He did so, albeit reluctantly, and she drew herself up and looked around. She had no idea where she was. Except she didn’t think she was in the same tunnel that had brought her to the cavern and her grandmother.
She turned to him, taking a deep, steadying breath. “Do you know where we are? Did you come in this way? I don’t think I did. I don’t recognize anything. Pan?”
He shook his head. “You ran so fast. I just ran after you. I didn’t pay attention to where we were going. But I think you’re right. This isn’t the same tunnel. I came in the same way you did. I just followed your trail until I found you.”
“Through the Belloruusian Arch? You followed me?” She was incredulous. “How did you do that? How did you even know to come here?”
So he told her everything that had happened to him since he had left her all those weeks ago, leaving Arborlon with Sider Ament and going in search of help from the cities and villages to the south. She listened with a mix of awe and disbelief as he related the story of Sider’s death, the passing of the staff, and his own part in taking up the Gray Man’s work and of his efforts at hunting down Arik Siq in order to bring him to Glensk Wood. She was filled with relief at the news that Prue Liss was alive, even though her relief was tempered as she learned further of Prue’s encounter with the King of the Silver River and the burden she had been given to bear as protector of Pan. She found herself wondering how a girl no older than fifteen and no bigger than a minute could possibly do anything to keep a bearer of the black staff safe from the demon that hunted him.
When he finished telling her how Xac Wen had found him and brought him to the Belloruusian Arch, where he had used the magic of the staff to force his way through a gap in the door that led down below the Ashenell, she put a hand on his cheek and began to cry again. “I hoped you would come for me. I prayed for it. I didn’t think anyone else would—Tasha and Tenerife confined to Aphalion Pass, my whole family dead or missing, Isoeld and her creatures taking control of everything. I didn’t know what to do. I thought if I could find Mistral, she would tell me …”
She caught her breath, stopped talking, and shook her head. “And now Grandmother’s dead, too. I didn’t think anything would ever happen to her. She was so strong. It still doesn’t seem possible.”
She closed her eyes, lips tightened into a thin line. She was dirty and ragged and worn to the bone, and she couldn’t imagine that things had come to this. When she opened her eyes again, the look she gave Panterra was hard and brittle. “If I get out of this alive, if I live to see Isoeld again, she will be the sorriest thing that ever walked.”
“We’ll get out of this. We’ll find a way. Do you still have the Elfstones?”
She had forgotten about them completely. In her panic and desperation, she had lost track of what had become of them. But when she glanced down at her tightly clenched fist she realized she was still gripping the Elfstones.
“We can use them to find our way out,” she said, her voice tired but hopeful. “These are seeking-Stones. Mistral told me what they could do. I can make the magic show us where to go.”
She climbed to her feet, and Pan rose with her. He didn’t look much better than she did, but she was so happy he was there she wouldn’t have cared if he had looked twice as bad. She saw the way he gripped the black staff. It suggested an inner confidence that she had not seen the last time they were together. It suggested that whatever they faced, he was equal to the task.
She gave him a smile. “All right. Let’s see what the Elfstones tell us. Let’s see where we should go.”
When she opened her fingers, the Stones lay glittering in the faint light of the tunnel, their deep blue color alive with an inner glow. She could already feel the magic responding to her, as if it recognized that she was their new owner, their caretaker. She felt its soft heat penetrate her skin and fill her with warmth she remembered from when she’d used the Stones last.
Last, and once only, she reminded herself. She had no real experience with this magic.
She would be testing herself when she called on it now. She must be wary.
She must be respectful of their power.
Mistral had intended the Elfstones for her, had died to give them to her so that she might use them to help the Elves. Phryne still couldn’t imagine how she would do this.