“Hold on,” her sister was urging. “Let me help you. I can use healing magic. I can mend your wounds. I just need a little time …”
His hand lifted to take hold of hers. “Just … remove the knife.”
She hesitated, but then fastened her hand about the handle of the blade and pulled it free.
“Better. I don’t want … to die with that sticking out of me.”
His voice was strong in spite of his injuries. There was blood everywhere. Where the knife had been extracted, it bubbled from his chest.
“Arling?” he asked.
“Just a superficial wound.” Aphen glanced over, making sure, and Arling quickly nodded in reassurance. Aphen turned back. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing!”
“Just stay with me. It won’t … be for very long.”
She was crying freely. “You should have waited for me!”
“There wasn’t time. Besides, the moor cat …” He trailed off. “Things were … already decided.”
Aphen put her hands over her face, ignoring the blood that streaked them.
“Take Arling … home,” Cymrian said. “Don’t let … anything stop you. Arling is decided. She knows. Don’t … make her doubt herself. Help her … stay strong.”
Aphen nodded, her mouth a tight line. She took her bloodied hands away from her face and placed them over his.
“I wish I had more time …”
“You know I love you,” she interrupted.
His eyes steadied on hers. “I know.”
“I should have said it more often. I should have done more for you.”
“You did enough. Don’t question it. Just remember …”
He coughed, and blood sprayed from his mouth. Aphen bent down quickly and they whispered hurried words to each other that Arling couldn’t hear. Aphen clutched at him as if to hold him back from what was coming. It wasn’t enough. Seconds later, he sighed and went still.
When Aphen lifted away from him, she had a look on her face that Arling had never seen before.
It was a look of utter despair.
That night, as Aphen lay wrapped in her grief, unable to think or act, Arling asked her sister what she had said to Cymrian. The Elven Hunter’s body lay wrapped in blankets and sheeting at the rear of the vessel’s cockpit. Aphen had refused to leave him, even though he had asked her to, telling her not to waste time but to just go.
“He never thought of himself,” she said. “Not once.”
“He didn’t love himself like he loved you.” Arling waited a moment before asking again. “What did you say?”
Aphen looked down at her blood-streaked hands. She had done a poor job of cleaning them, but she didn’t seem to care. “I told him I loved him enough that one day I would find him again. I would come for him wherever he was and we would be together.” She paused, shaking her head. “Stupid words. Foolish promises. But I meant them.”
“What did he say?” Arling pressed.
Her sister began to cry. “He said he would be waiting.”
Twenty-seven
Their journey to reach the huge pit that occupied the center of the valley required Redden Ohmsford and his companions to proceed much more slowly than they wanted to. Huge cracks split the floor, some of them hidden by brush and rock until they were right on top of them. In daylight—or as much daylight as there ever was within the Forbidding—it would have been an acceptable risk. But with nightfall coming on and the already weakened light rapidly giving way to treacherous shadows, it became especially dangerous.
At the same time, none of them wanted to be caught out in the open after darkness where they would be exposed and vulnerable to predators.
If not for Tesla Dart, the boy and the shape-shifter would have been hopelessly handicapped by their unfamiliarity with the terrain and their inability to cover the distance demanded of them in time. But the Ulk Bog had no trouble finding her way even in the closing dark and kept them moving steadily across the valley floor toward their goal, urging them on with hisses and grunts and anxious movements of her head, all the while warning of unseen dangers and potential pitfalls. She scampered and darted as if possessed, a mirror image of the Chzyk Lada, who by now only appeared in flashes of muted color when coming back to speak with his mistress. The odd procession snaked its way across the blasted earth in short, choppy bursts and with constant shifts of direction, led mostly by the small lizard.
“It would help if we were Chzyks, too,” Oriantha observed at one point.
It was almost completely dark when they reached the edge of the pit, the skies overcast with high clouds and low-hanging layers of mist, the air dry and murky within the vast cup of the valley’s walls. On reaching their goal, Tesla brought them to a halt and pulled them close.
“Now we choose. Go down in dark or wait for light. Sleep until sun or use torch.”
“Which do you think?” Oriantha asked.
The Ulk Bog scrunched up her feral face. “Dangerous in dark. Many steps, deep down. Then tunnel and cavern where magic kept. Hard to see with only torch.” She shrugged. “But hard to see with only torch in daylight, too. Not so different. No sun in cavern.”
“Helpful,” Redden observed.
“So it doesn’t matter?” Oriantha pressed.
Tesla Dart thought about it. “Doesn’t.”
“Then we should go now. The quicker we go down there, the sooner we get back out. Besides, it’s dangerous everywhere in this country.”
She glanced at Redden, who immediately nodded. He was anxious to know if there really was anything of use down in that pit. Waiting until morning would be maddening. “We should go now,” he agreed.
So they moved ahead to the lip of the black hole, where they found a series of rough stairs leading down to a rock shelf some fifty feet below them. Beyond, the darkness was so thick and impenetrable there was nothing to be seen.
“Lada waits here,” Tesla Dart announced. “Keeps watch for us.”
Redden looked around doubtfully. “How will Lada find us if he needs to give warning?”
The Ulk Bog grinned, showing all her teeth. “Chzyks see in dark as well as in light. No difference for him.”
So with the little creature scurrying off into the rocks, the three started down the broad steps to the shelf. Once there, Tesla moved over to a deep niche in the rock wall and produced torches. She lit the first using sparks from flint and stone, handing the other two to her companions after lighting them as well. Then she walked them over to the edge of the platform where a very narrow, uneven set of stone steps carved into the rock walls wound downward into the blackness.
Tesla Dart gave them a look, gestured at the steps, and shook her head admonishingly. “We go very slow. Steps very slick. Fall very long way if you slip.”
The boy and the shape-shifter exchanged a brief glance. That was three uses of very in about a dozen words. They got the point. One mistake and you were dead.
They began their descent. Tesla Dart led the way, with Redden right behind and Oriantha bringing up the rear. They went slowly, just as the Ulk Bog has said they should, and it became apparent right away that haste on these stairs would be deadly. Twice in the first hundred steps the boy felt his feet skid and almost go out from under him. The chiseled-out stone was ridged and broken and dangerously uneven. Dampness coated the surface of the rock. There were no railings and no handholds should you start to fall. The steps themselves were less than two feet wide in most places and no more than three anywhere. Perversely, Redden found himself wondering what would happen if someone going down met someone coming up. He guessed that had probably never happened, but he couldn’t help picturing the dilemma it would present.
They continued downward for what seemed an eternity. Redden lost track of how long, but he guessed it was over an hour. They traversed hundreds of steps, maybe thousands—a torturously slow process that challenged their concentration and balance every step of the way. Tesla Dart let them stop and rest at regular intervals, although not as often as the boy would have liked.