So he told her everything that had happened to him since he had left her all those weeks ago, leaving Arborlon with Sider Ament and going in search of help from the cities and villages to the south. She listened with a mix of awe and disbelief as he related the story of Sider’s death, the passing of the staff, and his own part in taking up the Gray Man’s work and of his efforts at hunting down Arik Siq in order to bring him to Glensk Wood. She was filled with relief at the news that Prue Liss was alive, even though her relief was tempered as she learned further of Prue’s encounter with the King of the Silver River and the burden she had been given to bear as protector of Pan. She found herself wondering how a girl no older than fifteen and no bigger than a minute could possibly do anything to keep a bearer of the black staff safe from the demon that hunted him.

When he finished telling her how Xac Wen had found him and brought him to the Belloruusian Arch, where he had used the magic of the staff to force his way through a gap in the door that led down below the Ashenell, she put a hand on his cheek and began to cry again. “I hoped you would come for me. I prayed for it. I didn’t think anyone else would—Tasha and Tenerife confined to Aphalion Pass, my whole family dead or missing, Isoeld and her creatures taking control of everything. I didn’t know what to do. I thought if I could find Mistral, she would tell me…”

She caught her breath, stopped talking, and shook her head. “And now Grandmother’s dead, too. I didn’t think anything would ever happen to her. She was so strong. It still doesn’t seem possible.”

She closed her eyes, lips tightened into a thin line. She was dirty and ragged and worn to the bone, and she couldn’t imagine that things had come to this. When she opened her eyes again, the look she gave Panterra was hard and brittle. “If I get out of this alive, if I live to see Isoeld again, she will be the sorriest thing that ever walked.”

“We’ll get out of this. We’ll find a way. Do you still have the Elfstones?”

She had forgotten about them completely. In her panic and desperation, she had lost track of what had become of them. But when she glanced down at her tightly clenched fist she realized she was still gripping the Elfstones.

“We can use them to find our way out,” she said, her voice tired but hopeful. “These are seeking-Stones. Mistral told me what they could do. I can make the magic show us where to go.”