Bloodfire Quest (33 page)

BOOK: Bloodfire Quest

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“Have you seen a girl?” she asked at once. “Small, young. We left her lying on the ground in the woods more than a mile back. She was injured, and we—”

Before she could finish, the woman wheeled on the man and struck him as hard as she could. “I told you we should have waited! Look what you’ve done!”

The man seized her by the arms to keep her from hitting him again. “Aquinel, stop it! We don’t know anything yet.”

“You have the girl?” Aphen asked at once, unable to contain herself any longer. “She’s my sister. Her name is Arling. Is she in your cart? Is she all right?”

The man and woman exchanged a quick look. She could tell immediately by the looks on their faces that something was wrong. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

The woman shook her head. “We didn’t know you were coming for her. We thought she had been abandoned. Her clothes and all the blood, you see. So we took her with us to keep her safe. But then we saw the airship, and we thought …”

“They said they were friends, that they could take her with them, make sure she got the help she needed,” the man said, cutting her off.

“We didn’t know!” Aquinel wailed, and began to cry.

Aphen stared. “Are you saying you gave my sister to some men flying an airship? What did the airship look like? What flag did she fly?”

“She was a warship, I guess,” the man answered, not looking at her, trying to find a way to comfort the woman, who was having none of it. “She was a Federation ship, I think.”

Aphen went pale.
Shades. The ones who were hunting us
.

She didn’t need to speak the words. Cymrian would be thinking the same thing. Arling had been given over to their enemies, to the ones who had brought the assassin and the mutants.

“Have they lifted off yet?” Cymrian asked, moving a step closer. “Have they left?”

The man shrugged. “They were still on the ground when we started back. That was maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago.”

The Elven Hunter took Aphen’s arm and pulled her ahead. “Quickly, now. Maybe we can still reach her in time.”

They charged past the man and the woman and went down the trail in a rush. They did not look back.

Sora and Aquinel started walking again, neither looking at the other. The rains had diminished to a few scattered drops, and the windblown mists had begun to re-form and thicken once more.

“Elves,” Sora said after a time. “Dangerous look to them, too. Did you see their clothes? All torn up and bloodied. The man was hurt. You could tell by the way he was holding himself.”

He waited for Aquinel to say something, but she wouldn’t even look at him.

“I did what I thought was right,” he said again.

But he knew that wasn’t entirely so. He’d done what he
hoped
was right and what he
knew
would net him a profit. He’d been right about the men on the airship. They’d been quick to reward him for his efforts in retrieving the girl, and they hadn’t looked anywhere near as questionable as the Elves. Of course, the injured girl was an Elf, too, and she looked the same as these two. But who was to say what the real relationship was between them? Maybe the two women were sisters, but maybe not. How could anyone tell? Those Elves all looked the same to him, anyway.

He tightened his jaw. Come right down to it, this wasn’t his business. His or Aquinel’s. None of it. They were well out of it. Let the others sort it out. He glanced at his wife, marching along at his side, stone-faced. She was angry now, but she would get over it.

Even after she did though, he didn’t think he would say anything about the silvery white stone he had found in the girl’s clothing. A beautiful thing, it was. He had never seen anything like it.

Now it was his. He would keep it, sell it later on the sly, and pocket the money.

After all, he deserved something for his trouble.

H
ere
E
nds
B
ook
T
wo of

THE DARK LEGACY OF SHANNARA

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

T
ERRY
B
ROOKS
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of more than thirty books, including the Dark Legacy of Shannara adventure
Wards of Faerie;
the Legends of Shannara novels
Bearers of the Black Staff
and
The Measure of the Magic;
the Genesis of Shannara trilogy:
Armageddon’s Children, The Elves of Cintra
, and
The Gypsy Morph; The Sword of Shannara;
the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy:
Ilse Witch, Antrax
, and
Morgawr;
the High Druid of Shannara trilogy:
Jarka Ruus, Tanequil
, and
Straken;
the nonfiction book
Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life;
and the novel based upon the screenplay and story by George Lucas,
Star Wars:
^®Episode I
The Phantom Menace.™
His novels
Running with the Demon
and
A Knight of the Word
were selected by the
Rocky Mountain News
as two of the best science fiction/fantasy novels of the twentieth century. The author was a practicing attorney for many years but now writes full-time. He lives with his wife, Judine, in the Pacific Northwest.