The Measure of the Magic (40 page)

She glanced at him quickly and looked away again. “But it’s everything, really. The Drouj threatening to invade our home, my stepmother murdering my father so that she could be Queen, being imprisoned and escaping and going down into the tombs of the Gotrins to find my grandmother, being given the Elfstones to use to protect the Elves when I don’t really know how to do that …”

She trailed off, shaking her head.

“It’s not so different with me,” he interjected quickly, trying to find common ground. “Losing Sider, losing Prue and then getting her back only partially whole, being hunted by this demon I didn’t even know existed, and now running away with you. It’s not so different.”

“Then you should understand what I’m feeling. Time is something precious, especially now. We might not have all that much of it. So there is a temptation to do things because you don’t want to lose the chance. You don’t want to let those things slip away and never know what they might have been like.”

“Last night,” he said.

“Last night,” she agreed.

“But that doesn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t mean a lot of things,” she interrupted him. “Especially in the way I thought it would. But it does mean a few. Last night was a small moment in whatever time we have left. I did it because I didn’t want to miss out on something wonderful. I did it because I was frightened. I felt alone and vulnerable, and I wanted to feel something. I wanted to be close to someone, and you were there. I like you, Pan. Maybe I even love you. But last night was a small part of everything else that’s happening to us. That’s what I was thinking about this morning. I was thinking about what I have to do if I can stay alive long enough to do it. First of all, I have to discover what I am supposed to do with the Elfstones. Mistral gave them to me because she felt that using them would let me help my people. But how will they do that? How am I supposed to use them?”

She held up one hand quickly to stop him from saying anything. “Just let me finish this,” she said, stepping closer to him now, putting one hand on his cheek. “Let me say everything I have to say.”

He could feel her affection for him in the touch of her hand, and all of his anger and growing sense of loss were suddenly gone, and he was ready to do anything for her.

“I have to go home again and face Isoeld. I have to find a way to prove that she had my father killed and should not be Queen of the Elves. I have to stand up with my people—with Tasha and Tenerife and Haren Crayel and all the others—against the Drouj. I have to find out if I can do what Mistral believed I could do. The choice is already made for me in all these things. I didn’t make it; it was made for me. It isn’t something I can walk away from. I know that now.”

Her hand dropped away. “Then, Pan, when that’s done, maybe I can think about us. In the right way, the way I would like to—not just because of last night or some other night but because there might be a whole lot of nights, maybe even a lifetime. I can think about it because then there will be a future that isn’t measured in hours or days.”

“It isn’t measured that way now,” he insisted.

She gave him a sad smile. “Of course it is. You don’t have to pretend this is all going to turn out right. I know the odds of that happening. I know what we are up against. But I need you to acknowledge
that I do. Don’t pretend with me. Don’t try to shelter me. I needed that yesterday, but today I’m someone else. I’m who I was always supposed to be, I hope. I’m strong enough to do what I have to do. I need you to be strong with me.”

He nodded slowly. “I just worry we’ve lost something since last night, and I don’t like how it makes me feel. I don’t like that you don’t think last night means something more—that maybe it doesn’t mean as much to you as it does to me. It makes me sad.”

She stepped up to him and kissed him hard on the mouth and held the kiss for a very long time. “There,” she said, stepping back. “That’s what it means to me.” She smiled at the look on his face. “But it’s over and done with, and we have to think about what’s coming. We have to leave last night behind.”

He didn’t want to leave last night behind. He wanted to build his life around it. He wanted to make it the beginning of everything. But he nodded slowly and forced himself to smile back.

“All right,” he agreed.

But it wasn’t all right and he wasn’t done with it, either, not now and not ever. That was what he promised himself as he let the matter drop.

T
HE DAY PASSED SLOWLY
after that. Neither felt much like talking so mostly they were silent. The only exchange of words came when Panterra—assiduously studying his surroundings in an effort to stop himself from thinking about Phryne—felt it necessary to pass along information on what his instincts and tracking skills were telling him. Twice they crossed the prints of what he believed to be the cat they had seen the previous night. Although the tracks were several days old, he was taking no chances and made it a point to direct them a different way. Once, they caught sight of a solitary agenahl, huge and ponderous as it threaded the gaps between the forest trees. Seemingly out of place in such confines, it nevertheless managed its way. It did not detect their presence, and they stood perfectly still until it was well out of sight.

Several times, they saw huge birds overhead, great wings outstretched,
soaring through the cloud cover and gloom. It reminded Pan of the dragon, though these were clearly species of a different sort and nowhere near as large. But he knew that life had evolved outside the valley and much of it was larger and stronger and more dangerous than anything living inside. When the two merged, the Races were going to have to find a way to equalize the unequal struggle that was inevitable.

A handful of small rodents with sharp teeth came at them threateningly at one point, but Pan used a quick burst of magic from his staff to turn them away. Insects bit and stung them when given half a chance, and something far up in the mossy trees hurled sticks and nuts at them. But at least they were seeing signs of life now, an indication that their woodsy graveyard was beginning to change into something less barren and empty. Pan picked up a handful of the discarded nuts and broke open the shells. Edible. He gathered more and shared them with Phryne, and they ate hungrily. Then they pushed on, shrugging off their discomfort, keeping their direction fixed in their minds, watching out for each other.

All the while, they searched diligently for a source of fresh water. A few times, they crossed streams that were fouled and smelled as bad as they looked. Once, they found a pool that appeared to be clean but then saw animal bones and half-eaten carcasses scattered about it. The longer they traveled, the more convinced Panterra became that they were not going to find drinkable water until they were safely away from this forest.

It took them almost until sunset to achieve their goal, emerging into a series of barren, empty hills that stretched away father than they could see, folding into lowlands and clumps of heavy brush to their right and abutting a broad plateau to their left. But finally they could see the mountain ranges that were their destination, though the peaks were little more than a ragged line against the horizon and miles away from where they stood.

Phryne glanced left and right. “Which way should we go?”

Pan took a moment to study the choices and shook his head. “Nowhere just now. It’s too late to travel any farther today. We’ll find a place to spend the night and take this up again in the morning.”

He could see that she wanted to object, that she was anxious to press on. But to her credit she didn’t argue the matter, deciding perhaps
that he was right about trying to cross those hills in darkness. So she simply nodded and joined him in searching for that night’s shelter. There was not much to be found without going back into the woods, and neither of them wanted to do that. They ended up settling on a fold in the hills that would keep them mostly hidden and hunkered down in its lee. There was nothing to eat or drink, so they soon rolled up under Pan’s blanket, huddled close together, and drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Nothing disturbed them that night, although had anything threatened them Pan would have known. He was awake almost the entire time, unable to sleep, unwilling even to try, his thoughts on Phryne as she pressed close to him, wondering at how things could change so quickly and wishing he could have done something to stop it. At least, he told himself, she wasn’t trying to avoid him altogether, sleeping so close to him. At least she wasn’t signaling that she no longer wanted him near.

But this alone provided scant comfort, and his thoughts of her were dark and despairing. The hours passed and sleep eluded him as surely as his hopes for the future he had once imagined possible.

When dawn broke and she woke, he kissed her once on the cheek, quick and purposeful, and rose to see what the new day had to tell him. He was hungry and thirsty and tired, as he knew she also was, and he wondered how long they could go on this way.

“I don’t know where we are,” he admitted as they stood together and looked out across the empty terrain. “I don’t recognize any of this. I don’t know where we are or which way the passes lie.”

She nodded, as if expecting him to say as much. “Then I’ll use the Elfstones to find out.”

He looked at her doubtfully. “There’s a risk in that, as you already know.”

“But if we don’t use them, we’ll continue traveling blindly ahead, and that’s every bit as dangerous. I think we have to.”

She waited, looking at him. “I think so, too,” he agreed finally.

He moved a few steps away from her and took up a protective stance as she prepared to use the Elfstones, reaching into her pocket to produce them and pouring them out of their pouch and into her hand. She stood there a moment studying them, as if not quite sure what it
was she was holding, as if weighing what it meant to summon the magic. Then she folded her fingers about the Stones, faced off toward the mountains, and closed her eyes.

Long moments went by. Pan waited impatiently, eyes scanning the surrounding countryside. He didn’t like it that they were so out in the open, unprotected even by the trees. If anything attacked, it would be on top of them almost before he could react to it.

But there wasn’t any choice if they wanted to get a bearing on where they needed to go.

He glanced at Phryne. Nothing was happening.

After a long time, she opened her eyes and looked at him in bewilderment. “It isn’t working. The magic isn’t working. I can’t make it do anything!”

She sounded almost stricken, suddenly in doubt again. He went to her at once and put his hands on her shoulders. “Yes, you can. I’ve seen you do it before, and you can do it again. Just remember that you are still new at this, so it might take a while before you can make it work right away.”

He took his hands away. “Tell me what you were envisioning, what you were focusing on in your mind?”

“Aphalion Pass,” she told him.

“All right. Maybe that’s too vague an image. The passes all tend to look somewhat the same. Try picturing Arborlon instead. That’s a more specific image. Wherever the Elfstones take us, we will have to go through one of the passes. That’s good enough.”

She studied his face silently. Then she turned away again, folded both hands about the Elfstones, closed her eyes, and went still as stone.

Again, Panterra waited.

This time she had a better response. The Elfstones flared to life, their bright blue fire quickly building strength. It lanced out across the barren hills toward the mountains, illuminating everything, rendering the whole of the landscape clear and close, revealing miles of rough, blasted terrain before closing on the massive rock walls. Once there, the light angled into a split that had been invisible just seconds before, careening down canyon walls, through a narrow defile, past a defensive wall constructed at a narrows with dozens of bodies scattered on either side, and finally down into the valley they both knew so well and to Arborlon’s familiar cottages and gardens.

Then the light flared and died away, and the images vanished.

The boy and the girl exchanged glances. “That wasn’t Aphalion Pass,” she declared.

“No,” he agreed. “It was Declan Reach. Those were the defenses I worked on with the men from Glensk Wood. But those men are all dead, and the defenses are still abandoned. I don’t understand it.”

“I don’t, either. Why aren’t others from the village guarding that wall? Something bad has happened, Pan.”

He looked back out across the hills, unwilling to speculate. “If Declan Reach is the closest entrance into the valley, we’re way south of Aphalion. We need to start walking.”

They set out anew, fresh purpose driving them beyond thirst and hunger and exhaustion, revitalizing their determination. They entered the hill country and began the arduous task of countless ascents and descents, of navigating ravines and gullies while making sure they kept in sight the destination shown them by the Elfstones. It was not hard to do so since three clearly recognizable peaks formed a sharp row of spikes right where the pass at Declan Reach awaited. The trick was in minimizing the amount of time wasted in finding their way over the uneven terrain, a task they were not in the best shape to undertake.