“But why? Why our daughters?” Eliason cried, grasping the wounded man by the shoulders and almost shaking him.
“I … do not know,” the elf gasped, and died.
Alake drew away from the window. Sabia shrank back against the wall. I climbed down off the footstool before I fell.
“We shouldn’t have heard that,” Alake said in a hollow voice.
“No,” I agreed. I was cold and hot at the same time and I couldn’t stop shaking.
“Us? They want us?” Sabia whispered, as if she couldn’t believe it.
We stared at each other, helpless, wondering what to do.
“The window,” I warned, and Alake closed it up with her magic.
“Our parents will never agree to such a thing,” she said briskly. “We mustn’t let them know we know. It would grieve them terribly. We’ll go back to Sabia’s room and act like nothing’s happened.”
I cast a dubious glance at Sabia, who was as white as curdled milk, and who seemed about to collapse on the spot.
“I can’t lie!” she protested. “I’ve never lied to my father.”
“You don’t have to lie,” Alake snapped, her fear making her sharp-edged and brittle. “You don’t have to say anything. Just keep quiet.”
She yanked poor Sabia out of her corner and, together, she and I helped the elven maid down the shimmering coral corridors. After a few false turns, we made it to Sabia’s room. None of us spoke on the way.
All of us were thinking of the elf we’d seen, of the torture he’d endured. My insides clenched in fear; a horrid taste came into my mouth. I didn’t know why I was so frightened. As Alake had said, my parents would never permit the serpents to take me.
It was, I know now, the voice of the One speaking to me, but I was refusing to listen.
We entered Sabia’s room—thankfully, no servants were about—and shut the door behind us. Sabia sank down on the edge of her bed, twisting her hands together. Alake stood glaring angrily out a window, as if she’d like to go and hit someone.
In the silence, I could no longer avoid hearing the One. And I knew, looking at their faces, that the One was talking to Alake and Sabia, as well. It was left to me, to the dwarf, to speak the bitter words aloud.
“Alake’s right. Our parents won’t send us. They won’t even tell us about this. They’ll keep it a secret from our people. And our people will die, never knowing that there was a chance they might have been spared.”
Sabia whispered, “I wish we’d never heard! If only we hadn’t gone up there!”
“We were meant to hear,” I said gruffly.
“You’re right, Grundle,” said Alake, turning to face us. “The One wanted us to hear. We have been given the chance to save our people. The One has left it up to us to make the decision, not our parents. We are the ones who must be strong now.”
As she talked, I could see she was getting caught up in it all: the romance of martyrdom, of sacrifice. Humans set great store in such things, something we dwarves can never understand. Almost all human heroes are those who die young, untimely, giving up their brief lives for some noble cause. Not so dwarves. Our heroes are the Elders, those who live a just life through ages of strife and work and hardship.
I couldn’t help but think of the broken elf with his eyes plucked out of his head.
What nobility is there in dying like that? I wanted to ask her.
But, for once, I held my tongue. Let her find comfort where she could. I must find it in my duty. As for Sabia, she had truly meant what she said about being a queen.
“But I was to have been married,” she said.
The elven maid wasn’t arguing or whining. She knew what we had to do. It was her one protest against her terrible fate, and it was very gentle.
Alake has just come in for the second time to tell me that I must sleep. We must “conserve our strength.”