“As I said, Simralin, my orders—”
“The King is not thinking clearly,” she cut in. “He is enraged over the death of his daughter, and rightly so. But he wrongly blames us. The real killer is an enemy from without, a demon who was disguised as an Elf. Let us reveal all this. Give us a chance!”
“If you don’t,” Kirisin added quickly, “the enemy attack will come all too quickly and you won’t be able to save anyone. You must have seen their numbers. We saw them from the air. There are thousands. Far too many for the Elves to defend against.”
“Maurin, please,” Simralin begged, lowering her voice, leaning close. “You have known me my whole life. You have known Kirisin. We would not lie about something like this. We would not turn traitor to our own people. Do you really think we are capable of such a thing?”
“People are capable of anything,” he replied. “Even Elves. Even good Elves, like you.”
“If you take us away, if you do what the King has ordered, you will never know the truth.”
“The King will extract the truth from you.”
“What the King is looking to extract is revenge. He will not listen to the truth. He has already made up his mind, and you know it. He is half mad with grief. In there, in the Council chambers, he might be made to listen. Alone with us, he won’t bother. He will simply find a way to kill us and call the matter closed.”
They stared at each other silently, desperation mingling with uncertainty. Maurin Ortish shook his head, and Kirisin thought, We failed. “You realize what you are asking of me?” the captain of the Home Guard said softly.
“I am asking you to do what you have always done before,” Simralin replied. “I am asking you to do what is right.”
He said nothing in response, but instead looked off into the distance. There was a hushed silence in the hall as everyone waited to see what he would do. One way or the other, Kirisin sensed, this was the turning point. He decided to try to tip the balance.
“Can you move everyone away from us for a moment?” he asked the captain of the Home Guard.
Ortish glanced over at him, hesitating. Then he motioned the guards to move back.
“You were there in the Council chambers when the Knight of the Word and the tatterdemalion told the King that the Ellcrys had spoken to me,” Kirisin said quietly, keeping his voice too low for anyone but Ortish to hear. “So you remember what they said. That I was to go in search of the Loden Elfstone. That when I found it, I was to use it to place the tree and the city and the Elven population inside so that they could be taken to another, safer place. No one believed this. No one even thought an Elfstone existed after all this time. There was no record of an Elfstone, nothing to support what any of us were saying.”
“I remember.”
Kirisin reached into his pocket and pulled out the Loden. He cupped it in the palm of his hand so that only Maurin Ortish could see it. “This is it. The Loden Elfstone. We found it on Syrring Rise. This is what will save us all. If you doubt my sister, if you don’t believe her, this should change your mind.”
The captain of the Home Guard stared at the Elfstone, and then he looked up at the boy. “How could you have found something like this, Kirisin?” he asked. “Are you sure of what it is?”
But before the boy could answer him, a familiar figure appeared in front of them, big and looming. “So there you are, Little K.”
Kirisin looked up to find Tragen standing next to them, his dark features lined with a mix of worry and confusion. And something else. Despair? Desperation? Kirisin wasn’t sure.
The big man tried a quick smile. “Hello, Sim.”
“What is it, Tragen,” Maurin Ortish asked, clearly irritated by the interruption.
Tragen looked exhausted. His clothes were torn and dirtied, and his face was scratched. “I need to speak with the King at once. Things are much worse than we thought.”
“Give your report to me.”
Tragen shook his head. “If I give it in the presence of the King and the members of the High Council, maybe I can say something that will help Kirisin and Simralin. About what they are telling you. About the Loden Elfstone. Please, Captain, let me come inside with you.”
Kirisin blinked. How long had Tragen been standing there? How much of what was said had he heard? Where had he come from, for that matter? He hadn’t been there before, had he?
Ortish glanced past the big Tracker. “Where are the others?”
“Dead. We were discovered, attacked, and then chased. The enemy caught up to us all, one by one. I was lucky. I fell down a ravine, and they lost sight of me in the dark. I hid until they had wandered away and I was able to crawl out again. Captain, please.”