Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [129]
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 attitude 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 passes. 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