Bloodfire Quest (7 page)

“Ha!” The creature clapped its hands in glee. “At last! You are the one I have been waiting for.”

“No, I don’t …”

“For very long. For years. I wait for so long!” The Ulk Bog talked right over her. “All through years after my uncle passes to other side, long since. I have wait and wait. Now you return, finally! You! I know of you! Your story, your name, your history, I know all!” He released a deep, explosive breath. “You are
Straken Queen
!”

For long seconds, there was a shocked silence. Then Khyber Elessedil held up her hands in a gesture or denial. “Wait. Your uncle was Weka Dart?”

The Ulk Bog danced to its feet, quick and lively. “Yes, yes! Do you remember him?”

“Only from the stories I was told. I am not the one who came here before. I am not the one your uncle knew. That was a different woman, one who served as Ard Rhys before me. Not a
Straken
or a
Straken Queen,
but an
Ard Rhys
. We are not witches. We are Druids. This other woman, the one your uncle knew. Her name was Grianne Ohmsford?”

“That was her name!” The Ulk Bog darted closer, crouched, and cocked its head. “Why do you say it isn’t you?”

The Trolls were awake now, standing behind Khyber and Redden and staring at this strange creature. Since they didn’t speak much Elfish, they had no idea what was going on.

“Grianne Ohmsford is gone. I am her successor. I have never been inside the Forbidding before now. I have never met Weka Dart.”

The Ulk Bog looked unconvinced. “You are described to me. It must be you! You have Straken magic. You know of Weka Dart. Of the Jarka Ruus. Why do you lie?”

“No, she isn’t Grianne Ohmsford,” Redden interjected impulsively. “I would know. Grianne Ohmsford was my great-grandfather’s sister. We are family. This isn’t her.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Redden Ohmsford knew he had made a mistake. The look that flashed across the Ulk Bog’s face was of anger as black as demon’s blood. It appeared and was instantly gone again. The boy saw it—or maybe he just
thought
he saw it because he
felt
it so strongly—reflected in the creature’s eyes and in a twisting of its features.

“Who are you?” the Ulk Bog asked, the words a soft hiss. “What is your name?”

“Redden Ohmsford.”

“Ohmsford. Of the family of the Straken Queen?”

“Of the …” He stopped himself, angered he was suddenly feeling so intimidated. “Who are you?”

The creature smiled, revealing all its teeth. “Tesla Dart is my name.” The smile vanished. “What are you doing in the land of Jarka Ruus?”

“Trying to get out!” Redden snapped.

“Trying to find two of our friends,” the Ard Rhys corrected, putting a warning hand on the boy’s shoulder. “We are here by accident. I told you before. We came through a breach in the wall we didn’t know was there, and it closed behind us. Now we are trapped.”

The Ulk Bog scooted back a few feet, his eyes darting left and right. “I think you lie. There are no others. Only the woman who left during the night.”

Pleysia. “Did you see which way she went?” the Ard Rhys asked.

Tesla Dart pointed south. Of course, Redden thought. Still searching for Oriantha. Going it alone.

“How long have you been tracking us?” the Ard Rhys pressed.

The Ulk Bog looked angry. It yanked on a patch of black hair in irritation. “Why do you ask stupid questions? I don’t track you. I don’t have to. My Chzyks do so for me. This one”—he gestured to the lizard—“is called Lada. He tracks you. He was there last night when you fought the Mantis Styx.” He gestured at Redden. “This one saw him.”

The boy glanced at the Ard Rhys. “He’s right. I did see him. Right after we were attacked. I forgot about it until I woke just now and found him poking at me.”

Tesla Dart nodded. “He watches you fight. Sees you and comes to tell me of it. Brings me here so we can talk.” He scrunched up his face. “But you are not who I thought? You are sure?”

“You’ve never seen Grianne Ohmsford, have you?”

“No. But I hear the stories. From Weka Dart. He tells me. You have magic like hers. You can do what she could. You are a Straken. Perhaps a Straken Queen, even if you say you are not. Lada knows this. So he tells me.”

“Wait,” Redden said, jumping in. “You can speak with Lada? But how did Lada find us? How did he even know we were here?”

Tesla Dart looked confused. “The Chzyks are a community. The community shares. One knows, all know.”

“And communicate with you,” the Ard Rhys surmised. “How many Chzyks are there?”

“Many. Everywhere. One saw you come through the wall and told me. Lada went to find you and told me. I am looking for you a long time, but now you are not the right one.”

“You were looking for Grianne Ohmsford? How long were you looking?”

Tesla Dart’s wizened face turned away in disgust. “Forever.”

“Why would you do that?”

The Ulk Bog jumped to his feet and danced away. “I can help you, if you want. Like Weka, I track. Nothing escapes once I begin to search. You want to find your friends? Missing friends? Ask me!”

His dark face was bright and animated; he appeared eager to demonstrate his worth. He hissed at Lada, and the Chzyk raced over, leapt onto his arm, and scurried up to his shoulder. Together Ulk Bog and Chzyk waited for a response.

Khyber Elessedil hesitated. “You can find them for us?”

“Ha!” the Ulk Bog shrilled, dropping once more into a crouch. “Tesla Dart can find anything! Lada!”

He made a series of hissing sounds to the lizard creature, and Lada responded in kind. Then the Chzyk flashed away, tearing out across the flats south and disappearing from view.

“You see? Lada goes to find them. When he does, he will return to tell me. We can start walking now.”

He turned and began to follow the Chzyk, not bothering to look back at them. Redden and the Ard Rhys exchanged a look, and then Khyber called after the Ulk Bog to wait long enough to let them gather up their things. She spoke to her Druid Guard, who hastened to do as she asked. It took the members of the little company only minutes before they were ready.

But then Tesla Dart returned to them, leached of animation and excitement, suddenly serious. “What we do is very dangerous,” he said quietly. “In the land of the Jarka Ruus, you are trespassers and not welcome. You understand, do you?”

Khyber nodded. “This country is treacherous …”

“No! No! Not this country!” The Ulk Bog was suddenly angry. “Not to an Ulk Bog. Not to a tracker of my skill.” He took a step closer. “Tael Riverine!”

The Straken Lord. Khyber Elessedil had heard the stories from Grianne Ohmsford. Redden had heard them from his grandfather Pen when he was only five or six. The land of the Jarka Ruus was ruled by Tael Riverine, and all of its creatures, great and small, were his subjects. He had captured and imprisoned Grianne Ohmsford more than a century ago when she was trapped in the Forbidding, and he had very nearly killed her before she managed to escape.

“If he finds out you are here …” Tesla Dart trailed off, making a curious twisting motion with one finger pressed up against his neck. It was hard to mistake what he meant by it.

“Then we must be careful,” the Ard Rhys finished.

“You must be quick!” the Ulk Bog hissed.
“Ar kallen rus’ta!”

“We still have to find a way out again. We have to get back to where we came from. Can you help us?”

The Ulk Bog shrugged. “A way out is no problem. Not to me. I know many ways out.”

Redden stared. Was this so? Was the Forbidding eroded so badly they could cross through it anywhere? He glanced at the Ard Rhys and could tell she was wondering the same thing. For the Forbidding to fail, the magic that sustained it must be completely compromised. But that happened only when the Ellcrys was dying and in need of rebirth. It had been hundreds of years since the last time, and there had been no word of a diminishment in the Elven magic, no word of the Ellcrys showing signs of sickness. Wouldn’t the Druids have heard about this before setting out? Yet the Ard Rhys seemed as surprised and confused as he was. Something was wrong with all of this.

“Stand around long enough,” Tesla Dart snapped, “and the Straken Lord will have no trouble finding you. Everything that lives in the land of the Jarka Ruus will want to tell him. Will you help them?”

The Ard Rhys shook her head. “Take us to our friends, Tesla Dart.”

The Ulk Bog smiled, and all those sharp teeth reappeared.

With Tesla Dart leading the way, the little company set off south in search of Crace Coram and Oriantha. They kept an eye out for the missing Pleysia, as well, thinking they might at least cross her trail. But they lacked a true Tracker to read whatever sign had been left, and while they searched diligently they found no trace of her passing. The country remained barren and wasted, a combination of hardpan and scrub interspersed with groves of withered trees and patches of swamp. At times, they skirted fissures in the ground that disappeared into darkness and stretches of broken rock that looked to have been pushed up through the earth in cataclysmic upheavals. There were no signs of life save for things distant and indistinct that the Ulk Bog mostly ignored.

That changed when, several hours into their march, he brought them to a hurried halt and ordered them all to crouch down and remain perfectly still. Redden peered out from the cover of the broken rise behind which they all hid and watched a swarm of creatures with cat faces and sleek, supple bodies lope across the plains west, dozens moving together in an undulating mass. Separately, they seemed small and vulnerable. But as a pack they had a dangerous look to them.

When the boy asked Tesla Dart afterward what they were, he smiled his toothy smile and said, “Furies.”

They spied many other creatures after that: ogres, Goblins, Wights, Harpies, and things that Redden had never even heard mentioned before. Everything seemed to be hunting, and none of them seemed too particular about what they found. Some scoured the land alone and some did so in packs. Now and then, the company came upon hunters absorbed in eating prey they had caught. Twice, they watched killings take place. Much of their traveling time was spent hiding in plain sight, crouching down and not moving until the danger was past. All of it was vaguely surreal, backdropped by a setting in which everything already seemed half dead and flattened by a sky that was hazy and dark and pressed down upon the earth like an anvil. The stench of death was everywhere, animal and vegetable alike—the world a giant cairn in which everything born into it was already on its way to dying.

As he walked through this grim wilderness, Redden found himself repeating the same words over and over.

I just want to get out of here. I just want to go home.

“They are called the Jarka Ruus, but the meaning for them is not the same as it is for us,” Khyber offered at one point while they were walking together. Tesla Dart had scurried on ahead and was out of hearing. “Jarka Ruus for them means ‘the free peoples.’ For us, as recorded in the Druid Histories, it means ‘the banished peoples.’ They have never accepted that they are anything but creatures tragically wronged by us, put here in this prison of magic for no reason other than being different. Grianne told me of this when she returned. She said no one would ever be able to persuade them otherwise.”

“How did she manage to survive this place?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “She wouldn’t talk of it.”

“I wouldn’t, either, I guess.”

“She was aided by Weka Dart after she was taken prisoner by the Straken Lord. He helped her get free and find a way back to where she had come into the Forbidding. He probably saved her life by doing so. I seem to remember that he wanted her to do something for him in return, but I don’t know what it was. In the end, she left him behind and returned with your grandfather, then took Paranor back from Shadea a’Ru and the rebel Druids who had aided her in seizing control.”

“And then she disappeared,” he finished.

“She entrusted the Druid order to me and those who had survived the war with me. She abdicated her position as Ard Rhys and went away with Penderrin, and no one ever saw her again.” Khyber Elessedil glanced over. “Did your grandfather ever tell you what became of her?”

Redden shook his head. “Only that she went somewhere far away to live out the rest of her life. Too many still saw her as the Ilse Witch, and she could never escape what that meant. She’d had enough of Druids—and magic, as well. She didn’t want to be part of that anymore. My father told me this when I was little. Railing and I. But he never said anything about where she had gone or what she had done afterward.”

He paused. “I remember asking my grandmother once. I always thought she knew something that she didn’t want to talk about. But I asked her anyway. I was young, persistent, and didn’t know anything about boundaries when it came to asking personal questions. I pushed her for an answer. She broke down in tears and wouldn’t talk to me afterward for almost two weeks.” He smiled sadly. “I never asked about it again.”

“It was a long time ago,” the Ard Rhys said. “A lifetime ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Redden nodded. “I still think about it. I still wonder where she went. I wonder if she was happy then.”

“She was solitary and aloof when she was alive, always conscious of how she was seen by others. I don’t know that she was ever happy.”

She moved away from him, leaving him with his thoughts.

Midday passed; the air thickened and the heat grew intense. Water was running dangerously low, and food was being rationed. They had never had much of either to begin with, carrying only enough for personal use when they’d passed through the waterfall. Soon, they would have to begin foraging. Tesla Dart seemed uninterested in the problem, leaving them to their midday meal as he danced off into the distance, looking this way and that, always active and eager, always moving. Redden watched him in fascination. How could anyone have so much energy?

When they set out again after eating, the Ulk Bog beckoned for Redden to walk ahead with him, making a series of quick, demanding gestures that the boy felt compelled to obey. Reluctantly, he moved up to where the other was waiting.

“You are family to the Ard Rhys, Grianne?” Tesla Dart asked as they walked together.

“She was my great-grandfather’s sister. But I never knew her.”

“She died?”

He hesitated. “She went away before I was born. I guess she must have died.”

The sharp eyes watched him. “She is friends with my uncle, Weka Dart. He helps her.”

“The Ard Rhys.” Redden indicated Khyber Elessedil. “She told me this. She said he helped save Grianne when she was trapped here.”

“A prisoner of Tael Riverine. Very bad. The Straken Lord wanted her to mate with him. He wanted her child for his own. But she escapes with Weka.”

Redden looked over at him. “I didn’t know that. About her child and the Straken Lord. I only knew she was trapped here and your uncle helped her get out again.”

Tesla Dart laughed. “Think of it! A child with the Straken Lord! Who would want that? I would not want that. My child will be Ulk Bog–sired.”

The boy stared for a moment, realizing suddenly he had made a big mistake about Tesla Dart. She was a woman. Or maybe just a girl. But female, not male.

“You would like a child someday?” he asked, trying to be certain of what he was thinking.

“I will have many children. My family will be large. Ulk Bogs, like me and Weka. But I will need a mate, and he is not yet come to me.”

“Um,” Redden mumbled, not sure what to say.

“We can be friends, you and me. Families are the same. Weka helped Straken Queen, and now I will help you! It is for us as for it was for them. Friends!”

“Friends,” he repeated.

Then, from out of nowhere, came that dark look she had given him earlier, the one he couldn’t understand. “But better friends than Weka and the Straken Queen. Real friends, who don’t fail to help when needed. Keep promises we make, stand by our word. Is this right, that we can promise this?”

She seemed so desperate for him to say yes that he did so, nodding for emphasis. There was no reason not to. There were no promises to be kept, were there?

“We can promise,” he said.

“This is good!” Tesla Dart announced with a yelp.

Then she darted away, quick and wild, skittering ahead on all fours like an animal, laughing as she went, leaving Redden still trying to come to terms with the idea that such an odd, wild creature was female. He trudged along in her wake, wishing he had her stamina, thinking he could feel his strength ebbing even now. How much farther would they have to go, he wondered, before they found some sign of their missing companions?

It was late in the afternoon when they reached a stretch of deep ravines and high, broken ridges worming their way across miles of stark, empty terrain. A flock of huge scavenger birds circled the skies perhaps two miles farther on.

Khyber Elessedil called a halt and stood staring at what lay ahead. “Tesla Dart!” she shouted to draw the other back from where she was scampering about.

The Ulk Bog girl rushed back. “Yes, Straken Queen?”

“Don’t call me that.” She gestured forward. “You intend for us to go in there?”

Tesla Dart looked at her questioningly. “You wish to find your missing friends? The ones the Dracha took?”

“I do. But why would they be in there?”

“Why? Because that is where the Dracha has its nest. It would go there without thinking about it. It would want to shed parasites it carries. So it would go there.”

“You know of this particular Dracha?”

The Ulk Bog shrugged. “This one, yes. Do you want to go on or not?”

The Ard Rhys considered. “How far ahead is this nest?”

“Not far. Maybe two miles.”

Right where the birds were circling, Redden thought. And then he wondered suddenly how Tesla Dart knew which dragon it was that had taken Oriantha and Crace Coram. Her Chzyks had been watching the company when it entered the Forbidding, not her. Had she learned which dragon it was from speaking to them?

“What has become of Lada?” Khyber asked suddenly, as if reading Redden’s thoughts. “Shouldn’t he have returned by now?”

“If he finds something, he returns. Come! We waste time. Let us hurry before the night arrives.”

But Khyber Elessedil shook her head. “I don’t think so. We aren’t going in there without knowing if our friends are alive. Why don’t you to go in for us, Tesla? Find the nest, see if our friends are there, then come back and tell us.”

“That is a bad idea. To leave you is bad.”

“I think it is necessary. You must go.”

The Ulk Bog stamped her foot petulantly. “I will not go! You cannot tell me what to do. I am free to do what I want. I will leave you!”

“But I thought you wanted to help us. like your uncle Weka helped Grianne Ohmsford. Don’t you? Are you afraid?”

Suddenly Tesla Dart was incensed. She screamed something unintelligible at the Ard Rhys and stomped away a short distance, then whirled around and screamed some more. Then she sat down and refused to look at them.

The Ard Rhys glanced at Redden and motioned for him to come away. With the three Trolls trailing after them, they moved to an open stretch of ground and sat down together, taking out food and blankets and making camp. The minutes slipped away. Tesla Dart stayed where she was, staring off into the weather-riven wilderness. Those with the Ard Rhys let the Ulk Bog be.

“We are not following her any farther until we know something more,” Khyber whispered to Redden at one point.

The boy didn’t care if they ever took another step. He was ready to turn back, to retrace his path to where he had found his way in and hope he could find his way out again. He was sorry about Oriantha and Crace Coram, but he had lost all hope of finding them alive. It had been too long. There were too many bad things that could have happened. He didn’t feel much hope for Pleysia, either. There should have been some sign of her by now. They should have caught up to her, or she should have come back to them.

It made him feel cowardly to think this way, but he was beyond caring. He was sick at heart and filled with despair, and he wanted to put all this behind him and get back to his brother.

He was picking at the scant pieces of his meal when Tesla Dart gave out a fresh scream, leapt to her feet, and began jumping up and down. At first Redden thought she had been attacked, but then he realized she was holding Lada, who had reappeared out of the twilight.

Redden and Khyber climbed to their feet as the Ulk Bog charged over, Lada now riding on her shoulder. Tesla Dart was singing and chanting as if it were a day of celebration.