PELAIR. The Gems of the Golden Serpent.

7. The Angmar Castle

"Don't worry!" Aela said with a genuine smile of satisfaction. "This passage is not known by anyone else in the castle but me."

"Thanks to Noor, the girl has not lost her candor, despite the ordeal she had gone through," thought Rinna, seen the joy and enthusiasm that Aela expressed.

It had already been a few weeks since they had found Aela all alone in the vastness of the forest. Gradually, Rinna had been putting together little fragments of Aela's story.

"But if she is not more than a lucky refugee from the Triad exodus, where did she get such intriguing bracelets?" asked herself intrigued. Hence, her interest in entering the castle and see if there was still someone or something to throw light on the girl.

Rinna's interest was not pure curiosity.

Since the days that had passed from their encounter, Aela had demonstrated innately the ability to sense the thoughts and behavior of those who surrounded her. To the guild of priestesses of Magyar, it was a gift. She had guessed Balin had been about to light a fire without even having gotten his flint.

"May I help you?" had offered the girl. "Let me do it for you!" she had said to the dwarf when he had not even risen from his site with that manifest intention.

Balin had been perplexed, not quite understanding how the girl had been able to read his mind. Rinna meanwhile, observed the situation and waited to confirm her suspicions.

On another occasion, the girl entered her tent, carrying a small blanket, which Rinna was about to fetch. In itself, these two events could have been the work of chance, but there were other details that an expert as she was did not overlook.

Yet on another occasion, Aela had taken a couple of sparrow eggs from a basket that was in the corner of their tent, which Balin had deftly fleeced from a nest atop a tree. She was about to leave the tent when Rinna asked: "Where are you going with those eggs, honey?"

"The little fox is hungry," had said the girl. "It has been days since it hasn't hunted anything.

"What fox?" had asked Rinna.

"The fox that is outside," said the girl as if nothing while she went out.

Rinna leaned out of the tent to see with astonishment that indeed a fox was eating the two eggs from Aela's hand.

How did she know there had been a hungry fox out of the tent? The woman had asked herself in wonder. How could such a wary animal have approached her so confidently and naturally?

These and many other little details had given much to think to Rinna and the dwarf. That quality was so natural to the girl that she was not even aware of it.

"It's around here!" indicated Aela very confident, as she walked along the narrow and dark passageway that made its way into the castle.

Aela assured her companions that she knew how to get in and out of the castle without anyone noticing. Everyone in the palace knew she did, but no one had ever discovered how. That was another of the girl's skills. She could be present in one place and almost pass completely unnoticed. Not that she disappeared. Simply and innately, she eased the minds of those present to pass ignored.

"Let's go!" indicated the girl to Rinna and Balin, leading them through a dark passageway, illuminating their way with a torch that she had always kept ready outside her secret entrance to the castle. The tunnel was long and narrow. The walls dripped moisture, and the floor was slippery. The soft rumble of Rinna's staff when she struck it to the ground was the only sound heard, alongside the echo that it caused.