"What I sense," he told her, "confounds me. In this matter, my staff refuses to answer my call. I attempt to extend my senses through it, to locate the heart of the Black Wood, and it reacts as though I have asked it to do something incomprehensible. Yet the cause of this lies out there somewhere, through the Gate and deep within the vagaries of this Wizard's Vale."
At this, Lily's mien became guarded, and she said to him, "Then trust my senses, husband. The Circle calls to me. I know what and where it is. Please, do not ask me to make explanation! I ask you to trust me in this. There is a thing here that is not made for your understanding."
The whites beneath her lowered eyes showed as she said this, and for an instant Anest felt as though he spoke, not to his wife, but to a perfect stranger, the purely eldritch creature she had once been. And he realised, then, that her knowledge had its source in this, in her eldritch nature, a thing that lay a world apart from their personal relationship.
"Lead on, then," he said quietly, feeling something akin to personal defeat, or loss.
She half-turned away from him, about to resume their journey, but paused first, not looking in his direction. "There is a thing you must know. The Circle does not call me directly, but does so through . . ." he eyes strayed, lowered to the vicinity of her belly.