A quiet footstep sounded behind her, and she turned to see Brand dark in the doorway.
"What?" he whispered.
Elansa shook her head.
He looked beyond her, down into darkness where torches stood in iron brackets on the walls. The light flared, and the shadows ran tangling up the walls. As though she felt his presence, Dell looked up. Her face was a pale oval, her eyes like dark pits. She shrugged, Brand gestured, and she turned away. A moment later Elansa heard her footfalls, the sound climbing the steps. "Don't know what happened," Dell said. Her dark hair hung over her shoulder in a thick braid. She tossed her head to fling it back. "It got quiet, real sudden. You have any idea-?"
He glanced at Elansa, his eyes dark. "What ways are there into the cellars?"
Chilled, shivering in the darkness, Elansa shrugged. "In the days of the king, the entrances from the courtyard, and two from the Hall of Columns." The name of the place meant nothing to him, and she didn't try to explain. "One of those ways is trapped, the other isn't. Anything-anyone could have gotten in from the caves. There are tunnels all through there. Maybe they were strong and unbreached once. Now, I don't know what time has done to the tunnel walls."
Brand grunted, considering this. "There are goblins outside, and elves. Could they have gotten in?"
"I suppose, but would they-either of them-make all that noise?"
He didn't think so, and neither of them could think what would. "All right," he said, nodding to Dell. "Whatever it is, we make ’em come up after us. We're holding the high ground."
Eyes glittering with sudden excitement and battle-lust, Dell turned and bounded down the stairs. Moments later, those outlaws who had been watching in the stairwell came leaping up the stairs. Brand sent them all into the tower with orders to arm themselves and prepare to hold the door.
"Tianna, go up to the wall and bring back-"
The scream cut through the darkness below, high and terrified. It shouted in goblin-speech, gabbling curses and pleas. Came another, and both screams turned to shrieking, then to sudden silence.
Tianna said, "Brand, if goblins got into the cellar, something worse is in there with them."
She shot a glance over his shoulder, and her long elven eyes met Elansa’s. Nothing passed between the two women but that look, and each understood what the silence between them meant. As though Tianna had spoken aloud, Elansa knew her thought: I am sorry, princess. Neither of us is getting out of here now.
Another scream wound up the stairs, then silence, cold and empty. Inside the tower, the outlaws spoke in low, tense voices as they took up positions to guard the door. Quietly, with Tianna still on the stair, Elansa said, "Brand, you told me there are armies outside. If they are elves and goblins, as you say, I don't think we need worry about them battering down the doors here."
"They're after each other."
"And now what’s in the cellar is after us. I don't know what it is, but I do know this: Whatever it is, I can meet it as I met ogres. In magic."
He stared, almost ready to laugh as she drew herself up as tall and straight as aching muscles would let her. She lifted her head, met his eyes, and held them. He did laugh then, the sound cold as ice cracking.
"Will you bring down the tower on whatever it is, girl?"
Tianna shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her glance darting from Brand to Elansa. Softly, she said, "Give her a chance, Brand. Listen."
Brand never turned to the half-elf. He kept his eyes on Elansa. Eyes narrowed, he said, "You trying to strike a bargain with me, girl?"
Elansa nodded. "I am telling you the terms. I will deal with what’s below. When I have, I will walk out of here."
"And go where? They'll be fighting out there, your folk and the goblins."
Elansa shivered, but she did not break gaze, "They will be. I am their princess, Brand. I would rather go die with my people than stay here a moment longer than I must."
In the cold stairway he looked at her long, her face a pale shining oval in the dimness, her long eyes bright with the kind of light he'd seen on men right before a battle.
"So, I am supposed to give you the phoenix and trust you?"
In the depths of the fortress the booming had fallen silent, and yet all the air around them pressed close and cold with dread, a fear crawling up the stairwell, like a dark miasma. From within the chamber that once housed thanes and kings, the voices of the outlaws called, one to another, and fear edged every one.
"That's our choice, Brand," Elansa said. "I will do what I must to stop whatever is down there and trust you not to kill me with an arrow in the back right after I've done that. You can count on whatever it is down there coming to kill you, or you can trust me."
He clapped his hands hard, the crack like thunder in the narrow stairwell. He did laugh then, and the bright and brittle sound of it startled her more than the thunderclap. "Well said!" With one quick motion, he slipped the silver and the phoenix over his head and dropped it into her hand. "You kill what’s down there, you can walk out the front gate, my girl, if that’s what you want."
Heart beating swiftly, Elansa’s fingers closed round the phoenix, the ancient inheritance of her family. The sapphire slipped along her skin, warm from his own skin. The magic wakened, roused to feel the beat of woodshaper blood beneath her skin, the rhythm of a heart attuned to its magic beneath her breast.
With more certainty than she had felt in many a long week, Elansa looked up at Brand and said, "There is a thing you have to do, Brand, to make this work"
He stood still, listening.
"Drive whatever is down there out into the sunlight."
Brand's was a long holding look, as though he had her by the shoulders. Right into her he looked, and she knew he wasn't gauging her trustworthiness. For good or ill, he'd made that reckoning. She felt herself seen, as she had prayed that gods would see her. She felt herself known and found worthy. Madness! She blushed, her pale cheek turning rosy.
"Go on, then," he said, and there was no way to know if he saw her color. "Do what you must, and I'll see that whatever is down there ends up in the court between the first wall and the second."
Elansa wanted to stand upon a height, but she didn't run to the Tharkadan where Brand had posted all his watches. She'd not be but a small figure, unheard and unrecognized at that height. And she wanted to be heard, she wanted to be recognized. An army of elves was coming, and she wanted to be seen by them. She had a warning to give, a command that no one interfere with what she would do, for her sake and theirs, for she feared that if she didn't defeat what haunted this place it would rampage out of Pax Tharkas and ravage the armies without. For goblins, she did not care. For elves-she was their princess. She could not let that happen.
Cold wind caught her breath as Elansa ran onto the second wall. Char, still on the heights of the Tharkadan, saw her and called out.’ She didn't hear what he said. Neither did she stop to look at him. Out on the plains she saw what Brand had described: two armies running fast. Even at this distance, she saw each was making a run for Pax Tharkas. Without doubt, the elves would reach the fortress in good time to hold the ground before the first wall.
Char called again, and again Elansa didn't look around. Looking for a way down to the first wall, she realized there was only one. Once, a long time age, there had been two, each tower having access to the wall from the lower regions. She could not go down into the deeps of the East Tower, but she could try the western tower.