Now there was this business of the Ellcrys failing and its seed being presented to Aphenglow’s sister and then having been stolen—possibly by the couple that had found her and brought her to the unfortunate captain and crew of the Federation warship that had carried Stoon and her three mutants in search of the sisters. The crumbling of the Forbidding, the dying-off of the Ellcrys, and a desperate effort by the Elves to put the wall back and keep the Faerie creatures imprisoned from breaking free—it was all connected in some way, and she was going to find out how.
She finished dressing and studied herself in the mirror. Severe, proud, and beautiful in a cold sort of way; she was looking at a woman who was very much in control of her own fate.
She smiled. Of one thing, she felt certain. Good things were coming her way.
After Edinja Orle departed the bedroom, Arling Elessedil waited several minutes before she quit pretending. She waited for the snick of the lock on the door, counted to one hundred, and then quit crying. Not that she wasn’t distraught and frightened; she was. She just wasn’t quite as hysterical and out of control as she wanted Edinja to think she was—not after all she had been through in the past few weeks. She had never been the sort to give in to her fears; never the kind to panic and lose control. But letting the other woman believe she was completely terrified might cause her to let down her guard.
Arling sat up on the bed and took a deep breath. All that screaming and crying had hurt her throat, but she wasn’t about to drink any more of the water—or any other liquid, for that matter—until she was out of this house. She knew whatever she was given to drink would likely contain more of the same stuff she had already been fed—a drug that would make her tell Edinja anything she wanted to know. As of right now—she had decided this on her way up from the cellar and its horrors—she was done doing what Edinja Orle wanted. Before the day was over, she was going to find a way out of there.
But a slow, careful inspection of the bedroom was not reassuring. There was only the one door. There were windows, but they were locked, and iron bars were affixed to the stone of the walls on the other side of the glass. There appeared to be no secret doors or hidden panels. The ceiling was too high for her to reach it without a ladder, and there didn’t appear to be any openings in any case.
Momentarily defeated, she sat back down on the bed and tried to think it through. There had to be a way.
But she was in an impossible situation. She was trapped in this room with no way out. She could do nothing but wait for the return of the woman who was keeping her prisoner and would do the same with Aphenglow if she got the chance. Arling was frightened her sister would use the Elfstones to come looking for her and, in the process, end up in the same situation. She couldn’t let that happen. She had to escape and find Aphen first. But she had no idea where Aphen was or how to go about finding her.
She had to find the missing Ellcrys seed, too, and she had no idea how to do that, either. She didn’t even know for certain what had happened to it.
She could eliminate several possibilities, however. Aphen wouldn’t have taken it and then left her; she would have stayed with Arling no matter what. It was a good guess the captain of the warship and his crew hadn’t taken it, either—not without Edinja finding out. Not after what had been done to them. So that meant it had been left behind in the wreckage after she had been thrown clear, or stolen by the couple who had carried her away and left her with the Federation warship.
One of them, she remembered suddenly, had been called Sora.
She shook her head as if doing so might clear away all the confusion. Time was running out. She tried not to think about it, tried to shut it out of her mind and just concentrate on the problem closest at hand. She needed to get free before she could find her sister, find the missing Ellcrys seed, find the Bloodfire, and do whatever she could to put the Forbidding back in place.
She sagged back on the bed, fingers knotted against her mouth, realizing suddenly what she had just done. Without meaning to—but without any hesitation at all—she had just embraced the fate the Ellcrys had ordained for her. Even in spite of her determination not to, she had let her thoughts take her down that road.
All the way down.
She began to cry again, and this time it was real.
Three hours later, as the daylight darkened with a fresh onslaught of storm clouds that had moved in from the north, roiling and churning across the expanse of the Prekkendorran, the bedroom door opened. The servant woman carrying the pitcher of treated water stood in the opening for long moments, her free hand on the door, clearly ready to slam it shut again if the need arose. She saw the figure lying on the bed, wrapped in blankets with her head on the pillow, unmoving. Even them, she hesitated, obviously not wanting to take any chances.
Finally, seeing no movement at all, she entered the room, and Arling leapt out from behind the open door to strike her a heavy blow and knock her unconscious.