That anger grew after every bout: it spread to include all she thought of. The High Lord should never have made the world to include iynisin, she thought bitterly, and if elves could turn so to evil, he should not have made elves. Now the distrust of true elves the iynisin had sown flowered in bitterness. She remembered the elf lord laired deep under stone, bound to some power of evil, and drawing her to his side with irresistible enchantments. Macenion's lies, his greed and cowardice with the snowcat, his arrogance. Even at their best, elves toyed with humans, clouded human memory for their convenience, sent them into dangers they could not assess, with that glamour upon them. Were a few tinkling songs and flowery compliments in a sweet voice a fair exchange for all this disdain of human lives and needs? Hardly. In a world where such evil existed, it ill-behooved elves to sit aside and cast human lives like dice for their pleasure.

It was monstrous that such evil existed—that innocents were tormented in dark places—that she was alone and helpless and frightened. But she wasn't frightened, she reminded herself. Death was the end of all things, and darkness surrounded all light, but she was no child to be frightened of what must come. If Gird wouldn't help—or didn't exist—she would get along without him. She would fight until the end, and then grapple death itself. That would show them.

When she thought at all of her friends, in bits and scraps of memory, she saw them standing idly in the sunlight while she was fighting against impossible odds underground. She had an image of Arñe and Vik, chatting peacefully in Duke Phelan's barracks—of the other paladin candidates, safe in Fin Panir, looking forward to their own tests—of the rest of the expedition, feasting around a fire, leaving her behind with a shrug. For awhile she knew this was untrue; she reminded herself that her friends were better than that. But in the end that truth slipped away as well. They would find out, she thought grimly, and enjoyed imagining their grief and their pride in her deeds. And if they never knew—that might even be better. She was no longer angry with them; they could not understand, it was not their fault. It was their weakness, all those silly thoughts of right and wrong, the rules made for gentler combats: if they had been where she was, they would know that only the fight itself mattered, the enemy's death, the anger sated by blood.

She awoke, once more in a narrow cell, to find the caped iynisi standing over her. She blinked, still under the influence of the healing methods they used. He beckoned one of his henchmen, who quickly raised her head and held a mug to her lips. She swallowed: the same burning liquid. As always, she wanted more. With every swallow, strength flowed back into her. She gulped down two mugs full before he moved away, then she rolled easily to her feet.