Iylaine goes deeper

Iylaine was awake, but one would not have known it except by the slow movement of her thin fingers as they traced the seam of the pillow beside her. Moving her fingers took nearly all the strength she could muster. Iylaine was very ill.

She had felt tired and ill before when she had been locked up indoors to protect her from some danger or other, but it was nothing like this. That was like hunger, and this was like starvation.

Iylaine believed she was dying, and her greatest fear was that she would die in the dark. For this reason she had not burned the deerskin on which she lay, though it would have brought her great comfort. She had long since burned the clothes up around her body, but she kept the deerskin for the end. She told herself that when she felt her strength dwindling to nothing, she would use the last of it to call out the fire in the skin, and she would die surrounded by heat and light.

She so longed for that moment, so dreamed of that release, that the skin was scorched in many places where she had lain on it. There were times when she had to use up some of her strength merely fighting to keep the fires down.

Suddenly she sat up on one elbow, for she thought she had heard a scream at some distance. It was more than a scream of fright – it was a scream of agony, and though she had no pity for these dog-​​elves, she was chilled by the sound.

The first scream was followed quickly by many others, and shouting, and hurried footsteps, and the sound of metal scraping against metal and stone, and much confusion. Something was happening, and it sounded very bad for the dog-​​elves.

The commotion rapidly came closer. There were running feet, and only a short distance from her room she heard a woman’s shrill scream suddenly cut off by a hideous gurgle. Then the running feet were at her door.

There were four of them, all dressed in black, and two had long, curved swords that were dark along the blade with blood. One of the other two immediately laid his hands on the lock as if he meant to tear it open.

The place had gone eerily quiet except for the rattling of the door on its hinges. There were no longer any distant voices speaking a language she did not understand. But somehow she knew that these four had not come to kill her. Somehow she knew that they had come to rescue her, but she was so weak that she could not rise to go to them.

And then the fourth elf spoke anxiously to the third. “Avé vín!”

“Vash!” Iylaine cried.

“We’re coming,” he said softly.

Now, though she thought it had been days since she had done more than crawl to the bucket in the corner and back, she found the strength to stand.

“Ní séyérín alpúl rín!” said the elf who struggled with the lock.

“Hurry up, you beetlehead!” Vash said to him.

Iylaine found the strength to smile. He had not forgotten that word, though it was well over a year since she had seen him. She felt light and alive, as if these past days or weeks – and even that long year and several months – had been an inconvenient dream, and now she was waking.

Vash put his hand through the bars and caught hers, and somehow his strength kept her from falling.

“It won’t be long now,” he said to her.

“I didn’t think you would come,” she murmured. She was so dizzy. She was not light, but only light-​​headed.

“Silly girl!”

“Aí! Púl rín?” the dark-​​haired elf said and stared quizzically at the two chunks of iron he held in his big hands. They had once been the lock, but he had twisted them off as easily as if the door had suddenly turned to cheese.

But Vash only pushed past him and came into her little room to take her in his arms. She found this to be a greater comfort than lying in the heart of even a raging fire.

“You thought I wouldn’t come!” he scolded playfully. “Just for that, Shus shall carry you out of here.”

Shus appeared to the be the dark-​​haired elf who stood smiling at the two of them, or at least she supposed, for the other two were carrying swords.

“Oh, no!” she whined. “I want you to carry me. Cousin!” she added with a sweet smile.

“Shus is your cousin, too, so he may. And I shall carry you all the way home, but I need my hands to get us out of here.

“How did you find me?”

“We shall talk later. Up you go!”

He tried to lift her into the arms of the taller elf, but Iylaine clung to his neck and would not let him go.

“We play later, Iylaine,” he warned, and his voice was grave enough that she released him.

The tall elf carried her out behind the other three, and for the first time Iylaine saw the corridor beyond her little room. It twisted to the right and to the left, and many other corridors branched out along the sides. But what troubled her the most was the realization that the corridor had a definite slope. They were going down – deeper into the earth, farther away from the sun.