As expected, Lyrani was the last elf ready to leave. Excitement fluttered in her stomach, sickening but also encouraging.
The end of this nightmare was in sight. Hopefully, the Spirit Guardian could tell Lyrani and her friends what he knew, and they could end Nash's misery and that of the realm.
Outside, the day had blossomed bright and cheerful. Lyrani smiled up at the sky peeking down at her between the leaves as she stepped out of Morloy's house.
Dessie sat on the grass with her back against a tree trunk, while Morloy paced in front of her, overflowing with an anxious energy similar to Lyrani's.
They hadn't heard from Gazana yet. Morloy was probably getting worried about her even though it had been less than a day since he left Fegris Mountain. Gazana may not have even received his message from Lord Dundor yet.
All the same, Lyrani didn't blame him for being concerned. Gazana was dealing with a restless spirit in the pixie territories. Anything could go wrong at any time.
Dessie's smile warded off Lyrani's unease. "Look who it is," she said to Morloy. "Always-late Lyrani."
To Lyrani's relief, Morloy cracked a smile.
Lyrani's only comeback was making a face at Dessie. It was lame, but not as lame as the nicknames she had thought up for each of her friends. Unfortunately, none of them stuck as well as Always-late Lyrani had.
Morloy handed Lyrani a backpack sewn from some rough-spun fabric. "This is for you."
Lyrani's arms buckled as she took it. The bag was heavier than she had expected, but she could bear its weight when she slung it over her shoulders.
She adjusted the straps. "What's in here?"
"Food and water." Morloy shouldered his own backpack. "This is going to be a long trip."
It would be even longer on foot, but Lyrani was certain that it would be worth it.
That was if the Spirit Guardian was real and this wasn't a wild goose chase.
Even so, it was better that Lyrani did something with her time instead of lying in a hopeless heap in bed. It would keep her ahead of the thoughts that hounded her.
Lyrani may have gotten away with failing this mission the first time, but that wouldn't be the case now. There was too much at stake.
The birds of the morning twittered high above, light, free from the weight dragging Lyrani down. A soft breeze rushed through the trees, adding its chorus to the late morning song. Lyrani and her friends were the only elves in sight.
"So, how do we find the Spirit Guardian?" she asked.
Morloy held up a hand for Lyrani and Dessie to stop. Their feet went still, and their group went quiet.
"We listen to the wind."
"What?" Dessie blinked.
"The meadow where the Spirit Guardian lives is where the Spirit Realm lurks beneath the surface of ours. They say that when the wind blows over the glassy pool, it carries the whispers of the dead away with it," said Morloy.
This was nothing new to Lyrani. They had all been told that story as children. It had sounded so poetic, read to her in her father's gentle voice.
"I thought that was just a fairytale," said Lyrani.
"There are always truths to fairytales, but we may have to look deeper to find them." Morloy's dark eyes were solemn. "Like calls to like. The whispers of the dead always carries the wind with them when they return to where they came from. That's where we need to go. Just listen..."
Lyrani closed her eyes and silenced her breaths.
Then she heard it.
It started as a faint hiss. When Lyrani cleared her mind, the sound amplified. It sounded like voices now, murmuring and whispering, dragging the wind behind it as it swept through the air.
"I don't hear anything."
Lyrani flinched at the loudness of Dessie's voice compared to the ones filling her ears.
Morloy shushed Dessie. "That's because you don't have a sixth sense."
Lyrani reined in her focus so that the wind's whispers were the only sounds within her range of awareness. Her friends continued to bicker in the background, their words as loud as breaths.
Dessie snorted. "Oh, and you do?"
"No, but I suspect Lyrani might..."
"There." Lyrani opened her eyes as the sound slithered between the trees.
She didn't wait for Morloy and Dessie before slipping between the trees and following the breeze along its winding path.
Fallen leaves and branches lay scattered over the forest floor. They cracked under Dessie and Morloy's heavy feet. The sound drowned out the wind's voice for a moment.
"Shh!" hissed Lyrani.
This was the best lead they had. If they lost it, they'd be left with nothing, but Nash and the realm would still be counting on them.
Lyrani glanced back to see her friends stepping carefully around the crunchy debris in their path.
The wind sighed, and Lyrani chased after it.
It moved so quickly that Lyrani refused to stop for fear of losing track of it. Morloy and Dessie nibbled at sandwiches and sipped water from their bottles as they scurried after her.
Lyrani didn't need food. She needed to find the Spirit Guardian and save Nash.
At Dessie's insistence, Lyrani finally took a sandwich. Running while eating was a challenge, but Lyrani never backed down from one.
She kept on the trail of the whispers of the dead, even when her sweat glued her tunic to her skin and the heat of her exertion threatened to explode her head.
The sun had reached its peak in the sky when Lyrani almost ran over the edge of a cliff.
Morloy caught her arm. "Woah! Careful."
Dessie skidded to a stop at Lyrani's side. Together, the three friends stared down at the misty landscape below.
"That's where it went," said Lyrani.
She squinted, but it was no use. The sunlight shone off the dense fog, unable to penetrate it. Lyrani was blind to whatever lay beneath it.
"What now?" asked Morloy.
"I have an idea." Dessie raised her hands and turned away from the precipice.
Three vines shot from the ground in front of her. They twisted around one another, following the motion of Dessie's hands, then fell over the cliff, growing downwards.
Becoming a seamstress had been an unconventional use for Dessie's magic, but it made perfect sense to Lyrani. Her gift for growing plants made her the first choice for anyone who needed a gown made from flowers, but it had other uses too, urgent explorations among them.
Dessie's hands fell to her sides. "Well? What are you waiting for?"
Lyrani took hold of the vine rope first. She tugged to test its strength. When it held, she climbed down the cliff.
Lyrani's senses were on high alert, ready for anything that should attack her from below or above. When she reached the end of the vine, she let go, bending her knees to prepare for the short drop.
As soon as her feet touched the earth, her ears perked up. The voices on the wind were faint, but she could hear them.
Morloy reached the ground behind her, and Dessie followed him. The fog was no less dense from this angle, and Lyrani didn't trust what she couldn't see.
"Take my hand and Dessie's. We don't want to lose each other," she said to Morloy.
They obeyed. Lyrani smiled to herself. They'd make fine secret agents. They had heart, and that was something no amount of training could drill into people.
"Now, come on!"
Morloy and Dessie trailed after Lyrani into the unknown. They moved through the fog, a chain of elves that were as good as blind.
"Slowly," warned Morloy.
Trees jumped out from the mist, and rocks rose from the ground. Morloy nearly lost his footing more than once, but Dessie and Lyrani held him up.
The elves stopped when they came to a clearing. The mist swirled away from it, rendering it visible but swallowing the tops of the surrounding trees. Little pink flowers sprouted underfoot, not discouraged by the sunlight's absence.
A circular pool stood a few steps away. Its bewitching radiance beckoned her.
It was so enchanting that Lyrani would've dipped her finger in out of curiosity, but something stopped her.
Shadows flickered beneath its glassy surface. Little lights churned in the turbulent water.
Lyrani knew on instinct what they were.
Spirits.
A hunched figure sat on a rock beside the mystical pool.
All that could be seen of his face was a beard falling down to his elbows. His wrinkled hands clutched a long stick with a stone dangling from a string at the end of it. It looked like a fishing pole.
He picked a jar from the long line at his feet. A glowing yellow light flitted about inside it.
He unscrewed the lid, and before the little light could escape, the stone hanging at the opening of the jar drew it towards its rough, grey surface. The mysterious man dipped it into the pool. When he pulled it out, the spirit was gone.
"Are you the Spirit Guardian?" asked Lyrani.
The man grunted without looking at her. "That depends. Who's asking?" His voice was scratchy from disuse.
It didn't sound like he was going to be an easy witness. Luckily, Lyrani had experience in interrogation.
"We won't hurt you." Lyrani approached the man, her hands raised in a gesture of peace. "I just have a question."
He chortled. "The last time I heard that one, I wished I hadn't." He pulled off his hood, revealing a face that was older than time, etched with more lines than there were lives in the realm.
Wisps of white hair gathered around his pointed ears. His black eyes bored into Lyrani, giving her the sense that he could see into her soul.
Perhaps he could. Lyrani shivered.
"I am the Spirit Guardian. I guide the souls of the departed to the Spirit Realm and back to this one for their rebirths. No spirit can escape me or my trusted soul pole." He brandished it for emphasis.
There was a long silence, equally awkward and confused. Dessie broke it.
"You have got to be kidding me."
"What does that mean?" The Spirit Guardian hopped down from the rock, narrowing his eyes. They shone with the impudence of a child despite the age that had worn down the rest of him.
"How can you force spirits into their realm with a fishing pole? They're souls, not fish!" Dessie glared at him.
"Which is why I call it a 'soul pole'," said the Spirit Guardian.
"It's cruel." Dessie took a step towards him.
The Guardian retreated behind the rock. "They asked for it! Didn't you see that last one try to escape? No soul can elude me, and it's all because of this." He patted the pole.
Dessie breathed heavily through her nose. Lyrani had known her long enough to know what that meant.
"Except a soul did escape you." Lyrani cut in before the Guardian and Dessie got into a fistfight. "Fifteen years ago."
Had it really been that long since her mother died? It was more than half of her life, but it didn't feel like it.
The ancient elf angled his head as he gazed at Lyrani. "Who are you?"
She stood straighter. "I need to know how to defeat Queen Rayn's spirit."
The Guardian grunted. "Best leave sleeping beasts to lie." He turned away.
"But she's not sleeping! She's destroying people, villages, entire clans! We must stop her." Lyrani lunged after the Spirit Guardian.
She had come too far to let him off so easily. He was her only hope of stopping Rayn.
Lyrani would've chased the Guardian in circles around the clearing if Morloy hadn't grabbed her arm.
"You're wasting your time." The Guardian stood at the opposite side of the pool, the lights of the departed souls reflected in his bottomless eyes. "I'm more afraid of Queen Rayn than I am of you."
Lyrani clenched her fists, but Morloy stepped in before she could introduce the Spirit Guardian to true fear.
"Name your price," said Morloy.
Lyrani shot him a look. He squeezed her arm in reassurance.
She turned to the Guardian, expecting an answer, but the old man only crossed his bony arms over his chest and turned his head, almost as a petulant toddler would.
"What do you want in return for giving us the information we need?" Morloy raised his voice, keeping his gaze steady on the other man.
It was a clever tactic. People could always be bribed. Perhaps Lyrani could learn some useful skills from her healer friend. Too bad it wouldn't be ethical according to ECISI's rules.
The Guardian smiled, showing crooked yellow teeth. "My standard price is the soul of someone young before their time."
"That's out of the question," said Lyrani immediately.
She had brought three ripe souls to the Guardian's domain, but this slippery little elf wasn't going to pluck any of them.
The Spirit Guardian looked at Morloy for confirmation. At the healer's emphatic nod, the Guardian's mouth turned downwards.
"Very well." He pulled his hood over his head. "We're done here."
Lyrani's heart sank. Her only lead was fizzling out before her eyes, and she could do nothing but watch. The Spirit Guardian's price was too high.
Lyrani had sacrificed enough for this mission. She wasn't about to give her friends up too.
"What about something else that's irreplaceable?" Dessie slid the engagement ring off her finger.
The Guardian's eyes grew big with greed. "Is that a diamond?"
"Yes, and gold." Dessie gazed down at it with wistful eyes, turning it in her hand.
The Guardian fixed his penetrating stare on her. "And why is it irreplaceable?"
Dessie's lower lip quivered. "My fiancé gave it to me before he died. I've been wearing it since."
The Spirit Guardian leaped for it, but Dessie held it out of his reach. "Tell us what we want to know and then you will have your payment."
Lyrani said, "Dessie, you don't have to—"
"I want to." Dessie's voice trembled. "If this will help us fight for the realm he died for, then I want to do it."
Lyrani met her eyes, and they were certain, even while they gleamed with tears. She folded Dessie's hand into hers, giving her the comfort she couldn't speak.
Lyrani remembered leaving work early so that she could help Jacden choose this ring. It had brought Dessie such joy once. She had never imagined the sadness it would come to represent.
Perhaps sacrificing it was the only way Dessie would move on from the past.
Lyrani turned to the Spirit Guardian. "How did Queen Rayn escape you?"
The Guardian looked at Dessie's engagement ring with big, longing eyes, then at Lyrani.
"Like all souls of the deceased, the queen was drawn here by the entrance to the Spirit Realm after the death of her corporeal form. Unlike most spirits, she had a complete sense of who she was and what she wanted. She asked me what I asked in return for letting her go free. Now, look around. What do you see?"
"Nothing," said Morloy immediately.
"Mist," said Dessie, her voice still shaky.
Lyrani's eyes darted about the clearing as she analysed every detail. There was mist, trees and little yellow butterflies fluttering between the bushes. None of those things stood out to her as the answer to the Spirit Guardian's question, so she shrugged.
"Berry bushes!" cried the Spirit Guardian. "The young people of today." He shook his head to himself.
"You were saying?" Lyrani prompted.
"Oh, yes." The Guardian's eyes focused on her. "Spirits are energy, and this clearing gets its energy from the pool and the spirits passing through it. The younger the soul, the greater its energy, and the more this clearing will prosper." He plucked a berry from the bush behind him. "Delicious!"
"Go on," said Morloy.
"I told the queen that her freedom would cost her a young soul. She said she knew the very person—the one who had sent her here."
Lyrani's insides roiled. She was getting a bad feeling about this.
"The queen haunted this young woman, driving her to madness until she threw herself off a balcony. I guided her soul to the Spirit Realm, got my berries, and the queen went free."
There was a moment of silence as three minds worked through everything they had heard.
Then Lyrani said, "You sacrificed my mother for a bunch of berries?"
"Well, I didn't know she was your mother." Fear glinted in the Spirit Guardian's eyes as they flitted between Lyrani and the edge of the forest he had retreated to.
She ground her teeth. He seemed to know as well as she did that she would reach him before he could vanish among the trees.
Morloy's grip tightened around Lyrani's arm. Good thing too.
If she could get within reach of the miserable little coward, she'd make him regret bowing to a wicked ghost's will instead of sending her where she belonged. She'd show him pain far worse than anything Rayn could do to him.
Lyrani didn't think she could lose her mother twice, but that was what this felt like.
She had believed that the truth would set her free, but this one only opened old wounds, renewing her grief. It was her mother's life that had brought about the disaster that faced Elvenland.
Veyali Esch had ensured Queen Rayn's execution. The queen saw it as the proper revenge to use Veyali's life and soul to stay on in this realm; to do awful deeds—deeds that Veyali wouldn't have wanted to die for.
Lyrani felt sick to think of it, that such honourable intentions had gone so wrong. She quivered with anger.
"Easy," Morloy told Lyrani in a low voice. "Focus on what's happening now. He will tell you what you want to know. That's what matters."
If Lyrani wanted to avenge her mother and free Nash, she couldn't lose sight of all that was at stake, no matter how tempting it was to strangle the Spirit Guardian.
"How do we defeat her?" Lyrani's voice was tight with suppressed fury.
"You would need to destroy her tether. It's the only thing keeping her in this realm. Without it, she will have no choice but to come to the Spirit Realm," said the Guardian.
"And what's her tether?" asked Lyrani.
The Guardian returned to the pool of spirits, watching Lyrani with wary eyes as he did. She made no move, only glowered at him.
As the Spirit Guardian stirred the water with his stick, an image rippled over the surface.
"Vlitavia Palace." He stepped back from the pool. "Queen Rayn was the first royal child born there after it was built. It's where her soul first joined with her body, and destroying it is the only way to separate her from the new body she has claimed."
Lyrani thought back to the scene from the cave of memories—the one with the man and woman she didn't recognise and their baby. That baby must've been Rayn. The Spirit Guardian had to be telling the truth. Still, it was difficult to imagine Rayn as a child.
No villain began as a villain, after all.
"So, we must destroy the palace in order to expel Queen Rayn?" Lyrani asked.
"Yes." The Spirit Guardian's gaze flickered from Dessie's ring to Lyrani's face.
"Is that all?" asked Lyrani.
"Yes."
"Do you swear on your berries that everything you have told us is the truth?"
The elf looked horrified at the mention of his precious fruit. "Yes. Now, give me!" He reached for Dessie's ring with greedy, grasping hands.
Lyrani gave her friend a nod, and Dessie dropped it into the Guardian's calloused, outstretched palm.
"I like this!" He slid it onto his middle finger, cackling with glee.
The sound grated on Lyrani's nerves. She turned and left the clearing without replying.
"Thanks for your help," she heard Morloy say, then he and Dessie were at her side.
Once again, they took each other's hands before venturing into the mist.
The crooked old elf had taken Lyrani's mother and unleashed one of the greatest threats Elvenland had ever faced. Now, he had claimed the last piece of Jacden that Dessie had.
If his information was as good as it sounded, Lyrani might find it in herself to resent him less but never entirely.
"What now?" asked Morloy when they came to the cliff.
Dessie's entwined vine rope still hung over the edge, just as they had left it.
Lyrani took it in her hand. There was only one way forward.
She set her jaw. "We go back to your home and make a plan. Tomorrow, we turn Vlitavia Palace to dust."