She climbed to her feet, and Pan rose with her. He didn’t look much better than she did, but she was so happy he was there she wouldn’t have cared if he had looked twice as bad. She saw the way he gripped the black staff. It suggested an inner confidence that she had not seen the last time they were together. It suggested that whatever they faced, he was equal to the task.

She gave him a smile. “All right. Let’s see what the Elfstones tell us. Let’s see where we should go.”

When she opened her fingers, the Stones lay glittering in the faint light of the tunnel, their deep blue color alive with an inner glow. She could already feel the magic responding to her, as if it recognized that she was their new owner, their caretaker. She felt its soft heat penetrate her skin and fill her with warmth she remembered from when she’d used the Stones last.

Last, and once only, she reminded herself. She had no real experience with this magic. She would be testing herself when she called on it now. She must be wary.

She must be respectful of their power.

Mistral had intended the Elfstones for her, had died to give them to her so that she might use them to help the Elves. Phryne still couldn’t imagine how she would do this. But none of that mattered now. What mattered was finding a way out of the underground. Nothing she did would help the Elves until she was back in Arborlon.

She cupped the Stones in her hand, wrapping her fingers about them, feeling them press against her flesh as she closed her eyes and began to picture where it was she wanted to be. She thought of Arborlon first, of its buildings and trees and gardens, of its people old and young. She thought of Tasha and Tenerife. Nothing happened. She shifted her thinking to blue sky and green grasses, to trees and rivers, to the fresh smells she knew from home. She tried to keep her thoughts straight and focused, but she had difficulty doing so. Her mind kept playing tricks on her, shifting from one picture to the next, from people to creatures to plants to places, back and forth. Everything seemed to morph into something else.

But finally the Elfstones responded, their warmth increasing, their magic abruptly surging into her. She opened her eyes as the blue light exploded out of the Stones and flashed down the tunnel’s length, ripping through the darkness for unimaginable distances, piercing a barrier of something that looked to be a thin sheet of clear water, and flashing onward from there to an opening that led out into a forest she did not recognize—the trees old and huge and hoary—before winking out.