Elansa ventured a question. "What did you get tired of?"
Tianna looked around, at Brand and Char in their animated conversation, at Swain and Ballu and Chaser rolling the bones, at Dell sleeping and Arawn brooding. Her glance swept past Nigh-toothless Kerin, Pragol, Loris, and Bruin, whose hair was the same color as a wolf's pelt. She looked at her father, the elf who spoke very little and not to many of his companions.
She said, "I’m tired of this. Tired of moving and tired of all these men." She sighted along the edge of her dagger, the tip of it glittering. "I won't be leaving him now. There is too much shifting and change in the air. One of us goes, and it could all come down."
"Arawn would like that."
"He acts like he would. No matter. I'm here for now. When we get where we're going…" She shook her head. "Brand'll be getting where he's going. Me, I'll just be going."
They sat a moment. Chaser crowed in triumph, and Swain grumbled about ill luck.
The silence settled in again. Tianna slid Elansa one swift sidelong glance and whispered, "You'll want to keep an eye on me, princess."
Elansa understood that the words weren't warning but suggestion. Tianna got to her feet and strode away. Elansa, for months a prisoner, had grown used to living as a captive. She knew how to keep her feelings close. As though the half-elf had said nothing at all, she settled back against the wall, feeling the cool damp stone against her shoulders.
She looked around her. A grander cavern, still this little forest of stone was a robber’s den. For this time, these brief hours of rest, the outlaws had fallen into old patterns-gambling, sleeping, and quarreling. She knew all their voices. She could pick them out with her eyes closed. She heard them each night in her sleep. She stretched out her legs and stretched her arms up high She was cold and cramped and weary. The light shafting down from some high crack in the stone ceiling grew fainter, paler. Day was ending. Perhaps moonlight would soon reach down here.
Ah, for the smell of the outside air, the freshness of a quickening breeze! She thought of the red-tailed hawk, winged and free. Secretly, behind the mask of her face, she thought of Tianna’s words. Keep an eye on me, princess. They sounded like wind in the sky. They sounded like hope.
She felt his eyes on her-Brand’s keen glance. Wrapped in her cloak, as much against his regard as against cold, Elansa lay down with her back to the wall. As she had long ago learned to do, she slept, but she didn't sleep peacefully. For the first time since her capture, Elansa dreamed.
She dreamed about being watched. Eyes were upon her-Brand’s brown eyes, weighing her, judging her. She dreamed she did not suffer that. She dreamed she allowed it, and in her dream, she looked into those eyes and spoke as a princess speaks, in the full confidence that her station was her shield, her rank her defense against all who would harm her. She was, after all, an elf among these half-savage outlaws, a princess of the royal house of Qualinesti.
She said, "Look, Brand, as deeply as you dare, and see if I am afraid of you."
In her dream, she was not.
Elansa felt the shadow of the hand before she felt the flesh and bone. Cool, sliding over her flesh, she felt the shadow gliding. Her heart slammed up into her throat. She stiffened and jerked away. Too late! A hard, callused palm clamped across her mouth, another grasped her wrists, her two slender wrists in one broad-handed clasp, prisoned as though by ropes again.
Elansa’s blood pounded in her temples. It seemed the whole dark world beat to the rhythm of her sudden terror. Her breath snagged in her throat, pressed back by the hand across her mouth, and she struggled, trying to find flesh to bite. Her teeth came down upon the pads of the palm. Her captor grunted, and she tasted blood even as he gripped harder. Eyes wide, she saw in the pale moonlight the flaring red outline of a man bent over her. By that dim light she saw his eyes, wide and white, and his mouth opening. His breath reeked of spiced jerky, and he stank of sweat and smoke.
"Hush," he whispered.
Brand.
A little, Elansa relaxed. Her muscles eased, the tension drained.
Brand's grip on her hands loosened. In one swift motion he pulled her to her feet. "Quiet, and come with me."
Shaking and wrapping her cloak around her shoulders against the chill of the underground, she stood in barely broken darkness. Faint light suffused the cavern-the light of the two moons gone pale for all the dark distance it had to travel to find them. Brand stood close, his beard bristling against her face.
"Come," he said, and his breath touched her cheek.
She heard no threat, no danger in his voice. He turned, assuming obedience. Following, Elansa walked carefully past the sleeping forms of Brand's outlaws. Char and Fang, master and hound, each twitched in sleep. Passing those two, she smelled the scents of hound and dwarf spirits all tangled up. She walked around Dell in her corner. Arawn and the others were hunched and unmoving as stone. Four were missing. She saw them in the distance, darker forms against the darkness, standing watch near the entrances to this stony forest.
Elansa looked across the stream to the stony wall, at all the pillars built up over centuries uncounted, minerals dripping down from the roof to form accretions on the floor, age after age growing tall until this wonderful forest of stone lived beneath the earth, illuminated by thin shafts of moonlight and pale blades of sunlight. This was the work of gods, or the work of the world itself. Yet here in this wonderful place someone had fashioned steps, the breadth and height carefully measured, the stone beautifully smoothed and polished, and her feet knew those steps as well as she knew those in the elf king’s hall.
Elansa and Brand walked to the water, right to the edge of the stone where the stream was noisiest. When he stood farthest from his men, Brand put his back to the water and turned to face her.
"Now, tell me something," he said. Here fell a broader shaft of mingled moonlight, so she saw how bright his eyes were. "Tell me what you know about Pax Tharkas."
"Pax-"
"Hush!"
He warned even as she heard her own voice begin to echo. Behind them, someone stirred, then stilled. Over her shoulder she saw Swain at one of the entrances turn his head, then turn back to his watch.
"Pax Tharkas," she whispered. "I know much about it, or what it used to be. Why? Hasn't Leyerlain told you about it?"
"Never cared about it till lately. Tell me what you know."
Curiosity pricking her, she said, "Pax Tharkas has long tales attached to it. In the library at Qualinost we have a whole room devoted to the histories of the place. Our greatest king commissioned the building of it-"
"Kith-Kanan."
"Yes," she said, surprised to hear that name on human lips.
Brand shrugged. "In the Stonelands, you hear things." He cocked a curious eye. "You kin to him?"
Coolly, she murmured, "No. My husband is Kethrenan Kanan, and he is kin to the ancient king."
But his attention had wandered. He was not impressed. "Ah, well, married to kingly kin, that’s not so bad." Again, he quickened, his eyes glinting with barely suppressed eagerness as he returned to what most interested him. "Now. Pax Tharkas. Tell me."
Low in the air of the cave, torch smoke drifted through the faint beams of moonlight that arrowed down from a ceiling they could not see. Two hounds growled over a bone. Char dreamed again.
"Pax Tharkas was, a long time ago, a monument to friendship between elves and dwarves and humans."
She looked past him, to the black-and-silver stream running, and warmed to her story, telling him that for a thousand years and half a thousand more the fortress whose name means Peace of Friendship stood inviolate, guarding all the land about in three kingdoms. The rich Tharkadan Iron Mines were there, safe behind the great walls and guarded by the two tall towers. From there came the iron and steel that had, before the treaty, been the cause of wars between dwarves and elves and humans. With the treaty and the building of the fortress to seal it, trading pacts were made, and wars became the stuff of history.