21-The Gypsy Morph by Terry Brooks

Author:Terry Brooks [Brooks, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2009-01-09T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

IN THE AFTERMATH of the battle with the skrails, Logan Tom wasn’t sure what had become of Kirisin.

At first he thought the boy had fled into the darkness to seek sanctuary from the attack, and that was why Praxia was chasing after him. He hadn’t seen the skrails snatch the boy, his attention on the larger swarm circling overhead and the struggle taking place around the AV. But when Praxia came racing back clutching the small pouch with the Loden Elfstone, shouting at him that Kirisin was gone, he realized the truth of things.

Lost another one, he thought in frustration and dismay.

Praxia thrust the pouch at him like a weapon. “We can’t use this without Kirisin!” she snapped. “All of our people are trapped inside unless he frees them!”

For a moment he just stood there, seething. First it was the gypsy morph and now the Elven boy. The Lady had given him responsibility for both, and he had failed them equally. It was a bitter realization, especially since he had thought that after so many years of ceaseless, debilitating effort at stemming the subversion of children in the demon camps, he had finally been given a charge for which there was an end.

Protect the gypsy morph—the street kid Hawk—long enough to permit him to lead an exodus to a safehold that would provide them all with shelter against the destruction that was coming.

Protect Kirisin Belloruus, the Chosen of the Ellcrys, into whose hands had been placed the fate of an entire race of people.

Straightforward charges. He should have been able to fulfill them. Yet he had lost Hawk to the madness of the inhabitants of a compound and now he had lost Kirisin to a flock of demon-summoned skrails.

While he had been lucky enough to have Hawk returned by an intervening magic, he could not rely on that happening with Kirisin.

More to the point, he had endured enough of personal failure.

“What are we going to do?” Praxia demanded. “Those things flew off with him! There’s no trail! We can’t possibly find him now!”

“Yes, we can,” he answered softly.

He told her to look after her companions, to bind their wounds and see to their needs. Two were dead, and the other two injured. She hesitated a moment, and then turned away to do as he had asked, muttering something about how he better be telling the truth.

“Watch my back!” he snapped at her.

Without bothering to see if she had heard him, he walked over to the Ventra and went back to work on the solar connectors. The AV was supposed to be virtually indestructible, yet something as small and unexpected as this shut it down. He shook his head. You couldn’t depend on machines to hold up, not anymore.

He had almost repaired the damage when the attack began, had been close enough to finishing that if he had been given just another half an hour, they would have escaped everything that had happened. He experienced a fresh wave of frustration thinking of this, but brushed it aside quickly so as not to disturb his concentration.

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