But it was here. She could sense its presence, even without being able to explain why. It was calling to her soundlessly, continuing to tug her forward into the chamber.
So she began to make her way upward from shelf to shelf, using her torch to light the way, searching carefully as she went. Even though she wasn’t entirely conscious of what she was doing, she stretched out her right hand and her fingers groped at the air as if there were something of substance to which she might cling. She continued on until she was almost to the back wall of the chamber. She was far enough along that only two more levels of stone risers remained when she stopped on one that was much smaller and set at the exact center of the larger one beneath it.
Just to one side of the shelf was a large boulder.
Here, she said to herself. The Bloodfire is here.
She knew it instinctively. Acting on her certainty, she moved over to the boulder and touched it experimentally. Nothing happened. Then, on a hunch more than anything else, she placed both hands on the huge rock and put her weight behind the effort. To her surprise, it began to move, even as slight as she was and as massive as it was. It rolled smoothly out of its shallow seating and her momentum carried her after it so that now she was standing where the boulder had been.
Instantly the floor beneath her feet exploded into flames, and she was enveloped in a brilliant white fire that reached all the way to the ceiling. Frozen in place, shocked by the suddenness of it, she cringed in anticipation of the expected pain. But the fire did nothing to harm her. The flames exuded neither heat nor smoke; nor did they burn, but instead enfolded her in a blanket of warmth and comfort. The worries and the stresses of the days she had spent coming to this place faded away as if they had never been. Everything around her disappeared, and she was surrounded by an impenetrable brightness that first flared as white light and then slowly became crimson.
She was inside the Bloodfire.
How odd, she thought, that I can stand in a pillar of fire and not be burned. She glanced down at herself to be sure she was not mistaken, but her body was whole and her flesh undamaged.
What is happening to me?
She wondered again at the way in which she had been brought to this place, drawn to it by something larger than herself. She thought at first it must be the fire, but then she realized the fire had been summoned by her presence as the bearer of the Ellcrys seed and was no more than an impersonal magic that responded to her appearance. She was the source of the summons—the Chosen of the tree, the bearer of its seed, a young girl wrapped in cool flames.
She experienced a sudden revelation, a door opening back on her life that filled her with a terrible understanding.
There had never been any choice in this matter for her.
She had never been able to walk away from her fate.
Her life’s story had been imprinted on her from the moment of her birth.
She was one of the Omarosian Chosen, an Elessedil carrying on the line so that the magic that kept the Forbidding whole and the demons imprisoned would not die out. She was the descendant of a girl who—desperate to atone for a tragic mistake—had given up her life so her people could be made safe. That was who and what she was. That was the life she had been given to live should the Ellcrys fail.
As it had failed. As it must have sensed, not so long ago, it would.
Unbidden and unafraid, she reached into her tunic pocket and closed her fingers about the Ellcrys seed. The smooth orb was warm against her skin, and she could feel it pulsate softly. She stared at the scarlet fire surrounding her, wondering what she was supposed to do next. Shouldn’t something already be happening? Why wasn’t the seed responding in some more dramatic way to the Bloodfire?
She wondered suddenly if she had misjudged things. Was there something more to the ritual of immersion? Perhaps she lacked some piece of knowledge that was crucial to the process. Or perhaps the seed was failing to respond because she was not the one intended to produce it. Perhaps the Ellcrys had been mistaken after all. Perhaps the seed was not hers to bear beyond this point, as she had hoped all along. She was meant to bring it here, where it would be quickened, and then to return it to the tree so that the proper Chosen could be summoned and …
She trailed off abruptly, aware of what she was doing.
Denying herself. Equivocating. Looking to escape the responsibility she had been given.
None of which was right. She was the one. She knew it.
Ignoring the persistence of fears and doubts, hardening herself for whatever would happen next, she brought the Ellcrys seed all the way out of her pocket and held it forth, fully exposed. Instantly, the flames brightened around her and the seed blazed in their reflection. A feeling of connection between the seed and the fire bloomed within her, revealing that she was not wrong in coming here and that the Ellcrys had left nothing to chance. Tendrils began to weave and lace within her body, and images appeared before her eyes.