The Measure of the Magic (36 page)

Run
.

Phryne broke and ran, propelled by the force of her grandmother’s words, knowing that this was the only chance she was going to get. It was there in her act of sacrifice and in the force of her words. It was unmistakable and inexorable. Phryne ran as fast as she could toward the place where she had last seen Panterra, ignoring her pain and fear, fighting through her clouded vision and diminished strength. Something exploded behind her, and a huge boom filled the cavern with light as bright as the sun’s. The shades of the dead disappeared. The whispering died. All that remained were echoes and wisps of something that looked like smoke and might have been souls.

Phryne
, one tiny scrap wailed as it flew past, and then it was gone.

W
HEN MISTRAL CALLED HER NAME THAT FINAL
time, her grandmother reduced to a scrap of smoke, Phryne lost all control. Wailing in despair, she tore ahead faster than ever—faster than common sense dictated or reason allowed—through clouds of spirit smoke and shrill echoes that resonated off the cavern walls. She didn’t think about where she was going and what she was doing; she just ran. She caromed off the walls of the tombs and sepulchers, dodged through the forests of stone markers, a rat trapped in a maze, and fled from both what she could see and what she could not. She heard Pan call her name—heard him call it more than once—but she did not slow.

Behind her, the shades of the dead faded along with the smoke that marked the passing of their remains, and the echoes of the struggle between Mistral Belloruus and Pancea Rolt Gotrin subsided. The dark and the silence closed about her, wrapping her with the ragged rasping of her breathing and the pounding of her footsteps.

“Phryne, stop!”

Pan’s voice. Again. No mistake. But she didn’t slow, couldn’t stop running, continued her uncontrolled flight.

Had to get out of there. Had to escape.

Then she was clear of the cavern and into the tunnel beyond, still running, her lungs burning, her body aching, her vision beginning to fail as small white dots filled the blackness right in front of her eyes. She caught glimpses of the phosphorescent veins of minerals buried in the rock as she sped on and so was not entirely blind to where she was going. But the blindness was coming on as stress and exhaustion threatened, and now she was running from that, as well.

She might have kept running forever had she the strength to match her intent. But she was tiring so quickly, she was beginning to stumble. She fought to keep going, blinded to everything, even to Panterra, who had caught up and was yelling at her to stop.

Then she felt him slam into her, tackling her and bringing her down in a crumpled heap. He crawled on top of her, holding her fast even as she struggled to get up again. His arms encircled her, and he held her to him, lying close, telling her it was all right, they were safe, it was over.

She shook her head violently, sobbing. “It’s not all right! She’s gone! Mistral’s gone! That other woman, that shade, Pancea … Did you see? My grandmother’s just …”

Words failed her, turned to mush, a jumble of sounds that lost coherence. She lapsed into crying jags so deep and long that she was shaking all over and gasping for breath. She couldn’t stop. She tried and couldn’t. Panterra continued to hold her, even when she begged him to let her go. He held on, all the while hushing her, telling her he was there, that he would stay no matter what, that he wouldn’t leave her.

She cried herself out. She couldn’t remember ever crying so hard, not even for her father after he was killed. But for her grandmother, she gave up everything she had, sobbing until she was exhausted and was left lying inert and all but lost to herself in Panterra’s arms on the cold and the damp of the tunnel floor.

“She did it for you,” she heard him say in her ear. “She did it to save you, to give you a chance.”

Was that what had happened? It had ended so quickly, so abruptly,
the thrusting of the Elfstones into her hands, her grandmother’s attack on the Queen of the Dead, the battle between them as the magic exploded out of them both and Mistral yelling at her to run …

Run to where?

Where had she run?

“Let go of me, Pan,” she told the boy. “I’m all right now. I need to sit up. Please, let me go.”

He did so, albeit reluctantly, and she drew herself up and looked around. She had no idea where she was. Except she didn’t think she was in the same tunnel that had brought her to the cavern and her grandmother.

She turned to him, taking a deep, steadying breath. “Do you know where we are? Did you come in this way? I don’t think I did. I don’t recognize anything. Pan?”

He shook his head. “You ran so fast. I just ran after you. I didn’t pay attention to where we were going. But I think you’re right. This isn’t the same tunnel. I came in the same way you did. I just followed your trail until I found you.”

“Through the Belloruusian Arch? You followed me?” She was incredulous. “How did you do that? How did you even know to come here?”

So he told her everything that had happened to him since he had left her all those weeks ago, leaving Arborlon with Sider Ament and going in search of help from the cities and villages to the south. She listened with a mix of awe and disbelief as he related the story of Sider’s death, the passing of the staff, and his own part in taking up the Gray Man’s work and of his efforts at hunting down Arik Siq in order to bring him to Glensk Wood. She was filled with relief at the news that Prue Liss was alive, even though her relief was tempered as she learned further of Prue’s encounter with the King of the Silver River and the burden she had been given to bear as protector of Pan. She found herself wondering how a girl no older than fifteen and no bigger than a minute could possibly do anything to keep a bearer of the black staff safe from the demon that hunted him.

When he finished telling her how Xac Wen had found him and brought him to the Belloruusian Arch, where he had used the magic of the staff to force his way through a gap in the door that led down
below the Ashenell, she put a hand on his cheek and began to cry again. “I hoped you would come for me. I prayed for it. I didn’t think anyone else would—Tasha and Tenerife confined to Aphalion Pass, my whole family dead or missing, Isoeld and her creatures taking control of everything. I didn’t know what to do. I thought if I could find Mistral, she would tell me …”

She caught her breath, stopped talking, and shook her head. “And now Grandmother’s dead, too. I didn’t think anything would ever happen to her. She was so strong. It still doesn’t seem possible.”

She closed her eyes, lips tightened into a thin line. She was dirty and ragged and worn to the bone, and she couldn’t imagine that things had come to this. When she opened her eyes again, the look she gave Panterra was hard and brittle. “If I get out of this alive, if I live to see Isoeld again, she will be the sorriest thing that ever walked.”

“We’ll get out of this. We’ll find a way. Do you still have the Elfstones?”

She had forgotten about them completely. In her panic and desperation, she had lost track of what had become of them. But when she glanced down at her tightly clenched fist she realized she was still gripping the Elfstones.

“We can use them to find our way out,” she said, her voice tired but hopeful. “These are seeking-Stones. Mistral told me what they could do. I can make the magic show us where to go.”

She climbed to her feet, and Pan rose with her. He didn’t look much better than she did, but she was so happy he was there she wouldn’t have cared if he had looked twice as bad. She saw the way he gripped the black staff. It suggested an inner confidence that she had not seen the last time they were together. It suggested that whatever they faced, he was equal to the task.

She gave him a smile. “All right. Let’s see what the Elfstones tell us. Let’s see where we should go.”

When she opened her fingers, the Stones lay glittering in the faint light of the tunnel, their deep blue color alive with an inner glow. She could already feel the magic responding to her, as if it recognized that she was their new owner, their caretaker. She felt its soft heat penetrate her skin and fill her with warmth she remembered from when she’d used the Stones last.

Last, and once only, she reminded herself. She had no real experience
with this magic. She would be testing herself when she called on it now. She must be wary.

She must be respectful of their power.

Mistral had intended the Elfstones for her, had died to give them to her so that she might use them to help the Elves. Phryne still couldn’t imagine how she would do this. But none of that mattered now. What mattered was finding a way out of the underground. Nothing she did would help the Elves until she was back in Arborlon.

She cupped the Stones in her hand, wrapping her fingers about them, feeling them press against her flesh as she closed her eyes and began to picture where it was she wanted to be. She thought of Arborlon first, of its buildings and trees and gardens, of its people old and young. She thought of Tasha and Tenerife. Nothing happened. She shifted her thinking to blue sky and green grasses, to trees and rivers, to the fresh smells she knew from home. She tried to keep her thoughts straight and focused, but she had difficulty doing so. Her mind kept playing tricks on her, shifting from one picture to the next, from people to creatures to plants to places, back and forth. Everything seemed to morph into something else.

But finally the Elfstones responded, their warmth increasing, their magic abruptly surging into her. She opened her eyes as the blue light exploded out of the Stones and flashed down the tunnel’s length, ripping through the darkness for unimaginable distances, piercing a barrier of something that looked to be a thin sheet of clear water, and flashing onward from there to an opening that led out into a forest she did not recognize—the trees old and huge and hoary—before winking out.

“What was that?” Pan asked softly. He’d seen it, too. He looked at her in wonder. “I’ve been everywhere in the valley and never seen a forest like that one. Are you sure about this?”

She almost laughed. “I’m not sure about anything. I’m not sure where we are or where we’re going or how we will get there. I’m not sure that what we just saw is where I asked to go. But the Elfstones say this is what we’re supposed to do.”

“That isn’t how we got here,” he pointed out. “This tunnel, the one the Elfstones showed us? That’s a different way out entirely. Why is that? Why not take us back the way we came?”

“There’s no point in asking me, Pan. I only got to use the Elfstones
one time, when I asked them to find …” She hesitated, realizing what she was about to say. Then she shook her head and dismissed her reticence. “When I asked them to find you—a test Mistral insisted on—they worked fine. But this time, I don’t know.”

She felt a flush creeping up her neck as she admitted she had spied on him, and quickly said, “Maybe they don’t work as well down here, so far underground, so close to the tombs of the Gotrins and their magic. Maybe they don’t respond the same. Or maybe I didn’t ask them in the right way. I don’t know.”

He reached out and closed her fingers back around the Stones. “I think we’ll be all right. Let’s see where this tunnel leads.”

She shoved the Elfstones back into the pouch and the pouch into her pocket, and they set out once more. Movement seemed to help ease her grief. She was still thinking of Mistral, of the way she had just evaporated into nothing, of the loss of the last member of her family. But she was past her shock and despair now, beginning to accept what had happened. She wasn’t sure how strong she was, but she knew that she could function again, that her panic was banished and her common sense restored.

She knew, as well, that while Panterra Qu was with her, she would be stronger still. But she was ambivalent about how that made her feel. She didn’t want to be dependent on anyone at this juncture; she felt she needed to be strong in her own right, able to face up to and respond to the dangerous challenges that threatened without having to rely on someone else. But there was something about the Tracker’s presence—something in his demeanor and attitude—that was reassuring and comforting. She knew she liked him; she had known that from the first time she saw him. But now she was beginning to wonder if what she felt was something more.

Maybe something
much
more.

The thought tweaked at her as they walked, nudging this way and that inside her head, giving rise to possibilities that went way beyond anything she had ever imagined. Some of those possibilities made her blush, but the darkness hid that from the boy. Some gave her pause in a way nothing had for years. She let it all take hold and then released it and washed it away.

It didn’t hurt to consider things that might one day be. Or even things that might never be.

When they had walked for so long that she was almost falling down with fatigue, Pan had them stop. He produced food from the backpack he had carried down from the Ashenell, sharing what he had, giving them both a long rest. While they recovered themselves, he talked of the changes to Prue and the fears he had for her.