“Slip it on your finger,” the King of the Silver River suggested. “Go on, it will not harm you.”
Railing did as he was told. The ring fit perfectly, the metal suddenly soft and malleable, molding itself to his finger as if it were a living thing. The boy studied it a moment, admiring its look, and then tried pulling on it. It came off without difficulty and turned rigid and unyielding again.
The old man nodded. “It belongs to you now and will serve only you. Should another try it on, it will not respond.”
“What does it do?” Railing asked. He was still trying to get used to the idea that this was the legendary Faerie creature who had appeared to members of the Ohmsford family at various times over the centuries, always with a willingness to help when their lives seemed darkest and their need greatest.
“It does what you need it to do when you cannot find your way.” The King of the Silver River smiled. “That’s what I have come to talk to you about. Finding your way.”
“Can you help me find Grianne Ohmsford?” the boy asked excitedly. “Can you tell me where she is?”
The old man shook his head. “I am not here for that. The ring can show you the way once you know what you are looking for. I am here to talk to you about what you should be looking for. I know the quest you undertake, and I know the reasons for it. I have listened to your conversations on both sides of the Rainbow Lake and seen the writings you have uncovered. I know your heart. I can feel your passion. But you travel down a road that may lead to your ruin.”
Railing started to ask for an explanation, but the old man had already turned away. “Come sit with me while we talk. My bones are weary from tracking your efforts. I need to rest them.”
They sat together on the trunk of a fallen tree, looking back across the water at Quickening and the star-filled skies that silhouetted her. For a long moment, the King of the Silver River did not speak.
“This is going to be difficult for you to hear, Railing Ohmsford—and even more difficult for you to believe. Perhaps you won’t heed me. Perhaps you will dismiss me out of hand. But at least I will have spoken the words and you will have had a chance to assess their worth. And perhaps, if you allow yourself to do so, you will take them to heart and weigh them carefully. If not now, then at another time in the not-too-distant future, before it is too late.”
“What is it?” the boy asked him. “What would you tell me?”
“You search for Grianne Ohmsford, Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order. You believe that by finding her, you will find, as well, a way in which to bring your brother back to you. But you should understand that what you seek is not necessarily what you will find.”
The old man folded his hands in his lap. “The Grianne Ohmsford you seek is lost to you. She has been gone for a hundred years, since she gave herself to the tanequil in exchange for the girl who became your grandmother. What’s been gone for so long cannot be brought back. Not as it once was. Not whole and complete again, perhaps not even alive. Understand, Railing. She is transformed. She became another creature entirely by choosing to live as an aeriad. She cannot take that back, and you cannot expect to find a way to make her.”
“I can try,” Railing interrupted, upset by now with how the conversation was going. “Grianne switched places with Cinnaminson. Why can’t it happen that someone switches places with her?”
The King of the Silver River nodded. “It would seem that such a thing would be possible. But the switch between Grianne and your grandmother happened only weeks after your grandmother gave herself to the tanequil. Only weeks, Railing. Not more than a hundred years. You can expect things to stay pretty much the same in weeks, but not after a century has passed.”
“What are you saying, then? That I should just give up and go home and forget my brother? That there is nothing I can do for him?” Railing was so incensed by the idea that he was shouting. He caught himself, glancing out at the dark shape of Quickening, but there was no sign that anyone aboard had heard. He looked back at the old man. “I won’t do it. I won’t abandon Redden.”
“Nor am I asking you to. Nor would I expect it of you.” The aged eyes seemed to look right into him. “But finding Grianne Ohmsford may not be the answer. It may end badly for everyone involved. It may not yield the result you hope to achieve.”
“You can’t know that. You can’t know how it will end!”
“I am a Faerie creature, and I have the use of magic and the gift of premonition. While I cannot know the answers to all things, I can sense if they will be good or bad for those involved. It is so here. My sense of it is very strong.”
Railing took a deep breath to steady himself, not wanting to blurt out what he was thinking. “What are you telling me to do?”
“Only this. Make your choice wisely. Do not become wedded to the idea that there is only one way.”
“I already know that.”
The King of the Silver River shook his head. “You only think you know. In the end you may discover you are a child playing with matches and in danger of burning everything around you to the ground. Think carefully. Do you really wish to continue on after what I have just said, or will you turn back and go into the Forbidding alone?”
There was a long silence as the boy and the old man faced each other. In the distance, something splashed in the waters of the cove, and the dark shape of a bird of prey winged skyward with food for her young.
“I cannot give this up,” Railing said.
“You can give anything up just as you can take anything up. But once the choice is made, there are consequences. And you cannot change those consequences. You can only live with them.”
The insistence in the old man’s words was daunting. Clearly, he believed what he was saying. Railing hesitated. Neither of them knew exactly what would happen if Railing persisted in his search for Grianne Ohmsford, but the King of the Silver River seemed certain that it would not be anything good. Yet even creatures of magic could be mistaken. Even they could be wrong. The history of the Ohmsford family had demonstrated that often enough.
Railing was no fool; he knew he should consider carefully what he was being told. He had until at least sunrise to do so. And he had all the days of his journey after that, as well, didn’t he? He would not dismiss the old man’s warning out of hand. He would think on it for as long as there was reason to do so.
“Will the ring guide me to wherever I choose to go?” he asked the other.
The King of the Silver River shrugged. “Or out of wherever you’ve been, should that become necessary. But know this. Unlike some magic, it has a finite life. It will show the way each time you ask for it, but each time one strand of its woven threads will disappear until all are gone. Save the stone for when the threads are gone and your life is at such risk there is no other magic you can call upon. That time may come sooner than you think.”
Railing took a deep breath. “I thank you for the ring and the advice. I will consider carefully everything you have told me.”
“Will you?”
The boy nodded uneasily. The old man seemed to see right through him. “How do I get back to the ship from here?”
The King of the Silver River smiled. “Who is to say you ever left?”
Then he disappeared, and the shoreline and the trees and any view of the airship anchored in the cove disappeared as well, and Railing woke from what might have been only a dream still wrapped in his blanket and lying on wooden planking, and he was aboard Quickening once more, and all that remained was the silence and his memory of the Faerie creature’s words.
It might have been a dream if not for the ring that nestled deep inside his pant pocket.
Railing was awake for much of the rest of the night, mulling over what the King of the Silver River had told him. He was conflicted in every conceivable way, even as to whether what had happened was real.