Her smile in response was there and gone in an instant. Her delicate features were shadowed and gave her a gaunt look in the dim light. She seemed to be working something through.
“When I was five years old,” she said after a moment, “just before I reached my sixth birthday, not long after my sister died, I was out playing in a field near the house with my older brother. It was a pasture, left fallow that year. There were milk cows in it, grazing. I remember seeing one of the cows lying on its side down in a depression. It had a funny look about it, and I walked down to see what was wrong. The cow was looking at me, its eyes wide and staring, very frightened. It didn’t seem to be able to cry out. It was dying, half in and half out of some sort of muddy sinkhole that I had never seen there before. Its body was being eaten away.”
She folded her arms across her chest as if she was cold. “I don’t know why, but I wanted a closer look. I walked right up to it, didn’t stop until I was no more than several yards away. I should have called for my brother, but I was little and I didn’t think to do so. I looked at the cow, wondering what had happened. And suddenly I felt this burning on the soles of my feet. I looked down and saw that I was standing in some of the same mud that the cow had gotten into. The mud was streaked with greenish lines and bubbling. It had eaten right through my shoes. I turned and ran, crying now, calling out for help. I ran as fast as I could, but the pain was faster. It went all through my feet. I remember looking down and seeing that some of my toes were gone.”
She shivered at the memory. “My mother washed me as best she could, but it was too late. Half my toes were gone, and my feet were scarred and burned as if they had been set on fire. I developed a fever. I was in bed for two weeks. They thought I was going to die. But I didn’t; I lived. They died instead. All of them.”
Her smile was bitter and ironic. “I just thought you should know after this morning. I don’t like people to see what happened to me.” She looked at him briefly, then turned away again. “But I wanted you to understand.”
She stood with him a moment longer, then said good-night and disappeared back into the trees. He stared after her for a long time, thinking about what she had said. When he returned to the campsite and rolled himself back into his blanket, he could not sleep. He could not stop thinking about Matty Roh.
They set out again at dawn, shadows in the faint gray light that seeped out of the east. The day was overcast, and by midday it had begun to rain. The company trudged on through the forested hill country north of Varfleet and the Mermidon, following the line of the Dragon’s Teeth west. Twice the scout came back to warn of Federation patrols and they were forced to take cover until the patrols had passed. The land was gray and shone damply through the rain, and they encountered no one else. Morgan walked with Matty Roh, moving up next to her unbidden, staying with her through the day. She said nothing to discourage him and did not move away. She spoke little, but she seemed comfortable with his presence. When they stopped to eat lunch, she shared with him the small bit of fruit she was carrying.
By nightfall, they had crossed the Mermidon and come in sight of Tyrsis. The city glowed bleakly from the bluff heights as they stared up at it from across the approaching plains. Rain continued to fall, steady and unrelenting, turning the dusty earth to mud. Damson and Matty Roh would not attempt to enter the city until morning, when they could mingle with the usual tradesmen come up for the day from the surrounding villages. Chandos sent the scout on ahead to see if he could learn anything useful from travelers departing the city. The rest of the company bedded down in a grove of old maples, finding to their displeasure that dry spaces were few and far between.
It was nearing midnight when the scout returned. Morgan was still awake, huddled with Chandos and Matty Roh, all of them listening as Damson described what she knew of the tunnels beneath Tyrsis and the Federation prisons. The scout bent to whisper something to Chandos, furtive and quick. Chandos turned ashen. He dismissed the scout and turned to the Highlander and the girls.
The Federation had announced its intention to execute Padishar Creel. The execution would be public. It would take place at noon on the day after tomorrow.
Chandos got up and walked away, shaking his head. Morgan sat with Damson and Matty Roh in stunned silence. He had guessed wrong. The Federation had decided to rid itself of Padishar once and for all. The leader of the free-born had less than two days to live.
Morgan’s eyes met Damson’s, then Matty’s. They were all thinking the same thing. Whatever rescue plan they tried, they had better get it right the first time.
Chapter Twelve
Wind blew across Wren Elessedil’s face, cooling it against the heat of the midday sun. Her short cropped hair whipped from side to side with its passing, and the whistling rush past her ears drowned out all other sounds. There was a cadence to it that lulled and soothed despite its thrust, that wrapped about in the manner of a warm cloak on a cold night. She smiled at the feeling, closed her eyes, and gave herself over to its embrace.
Wren was seated astride the giant Roc Spirit, flying high over the Westland forests south and east of Arborlon, approaching the Mermidon where it brushed the vast swamp they called the Shroudslip and edged down into the plains of the Tirfing. Tiger Ty sat in front of her, straddling Spirit’s neck where it joined the shoulders, just forward of the great wings. Both Wing Rider and Elf Queen were strapped tightly to the bird’s harness, securely fastened against the possibility of a fall. The sky was bright and cloudless, the sun’s light bathing the land from horizon to horizon in melted gold. Below, where the earth stretched away in a patchwork maze of green and brown, it was hot and humid in the long, slow days of late summer, and everything seemed to stand still. But here, high above the heat, where the wind blew steady and cool, Wren soared through space and time unchecked, and there was within her that sense of escape that flight inevitably generated.
Her eyes opened and there was bitterness in her smile. Certainly she had spent enough time seeking escape in one form or another to recognize the feeling, she thought.
It was ten days now since her return to the Four Lands. The nightmare of Morrowindl was behind her and beginning to fade into the recesses of her memory. Her sleep was still haunted by dreams of what had been—by the monsters that had pursued the little company down Killeshan’s ruptured mountain slopes to the beaches, by the faces of those who had died in the attempt, by the fear and anguish she had felt, and by the terrible sense of loss that she did not think would ever leave her. She still woke from those dreams, shaking and cold in spite of the summer heat, leaving her bed to walk alone through the palace halls, a driven spirit. Even now Morrowindl, gone back into the ocean in that fiery conflagration, whispered to her from out of the past, from out of its watery grave, its voice a constant reminder of how she had gotten to where she was and what it had cost her.
But there was little time to dwell on what had been, for the demands of the present overshadowed everything. She was Queen of the Elves, entrusted with the safety and welfare of her people. It was the charge that Ellenroh had given her; it was the charge she had accepted. But not all those for whom she had been given responsibility believed in her. It was not easy convincing the Elves that she was the one who should lead them. After the first rush of euphoria over finding themselves free of Morrowindl and returned once again to the Westland faded, they began to question. Who was this barely grown girl who had declared herself their queen—this girl who was not even a pure-blooded Elf, but a mix of Elf and Man? Who had decided that she should lead them, should govern them, should make decisions that would affect their lives? It was claimed that she was the granddaughter of Ellenroh, the daughter of Alleyne, a child of the Elessedils and the last of them left to rule. But she was a stranger, too, come out of nowhere, unknown and untested. Who was she, that she should be queen?