Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [228]
When she looked again at the Lady, tears marked the queen’s face. The Lady met Arian’s gaze; Arian saw great sorrow there. Then the Lady turned to her entourage. “If a half-elf can do here what we full elves cannot, it is indeed not our place. We must give it up. The blame is mine; I wasted your time, brothers and sisters, long ago and once again, and offended those to whom the Singer gave the dominion of stone. I swear to you, I did so with good intent, but good intent does not excuse ill results. We must now return to the Ladysforest and do what we may for the taig, but afterward, if it is your will, another may challenge for my place.”
“No, Lady!” Several elves protested, stepping forward. The Lady held up a hand to forestall them.
“It grieves me to say, but I was wrong; the taig is bearing the pain of my error, and the taig is—was—in my charge. Let us go quickly and spend ourselves in its defense.” To Arian she said, “I am sorry you were hurt, child, by my anger. It was wrong of me to take, even for a moment, your taig-sense from you. I wanted only the best for my grandson, who had been so cruelly hurt so young.” She stepped on the pattern Arian had made and offered Arian her hand. “Come with me, if you will, and I will do what I can to mend what I broke. Though I know you have another helper—” She glanced at the ceiling.
Go, said the dragon in Arian’s mind.
Her resentment against the Lady was less important than the taig, than Kieri. She took the Lady’s hand.
Once out of the stone, the Lady’s connection with the elvenhome Forest moved them all to the edge of a long, straight ash-colored scar through the forest. Arian saw Kieri and a small group—Orlith among them, standing on the scathefire track—turn to the elvenhome light. And to one side, the dark man with flame-colored eyes.
By the third day of the attack Kieri felt that the situation had stabilized—though he still feared the magical fire the Pargunese king had mentioned, it had not yet been used. Someone had found the bodies of the couriers the assassin had killed, and another assassin—less skilled than the first—had been caught. Though Kieri’s force was able to drive the Pargunese to the river in some places, the enemy still had a foothold on the south bank. Aliam and his remaining force would only now be hearing of the attack; it would be more than a hand of days before they could reach Chaya.
“Where is the Lady?” Kieri demanded of Orlith every day, and every day Orlith had no answer. “Why does she not come or send aid? Does she want the land burned to the bare rock as they’ve threatened? And where are the other elves?”
“I do not know,” Orlith said. The elf looked almost as tired as Kieri felt, his usual bland expression strained. “I cannot sense her anywhere. I do not think she has been killed: the taig would surely react to that.”
“The taig has enough anguish,” Kieri said.
“I know. And before you ask again, I do not know where the other elves are: your uncle Amrothlin, for instance. It is as if the Ladysforest itself were withdrawn, though I can sense it, far off near the mountains. Even if she went below—”
“Below?”
“Into the elfane taig, the stronghold—even there I should be able to sense her, but I cannot.”
For an instant, Kieri’s mind threw up the memory of Arian’s father, Dameroth, talking of Paks … of places no human should see … the elfane taig? Was that one of the places? He put that aside; it couldn’t matter now.
“Without the Lady, or the guidance of another with her powers, the taig is defenseless,” Orlith said. “If worse comes, neither of us can raise its full power.”
“At the battle on my way here, a Kuakgan raised the taig—”
“We do not speak of Kuakkgani!