watchfully. She watched the Gnome Hunters drift through the light toward their ships like wraiths to their haunts. She saw Tagwen’s rough features, sad and desperate, peer upward as Pen climbed the ladder. She saw Kermadec’s strong hands knot together in a promise of certain action.
She could still stop it, she told herself. She could fling Druid Fire or elemental winds all through those Gnome Hunters and knock them sprawling. She could separate Pen from those Druids, burn away the ladder from below where he climbed, and give him a chance to flee. But it would not be settled then and there, and the consequences for those Trolls too slow to reach the shadows or the weapons of which they had been stripped would be ugly.
Remember. Penisnot trying to escape. He is trying to reach Paranor. He has made up his mind.
She pictured him anew as she had seen him from across the chasm not two hours earlier. She saw the monster Traunt Rowan had named Aphasia Wye. She saw Pen prepare to do what he could to stop it, even when there appeared there was nothing he could do. Facing what must have seemed to be certain death, he had not tried to flee or hide. He had stood there to meet it.
And would have, had she not been there to give him aid.
Perhaps he was relying on her now.
Perhaps he knew she would not abandon him, that because she had saved him once, his life was her responsibility. Old legends said that this was so. She had never believed it.
But somehow, at that moment, she did.
« Are you injured?» Traunt Rowan asked pleasantly, supporting Pen under his free arm, not looking at him as he talked, moving him steadily along toward theAthabasca.
Pen shrugged. «Nothing serious.»
« Aphasia Wye?»
« I hurt it trying to get away from him.»
« But no broken bones?»
Pen shook his head.
« You’re lucky. If you hadn’t gotten away from him, broken bones would have been the least of your problems.»
The second Druid, the one Tagwen had named Pyson Wence, moved up suddenly on Pen’s other side. «Howdid you get away from him?»
« 1 don’t want to talk about it.» He risked a quick look at Traunt Rowan, seemingly the friendlier of the two. «Not until we’re away.»
Pyson Wence seized his arm, the blunt fingers squeezing so hard he flinched. «I don’t like your tone of voice, little man,” he hissed. «What you want in this matter is of no concern to us.»
Pen shrank from him. «I want to know my friends are safe before I tell you anything.»
« Let him go, Pyson,” the taller one whispered. «Unfriendly eyes are watching. We can wait.»
The one called Pyson let him go. Pen tore away from Traunt Rowan and rubbed his injured arm. He kept his head down and his eyes averted. He didn’t want to do anything to aggravate them until the airships were aloft and his friends free. He didn’t know what to expect then, but he would have a story in place to tell them that might buy him some time.
They reached the ladder, and as he made an attempt to climb it while still holding the darkwand, Pyson Wence snatched it away and cast it aside. «You won’t be needing any crutches from here on,” he said.
Pen froze, hands on the ladder, one foot on the first rung. He couldn’t leave the talisman behind.
Then Traunt Rowan walked over and picked it up. «He might have need of it, Pyson. I’ll carry it up for him. Go on, Pen.»
Pen exhaled sharply and began to climb, taking care to favor his supposedly injured leg as he went. He did not look down at the Druids. He did not slow until he was aboard the airship, when he turned to wait for them. They were aboard quickly, dark faces shadowed and unreadable in the faint diffusion of the now distant firelight. Below, the Gnome Hunters were moving to follow, all but those who ringed the prisoners.
Traunt Rowan moved over to Pen and handed him back his staff. «You wouldn’t consider trying to use this as a weapon, would you?» he asked with an edgy smile.
Pen shook his head.
« Good. Now let’s go below and get you settled in.»
Instantly, Pen moved over to the railing, away from everyone. «Not until 1 see that my friends are going to be all right,” he said. «I want to watch what happens next.»
Pyson Wence’s Gnomic features were dark with anger, but Traunt Rowan merely shrugged. «Stay where you are then.»
He turned to Wence and nodded, and the latter issued orders to the Hunters who crewed the airships. The Hunters began scurrying about the decks and up the rigging, preparing the three ships to sail. With a last, dark look at Pen, Pyson Wence moved into the pilot box to stand next to theAthabasca’s Captain, his face turned away from the boy.
Now only the few Gnomes guarding Tagwen and the Trolls remained, and one by one, weapons held at the ready, eyes fixed on the prisoners, they began to drift back toward the airships as well. Pen’s companions sat quietly and watched their captors withdraw, making no attempt to stop them. Atalan was staring up at Pen, a strange look on his fierce face, one that suggested he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Tagwen was whispering to Kermadec, his head bent close to that of the Troll, their faces dark and intense.
Pen scanned the grounds at the edges of the firelight, where the walls caught the last of the flickering yellow glow, where the shadows encroached from the woods beyond. No sign of Khyber. But she had to be there. She had to be watching.
Then theAthabasca was lifting away, the other two airships following close behind, and the ruins of Stridegate were shrinking into the darkness. His former companions came to their feet and stood close together, looking after him. Quickly, their faces turned small and indistinct, and then disappeared. The ruins faded, as well, until all that remained was the tiny dot of the fire’s heart.
When that disappeared and the island of the tanequil was nothing more than a dark lump silhouetted by starlight against the horizon, Traunt Rowan appeared at his side to take him below.
On the deck of the ship flying to starboard, Khyber Elessedil sat quietly in the concealing shadow of the aft port rail sling, watching theAthabasca. Pen had gone down the main hatchway and was no longer in view. The ruins of Stridegate had disappeared into the distance, and her companions with them. The glow of the fire had faded, and the position of the stars told her they were flying south along the edge of the Klu toward the Upper Anar, the vast sprawl of the Inkrim a dark lake below.
There was nothing she could do but wait.
When she was twelve, she had run away for the third time. On that occasion, intent on escaping her family and their dictatorial ways, she had stowed away aboard an airship flying to Callahorn. It wasn’t that she didn’t love them. It was that she didn’t love what they had planned for her. Her brother and her father before him had very definite ideas about the ways in which an Elessedil Princess should conduct herself, and Khyber had trouble even seeing herself as a Princess. Her station in life was an accident of birth, and she could never quite bring herself to accept it as her due. She was always more comfortable with being someone and something else. Her family didn’t like that. Her family let her know that rebelliousness would not be tolerated.
Her response had been to run away. She started at eight. At twelve, after two failed attempts, she had determined that this time she would succeed, that she would put herself permanently beyond their reach. Callahorn was Free–born land, and people of all Races were welcomed and accepted no matter who they were or where they came from. Everyone was treated the same. Royalty had been gone from the Borderlands for hundreds of years and wasn’t likely to be coming back anytime soon. If she could get that far, she could disappear into the mix and never be found. At least, that was the way she saw it at twelve.
She got as far as her destination, but she was discovered by the Captain before she could disembark and was hauled back kicking and screaming yet again to her family. It was not a pleasant reunion. But she learned something valuable from that effort. She learned how to hide in plain sight. She learned that if you looked enough like you belonged, you stood a pretty good chance of being accepted. On that outing, she took on the look of a cabin boy or a very young crewmember, and to her surprise the crew never stopped to consider that she might be something else. Admittedly, she kept her exposure to a minimum, staying out of sight most of the time. But when
