“I will stay with you, and I will find a way to get us both safely back into the Four Lands and to Arborlon and to your brother. I know these are only words, but they are a promise. You will not be returned to Tael Riverine while I am still alive.”
He was crying again, and he brushed at his tears angrily. “It just feels like there’s no end to any this. I keep thinking about all the others. All of the dead. I feel as if I’m being drawn to them. I can feel their hands closing on me. I can’t make myself believe I won’t end up like them.”
“Listen to me,” she said. Her lean, smooth face was so close to his own, he could feel her breath on his face. “By the end of this day, we will be outside the Forbidding and back in the Four Lands. I will make Tesla Dart promise this. There won’t be another day inside this world. Then maybe you can start putting what you’re feeling right now behind you.”
He nodded without looking at her. “I can’t do anything before then, I can tell you that much.”
“Just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other,” she said. “Just stay with that for the rest of today. You’ll be fine.”
They set out again shortly afterward. They had finished the little food and water Oriantha had brought with her from the camp. Tesla Dart seemed to be able to go for long periods with no food or water at all, and she said nothing of the supplies situation, insisting they press on.
“I want us out of here by nightfall,” Oriantha insisted.
“I want us out of here forever!” the Ulk Bog snapped in reply.
It was midafternoon when they reached the rim of a crater-shaped valley that dropped away in a huge, sweeping bowl, its slopes rock-strewn and chopped apart by twisting defiles. The valley floor stretched away for perhaps a mile, all of it riven with jagged cracks and littered with boulders and clumps of thick scrub. It was a stark, desolate landscape, an arena poorly carved by ancient cataclysms and the passing of time, rough-hewn but immediately reminiscent of the place where Redden had watched Khyber Elessedil do battle with Tael Riverine. When he made the connection, a deep shudder went all through him, and he wrenched his gaze away and concentrated on the ground in front of him.
“What is that?” Oriantha asked Tesla Dart.
The Ulk Bog glanced over and shook her head. “Kroat Abyss. Very bad. You don’t go there. Dangerous things.”
They kept walking, glancing over now and then to the valley. “Who was Kroat?” the shape-shifter pressed.
“Straken Lord, very early. One of first. Drilled down for place to keep the bad things collected.”
“The bad things. What sort of bad things?”
“Elf magic, talismans and sorceries used against the Jarka Ruus in ancient wars. Locked away with us, these ones, when we were imprisoned. But no one knows their power, no one knows how to use, afraid to try.” She gave them a sly look. “Weka touched them and no harm came to him, he told. But Straken Lords keep such for themselves, not let others come close. Weka not like others. Weka knows all the secrets of the lands, all the hiding places, all the treasure chambers and tombs and keeps. So he visits and looks.”
She gestured at the valley. “Takes me there, once. Long ago. So long. I was still learning. Just a girl. Takes me down into darkness and shows me what is there. Things of the Old World. Of when Jarka Ruus were one with Faerie. Long since gone.”
Redden, who had been only half listening before, suddenly realized what he was hearing. He stopped where he was. “What did you say?” he asked sharply. “Things of the Old World?”
The other two stopped and turned back to him. “No, Redden,” Oriantha said in warning. She was already sensing what was coming.
“Were there pretty stones?” he asked, ignoring her. “Did Weka show you colored stones?”
“Some,” said the Ulk Bog. “In a box, locked up. Pretty stones. Different colors.”
“Were they in sets of three?” he pressed, moving over excitedly.
“Redden, stop it!” Oriantha snapped.
Tesla Dart glanced over at her, and then looked back at the boy. “Sets of three. Red. Green. Another two. Yellow, maybe?”
“Four sets, four colors? You saw these stones? They were down there?”
“Saw them like I see you. Took them out of case and held them in my hands. Pretty in the light. Glittered and shined. But they were only stones, not magic. Nothing happened. I put them back.”
“Shades!” Redden breathed, turning to Oriantha. “Do you believe it? We’ve found the missing Elfstones!” He held up his hands as she started to object, giddy with excitement. “No, listen to me. This is a miracle. We had the chance to find them all along; we just didn’t know it. Tesla Dart knew where they were. She knew! But she didn’t know we were looking for them because we didn’t say anything about it. We just told her we were trying to find friends that had been carried off by a dragon. We didn’t tell her why we were inside the Forbidding in the first place. We didn’t say what we had really come looking for!”