They remained with Lady Melei and the caravan for just one more day. They attended memorial services for Sir Remnick and the others that had been killed in the attack, and collected a small fee from Lady Melei for their services throughout the expedition. "I promised you two percent of the profits," she said sadly. "Are you sure I can't convince you to return to Galleus with us?"

  Arai shook his head. "I'm afraid not. I have friends waiting for me in Velon."

  Lady Melei gave him a long, considering look. "I'm going to miss you," she said at last. Her gaze turned to the others. "All of you. Will I ever see you again?"

  "Probably not," Arai said.

  "I hate to hear that."

  "Well...maybe Shell will come to visit you someday. Elves live a long time, and it's just possible she might decide to make her way east again." He gave her a little nudge. "What do you think?"

  Shell thought about it. "Maybe. But I want to spend more time with Arai and Lillandra first."

  Melei turned to Sir Estil. "And you?"

  "I swore to see them safely to Velon," the knight said. "I will not go back on my vow." He seemed to hesitate for a moment, as though he was unsure of what to say. Finally he said, "I wish you all the best, Lady Melei. And if by chance you should meet with King Arthorius...tell him I remained true to my word, until the very end."

  Lady Melei's eyes clouded up with tears. "I'll tell him. I'll tell everyone who will listen, that Sir Estil Endsgrief was the greatest knight in the history of the world." And she threw her arms around his neck, enveloping him in a hug.

  "Are you sure you don't want to return to Galleus with them?" Arai asked Sir Estil later. "I will release you from your vow, if you wish it."

  But he shook his head. "I meant what I said. But this western world intrigues me, too. I want to see more of it, I think."

  There were a lot of hugs, a lot of farewells. Arai shook hands with Hiero, and said goodbye to the knights -- to Sir Farrow, to Sir Pallas, and all the others he had fought with, side by side, in the Scarred Lands. Lillandra thanked the surgeon, Gramewold, for his treatments, and Shell, shedding tears, said goodbye to Damon, from whom she had learned no small amount of sorcery. He patted her blonde head and looked upon her kindly. "Good luck, little one. I hope to see you again someday."

  When they had gathered their supplies, they met with Lady Melei once again. Arai, who was a little worried about the final fate of the expedition, asked her about her plans. "Queen Alfaze has apologized for the attack on the caravan," she said, "and she has offered to buy all our remaining merchandise. She's also offered to send along a contingent of Queen Men's with us, to see us safely back to Galleus. I'm not exactly thrilled with the idea, but we've lost several knights, and we need their strength. Oh, and we're taking an Elentish ambassador back with us as well. Queen Alfaze hopes ours will be the first of many such expeditions across the desert."

  "What about D'mai?"

  "They found a gigantic stash of these old Salosi coins at his estate," she said, "along with other evidence implicating him in Princess Nattali's murder. I don't know how Elentish justice works, but I suspect his life is already forfeit. He killed a princess and tricked a queen into an unnecessary war...and that was before he hired these mages to murder us all." She clenched a fist. "If Queen Alfaze doesn't execute him, I will."

  "And that just leaves Nessa, I suppose," Arai said. "I wonder if she'll ever be found. I wouldn't be surprised if she decided to run off into the desert again."

  Melei shrugged. "Perhaps." She stopped and smiled, looking them all over one last time. "Safe travels, my friends. If any of you ever do return to Galleus..." She trailed off.

  Arai nodded in appreciation. "You've been a tremendous help," he said, "and a great friend to us. We couldn't have made it through the desert without you."

  "I'm going to miss you," she said again, wiping away another tear.

  And they parted there, following another series of hugs and goodbyes. It was difficult to leave them; though they had only known each other a few months, they had been through a lot together, fighting monsters and suffering all kinds of hardships in each other's company. And the fact that they were unlikely to see each other again made it even harder. Velon, after all, was a very long way from Galleus.

  The four of them left the Akane Palace and headed for the city's southern gates, where they hired a wagon to take them west. Elent was famous for its excellent and well-maintained roads and bridges, and for its taxi services which carried travelers from one end of the country to the other, and Arai was optimistic that they could make it to Manthe before the weather turned and the early snows began to fall in the Holy Empire.

  While Sir Estil played his flute, and while Shell practiced her magic, Arai spoke with Lillandra in the back of the wagon. "Where do we go from here?" she asked.

  "It'll probably take a couple of weeks to get to Manthe," he said. "From there, we'll take a ship across Estellaria's Bay, to Salos City, make our way north through the Old Duchy, and then through Grimcourt, Cyrille Major, and finally Velon."

  Lillandra frowned. "Another ship?"

  "I'm not terribly excited about it, either," he admitted. "But the land border between Elent and the Holy Empire is a dangerous place. The Elentish side of the border is heavily militarized, and there's always fighting going on between Arl's Trust and the Greater Remnant. We don't want to stumble into the middle of another war. Besides, I'm more familiar with Salos and the Marquisates than I am with Balbaroy and Arl's Trust and those other statelets. I know my way around Salos City. It'll make it easier to arrange transportation."

  "We're getting closer, aren't we?" Lillandra said. "We'll be back in Velon in...what, a couple of months?"

  "If all goes well," he said. He thought he saw a bit of apprehension in her eyes, so he asked her, "Does that make you nervous?"

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  "Yes," she said immediately. "How can I show my face there? If anyone finds out that I'm the Night Queen--"

  "You're not the Night Queen anymore."

  She snorted. "I'll always be the Night Queen, and people are always going to hate me. The people of Velon especially. I'm afraid that..." She sighed. "I'm afraid it will be impossible for me to live a normal life there."

  "No one's going to harm you," Arai assured her. "I won't allow it. No one even has to know you're the Night Queen; she hasn't been seen in a century. Who would believe that you're a hundred-year-old sorceress?"

  "I'm actually closer to a hundred and nineteen," she corrected. "Of course you're right -- no one has to know who I am. Can I really live happily in Velon, though, surrounded by people like your friend Maya -- people whose lives I've destroyed?"

  "What will you do, then? Go into exile somewhere?"

  She thought about it. "Perhaps."

  "Where?"

  "I don't know."

  "What about me? What about Shell? You'd really leave us behind?"

  "I...don't know."

  "It sounds to me like you haven't really thought this through."

  "I haven't," she admitted. "I'm just afraid of what might be waiting for us in Velon."

  He patted her hand. "Whatever we find," he said, "we'll face it together."

  She smiled weakly, but then brightened a bit. "Speaking of your friends..." She reached into her bag and removed the Black Box, the zemi she had created to store their other zemi. She placed her hand on the lid and closed her eyes, which caused the box to click open -- this was its enchantment; the Black Box could only be opened by a sorcerer. Flipping up the lid, she removed what appeared to be a single, and rather ordinary-looking, white feather. "I completed it the other day."

  "What's that?"

  "Griffin's Down," she said. "A zemi to reverse the spell of stone I cast on Odo and Maya."

  Arai stared. "Where did you get that?"

  "Where do you think I got it? I made it. I've been working on it since we left Addisport; the feather came from a pelican."

  "That long ago?"

  She shrugged. "That was when I changed my mind about you."

  "May I?"

  She handed him the feather, which he examined closely. "Why didn't you tell me you were working on this?"

  "I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish it by the time we got back to Velon," she said, "and I didn't want to get your hopes up."

  He returned it to her; she put it back in the box. "You're always surprising me," he said. "One of the many things I love about you."

  She scoffed at that, but smiled, too, in a shy sort of way. Shell, watching the exchange, rolled her eyes. "These two," she muttered. "I'm glad you finally sorted yourselves out, but do you have to act that way in front of us? It reminds me of when Lillandra was sick on that love philtre."

  "Leave them be," Sir Estil said, stopping his flute-playing for a moment. "They have every right to enjoy themselves; it took them a very long time to get here."

  "You don't have to tell me," Shell muttered.

  * * *

  The next few weeks were relatively uneventful. Taking full advantage of Elent's roads and taxi services, they made their way through the queendom's heartland, passing through fields, forests, villages, and occasionally a few mid-sized cities such as Brokedam and the Falls. They traveled in all kinds of carriages and wagons -- some old, decrepit, and uncomfortable, and which were only capable of wheeling along at a few miles an hour, and some of which were speedy and luxurious. When they couldn't find a taxi to take them from one village to the next, they rented a wagon for themselves, or simply walked, but this happened less and less frequently as time wore on, because the seasons were beginning to change now and it was too cold to spend the nights camped out by the side of road without any kind of shelter. It hadn't snowed yet, fortunately, but Arai was always worried that it might -- travel was always more difficult through the snow.

  At almost every village they stopped at, Arai inquired about Velon. What had been happening there? Had Lord Pierce been ousted? Had the Steelmen returned to the Holy Empire? But no one seemed to know anything about Velon.

  They did, however, hear plenty of wild stories about what was happening within the Holy Empire. A new war-leader, called Dayan, had apparently seized control of Balbaroy and laid siege to Arl's City, which was not only the capital of the Greater Remnant but also the largest and most ancient city within the Empire. The outcome of the attack was as yet unclear, but Arai doubted this Dayan had succeeded in his efforts -- the Greater Remnant was the most powerful of the Empire's many states and city-states; their armies were three times larger, at least, than any of their rivals.

  Sir Estil had some trouble understanding the nature of the Holy Empire. "How can this place be called an empire, when its people are constantly at war with one another?"

  "They were unified, once," Arai said. "Arliel brought them together, built the Pontiaks Cathedral, and established Arl's City, probably about six or seven hundred years ago. The Holy Empire really was an empire back then. But they had a series of very bad emperors, and some wars broke out, and eventually the whole thing just fell apart. The most powerful dukes and marquises declared their independence and raised their own armies and started issuing their own coins. But Arliel was supposed to be a reincarnation of Arl himself, and even the most independent-minded lords and lordlings couldn't bring themselves to make a complete break with the empire he had built. To this day they still pay homage to Arliel's descendants."

  "There is still an emperor, then?"

  "Oh, yes," Arai said. "Arliel XXI. He lives in a palace in Arl's City, and everyone bows their heads when they see him, but he's just a figurehead, with no real power at all. It's the same with the empire. It's not really an empire anymore, but everyone still calls it that."

  "Was Velon a part of this Holy Empire at one point?"

  He shook his head. "Velon's always been its own kingdom -- since the Harrowing, at least. It's been invaded by the Holy Empire several times, but we've always managed to drive them back."

  Finally, after these weeks of uneventful travel, the group arrived on the outskirts of Manthe, the largest city in western Elent. This was another coastal city, arrayed upon Estellaria's Bay -- a considerable body of water (though considerably smaller than the Bay of Vandals in the east) which was joined to the Southern Ocean by a narrow passage called the Starlit Channel. Manthe was only one of the great cities built upon the banks of the Estellaria -- Salos City, Camarro, and Carmaine lay on the other side of the bay, and a huge amount of trade was conducted over its waters.

  Manthe itself was a city of tall buildings and narrow streets. Shell -- who, as usual, was hiding her face beneath the hood of her cloak -- looked around in amazement. "I wonder how long it's been since an elf visited this city," she said.

  "A couple of centuries, at least," Arai guessed, though he really had no idea.

  "Shall we find an inn?" Sir Estil asked.

  "I'd like to go down to the port first," he said.

  "Transportation to Salos City?"

  He nodded. "We need to book passage as soon as possible. A lot of captains won't even make the crossing this late in the season."

  So they proceeded to the port. After spending a few minutes asking around, Arai found a captain who was planning on making the trip in two days, weather permitting, and who didn't mind taking on a couple of passengers. "You don't look like Salosi," the captain said, raising an eyebrow at the four of them.

  "We're not," Arai said. "We're from Velon, actually. We're on our way home."

  "Through the Marquisates?"

  He nodded.

  "It'd be quicker to run you through Carmaine," he said. "But I can understand why you'd want to avoid that place, what with all the fighting going on there."

  "Fighting?"

  "You haven't heard? This new Arlian general, Dayan, captured Arl's City not two weeks ago. He's bottled up in Manrador now, but he was planning on making his way to Carmaine after that."

  "Arl's City has fallen?" Arai could hardly believe it.

  "It's chaos," the man affirmed. "Word has it he took the emperor himself hostage. There's a dozen armies on the march, and the smaller statelets have been hiring mercenary companies left and right. The Red Stars, the Bleeding Eyes, the Pretender's Company. New Carmal hired the Steelmen to defend Carmaine."

  Arai froze. "The Steelmen? In Carmaine?"

  "That's what I heard. They've got a new captain now...what was his name?"

  "Grizz?" Arai asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  "Ah, that's right," the man said, nodding in satisfaction. "Grizz."