ing, and its mouth glowed blood-red against the night.
She was aware suddenly of the Elfstones still clenched tightly
in her hand. Without looking down at them, she slipped them
Into her pocket.
“Come this way, Wren,” Aurin Striate said.
There were guards at the door through which they had en-
tered, hard-faced young men with distinctly Elven features and
eyes that seemed tired and old. Wren glanced at them as she
passed and was chilled by the way they stared back at her.
Garth edged close against her shoulder and blocked their view.
The Owl took them out from beneath the parapets and over
a rampway bridging a moat that encircled the city inside its
walls. Wren looked back, squinting against the light. There was
no water in the moat; there seemed to be no purpose in having
dug it. Yet it was clearly meant to be some sort of defense for
the city, bridged at dozens of points by ramps that led to the
walls. Wren glanced questioningly at Garth, but the big man
shook his head.
A roadway opened through the trees before them, winding
ahead into the center of the city. They started down it, but had
gone only a short distance when a large company of soldiers
hurried past, led by a man with hair so sun-bleached it was
almost white. The Owl pulled Wren and Garth aside into the
shadows, and the man went past without seeing them.
“Phaeton,” the Owl said, looking after him. “The queen’s
anointed on the field of battle, her savior against the dark things.”
He said it ironically, without smiling. “An Elven Hunter’s worst
nightmare.”
They went on wordlessly, turning off the roadway to follow
a series of side streets that took them through rows of darkened
shops and cottages. Wren glanced about curiously, studying,
considering, taking everything in. Much was as she had imagined
it would be, for Arborlon was not so different, apart from its
size, from Southland villages like Shady Vale-and except, of
course, for the continuing presence of the protective wall, still
a shimmer in the distance, a reminder of the struggle being
waged. When, after a time, the glow disappeared behind a screen
of trees, it was possible to think of the city as it must have once
been, before the demons, before the beginning of the siege. It
would have been wonderful to live here then, Wren thought,
the city forested and secluded as it had been above the Rill
Song, reborn out of its Westland beginnings into this island par
adise, its people with a chance to begin life anew, free of the
threat of oppression by the Federation. No demons then, Kil-
leshan dormant, and Morrowindl at peace-a dream come out
of imagining.
Did anyone still remember that dream? she wondered.
The Owl took them through a grove of ash and willowy
birch where the silence was a cloak that wrapped comfortably
about. They reached an iron fence that rose twenty feet into
the air, its summit spiked and laced with sharpened spurs, and
turned left along its length. Beyond its forbidding barrier, tree-
shaded grounds stretched away to a sprawling, turreted building
that could only be the palace of the Elven rulers. The Elessedils,
in the time of her ancestors, Wren recalled. But who now? They
skirted the fence to where the shadows were so deep it was
difficult to see. There the Owl paused and bent close. Wren
heard the rasp of a key in a lock, and a gate in the fence swung
open. They stepped inside, waited until the Owl locked the gate
anew, and then crossed the dappled lawn to the palace. No one
appeared to challenge them. No one came into view. There
were guards, Wren knew. There must be. They reached the
edge of the building and stopped.
A figure detached itself from the shadows, lithe as a cat. The
Owl turned and waited. The figure came up. Words were ex-
changed, too low for Wren to hear. The figure melted away
again. The Owl beckoned, and they slipped through a gathering
of spruce into an alcove. A door was already ajar. They stepped
inside into the light.