As Orenda ran into the crowd she saw that she was not the only one wearing protection from the weather- but many people were not so fully dressed. People were fleeing their unknown assailant in whatever they had been wearing when the first attack rang out- and the Brigaddons were not the only people running barefoot in the snow.

The throng pushed heavily, being funneled into the gates- and she could now see that someone had put a sort of wooden barricade down the center, cutting it off vertically, because there were people coming out as well as in. A contingent of soldiers raced past her in the opposite direction; they hadn’t even looked in her direction, hadn’t noticed her at all in the sea of people. They were running towards the docks, and Orenda felt the rings in her ears heat as she thought of Toli.

She would never believe rumors of his death again.

She was shocked at how easily they made it through the gates, but when she raised her head to look around, she found that she was alone. She frantically whipped her head around, looking through the crowd for a glimmer of silver, but there were so many people, and the gates opened into a hall only wide enough for a carriage, and she had to push forward or be trampled.

She came out into what seemed to be a merchant section of a large city. She tried to get some kind of bearings, but this place was so new to her. The biggest building in the immediate area was a large temple, and it was there that most people were fleeing. She recognized it, but she couldn’t feel the intense earth magic radiating from it that she felt she should from such a sacred place. The Sacred Stone rested within the Sacred Earth Temple at the capital, from which the Chosen One had apparently drawn the Sacred Sword. People came from all over the world to touch that stone, which had once housed the sword and had been chosen by Thesis, despite the fact that it now sat empty. Orenda, having always been interested in art and the sacred texts, would have loved to see it. But it was not the time. That wasn’t where she was going. And she had to take advantage of the chaos and get inside the castle. She only had one chance.

“Where am I going?” Orenda asked the staff as she ran down the street.

She didn’t think about the shops on either side of her, didn’t look at them or the finery within, though she was curious, and knew that this was probably the most expensive place one could live. Everything in this city would be fit for a queen. Instead, her eyes were trained on the sky, and as she ran, she saw it.

The castle looked exactly like a drawing out of a storybook. The tall spires reached above the buildings Orenda was running past, made out of some sort of light grey stone. In the places where there were roofs, green tiles had been laid out, shining in the few places they were not covered by snow. Tall, stained glass windows adorned the bits she could see- the most prominent of which was above the entryway, and depicted a large, open rose, a symbol often associated with Xandra.

But as Orenda neared the beautiful castle with its tall towers where storybooks told her beautiful princesses waited for white knights, she realized that real castles were military strongholds meant to protect royalty- and this one was encompassed by another wall, easily as tall and thick as the one that had surrounded the city.

A moat surrounded this inner wall, and Orenda could smell it before she got to it. She did not know, had no reason to know, that castles dumped their waste and sewage into the moat. She had always thought of them as sparkling streams of water.

There was a drawbridge that would permit entry, but it was guarded by four Urillians in uniform holding swords and shields.

Orenda came to a stop by one of the last buildings, apparently some sort of restaurant judging by the tables outside and the lovely smells wafting from it, and watched as the soldiers stepped inside the castle walls, and listened to the clanking of chains as the drawbridge slowly rose, cutting off the place from the city outside.

“Shit!” Orenda said, and thought this location was a terrible place for a restaurant, because the smell of the moat was enough to turn her stomach, and wondered how they could possibly do any business. Orenda had never been as obsessed with nobility as many Urillians, and didn’t understand how many of them would be willing to smell sewage if it meant they could eat near the empress.

“What do I do?” Orenda asked the staff, and was beginning to get angry that it wasn’t answering her.

Then she realized that she was the one who was being an idiot. She jerked off the baklava and stuffed it into her bag, and the second her ears were free of the sterilite she heard the voice of the staff. It had apparently been in the middle of a sentence.

Artifact lies in the heart of the castle. I see it. We’re so close, master! Head to the eastern side of the castle wall- in the courtyard there is an entrance that that is not well guarded.

“An entrance into the castle? Or into the courtyard?”

The castle, master, from the courtyard.

“Well, that doesn’t help me get over the giant bloody wall, does it?” Orenda asked, “And the moat is wider than I am tall! Am I meant to wade through shit?”

When you have the artifact, master, you will have power beyond your wildest dreams.

“That doesn’t answer my question!” Orenda snarled.

“Rendy!” Anilla came sprinting up to her, “There you are! I lost everyone in the crowd! The castle is so beautiful!”

Slay the halfling, master! She will betray you!

“Where are Mary Sue and Sonny?” Orenda asked.

“I don’t know,” Anilla said. “I got lost in the crowd.”

“Well… we need to get into the castle from the eastern side,” Orenda said.

“Ok!” Anilla said, and took off in that direction at a sprint without waiting for further instruction.

Orenda cursed and followed her. The buildings around them thinned until there was nothing left, and the inner wall nearly met the outer wall. Only the moat ran between them.

Orenda studied it for some time, and looked up as the snow fell softly around them.

“Anilla,” she asked, “I once saw Bella float a barrel of rum across an open sea. If I jump- can you carry me across this moat?”

“I think so?” Anilla said, “But you’re so heavy! And you’ll hit the wall!”

“I’m not concerned about the wall,” Orenda said as she peeled away her gloves and stuffed them into her bag, “I just don’t want to fall into that foul smelling mess. That’s actually how I’ve lived my life in regards to everything about the nobility. I should have taken Gareth’s carpet.”

“I can’t fly us,” Anilla said, “But if I… maybe ride on your back or something I can probably keep us in the air, give us enough momentum to cross.”

“Perfect,” Orenda said, “But mind the staff. I don’t know if it being wrapped up will be enough to keep it from burning you. It really doesn’t care for you.”

“The staff doesn’t like me?” Anilla asked, as if the prospect hurt her feelings, “Why?”

“It’s altogether disagreeable, in general,” Orenda said as she knelt, and Anilla frowned as she dug her wand out of her bag, then climbed onto Orenda’s back.

“Are we ready?” Orenda asked.

“Yes!” Anilla said chipperly, clinging fiercely to Orenda’s shoulder with one arm, and her waist with her legs. The staff didn’t seem to be hurting her. Orenda backed up as far as she could, took a long run, and when she ran out of ground, she leaped for all she was worth.

It felt as if she just kept going, as if she really was so strong that she was able to clear it herself. Nothing about the speed or momentum changed, and that meant it was over far more quickly than she had anticipated. Orenda was thankful she had been training, but it wasn’t enough. She hit the side of the wall with a sickening crack, face first, and felt something in her jaw snap.

“Rendy?” Anilla asked with panic in her voice as they began to fall backwards, and Orenda worked through the daze in her brain, scrambling at the wall with her hands.

The stone melted, and they did not fall.

Anilla reached around her, took her face in one hand, and Orenda felt the cool, fresh air that took away of the stench below them, and felt the thing that had been knocked loose in her jaw tighten back up. She moved the inside of her mouth back and forth and felt a terrible pain, but she suspected she had broken her jaw, and was thankful that it worked at all.

“Thank you,” she said, and felt the strain in the shoulder of the arm she was using to cling to the wall.

“You’re welcome!” Anilla said cheerfully.

Orenda swung herself back and around and dug into the wall with her other hand, and began to climb. She heaved herself up as far as she could, and it was much easier when she was able to get her feet into the handholds she had created. She and Anilla were much heavier now than she had been, alone, as a child, but the wall was not much taller than a single story. She estimated it was, perhaps a story and a half, a little shorter than the outer wall. It would be easy for anyone to see what she was doing, and she didn’t even try to close the stone behind her.

She hated the snow and the cold that bit into her, but she was stronger. She was in the heart of the Urillian empire, the heart of the earth elves. She was a fire, burning brightly in the middle of the forest. And she told herself, as she heaved her body onto the terrace at the top of this thick wall and rose on unsteady legs, that she was the most dangerous person in this place. It only took a spark to burn down a forest, and she was a raging fire.

She panted, and took in the cold air, then turned to look out over the other side of the wall. It was beautiful now, but she suspected it was breathtaking in the spring. The front garden was vast, sloping a little, and Orenda was sure that when there was life here, when all the bushes and trees were in bloom, it would have been one of the most beautiful places in the world.

She could see that there were vast tracts of land off to the side and back of the place as well. It stretched so far and held so much, all under cover of snow. There was practically another city inside the inner walls, with buildings, people, and animals.

There were so many soldiers.

But Orenda saw the place that the staff had been talking about. An area to the side of the castle had what she thought may be a row of greenhouses, and beside them was an entrance, presumably for the servants to use. There were no guards stationed at the door, but they did walk in paths around the grounds. They seemed to move like clockwork on preset paths, and Orenda thought that if she studied them long enough, she could figure them out and exploit them.

“Who the hell are you?” A voice rang out from her side, “Stop what you’re doing and keep your hands where I can see them!”

Orenda turned to see a group of three Urillian soldiers with bows drawn and arrows notched, pointing right at her.