Terry Brooks - Witch Wraith

“If you won’t take me, then at least take Skint or Challa Nand. You need someone with you.”

“But it would be the same, Mirai. I would simply be risking their lives instead of yours. I’ve done that for the last time. I won’t do it again. I have to go alone.”

Mirai studied his face, then slowly nodded. “You’re set on this, and I know I don’t have the right to stop you. I was the one who insisted you find yourself again, and you have. You’re the Railing I remember, and that’s who I want you to be. Who you need to be. But I don’t like letting you leave me behind.”

His smile was wan and brief. “I don’t like it much, either.”

“Your mother will never forgive me if something happens to you, too.”

“She probably won’t forgive any of us for anything that’s happened, if she ever finds out.”

Mirai smiled in spite of the tears in her eyes. “I’ll explain it to the other two. I’ll make them understand.” Then she put her arms around him and kissed him hard. “I’ll be waiting for you,” she said.

Wordlessly, he turned away and started for the bridge.

Railing felt the immensity of what he was about to do pressing down on him as he approached the steps leading up to the bridge and hesitated one final time.

The voices would have none of it.

–Cross–

He resisted the urge to look back at Mirai and her companions—to seek reassurance where no reassurance could be found—and instead obeyed the voices and began to climb. The world around him receded, the colors and smells and sense of peace all fading away. At the top of the steps, he felt the pull of the gloom and shadows that lay ahead. All around him, the voices wrapped him in their invisible whispers and soft caresses.

–Cross–

He made his way onto the bridge, allowing himself to take his time, working hard at staying calm enough to think everything through. The bridge arch provided a wide span for crossing, but there were no guardrails or walls. As he moved onto the walkway, he could see down into a ravine that fell steeply away below. It was an endless drop into blackness, and, after twenty feet of walls grown thick with vegetation and gnarled roots, it became a void.

He took a single glance to either side and did not take another. He forced himself instead to focus his attention on the stone pathway before him. He kept to the exact middle of the span so that he would not be tempted to go closer to the edge. The lure to do so was present; he could feel it. But because he was always taking risks, always tempting the fates—just as Mirai had said—he knew better than to put himself within reach.

As he neared the far side of the bridge and began looking up into the huge old trees that grew there, he heard singing. It was in the air around him, swirling about, drawing him in. The voices were soft and sweet, and while the words were indistinct, the music was soothing. He could feel his fears and doubts diminishing and his confidence growing. It was an unwarranted response to what was happening, but the voices were compelling.

He came down off the bridge and stood looking into the forest. The trees towered over him, their huge trunks more than a dozen feet across, their great limbs canopied overhead to blot out the sky, leaving the forest dark and layered in shadows. Nothing moved within the trees; no sounds came from the gloom.

Where was he supposed to go now?

–Come–

As if they had read his mind, the voices beckoned. Their music shifted and took him forward and slightly left of where he stood. The bridge disappeared behind him. His companions vanished. He was alone on his quest, and he was faced with discovering at last if his journey had been in vain or if it might provide some hope for finding Redden and putting an end to the threat from the Straken Lord. Even as he considered what he was trying to achieve, he was confronted anew with the foolishness of it. To think that he would be able to find a woman who had disappeared more than a hundred years ago alive and well and then persuade her to come back with him to face a monster that wanted things of her she could not possibly provide was the height of arrogance. He wondered at what had made him think he could do this.

And yet, right from the beginning, it had seemed to him that he could succeed. He had told himself that this was the path he must travel. Even knowing how impossible it seemed, he was drawn toward it. He wondered now, remembering how he had disdained the advice of the King of the Silver River, how he had ignored what his instincts told him about the Grimpond’s duplicity, how he had refused to allow common sense to intercede and the possibility of failure to color his hopes. The warnings had been given, the odds against him made clear, and still he had persisted.

He continued ahead, knowing only that he was moving toward something and whatever he found would bring about some sort of resolution. He told himself—insisted to himself—that it would be enough.

Questions crowded his mind as he listened to the music of the creatures leading him. Would he find Grianne Ohmsford here, somewhere in the ruins of Stridegate, as the ring suggested he would? Was she still alive? He felt from the tugging of the thread that she was, but he couldn’t be certain. The tugging might just as easily lead him to her grave.

“Who are you?” he again asked the voices leading him.

This time, they answered.

–Aeriads–

Aeriads. Spirits of the air. The creatures that served the tanequil. “Where are you taking me?”

–She waits. She knows–

“Who?”

–Come–

He felt them moving away, and so he followed. The thread seemed to be following them as well, prodding him in the same direction. He was deep in the forest now, surrounded by the great old trees, a part of the shadows, a tiny transient life-form among ancients. He glanced about for movement, but found none. There was no sign of anything present save for the voices.

As he advanced, he rehearsed in his mind what he would say to Grianne. What words would he need to persuade her to his cause? He had come so far and risked so much, and yet he had no firm idea of what it would take. Even now, after all this time, he was uncertain.

He felt a chill run through him. He wasn’t equal to this; he didn’t have what was needed. He was going to fail.

–Come–

But to turn back now was unthinkable, an act of cowardice and an admission of defeat. He must do what he came to do and find a way to succeed.

–Here–

He was in a clearing, dappled with sunlight and permeated with a warmth he had not felt before. The voices were singing loudly now, their music filling up his senses. He looked around for something he would recognize, for a sign of Grianne, for the “she” the aeriads had told him was waiting, but there was nothing to see. The clearing was empty.

Then, abruptly, everything went silent, and in that same instant he felt the tugging inside his head disappear.

–Railing. I am here–

A voice in the air, disembodied. “Grianne?” he whispered.

–I am what Grianne has become–

He hesitated, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. What she has become? “Are you one of them? An aeriad?”

–I am–

“You exchanged yourself for Cinnaminson?”

–I did. When I left Paranor, I came here to offer myself for the girl who would later became your grandmother. She had given herself for me, so that Penderrin could come into the Forbidding and free me. I chose to do the same for her and let her return to Pen–

He felt a rippling in the air and heard the soft voices of the other aeriads calling.

–My time to speak with you is short. Tell me why have you come, my brother’s great-grandson, child of my blood. Tell me what you seek–