That should have been the end of it. She was where she was supposed to be, where her grandmother had told her to come. But Mistral was nowhere to be found.
Phryne stood at a distance of perhaps twenty feet from the Belloruusian Arch, weighing her next move. But she quickly grew impatient. Dawn was approaching, and people would be out and about. Unwilling to just stand in place any longer and resigned to whatever fate awaited her, she decided to take a closer look.
XAC WEN WATCHED HER GO, hanging back and studying the arch as if it might hold some clue he could decipher. He kept thinking something would appear that would explain the message from Mistral Belloruus. Why had she summoned Phryne here? What was it she wanted? He thought of Phryne’s grandmother the way most people did—a very peculiar, reclusive old lady who knew how to do things that other people didn’t. Like how to do magic, some of it dangerous. He kept wondering if Phryne’s insistence on finding her had something to do with that. After all, a little magic might be useful when you were dealing with people like Isoeld Severine.
Phryne was almost to the arch now, moving cautiously, taking her time. Xac didn’t think this was a trap, but he couldn’t be sure. He wished that Tasha were there. Big, strong Tasha, who was a match for anything. Or even clever Tenerife. But there was only Phryne and himself, and that seemed less than adequate given the extent of the danger they were in.
He started forward now, not wanting the girl to get too far ahead of him. He needed to be close if something happened, and he didn’t want to have regrets about that later.
He no sooner completed the thought than Phryne Amarantyne walked beneath the arch and disappeared.
For a moment, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. There one minute, gone the next—that wasn’t possible. Nothing had happened to cause it; she had just disappeared into thin air. He rushed ahead, blinking rapidly, trying to find her in the mix of gloom and shadows. But she wasn’t there. She was gone.
“Phryne!” he called aloud, throwing caution aside.
He plunged through the space beneath the Belloruusian Arch, but nothing happened.
He wheeled back and rushed through again. He turned back once more and placed himself directly beneath the arch. He tried every different approach he could imagine, trying to put himself on the path she had taken, at one point even standing in the faint prints of her boots.
Nothing.
He stared around in dismay. What was he supposed to do now? How could he find her? Would she come back on her own from wherever she had gone, or was she in trouble?
He stayed by the arch all that day, waiting for Phryne Amarantyne to return. When she didn’t, he decided there was only one thing to do. He had to go back to Tasha and Tenerife and tell them everything that had happened. He had to get help.
At dawn the following day, a food sack and water skin slung over one shoulder, he set off for Aphalion Pass.
PANTERRA QU AND PRUE LISS TRAVELED NORTH out of Glensk Wood through the remainder of the night, following roads and paths that led toward Arborlon and the Elves. Prue was using a walking staff now, one cut from a hickory limb by Pan shortly after they had set out so that she could continue to give the impression that she was blind and needed help in making her way. They had agreed that even though she could see as well as any sighted person she would be better off not revealing the truth of this. It would lend others a false impression of how vulnerable she was and give her an advantage she might not otherwise have. Given the situation in which they found themselves, any advantage they could gain was not to be passed up.
Nevertheless, Prue continued to be decidedly unhappy about the price exacted. She was growing used to the idea that she could not discern colors, could only see shades of gray and white and black, but it did not ease the fresh pain that each new reminder of her disability created. She told herself that she should not let this bother her, that colors were lovely and sometimes even wondrous, but that being able to see, whether in colors or not, was what really mattered. And while this was true, it made the fact of it no easier to bear. There was a subtlety to the emotional pain she experienced that deepened as time passed and it became increasingly clear that not only was her ability to see colors forever gone but her inability to adapt to that loss was deepening.
She thought more than once to talk it out with Pan because she had always talked out everything with him. But she chose against doing so here because it would only remind him of the fact that he was the cause. Better that she suffer quietly and not make him share in her pain. In any case, he could never know the extent and nature of that pain, because it hadn’t happened to him.
So they talked of other things.