantly want more. Already it had taught her more about pleasure than she had imagined it was possible to learn.

“Not too quickly, pretty thing,” her demon whispered in that rough, soothing voice. “Let them go on a bit before we follow. Let them be.”

She did not want to let them be. She did not want to waste another moment tracking them. She wanted to catch up to them and tear them apart, especially the female Elf who had taken her eye. The knife had blinded her; she would never see again out of her right side. It had been luck, nothing more, but it was done and her sight was gone. Her rage would not be quenched until she had tasted the Elf’s warm blood.

“Does it hurt still?” the other asked her softly.

One hand came down to stroke her scaly head, lingering near but not touching the wound. The hand that had extracted the blade and stanched the flow of blood and taken away most of the pain, she thought absently, reveling in its feel. The hand that gave her such pleasure when it touched her.

“You are so eager to kill her, aren’t you?” the other said. “But now is not the time. Everything is happening as I intended it should. We have them fleeing the safety of the Cintra. We have them alone and cut off from any help. We have them responding to the incentives we have given them. All we need do is be patient. When it is time, you may kill them all.”

Delloreen’s growl was a mingled hiss and purr. She showed her teeth and panted softly.

“Lead us down into the trees,” it instructed her. “We will make our bed there for the night. We will rest and resume tracking when it is light. Their trail will be easy to follow. Their scent will be unmistakable. But we will stay safely behind them and out of sight.”

Delloreen accepted this. She knew that they could not escape her—that once she set her mind to it, nothing ever escaped her. But the urge to kill was strong, and she felt itchy and restless within her scaly body.

She looked up into the eyes of her companion and let it see her need clearly. The other demon nodded.

“Go, then. Do what you must. There will be other prey for you besides our little Elves and the Knight. Take what you need elsewhere, but leave them be for now.” It bent down and kissed Delloreen on the muzzle. “Go, but come back soon.”

Her blood was hot with expectation and her body taut with the thrill of the hunt as she bounded away into the night.

FIFTEEN

S
QUIRREL’S FAMILY
buried him at dawn.

They were all awake by then, perhaps because they were no longer safely tucked away in their Pioneer Square home, perhaps because they were already anticipating the uncertainty of the journey that lay ahead. It was barely light, the sunrise still little more than a faint brightening on the eastern horizon, its glow muted by a heavy screen of smoke and ash blown south from the city. Glimmerings of the fires dying out on the docks and in the adjacent buildings could still be seen against the fading darkness. North, a single star was all that remained, a tiny pinprick of light that seemed to have lost its way.

Logan Tom had risen before the rest and was standing by himself on the crest of the hilltop where they had made their camp when Owl rolled up in her wheelchair.

“We have to bury the boy,” he told her. “It isn’t safe to keep him with us another day.”

She knew what he meant. Too many diseases; too many ways to infect the others. There wasn’t any choice, no matter how you felt about it. “We can bury him here, beneath this spruce,” she said, pointing to a majestic old growth that the wilt and sickness had not yet killed and stripped of life. “He would like sleeping here, I think. Will you help us dig the grave?”