The aeriads led them with whispered encouragement, leading them through the forest, between the massive old trees, down the ravines and across the ridges, over the rocky outcroppings and around the steep drops. The path was circuitous and unknowable, a thread that no one who hadn't traveled it many times before could hope to find. Pen could not explain it, but he had the curious feeling that it might not even be possible to travel the same path twice, that it might somehow be different each time. Even though comprised of earth and rock, streams and trees—solid, knowable things—that place felt as if it were ephemeral and ever shifting. There was a changeling quality to it, a mutability that turned it from solid to liquid, from a terrain of the physical toa dreamscape of the mind. Pen had the feeling that it wasn't a place you could go to if you weren't a guest of its maker.
It was a place, he thought suddenly, in which the King of the Silver River would feel at home.
He began to hear humming then, soft and insistent. He thought it was the wind at first, weaving through the branches of the trees, vibrating the leaves, but there didn't seem to be any wind. Then the humming changed to singing, the nature of the words indistinct but the sound clear and compelling.
«Cinnaminson?» he whispered.
She was smiling. «The aeriads are singing, Pen.»
He listened to them, to the strange, echoing voices that seemed to come from both inside and outside his head, rising and falling in regular cadence, the sounds repeating, over and over.
«Can you understand them?» he asked, leaning close and speaking softly, afraid that his voice might do something to disturb the song, might break its spell.
She shook her head. «Isn't it beautiful? It makes me want to sing with them.»
They continued on through the trees, deep into the forest, far away from the ravine and the thing that dwelled within it. Night had descended, and the world was a mix of tiny pieces of starlit sky glimpsed through breaks in the canopy. Pen could not be certain how far they had come, but it seemed much farther than should have been possible. The pinnacle, though large, was of a finite distance, certainly no more than a quarter of a mile across. Even allowing for all the climbing up and down and detours over rocky terrain, they shouldn't have been able to travel so far without reaching the opposite side.
But they walked on anyway, the time passing, the night settling in, silent and soft, the air warming, the light from moon and stars growing steadily brighter. After a time, Pen dropped Cinnaminson's hand, no longer afraid for her or himself, willing to believe that they had found a haven from the dangers that had tracked them for so many days. It was a conclusion based on a feeling, not rational cause.
But it felt as real to him as the earth he walked and the trees he navigated, and that was enough.
Finally, long after the moon had risen and they had walked well beyond any distance it should have taken to cross the pinnacle, the aeriads, who had been singing all the while, went suddenly still.
-Wait–Pen and Cinnaminson did so, taking hands again without looking at each other, an act of reassurance that had become as familiar and comforting to them as a childhood hug. All about them, the ancient forest had gone still, the silence deep and penetrating, a presence as real as the sky and earth.
Ahead, a sudden, unexpected brightness shone through the trees, as if the moon had broken through the thick forest canopy to light a place previously hidden from view.
-Come
They went forward once more, drawn by the invisible presence of the aeriads, trusting to fate and their invisible guides. Pen felt a strange sense of calmness, a peace of mind he hadn't known since Patch Run. Everything would be all right, he knew. Whatever awaited, everything would be all right.
Then they stepped from the trees into a clearing awash with moonlight. The canopy of the trees had pulled back, opening to the heavens as if in deference to the ancient tree that sat at the very center. It was massive by any standard, its trunk thick and gnarled and its limbs twisted and broad, lending it an otherworldly, surreal look among even the largest and strangest of the old growth that surrounded it. The moonlight revealed it clearly, particularly the odd colors that infused its bark and leaves—the former a peculiar mix of mottled black and gray, the latter deepest green bordered in bright orange. Pen could see the colors clearly, even in the darkness. He could see the way they mingled with each other, forming a strange pattern that glimmered against the deep black backdrop of the starry sky.
He had found the tanequil.
He had seen it only once, in the flare of the vision revealed by the Elfstones weeks before, when Ahren Elessedil had used the magic in the Elven village of Emberen to make certain that rinding the tree was an attainable goal. He had seen it then, but the vision was nothing compared to what he was seeing in front of him. No vision could adequately capture the size and majesty of that giant. No vision could reveal how it made him feel to stand before it, dwarfed by its size and the sum of its years.
Dwarfed, he thought suddenly, by its intelligence.
He blinked in shocked surprise. He could feel the tanequil watching him. He felt it considering him, deciding what it would do with him now that he was there. It was a wild, irrational conclusion, one couched in premonition. Nevertheless, he was convinced of it. The tanequil was watching.
«Pen, I have to go now,' Cinnaminson said suddenly, releasing his hand and stepping away. Her milky eyes shifted blindly. «The aeriads say I must go.»
«Go where?» He was suddenly afraid. He wasn't sure if he was afraid for her or for himself, — he only knew that he didn't want to be separated from her. «Why do you have to go?»
«So that you can be alone. So that you can do what you came here to do.» Her smile was quick and dazzling, lighting up her face in a way that rendered her instantly beautiful. «The aeriads are going to show me what they look like. They brought me here so that I could see them. I won't be long.»
He stared at her helplessly. «I don't want you to leave.»
Her eyes shifted again, searching the space between them, making it seem as if she were trying to find a way to reach him. «You came to find the tanequil, Pen. You have done so. Make something good come out of that. Find what you need to help your aunt.»
She hesitated a moment longer, then turned away. «I am coming,' she said to the air, to something only she could hear. Her head lifted slightly. «Good luck, Pen.»
He watched her disappear into the trees, sylphlike, a shadow quickly lost in the changing mix of light and dark, swallowed whole.
«Good luck,' he echoed back, and was alone.
He stood motionless in front of the tanequil for a long time, unsure of where or how to begin, of what to do. The tree would give him one of its branches, if he could find a way to persuade it to do so. The branch could be shaped into something called a darkwand, if he could figure out how. The darkwand would give him access to the Forbidding and allow him to find and retrieve his imprisoned aunt and bring her home again, if he could reach Paranor and pass through the portal created by the potion called liquid night.
If. That word was everywhere. It loomed all about him like an impenetrable wall.
What should he do?
He waited some more, half hoping that the tree would try to communicate with him, that it would take the initiative and show him a way to speak with it. But after standing in front of it for what seemed an interminable amount of time, he gave up hoping. The effort to communicate would have to come from him. He was the supplicant, — he was the one who was going to have to find a way to break through.
He had communicated with the aeriads just by speaking aloud. Would that work with the tanequil, as well?
«My name is Penderrin Ohmsford,' he said. «Can you understand what I am saying?»
He felt foolish speaking that way, and he knew as soon as the words were out that there wasn't going to be any response. The tanequil was different from the aeriads. He was going to have to find a different way of speaking to it.
He walked up to the tree and placed his hands on its bark, running them slowly over the hard, rough surface. He was surprised at the warmth he found there, a pulsating heat that radiated outward to spread through his own body. He kept his hands in place as the heat entered him, thinking that might be the beginning of a way to connect.
But nothing more happened.
He took his hands away, staring upward into the thick nest of intertwined limbs. The orange–tipped leaves shimmered in the moonlight overhead, a rippling that reminded him of a sunset's glow on the surface of the
