Chapter 112

CASPIAN

Elandor’s courier came up the north road at dusk on the eighth day after Rhys put his badge back on, while the council house still smelled of the night Valerian had left it.

He was the same courier as before, or his brother, and he would not give the packet to Quill. He waited until I had it in my own hand, and said, “My king asks that I see you read it.”

There was no inner fold this time, no thumb pressed into plain wax. Only Elandor’s tall, unhurried hand.

The King of the Silvaran house to the King of Vaelmoor. I write as one king to another, and not as her father, because as her father I would not write to you at all.

My daughter has gone north. She writes that your sister is alive, in the house Malachai keeps on the black lake beyond the passes, and that she means to go and see for herself. She did not ask me to tell you. She did not forbid it.

I cannot put a warden over those passes without war. Nor, I think, c