Long moments went by. Pan waited impatiently, eyes scanning the surrounding countryside. He didn’t like it that they were so out in the open, unprotected even by the trees. If anything attacked, it would be on top of them almost before he could react to it.

But there wasn’t any choice if they wanted to get a bearing on where they needed to go.

He glanced at Phryne. Nothing was happening.

After a long time, she opened her eyes and looked at him in bewilderment. “It isn’t working. The magic isn’t working. I can’t make it do anything!”

She sounded almost stricken, suddenly in doubt again. He went to her at once and put his hands on her shoulders. “Yes, you can. I’ve seen you do it before, and you can do it again. Just remember that you are still new at this, so it might take a while before you can make it work right away.”

He took his hands away. “Tell me what you were envisioning, what you were focusing on in your mind?”

“Aphalion Pass,” she told him.

“All right. Maybe that’s too vague an image. The passes all tend to look somewhat the same. Try picturing Arborlon instead. That’s a more specific image. Wherever the Elfstones take us, we will have to go through one of the passes. That’s good enough.”

She studied his face silently. Then she turned away again, folded both hands about the Elfstones, closed her eyes, and went still as stone.

Again, Panterra waited.

This time she had a better response. The Elfstones flared to life, their bright blue fire quickly building strength. It lanced out across the barren hills toward the mountains, illuminating everything, rendering the whole of the landscape clear and close, revealing miles of rough, blasted terrain before closing on the massive rock walls. Once there, the light angled into a split that had been invisible just seconds before, careening down canyon walls, through a narrow defile, past a defensive wall constructed at a narrows with dozens of bodies scattered on either side, and finally down into the valley they both knew so well and to Arborlon’s familiar cottages and gardens.

Then the light flared and died away, and the images vanished.

The boy and the girl exchanged glances. “That wasn’t Aphalion Pass,” she declared.

“No,” he agreed. “It was Declan Reach. Those were the defenses I worked on with the men from Glensk Wood. But those men are all dead, and the defenses are still abandoned. I don’t understand it.”

“I don’t, either. Why aren’t others from the village guarding that wall? Something bad has happened, Pan.”

He looked back out across the hills, unwilling to speculate. “If Declan Reach is the closest entrance into the valley, we’re way south of Aphalion. We need to start walking.”