Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [145]
“I love what I do, Kirisin, even if you don’t think so. I believe in what I do. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, and I ...” She trailed off. “Sometimes I go to see her at night, just like you do. I like being close to her, being alone with her. I can feel her watching me. I know that’s silly, but that’s how it seems. I sit in the gardens and just... be with her. She never did anything to let me know she was aware of me until two weeks ago. That was when she told me about the danger that was coming and about putting her inside the Loden for protection.”
She shook her head helplessly. “I didn’t know what to do. I had to tell someone right away. I decided to go to my father. I begged him to do something.
At first I thought he was going to help. But then he said it was more complicated than I realized. He said that I didn’t understand what I was asking, that I didn’t know enough about the Loden to appreciate what would happen if he did as I asked. He said we had to wait until my term as a Chosen was over. Once I was no longer a Chosen, then he would act.”
She held up her hands as he started to speak. “I know. I told him I didn’t see how we could wait that long. But my father said that in terms of an Ellcrys lifetime, it was nothing. The Ellcrys had been alive for hundreds of years. A few months in the tree’s life was little more than what a day would be to us.
Less, maybe. It wasn’t necessary to act right away.”
“He can’t know that,” Kirisin objected.
“What he can’t know,” Erisha said wearily, “is what might happen to me if he doesn’t make me wait.”
Kirisin started to respond and then stopped. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that there is more to this than you or I know. The Loden is an Elfstone, a talisman of magic. My father says there is great risk to the one who uses it. He wouldn’t reveal the nature of that risk, only that he wasn’t going to allow me to take it. I told him I wasn’t afraid. I told him that I was leader of the Chosen, and that I was the one who had to take it.”
She saw the look on his face and scowled. “You can believe me or not, Kirisin, but that was what I said to him. It made him furious. He told me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. He said that my time as a Chosen was almost up and I wasn’t going to be allowed to do this. Someone would have to take on the responsibility of using the Elfstone, but it wasn’t going to be me.”
She shook her head helplessly. “When I tried to object, he shouted me down. He was so angry! I have never seen him so angry. What could I do? He is my father! He was insistent about it!”
A long silence settled between them. They stared at each other, neither ready to say anything more right away. Kirisin was unsure how he should feel. He was furious at the King, but on the other hand he understood how Arissen Belloruus would want to protect his only daughter from what he perceived to be the danger of using the Loden. What bothered him most, however, was a nagging suspicion that the King might not have told Erisha everything he knew, that he might be holding something back. He had been duplicitous with Kirisin; there was nothing to say he was being any less so with her.
“What are you going to do?” she asked him finally.
In point of fact, he didn’t know. He had thought knowing the truth of things would give him the answer to that question, but it hadn’t. He was as much adrift now as he had been before.
“How does your father know that the Loden might be a danger to the user?” he asked.
She shrugged. “When I told him what the Ellcrys had said, he had me wait while he sent old Culph to study the histories to see what they said about it.
It was after Culph had done so that he decided I couldn’t have anything to do with the matter. He found out something about what would happen if the Loden were used, but as I said, he wouldn’t tell me.”
Kirisin thought it through some more. Then he said to her, “Don’t you want to know what that something is?”
She shook her head doubtfully. “I’m not sure if I do or not.”
“At least