The Revenge of the Elves Read Free Page A

the way,
    Be brave, be strong, be true.
    ‘Tis not enough, idly by to sit
    When destiny beckons you.
    Seek it now, the blighted map,
    Pluck it from their hands,
    Lest it fall forever lost
    Upon the daemon’s chest to land.
    The sisters of the sacred place
    know not what they do,
    Forgive them the words their actions speak,
    They are noble, through and through.
    Lost in a moment of what he needs;
    “The well at the end go seek!”,
    Not all can be arranged just so,
    The Drue find, the Drue keep. “

    He looked hard at Caroline, waiting for a response.
    “How grave is the need of this Lalas that it gave such ill-conceived instructions to Tamara?” she asked. “Are they ill-conceived? I don’t even know anymore.”
    “And I don’t understand what she meant by that. How could the tree be misguided? That seems unlikely. A Lalas can’t be wrong, can it? But they’re dying, Caroline. Maybe they’re just becoming frightened like the rest of us, frightened and confused,” Dalloway replied. Questioning a Lalas? He’d never done that before.
    “Why couldn’t it be wrong? Maybe it just doesn’t know everything. Tamara said they’re worried. They can’t communicate like they did in the past.” Her features were strained and edged with fear. “My father told us Sidra could be trusted. He wouldn’t have said that if it weren’t true.” Would he? What did she really know of his fears? He wanted to protect her more than anything. She realized that after learning of her mother’s death. Still, she wondered, what more had he kept from her?
    “And you think the Lalas can’t be trusted?” Dalloway winced.
    “It’s not only a matter of trust, Daly. Maybe the trees are suffering so much from their losses that they can’t see things as they used to. But they could be wrong too, couldn’t they? Isn’t that possible? And what if Sidra knows this?” Caroline speculated.
    “And we’re supposed to determine who is correct? The sister was instructed by the Lalas itself to drop the map down the well, and that’s what she told us to do,” he said, puzzled.
    “Yes. And you were instructed that the Lalas was ‘lost in a moment of need’, weren’t you?” Caroline paraphrased Sidra’s words. “So we are the ones who must decide,” she concluded. “We can’t just ignore Sidra’s admonition either.”
    “Could Caeltin D’Are Agenathea be here in Odelot?” Dalloway asked. His heart skipped a beat. “Do you think he’s waiting for us? He mustn’t gain possession of the map no matter what we decide to do with it!” The shifting sands looked more and more forbidding. Each step was difficult.
    “He can’t possibly know who we are and where we are, could he? He can’t see into the forbidden places remember, and his assassin is dead,” Caroline paled. “The only others who know of our journey are Sidra, Tamara and my father.” The Dark One? She didn’t feel him here. She didn’t feel anything here.
    “If he’s in Odelot, someone else had to advise him of our presence,” Dalloway stated.
    “But no one else knew,” Caroline repeated.
    “Oleander knew!” Dalloway said.
    “Oleander? What are you saying, Daly? Why? Why would one of the Lalas inform Colton of such a thing?”
    “I don’t know, Caroline. Truly, I don’t. But it could be true.” May the First help us if it is , he thought.
    “Then who’ve we left to trust?” she wondered. Her fingers grasped his sleeve so tight his arm numbed.
    “We’ve come this distance in order to drop the one object that would help Davmiran the most down the well so that it will be lost forever,” he said.
    “Or be found by Colton!” she said. “Which has to be worse.”
    “How could Sidra know what the Lalas did not?”
    “I think we should keep it, Daly,” Caroline said. “Everything changed when we arrived. What was right for the sister may not be for us. Once it was put in our hands and Tamara left with the shard, the circumstances changed