Chapter 2

“Thank you for being willing to talk to me again,” Ellerie said to Ariadne. She spoke in Western, since that was the most recent language the woman had been given by the necklace. It seemed it could only handle one at a time.

Ariadne gave a curt nod of her head. Their previous conversation, several days earlier, hadn’t gone well. After only a few questions from Ellerie and Bobo, the Chosar woman had stood up and stalked away, refusing to say anything more. She’d returned to hiking around the mountain and wandering through the ancient ruins inside, not speaking to anyone unless she had to. Ellerie had decided to try again with just the two of them, hoping that having fewer people around would help. Bobo had reluctantly agreed.

When Ariadne didn’t say anything, Ellerie spoke again. “The last time we talked, it seemed like you were suggesting that all the Tirs belonged to the Chosar. Is that right? Except for Terrillia and Tyrsall, I mean?”

“Of course,” Ariadne said. “Who else could build them? We had to build Tir Sal for the humans—they don’t know shaping magic. Tir Illia isn’t even a real Tir. The elves just built their homes in the trees, like they always do.”

Shaping magic was mentioned frequently in one of the books Ellerie had found in the ruins, but she didn’t ask about it. She didn’t want to let herself get distracted from the topic at hand.

“The wood elves build homes in trees,” she said instead. “What about silver elves? Nilvasta?”

“I do not know these words. What are silver elves?”

Ellerie ran her fingers through her silvery hair, holding it out to the side of her head. “Like me. The silver elves used to live among the tershaya, just like the wood elves. Did they still do so when you knew them?”

“Some hybrids have hair like that,” Ariadne said.

“Hybrids? What’s a hybrid?”

“The necklace doesn’t give a word for it in this language. Elves with some human or Chosar blood in their past.”

Ellerie drew in a sharp breath. The most commonly accepted theory among her people was that the nilvasta had lost the tree bond because they couldn’t get the tershaya trees to grow, and there was always pressure among the great houses to keep trying. Some scholars, though, had opened themselves up to ridicule by suggesting it was because there was too much human blood in their ancestry. Ariadne’s statement alone wouldn’t confirm it, but it made the second option more likely.

“Were there many hybrids in your time? What do you know about them?”

Ariadne glared at her. “I’m here to learn what happened to my people. Not to tell you what happened to yours.”

Ellerie managed to keep from snapping at the woman. The origin of the nilvasta was important, but if she’d been in Ariadne’s place, she, too, would have been desperate about news of her own people. Luckily, dealing with Marco had been a lesson in patience.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Let me tell you what I know, and then if you tell me more, perhaps we can find where the two ends meet.”

Ariadne considered that for a moment before nodding. “Agreed.”

Ellerie considered where to begin. “Have you ever heard of the phrase the first peoples? Or the Ancients?”

“No.”

“Those are words used by modern scholars to refer to what we think might be your people, and possibly to others who were around at the same time. You know of humans and elves, but you’ve said you aren’t familiar with stoneborn, right? Or seaborn or stormborn?”

“Your short friend is stoneborn, yes? The one with the beard? Boktar?”

“Yes. And Sarette is stormborn.”

“Treya told me.”

“But you’ve never seen their kinds before?”

“No.”

“What about lizardfolk?”

Ariadne tilted her head to the side. “Lizards who are like people?”

“Yes. They’re from the southern tip of Aravor.”

“We haven’t fully explored the southern half of Aravadora yet. There is still much to claim in the north, and the demons have delayed our plans.”

“That’s the war you mentioned? The Third Demon War?” The idea of demons crossing the barriers between worlds in numbers vast enough to wage war was frightening. In all her reading, Ellerie had never heard of anything like it. Individual demons might cross from time to time, but even groups as small as the one they’d fought in High Cove were rare.

Ariadne nodded.

“So there were two other wars with the demons before that?”

“The war is over and done with, elf,” the Chosar woman said, her eyes narrowing. “Talking about it doesn’t help me find my people.”

Ellerie grimaced. “I’m sorry. Have you ever heard of something called the Burning?”

“No.”

“We’re not sure what it was, but we think the Burning is what caused your people to leave Tir Yadar. That’s just a guess, though. We don’t know for sure.”

Ariadne stood to leave. “You don’t know much. This was a waste of time.”

“Wait!” Ellerie said. “We can still help each other.”

“How?”

“There has to be a clue that’ll let us figure out what happened. Like the reason why you’ve never heard of the stoneborn or seaborn. The stormborn I can understand—their own histories say they were created later—but the stoneborn are too widespread here in Cordaea for you to have missed them. Did they come here after your people were gone? Are humans and elves really the only other people you knew of?”

Ariadne shrugged. “The scourlings, if they count.” She sat down again.

“Scourlings? Who are they?”

“They inhabit Donvar, but we don’t know much about them. No one’s gotten a close look at them and lived. Our sailors can see them at a distance from our ships, and say they sometimes walk on two legs like a person, but if the ships get too close, the scourlings swarm them and kill everyone onboard. When I was young, we sent an expeditionary force, but they never returned. We stay clear of Donvar now.”

“I’ve never heard of them before, or of a place called Donvar.”

“You should avoid it. As soon as we’ve recovered from the war, the High Guard will deal with—” Ariadne stopped talking suddenly. Looking off into the distance, she took in a slow, deep breath, then let it out even more slowly. “The High Guard had planned to deal with them. I wonder if they ever got the chance.”

Ellerie gave her a moment to recover, then said, “Do you know anything else about the scourlings?”

“Why do you keep asking these questions? How does it help?”

“If we want to find out where your people are, we have to determine where they’re not. And who they’re not. Can you breathe underwater?”

Ariadne blinked. “What? No, of course not.”

“You remind me of the seaborn, but they can breathe underwater. Do all your people have brown hair?”

“No, not all, but it’s common.”

“The seaborn—at least the ones that I’ve met—all have brown hair, but it turns lighter the longer it’s been underwater. Does your hair do that?”

“No. You think my people changed into something else? These seaborn?”

“If my people can change, perhaps yours can as well.” Ellerie found herself wanting to give the other woman some reason to believe her people had continued on rather than being lost forever.

“The Chosar can’t breathe underwater, hybrid or not.”

“I’m just saying that if they did change somehow, that would explain why I haven’t heard any stories of your people still being around. Or, for that matter, maybe they simply sailed farther away. I barely know anything about Cordaea or Vestath, much less the lands on the other side of the world. When we get to Aencyr, we could find a map of all the seas and you can show me where the Chosar settlements were.”

Ariadne looked down for a moment, not speaking. Then she stood up again. “You can’t help me, can you? You don’t know anything. Always you want to know more from me, while you tell me nothing but guesses.”

“How do you expect me to figure it out when you’re barely willing to speak to me, and you leave any time you don’t like what you hear?” Ellerie retorted, unable to keep her temper in check any longer. “The more I know, the more I’ll be able to help.”

Ariadne hesitated, then gave a small nod. “Perhaps. We’ll see.” She turned to leave.

“Wait—we’re missing something from the storage room. A small, green bracelet made of jade. Did you take it?”

The Chosar woman whirled back around, her eyes flashing with anger. “You come here and you loot my city, and then you call me the thief?”

“I didn’t call you a thief! If you took it, that’s fine. I just want to know why.”

“What I do is none of your concern, elf.” She strode away.

Ellerie sighed.

At least this conversation had gone better than their last one.

The barrens weren’t completely barren. The frequent rain supported the growth of scattered weeds and scrawny bushes, and grasses sometimes grew near the streams and rivers.

There was more life in the river itself, Shavala found, as she sat on the bank with her eyes closed, her elder senses stretched out in all directions. Not as much life as a regular river, but more than was indicated by the surroundings. There were algae and mosses, and underwater species of worms and snails. There were even a few fish in the deeper, darker waters in the middle of the river.

She decided not to mention the fish to anyone else. There weren’t enough to support any amount of fishing, and her friends were growing tired of trail rations. Perhaps Leena could buy some already-cooked fish the next time she visited Aencyr.

Shavala hadn’t had any luck so far in figuring out why the land was mostly dead. The dirt was packed too hard to be welcoming to new plants taking root, and it only partially softened during the frequent storms, but that wasn’t the reason. The ground was like that because there was so little plant life, not the other way around.

“Why does nothing grow here?” she asked the staff, which she was holding across her lap. “There’s water to support life, but there’s hardly any life.” There was no response. The staff hadn’t communicated with her in any way since stopping her from helping during the battle.

She turned her attention back to the task at hand. Could the land be barren simply because the normal cycles of life had been interrupted for so long that the ecosystem couldn’t repair itself? The sun-baked, dusty ground was much different than the rich, dark soil within the Terril Forest. It was missing most of the creatures—the earthworms and woodlice and fungi—that helped to break down plant and animal matter, turning it into new soil to support the next generation of life. But that didn’t mean all those creatures were gone. According to Meritia, some were so tiny they couldn’t be seen, even with elder senses.

Some must still remain, since some plants did still grow, but perhaps there weren’t enough to restart the growth cycle at a larger scale. Or perhaps the few seeds that made it this far into the barrens, dropped by the wind or high-flying birds, weren’t capable of growing in the hard ground.

Or maybe the soil itself was too damaged to support anything more.

“Can it be fixed?” she asked the staff.

It didn’t reply. She frowned down at it, but then remembered it hadn’t communicated with her the one time she’d used it either.

“I think I understand,” she said. “You only spoke to me during the battle because you didn’t like what I was doing. You don’t want to tell me anything else except for those visions. So, what do you want to do?” She thought back to the most unusual of the scenes the staff had shown her, and what it might mean after Ariadne’s revelations. “Were those really the old gods watching when that druid found you? Why were they so interested?”

There was still no response.

“Fine, be stubborn about it,” she said, “but you have to let me help my friends when they’re in danger. If you try to hurt me again, I’ll throw you down a deep well, and then what are you going to do? Or I could just leave you here, locked in that room, for thousands more years.”

She waited longer this time, but the staff didn’t seem to have an opinion either way. It sat across her legs as if it was nothing more than any other tershaya branch.

“Would it help if I showed that you can trust me?” she asked. “In the visions, you seem to like fixing things.” Most of the visions had shown the staff and its bearer repairing an existing ecosystem or creating a new one. “Help me fix the soil here. The mules have eaten up all the grass near the river, but they’re getting tired of hay and oats all the time. They’d like to have something fresh.”

The staff didn’t complain, so Shavala climbed to her feet, then held it out in front of her and rested its tip on the ground, narrow end down. Taking her hand away, she smiled when it remained standing upright, as it had in the room where she’d found it, and in the vision with the old gods.