If that doesn’t force him to make love to her, nothing will, thought Roland. He stared into the darkness and thought desperately about money.
Lying apart from both her brother and the elf, Rega kept very still, pretended to sleep, and swallowed her tears.
“The tunnels end here,” announced Drugar.
“Where is ‘here’?” demanded Paithan.
“We are at the border of Thillia, near Griffith.”
“We’ve come that far?”
“The way through the tunnels is shorter and easier than the way above. We have traveled in a straight line, instead of being forced to follow the winding trails of the jungle.”
“One of us should go up there,” said Rega, “see what . . . see what’s happening.”
“Why don’t you go, Rega? You’re so all fired hot to get out of here,” suggested her brother.
Rega didn’t move, didn’t look at him. “I… I thought I was. I guess I’m not.”
“I’ll go,” offered Paithan. Anything to get away from the woman, to be able to think clearly without the sight of her scattering his thoughts around like the pieces of a broken toy.
“Take this tunnel to the top,” instructed the dwarf, holding the torch high and pointing. “It will bring you out in a femmoss cavern. The town of Griffith is about a mile on your right. The path is plainly marked.”
“I’ll go with you,” offered Rega, ashamed of her fear. “We both will, won’t we, Roland?”
“I’ll go alone!” Paithan snapped.
The tunnel wound upward through the bole of a huge tree, twisting round and round like a spiral staircase. He stood, looking up it, when he felt a hand touch his arm.
“Be careful,” said Rega softly.
The tips of her fingers sent ripples of heat through the elf’s body. He dared not turn, dared not look into the brown, fire-lit eyes. Leaving her abruptly, without a word or a glance, Paithan began to crawl up the tunnel.
He was soon beyond the light of the torch and had to feel his way, making the going slow and arduous. He didn’t mind. He both longed for and dreaded reaching the world again. Once he emerged into the sun, his questions would be answered, he’d be forced to take decisive action.
Had the tytans reached Thillia? How many of the creatures were there? If no more than they had encountered in the jungle, Paithan could almost believe Roland’s boast that the human knights of the five kingdoms could deal with them. He wanted very much to believe in that. Unfortunately, logic kept sticking its sharp point into his rainbow-colored bubbles.
These tytans had destroyed an empire. They had destroyed the dwarven nation. Doom and destruction, said the old man. You will bring it with you.
No, I won’t. I’ll reach my people in time. We’ll be prepared. Rega and I will warn them.
Elves are, in general, strict observers of the law. They abhor chaos and rely on laws to keep their society in order. The family unit and the sanctity of marriage were held sacred. Paithan was different, however. His entire family was different. Calandra held money and success sacred, Aleatha believed in money and status, Paithan believed in pleasing himself. If at any time society’s rules and regulations interfered with a Quindiniar belief, the rules and regulations were conveniently swept into the wastebasket.
Paithan knew he should feel some sort of qualm at asking Rega to run away with him. He was satisfied to discover that he didn’t. If Roland couldn’t hang onto his own wife, that was his problem, not Paithan’s. The elf did remember, now and then, the conversation he’d overheard between Rega and Roland; the one in which it had seemed Rega was plotting to blackmail him. But he remembered, too, Rega’s face when the tytans were dosing in on them, when they were facing certain death. She’d told him she loved him. She wouldn’t have lied to him then. Paithan concluded, therefore, that the scheme had been Roland’s, and that Rega had never truly had any part in it. Perhaps he was forcing her, threatening her with physical harm.
Absorbed in his thoughts and the difficult climb, Paithan was startled to find himself at the top sooner than he’d expected. It occurred to him that the dwarven tunnel must have been sloping upward during the last few cycles’ travel and that he hadn’t noticed. He poked his head cautiously out of the tunnel opening. He was somewhat disappointed to find himself surrounded by darkness, then he remembered that he was in a cavern. Eagerly he gazed around and-some distance from him-he could see sunlight. He drew in a deep breath, tasted fresh air.