With a stifled curse, Yanis let go of her arm, and Zanna fled from the cavern with tears of anger streaming down her face.
“I might just as well be your prisoner!” The Earth-Mage Eilin glared at the Forest Lord. “You deliberately took my staff and gave it to D’arvan, so that I could not return to my Valley. You could hardly wait to seize the chance to tamper with the fate of the World Outside once more!”
Hellorin looked at her steadily, but made no reply to her charge. The suspicion dawned on Eilin that he was simply waiting for her anger to run its course—after all, what need had he to waste his breath in fruitless debate? No matter how much he might storm and argue and protest, she was utterly in his lower.
The Mage found that she was shaking with rage. “Meddler!” she spat. “It was^ ever so with the Phaerie. It’s of no consequence to you that the Atchmage rides roughshod over all the world. Just so long as you can exercise your influence on events, what do you care? Don’t you realize that I am the only Mage left in the North to oppose Miathan? You’ve let those two children loose in my Vale with my staff to face the Archmage alone. In the name of all the Gods, my Lord—they need me!” “No, Eilin, they do not need you.” Hellorin spoke softly, but the underlying power of his voice sent a shiver across the smooth, silver-gray bark that coated the walls of the chamber. The Mage fought to hold on to her anger; the legendary temper of the Magefolk was the only thing that had saved her from being overawed by this stupendous immortal. Eilin folded her arms and her lips thinned into an obdurate line. “Why not?” she demanded. “Give me one good reason why not!”
“Because I am Lord here, and I say that they do not!” When Hellorin frowned, it was as though a cloud had passed over the sun—though there was no sun in this changeles timeless Elsewhere. As Hellorin’s dark brows drew together, Eilin shivered at the sound of a distant growl of thunder. “Have a care, Magewoman. I do not meddle, as you call it, through idleness or spite—though the debt your people owe to mine is a sore temptation . . .” Hellorin’s voice was a blade of ice, and Eilin took an involuntary step backward, rubbing at the goose-flesh that pricked her skin. “So that’s what this is about!” she hissed. “Revenge—pure and simple! Oh, you may protest your innocence, Lord, but if I had not been a Mage—”
“Had you not been a Mage, you would never have survived the murder attempt by one of your own people,” Hellorin told her flatly, his eyes glinting with irritation. “Had you not been a Mage, you would never have come here to plague me!” “If I plague you, let me go!” Eilin countered swiftly. “By all the Gods, Eilin, is there no telling you? I can not!” Hellorin threw out his arms in a gesture of defeat, a.m stamped across the mossy-green carpet to the deep window embrasure, where a flagon of wine and two goblets stood on the sill. Throwing himself into the window seat, he poured wine for them, and held out a cup to her. “Here—sit down, you wretched woman, and stop bristling! Let us end this wrangle, once and for all!” “But—”
“Eilin—please?”
The Earth-Mage was disarmed by the change in Hellorin’s voice. Biting her lip, she crossed the room to him, and perched tentatively on the edge of the window seat.
“You look just like a little brown bird, poised and ready to fly away at the slightest hint of danger.” Hellorin’s chiseled mouth had softened in a smile.
Eilin, much to her dismay, found the last shreds of her righteous anger melting like sunrise mist. “Little brown bird, my eye!” she retorted tartly, but despite her best efforts, she found that her lips were twitching as she took the goblet from his hand.
Hellorin’s eyes never left her own. “Rest you, my Lady,” he said softly. “Your Healing is but lately accomplished, and you need time to regain your strength. It does you no good to agitate yourself in this way.”
“Is that why you won’t let me go yet?” Eilin seized eagerly on his words. “Do you mean that when—”
“No.” The word held a terrifying finality. Hellorin sighed. “Lady, I have put off this explanation lest you be distressed beyond the limits of your strength—and because I feared that you would not believe me.” He took her hand in a firm, warm grip, and his fathomless eyes bored into her own. “Eilin, you must try to understand. What I am about to tell you is the absolute truth—I swear it on the head of my son. When you were brought to us, your injuries were fatal, even to one of the Mageborn. My Healers brought you twfck from the very brink of death. In this place, where the Phaerie are empowered and time holds no sway, it was possible for them to do this. But thanks to your Magefolk ancestors, their power—our power—no longer t-xtends into the mundane world. In short, you have been Healed in this world, but not in your own. If you try to return—”
“No!” Eilin choked on the cry. Her blood was ice in her veins. “It can’t be true—it can’t]” But the lines of sorrow on the Forest Lord’s face, the overflowing sympathy in his eyes, convinced her beyond any words that he spoke the absolute truth. Eilin, after the tragedies of her life, had believed herself more than a match for any disaster that Fate flung into her path—but this last cruel jest on the part of destiny felled her with a single, lethal stroke.
The impenetrable citadel of fierce Magefolk pride, with which Eilin had surrounded herself after the death of Geraint, began to crumble and totter at last, and the Mage felt as though she were falling into pieces along with it. “I cannot leave?” she whispered. “I can’t go home—ever?”
The pain in Hellorin’s eyes said everything. “I fear not, Lady,” he told her sorrowfully. “At least, not unless—”
But Eilin never heard those vital, final words. They were drowned in a sound of endlessly breaking glass, as her adamantine fortress exploded into shards that were falling, falling like her tears . . .
Hellorin could only hold her helplessly while she trembled and wept. She had been dreadfully weakened, of course, by her injuries—far more than she realized—but he was utterly shocked by such profound distress. To see Eilin brought so low was more than he could bear: she who was so fierce and proud— and how he admired her for that! No one had stood up to him so well in aeons—save little Maya, of course! We have been out of the world too long, indeed, he mused. They seem to have produced a wild and wonderful breed of women in our absence. But even the strongest of women occasionally needed help.
The Lord of the Phaerie gathered his powers and . . . “ENOUGH!” he roared. The air was ripped apart by a tremendous thunderclap, and-toghtning arced across the chamber in a searing flare. Eilin jerked to her feet, cramming her knuckles into her gaping mouth. Her tangled hair was a bristling aureole from the residue of power in the room, and her eyes appeared enormous in a chalk-white face. Hellorin smiled at her. “Much better!” he said briskly. “And now that I have your attention,
Lady ...”
Seizing the hand of the startled Mage, the Forest Lord pulled her after him out of the room, and rushed her, clattering, down the wooden spiral of stairs that twisted inside the walls of the slender tower. Ignoring the incredulous stares of his subjects, Hellorin towed her through the seemingly endless series of halls and chambers that made up his citadel, until at last they crossed the imposing Great Hall where Maya and D’arvan had rested, and burst through the great arching outer doorway and into the open. Without pausing, he hurried her down the steps of the outer terraces, and across the meadow toward the misty outline of the woods beyond.