The Darkling Child

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PAXON LEAH WAS SITTING ON A BENCH IN THE CORTYARD gardens of Paranor, paging through documents written more than five hundred years earlier that recorded the events in the life of the Elf King Eventine Elessedil, when Keratrix came for him. He could tell immediately from the scribe’s solemn face that something was wrong.

“She’s asking for you,” the other said without preamble. His eyes seemed tired and haunted. “She says it’s time.”

Paxon stared. On a beautiful, sunny day like this one? On a day when everything felt right, and it seemed that the world was at peace and life could go on indefinitely? How could this be?

That was what he thought as he measured the scribe’s words and let their meaning sink in. He didn’t have to ask what Keratrix meant. He knew. He had known this was coming because she had told him herself.

Aphenglow Elessedil, Ard Rhys of the Fourth Druid Order, was dying.

He rose at once, wordless and shaken, and followed Keratrix from the gardens into the tower that housed her private chambers. The Ard Rhys kept to herself these days, weakened by age and worn down by both the demands of her office and the passage of time. She was housed on the lower floors, no longer able to handle the stairs and the climb that going to her former chambers and to the upper reaches of the main tower required. She had not been in the cold room in over a year. She had not used the scrye waters once in all that time, relying instead on her chosen successor, Isaturin, to carry out her duties. She was in stasis, waiting for the inevitable. If the truth were told, Paxon believed, she was anxious for it to arrive.

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