Page 145 of Keeper of the Word

“Where are we going?” Tolvar asked.

Elanna’s hand rooted around in her pocket. “We have a great many tasks.”

Chapter

Fifty-Four

SOMEWHERE IN THE PROVINCE OF RENN, GRENDEN: ELANNA

Stars gave no comfort. Night gave no shield. And remorse bled through Elanna.

Over and over, thoughts coursed through her:Is this all my fault?andHow can I still save the realm?

The original company—Tolvar, Gus, Barrett, Joss, Hux, and herself—had fled Asalle a week ago and determined it safest to go into Grenden, head south, and then follow the Cresswell River west along the foothills of the Ena Mountains to reach Ashwin.

Ashwin. Were her sisters safe? Elanna had not yet been able to feel the others through her cord of light or StarSpeak. Nightmares about Maristel crying out haunted her, even in the daylight.

Already, Elanna could feel the turmoil roiling through the realm. The countryside they’d journeyed through, though blank, was swept with a wrongness she knew the others could feel.

Elanna scarcely believed that everyone was intact. She glanced at Hux.

That terrible night—“the sovereign’s fete,” they’d heard it called, disparagingly, in a village they’d passed through—no one had found or stopped the prince before he’d fled Asalle himself. Stars only knew where he was.

She reminded herself that she’d Seen the prince marry. At least the stars had afforded her that.

But why had they not afforded her other visions?

The memory of the blood. She could still smell the coppery tinge. Nothing could rid her of the odor.

Do not think on it. You shall fall apart again.

Before all this had started, Elanna’s life had been simple. Praying. Seeing. Praying. Counseling. Praying. Naught more.

And she’d ne’er questioned the stars.

As she was tempted to do now.

Was Tara questioning the stars? Was she in Castle Sidra’s Delara, praying at this moment for the sovereign’s recovery? For Goodsell’s recovery? The man had not seemed well upon their hasty departure. Did Tara curse Elanna for dragging them all to Asalle? It had changed nothing—mayhap even made matters worse.

“You shall have to give Sir Tolvar ‘the word’ on your own,”Tara had said, clearly not suggesting that she, Elanna, couldgivethe word. She did notknowtheword.

Only the stars knew theword.Employing her as a vessel, the stars would bestow it upon Tolvar alone.

Elanna glanced upward. On her own. ’Twould be much more difficult and would require completeness. Completeness of confidence. Of hope.

Of faith,she let herself consider.

She sighed and stood from where she knelt in the meadow a score of paces away from the camp in which the others sat. Hux glanced at her but was quick to peer elsewhere.

The pit in her stomach returned.

That first night they’d fled Asalle, Elanna had fallen to pieces. Every thought, every breath, every hair on her arms had crawled with the foul stench of the sovereign’s fete.

’Twas too much.

She’d held herself intact. But no longer.

The others had each, in turn, gingerly placed consoling hands on her shoulders, but her sobbing was uncontrollable.