"Why would anyone make a door out of glass in a cavern deep underground?" Arling wanted to know, looking from one to the other. "What would be the point?"

Aphen didn't know. "Perhaps this is another instance of us not recognizing what we're being shown. Like with the waterfall in the Fangs that turned out to be only a screen of light." She felt uneasy just talking about it, but hid her discomfort with a smile. "Shall we find out?"

They packed up their camp and climbed back aboard the Sprint. Moments later they lifted off, gained sufficient altitude to put them well above the trees, and began flying south into the mist and gloom of the Wilderun.

They set a course that took them toward the center of the valley, and after a few hours they caught sight of Spire's Reach. Its rock tower was at first no more than a vague outline in the curtains of brume, distant and indistinct. But within the hour, they had drawn near enough that they could make out its rugged features. By then the earlier drizzle had turned into a steady downpour and the day had become black and threatening. Fighting wind and rain, they huddled in the Sprint's narrow cockpit, their cloaks wrapped close about them, their shoulders hunched and heads lowered.

Aphen was piloting, hands moving swiftly over the controls in an effort to keep their flight smooth and steady. She was thinking it would be nice if she could stop being wet all the time, that it seemed as if she was never dry anymore when she was in the air, only cold and damp.

But it was what it was, and within the next half hour they had reached their destination, sweeping past the craggy heights of Spire's Reach and then swinging back again while searching the entire base of the pinnacle. It was Cymrian who saw what he believed to be the opening in the rock they were looking for while they were making their second pass, and on bringing the Sprint down for a closer look, Aphen was inclined to agree.

They landed not far away, setting down in a grassy flat at the base of the peak. They took a moment to prepare before disembarking. Cymrian added a few more weapons to his arsenal, Arling handed out waterskins, and then they set out to look for the entrance into the base of Spire's Reach.

They found it quickly, and it was immediately recognizable to Aphenglow as the opening the Elfstone magic had revealed. Cymrian had brought along a trio of smokeless torches he had found aboard the Sprint; he handed one to each of the sisters and kept the third.

"Let me take the lead," Aphen said. "That way I can make sure we are going in the right direction."

Aphen wasn't entirely sure that she remembered the right direction, but she pretended she did. Cymrian was back in his protector mode, if indeed he had ever left it, the best trained of the three in any case should they encounter trouble. But she had use of the Elfstones, and their magic would prove to be the more formidable weapon in almost any situation.

So they passed through the opening, leaving the rain and the forest behind, and found themselves in chilly darkness. Aphen led with Arling following her and Cymrian acting as rearguard. Their torches cast hazy, narrow beams into the gloom to reveal a rough-hewn entry chamber and a maze of tunnels leading away from it. After brushing the rain from their cloaks and giving Cymrian a moment to search for any sign of hidden traps and snares, Aphen chose the passageway she believed the Elfstones had revealed in their vision and the three companions set out.

They walked for a long time through the tunnels without reaching an end. Aphen was surprised to discover she remembered almost all the twists and turns she was meant to take. Only once was she required to employ the Elfstones to reassure herself she was making was the right choice. The rest of the time her memory was good enough that using the Elfstones wasn't necessary.

Even so, she was carrying them in her hand now, ready to help Cymrian if matters suddenly turned dangerous. They had come so far and gone through so much that she was not about to let anything stop them now.

It was this determination that led her to reflect on the fact she was leading her sister to the very fate she had promised to save her from. She could pretend otherwise, could say she was only doing what they had all agreed on and what Arling herself had decided, but the end result would be the same. When they reached the Bloodfire and the Ellcrys seed was immersed, Arling's future was as certain as the rising of the sun. She would become the Ellcrys and cease to be human.

And Aphenglow would have helped bring that about.

She sensed this was wrong-a twinge of recognition amid all the thoughts and deliberations on why it was both right and necessary. She sensed it even while telling herself she shouldn't. It made her want to turn around and go back in spite of everything that insisted she do otherwise. It made her want to abandon reason and resignation and give in to the white-hot mix of emotions she was experiencing.

The guilt that tore at her deep inside.

The despair that filled her at the thought of losing Arling forever.

Turn back. Give up on all this.

They reached the opening to the stairway leading down into the earth, and with her emotions still roiling and her feet moving as if of their own accord, she started down. They heard no sounds other than the ones they were making as they walked. No one had spoken since they had set out. There was a disconnect among the three, as if they were strangers on a journey that could not be discussed and was being undertaken for reasons that were not entirely clear.

At one point, Aphen found herself in tears and was forced to wipe them away surreptitiously, to muffle the sobs that kept rising in her throat.

Their descent continued for a long time. They traversed hundreds of steps, perhaps thousands. She lost track of time. She only knew to keep going, to place one foot in front of the other and try not to think about what she was doing-the first an endless struggle, the second a hopeless task. She did it because she knew there was no other choice now and because she had lost the will to resist. Her fate was inescapable. She was her sister's guide and accomplice both; she would be the source of both her salvation and her undoing.

At the bottom of the steps was a passageway, and they followed it to a huge chamber constructed of stone blocks and supported by massive columns within which ancient benches spiraled out from the raised platform at the chamber's center. The cavernous space smelled and tasted of stale, damp air. Large pieces of it lay in ruins. Together the Elves navigated its debris and crossed to the dais and from there to the massive stone door Aphen had described. It stood ajar, just as it had in her Elfstone vision, and they slipped through its opening to where a short set of additional steps descended to another passageway.

At the end of this new passageway was the second cavern, this one very different from the one they had just left-a rock chamber formed by nature's hand, carved out over endless amounts of time, rugged and damp with moisture. Huge stalactites hung from the ceiling in clusters, stone spears poised to impale should they fall. Chunks of broken stone lay scattered about the uneven floor, the leavings of earlier formations that had already given way and shattered.

The Elves glanced around, searching the gloom with the glow of their torches.

Then Cymrian called out and pointed, and all three focused their lights on a glass door set into the far wall between a pair of towering boulders, its smooth surface rising to where a rippling dampness higher up revealed a steady flow of water.

"That door isn't glass," the Elven Hunter said after a moment's study. "It isn't even a door. It's a sheet of water."

Aphen saw it, too. The supposed door was actually a thin, smooth screen of water that spilled from a trough in a curtain so still it barely shimmered at all.

"The Bloodfire is there," Arling said suddenly, pointing at the opening. She took a step away from the other two. "Beyond the waterfall, inside that opening. I can feel it now, tugging at me. It senses the presence of the Ellcrys seed."

She took another step away. "I have to go to it."

"Not without me," Aphen said at once, and started after her.

But her sister held up her hands. "No, Aphen, I have to go alone. I have to do this by myself. I want you to wait for me here. You and Cymrian both."

Aphen started to object, but then saw the determination mirrored in her sister's eyes and thought better of it. Of course she has to go alone. Of course she has to do this by herself. She understands the importance of finding the strength she needs to carry this through. She knows how hard it will be, and because she knows she will face it on her own terms and prove to herself that she is ready.

"Aphen?" her sister whispered.

Cymrian was looking at her, waiting to see what he should do. "All right," she said finally. "We'll be waiting for you."

Arling turned, crossed the chamber to where the waterfall waited, ducked through its thin curtain without a backward glance, and was gone.

CHAPTER Twenty-four

When she was through the thin curtain of water, Arlingfant paused a moment to brush the droplets from her hair and shoulders before continuing on down the short passageway that opened before her. At its end she found yet another cavern, although this one was much smaller than the other two and considerably warmer and drier.

It was also empty.

The floor of the chamber sloped upward before her, ascending gradually in a series of broad shelves that wrapped right and left of where she stood from wall to wall. She shone her smokeless torch into the gloom before her, but there was nothing to be seen higher up but more shelves and deeper darkness.

There was no sign at all of the Bloodfire.

But it was here. She could sense its presence, even without being able to explain why. It was calling to her soundlessly, continuing to tug her forward into the chamber.

So she began to make her way upward from shelf to shelf, using her torch to light the way, searching carefully as she went. Even though she wasn't entirely conscious of what she was doing, she stretched out her right hand and her fingers groped at the air as if there were something of substance to which she might cling. She continued on until she was almost to the back wall of the chamber. She was far enough along that only two more levels of stone risers remained when she stopped on one that was much smaller and set at the exact center of the larger one beneath it.

Just to one side of the shelf was a large boulder.

Here, she said to herself. The Bloodfire is here.

She knew it instinctively. Acting on her certainty, she moved over to the boulder and touched it experimentally. Nothing happened. Then, on a hunch more than anything else, she placed both hands on the huge rock and put her weight behind the effort. To her surprise, it began to move, even as slight as she was and as massive as it was. It rolled smoothly out of its shallow seating and her momentum carried her after it so that now she was standing where the boulder had been.

Instantly the floor beneath her feet exploded into flames, and she was enveloped in a brilliant white fire that reached all the way to the ceiling. Frozen in place, shocked by the suddenness of it, she cringed in anticipation of the expected pain. But the fire did nothing to harm her. The flames exuded neither heat nor smoke; nor did they burn, but instead enfolded her in a blanket of warmth and comfort. The worries and the stresses of the days she had spent coming to this place faded away as if they had never been. Everything around her disappeared, and she was surrounded by an impenetrable brightness that first flared as white light and then slowly became crimson.