At least she would get one chance to discover where the Elfstones could be found—one chance to look at where they might be hidden.

She would have to make good use of it.

They walked down the steps leading from the Council Hall to the roadway and started for the palace. All around them, Elves were going about their business, paying no attention to Aphenglow, oblivious to everything in which she was involved. No one greeted her; no one even seemed to know her. She felt like an intruder. She felt again how alone she was, how far removed from her home and her people. Maybe it was the Druid robes. Or maybe it was simply that Phaedon was right and she no longer belonged. It was a bitter admission, and she refused to make it.

“You made the best argument you could, Aphen,” her uncle said quietly. “I can’t think of anything else you could have said. The problem is not in your presentation or even the rightness of your cause. It lies with an innate distrust of the Druid order, a distrust that has been in place since Grianne Ohmsford’s days as Ard Rhys.”

She moved closer to him, keeping her voice down. “I can understand their distrust of Grianne. She gave everyone reason to distrust her. And to fear her, as well. But she has been gone a long time. Khyber Elessedil is one of us. She’s done nothing to earn such distrust. If anything, the Elves should be supporting her. And the Druid order. We should be allies, not antagonists.”

“You are entirely right. We should.” Ellich kept his head bent, but his eyes shifted this way and that. “But we aren’t and we won’t be anytime soon. Once settled in place, distrust is hard to dislodge. Especially when the Druids keep themselves so isolated from the rest of us. They deliberately hold themselves apart. Oh, I know the reasons for it. But that doesn’t change the impact it generates. It is the appearance of things that matters. It looks elitist. It fosters resentment and suspicion.”

She knew it was so. But having lived these past ten years with a foot in both camps, she also knew how wrong such thinking was. If anything, the Druids wanted to be accepted as allies by all of the Races. But it must be all. Any display of favoritism compromised their credibility. Staying aloof from the everyday lives of the Races was one way to reinforce their determination to remain impartial. The problem was that no one saw it that way. It felt to the average citizen as if the Druids considered themselves superior and preferred their own company to that of ordinary people.