Still, she lingered, unwilling to give up. If she left now, she would know exactly nothing of where her grandmother had gone. She would never find the Elfstones. Everything would be lost. Read it on the air. Shades! She was trying!

“Phryne!”

Xac Wen’s voice had changed to a harsh whisper. She could hear the voices now, too. They were coming from outside the front of the cottage, soft and guarded. Men’s voices—Elven Hunters or something much, much worse.

Then the gloom right in front of her blazed to life, filling the darkness with huge words written with flames in bright red letters that sizzled and popped as if the air itself were burning.

Phryne felt her breath catch as she read:

Go to the Ashenell
beneath the
Belloruusian Arch

With Xac Wen in tow, she went out the back door, across a small grassy open space, and into the gardens. Swiftly they gained the forest beyond, pausing there to crouch down and look back. Lights were moving inside the house, two or three, and she could hear the scrape and clump of heavy boots on the wooden floors. If she could have done so, she would have shuttered the house and trapped them inside. Buffeted by too many emotions to sort out all at once, she embraced the one that was strongest and made it her own.

Rage.

Someday, she would make Isoeld and those responsible for whatever had been done to her grandmother pay for their arrogance and their hateful disregard for any form of moral code. She would track them down and hurt them. She envisioned what she would do, but as she did so the anger leached away and tears filled her eyes. She brushed them away, not wanting the boy to see. When she looked over at him, though, he was looking back.

“Don’t worry, Phryne, she’ll be all right. Your grandmother, I mean. She got away from them.”

He was trying to help, to make her feel better, and she gave him a smile for his effort. But she wasn’t convinced that he was right. All she knew for sure was that her grandmother had created that avatar with magic Phryne hadn’t even suspected she possessed and left it behind to let the girl know where she had gone.

To the Ashenell. To the tombs of the Elven people.