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.When I had seized her, the head of my wolfskin fell back, and now, for the first time, she saw my face.She didn't seem surprised."You understand why you mustn't call out, don't you?" I said.She nodded.She had felt my desire to spill her blood and chose not to give me an excuse."Sit down," I told her.She sat down on the edge of her bed."Do you walk through walls," she asked, "or is there more than one spy in my house?""You killed him," I said.She smiled at me."So your lord believes.""Do you deny it?"She shrugged."It was a clever plan," I said, "but you made one mistake.You let Maara get away.If she hadn't come back, no one would have ever given the matter another thought.""Yes," she said."How did it happen that she came back? Was your lord behind it? Did he deliver her to me so that he would have an excuse to enter my house with his men-at-arms?"She didn't expect an answer.She was thinking out loud, trying to understand the situation, and at the same time hoping to provoke in me some reaction that would tell her when she was getting near the truth.She knit her brows, as if there were a stubborn knot she couldn't untangle."Even if your lord suspected me of causing my husband's death, I'm surprised he was willing to surrender the instrument.""She was not the instrument," I said."She was the scapegoat.""Did she persuade him of her innocence? No matter.Let him believe what he will.One thing I don't understand.He gave her up willingly enough.Why is he now so keen to have her back?"Then she remembered our first encounter in the tower room."No," she said."You are the one who is keen to have her back."I wouldn't have denied it, even if I had been as accomplished a liar as she was."You will find her changed," Elen said.After she dropped that bit of poison into my heart, she smiled and started in a new direction."So.It was not your lord who sent you.Now you have given him away.What treachery has he devised, I wonder.He has too few men here to challenge me on the battlefield, but it seems there is a plan to turn my prisoners loose.If he expects them to join forces with him, he will be disappointed.They don't want another taste of what we have already served up to them.They will vanish into the mist."I listened to her, fascinated, as I watched her entangle herself further in her web of lies."You had better take your prize and vanish with them," she said, "before your lord discovers what you've done."When I made no move to leave her tent, she sighed."I begin to find our conversation tiresome.Is there something else you want from me?""If it's possible for one true word to escape your lips, I want to hear the truth from you.""You want me to admit I killed him? Of course I killed him.Are you satisfied?"In that moment I knew what evil was -- the shadow that falls over the human heart, the unnecessary suffering, the destruction of possibility.To Elen the death of innocents meant nothing.Maara's death meant nothing.The suffering she caused meant nothing.That she had crippled Maara's soul meant nothing.The harm she had done to Maara was incalculable, yet to her it carried not one feather's weight.What Maara believed about herself, that she brought grief to those she loved, came from Elen's lie.Because of that lie, she had tried to shut herself away from love, and when love found her, the lie led her to her sacrifice, as if her death would buy my happiness.Evil spread out from Elen like a stain, tainting, not only Maara's life, but the lives of everyone who loved her, corrupting what should have been pure and perfect.I felt open up within me the place I had discovered for the first time in Elen's house, the place deep within my heart where hatred dwells."Show me," I said."Was he lying in his bed?" I pushed her down.I pushed her hard.She lay across the bed, and I knelt over her."Was he awake, or did you kill him in his sleep? Did you slip the knife between his ribs? Like this?" I set the knife under her left breast, over her heart.I let her feel the point, but I didn't push it in.I wanted her to see her death coming for her.Elen showed no fear.Perhaps she felt none, so certain of her power that she could stay my hand by her will alone.She looked up at me and met my eyes."What was he to you?" she asked me."He was nothing to you.You never cared for him.She is the one you care for.Go ahead.Make sure of her.Leave her nothing to come back to."I willed my hand to strike.My hand refused me.I didn't understand what stopped me.To me Elen's death meant nothing.Her rotting corpse belonged in the privy trench.But if I killed her, I would never know.I would never know for sure.I dropped the knife and fled.86.ReunionOutside Elen's tent half a dozen of Bru's men waited for me.One took my arm and drew me into the fog behind the tents.We passed through the palisade of spears without stumbling into anyone.Behind us I heard Elen's voice, summoning her men-at-arms.Though we could see nothing but the ground a yard or two in front of us, Bru's men seemed to know where they were going.We followed a path newly made, the grass trodden down but not yet worn away.It must be the path from the tents to the place where the mighty kept the prisoners.When we reached it, the hollow in the hills was empty.The prisoners were gone
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