No answer to that. She felt pressure in her head, almost like the start of a headache before a summer thunderstorm.

“Stop that,” she said without heat; the feeling vanished. She went on. “The king is half-elven; the Lady of the Ladysforest is his grandmother.” Again he said nothing; she went on. “But to your main problem, as you state it—the mageborn in that hall. I have no idea how to break that enchantment. We Girdish do not deal in magery. There is but one magelord I know of who is presently capable of effective magery.” Should she have said that? What would Dorrin Verrakai think if an elf king showed up in her house?

“You must tell the magelord to come to us and break the enchantment,” the king said.

“Me?” Arianya felt her brows rising. “I am not her commander. She is not Girdish but Falkian, and she is the vassal of Tsaia’s king. You must go to her directly—or, better, to Tsaia’s king—and gain his permission for anything she does.”

He shifted in his seat. “I have never been to Tsaia,” he said. “Is it far by road?”

Arianya had no idea what “far” meant to an elf who usually traveled from pattern to pattern. “Three hands of days, perhaps,” she said. “Longer if the river has flooded; it does most springs.”

He frowned. “I have no … no sight for Tsaia.”

Arianya had no idea what that meant.

“Perhaps I should go instead to visit the Lady’s grandson, the new king, in Lyonya.”

“That would be a good idea,” Arianya said. She would like to see that meeting of kings.

“But you must recall those of your people—the Girdish—from the west,” he said. “For I do not know when we will be able to close the rock.”

“We would like to bring back the archives,” Arianya said. “I understand it was your land first, but what the humans there left—the writings, the things they made—are important to us. For our history.”

“History!” one of the other elves said, with a dismissive wave of the hand.

“History to us,” Arianya said firmly, “though but a blink of time to you. Since we do not live long, we need the records of past times to give us some guidance for the future.”

“How long will that take?” the king asked.

“I will ask our archivist,” Arianya said. “We have brought back some already. The archivist will know how much is left. How long can you stay? It may take a few days for the archivist to determine how many trips it will take.”

“We will go … I must prepare my kingdom for the longer journeys to eastern lands,” the king said.

“You could not send an ambassador?”

“I do not know,” the king said. “Would he be believed? Respected?”

“Why not?” Arianya said. “From what I know, both kings have dealt with elves before. King Kieri certainly has.”