The Eternal Flame Read Free

the famous Cloud Gardens of the faeries.
    Slowly, the shreds of mist around them began to thin. The air grew clearer, as well as drier. Elli caught a faint whiff of sulfur, like eggs gone terribly bad. The wind carried them over a huge, lumbering cloud—and all of a sudden she saw volcanoes below.
    Fireroot! Now, as far as she could see, marched the ridges of Rahnawyn’s fire-blackened peaks. Their cliffs glowed with streaks of orange lava, while their summits swirled with clouds of red and gray ash. Noxious fumes poured out of flame vents, billowing as they rose skyward. All across this scorched landscape, fires flickered on the cliffs and heavy smoke poured out of deep crevasses.
    Onward the wind carried them, through red-tinted clouds that dusted them with ash. At one point, as they passed above a desolate, charred ridge, Elli spied a crater surrounded by crooked spires of rock. Could that be, she wondered, the place that Scree had once described? The crater that had been his childhood home, and also Tamwyn’s? She cringed, thinking of Tamwyn, who so loved the forests of El Urien, living in this place without any greenery at all. And she cringed again, recalling her own years without any trees or vines or flowers—the years she’d spent as a slave to those gnomes who had killed her parents and then kept her captive underground.
    She coughed, trying to rid her throat of its bitter taste, even as a sulfurous cloud made her eyes water. She turned away from Nuic, not sure why she didn’t want him to see.
    Then, beyond the crater’s rim, she caught sight of the molten River of Fire, and beyond that, several enormous towers. Conical in shape, they resembled perfectly formed volcanoes, crowned with turrets that arched skyward like erupting lava. Made of polished red stone, the towers gleamed in the light of the huge, intense fires that roared beneath them. Were they the forges of the flamelons, the warlike people who made such elaborate weaponry and building materials? Or were they, perhaps, the famous flamelon palaces—buildings that held, if the bards’ tales were true, many marvelous inventions found nowhere else in Avalon?
    All at once, the sky started to darken. Starlight faded from the sky, while the air grew swiftly colder. Below, the landscape disappeared, and even the bright fires of Rahnawyn soon flickered and vanished. Elli turned her head toward Nuic, but she could no longer see him. She called out, but heard no reply.
    Into the deepening darkness she sailed, borne by the unbroken wind. Unable to see any landmarks below, nor even any clouds, Elli felt increasingly disoriented. Was she still moving at all? Was Nuic still with her?
    A vague feeling of terror swelled inside her chest. If she was, indeed, entering Shadowroot, how would she ever find her way? How would she even survive?
    Suddenly the wind sputtered. A fierce blast of air jolted her sideways; another slapped her face so hard that she tumbled backward through the blackness. Just then she heard air whooshing wildly around her, and she realized that she was falling. Falling fast! Before she could scream, or even squeeze her crystal more tightly, she hit the ground with a brutal thud.
    She lay there, motionless, in the darkness—the darkness of eternal night.

2 • Whispers in the Dark
    In the darkness, Elli rolled over. She straightened her back, which felt like one enormous bruise, and worked her sore limbs. Everything around her was black: the air; the ground, which was covered with some sort of stubbly moss that she could feel but not see; and even her own hand, when she raised it to touch her face.
    “Am I blind?” she asked herself. “Or just in Shadowroot?” She spoke in the barest of whispers, for something about this impenetrable darkness made her want to be as quiet as possible.
    Not far away, something moved on the rough moss. Then came a gruff whisper. “You’re not blind, you dolt.”
    “Nuic,” she breathed. “I’m so glad you