Elara Moonwhisper's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Kael led Elara up the slope all morning, following the wrong-running water. The small green dragon rode on his shoulder. By noon the spring widened, then split. Three streams ran from a shelf of mossy rock. Elara knelt and touched each one. All three climbed uphill. All three fed something higher. "Which," she said. Kael tasted the left, then the middle, then the right. His jaw tightened. "They all run true. The trick doesn't work when they split." Elara pressed her palm to the center stream and reached for the forest's voice, the way she had for six hundred years. She asked the water where it meant to go. Nothing answered. The land had forgotten her too. She pulled her hand back, shaking. Below them the trees were brown. Every lost hour cost the heart-tree. "Choose fast," Kael said. "My trail runs through here. Whatever I track chose one of these already." His eyes flashed gold. He crouched and studied the mud between the streams. "Boot prints. Deep. A staff, dragged." He pointed at the right-hand stream. "It went that way." Elara looked at the right stream and felt cold. If a stranger with a staff climbed toward the white stones, he was no wanderer. She made her choice. "Then we take the right. I won't let him reach the tree first." They climbed hard, the stream loud beside them. The trees thinned. Pale rock broke through the soil ahead, the first white stones Elara had seen in centuries. Her heart lifted. Then she saw the figure standing among them. He was an elf, pale as ash, in black and crimson. A crown of twisted branches grew from his skull like horns. In his hand he held a staff carved from dead wood, its dark crystal pulsing like a slow heartbeat. Elara knew the wood. It was heart-tree, cut and killed long ago. She had never seen him, but the forest went silent around him. Even the dragon stopped breathing smoke. "Elara Moonwhisper," the stranger said. He did not raise his voice. "I searched three centuries for this ground. You found it in a day." He smiled, calm and patient. "I waited for you to come. You read the water. Now lead me to the tree." Elara reached for the earth's power to throw him back. She found nothing. The staff's crystal flared, and her magic died in her chest. She gasped. Kael drew his bow. "Don't," Vaelthorn said, almost kind. He lifted the staff. A ring of dark runes burned to life in the rock around Elara's feet, green and purple light crawling through the stone. The ground held her like a trap. "You will walk me to the white stones at the summit. You have no choice now." He turned and started up the last slope, certain she would follow. Elara had reached the stones at last. She had also led her enemy straight to them.