Leaves of Flame

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.

Their shamans knew of it ages ago, would come to the Heart to speak to the forest, to commune with the Lands. Until the Shadows found them. The dwarren did not come again after that, the cost too high, until they realized that the Summer Tree had freed them from the Shadows’ threat.

But come. There are more important things to discuss. The Faelehgre have been awaiting your arrival.

Colin wanted to ask more-he found the news that the dwarren communed with the heart of the forest unsettling and heartening; perhaps he was not as alone in his struggles as he had thought-but as he began descending the stairs, moving toward the Well and the intoxicating scent of the Lifeblood it contained, he realized