The Legend of Asahiel: Book 02 - The Obsidian Key (57 page)

But Crag led them onward, pushing past flowering shrubs and bushes laden with berries—now, in the dead of winter. They spied birds and insects, rabbits and deer, each of which, again, seemed at perfect ease among the others with whom it coexisted. And yet, no matter how hard he looked, there was still no sign of those Torin had come to find.

“Where are the Finlorians?” he asked finally. “You said this dell was their home.”

Crag snickered. “All around us, lad. Safely out of sight. Or did ya expect ’em to come running out to shake your hand?”

Torin glanced about self-consciously. He hadn’t known
what
to expect, though this would not have been it. Not after what he had glimpsed of the splendors and marvels that had marked Finlorian society at the height of their civilization. Temples and treasures and statuary would have been more in keeping with the onetime majesty of their greatest city, Thrak-Symbos. Then again, he could not imagine anything of that nature leaving a greater impression than that which the elven people had helped to create here.

When finally they came to a halt, they did so unexpectedly, beside no discernible marker. And yet it appeared they had reached at least a temporary destination, for Crag untied the rope that had tethered the Tuthari to his charges, and let it drop to the earth.

“Stay here,” he ordered them, then wagged a crooked finger for emphasis. “Remember my warning.”

With that, he trundled off around the base of an enormous tree, carrying their weapons with him. Torin’s gaze shifted reflexively, climbing upward through the nest of boughs. He wondered if it was up inside the trees that the Finlorians had concealed their homes. But all he saw were dagger-shaped leaves and great, peeling strips of bark that hung down like withered vines. If anything lay therein, then it was well concealed from his wandering eye.

They waited in silence, listening carefully for any change in the forest’s mellifluous sound. Despite the magnificence of his surroundings, Torin was soon distracted by Dyanne. Though he tried not to be obvious, he could not help but study her profile whenever he felt it safe to do so. In full thrall to whatever enchantment graced this land, he found her to be more radiant than ever. For too long now, his interactions with her had been limited to longing, unnoticed stares. He ached to know her thoughts, but could not bring himself to ask. Whatever she might be feeling—toward him and toward their current venture—remained a mystery.

It seemed almost cruel when Crag finally returned to them, reappearing from around the base of that giant tree. He did not look happy, his hanging expression like that of a scolded child. But then, Torin had absolutely no notion of what the dwarf might look like when pleased.

“Come,” the Tuthari growled, taking up their tether line like a horse’s lead rope.

The companions did not ask where he was taking them; they simply obeyed. Together, still bound and in single file, they started around the tree. A smile of amazement slowly gripped Torin’s cheeks when he realized that the tree’s roots formed a sort of staircase, spiraling downward as they rounded the great trunk. Had there been any question before about whether the Finlorians had manipulated this land through some magical means, there was no denying it now.

With each step, Torin’s excitement grew. This was it, the culmination of a
journey spanning weeks and events he could scarcely recall. From the moment he had bid farewell to his friends and passed through Krynwall’s gates, this had been his sole objective: to find and meet with the last remnants of the elves of ancient Finloria. Even throughout all of the secondary conflicts—his escape from Soric, his battle against Lorre, and his inner turmoil regarding Dyanne and Marisha—he had never completely lost focus of what it was he had come to do. And though it seemed as unlikely now as before, he felt certain that his quest was about to come to a fruitful end.

For if a people could tell a tree how to grow, then surely they possessed magic enough to help thwart the Illysp scourge.

They stopped again when the staircase of roots leveled out, barely more than a quarter-turn around the mammoth tree. There, among the gnarled folds of the tree’s bark, lay a narrow cleft, veiled by a curtain of ivy. Alone, Torin might never have seen it. Even after Crag had drawn back the dangling strands, he doubted it could be the opening they sought.

“Watch your step,” the dwarf said, then disappeared within.

The cleft turned out to be much bigger than it looked, carved at an angle so as to disguise its width. No, Torin amended quickly, not carved, but shaped smoothly by natural—or supernatural—means. It opened not into a central hollow, but a corridor that sloped gently downward, spiraling deeper beneath the earth. Keeping step behind their guide, the companions followed it—a path illuminated not by fire or sunlight, but by hairlike roots dug down through the ceiling that glowed with a dim radiance.

“What causes them to shine like that?” Saena asked, unable to contain her wonder.

Crag glanced back as if to reprimand her, but answered instead. “Tree filters it down from leaves overhead. An elven trick.”

“Magic?” she replied, speaking the word on everyone’s mind.

The dwarf shrugged. “Something like that.”

The tunnel wound on until leveling out at last within a large chamber—a foyer. Openings branched off in multiple directions, doorways to reaches unknown. Flowers grew in the center of the floor, beneath a heavier concentration of light from the glowing root tendrils. Other roots dripped water that had seeped from above, directing it into a spring pooled up from below and hemmed in by a wall of shale. Streams fed out from this pool by way of slender troughs dug along the walls, carrying water, Torin imagined, throughout the complex.

He was given little time to investigate further. Crag marched them ahead, around the central garden and to the left of the corner pool. They passed through one of the doorways and down a short hall. This one opened into a second chamber, larger than the first, and colored by a familiar red aura.

Only then did Torin realize that Crag no longer toted the fur wrap in which their weapons had been bundled. He found it instead lying against the wall, just inside the doorway of this second room. The covering lay open, but Torin barely glanced at its exposed contents. For he knew already that the one artifact that concerned him was no longer there.

He looked instead for the source of the red aura. A woman stood sideways in the center of the room, staring with wonder into the flaming depths of the Sword of Asahiel, held before her. The wrappings used to disguise the hilt hung from one arm, and she was even now stroking the naked heartstones with a mother’s caress.

A moment passed before she could force herself to break away, and even then, she only scarcely considered them before turning back to the blade.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I did not believe Crag without taking a look for myself.”

Her voice had a songlike quality to it, so that even these simple words sounded smooth and lyrical. Torin waited anxiously for her to say something more.

Again her gaze shifted to them, and this time, something made it stick. A scowl sharpened her already angled features.

“I should think you could unbind them, Crag.”

The dwarf grunted. “I doubt that would please Eolin.”

“Too late to worry about
that
now, isn’t it?”

Crag huffed, but within moments, the companions were rubbing at the angry red welts raised upon their wrists.

“Seat yourselves,” the woman bade them—a demand, not a request.

She gestured toward the circle of furniture that adorned the room, each piece woven from reeds and branches and tied together with strips of bark. Dyanne and Holly were the first to obey, stepping forward across a carpet of moss. Saena soon followed, and finally Torin. Of their party, only Crag still stood, planted in the chamber doorway with arms crossed.

Their host remained standing as well, facing the open circle of her guests. She held the Sword absently now, one hand on its hilt, the other near the blade’s tip. “Which of you carries the message from my father?” she asked.

“You are Laressa?” Saena replied. “Daughter of Lorre?”

“I am Laressa Solymir, daughter of Shaundra and wife to Eolin Solymir—keifer of the elven nation of Finloria. Who are you?”

Her stern tone, Torin decided, could not mask her exotic beauty. Though lightly freckled, her skin had just a hint of the olive tone he had seen in the Mookla’ayans—the elves of his own shores. Cheeks, ears, eyes—all were prominent and high swept, angled at the outer edges. Her hair was blond and short, cropped close like her father’s and tinged red by the light of the Sword—though the fact that she
had
hair was perhaps proof of her mixed heritage, as none of the Mookla’ayans Torin had met grew any at all.

Yet it wasn’t her appearance that captivated him as much as her voice, her intense gaze, and the supple grace with which she moved. So delicate she seemed, dressed in a long, sleeveless tunic of pure gossamer. But that delicacy, Torin suspected, was a ruse, a natural defense against those who would misjudge her a weak and fragile thing.

“I serve in your father’s army,” Saena admitted. “He asked that I come here to apologize on his behalf for any pain or confusion he may have caused you. He never wished for anything more than your happiness, and swears
to this day that he will do anything to ensure it. If this is the home you have chosen, for you and your child, then rest assured for the remainder of your days that he will do nothing to violate it. He wants only to know that you are well, that you have chosen your own life, and that none other has chosen it for you.”

Torin looked to Laressa, awaiting her reaction. The woman seemed at a loss for words.

“That’s all?” she asked finally.

“His Lordship wasn’t certain what else he might say, except that you are the one triumph he is truly proud of, a tribute to your mother—the only woman he has ever loved.”

Laressa’s eyes gleamed. Torin wanted to believe that she had been moved by Saena’s words, but couldn’t tell for sure.

“Then he did not send you in an effort to renew his hunt of my Finlorian brothers and sisters?” Laressa asked evenly, glancing in Crag’s direction.

“Only if you were to ask that he do so,” Saena revealed. “On his oath to your mother, he will sunder the earth if that’s what it takes to deliver you from captivity.”

Torin continued to study Laressa, even as a great weight lifted from his own shoulders. Saena’s words reflected almost exactly what Lorre had expressed during his own interrogation. All this time, he had worried that the overlord was not being honest, that surely his agents—Saena and Warrlun—were the bearers of some secret plot against the Finlorian people, making Torin an unwilling facilitator of their designs. But now that Saena’s story matched up with Lorre’s own, it would seem he could finally lay his suspicions toward both the woman and her ruler to rest.

Laressa smiled sadly. “Captivity. He still assumes me to be the victim of an elf’s enchantment, then, does he?”

Saena did not respond, allowing the elven woman to draw her own conclusions.

“My father never did understand,” Laressa continued, her pointed gaze seeming to peer past her uninvited guests. “He never understood why his acceptance—and that which he would force others to share—wasn’t enough.”

“Acceptance?” Saena asked, bent forward in her seat by that natural curiosity of hers. “You were already married, were you not? And with child?”

“To a man my father selected—a man I did not love. Though it is true I carried his seed, theirs was not a culture to which I wanted that child to be born. I feared that she might feel as I did, like an outcast amid the human race.”

“
She
. You bore a daughter, then?”

Laressa’s countenance hardened in warning.

Saena pressed on anyway, though with a tone of carefully measured respect. “Except, with a human father and a half-elven mother, was she not likely to look more human than elf?”

“It was more than physical appearances that concerned me,” Laressa confessed. “Her looks, like mine, might have made her an easy target for insensitive fools of both races. But a fool’s ridicule is not all that hard to endure.”
Her fingers began to rub idly against the Sword’s polished blade. “No, my concern had more to do with culture and ideologies. My features may be predominantly elven, but it was more the beliefs and mannerisms of the Finlorians that I found so appealing. In a way, my father is right to believe that I was bespelled. For when Eolin welcomed me into their world, my own rapture made me helpless to refuse.”

“You must have known it would mean war with your father,” Torin interjected before he could think to check himself.

Laressa’s gaze snapped around to find his.

“War was
his
choice, not ours. To avoid it, we left all that we knew behind. Eolin’s father, keifer at the time, did so at his son’s urging, refusing to fight out of respect for me and
my
father.”

“And would you do so again?” It was Dyanne who spoke up now. “At what point would you take a stand to defend what is yours?”

There was a hint of frustration in the Nymph’s tone—or indignation, perhaps. She was trying to be polite, Torin thought, to refrain from passing judgment. And yet this was the very question that had driven such a rift between her and her twin sister, Dynara.

“A home can be made anywhere,” Laressa argued, “and is easily replaced. Lives are not.”

“It doesn’t bother you, then, to have been chased underground like animals?” Torin asked, thinking to defend Dyanne and her reasoning.

“How would you have us live?” Laressa asked sharply.

Torin glanced toward Dyanne, but saw no help coming from either her or Holly. “I only mean, it’s a far cry from what I saw while trekking through the ruins of Thrak-Symbos.”

Laressa laughed. “Thrak-Symbos? That was what, three thousand years ago?” Her gaze slipped briefly to the talisman in her hands. “Every people must evolve, both the individual and their society. Some whisper that it was the arrogance of our forebears in embracing material glories such as those you may have witnessed that led to our eventual downfall. Although I might argue that we are better off now than we ever were. Certainly, we are less obtrusive to those who would hunt us.”