“I doubt it,” Seersha replied. “But I’ve told Railing we might at least do something about his leg. Is Aphen still at the cottage?”
Mirai nodded. “Is your argument with her over?”
“Over and done. She’s my friend. I reacted badly. But that’s in the past. Want to come along?”
The three of them continued walking, Mirai linking her arm in Railing’s to give him added support as they went. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
She gave him a smirk. “So I can nurse you back to health, no doubt. What does Seersha have in mind for your leg?”
“I don’t know. She hasn’t said.”
“Are you rational today?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that during the entire trip back here, you did nothing but rant and rave about how you were going back for Redden and no one could stop you and anyone who tried would regret it. That, and a lot of other wild nonsense. I was tempted to agree when Austrum threatened to bind and gag you.”
At the mention of the big Rover’s name, Railing felt his mood sour quickly. He remembered Austrum kissing Mirai. He remembered how she had failed to do anything about it afterward, not even warn him against trying it again.
“He would have regretted it,” he muttered.
She gave him a quick nudge. “Why don’t you stop trying to be so fierce? I like you better when you’re gentle.”
“I don’t feel like being gentle.”
“Which is something you should work on. Like Redden has.”
He didn’t know where that came from, but he didn’t feel like pursuing it and let the matter drop.
When they reached the Elessedil sisters’ cottage, they found Arling gone and Aphen packing clothes and making up a list of supplies for the journey. She told them she had already visited with Cymrian, who had appeared not long after Seersha left, and he was already off collecting an airship crew for their flight. She greeted Seersha effusively, and they apologized to each other immediately. Railing stood by awkwardly until the conversation turned to him.
“Railing needs his leg repaired if he’s to be of any use either to himself or to the rest of us,” Seersha announced. “We can’t afford to wait around for it to heal normally, so I think a little magic is in order. You are the best at this sort of thing. Will you give it a try?”
Aphenglow looked at him, and Railing at once felt the difference in their ages and maturity. She wasn’t that much older, but her confidence and poise so far surpassed his own that it made him feel like a child.
“Is that what you want?” she asked him. “For me to use magic on your leg?”
He nodded. “If you can heal it, yes.”
She glanced at Seersha and then at him again. “Magic of this sort works best on others. I can heal you more easily than I could heal myself when I was injured at Paranor. Unfortunately, it won’t hurt any less.”
They placed him on Mirai’s bed in the spare room, loosening his clothes and making him comfortable. Aphenglow cut away his pant leg all the way up above the knee of his bad leg and took off the splints and bindings. When his leg was completely revealed, she gave him something to drink and then a bitter-tasting root to chew that immediately made his mouth go numb and eventually his body and limbs as well.
“Just be still while I do this,” she told him. “No sudden movements. There will be some pain. To help you stay still, I’ll have both Mirai and Seersha hold you. Don’t panic. It won’t take long. When it’s over, you will sleep.”
He nodded, waiting impatiently, the first twinges of doubt starting to erode his confidence. “Just do what you have to. I’ll be fine.”
She placed a cloth over his eyes and stroked his face. Then she placed both hands on his broken leg and began to move them lightly over the surface. She worked at this for a long time, and he could hear her murmuring softly. Once in a while her fingers probed.
Then a slow, steady ache began to build deep inside the bones of his damaged leg, rippling through him from thigh to ankle. The medication Aphen had given him dulled it, but did not prevent it. He could feel Seersha’s and Mirai’s hands tighten on his wrists and ankles. He held himself as still as he could manage, the pain building on itself in slow waves until eventually it was all he could do to keep from screaming. He clenched his teeth and focused on an image of Mirai—the image strong and alive in his mind. The murmuring and touching continued and the pain raged on, but he forced it all away and went down inside where his heartbeat gave him a lifeline to grasp and Mirai’s voice whispered over and over, I like you better when you’re gentle.
Then, finally, he lost consciousness and slept.
For Arling Elessedil, it was a traumatic day on several fronts. Her visit to her grandfather and Uncle Ellich, followed by her sister’s argument with Seersha, had been troubling enough, but later she was forced to call a meeting of the Chosen to discuss the deterioration of the Ellcrys. It was becoming apparent that there were problems with the tree. The first signs of wilt and decay had begun to appear, and while the Chosen worked diligently to heal the damage, all of them suspected the same thing. The tree was failing and needed to be renewed.
They knew as well that for a renewal to happen, one of them must be given the Ellcrys seed and sent in search of the Bloodfire.
Once, such knowledge had been carefully hidden from virtually everyone, the myth of immortality part of the old legends of the creation of the Forbidding and the locking away of the demonkind. But that had changed during the reign of Eventine Elessedil, when the last Ellcrys had failed and the truth about her regeneration become common knowledge.
Now there were enough who knew the truth of things that pretending the tree could never die or need replacing was pointless.
Arling and Aphen had discussed earlier in the day how the meeting should be handled, and they had agreed that Arling should keep the fact that she had been selected to go in search of the Bloodfire to herself. Doing so would provide another of the order the opportunity to step forward and volunteer to do what she could not.
She was still not ready to accept that she was the right choice to become the tree’s successor. She had talked with the Ellcrys nightly after Aphenglow’s departure for the Breakline, trying to convince the tree that choosing her was a mistake. But the Ellcrys had deflected her efforts, continuing quietly to insist that she was the only one who would do. Nothing Arling had said during their discussions seemed to make any difference at all.
But now, perhaps, confronting the other Chosen with the enormity of the need facing them all might cause one among them to step forward and indicate a willingness to act as bearer of the seed.
This turned out to be wishful thinking. The other members of her order listened patiently, but none of them offered to be the one who bore the seed to the Bloodfire. If anything, they were reluctant to believe that the need was immediate. Surely there was more time than Arling believed. Shouldn’t they examine the tree more thoroughly? Weren’t there healing skills and medicines that could be employed? Objections were raised and questions asked, and the dismay that settled over those assembled seemed to inhibit any of them from doing more than listening.
By the time they had disbanded to go home for the night, not a single Chosen had seemed ready to accept what she had told them.
They were not so different, she realized afterward, from herself. She had been no more willing to believe when the tree had revealed its condition. She had been no better prepared for it, no more anxious to act on the tree’s behalf, no more eager to wish for selection. Oddly, she was not surprised. If anything, it only deepened her growing sense of fatalism.
At midnight, when the rest of those staying in her little cottage were asleep, she slipped out the door and went through the nighttime darkness to the Carolan and down into the Gardens of Life. She crept through the flowering shrubs and bedding plants, through the trellis vines and ornamentals to where the Ellcrys stood alone, shining crimson and silver in the moonlight. She knelt beneath her canopy.