A fiery energy shot through her from her knees to her neck, screaming in her every nerve. Here was the pain of the world breaking, of stone falling and rock shattering.
She screamed, and screaming she would not let go the flashing energy running through the stone. She did not know magic from pain. Ah, but this was not different from taking in the illness of trees to change it to strength, making an alchemy and transmuting sickness into health.
In her heart where all her prayers were born, Elansa cried, "Habbakuk! Phoenix, my strength rises!" And like the Blue Phoenix rising up out of the ashes, wide-winged, powerful and alive, strength flared in her.
A voice-hers!-shouted, "Run to the tunnel! Now! Run now!"
She shouted looking at Brand, at the outlaws as though across a wide plain. He opened his mouth, and her own words came out, like an echo. The echo shattered the image, and the world she returned to was breaking apart.
The walls shook. The stony floor of the cave trembled. From the ceiling, stalactites hung by gods creaked and fell. The forest of stalagmites trembled as though in a storm’s own wind. One cracked at the base and tumbled, crushing an ogre.
Someone screamed, "Earthquake!"
And someone else shouted curses and howled, "Magic!"
Brand grabbed her by the arm and dragged her up from her knees. He staggered, bleeding from a head wound, but he was strong. All her muscles buzzed and burned. Her head seemed filled up with fire. No matter where she looked, she saw the phoenix, and it seemed it no longer hung from Brand's neck. She saw it in shadows, on the floor as she ran; she saw it in the space where a tall pillar of stone had stood, in the gap between splitting stone.
Brand shoved her hard, pitched her into the darkness of the tunnel. The roar of the roof falling drowned out his shouting, but she knew he shouted at her, some question, some desperate plea.
"Make it Stop!"
The plea screamed in all her bones, in her blood, in the deepest part of her where she felt the agony of stone breaking. Make it stop!
With trembling fingers, Elansa reached for the sapphire. Brand pulled back, and then he held. He suffered her touch, and she saw that wasn't easy for him. When her fingers brushed his skin as she took up the phoenix, she felt him flinch. Still, he didn't back away, and he stood very still when she whispered her prayer, giving her thanks to the god who had heard her.
Then, the silence of the earth. The quiet of stone. The weeping of water, a spring loosed into the cavern In that silence, Elansa heard the ragged breathing of outlaws, the groaning of someone wounded or amazed. Brand's fingers touched hers, then pried them one by one from the sapphire phoenix. She thought he would surely take the talisman from his neck, perhaps throw it away in fear. He did not. He took it back, and he tucked it into his shirt.
And how not? Would he put such a weapon into the hand of a prisoner? Of course not. He would hold it, if not to use, then to keep her from using it.
Char went past her, very carefully, and looked back into the cavern.
"Y' brought down the world," he said, his voice hushed with awe. "Girl, y’ brought it right down on their heads."
All around her Elansa heard the breathing of outlaws caught in the dark Humans, none could see her but Ley and Tianna and Char. The dwarf had the best sight, and he looked at her as though he were seeing something fair and foul.
"Char," Brand said. "Do you know where we are?"
Char grunted.
"Is that or no?"
Again, the dwarf grunted. "That’s no. The way we took into the cavern is all choked with"-he snorted-"all choked with what she did. There's another, but… well, it ain't where I was thinkin' to go."
Fear pricked along Elansa’s neck.
"Don’t worry about that," Brand said. "That tunnel go south?"
"So far as I can see."
"All right then. You just lead on, and don't turn aside from any water you find."
The dwarf said nothing, but he did as he was asked.
Lindenlea stood in a field of black and dun, on grass-less earth littered with burned buildings, charred beams and foundation stones scattered. The bodies of the slain lay untouched by any who had survived. It had been the same in every little village or luckless farmstead the hobgoblin had taken his army through. He'd been active in the last, weeks, but his pattern had been strange.
No, she thought, looking around her. The strange thing was that there should be a pattern at all. He'd burned and raided in a determined line, straight along the edge of the Qualinesti border, but never close enough to draw the attention of the elven scouts stationed along the edge of the forest. She'd kept her forces strong and alert, riding the length of the border herself, spending no more than a day or night at each camp and making certain the bright wall of elven soldiery kept to the letter of her command. It did not matter what the hobgoblin did beyond the border of the forest, and no one was to mount sorties against him. As long as Gnash knew how the elven border bristled with blades and hard-eyed warriors, he would keep his distance.
And so he had. The progress of his raiding traced against the sky, seen in smoke. Only days before, Gnash had deviated from his pattern. The hobgoblin had turned east within sight of the first bright peaks of the mountains. The deviation had piqued Lindenlea’s curiosity. A scout had said that he'd seen a burning deeper into the borderland and not along Gnash's usual line.
At the head of a troop, Lindenlea had ridden out to see what she could see. They had found this place, this broken and binned place that had only days before been one of those stubborn little villages clinging to a crossroads, remembering, perhaps, older days when travelers came through to eat at the inn or trade goods from Abanasinia or Tarsis. Not many did come-these were not hospitable lands-but those who could afford armed escorts did, and they came to this place. Lindenlea thought the name of it was Well’s Cross.
Or had been Well’s Cross. There was nothing left worth sticking a name to now.
Her soldiers had scoured the place looking for at least one living creature and found none until, at the far end of the ruined village, Feslan Oakbeam had sung out, shouting "Got some!"
He'd found a clutch of children shivering in the cellar of one of the houses at the outskirts. They were weeping among the roots and the preserves and the pickle barrels.
Wind-stung and shivering, Lindenlea watched as Feslan hustled a survivor along the village street. Feslan was a warrior bold, not unaccustomed to the sights that lay all around him-the hacked corpses, the feeding ravens. But he was a father when he wasn't that, and so it was a father's hand that turned the boy away from sights, a father's hand that kept him walking straight on the road, past ruin. When Feslan stopped him before his commander, the boy's eyes were wide in his white face. Perhaps he'd never seen an elf before now, or anyone not of his mean little village.
"My lady," Feslan said in Common, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. "This one will talk."
Lindenlea looked down at the boy, looked him right in the eye. She didn't waste time on false sympathy or pretend to empathy. This was a human after all. What could either of them know about the other?
"Tell me, boy," she said, a warrior tall and stern. She gestured, sweeping the village around, causing the boy to look where Feslan had not let him. "Who did this demon work?"
Lips trembling with shivering or fear, the boy started to speak. He managed a squeak, then had to swallow.
Lindenlea snapped, "Choke it out, boy."
He had long red hair, shaggy and unkempt. His face was filthy, and the soot that smeared his cheeks was only the newest layer of dirt. Urchins in the root cellar, they had likely been urchins in the muddy streets long before then. He lifted his chin, and a little his eyes narrowed.