The Eternal Flame Read online

  Elli relaxed a little. “How do they know?”

  “Well, the few bards brave enough to have traveled here (always guided by their museos) say that all the dark elves’ towns, schools, farms, and mines are empty now. Even Tressimir and Brionna found no dark elves when they came here—although their trip was cut short when, as Brionna told you, she developed the disease called darkdeath. Which, fortunately for us, only afflicts elves from other parts of Avalon.”

  “Fortunately,” repeated Elli, though she couldn’t help but wonder what other strange ailments existed in this realm.

  Nuic’s tone turned grave. “But one of their mines, as we have learned, is no longer empty. The one where Kulwych is hiding.”

  Elli’s expression hardened. “He’ll soon be having visitors. That is, if we can just find that library with the maps.”

  The sprite grinned almost imperceptibly. “My memory isn’t what it used to be, nowadays. But I seem to remember that the library building had a huge dome and a row of flagpoles out front.”

  “Nuic, you are amazing.”

  “Hmmmpff. Amazingly foolish, more like it. Why else would I have followed you into this mess?”

  Elli answered by striding resolutely toward the gap in the wall. With every step, though, the truth became clearer: This was no longer a wall, and what it bordered was no longer a city. This was a wasteland.

  Toppled stone towers, smashed remains of statues, and scattered tiles lay everywhere. To pass through what was left of the gates, Elli needed to climb over a pair of fallen columns, their intricately decorated surfaces hacked to bits. Then she skirted to one side to avoid a teetering pile of stones and metal—all that remained, she guessed, of a guardhouse.

  Inside the gates, the devastation continued. Although many of the city’s buildings still stood, several had been completely demolished. And even those still standing had been mutilated, especially those that had once displayed artistic tile work or elegant facades. Holding Nuic securely, she made her way down what had once been broad avenues paved with colorful tiles. Yet now, instead of throngs of people, the streets held only rubble from battered buildings, broken torches, smashed windows—and, she shuddered to find, hundreds of skeletons.

  Bones, gray and brittle, lay all around. No matter where she turned, her crystal’s light would shine upon someone’s cracked skull, twisted leg bones, or contorted hand bones that had been frozen, clutching empty air, in the throes of death. It was hard to avoid stepping on bones, too, as she discovered when her foot landed with a sickening crunch on someone’s rib. Skeletons poked out from under toppled stones, lay in heaps on the sides of streets, and draped from open windows.

  Down the avenues Elli wandered, alert for crumbling walls that could fall at any moment. Ceaselessly, she looked for any building that might be the library. But she saw no trace of a dome or flags—which made her wonder whether they lay somewhere in the surrounding wreckage.

  After taking several turns, they came to an intersection of nine streets; in the center, a ring of pillars had once stood. Although the pillars were now just a mound of rubble, from beneath them came a faint glow of green light.

  Before she could even ask, the sprite answered her question. “Yes, that’s all that’s left of the portal.” He clacked his tongue in dismay. “Such imbeciles! To destroy a building is one thing. But to destroy a portal, your realm’s best link to the outside world, is quite another.”

  “Why, though? What made them do it?”

  “Hmmmpff. The answers to those questions died with the dark elves. It’s part of the mystery of why this city was destroyed, something I’m afraid we will never understand.”

  Elli moved on, following yet another avenue to yet another junction. She turned down a new street, skirted a heap of skeletons—then spotted something that made her freeze. A row of poles lined one side of the street. Although several of them were broken, and only a few tatters remained of their banners, there could be no mistake that once they had been flagpoles. Nuic gripped her forearm with his tiny hand.

  She edged closer. There, in the crystal’s penetrating light, she could make out some stone steps behind the poles. They led up to a building, squarish and quite large. Then, as she started to climb the steps, she glimpsed the outline of a great dome.

  The library! Despite all the debris, Elli practically bounded up the steps. She swerved to avoid a mass of broken tiles—the remains, perhaps, of a colorful mural—and reached the top. Three steps later, she stood at the building’s entrance.

  Since the immense iron door had been wrenched off its hinges and cast aside, she strode right through. Her heart raced with the anticipation of finding the map they needed. But at the instant she placed one foot inside the building, a sharp voice rang out.

  “Stop right there! Or die.”

  She halted, glancing down at Nuic. The sprite’s expression, as well as his completely black color, told her what she already sensed. That voice from the shadows belonged to a dark elf.

  9 • Always Hungry

  Elli mustered her courage. She peered at the toppled shelves of books, smashed statues, and mutilated tile work that lay everywhere in the ancient library. Then, trying her best to keep her voice steady, she called into the darkness beyond her crystal’s ring of light.

  “We mean no harm,” she declared. “Don’t attack us.”

  “Everyone in this city means harm,” retorted the harsh, menacing voice. In a still more threatening tone, it added, “Unless you leave this instant, you shall stay here forever.”

  That final forever echoed around the ruined library, repeating for several seconds until at last it died away. For a long moment there was no sound at all within the vast, domed chamber. Elli’s mind raced, but she couldn’t think of anything to say or do. She just stood there, completely motionless except for the fingers that tugged nervously on her own curls.

  It was Nuic’s crusty voice that broke the silence. To Elli’s astonishment, he said quite casually, “All right then, kill us. But if you do, you’ll never find out why we came to this library.”

  Elli stared down at him in disbelief. But the old sprite merely smirked back at her. Another weighty silence ensued, broken only by the sound of a single piece of tile falling from the ceiling onto a heap of leather-bound books.

  Suddenly something stirred. From deep in the recesses of the library, far beyond the crystal’s glow, came the sound of slow, trudging steps. It drew nearer and nearer, never pausing, its pace much less hurried than that of Elli’s pounding heart.

  “What have you done?” she whispered angrily to her maryth.

  He continued to smirk, though he also gave her an infuriatingly casual wink.

  A shadowy figure reached the edge of the light. Elli took a breath, ready for the worst—then released it in a surprised sigh. For the figure wasn’t at all what she had expected.

  It was, in fact, just an elderly fellow. Very elderly, from the looks of him. White hair, as thick as a bed of ferns, sprang in all directions from his head, almost obscuring his pointed ears. In one hand, he clasped a pair of thin, leather-bound volumes covered with dust. His back was severely bent, making his black tunic billow around his chest. But Elli could see that, like Brionna, he had the slim and wiry frame common to elves. His eyes, though, were much larger than Brionna’s, practically the size of a hen’s eggs. And Elli could see no malice in those large, silvery gray eyes.

  Just intelligence. And something more—something like curiosity. Although he couldn’t bear to look directly at Elli’s glowing crystal, he didn’t seem to fear it, as had the death dreamer. Rather, he seemed genuinely intrigued by its light. And by the strangers who had brought illumination back into this chamber. He edged a bit closer, peering at them curiously with his large eyes.

  “If you truly come in peace,” he declared, “you are welcome here.” His voice, while grinding like a cart wheel on stones, didn’t sound malevolent anymore. “I must beg your pardon for the rudeness of my g
reeting, but I have endured many perilous times.”

  Glancing down at Nuic, Elli shot him a glance that seemed to ask, How did you ever guess?

  To which the sprite responded with a roll of his liquid purple eyes. She could almost hear his voice: How did you ever doubt me?

  The elf bobbed his white head, still not looking directly at the source of light. “Grikkolo is my name. I welcome you to my realm.”

  “And also,” Nuic added, “to your library. This is your library, isn’t it?”

  A grin, both ironic and sad, spread over Grikkolo’s wrinkled face. He hefted the pair of books in his hand, then tapped one cover as gently as a parent would tap the forehead of a baby. Slowly, he drew a deep breath of the air of this room—air that smelled richly of leather bindings, handmade paper, and centuries of dust.

  “As a youth, I was always hungry, deeply hungry—though not for food. For information! I was so curious to learn, I loved no place more than this library. So I studied diligently, worked very hard, and finally won the position of Apprentice Librarian, Linguistics Collection. Yet I realized that even that was not enough.” His enormous eyes sparkled. “I yearned to live here all the time, doing nothing but reading these books for the rest of my days.”

  “And then,” finished Nuic, “the war came—and you got your wish.”

  “Yes,” answered the elf gravely, his grin vanishing. “That is true. Now I have lived here, in hiding, for many years. Too many: over one hundred, by my count. Thanks to my elvish sight, I can see in the darkness—well enough to read, and plant my own little garden for food. But I dare not go far from this building, in case any warriors are still lurking in the city.”

  Elli cocked her head sympathetically. “You must be very lonely.”

  For the first time, he glanced right at her. Though he quickly turned away again, Elli could see that his expression was one of shock. “Lonely? How could anyone be lonely amidst so many stories, so many languages?” He shook his wild head of hair. “Lonely is the very last thing I am!”

  Grikkolo waved both his hands at the library. “I have friends, thousands and thousands of them, in every part of this building. Those ignorant warriors may have destroyed the shelves, the murals, and the display cases. But they left the only thing that really matters.” He waved the volumes that he was holding. “The books themselves.”

  Nuic’s color shifted to a thoughtful shade of blue. “Not the only thing. They left something else that matters.”

  The old elf tilted his head, clearly puzzled.

  “A librarian.”

  Grikkolo’s sad grin returned. “They left me plenty of work, organizing and repairing volumes, that is certain. More work than I could accomplish in several lifetimes! Yet perhaps one librarian, even a doddering and forgetful one, is better than none.” Then the light of curiosity returned to his eyes. “Would you tell me now why you came here?”

  “Yes,” Elli answered. “But first, would you tell us something briefly? Just why was your city destroyed?”

  Wrinkles seemed to multiply on the old fellow’s face. Looking suddenly more frail than ever, he set down his books and leaned back against a pair of shelves that had collapsed together. His weight knocked several more books to the floor, sending up a spiral of dust. He hesitated a long moment before finally starting to speak.

  “First you must imagine the city as it was. A center of learning, of art and music and story—that was Dianarra, the City of Light. It was built here by people from the stars, people with bodies of fire, whose very wings were aflame.”

  Elli lifted her eyebrows in surprise.

  “Ayanowyn was their name,” the elf explained. “Or, in our Common Tongue, fire angels. They gave us many gifts—more, I fear, than we deserved. They not only built much of this city, they covered its buildings and streets with dazzling tiles of every color, made from the heat of their own flames.”

  He pushed some stray white hairs off his brow. “And they also gave us the gift of light. Torches flamed everywhere in Dianarra—which, to those people, meant City of Fallen Stars. Their goal, you see, was to bring the brightest of light to the darkest of realms.”

  The librarian paused, casting his gaze around the room that held uncounted volumes. “That was why they gave to Lastrael the brightest light of all. Stories. Tales from every land, even some from beyond the Seven Realms. Legends and mysteries, mournful ballads and romantic poems—these filled Dianarra, just as storytellers stood on every street corner and mural painters decorated every wall. It was those stories, and the many bards and performers and scribes who came here to learn them, that brought this city its greatest days.”

  His face turned grim. “And also its downfall.”

  Glumly, he shook his head. “There were always dark elves who resented the City of Light. They feared its power—and even more, the power of its stories. Suspicious of outside influence, they longed for the bygone times of quiet darkness. Of isolation from all these foreign myths, customs, and ideas. And in our arrogance, those of us who cherished the wider world simply ignored those who disagreed, deriding their foolishness but never trying to help them understand the beauties beyond our borders.”

  He exhaled a sorrowful breath. “Finally, they attacked Dianarra. The battle raged on, growing more brutal with every atrocity. At the beginning, I fought as best I could with those who defended our city and all it stood for. But in time I could see that Dianarra would fall. When the portal, Lastrael’s only one, was destroyed, I fled into the deepest part of the library and hid there.”

  Hanging his head, he lamented, “I am nothing more than a coward, a terrible coward! I should have given my life to my city. To my realm.” He wrung his wrinkled hands. “Yet I just could not bring myself to do that.”

  His voice now just a raspy whisper, he added, “For this was a war that no one could win. And that was just how it ended. Both armies lost. Dianarra lost. The lovely dark and the inspiring light—both of them also lost.”

  The lovely dark, Elli repeated to herself. Just what he meant by that phrase, she wasn’t sure. Yet she did feel sure that, despite all she had believed, there remained some genuine goodness here in Shadowroot.

  She stepped over to Grikkolo, some broken bits of tile cracking under her weight. Gently, she rested her hand against the back of his neck, hoping to comfort him.

  In time, the old elf raised his head. Although he couldn’t look at her directly, she glimpsed the gratitude in his silvery gray eyes. Then, as his curiosity returned to the fore, he asked, “Now tell me. What brought you here? And what, may I ask, is that light you carry?”

  Quickly as she could, Elli explained everything: the darkened stars, the corrupted crystal, and the overwhelming plight of Avalon. As she spoke, Grikkolo listened in rapt attention, his expression graver by the minute. When, at last, she told him about the crystal of élano that she wore, his wide eyes opened even wider.

  “All we know,” she concluded, “is that Kulwych is hiding underground, in the deepest mine he could find.”

  “That would be Borvo Lugna,” Grikkolo commented. “It is deep, very deep. And also large enough to hold whatever army he might be assembling, with plenty of iron for forging weapons.”

  Elli traded glances with the sprite in her arm. “How far,” she asked, “is it from here?”

  “A full day’s walk. If you know the way, of course.”

  “Which is why we came here,” she explained. “To find a map.”

  “That will not be necessary,” declared the elf. He pushed away from the shelves where he’d been resting and stood as straight as his back allowed. Facing the doorway to the library, he added with determination: “For I shall take you there myself.”

  Elli blinked in surprise. Then slowly she smiled, realizing how much this would help them find their way across the realm of darkness. “You would really do that?”

  Grikkolo nodded at the doorway. “While many years have passed since I left this place, I still remember we
ll the pathways of my youth.” He stood even more erect. “And this time, in this battle, I will be no coward.”

  10 • Palimyst

  The huge, hunchbacked monster stared down at Tamwyn, who lay helpless on the grass. The creature’s tongue licked the lips of his snout, while his immense hairy arms reached toward the young man. Even if Tamwyn had been standing, this monster would have towered over him, much like a tree over a fallen branch.

  Indeed, the giant creature did resemble a tree—one covered with shaggy brown hair instead of leaves. His one enormous leg, as thick as an oak, furthered this impression. As did his burly, branchlike arms. Only the two dark eyes above his snout, glinting mysteriously, seemed to belong to a different sort of being.

  Just then the monster roared, a wrathful blast of sound that flattened the grass. The pair of drumalings who had been pursuing Tamwyn had already stopped short when they saw the hairy giant. Now they turned and hurried away, their roots slamming against the ground.

  Meanwhile, the huge beast’s hands, each with seven long fingers, opened toward Tamwyn. He knew that in another instant they would close around his neck or crush his skull. There wasn’t time to grab his dagger or his staff, let alone try to escape.

  I’m sorry, Elli. So very—

  The long fingers reached him. But instead of wrapping around his neck or his skull, they grabbed his shoulders—and lifted him straight up into the air. Tamwyn struggled, trying with all his might to wriggle free before the creature could eat him. From the size of that snout, it would take only a few bites. Yet as hard as he tried to break free, he only felt the fingers’ grip tighten.

  The hunchbacked giant studied him, dark eyes gleaming. Then, just as Tamwyn expected to see the jaws open wide, he saw instead the creature’s lips curl into a quite human expression of puzzlement. At the same time, Tamwyn suddenly heard the creature’s thoughts, spoken in a rich bass voice.