Leaves of Flame (34 page)

Two days before, they’d been joined by another large group of dwarren, the size of the army nearly doubling. At first, Colin had thought they came from one of the other clans, but as the new warriors dispersed, he realized they had merely been reinforcements for the three clans that were already part of the group.

It unsettled him. He wondered how many dwarren were being called to this Gathering, and to what purpose.

He shoved his speculations aside. He’d done nothing but ponder the possibilities during the ride so far and had come to no solid conclusions. He didn’t have enough information, and he wouldn’t get that information until they reached the Confluence. None of the clan chiefs or the head shamans knew anything beyond what they’d told him in the keeva, or they were unwilling to share their information if they had it. The fact that he knew nothing had nearly driven him to abandon the dwarren and Eraeth and Siobhaen altogether and use his powers to reach the Confluence ahead of them, but he’d resisted.

Besides, there was something he needed to do here.

“The dwarren tunnels run beneath the entire length of the plains,” he said in answer to Eraeth’s unasked question. “From the Escarpment all the way to the edges of the Thalloran Wasteland, from the mountains to the north to the Flats in the south. They have controlled them for generations, so long that they’ve lost count.”

Eraeth turned aside from his perusal of the dwarren as they methodically settled in to rest, the smells of a hundred cook fires beginning to fill the room. Colin’s stomach growled, but he ignored it.

“Did the dwarren build them?”

“No,” Colin said with a smile. “According to their legends, they were given the network of chambers and corridors by their gods, so that they could oversee the preservation of the Lands above and so they could protect the Sacred Waters. As far as I can surmise based on their histories, they have done so for well over two thousand years, but it’s hard to judge.”

“So they believe their gods built it for them?” Siobhaen said with a touch of derision.

“Of course,” Colin said. He frowned down at the contents
of the satchel in his hands. He didn’t think he’d need much for his excursion, knew that most of what he had brought would be useless. He shrugged and cinched the satchel tightly, throwing it over one shoulder.

Eraeth was suddenly at his side. “Where are you going?”

He met the Protector’s frown. “I need to speak to the Faelehgre… and to the forest.”

“And were you going to tell us you were leaving?”

Colin turned in surprise as Siobhaen stepped up behind Eraeth. Both of them gave him a nearly identical look of anger. They barely spoke to each other on good days, but in this they were united? He shook his head. “I’ll be back before the dwarren rouse themselves and continue on.”

“That’s not the point,” Eraeth said.

“One of us should be with you,” Siobhaen added.

Eraeth nodded. “That was the whole point in having us accompany you.”

Colin glanced back and forth between them, eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. But no, there was still a tension between the two, an unspoken distrust. They simply both agreed, grudgingly, that he shouldn’t be traveling alone.

He sighed, focusing on Eraeth. “You can’t come with me. I don’t want to leave the dwarren army, and I have to travel too far to take either of you with me.” He let his voice harden. “I’m going to Terra’nor and the Well, that’s all. I’ll be gone at most a few hours.”

Siobhaen frowned in confusion. “You know where we are? How? I lost any sense of direction the moment we were taken underground.”

“I can sense the Well,” Colin said, not looking away from Eraeth. The Protector’s eyes searched his own. “We’re beneath the Ostraell, have been for the past day or so. We’re in the domain of the Faelehgre and within the bounds of the Seasonal Trees—­the Summer Tree actually. I’ll be protected.”

Eraeth considered a long moment, then nodded once. “Very well.”

Siobhaen scowled, arms crossed over her chest.

“Don’t be too hard on him, Siobhaen,” Colin said. “He knows neither one of you could stop me.”

Then he slowed time and stepped to the side, catching the beginning of Siobhaen’s surprise before turning away and leaving them behind.

He Traveled, slid among all of the gathered dwarren in the midst of setting up camp, through pockets of the warriors circled around campfires, eating and drinking, all of their actions caught in mid-­motion. He stalked past others herding the gaezels they rode to the far left, grain thrown out onto the floor to lure them away from the rest of the underground encampment. The dwarren were leading them in small groups to the river’s edge to drink. As he passed the head of the army, he noted the clan chiefs and head shamans were seated around a brazier, the sharp scent of yetope heavy on the air, even with time slowed.

And then he moved beyond the army, entering the wide mouth of the tunnel beyond.

He picked up the pace as soon as he passed into the darkness, reaching into his saddle to withdraw a wooden box. From inside, he took out a clear stone prism about as long as his hand, like quartz, but polished smooth on its faces. A tendril of white fire lay trapped inside the prism, whisking back and forth along its length, tongues of smaller flames flicking outward from the main tendril to trace along the edges of the crystal.

Siobhaen would be shocked to her core if she ever found the stone. As a member of the Order of the Flame, she’d recognize that the flame Colin had captured inside the crystal was part of Aielan’s Light, taken from the pool of fire that burned beneath the mountains of Caercaern. He had not asked for permission to capture the flame, not from Lotaern
or the Order. He knew what the Chosen would have said, that the Fire was not a tool, but a manifestation of Aielan, that it should not be abused in such a manner.

Colin understood the significance of the Fire to the ­Alvritshai and, in particular, to the Order. He understood the need for faith. His mother had raised him beneath the Hand of Holy Diermani; he had read from the Codex, had attended church with his mother at his side, had prayed beneath the Tilted Cross, and had planned on taking his vows with Karen with the blessings of one of Diermani’s priests.

That would never happen now.

But he thought Lotaern and the Order were blinded by their faith. Aielan’s Fire could be used for other things, like the crystal he now held up to illuminate the passage before him. They had begun to explore such possibilities; the Alvritshai had witnessed the use of the Fire at the battlefield at the Escarpment, when Lotaern and that first battalion of the Flame had called it forth from the earth to disrupt the attack by the Legion. And Lotaern had used the Fire to help him in their first attempts at forging a weapon to use against the Wraiths.

Lotaern would never have considered removing part of the Fire itself from its natural cauldron, though.

Colin had no such compunctions… although he
had
merged with the Fire beneath Caercaern and asked Aielan for permission before he’d done so.

When he’d emerged from the Fire, the white flame had already inhabited the crystal.

The white light glowed on the smooth surface of the tunnel as he moved, broken only at intervals by support arches. At the first junction of the tunnel the dwarren army followed and another tunnel running crosswise to it, he turned left. He could feel the Well’s power through the walls of earth on either side, pulsing subtly. He followed the new, narrower corridor, passed a few open arches that led to
empty rooms, both large and small, then paused at another junction. He stared at the three remaining openings, prism held aloft, then stepped into the entrance to each one, released time, and breathed in deeply.

The central corridor that ran straight ahead appeared to lead in the direction of the Well, but the tunnel to the left brought with it the faint scent of forest, of cedars and loam.

He headed to the left, slowing time again as he went. The corridor stretched on and on, seemingly endless, but then the support arches began to appear more frequently and within moments the corridor ended in a set of stone stairs, rising in sharp turns. He began to ascend, moving faster now.

Near the top, the scent of the forest strong enough to permeate his surroundings, he discovered that the original opening had collapsed. Earth riddled with roots and stone filled the stairwell, appearing black in the harsh light.

He held the prism higher and scanned the collapse in frustration. The profusion of roots suggested he was close to the surface, even if the collapse had happened decades before.

And he’d smelled cedar, not just loam.

He let go of time and caught the faint breath of a breeze. It touched his face and pushed at his hair, damp with a recent rain.

Craning his neck, he found he could barely see past the fall of dirt at the turn in the stairs. It didn’t appear to block the entire stairwell.

Keeping the crystal firmly in one hand, he shoved his satchel around to his back and began climbing the fallen debris. His free hand sank into the dirt and sent it cascading down behind him, but he struggled on, catching at the thicker roots the higher he rose to help pull himself upward. He lost his footing twice before he grasped desperately for the corner of stone that marked the stairwell’s turn,
then hauled himself up around the corner with both hands, the edges of the prism biting hard into the flesh of his palm.

Propping himself against the corner, he raised the light and saw where the earth had caved in under the weight of centuries of debris. A narrow hole opened up through the earth. Beyond it, he could see cedar branches stirring and the pinpricks of stars.

The hole wasn’t large enough for him to fit through.

Cursing, he tucked the prism back into the box, replacing it in his satchel. The stairwell was sheathed in darkness, broken only by the faintest of light from the opening above. Drawing his shoulders up with a deep breath to steady himself, he let out the pent-­up air with a sharp exhale and scrambled up the remaining slope to the hole.

His arm reached through to the fresh air and night sky above, then clawed at the ground as he shoved his head into the narrow opening. Dirt dislodged in his struggles rained down around his body trapped below, some falling beneath his shirt and skittering down his back and chest. He gasped and kicked with his feet, but he was too big.

He ceased struggling and found that his other arm, the one still below ground, was now lodged against his side.

He bit off another curse and forced himself to relax, to think. Dirt had caught near his mouth and he spit it out.

Growling, he tried to retreat. His free arm flailed, but he was lodged tightly in the hole now, head, arm, and left shoulder above ground. Spitting curses—­at Diermani, Aielan, even Ilacqua, the dwarren god—­he writhed in the hole, shoved hard against the needle-­strewn earth, and finally collapsed backward as much as he could, spent.

His body was simply too damn big.

Then, staring up at the night sky, he started laughing.

Shaking his head, he focused.

The years sloughed off, his body growing younger and younger. The skin and wrinkles of the sixty-­year-­old man
firmed and hardened into that of a thirty year old, then a twenty year old, before softening again as he drew himself back to the body of the twelve-­year-­old boy who had first drunk from the Well nearly two hundred years before.

A boy whose body was much leaner than the sixty-­year-­old form Colin normally wore.

He pulled himself from the hole easily, with only the satchel getting snagged on a root to impede the process. At last, he lay back on the dead needles shed from the trees, panting with the effort, then chuckled to himself again.

He hadn’t transformed his body to such a young age in decades, perhaps not since the Accord between the three races had been signed.

Climbing to his feet, he brushed off the dirt and debris from the forest floor, his clothes hanging on his thin frame. He thought about keeping the youthful form, but without proper clothes.…

He settled on a man in his mid-­thirties, the clothes only slightly loose, then began winding his way through the trees toward Terra’nor.

When he reached the edges of the city, he found Osserin waiting. The piercing white light of the Faelehgre hovered beneath a large stone archway that still stood over one of the main roads, the towers, fountains, and lower buildings interspersed with the huge boles of trees receding into the distance behind him. Like most of the buildings of Terra’nor, the arch showed signs of its age. One corner had cracked and crumbled away, another crack running down the center of the arch, but it still stood.

Welcome home, Shaeveran,
Osserin murmured, pulsing once.
Have you come because of the Wells? Of their new awakening?

“Yes, and to ask the heart of the forest for another gift.”

We thought so. You are not the only one.

Colin shot the Faelehgre a startled glance. “What do you
mean? Who else has been here? How did they get past the Faelehgre and my wardings?”

The Faelehgre began leading Colin through the city, the white towers with empty windows and shattered balconies looming on either side. Osserin turned down a central street lined with standing columns, most toppled. When Colin had been here before, nearly all of them had been standing.

No one has been to the Well. But the dwarren shamans have been to the heart of the forest.

“Why? What have they come for?”

Like you, they come asking for gifts, for shards of heartwood that their hunting parties—­the trettarus—­can use against the Shadows and the Wraiths. And the other fell creatures of the Turning.

Colin continued walking in silence, his body thrumming with shock. When the pair reached the height of the amphitheater’s stair that cupped the edge of one side of the Well, he halted. “I had not realized the dwarren knew of the heart of the forest.”

Osserin didn’t halt, drifting down the stairs toward the wide pool of flat water that spread out beneath them, the forest itself picking up where the city and the amphitheater ended. Below, the Well pulsed with blue-­tinged light like the Well in the northern wastes, illuminating the surrounding trees and buildings with a harsh glare. More of the Faelehgre’s lights hovered over the water.