She took a deep breath against the inevitable pain and tried to raise herself to a sitting position. She failed and lay back again. “You’ll have to help me up,” she told them.
“We’ll have to carry you, is what we’ll have to do,” Simralin observed. “Don’t try to rush this.”
“I’m trying not to. But I know what’s at stake. Kirisin has to get back to the Cintra. He has to use the Loden to save the Elves. Otherwise, this has all been for nothing.”
Simralin nodded. “Kirisin will get his chance. But first we have to do something about you.”
“You have to take me with you.”
Simralin actually laughed. “Now there’s a good plan. Why didn’t I think of it?”
“I mean it, Simralin. You have to take me with you. It is the mission I was given–to be your protector. I can’t let you go alone.”
“Well, I don’t think this is your decision.” The Tracker bent close again. “I’ve seen dead people in better shape than you are. If you try to go with us, you’ll be more hindrance than help. I can’t protect you and him. And you can’t protect either of us until you’re healed. I’m taking you to someone who can make you well again. Then I’m taking Little K back into the Cintra where he can do what he is supposed to do.”
Angel shook her head stubbornly. “Not without me.”
Simralin sighed. “I thought you promised not to make this so hard on us.”
“I don’t care what I said. I’m going.”
“I’m afraid not, Angel.”
She reached down, pressed her fingers into the other’s exposed neck at the base of her skull, and held them in place. Angel’s eyes fluttered momentarily and closed.
Simralin stood up. “She’s unconscious. I’ll give her something in a little while to keep her that way. Stubborn, isn’t she? Determined. No wonder she’s still alive.” She motioned to Kirisin. “Take the staff from her hands, Little K. Be gentle.”
Together they made up the sling using the staff and one of the cloaks, tying and looping the sleeves and the loose ends of the flaps to form the cradle. Then they fitted Angel inside, shouldered their packs, and picked up the sling. It felt to Kirisin as if Angel weighed three hundred pounds.
“Don’t worry,” Simralin grunted from the other end of the staff. “We’ll stop and rest on the way. Just let me know when it gets to be too much.”
It was already too much, Kirisin thought. But he didn’t say so. He just nodded. He would do what it took to get Angel down the mountain. She would have done the same for them.
She would have given up her life.
Half an hour later, they were back outside the caves and making their way across the ice fields toward the snow line and the meadows that lay below.
FOUR
IT TOOK KIRISIN AND SIMRALIN almost four hours of hiking interspersed with frequent rest stops to carry Angel Perez back down the slopes of Syrring Rise to the meadow where they had left the hot–air balloon. Their trek was lengthened by the need to take a circuitous route in order to avoid the rougher terrain. By the time they reached the edge of the ice fields and stepped off the glacier onto visible ground, it was already midmorning. When they came in sight of the balloon, the sun was directly overhead and midday was approaching.
The day started out bright and clear, but as the hours wore on it turned hazy and the sky began to fill with clouds. A storm was forming over the mountain, and they had to get away before it struck or they would be trapped another night. Simralin pushed hard to keep Kirisin moving, even after he told her that he didn’t think he could go any farther. He surprised himself by putting aside any thought for his own discomfort and responding to his sister’s urgings and his own sense of duty to the injured Knight of the Word.
If Erisha were there, he comforted himself, she might even tell him he was finally growing up.
Angel, for her part, slept the entire way, drugged by the sleeping potion Simralin had prepared and trickled through her lips and down her throat, a powerful medicine meant to keep her unconscious until well into the following day. It might have been dangerous to give her such a strong potion, but Kirisin understood that it would be more dangerous still to have her awake and struggling to change their minds about not taking her with them. However determined she was, however well intentioned, she was not capable of helping them in what they had to do. He understood how she felt about carrying out the mission given to her by the Word, of fulfilling her duty as one of its Knights, but that alone was not enough to see her through what lay ahead. Simralin was right: Angel had to stay behind.
Once they arrived at the meadow, they lay Angel down on a soft patch of grass and went to work on enabling the balloon. No one had disturbed its various parts, and within a short time they had the blower operating and the bag filling with hot air. Simralin worked to secure all the stays and ties while Kirisin monitored the blower. The meadow and its surroundings remained otherwise empty and quiet, but the sky overhead continued to darken. It seemed odd to watch a storm develop; it had been years since weather this threatening had come to the mountains of the Cintra. A little rain now and then, but nothing like this. Still, Syrring Rise was special, and the work of the Elven caretakers on the forests and plants had created a climate peculiar to the mountain. Kirisin found himself wondering what it would be like to live and work here, to be one of the caretakers rather than a Chosen. Here the challenges were greater and the skills needed to keep the mountain free of disease and poison more demanding. Kirisin knew he was good at healing and possessed both learned and innate understanding of the ways in which he could protect the native vegetation. Working here on the slopes of Syrring Rise would be a thoroughly satisfying experience.
Though now, it seemed, he would never have a chance to find out, since the Elves would be leaving the mountain and the world of Syrring Rise was ending.
How much of that world, he wondered, would survive in the aftermath of the predicted destruction?
He thought about that as he worked, about how it would be for the Elves once they were no longer living in the Cintra–or perhaps anywhere else that they knew about or could even imagine. The new world might be entirely foreign to them. He wondered how life would change when the disaster foretold by the Ellcrys came to pass. He didn’t bother using the word if in reference to the prediction. He accepted the inevitability of the world’s passing in the same way he had come to accept everything else the tree had told him. The presence of demons among the Elves had convinced him that a new way of looking at things was necessary. The deaths of Ailie and Erisha had only reinforced that conviction, providing sharp reminders that the life he had once taken for granted was coming to a close. This period in the history of the Elves was over, as much so as that long–ago time when magic had ceased to be a part of their lives and humans had become the dominant species. No Elf wanted to think this way, least of all Kirisin, who still wanted to believe that the Elves, as the first people, would one day regain their elevated position in the order of things.
But in the world of the present, the world of demons and once–men and things so terrible that they belonged in the darkest of nightmares, no one species or race or civilization mattered more than another. What happened to one would ultimately happen to all, and no amount of healing skill or Elfstone magic or wishful thinking would change this.
“Little K,” Simralin snapped, interrupting his ruminations. “The storm is coming. We need to leave. Help me with Angel.”