Page 94 of Into the West

Sheer weariness kept the rest of it in check.

Silvermoon spread his arms wide. “There are no words for our regret,” he said. “When last we surveyed the Red Forest, it was mostly asleep. We reckoned it would stay that way. We are—” He shook his head. “Sorry is inadequate.”

Anger made him want to lash out, but diplomacy won. Besides, if that damned thing had been tracking them all this time, if they had remained in that wintering spot, they’d all be dead. “I . . . assume you were watching us to see if we were as good as our word.” The words came out flat, but Silvermoon did not seem to take offense.

“Wouldn’t you?” the Hawkbrother asked, wryly.

He couldn’t argue with that.

“I would like to say that we were making sure that you would not encounter anything you couldn’t handle,” Silvermoon continued, “but I would be lying, because we didn’t even consider that would be the case. And after all, we left you with everything you could need. And when that infant Earth Elemental turned up and began helping you, well . . .” He shrugged. “You had more than you’d need, and we watched you to see how you would treat it.”

“Its name is Pebble, and it’s the one I freed when I fled our Capital.” He’d given the brief version of the story to Silvermoon during one of their evenings of talking and sharing information.

Silvermoon nodded. “So this would be its mother.” He glanced at the wall, where the top curve of Mother’s neck was just visible. “I have never, ever, ever, in all my studies, encountered someone who earned the loyalty of a Great Elemental. Not any of them.” Now Silvermoon fixed him with a penetrating gaze, as if he would like very much to read Kordas’s mind.

“Right now, I am a weary man, but I have another duty to do. Two, actually,” as an idea somehow escaped from the depths of his consciousness and presented itself eagerly to him. “You’re welcome to come with me while I speak with Mother.”

“Ah. No, thank you,” Silvermoon temporized. “I think it’s best if she only sees people she knows. Ah . . . good luck. I’ll see you at dusk in the negotiation room.”

And he backed up a little, clearing Kordas’s way to go down to Pebble and Mother.

Somehow, that was the funniest thing Kordas had seen in a long time, and he choked back laughter as he made his way down to the blasted plain.

Well, when you’re dealing with the likes of us, you do want to be careful about the impressions you make.

Silvermoon called after him, clearly meant to be heard by everyone around, “Well fought, King Valdemar.”

As ever, Rose was at Kordas’s elbow as he trudged down to where Mother and Pebble were still grazing lazily. Rose returned his Spitter and pouches—all conspicuously empty—and she resumed her duties of briefing him until they were past the gate. I didn’t even think how she was going to fire this thing, when I gave her my Spitter. I guess she used her thumbs?

Kordas was pretty sure that the Elementals were taking great pains to gobble down even the tiniest bits of the Red Forest. Of course, that wasn’t entirely altruistic on their part; it looked like all the wounds that the Forest had torn in Mother’s sides were completely healed, and he didn’t need mage-sight to tell that both of them had completely replenished any magical energy they had lost—as well as taken the Forest’s.

He had to stop a good distance away from Mother; the heat coming off of her was still quite enough to set fire to anything flammable near her, even though she had dimmed that heat until her surface was a very similar texture to pumice stone, only darker. She and Pebble did not appear to pay any attention to him as he lingered on the edge of the field of ashes and churned up soil around them.

“I came to thank you, Mother,” he called hoarsely.

Slowly, she raised her head. Her eyes had been closed as she “grazed” methodically. Now she opened them, and they were still white-hot. He could feel their blast when she looked at him, and his lips were cracking.

“The thing was Abomination, and needed to be set to rest,” she said, her actual voice sounding like brass gongs. “We owed you debt. Our debt is paid.”

“Seems to me that it was overpaid,” he replied candidly. And he spoke those words knowing he was opening himself up to demands from someone who might ask more of him than he could give.

But she—laughed. “The feast repays all,” she replied. “We shall eat and cleanse this soil, and then go. You will need to make the soil here rich again, or it will grow nothing when we are done with it.”

She must be sterilizing the soil as she sifts through it for bits of the Forest.

“Thank you again,” he managed. And then asked the important question. “Do you see my companion?”

“My child knows your companion,” said Mother. “He knows that your companion and her fellows with you are the Truthseekers, trapped within those bodies.”

“Do you know a way to free them?” he asked.

Rose actually made a sound like a muffled gasp.

“We’ve tried to find a way, but all our studies say that if the glass that contains them is broken, they die. That is woven in the spells that confine them to the glass. But they cannot be freed from the glass without breaking—”

“You did not have me,” Mother interrupted, with the natural arrogance of something as powerful as she was. “No human like you can ever muster the power, or the fire, to melt the enchanted glass they are trapped in. But I can. And I will. For we owe debt to the Truthseekers as well, who did what they could for my child.” Mother didn’t shift her posture, but her eyes redirected to Rose. “Do you want this, Truthseeker?”

“More than anything!” Rose cried, and clasped her mitten-like hands just under her chin—an unconscious, or deliberate, imitation of Delia, he thought. Then she composed herself, and glanced at Kordas. “But—”