3 When Darkness Falls.8 (38 page)

They had no way of knowing.

All they knew was that they had no way of treating the second plague. It seemed to be new — the Elven Healers said it wasn't mentioned in any of the Story Songs of the Last War.

Despite the fact that they were their main source of information on how to treat many of the diseases they were facing now, both Vestakia and Idalia were getting very tired of the Elven Story Songs.

Very nearly as tired as they were of seeing people die because their medicines simply weren't working very well.

* * * * *

WHEN she'd gotten back to the smaller camp at last, the only thing she'd wanted was to throw herself down on her bedroll and sleep, but a sense of duty drove her down into the caverns.

There she had tried, yet again, to extract the information they all desperately needed from the Crystal Spiders' completely willing yet utterly alien minds, working until Khirethil — the captain of the troop who watched over her while she was beneath the mountain — had finally insisted that she stop.

"You gain nothing by forcing us to carry you to your bed, Vestakia," Khirethil had said, her black eyes uncompromising. "And in working yourself into exhaustion, you waste time in the end."

It was good advice, and kindly meant, and Vestakia had forced herself to take it.

In camp, under Khirethil's steady gaze, Vestakia also forced herself to eat, though the food lay heavily in her stomach. Afterward she had excused herself quickly, and gone to her pavilion.

Until she had started working here, she had not had a pavilion of her own, but shared Idalia's tent — for warmth and companionship far more than safety, for among the people of the Allied army she felt accepted and, yes,
cherished
as she had never expected to find herself in all the years of her life. From the moment she had been born, Demonic in form but human in soul, her mother and her aunt had taught her and warned her:
Trust no one. Show yourself to no one. No one will look beyond the surface and dare to believe in the human soul within.

But Kellen had. Even now, tired and miserable as she was, the thought of him brought a warm glow of happiness to Vestakia's spirit. From the first moment he had seen her, Kellen had trusted her, believed in her, without question. What had grown between them — or might grow between them — was very awkward, given the Mageprice that Kellen paid, but Vestakia's own mother had given up twenty years of her life so that Vestakia could be human, and Vestakia was familiar with Mageprices. And a year and a day was not forever.

But even constrained as they were — not to look, not to touch, barely to take notice of one another save as comrades in the field, Vestakia wished Kellen were here now.

How he would laugh to see her pavilion!

She'd known, of course, that the Elves tended to choose a "signature" color for a person — Kellen's was a very pretty green, just the color of Shalkan's eyes — and she should have had fair warning when the armor that Artenel had produced for her had been enameled a cherry-red the exact shade of her skin, but she really hadn't expected to be presented with a matching tent.

It was quite a lovely color, really. And it certainly stood out against all this snow.

But since the Elves did things very thoroughly, and very single-mindedly, it turned out that nearly all of her clothes were red as well. And that made them rather hard to find, sometimes, in a red tent.

Yes, Kellen would definitely laugh.

Making certain that the braziers were filled for night, Vestakia got out of her armor and into a sleeping tunic and leggings. Curling up beneath several layers of blanket and fur coverlet, she pulled the one remaining lantern over to her and blew it out, then lay shivering in her bed as she waited for her covers to warm. Her muscles were filled with tiny tremors, and there was a nauseated, metallic taste in her mouth; she knew she was far too exhausted for sleep to come easily, no matter how badly she needed it.

Tomorrow she would think of something that would work. She
had
to.

The army can do nothing until it knows where the last Enclave of the Shadowed Elves is.
In the dark, her mind returned to the problem that obsessed her. It did not help matters to know how much they were all depending on her to find the key. Like the other Healers, Vestakia had dealt with the Allied wounded after the two battles for the caverns, and the horrific Battle for the Heart Forest. She knew what a terrible enemy the Shadowed Elves could be. And if that weren't bad enough, the Shadowed Elves could bring other Allies of the Endarkened into the center of the Elven Lands without breaching the land-wards, as well as causing monsters such as the Deathwings and Coldwarg to do their bidding. If they were not stopped, they might attack Ysterialpoerin again — or one of the southern cities.

South.

Vestakia felt a faint spark of recognition. She
felt
that the last Enclave must be somewhere south of here, but she couldn't say why she felt that, and she could ask no one to act upon such a vague disorganized feeling. Certainly the Crystal Spiders had no sense of direction that she'd ever figured out. So the feeling couldn't come from them.

And if it didn't, it couldn't be allowed to count.

She sighed in frustration, pulling the blankets up higher. Jermayan and Ancaladar would be rejoining them soon — a sennight or two at most, Idalia had said — and if nothing else, the three of them could try flying a search-grid again, though in the winter storms it would be almost impossible for Ancaladar to fly low enough for her to sense a Shadowed Elf Enclave.

But they had to do something!

* * * * *

SLEEP came at last, and with it, vivid disjointed dreams that verged on nightmares.

Caverns… but caverns so much vaster and deeper than the ones Vestakia had spent so many hours in that it was impossible to compare them. She sensed that these caverns were utterly without light, yet somehow she could see, and all around her were the creations of a civilization far older and far more inhuman than that of the Crystal Spiders, one whose works made her dream-self shudder as she glimpsed them.

Thoughts that were not her own crowded her mind. For now they were still distant and indistinct as faint whispers in a noisy room, yet they terrified her with the possibility that she might come to hear and understand them clearly. As if the whispered thoughts represented a physical danger that she could escape, Vestakia tried to run, but only succeeded in entangling herself deeper in the dream-stuff clouding her mind.

* * * * *

SHE was in a garden, but this was no garden that had ever flourished beneath the rays of the sun. Everything here was cold unliving stone, yet she could sense that each stone cried out in pain, as if it were a living suffering thing whose torment would continue forever.

There was someone standing beside her, someone whose face she dared not raise her eyes to see, for if she looked, it would shatter her mind forever. She heard a voice:

"Do you love me, my own?"

And she heard her own voice reply:

"As I love power and pain, my mother, my heart… "

* * * * *

WITH a choked scream, Vestakia awoke. She was sitting bolt upright, her fists crammed into her mouth, heart hammering so hard her whole body shuddered with its force. Her whole body was covered in clammy, greasy sweat, and before she was quite awake, violent nausea overcame her. She barely made it to the slops bowl in time to deliver up her evening meal — and, it seemed, everything she'd ever eaten — in a foul-smelling rush of bile. She gagged and heaved over the vessel long after there was anything in her stomach to void, knowing as she did that what she really wanted to rid herself of — her dream — would not be so easily banished.

At last she sat back on her heels, panting and gasping, and reached for her water jug. The water was ice-cold, but she relished the shock, rinsing and spitting until she'd cleared her mouth.

She had a blinding headache, and she felt weak and ill. Her tunic and leggings were clammy with sweat, and she hardly had the strength to change them. But the thought of summoning Khirethil to help her — she was sure the Elven Knight was awake; Khirethil's pavilion was pitched right next to hers, and Vestakia knew from experience that Elves slept lightly — galvanized her, at least as far as dragging the sodden items from her body and wrapping herself in her fur-lined cloak.

That would have to do for the moment.

Blessed Goddess, what is happening to me? Is it plague?
The bruising that was one of the earliest symptoms probably wouldn't show on her cherry-red skin. But she had no sign of fever, which was one of the next symptoms. And Idalia had been fairly sure that her half-Demon heritage would protect her from catching it at all.

She forced herself to take several deep breaths.
You know it isn't plague.
She'd only been hoping it was. Plague would have been a kinder answer than what Vestakia suspected to be the truth.

Ever since she had begun to become a woman, she had known she was linked to the Demons — she could sense
Them
, and
Their magic,
and use that gift to hide from
Them
. Lately, the scope of her power had grown, so that she could sense not only
Them,
but what
They
had touched. It was a fortunate gift, for it had allowed Vestakia and her friends to track the Shadowed Elves in the first place, and rescue Sandalon and the other children they had captured, as well as finding their other Enclaves.

But it wasn't something she could just turn off when she didn't want it. And she didn't need to hear the reports from Redhelwar's scouts and patrols to know that Their Allies were broaching the boundaries of the Elven Lands to the north. Even though it was hundreds of miles away, Vestakia could feel it like a sore tooth — even more so when she was linked with the Crystal Spiders.

The work she was doing with them — concentrating so hard, sennight after sennight, on seeing things unseen — had opened up her Gift in a way it had never been opened before.

And now I can feel my father's mind as well.

Tears sprang to Vestakia's mind, and she hugged herself tightly. It was the very last thing she wanted. Her father was the Prince of Shadow Mountain, and he had doomed her mother and her aunt to a life of exile and caused them both to die years before their time. He had hunted Vestakia her entire life, and — until Kellen had rescued her and she had come to live in the Elven Lands — every waking moment of her life had been lived in fear either that her father would find her, or that one of the Lostlanders would accidentally see her face and kill her for the Demon she appeared to be. When Kellen had brought her into the Elven Lands, she'd thought she was safe from that forever.

But now that temporary sanctuary was gone — or nearly so. Tonight's bad dream wasn't the first she'd had, Vestakia sensed; simply the first one she managed to remember. There would be more, and worse ones, and if — when — if— the power of the Demons grew, the nightmares would invade her waking mind as well.

There were things she could do to stop that; potions that blocked Gift and allowed the minds of Mages and Healers to rest. She had taken one of them before. It would block her ability to sense
Them
— and probably her ability to link her mind with the Crystal Spiders, as well.

No.

The Allies needed to find the last Enclave of the Shadowed Elves.

And any possibility, however faint, that she might be able to give the Allies insight into what the Enemy thought and planned was something too valuable to throw away, no matter what it cost her.

South. The Crystal Spiders do not know where the last Enclave of the Shadowed Elves is, but he does. It is from him that my belief comes, not what I take from their minds.

Vestakia blinked back tears of acceptance and relief. It was not much, but it was something. If they must search for the last Enclave upon the wing, at least the area they had to search would be that much smaller.

Moving slowly and painfully, she crept to her clothes-chest and began to rummage through it for something dry and warm to wear. She thought she had slept only a few hours, and she was sure sleep would not return tonight, nor did she really want it to. Far better to let the images from her nightmare fade than risk renewing them — and at any rate, the slops-bowl certainly needed emptying.

Besides, her head throbbed, and her bones ached, and she was thirsty. At least in an Elven camp, one could always be sure of getting a hot cup of Allheal tea.

* * * * *

AT last Jermayan returned to the war-camp outside Ysterialpoerin, after nearly three moonturns of absence. And he saw why there were no refugees in Ondoladeshiron.

They had all come here.

Though it was counted as one of the Heart Triad, Ysterialpoerin was nearly as far north as Deskethomaynel. It only made sense that instead of risking a dangerous mountain journey in the depths of winter, the refugees of the Northern Triad would head for the only remaining city north of the Mystrals: Ysterialpoerin.

Lerkelpoldara had fallen, and left behind only a handful of survivors, but Windalorianan and Deskethomaynel had been fully inhabited, save for those they had sent to war, and the women and children who were now at the Fortress of the Crowned Horns. Both cities had evacuated in good order, bringing all that they could safely carry — and Windalorianan had brought every single mare, stallion, yearling, and foal from the Plains of Vardirvoshanon, as well — for to leave the Elven horses behind would be as unthinkable as leaving Windalorianan itself behind.