“But we’ve suffered so much! The Druids are mostly dead; the order is destroyed. Your mother is dead. My brother may be dead, too. The search was a disaster. If we could get possession of the Elfstones, at least we would have something to show for all that.” He shook his head and stared at the ground. “I am not going back without trying. I can’t. I won’t ever be the same if I give up on this chance. I have to try to find a way back to who I was before all this began. Maybe I can do that if we recover the Stones.”
Oriantha folded her arms. “The Elfstones have been the cause of everything bad that has happened. Why do you think it would be any different now? Insisting on this just gives you one more chance to kill yourself and take us with you. I risked my life to break you free of that cage. Was it all for this? To have you take up right where you left off and in the end die anyway?”
“But what if all that is behind us?” He wheeled on Tesla Dart. “Are you sure the Elfstones are still down there, in this underground storage chamber? Can we find a way down there like you did?”
She looked from him to Oriantha and back again, clearly uneasy. “Stairs take you down—a long way down. But the stones are there. No one touches Old World magic, not even Tael Riverine. We can do, can go, if you want.”
“Does something guard the magic? Are there creatures watching over it? Is it dangerous down there?”
“Nothing guards. Nothing watches. It is a dead place with dead things from a dead world. Only the Straken Lord goes. And Weka, too, once upon a time. Now, you maybe.”
“You see?” Redden turned back to Oriantha. “We can do this! If we bring back the Elfstones, it will mean we didn’t fail entirely. You must see it. We can’t let this chance pass! We have to take it. We have to at least have a look!”
She glared at him. “You were the one who claimed to be falling apart. You were the one who insisted we had to be out of the Forbidding by day’s end. Remember?”
“But knowing the Elfstones are down there changes everything. Now we have a real purpose in being here, one that doesn’t involve running and hiding and fighting to stay alive. We have a chance to bring back the most important magic in Elven lore.”
“Bringing back the Elfstones won’t bring back the Ard Rhys or my mother. It won’t bring back any of them. The past is done. You understand that, don’t you?”
Redden took a deep breath and exhaled sharply. He could feel this opportunity slipping away from him, and he couldn’t stand the thought of it. Oriantha was determined not to go, and if she didn’t she probably wouldn’t let him go, either. She was too invested in saving him, had given up too much to bring him back to his family. He understood what that meant, and he knew he wouldn’t fight her.
But if that happened, he would never recover from what he had gone through. He could sense it—and not just in an offhand way, but deep down inside where the pain never quite goes away. Doing this, giving it at least a chance, would help him heal. It would lend him the emotional strength that had been steadily eroding all during his imprisonment and systematic incapacitation.
He met Oriantha’s hard stare squarely. “What if the Elfstones could be used to help us defend against the Straken Lord’s invasion? What if one of those sets has the power to negate the size and numbers of his army—maybe even to destroy it? Would it be worth it then?”
“We don’t know what the Stones can do, Redden.”
“But if we had them in our possession, we might be able to find out. We would have four chances to find a magic that would make a difference. Isn’t that worth the risk?”
She continued to stare at him, saying nothing.
“We just need someone with Elven blood to wield the Stones,” he continued. “Even I would do! I’m more than half Elf. My mother’s blood is Elven; my father had some small portion of Elven blood, as well. I could try to use them.”
Oriantha sighed wearily. “You are determined, aren’t you? Even given the probable danger. Even knowing that it might all come to nothing. Your stubbornness exceeds your fears and doubts and your need to escape this place.” She shook her head. “Hard to believe.”
He almost laughed. “No harder to believe than anything else that’s happened. It’s just another part of the madness we’ve been struggling with since we left Bakrabru. But this, maybe, will lead to something good. For me, it means finding a way to live what what’s happened. It means putting an end to this whole business. I have to try.”
She shook her head in despair. “You won’t let go of this, will you?” She gave a deep sigh. “All right. Maybe there’s something in what you say. We’ll give it a try.”
She held up one hand quickly as she saw the look of joy on his face. “But here are my terms. If something dangerous wards the treasure of the Old World and I decide we are overmatched, we come back out. If we fail to find the Elfstones quickly or are not able to free them from their chamber, we come out. Tesla Dart, how do we see anything once we’re down there?”
“Torches,” the Ulk Bog said. She looked at Redden. “I know how to go, the way down and out again. I can lead us. Let me watch for dangers, use Lada to help.” She looked back at Oriantha. “Agreed?”
The shape-shifter nodded. “Agreed.” She glanced over at the valley and its black pit, then over her shoulder, already looking for the pursuit she knew would be coming. “Against my better judgment.”
They left the valley rim and started down a brush-covered slope that provided handholds as they went. Tesla Dart made the choice of approach, offering a dozen reasons why others wouldn’t work, most having to do with hidden dangers involving poison and teeth. Oriantha didn’t argue. It was bad enough that they were going at all, but once the decision had been made she was not about to start second-guessing. This was the Ulk Bog’s country, and she knew it better than the outlanders. Oriantha decided the best use of her time was in keeping watch for danger.
Slipping and sliding down patches of loose rock and dry earth, grabbing one clump of brush and then reaching for the next, using outcroppings of rocks for footrests and handholds where the brush was sparse, the trio made a torturous descent into the valley. Daylight was fading quickly now, the already pale gray light darkening by the minute as the skies lost what little glow they offered and shadows spread in sweeping pools that soon covered everything. Visibility diminished to a point where Oriantha was left feeling adrift, but it seemed not to bother Tesla Dart at all. Lada had disappeared early on, skittering away at the beginning of things, a flash of color disappearing into the brush. Apparently, the Chzyk was out there somewhere, scouting the way forward, but Oriantha couldn’t prove it.
She glanced often at Redden Ohmsford. The transformation was astonishing. From beaten down and discouraged to reenergized and eager; it was as if he had been newly made. Before, he couldn’t stand being inside the Forbidding and wanted only to get out again. Now he seemed to have lost his sense of despair and his fears, and his thoughts were dominated by what he saw as the very real possibility that he could find and carry away the treasure they initially had come searching for. Admittedly, it was an astonishing prospect. That, after all that had happened, they should actually lay hands on the missing Elfstones was beyond belief. In truth, all of them had long since forgotten or at least set aside the original purpose for their quest. No one had given thought to it since the destruction of the company and discovery that the demons were breaking free of the Forbidding. There had seemed no reason for doing anything else. Redden was right: They had lost their way and believed they had no real chance of finding it again.
Now this.
Fate worked in mysterious ways. Oriantha understood that much about life, and her own strange history convinced her that the future was unpredictable and the past often shrouded in confusion and mystery. But what was happening now, undertaking this effort to find what had seemed forever lost, surpassed everything she knew.