UNSHEATHED

Chapter Thirty Five

The day was long. After learning such unbelievable news it took all of Elena's well-developed discipline to keep focus on her tasks. She hardly had ever thought much of the Guardians, doubting even their existence, and now she must somehow absorb that they were real and that she was one of them.

I am exactly the same person I was yesterday, she recited to herself, yet the task her mother had laid on her seemed far beyond her abilities. If she was to believe Maylani and her visions, she alone could defeat this rogue Guardian, Korr.

How does one fight a Guardian? She mused as she finally headed back from the beach where she had been running through her training program with her troops all day. Her troops! She had been given full authority and command now. It was official. This pleased her, at least, and she was confident that she could do this job, at least, even if the task of being "The Defender" completely overwhelmed her.

She took her meal in her rooms so she wouldn't have to pretend to focus on discussions that she couldn't possibly follow under the circumstances. She ate a little, then realized she had no appetite and left the plate on the table and went to lie down on her bed. She wasn't tired, but it was a place to lay her body while her mind swirled around with troubling thoughts.

The afternoon wore on. At some point Elena must have dozed off, for she snapped to attention with a shock when she heard something outside her bedroom. It was night now, and the fortress was quiet at this hour. No one should be entering her private rooms without at least knocking on the door, and there were guards on both ends of the outer hall monitoring who came and went from this floor where the highest ranking occupants of the fortress lived.

She sat in her room straining to hear what was going on just outside. Again she heard a noise. It was a footfall. Someone was heading toward her, creeping quietly.

Elena reached over to a side table where she had laid a small dagger that she usually kept strapped to her lower leg. She rose with as little noise as she could manage, certainly less than her intruder, and set herself just beside the door with her dagger in hand and waited, breathing as lightly as she could.

It only took a few more heartbeats for the intruder to reach her bedroom. The moment she saw the dark shadow against the window in the outer room, she made her move. She grabbed the intruder's wrist and pulled him, toward her while she slipped her foot out in front of his own, so that he became unbalanced and tripped over. She swung around him and placed her knee on his back as he fell over, still holding onto the wrist, and tucked his arm neatly behind him so that he couldn't move as he lay face down on the floor.

"Who are you?" To her surprise, the intruder didn't fight her to get free, only lay there as she had caught him.

"I bring you a message, my Lady. The tree shelters me from the burning sun."

The phrase caught Elena by surprise. She knew it well. She responded automatically.

"The wind dries my sweat and cools me."

When she realized where she knew this from, she tightened her grip on the man. "How did you come by these words?"

The man kept his body relaxed.

"Lord Garion told me you would know them. It was the pass phrase he used when he was a member of the fifth cohort. He told me you would remember it too."

She knew Lord Garion well. They graduated from training together when they were young, and spent time as comrades in the fifth cohort as well. It was clever to use a pass phrase from the fifth cohort, one from her time, no less. They were used to establish trust with informants and spies when they were abroad.