The Weapons Master's Choice

He nodded, not so sure about that. “So you think the Elfstones are really in here somewhere? Like Aphenglow was shown by the vision?”


She nodded. “It would explain why they couldn’t be found for so long. Aleia Omarosian’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.

They arranged themselves in a circle so that the ravaged spruce trees provided a wall around them. The trees were almost completely stripped of needles, and their twisted limbs cast crosshatched shadows over the little party like a cage. Redden was so uncomfortable and on edge that he offered to sit the first watch, hoping that by the time it ended he might be tired enough to sleep.

They ate their meal cold, aware that their supplies were meager and would not last more than another day or so. They might be able to replenish their food, but water would become a problem quickly. How could they know what was safe to drink in this world? Sitting together and speaking quietly, aware of the darkness deepening as night closed in about them, they tried not to talk about it.

We don’t belong here, Redden kept repeating.