"I will be fine," answered the elf-woman with a wan smile, "in a matter of days . . ." But then, she lost her composure, and she put her hands to her face and began weeping. Lily sat by her head and Dorain buried her face in the girl's lap. Anest had come to rejoin them, but Lily indicated to him that he should wait outside. It wasn't long before Lily rejoined him, telling him that Dorain was asleep again. He smiled crookedly and put his arm around her. "You've come a long way," he
said, and their was an unmistakeable note of pride in his voice. But Lily only sighed, thinking of the difficulties that Dorain faced, and faced alone.
That evening a meeting was held in one of the halls of the great fortress.
The term `fortress' did the structure no justice. It stood like twin castles on either side of the River Grey, with the long, wide bridge between. At either end of the bridge, the roadway passed through a tunnel running beneath each of the two castle-like structures. At both ends of each tunnel there was a high gatehouse, each of which could raise or lower either a port cullis or an impenetrable door of iron. As a further precaution, there had been built, beneath the roadway of the bridge, a