“Arling, I’m here,” she whispered, her words graced with hope.
Railing Ohmsford was conscious again. Shaking off the dizzying effects of the blow he had been struck, he pushed himself back to his feet. Mirai was screaming at him, her voice frantic.
He saw his brother then. He just stood there staring at nothing, his body stilled, his outstretched arm wrapped in crimson light. The witch was on her knees but trying to stagger back to her feet, apparently recovering from whatever damage the Elfstones had done to her. In moments, she would be after them.
“Run!” he yelled at Redden, grabbing him by the arm and turning him around.
But Redden didn’t hear him. He didn’t seem even to notice him. He was staring at nothing, completely oblivious to what was happening around him, his face blank and his eyes fixed. The way he held himself let his brother and Mirai know instantly that he couldn’t make himself move. He appeared to be somewhere else entirely, unaware of what was happening. Whatever was wrong with him, it was deep and abiding.
Railing glanced down to where his brother’s right hand was curled into a fist, still holding the crimson Elfstones.
“He used them on the witch,” Mirai exclaimed. “In combination with the wishsong!”
Oriantha stumbled over to them, bloodied and streaked with dirt, but clear-eyed and apparently not seriously damaged. Together the three took Redden by his arms and hastened him back toward the Elven defenses, away from the thrashing, screaming masses of the Jarka Ruus. Already Elves were running from the mouth of the pass to reach them. Railing thought he saw Challa Nand, his huge figure distinctive among the smaller forms of the Elves. He saw Skint, too.
Then he caught sight of someone else, a wiry creature with elongated arms and legs standing much closer than any of the others. The creature had both arms wrapped about a metal box, clutching it against its chest.
“Who is that?” Mirai asked before he could get the question out.
“Tesla Dart,” Oriantha said. They were practically dragging Redden. “An Ulk Bog from the Forbidding. She helped us get free.”
Behind them, a roar went up from the enemy army, and Railing glanced over his shoulder to see the dragon lifting away. The enraged Jarka Ruus, freed of its presence, had recovered sufficiently to mount an attack and were swarming across the plains after them. The witch was upright, as well, and joining in the hunt.
Railing and his companions tried to flee more quickly, but Redden’s movements remained wooden and uncoordinated. He was still not responding to them. He’s catatonic, Railing realized. He’s been rendered incapable of speech, movement, sight—of even knowing what is happening around him. He can’t do anything to help himself.
Impatient and desperate, Oriantha moved in front of Redden and hoisted him onto her back. “I’ll carry him. Hurry!”
Railing glanced over his shoulder once more. The creatures from the Forbidding were gaining on them. Even with Oriantha shouldering his brother’s weight, they would not be able to reach the pass and the protection of the Elves in time.
“Get him into the airship!” he shouted.
They turned toward the transport and the crooked figure of Tesla Dart, who was screaming at them unintelligibly and jumping up and down while holding the metal box.
“Wait!” snapped Oriantha suddenly. “What’s happening?”
She stopped where she was and began searching the sky. A hush had settled over the plains, sweeping eastward from out of the mountains warding the Rhenn and across the Streleheim and Tirfing onward into the rest of the Four Lands. It was as if every sound had been muffled and the whole of the world rendered silent. Railing, Mirai, and Oriantha all started talking at once, but their words could not be heard. Tesla Dart was still leaping about and shouting wildly, but they could not hear her, either. It was as if they were all screaming into a massive void. Even the Straken Lord’s army, slowed now in its charge across the plains by what they sensed was happening, had lost its collective voice.
Then a wind rose from out of nowhere, coming from all directions, filling the silence with an enormous howl. Railing clutched Mirai against him, and they dropped to their knees. Oriantha lowered Redden’s inert form and crouched over him protectively. The wind was still gathering force, becoming a violent, dangerous presence—a whirlwind that turned the air dark and hazy, blew away the clouds and shut out the sky.
Seconds later the Jarka Ruus were pulled skyward, disappearing moments after their feet left the ground. One by one, they went into the ether. They ran wildly in all directions to escape what was happening, but there was no place to go and no time left.
Railing realized at once what had happened. He turned to Mirai and screamed it into the silence, but she couldn’t hear him. He watched as the dragon was caught up and carried away. He watched ogres and Furies and Goblins disappear. He witnessed the sudden vanishing of thousands of the creatures of the Straken Lord’s army.
Even the witch wraith was not immune. Her choice to replace Tael Riverine as the Straken Lord and become one of the creatures of the Forbidding had doomed her, as well. She was snatched up and carried off into the blackness, screaming in fury and despair.
Near the end of the terrible culling, he caught sight of Tesla Dart futilely trying to reach them. But then she was caught up, too, still holding on to the metal box. Oriantha leapt up, abandoning Redden to run after the Ulk Bog, but she couldn’t get to her in time. Tesla Dart disappeared with a thrashing of arms and legs, still crying out, still fighting against what was happening, taking the Elfstones with her.
Thirty-four
It was difficult even for those close to him to guess how Redden Ohmsford would have reacted if he had known the missing Elfstones were lost once again. He had suffered terribly during his time trapped within the Forbidding. He had watched his companions die one after another, become a prisoner of the Straken Lord and imprisoned at Kraal Reach, and been hauled back into the Four Lands as Tael Riverine’s pet. That he had gone once more into the Forbidding and thereby found the object of their initial search was a stunning triumph, and it had released him from a darkness of the mind that had threatened to undo him completely. It seemed as if he might be on the road to recovery, free of the past and of the madness that had been steadily overtaking him.
But all that was rendered moot by what the combined magic of the Elfstones and wishsong had done to him during his battle with the witch wraith. He did not emerge from his catatonia, but remained locked away in a place that no one, not even his brother, could reach. Three days after the conclusion of the terrible struggle against the Jarka Ruus and in spite of the efforts of Elven Healers and the long, quiet pleadings of Railing and Mirai, he remained unchanged. He sat or stood as placed and did not move. He stared into the distance. He never spoke. He neither ate nor slept. He had to be cared for as the smallest baby would, unable to fend for himself. This was the price he had paid for saving them all in those final moments before Arling Elessedil transformed into the Ellcrys, restoring the Forbidding and returning its inhabitants to their prison.
He would have felt badly about Tesla Dart’s fate, Oriantha said more than once to Railing. Worse about that, she suspected, than about the loss of the Elfstones. He would have hated that he had broken his promise to the Ulk Bog, to keep her with them in the Four Lands, even though there had been no chance of doing so once the Forbidding was restored. But it was impossible to know for sure what his response would have been. It was just what she believed.
Railing knew how he felt about the loss of the metal box and its Elfstones, however. He was glad they were gone. He was devastated by what had happened to his brother, and while he could not escape his own guilt around those events, he found reason to transfer a substantial portion of it to the talismans. After all, it was the search for the Stones that had triggered everything that followed. It was their magic that had brought about Redden’s current condition. They were the source of the power that had damaged him so badly, he might never recover.