She opened the diary. “I won’t read you all of this, only those parts that are pertinent to what seems important. Listen.”
For the next fifteen minutes or so, she read from the diary, taking each entry in turn, reading it through in its entirety and without comment moving on to read the next. Her three listeners did not interrupt, but sat quietly, paying close attention.
When she was done, Pleysia said. “I don’t know. Is this story even real? It sounds like something Aleia Omarosian might be making up. Young girls do that. They create an imaginary existence hoping that some of the angst and excitement might relieve the ennui of their real lives.”
“Maybe,” Carrick mused, rubbing his chin. “But it doesn’t sound made up to me.”
“I thought as Pleysia does,” Aphenglow said. “I wondered if the reason the diary had lain undiscovered so long was that somewhere along the way—maybe as far back as when she was still alive or right after her death—it was determined to be only a young girl’s musings. But on the same night I took the diary back to my cottage, I was attacked.”
She proceeded to fill them in on the details of the first night, then went on to relate how the attacker had returned on the second night and she had been forced to kill him. “Until then, I wondered. But the attacker’s persistence and knowledge of the book suggest it might have value. The attackers, at least, must have thought so.”
“But they don’t even know what’s in it, do they?” Pleysia pressed, leaning forward, brow furrowed. “Why would they bother with something they know nothing about? And if they did know what it contained and thought it dangerous for some reason, why wouldn’t they have tried to steal it or destroy it long before this?”
“I don’t know what they were thinking. The one is dead and the other’s identity is a mystery. But he did take my backpack in the clear anticipation that the diary was in there.”
“Or he took it because he knew something was in there that you believed had value,” Seersha offered. “He might not have known it was the diary, only that it was a document that you had found valuable. So it might still be true, as Pleysia thinks, that the diary is only a young girl’s imaginings.”
Carrick nodded. “That’s true, Aphen. Who knew you had found the diary and taken it out of the archives?”
She shook her head. “No one, so far as I know. I was alone in the storerooms the entire day, except for my uncle Ellich. But I hid the diary before he got close enough to see what I was doing, and I didn’t take it out again until after he had left. There was no one else down there.”
“So this girl, Aleia, takes this Darkling boy as her lover, changes her mind about the relationship when he insists she must leave Arborlon and come to live with his people, and then after refusing him discovers too late that he has stolen all but the seeking-Stones, leaving them behind so she will have a way to track him down.” Seersha grimaced. “Then she tries to do so, but can’t—even with the seeking-Stones to aid her—returns empty-handed and lives out the rest of her life. And you’ve no idea what happened to her?”
Aphenglow shook her head. “She wrote she had found a way to help set things right, but didn’t say what it was. She died shortly after, according to the genealogy charts of the Elven Kings and Queens. The Elfstones were gone for good after that. If there was any record of the specifics of their disappearance, it has been lost. The records as a whole are incomplete, of course, going that far back. All we know for certain is that the Elfstones disappeared during the age of Faerie, and it now appears it might have happened in the way the diary relates.”
Pleysia frowned “What exactly are we supposed to do with this?”
“That is what we are here to discuss,” Carrick declared. “What do you think, Aphenglow?”
“I’m not sure. I suppose we need to decide if there is a way we can track the missing Stones that hasn’t been tried before. Does the diary offer any clues that might help us with a fresh search? If it does, I haven’t found them. But I would like us to consider any possibilities. For instance, do we know if anyone other than Aleia has tried using the blue Stones to track the others? I can’t believe someone hasn’t, but the Elven histories don’t say.”
“If no one else has been able to find them in all this time,” Pleysia pointed out, “why do you think we can?”
Carrick stood up and started walking around the table. “The point is, Pleysia, that even if others have tried, we haven’t. And Aphen is right. We have to. Think what’s at stake! The Four Lands stand at a crossroads. Science and magic are pressing up against each other, both seeking dominance and the welcoming embrace of all the Races. We have been a long time with only magic to empower and fuel civilization’s advancement. Now science has begun to reemerge as a force to be reckoned with. It surfaces everywhere, and where once it was reviled and disdained as the instrument of humanity’s near destruction during the Great Wars, now it gains increasing favor—and it is magic that is mistrusted.”
“It is not our duty or obligation to sort out whether magic or science will empower future development in the Four Lands,” Pleysia snapped. “Our job is to employ magic in the present and to see that it is used wisely and to the benefit of all equally. The future will take care of itself.”
“Then you would resist any search for the missing Stones?” Carrick pressed.
“Talk of a search is premature. We have other work to occupy our time—equally important work.” Pleysia shook her head. “This feels like an exercise in futility. There was nothing in Aphenglow’s reading that offered even the smallest clue about where or how the Elfstones could be found. Are we to set aside everything and just go off blindly hunting? I don’t think so. Not without something more to convince us that a search will actually yield something.”
“We have nothing ‘to occupy our time,’ as you put it, that is even remotely as important as finding the Elfstones,” Seersha declared. “If there is a chance they might be recovered, we have to take it.”
“We are the caretakers of magic in this world, are we not?” Carrick leaned forward across the table toward Pleysia. “As such, we have a responsibility to find, retrieve, and safeguard any magic that might impact the people we serve. They may not appreciate our efforts, but that has never been the measuring stick of our commitment as Druids. I think we have here the sort of challenge we cannot refuse to accept. I think we have been given a responsibility of proportions impossible to measure. Finding the missing Elfstones might initiate changes that would dictate an entirely new future for the Four Lands. To pretend otherwise is foolish.”
“Yes, think what it would mean if we found them,” Seersha added quickly “Power of the sort that five sets of Elfstones would bestow could offer solutions to so many problems. I am not yet ready to toss aside magic in favor of new science. All I have seen so far from what’s been recovered are killing machines and weapons. I’ve seen the chronicles compiled on the new forms of destruction introduced during the war on the Prekkendorran. I’ve seen the Races grow increasingly hostile toward one another, all of them ready to do battle at the first challenge thrown.”
“That might well have come about even without the advent of the new science,” Pleysia pointed out. “It might have come about in the presence of magic alone. You are conjecturing.”
“But what if the missing Elfstones are out there waiting to be found, and we have a chance to do so,” Carrick pressed. “Why not try?”