"Then I'll be waiting for you there. I'll work on the defenses with the others while I do."

There was a momentary pause as the two stared at each other, neither knowing what more to say. "Don't worry," the Gray Man said finally. "I'll bring her back safe and sound."

The boy did not respond, but in the following silence Sider Ament could all but hear the words he was thinking.

You'd better.

TWENTY-FOUR.

JUST TWO DAYS AFTER VISITING HER GRANDMOTHER, Phryne was summoned before her father and told that the restrictions placed upon her were being lifted. Her father did not seem either happy or unhappy about this decision, simply resigned. His explanation, however, said everything that needed saying.

"Your grandmother seems to feel that you've been punished enough," he began after sitting her down across from him. "She has sent me repeated notes to that effect. She wants me to put you back to work in a more useful way; she wants me to give you a fresh chance to demonstrate your sense of responsibility."

He paused. "I agree with her thinking, which is saying something. Mistral Belloruus hasn't exactly endeared herself to me over these past few years. She would have me be a widower in mourning for your mother until I die, and even your mother, could she communicate as much, would disagree with her. Life is for the living, and the living have an obligation to carry on."

He paused again, suddenly uncomfortable with what he had said. "Not that I didn't love your mother more than I will ever love any other woman, Phryne. No one will ever replace her in my heart. You might think otherwise, but that's how it is."

She did think otherwise, but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. She loved him enough for that.

"So I am giving you back your old life, free of any restrictions," he continued. "With the understanding that you will not violate my trust and will exercise good judgment when temptation suggests you do otherwise. No running off on some wild impulse, no throwing caution to the winds to satisfy curiosity, and no going outside the valley for any reason whatsoever. Are we agreed?"

She nodded. "We are."

"This is important, given what I am about to ask of you. Are you certain you can live by these rules?"

"I can live by them."

"Good. Then we will put the last two weeks behind us, and hope that Sider Ament finds a way to rescue that unfortunate Glensk Wood girl from the Trolls."

She cringed inwardly as he said it, but kept her face expressionless.

"As I said, I have something I want you to do. No more work at the healing center for now. Let's leave that to Isoeld."

She cringed anew. That and a few other things she couldn't bring herself to mention.

"I want you to go back up to Aphalion Pa.s.s," he finished.

She started, surprised. "But I thought you just got through saying you didn't want me to-"

"Go out of the valley," he finished. "That is exactly right. I don't. What I want you to do is go up to the pa.s.s and find out how things are going. Talk to the Orullians and ask them what they think. They're both up there, helping with the barricades. Take a good look around. I need an independent judgment of matters, and you are the most independent-minded person I know. Which is to say, among other things, that you are good at seeing what others miss because you keep an open mind."

He saw the look of uncertainty that crossed her face. "I mean all this as a compliment, Phryne. You won't tell me something just to try to please me. And the truth is what I need. How is the work coming? How strong do the defenses look? What is the att.i.tude of the Elves working on the barriers, now that they know the protective wall is down? That's what I want here. The truth of things. Will you go?"

She rose, walked over to him, bent down and kissed his cheek. "Of course I'll go. Thank you for trusting me to do this."

"Who do I trust, if not you and Isoeld?" he said.

She bit off the reply that was on the tip of her tongue and listened to the rest of his explanation. One of the conditions of her going was that Elven Hunters acting as escorts and bodyguards would accompany her. She agreed without argument; she understood why her father would think it was too dangerous for her to make the journey alone. She was somewhat mollified when he added that she would be allowed to choose their route both coming and going so long as her escort did not think it presented any danger. She would make her own conclusions and deliver her own report when she returned. She was to take no more than three days to do this.

"This is all the time I can give you," he finished. "The deadline for this meeting with the Trolls expires in eight. I will need the balance of that time to muster and dispatch a force adequate to hold the pa.s.ses. I will have to tell our people something soon. I can't put it off any longer, much as I might like. Time slips away from us, Phryne."

She wouldn't disagree, and since it didn't do any good just talking about it, she left things where they were and went off to pack. Shoving clothes and personals into her backpack, she had a momentary twinge of regret that her companions of the last trip would not be going with her, especially Panterra Qu, about whom she had not stopped thinking since he had departed Arborlon more than a week ago with the Gray Man. Certainly thinking about Pan was preferable to thinking about her stepmother, but her thoughts were generated less as a matter of choice than of fascination. Even now, she remained intrigued with this boy, and although she had tried repeatedly she could not explain it.

She sighed, pondering on it anew as she stood there in her bedchamber, staring at her backpack. Some of her odd attraction to Panterra had to do with his unavailability, she knew. He was human, she was Elven, and the two did not mix when you were a member of the royal family. He was unavailable to her, and that made him desirable. Some of it had to do with the singular nature of his profession, how remote he kept himself from the rest of the world, how isolated he was. How he could do what he did and be happy, living on his own with no one to talk to but Prue Liss, separated from the rest of his people, immersed in reading sign and interpreting the behavior of nature's creatures.

She knew plenty of Elven Trackers, understood their lives and their need to live free. She had talked with some and listened to their explanations. But Panterra Qu was different, and she could not explain how. Something in the way he viewed the world. Something in the way he spoke and moved. Something in the Tracker part of him that made her feel he could manage in any given situation-which was part of why she had been so quick to cajole him into investigating the campfire that had led to Prue Liss's captivity.

Something in the way he looked at her.

She stopped suddenly, just at the end of closing up her backpack and preparing to set out, struck by a shocking possibility.

Was she in love with this boy? Was that what this was?

She rolled her eyes at the very idea of it and went out the door and down the walkway to the quarters that housed the Elven Hunters. Once there, she inquired after her escort and found that they had a.s.signed Rendelen and Dash to go with her, two who had accompanied her on previous outings in the valley. The former was a veteran, small and tough and smart. The latter was younger, bigger and full of good cheer. They greeted her with friendly waves, their packs already in place, ready to leave.

The morning had not yet reached midday when they set out for Aphalion Pa.s.s.

As they walked to the edge of the bluff and started down the Elfitch, she was surprised to find Arik Sarn coming up. The Troll was carrying writing instruments and paper, his head lowered, his mind elsewhere. He did not see her until he was almost on top of her, and when he did he was visibly startled.

"Princess," he greeted in his guttural voice, bowing deeply.

Too deeply to suit her. She still didn't like him. But it didn't much matter because she hadn't seen him once in the time he had been there. Until now, of course.

"Good morning to you," she said in reply. "Taking a walk?"

"Just to the ramp's end and back. I've come from your gardens. We have no such flowers where I live."

"They are beautiful," she agreed. "The gardeners work very hard to keep them so." She glanced at the notebook. "Writing something down about those flowers?"

"Drawing them," he said. He showed her several pages of very good sketchings of early-spring flowers. He smiled. "Helps me pa.s.s the time. We don't have these plants outside."

She found it surprising that he liked to draw flowers, but who could tell about Trolls? She left him there with a smile of encouragement and a wave of her hand. She could feel him studying her back.

With Dash and Rendelen as companions, she walked through the remainder of the day at a steady pace, pa.s.sing out of Arborlon and down through the Eldemeres, making her way across the lowlands to the forest that lay just at the base of the mountains leading up to the pa.s.s. The day was cloudy and gray, but the air was warm and the ground soft and dry. As nightfall approached, the trio made camp and ate dinner, and then afterward sat around a small fire drinking ale and telling stories. Phryne might have been born to a privileged and high-ranking family with expectations for her future, but she had not been raised that way. In fact, she had pretty much spurned all of it since she was very young, insisting that she be allowed to spend her time with whomever she wished-which in her case meant with the rough-and-tumble boys and girls being raised as Elven Hunters and Trackers. Her mother and father, seeing how set she was on choosing her own playmates and lifestyle, gave up on trying to manage that aspect of her life early on, settling instead for teaching her what they thought important about deportment and manners and court life in the privacy of her own home. She endured their lessons stoically and structured her life pretty much as she chose.

That became more the case than ever after the death of her mother, when her father, alone now and preoccupied, let her go her own way. Had he known half of the things she did during that time period, even a quarter of the escapades in which she had engaged or the dangerous situations into which she'd put herself, he would have locked her away until she was old enough to know better. Phryne, as her grandmother correctly surmised, had never been very good about knowing better, only knowing what she wanted.

So joshing and teasing with Rendelen and Dash came naturally, just three Elves of similar background and shared worldview, sitting around a fire and pa.s.sing the time.

Only one area was taboo. No mention was made of the King's personal life or his young Queen. Even Elven Hunters were astute enough to know that this was forbidden territory when it came to Phryne Amarantyne.

They slept soundly until the sunrise woke them, then set out to finish their journey. They climbed into the mountains, bright sunlight washing the landscape as yesterday's weather moved on, the clouds and mists of early morning dissipating, the skies turning clear and blue. By midday, they had reached the slopes leading up to the pa.s.s and were met by sentries keeping watch. Within another hour, they had ascended the final section of their climb, moved into the near end of the pa.s.s, and could hear the sounds of construction ahead.

The first thing Phryne noticed as they entered the split and saw the first of the staging areas was how close the fortifications were to the near end of the pa.s.s. Within minutes, she could see the defenses themselves, braced across a narrows where the cliff walls offered sheer drops of more than two hundred feet. She had envisioned the defenses being set farther in toward the far end of the pa.s.s, thinking the Elves would want to fight for every inch of the twisty pa.s.sageway if the first set of defenses was breached. Clearly, someone had decided otherwise.

She had her chance to discover whom as Tasha caught sight of her from where he was working on fashioning logs into b.u.t.tresses for the walls and hailed her over.

"Welcome, cousin!" he boomed, wrapping his big arms around her.

A few mouths gaped as he embraced her, for she was a Princess and no one hugged a Princess like that without permission. But Tasha was Tasha, and she expected no less.

"Good to see you, Tasha," she greeted him, hugging back. "I've missed you."

"And me, as well, I hope," said Tenerife, appearing at his brother's side to claim his own hug. "Your father set you free again, I gather?"

"He said he thought I had learned my lesson."

"Which lesson would that be, I wonder?" Tenerife gave her a wink. "How are things in Arborlon? How is Panterra doing without Prue?"

She grimaced. "Must you keep reminding me about that?" She sighed. "Well enough, when he left. Sider Ament took him off to the south to visit the villages there and try to rally support for protecting the other pa.s.ses. I haven't seen him since. What about here?"

"You can see for yourself, if you want," Tasha offered. "We've gotten the better part of the defensive wall finished. Should be all the way done in three days. Is that why you're here? To give your father a report?"

"Of course not!" She tried to look offended. "I'm only here to see that both of you are safe and sound. But you seem well enough, so I might as well have a look around."

The brothers laughed, and Tasha took her arm and steered her toward the wall. "Come with us, cousin Princess, and see how the working Elves do their job."

With Tenerife in tow, he took her through piles of building supplies and equipment-logs and huge stones hauled up from the valley; chains, clamps, and latching forged by their smiths; and heavy ropes, block and tackle, and pulleys and hoists manufactured by their craftsmen. She looked at everything, still confused by the positioning of the wall. "Why did you build it so close to the near end of the pa.s.s?" she asked finally.

Tasha laughed. "Seems like a mistake, doesn't it? But only if you judge the choice without thinking it through. Let me explain." He gestured at the cliffs to either side. "This is the narrowest point in the pa.s.s where the cliff walls cannot be climbed by attackers to bypa.s.s the fortifications. We've already eliminated some of the climbing paths and footholds farther in, sheering back the wall even farther. On this side, we've hewed out footholds that allow us to place defenders all along the upper stretches of the cliffs, back out of sight of those approaching. Archers will take those positions if we are attacked. Because of time constraints, we decided early on to build a single wall rather than a series. One good wall will have to be enough. We also chose this site based on something a little less obvious. Come over here."

He guided her to the wall, and together the three cousins climbed ladders to parapets and descended on the far side. Tasha led the way forward for perhaps two dozen yards and stopped, pointing up. "Now look up. There, in those clefts to either side."

She looked but didn't see anything. "What am I looking for?"

"What you're not seeing, which is good. We don't want the Trolls to see it, either. We've rigged pins linked to ropes on either side that hold back several tons of rock. If they are pulled, we create an avalanche that will bury anyone caught in the pa.s.s on the wrong side of the wall. A last resort, if the walls should be taken. The Trolls will be crowding forward, hundreds deep. There won't be time or s.p.a.ce to run. Most will die where they stand."

She nodded. "So you don't think they will see the trap you've set?"

Tenerife shrugged. "You didn't. Are their eyes any sharper than yours?"

"They might have more experience with these things than I do."

"They might be too busy trying to stay alive if they get this far to make a careful study of outcroppings several hundred feet up."

She nodded. It made sense. "Who designed all this?"

Tasha c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at her. "Ronan Caer. Remember him?"

She shook her head. "But the name sounds familiar."

"It should. He broke your arm when you were five. You were playing with staves, pretending to fight each other. He pretended too hard or you pretended too little, and the result was your left arm in a splint for nine weeks. Do you remember now?"

She did, although she hadn't thought of the incident in years, and she didn't think she had seen Ronan Caer in almost that long. He had moved away from Arborlon when she was still little. "He designed all this?"

"It seems he wasn't wasting his time while he was away. He was studying architecture, particularly as it relates to creating defensive positions. He was exploring, as well. Knew the pa.s.s as well as we did. He set the positions right away. Haren knew his talent from before and called him up as soon as we arrived. Made things much easier."

Haren Crayel, captain of the Home Guard. A good man, one her father trusted implicitly. She hadn't known he was up here, but it made sense that he would be placed in command.

"Enough of ancient history," Tasha declared, taking her arm. "We've got something else to show you besides the fortifications, something that isn't quite so rea.s.suring."

They left the staging areas and the defensive wall behind and proceeded through the pa.s.s. Soon even the noise of the construction had disappeared in a baffle of twists and turns that first distorted and then deadened the sound of the noise altogether. They wound deeper into the cut, approaching the wide opening where they had stumbled upon the dragon the last time she was up here.

"Any sign of that ...?"

"Dragon?" Tenerife finished for her. "Haven't seen it. Maybe it moved on to less crowded quarters. Maybe there wasn't enough for it to eat in these mountains and it went in search of better feeding grounds."

"Maybe it's waiting for you to get careless," she suggested.

"Maybe," he agreed. "I've been known to do that, but not where dragons are concerned."

They crossed the broad opening, Phryne glancing skyward more than once, caught between wanting on the one hand to be safe and on the other to encounter the beast again. She could not forget the mix of exhilaration and fear she had felt on seeing it for the first time. But the dragon did not appear, and soon enough they were past the widening and back inside the narrows, moving ahead once more toward the far opening of the pa.s.s. It took them only a short time after that, and as they neared their destination she caught sight of a handful of Elven Hunters gathered just inside the cut. Sentries warding the mouth of the pa.s.s, she realized.

"Any change?" Tasha asked as they came up to the group, glancing from face to face.

"Nothing," one replied. "Take a look for yourselves."

Wordlessly, the Orullians led Phryne forward the last few steps to where the pa.s.s opened out onto the foothills and plains beyond. As they neared the opening, Tasha looked over at her. "Look down on the plains, but don't show yourself. Stay in the shadow of the cliff sides."

He motioned for her to go ahead of him, and she did so. When she reached the edge of the light, she stopped and stared out at the broad sweep of the landscape beyond. There were mountains all around, but in the distance, below a ragged clutch of scrub-littered foothills, were plains turned as barren and brown as the rock of their pa.s.sageway, rolling off to the northwest until they disappeared in the haze of the distant horizon. She scanned from mountains to plains and back again. Nothing.

"I don't see anything," she said, glancing over her shoulder at the Orullians. "Where should I look?"

"There," Tasha advised, coming up beside her and pointing.

She peered out across the foothills and into the hazy air of the plains to the place he indicated. At first she saw nothing but a mix of dark and light terrain. Then she saw what looked like thin, barely noticeable columns of smoke rising out of the largest of the darker patches. She realized that there was movement within the patch, a rippling of life.

"Taureq Siq's army," she said quietly.

"Just so." Tasha's voice was equally soft. "Spread out for several miles on the flats. Been like that for three days now."

Both Orullians were standing next to her, one at either shoulder. Phryne glanced from one to the other. "What's it doing here?"

Tenerife shrugged. "Waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"That's the question, isn't it?"

"What's troublesome is that it hasn't sent out scouts, not even into the foothills let alone these mountains," Tasha interjected. "The Trolls don't seem particularly interested in investigating. I thought when the army first appeared that it had come to claim the pa.s.ses. But it hasn't moved since setting up camp."