bound and gagged? She doesn’t have the magic for that! She’s just a girl!»
« Well, maybe she didn’t escape. Maybe there’s another explanation.»
She looked at him as if he were an idiot. «If the Gnomes are missing, she’s escaped. But we can deal with that.» She gestured toward the door. «Go. See what the watch in the cold room has to say. Then come tell me.»
He went out the door without a word. She stood looking after him a moment, considering what she should do. She would check the triagenel herself, of course. She would not rely on him. Her own magic was the more powerful and the more capable, it would give a more sensitive reading. In any case, she no longer cared to rely on anyone else in matters of importance—even her confederates. Maybe especially her confederates. They hadn’t shown her anything yet that suggested she should rely on them.
Nor had anyone else, she reminded herself, thinking suddenly of Iridia.
She paused a moment to ponder the disappearance of the assassins she had dispatched to Arishaig to dispose of the sorceress. Those Gnomes had vanished as well, which would suggest that they had failed. Iridia was dangerous, the most capable of those who had conspired with her to lock Grianne Ohmsford within the Forbidding, but the men sent to kill her should have been equal to the task.
She shook her head. Sooner or later, she would have to deal with Iridia herself. Perhaps Sen Dunsidan, too. It might be better if she rid herself of both of them. Let the Federation choose a new Prime Minister. She would take her chances. Sen Dunsidan was becoming more trouble than he was worth.
For the moment, however, she needed to find out if the Elessedil girl was still inside Paranor’s walls.
Pulling her dark robes close about her, she went out the door and down the hall toward the Ard Rhys’s sleeping chambers.
It took Khyber a while to figure out how to disable the clipps, but in the end she managed. She did so by masking them with her own magic, a small covering that closed down their ability to read the presence of intruders in the passageway and left them useless. The magic she used was small, but sufficiently strong to last for several days. That should be long enough, she decided. It would have to be.
She fell asleep again after that, not meaning to, unable to help herself, she was so exhausted that just resting her eyes for a moment was sufficient to send her off. She awoke feeling a little better, although her wound still throbbed and her face felt hot and tight. She couldn’t risk using any further magic to heal herself, couldn’t risk anything that might give her away unless it had to do with helping Pen and Grianne, and so she did her best to turn her thoughts away from the pain and to the task at hand.
She slipped the rest of the way down the passage, checking carefully as she went for traps, and reached the doorway at the end. She saw the faint glow of the triagenel’s magic as it seeped through the cracks in the doorway from the chamber beyond, a wicked green light that cut through the darkness like a razor’s edge. She crouched down in the gloom and studied the doorway for a moment, then inched forward until she was close enough to touch the light seeping through. She kept herself from doing so, some magic could convey disturbances even from something as minuscule as the brush of fingertips. Sitting to one side of the doorway, she tried to plan her next actions.
Warning Pen and the Ard Rhys after they had reentered Paranor would do no good. The trap would be sprung by then, and they would be prisoners. She could try to help them, but she knew she lacked the kind of magic that could break them free. Whatever she was going to do, she had to do it before they attempted their return.
Which meant that she couldn’t afford to wait since she didn’t know how long she had. Which meant that she had to do something soon.
But what?
The only real magic she possessed was the Elfstones. But if she used them, she would give herself away in a heartbeat. She would be captured anew, and Shadea a’Ru and her allies would simply rebuild the triagenel. Besides, the Elfstones could only serve two purposes— to discover what was hidden and to defend against enemy magic. Neither usage seemed right for what was needed.
She leaned back against the passage wall, thinking. She was still thinking when she heard a noise in the darkness behind her. The hair at the back of her neck prickled and her throat tightened in fear.
Someone was coming.
Twenty–Five
Willing herself to disappear, Khyber pressed back against the rough wall of the darkened passage. She had nowhere to run or to hide, nowhere at all to go. She was trapped, and unless whoever or whatever approached changed direction quickly, she would be caught out. She tried to remember how far back down the passage diverged, but she couldn’t. The sounds continued to advance toward her. There was no mistaking the inevitable.
She reached into her tunic and brought out the Elfstones. If Shadea or one of the other Druids had found her, she would have to fight. If magic was used, the Elfstones would give her some protection.
Then a shadowy form appeared from out of the gloom, squat and heavy, too small to be anything other than a Gnome or a Dwarf. One of the Hunters she had feared would come searching, she thought in despair. The Elfstones would do her no good against him. She would have to rely on the long knife she had used to cauterize her wound. She tucked the Stones away swiftly and brought it out.
Not a dozen feet away, the approaching figure paused. Two more figures, cloaked and hooded and much larger than the first, appeared as well. Dizziness washed through her, triggered by the sudden surge of adrenaline that the new threat brought. She could not fight all three. She did not think she could fight one. She was weak and feverish and holding herself together through sheer determination.
Could she use magic to mask her presence? It was a possibility, and she grasped at it as she would a lifeline. Using magic was dangerous, but she was all out of choices.
She brought up her hands in front of her and was beginning to conjure a masking spell when a familiar voice said, «Khyber Elessedil, is that you?»
She was so astonished that she stopped what she was doing and stared at the speaker, realizing as she did so that the light from the triagenel magic was giving him a clear view of her silhouette. «Tagwen?» she whispered in disbelief.
He hurried forward, knelt in front of her, and took her hands in his own. «Shades, Elven girl! We didn’t know what had become of you! I must say, I thought the worst more than once. But here you are.» He reached out impulsively and hugged her. «Look, I’ve brought help!» He gestured to the two figures that had joined him. «These are Pen’s parents, Bek and Rue.»
The older couple knelt as well, and whispered greetings were quickly exchanged in the greenish cast of the magic’s light. «How did you find me?» Khyber asked.
« By accident,” Bek said, keeping his voice low. «We came looking for my sister’s sleeping chamber so that we would be here when she and Pen came through the Forbidding.»
Quickly, he explained how Rue and he had escaped the Druids and the Keep more than a week earlier, then flown north aboardSwift Sure in search of Pen and his companions, not realizing that Pen was already a prisoner. After finding Tagwen and the others at Stridegate and learning what had become of their son, they had flown back again, determined to rescue him.
« Is Kermadec with you?» she asked excitedly.
« Somewhere in the Keep with Atalan and a few others,” Tagwen answered. «The rest of the Trolls of Taupo Rough are following us. They might not be more than a day out. Then we’ll see how Shadea and those other weasels handle things.»
« We’ll need their help,” Khyber said. She explained what had befallen after her successful attempt at freeing Pen and helping him to enter the Forbidding. «But Shadea and her allies have constructed a triagenel in the sleeping chamber. If we can’t disable it in some way, it will trap Pen and the Ard Rhys the moment they come back through the Forbidding. I’ve been trying to think of something to do, but I haven’t had much luck.»
Rue Meridian, who had been listening silently in the background, moved forward and put her hand on
