At once they were surrounded by Goblins who fastened them anew with chains and fitted gags to their mouths. Neither made any attempt to resist. Redden was stunned and disbelieving, still trying to comprehend what he had just heard, as if perhaps it wasn’t true and in a moment he would hear it all rescinded.
A moment later they were hauled from the room and back down the tower stairways and through its corridors. Just before they were separated, Redden got a quick final glimpse of Khyber Elessedil’s face.
He had never seen such ferocious determination.
21
Afterward, returned to his cell and his solitude, Redden Ohmsford sat alone in the silence and tried to keep from falling apart.
It took him a long time to recover himself sufficiently that he could consider rationally what had just happened. He felt overwhelmed by how unexpectedly the meeting with the Straken Lord had ended. Devastated, shocked, and adrift in the knowledge that he was helpless to do anything, he just sat on his bed with his hands clasped and his head bent, staring at the floor.
He did not for a moment believe that Tael Riverine would let Khyber Elessedil leave Kraal Reach alive. He didn’t care what the Straken Lord had promised or the conditions he had set; the outcome of the battle was a foregone conclusion. No matter how hard Khyber fought for her life, no matter how clever or strong or brave she proved, she was doomed. The Straken Lord would not allow any other outcome. In sentencing her to trial by combat, he had sentenced her to death.
How he would accomplish this, Redden wasn’t sure. But there was no other purpose in arranging this. A spectacle, perhaps, for the benefit of his minions—or perhaps simply for his own gratification. But it would be a spectacle nonetheless, not a true opportunity for the Ard Rhys.
Which would leave him as the final surviving member of the expedition that had come into the Forbidding, the last loose thread in a tangled web of destruction and murder. He didn’t think for a moment that Tael Riverine could resist pulling out or cutting off that loose thread and putting an end to the entire business.
Yet the Straken Lord seemed determined on recapturing Grianne Ohmsford even after all these years obsessed with the idea that she should be made to bear his children. He appeared to have no clear idea of the passage of time in the world outside the Forbidding if he believed Grianne still of child-bearing age; or else living things aged much more slowly here. Perhaps he was refusing to acknowledge the reality of things solely for the purpose of getting revenge. Perhaps he wanted her to suffer for escaping him and foiling his intentions decades earlier.
Whatever the reason, this might be the chink in the Straken Lord’s armor.
Perhaps.
But none of this helped either Redden or the Ard Rhys escape their present circumstances. They needed help from outside, and the chances of that were slim.
Redden hugged himself and rocked back and forth as anguish threatened to engulf him. He would not cry, he told himself. He would not give in to what he was feeling. He would be as fierce and strong-willed as Khyber Elessedil had been when they parted. He would be her equal in courage, though what faced him was so vast and inexorable that there was no reasonable chance of finding a way through it. Tears were spilling from his eyes, but he remained silent and stoic even so.
Eventually, his despair passed and he regained control of himself, and he was able to master his sense of hopelessness sufficiently to consider what he might do to help himself.