Terry Brooks - Bloodfire Quest

He sat up gingerly and flexed his shoulders. “We’ll do whatever we have to for Arling. At least we won’t have to worry about being hunted. Not right away, anyhow.” He nodded toward the bodies surrounding them. “There’s one more farther back—another mutant. Ugly things. Men, once, but something much less now.”

“Who made these creatures?” she said. “That woman, Edinja Orle?”

“It’s possible.” He climbed to his feet, testing his weight, looking down at himself as if to make certain he was all in one piece. “I know her. A witch. A member of a powerful Federation family, most of them practitioners of magic. She was one of the candidates for the position of Prime Minister of the Federation Coalition Council when Drust Chazhul got selected as a compromise choice.”

She gave him a look. “How do you know this?”

“I keep up on what’s happening in the camps of our enemies. I’m surprised you don’t.”

She shook her head. “I’ve had no time for keeping up. I’ve spent almost a year shut away in a cellar looking at ancient documents. I’ve lost touch with a lot of things.” She paused. “Things I should have been paying better attention to.”

She placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him on the mouth. When she drew back, she kept her eyes fixed on his. “But I might want to think about changing all that.”

Without waiting for his reply, she started away. He fell into step beside her, his movements still tentative. “Let me know if I can do anything to help,” he said after a moment, and the smile was back once more.

They returned the way they had come, finding the path easily enough. Aphen was anxious to make certain Arling was all right. Her sister had been sleeping soundly enough when she left, and the danger from the shards that had penetrated her body seemed under control, but you could never be certain with wounds of that sort. In other circumstances, she would never have left her, but abandoning Cymrian to his fate when he was risking so much for them was unthinkable. Hard choices both, and she hoped she had made the right one.

The woods thickened, and the mist grew steadily heavier. Shadows floated all around them, cast by tree trunks, limbs and things unseen and unknown. The woods were still, and there was an odd sense of emptiness about them that was troubling. Aphen picked up the pace, suddenly worried.

She had reason to be. When they reached the clearing where she had left her sister, Arling was gone.

The pitted stone bulk of Kraal Reach rose against the gray smudge of the horizon, easily the most formidable keep that Oriantha had ever seen. Hidden in a thick cluster of boulders to the west, she studied the fortress in silence.

Next to her, Tesla Dart shifted restlessly. “We should not be here.”

Oriantha nodded. “But here we are, anyway. Is there a way in?”

The Ulk Bog stared at her in horror. “We do not go in there! You did not see what they do? Somehow you are made blind?”

Tesla was speaking of Khyber Elessedil’s head, spiked atop the east gates, ravaged by the elements and picked over by scavenger birds. Oriantha had crept close enough with dawn’s approach to make certain of what she was seeing. Such a terrible thing to witness, but it was not the first and would not be the last. Not while they remained inside the Forbidding.

The shape-shifter and the Ulk Bog had come looking for Khyber Elessedil and Redden Ohmsford almost a week ago—immediately after leaving Crace Coram to make his way back through the break in the Forbidding’s wall. If the boy and the Ard Rhys were still alive, Kraal Reach was where they would be found. Tesla Dart was certain of it. All of Tael Riverine’s prisoners were taken to his fortress as a matter of course, and that’s what would have been done with them.

Not that Tesla Dart believed for one minute that being here was a good idea. From the moment that Oriantha had told her what they were going to do, she had bemoaned their impending fate, railing against the foolishness of such a decision. But Oriantha was determined. She had made up her mind that even though her mother and most of those who had come with her were dead, she was at least going to bring back the two who remained alive. She was not going to leave them behind; she was not going to save herself without first doing what she could to try to save them.

And she had made it clear that the Ulk Bog would help her whether she wanted to or not.

Mostly, it was because of the boy, she thought. Redden Ohmsford. There was a quality about him that reminded her of herself. It spoke to her, intrigued her, drew her. Maybe it was the magic, a vast store of power and possibilities that were a birthright like her own—inherited, not learned, an inseparable part of who they both were and which defined them in ways that none of the others would ever entirely understand.

So after coming down out of the Dragon Line Mountains, they had journeyed on through the Pashanon, avoiding Furies and Harpies and several dozen other dangerous species, the Ulk Bog guiding them and Oriantha keeping a careful watch on her while she did. Pleysia’s shape-shifter daughter had learned the hard way to be cautious. She didn’t trust Tesla Dart. Her part in the demise of the Druid company was still suspect. Whatever had happened to Oriantha’s companions was not going to happen to her. Because of her shape-shifter heritage, she was much closer to being one of the things that were confined to the Forbidding than had been any of those who had come with her. If Tesla Dart did anything to arouse her suspicions, she would sense it and be able to act on it.

She had pointed this out to the Ulk Bog early on, warning that any suggestion of betrayal would result in swift retribution.

Tesla Dart, for her part, denied that she had played any role in bringing harm to Khyber and her followers. Quite the opposite. She had done everything she could to save them—everything they would let her do, at any rate. But in the end, they had brought about their own doom by ignoring her warnings and going off without her. It was because they hadn’t trusted her, she pointed out, and it would be tragic if Oriantha were to make the same mistake. She was not the shape-shifter’s enemy; she was her friend. Hadn’t she agreed to come on this impossible mission? Hadn’t she promised to show her the way and kept her safe? Wasn’t she risking her own life by placing herself in harm’s way, all for the sake of two people who were probably already dead?

Yet the shape-shifter remained unconvinced, and the tension between the two remained. To Oriantha, Tesla Dart’s motives were a mystery. The Ulk Bog talked of her uncle Weka and how much he had done to help the Straken Queen Grianne, and how this obligation had been passed down to her. She talked of obligation and loyalty and blood heritage. But none of it really explained what had brought her to them in the first place. She claimed she had been waiting for Grianne Ohmsford’s return, had been looking for this miracle as if she truly believed it was possible. But her intimate knowledge of Tael Riverine and his creatures—and of Kraal Reach and its secrets—was troubling. While she claimed she knew these things through her odd relationship with the Chzyks, Oriantha wasn’t convinced. Tesla was hiding something, and that made the shape-shifter nervous.

Their uneasy relationship did not prevent them from completing their trek to Kraal Reach, however—although they watched each other guardedly for the five days it took. They walked the entire way, traveling by day, hiding by night, kept safe from the ever-present dangers that threatened both of them by Tesla Dart’s knowledge and experience and by Oriantha’s instincts and caution.