Seersha nodded. “Everything we try at this point will be something of a stretch. Even finding a way back into the Forbidding and into the Straken Lord’s fortress to free the Ard Rhys and Redden Ohmsford seems unlikely. But it’s too late for what’s possible and what’s not to suddenly become a concern.”
“But hasn’t Woostra already studied the Druid Histories at length?” Mirai asked. “Is there is anything new to find?”
Seersha gestured at the little scribe. “Woostra and I have already discussed this.”
Woostra shrugged. “The Druid Histories say nothing about what became of Grianne Ohmsford after she left Paranor. But there are writings from both Grianne and Khyber Elessedil in the archives from that time period. I have not researched all of these. There might be something there.”
Skint was not persuaded. “But no one’s heard anything about her—anything—for more than a hundred years. Is this even a possibility?”
“I’ll admit it feels like the beginnings of the search for the missing Elfstones all over again,” Seersha replied. “A hunt through old journals, diaries, writings of people dead and gone, lost to us for too many years. But maybe this time we can make something good come of it. The Elfstones are still lost to us, but maybe Grianne isn’t. She was a powerful witch and a fierce Ard Rhys during her life. Perhaps she’s still something of both.”
She moved to an empty chair and plopped down. “What else do we have to do but find out? Go back to the Forbidding and try to get inside again? Go back into that madness that has already killed most of us and hope it does not take the rest?” She gestured at Railing. “What do you want to do, Railing?”
The boy discovered he was free of his restraints. He could move again, and he could talk. Still, he hesitated. “What I want to do is whatever it takes to save Redden. Do you really think this might be the way?”
“I think if it isn’t, there’s still time to try another. The Straken Lord made prisoners of the Ard Rhys and your brother for a reason. Whatever we do, we have to hope that means he wants to keep them alive and well long enough for us to save them. We have to hope there’s a way. While you search for Grianne Ohmsford, Crace Coram and I will search for a way back inside the Forbidding. We will attempt to bring your brother and Khyber out. We won’t just be sitting around with the Elves.”
“Remember that Oriantha is still in there, as well,” the Dwarf Chieftain added. “I saw what she could do when that dragon carried us off. She is someone to be reckoned with, and she is looking for your brother, too. I think Seersha is right. Nothing you could do at this point by way of searching for him would add to our chances. Stay here and look for the Ilse Witch.”
Seersha looked at him sharply. “Don’t use that name. The Druids don’t call her that anymore.”
Crace Coram nodded. “Doesn’t matter what the Druids call her. That’s who she was, like it or not. That’s who she still is—if she’s still alive—somewhere deep down inside. Maybe that’s who you want to find if you expect her to stand up to the Straken Lord.”
Railing was thinking it through. He had listened to the Dwarf Chieftain relate the story of his experiences inside the Forbidding several times. He had heard him speak of Tesla Dart and of what she had insisted was true about the Straken Lord and his obsession with Grianne Ohmsford. It seemed clear enough that he would do anything in his power to bring Grianne back, and that almost everything else was secondary. It was a fresh form of madness, and it might make him vulnerable. They needed to find a way to breach his defenses and undermine his control over the Jarka Ruus, and perhaps by doing so disrupt things enough to allow them to reach Redden and Khyber Elessedil. All that was true.
But it was also true that every day he was kept away from his brother left him riddled with guilt. Every day seemed to increase the chances they would never be together again. The Speakman’s prediction still haunted him. Only one would return. Only one. What if that one was Crace Coram, and those still left inside the Forbidding—his brother included—would not be coming back?
The others were talking again, Skint questioning Woostra further on the chances of finding anything new about Grianne Ohmsford and Seersha adding something about Aphenglow’s experience with the Elven writings. But Railing wasn’t listening.
“If you go,” Mirai said quietly, leaning close to him, “I will go with you.”
He nodded without looking at her. He knew she would. He would have been surprised if she’d said anything else.
But this felt like such an impossibility that he couldn’t make himself believe there was any real chance of it coming to pass. Could he abandon his plans, however ill formed, for rescuing his brother immediately? Could he put off what needed doing yesterday and gamble on finding someone missing and long presumed dead, hoping she could alter the course of events if she appeared, but not knowing if she would even consider doing so? Did this make any sense at all?
“What do you say, Railing?” Seersha repeated.
But nothing was clear to him anymore. Everything that had made sense in his life had been left behind at Bakrabru when he had flown west into the Breakline with the ill-fated Druid expedition.
“I’ll go,” he said, just like that.
“And I,” Mirai said at once.
Skint gave a curt nod of agreement, and Woostra said, “I’ve already said I would go. How soon do we leave?”
“An airship will be arranged for you,” Seersha said, getting to her feet. “You can leave as soon as you want.”
When she left, Seersha took Crace Coram with her for a meeting with Sian Aresh to discuss preparations for their departure for the Breakline. The two old friends walked side by side in silence toward the city proper and the compound that housed the Home Guard. Elves passing by gave them covert glances, these two Dwarf warriors, scarred and worn from hardship and years. “You don’t believe anything you told that boy,” the Dwarf Chieftain said finally.
“A little of it,” she answered. “Enough of it that I could speak the words without feeling they were a lie.”
“Do you really think that Grianne Ohmsford is still alive? What chance is there of that?”
“What chance is there that his brother is still alive? Or Khyber? It’s all the same.”
“But you gave him hope.”
“Hope is all we have.” She stopped and faced him. “I told Khyber—I promised her, when she left with the rest of you to go through that waterfall that wasn’t a waterfall at all—that I would not let anything happen to Railing Ohmsford. He already had a broken leg and she was taking his brother with her. She knew it would be dangerous and she might not come back, and that Redden Ohmsford might not come back, either. She did not want both brothers to die. She had told their mother she would bring them back, and if she could not bring them both back, she would at least bring one. She was insistent about this. She would make certain at least one of them returned home.”
“So you’re sending him on this hunt for ghosts and shadows to keep him safe? To keep him from going into the Forbidding?”
She reached over and tapped him lightly on the forehead. “And to think they say you’re slow-witted.”
They started walking again, moving off the smaller pathway they had been following onto the main road. “He won’t appreciate it once he finds out what you’ve done.”
“He’ll appreciate it if we bring his brother out of the Forbidding,” she said. “And if we don’t, likely we won’t be around to hear about it, will we?”
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
Still sitting in the common room with his companions after the Dwarves had departed, Railing watched dust motes floating in the sunshine that streamed through the window. “You think trying to find Grianne Ohmsford is a waste of time, don’t you?”
Skint grunted. “If we thought this was a waste of time, we wouldn’t be going with you.”