and keeps you there until the spell is released. There is a kind
of suspension in time. That way you don’t feel anything of what’s
happening during the journey; you don’t have any sense of
movement.”
“So everything just goes on as before?” Wren queried, trying
to envision how that could happen.
“Pretty much. There isn’t any day or night, just a grayness
as if the skies were cloudy, the queen tells me. There’s air and
water and all the things you need to survive, all wrapped care-
fully away in this sort of cocoon.”
“And what happens once you get to where you are going?”
“The queen removes the Loden’s spell, and the city is re-
stored.”
Wren’s eyes shifted to find the Owl’s. “Assuming, of course,
that what Ellenroh has been told about the magic is the truth.”
The Owl sighed. “So young to be so skeptical.” He shook
his head. “If it isn’t the truth, Wren, what does any of this
matter? We are trapped on Morrowindl without hope, aren’t
we? A few might save themselves by slipping past the dark
things, but most would perish. We have to believe the magic
will save us, girl, because the magic is all we have.”
She left him as they neared the palace gates, letting him go
on ahead, tired eyed and stoop shouldered, his thin, rumpled
shadow cast against the earth, a mirror of himself. She liked
Aurin Striate. He was comfortable and easy in the manner of
old clothes. She trusted him. If anyone could see them through
the journey that lay ahead, it was the Owl.
She turned away from the palace and wandered absently
toward the Gardens of Life. She had not looked for Garth when
she had risen, slipping from her room instead to search out the
queen. But Ellenroh was nowhere to be found once again, and
so she had decided to walk out into the city by herself. Now,
her walk completed, she found that she still preferred to be
alone. She let her thoughts stray as she entered the deserted
Gardens, making her way up the gentle incline toward the ElI-
crys, and her thoughts, as they had from the moment she had
come awake, gravitated stubbornly toward Gavilan Elessedil. She
stopped momentarily, picturing him. When she closed her eyes
she could feel him kissing her. She took a deep breath and let
it out siowly. She had only been kissed once or twice in her
life-always too busy with her training, aloof and unapproach-
able, caught up in other things, to be bothered with boys. There
had been no time for relationships. She had had no interest in
them. Why was that? she wondered suddenly. But she knew
that she might as well inquire as to why the sky was blue as to
question who she had become.
She opened her eyes again and walked on.
When she reached the Ellcrys, she studied it for a time be-
fore seating herself within its shade. Gavilan Elessedil. She liked
him. Maybe too much. It seemed instinctual, and she distrusted
the unexpected intensity of her feelings. She barely knew him,
and already she was thinking of him more than she should. He
had kissed her, and she had welcomed it. Yet it angered her that
he was hiding what he knew about the magic and the demons,
a truth he refused to share with her, a secret so many of the
Elves harbored-Ellenroh, Eowen, and the Owl among them.
But she was bothered more by Gavilan’s reticence because he
had come to her to proclaim himself a friend, he had promised
to answer her questions when she asked them, he had kissed her
and she had let him, and despite everything he had gone back
on his word. She smoldered inwardly at the betrayal, and yet
she found herself anxious to forgive him, to make excuses for
him, and to give him a chance to tell her in his own time.
But was it any different with Gavilan than it had been with
her grandmother? she asked herself suddenly. Hadn’t she used
the same reasoning with both?
Perhaps her feelings for each were not so very different.