“Here,” said Sellena at last. “I can take you no farther.” The blackness was perfect; the Princess could see not the vaguest outline of the woman who stood beside her, but she could tell by the sound of her voice that Sellena had turned to face her. “There is no danger here, in this simple dark; but your next step will begin your final journey which will take you to the wizard’s den, and once you have taken that step you will be able neither to stop nor to turn back.
“Stand here awhile, till everything you are, everything you think and remember and feel, drains out of you. What my brother told you of the wizard’s ways is true. Even when you think you have left yourself like a discarded cloak, wait—search again, into every corner of your being; you must not leave even a shred of your personality for the wizard to seize upon. He will search you like the dagger in the hand of the assassin. What you leave here, I will hold for you in the palms of my hands, and I will wait here for your return and give these things up to you again just as they were when you left them in my keeping. Your heart and your hopes are safe here with me, but you must not take them with you, for he whom you will face will make spears of them and drive them back upon you.”
The Princess stood awhile, with the blackness standing all around her; and she remembered all of the months that had gone to make up her tally of seventeen years; and each week of those months she remembered. She remembered how she had learned to leave her heart behind her when she was summoned by her father, because his lack of love for her hurt her; and how she had only taken up her heart again gladly, and joined it to her hopes and fears, when she went to meet her brother. And she thought of her brother and how he had never understood the hurtfulness of love, so that when he discovered a great love in the eyes of Sellena he had not been able to lay it aside when he went to face the wizard; and now he lay dying of his weakness, of his simple honesty.
She thought of all these things, and then she felt Sellena’s hands on her face; and silently she yielded up all of her that was hers to Sellena’s care, saving only the question she must ask the wizard. And she felt her body as dark and empty as the tunnel she stood in, with herself and Sellena the questions who waited their asking, and she took the first step of the last stage of her journey to the wizard.
She was dimly aware of a roaring in her ears, and heat against her skin that came and went, and a flickering like lightning in her eyes; but she had left herself no thoughts to think, and she did not think of these things. She could not even count the steps she took, but she came at last to a lighted place, a cavern, low and white, and at the center of the cavern was a chair of white rock that seemed to grow up out of the floor without break or joint. The white light, for which there was no source visible, burnt fiercely upon the face of the figure that sat in the chair; and the face and the figure bore the semblance of a man. He wore long black robes that covered all but his long white fingers and pale face; a hood was pulled over his head and low upon his brow, but his eyes glared at her, bright with rage and brighter with power. But she had no names for these things now, and so she did not try to name them; nor had she left herself fear, and so the frenzy in the face before her inspired in her no fear.
She opened her mouth, and gave utterance to the one thing she had brought with her to the wizard’s lair: “Will you set the two you hold in bondage free?”
The chair, and the creature on it, and the cavern itself disappeared; silently and seemingly gently, for the Princess felt no shock; it was as though she watched a shape of snow melt in spring sunshine. She blinked, and found herself … somewhere else; and the first thing she knew was Sellena’s hands again on her face, and all that Sellena had held safe for her ran back inside her and made her breathe quickly for joy; for the first thing she then did was turn to Darin, who stood at Sellena’s side, lame no longer, but standing strong on both feet. And Darin and Korah looked long and deep in one another’s eyes.
Then they turned away to see Sellena’s eyes shining brightly on both of them together; and they all three laughed, and Darin and the Princess blushed, and then they looked around to see where they were. But Darin’s and the Princess’s hands somehow met and clasped, while their eyes were busy elsewhere.
The grey grim mountain was gone, and they stood on a sweet green plain untroubled by rough stone and starry with flowers, and a stream ran off to their right, and before them was the forest. And the Princess’s chestnut mare came running to greet them.
“We must return to your city,” said Sellena, and her eyes were shining still, but the thoughts behind them were changed. It was only then that the Princess saw the warm beauty of her friend and sister, and knew that she had been healed too. “For as my brother’s leg is whole again, so—so many other things come right.”
The Princess drew her mare’s head down to her own breast a moment, and whispered in the chestnut ears that flicked forward to listen. “Go,” she said then to Sellena. “Ride my mare; she will take you as swiftly as she may to my home and hers; and we will follow after.” And the Princess bridled and saddled her horse, and Sellena mounted and rode off.
The forest did not seem wide to the two who followed behind; and though they walked swiftly, it was gaily too, and without thought of weariness nor any desire that the journey come to an end. But the dense undergrowth that had stretched on and on almost without measure when the Princess had followed the Hind gave way now to tall easy-spaced trees and frequent meadows full of singing birds; and the two that walked on had not by any means come to the end of all they had to say to each other when they found they had come to the end of the frees. They emerged from the forest just in time to see the party that was setting out from the city to meet them. In that party rode the thirteenth hunter, who reined his horse so close to his wife’s that he might hold her hand as if he would never let it free again; and at their head rode the Prince, who was perhaps thinner than he should be, but he rode his tall stallion with his old grace and strength, and at his side rode Sellena. And behind the two that stepped out of the forest stepped several more, eleven in all, whose presence had not been suspected even by themselves, for they had thought themselves long dead in a wizard’s cave. But now they strode forward to bow to the Prince and ask the way to their homes and countries, barring the two who belonged to this kingdom, and who wept for joy at finding themselves in it again; and they all did homage to her who had rescued them.