Something dark flashed through a wash of torchlight to the left of where he stood, and Oriantha tore into a clutch of attackers. Redden’s arm rose instantly, extending like a weapon, and his voice filled the cavern with a roar that sounded like a mountain coming down.
At the same instant, red light blossomed from his clutched fingers, turned to fire, and exploded into their attackers. Two forms of magic at once, one feeding the other, wishsong and Elfstone magic blended into a firestorm of light and sound. He felt them tear out of him, generated not just from throat and hand, but from everything he was, as well. A strange, terrible wrenching shook him to the soles of his feet, and he could tell that something unpleasant was happening.
But the result he had been seeking was achieved. Red light surrounded and absorbed the creatures of the Straken Lord. Tarwick and his minions were snatched up like toys, wrapped in unbreakable chains of magic. Shuddering and thrashing, they were encased in red fire.
It happened quickly, a leaching away of substance—of flesh and blood and bone. Through a miasma of pain and shock, his body shuddering from what the combined magic of wishsong and Elfstones was doing to him, Redden Ohmsford watched it unfold. Some essential part of him was disappearing, disintegrating with the power he was releasing. Another almost physical form of disintegration was taking place among the demonkind. Bodies lurched and shook and convulsed as if jerked by invisible strings. The sounds the stricken creatures made were terrible to hear, and the boy knew he would never be able to forget them. Screams and howls and shrieks; they were burned forever into his memory. His own sounds were equally terrifying, for what was emanating from them seemed to be coming from him, as well.
He was going to die. He knew he was. By ending their lives, he was ending his own.
But it was worth the price. It was worth any price.
Then his voice and his strength gave out. The light and the sound collapsed, and the magic faded. Redden sagged to his knees, drained of strength and in shock, but still alive. In the flickering of torchlight he saw the predators that would have torn them apart reduced to heaps of ash and scraps of clothing. There was nothing left of any of them.
Tesla Dart bent close, bracing his shoulders, speaking to him. He couldn’t hear what she was saying and stared at her blankly. Oriantha reappeared out of the darkness, having escaped the fate of the Straken Lord’s creatures. He had hoped to keep her safe, but he hadn’t been sure he could make that happen. He hadn’t been sure of anything.
He found himself crying at the sight of her, whole and unharmed. She was changing back into her human form even as she approached, her strange eyes fixing on him, reflecting her disbelief and awe.
“Had to try,” he gasped as she knelt before him.
He opened his hand, and the Elfstones glittered through the darkness like drops of blood.
She supported him with an arm wrapped about his waist when they set out again, leaving the cavern and its dead behind. Little was said as they departed; even the normally gregarious Tesla Dart had gone silent. Lada, who must have gone into hiding at some point, scurried out to meet them at the tunnel entrance before rushing ahead once more to scout the way.
“You shouldn’t have taken such a chance,” Oriantha whispered.
“I knew it would work,” he whispered back.
And he had, he realized now. He had known. But he had not reckoned entirely on the consequences. A feeling of having been dismantled and then reassembled in a different way still reverberated through him, refusing to pass. The magic of the Elfstones had done something inside him; he could feel it but not define it. At some unspecified point in the future, he would know. He did not particularly look forward to that moment, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
Up from the darkness they trudged, wending their way through caverns and tunnels, climbing the endless succession of steps to the platform where they had started, emerging once more into a daylight gray and murky beneath overcast skies. The Forbidding, rediscovered. They crawled out of the pit like burrowing animals into the light, blinking in confusion, making a hurried search for additional enemies, but none was in evidence. Apparently all those who had come after them had gone into the pit.
Oriantha lowered Redden to the ground, bracing him with her hands on shoulders. “Can you walk on your own from here?”
He nodded. Speech had pretty much deserted him, and he wasn’t rushing to retrieve it. The whipsaw feeling from using two forms of magic in combination still roiled inside, leaving him sick and disoriented. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t even want to think.