All three turned at the approach of the Border-man and the girl, startled.
“No! Go back!” Bremen cried on seeing them.
But Mareth raced up the stairs and onto the lower landing with a sudden burst of speed, leaving a surprised Kinson behind. She planted her feet and hunched down within her clothing like a coiled spring. Her hands came up, her arms stretched wide, and her palms turned upward as if to beseech help from the heavens.
Kinson exhaled in dismay and rushed after her. What was she doing? The monster closest to the girl hissed in warning, whirled, and came at her, bounding down the stairs as swift as thought, claws extended. Kinson cried out in anger. He was still too faraway!
Then Mareth simply exploded. There was a huge, booming cough, and the shock wave threw Kinson against the wall. He lost sight of Mareth, Bremen, and the creatures. Fire burst upward from where Mareth had been standing, a blue streak that burned white-hot. It ripped into the closest creature and tore it apart. Then it found the second, where it was closing on Bremen, and bore it away, a leaf upon the wind. The creature shrieked in dismay and was consumed. The fire raced on, burning along the stone walls and stairs, swallowing the air and turning it to smoke.
Kinson shielded his eyes and struggled to his feet. The fire disappeared, gone in an instant. Only the smoke remained, thick clouds of it filling the stairwell. Kinson charged up the steps and found Mareth collapsed on the landing. He lifted her, cradling her limp body. What had happened to her? What had she done? She was as light as a feather, her small features pale and streaked with soot, her short dark hair a damp helmet about her face. Her eyes were half-closed and staring. Through the slits, he could see they had turned white. He bent close. She didn’t seem to be breathing.
He couldn’t find a pulse.
Bremen appeared abruptly before him, materializing out of the haze, disheveled and wild-eyed. “Take her out of here!” he shouted.
“But I don’t think she’s ...” he tried to argue.
“Quick, Kinson!” Bremen cut him short. “Now, if you want to save her, get out of the Keep! Go!”
Kinson turned without a word and hastened down the stairs, Mareth in his arms, Bremen trailing in a ragged swirl of torn robes. Down through the Keep they stumbled, coughing and choking on the smoke, eyes tearing. Then Bremen heard something rumbling in the earth beneath. It was the sound of something waking, something huge and angry, something so vast it was unimaginable.
“Run!” Bremen cried once more, needlessly.
Together, the Borderman and the Druid fled through the smoky gloom of dead Paranor toward daylight and life.
The Search for the Black Elfstone.
Chapter Eight
After leaving Bremen, Tay Trefenwyd proceeded west along the Mermidon through the mountains that formed the southern arm of the Dragon’s Teeth. Sunset arrived, and he camped for the night still within their shelter, then set out again at daybreak. The new day was clear and mild, last night’s winds having swept the land clean, the sun dazzling. The Elf worked his way down out of the foothills to the grasslands below the Streleheim and prepared to cross. Ahead, he could see the forests of the Westland, and beyond, their tips coated in white, the peaks of the Rock Spur. Arborlon was another day’s walk, so he traveled at a leisurely pace, his thoughts occupied by all that had happened since Bremen’s arrival at Paranor.
Tay Trefenwyd had known Bremen for almost fifteen years, longer even than Risca. He had met him at Paranor, before his banishment, Tay newly arrived from Arborlon, a Druid in training. Bremen had been old even then, but with a harder edge to his personality and a sharper tongue as well. Bremen in those days had been a firebrand burning with truths self-evident to him but incomprehensible to everyone else. The Druids at Paranor had dismissed him as being just this side of mad. Kahle Rese and one or two others valued his friendship and listened patiently to what he had to say, but the rest mostly looked for ways to avoid him.
Not Tay. From the first moment they met, Tay had been mesmerized. Here was someone who believed it was important—even necessary—to do more than talk about the problems of the Four Lands. It wasn’t sufficient simply to study and converse on issues; it was necessary to act on them as well. Bremen believed that the old ways were better, that the Druids of the First Council had been right in involving themselves in the progress of the Races. Noninvolvement was a mistake that would end up costing everyone dearly. Tay understood and believed. Like Bremen, he studied the old lore, the ways of the faerie creatures, and the uses of magic in the world before the Great Wars. Like Bremen, he accepted that power once subverted was twice as deadly, and that the rebel Druid Brona lived on in another form and would return again to subvert the Four Lands. It was an unpopular and dangerous view, and in the end it cost Bremen his place among the Druids.
But before that happened, he made an ally of Tay. The two formed an immediate bond, and the older man took the younger for his pupil, a teacher with a store of knowledge so vast that it defied cataloging. Tay did the tasks and completed the studies that were assigned him by the Council and his elders, but his spare time and enthusiasm were reserved almost exclusively for Bremen. Though exposed from an early age to the peculiar history and lore of their race, few of the Elves at Paranor who had taken up the Druid pledge were as open as Tay to the possibilities that Bremen suggested. But then, few were as talented. Tay had begun to master his magic skills even before he arrived at Paranor, but under Bremen’s tutelage he progressed so rapidly that soon no one, save his mentor, was his equal. Even Risca, after his arrival, never reached the level that Tay attained, too wedded, perhaps, to his martial skills to embrace fully the concept that magic was an even more potent weapon.
Those first five years were exciting ones for the young Elf, and his thinking was shaped irrevocably by what he learned. Most of the skills he mastered and the knowledge he gained he kept secret, forced to do so by the Druid ban against personal involvement in the use of magic except as an abstract study. Bremen thought the ban foolish and misguided, but he was in the minority always, and at Paranor the Council’s decisions governed all. So Tay studied privately the lore that Bremen was willing to share, keeping it close to his heart and concealed from other eyes. When Bremen was exiled and chose to travel west to the Elves to pursue his studies there, Tay asked to go, too. But Bremen said no, not forbidding, but requesting that he reconsider. Risca was of a like mind, but for both there were more important tasks, the old man argued. Stay at Paranor and be my eyes and ears. Work to master your skills and to persuade others that the danger of which I have warned is real. When it is time for you to leave, I will come back for you.
So he had, five days earlier—and Tay and Risca and the young Healer Mareth had escaped in time. But the others, all those he had tried to convince, all those who had doubted and scorned, probably had not. Tay did not know for certain, of course, but he felt in his heart that the vision Bremen had revealed to them had already come to pass. It would be days before the Elves could verify the truth, but Tay believed that the Druids were gone.
Either way, his leaving with Bremen marked the end of his time at Paranor. Whether the Druids were dead or alive, he would not return now. His place was out in the world, doing the things that Bremen had argued they must do if the Races were to survive. The Warlock Lord had come out of hiding, revealed to those who had eyes to see and instincts to heed, and he was coming south. The Northland and the Trolls were his already, and now he would attempt to subjugate the other Races. So each of them— Bremen, Risca, Mareth, Kinson Ravenlock, and himself—must be held accountable. Each must stand and fight on what ground was given.