In truth, his imprisonment had eroded his powers of concentration along with his strength. Although a measure of emotional resilience had been restored with his freedom, and the level of his excitement at the thought of recovering the lost Elfstones fed additional adrenaline through his body, he was still not in the condition he had been before entering the Forbidding. Sheer force of will kept him upright and on the treacherous steps, but his agility was suspect and his concentration weak. He kept his right shoulder pressed against the rock wall, rubbing along the roughened surface to reassure himself that he was still connected to something solid.
Ahead of him, Tesla Dart muttered and whistled soft incomprehensible sounds that apparently served a purpose, although he couldn’t think what it was. Behind him, Oriantha was a soundless ghost, a presence no stronger than his own shadow. He had to force himself not to look around and make sure she was still there. He had to keep reminding himself of what she was and what that allowed her to do. But it was still unnerving.
The stairs ended in a tunnel that curved away from the pit and downward ever deeper into the earth. The cavern had the look of a passageway that had been hollowed out over a long period of time, its surfaces rugged but its broad circumference even and unchanging. It called to mind a giant wormhole tunneled through tons of rock, but Redden could not imagine the size of the creature that would have made it.
Farther on, at a juncture of tunnels and caverns that opened off a central chamber thick with stalactites and stalagmites, their stone tips jutting up and pointing down in vast clusters, they found another set of narrow stairs carved out of the rock and began another descent. The sense of depth was suffocating, and Redden had to fight not to give in to a growing panic. He felt imprisoned in the same way he had while in the hands of the Straken Lord, and the old feelings of hopelessness were threading their way through him with steady insistence.
Once he stopped altogether and leaned back against the wall, torch sagging in his hand, eyes closing against a sudden onslaught of fear.
“What is it?” Oriantha asked at once. She put her chiseled face right next to his and stared into his eyes. “Tell me.”
“I’m feeling trapped in here.”
He could barely speak the words. Everything was pressing down on him. The air had grown so cold, he was shivering.
Oriantha took off her cloak and wrapped it around him, fastening it securely. “Wear this. Stay fixed on what you are doing. Don’t think about anything but that.”
“You’ll be cold,” he said.
“The cold doesn’t bother me.” She turned him back around by the shoulders and faced him toward Tesla Dart, who was waiting several steps below. “Just keep walking.”
Their descent ended when the tunnel flattened out and continued on in a lateral direction, winding ahead through the darkness. The air tasted of metal. Water dripped from the low ceiling and collected in depressions in the rock floor; they had to wade through pools that stretched from wall to wall. Redden did what Oriantha had told him, focusing on what they had come to do to avoid dwelling on his doubts and fears. He thought of the Elfstones and of how they might look when he found them. He thought of returning with them to the Four Lands and then at last going home.
He thought of Railing. He wondered how his brother was. He wondered, to his shame and horror, if he was still alive.
At last they arrived at a final chamber—another huge cavern that opened onto a vast store of darkness. Tesla Dart brought them to a halt and held up her torch. In the flicker of its light something huge and still caught their attention, and all three torches shifted at once.
It was a creature of some kind, massive and unmoving.
“A Graumth,” the Ulk Bog advised. “Dead.”
She moved them closer, taking them across the cavern floor to their left to where a huge worm-like creature lay curled up against one wall. Chains held it fast, but its unmoving bulk alone was terrifying. Redden drew up short, but as Tesla kept going.
“Are you sure it’s dead?” he whispered.
She turned and nodded. “Many years dead. So long it becomes hard.”
“Hard?”
“Hard. Like rock. Empty shell.”
Petrified. Preserved by nature’s elements. “What’s it doing here?”
“Used to make tunnels. Rock eater burrows out space for magic things. Long time ago. Very long.”
“Where did this magic come from?” Oriantha asked.
“Comes when Jarka Ruus imprisoned. Comes with them when they are exiled, gathered up, put down here. Happens quick.” She snapped her fingers. “Everyone, all at once.”
Redden saw it then. When the first Ellcrys was created and the Forbidding went up, the exodus of the Darkling creatures didn’t happen slowly. It happened all at once. Whatever they were doing, wherever they were found, those against whom the magic was directed were snatched up and carried away. It stood to reason that some of them would be in possession of magic when that happened. Aleia Omarosian’s Darkling boy must have been one of them. He must have had the container with the Elfstones in hand when the Forbidding had imprisoned him.
He took a moment to think about the consequences of the Forbidding’s creation. It would have been a swift, complete resolution of the war between the two factions—the implementation of a magic so powerful that any resistance was simply swept away. But it must have happened on a radical scale; entire species must have disappeared at once. There would have been no distinguishing between those creatures thought good or bad on an individual basis. No culling would have been involved; no objective measures would have been employed. It would have been decided on a species-by-species basis only, and those failing to measure up would have been extinguished. Aleia Omarosian’s Darkling boy would have suffered such a fate, caught up in the cleansing because of what he was, no matter if his intentions were evil or simply misguided.
Redden was horrified, imagining what that must have been like. He had never thought of the imprisoning in those terms. For him, as for so many, it had been an event where good had triumphed over evil in a time when the consequences would have been unimaginable if things had gone the other way. But it was much more than that. It was a severing of species without regard to guilt or innocence, without determination of purpose or intent. Some were saved, some were not. Who had made that determination? Who had decided who would stay in his world and who would be locked away in this one?
Oriantha was looking at him. “Are you all right?”
He nodded. But he wasn’t all right. Not by any measurable sense of the word.
“They stored magic for Faerie down here because they were afraid of it?” he asked, trying to shift his thinking away from any further consequences of the Forbidding’s creation. “Is that what happened, all those years ago?
Tesla Dart shrugged. “Magic not good. Belongs to those who put us here. Elves and such. Taken away by leaders and stored. No one wants it.”
Because they couldn’t make use of it. Because they lacked the ability to summon it. Because it was here by chance, and probably served as an unpleasant reminder of what had been done to them, so they stuck it away where it wouldn’t be seen. Where it wouldn’t offend by its mere presence. How would that have come about? What were things like in the beginning of the Forbidding, in its early days after everyone realized what had happened to them?
Anarchy. Chaos. Madness.
“Show us the Elfstones,” Oriantha ordered the Ulk Bog.
Tesla Dart hissed at her, then turned and beckoned them across the chamber. Redden and the shape-shifter followed, staying well clear of the chained worm. Dead or not, they had no interest in getting any closer to it than they had to. Casting about in the darkness of the huge cavern with sweeps of their torches, they kept close watch for other creatures.