She wondered if she should go and seek her in the kitchens. She wondered if the orcs had killed servants. Perhaps they would not, wishing to keep the servants around to do their bidding. On the other hand, the orcs would know that the servants were probably less likely to do the bidding of orcs than the higher classes of elves. The servants hated the orcs intensely, likely because they were the only people below them. They would never lower themselves to serving orcs.
She was quite worried that all of the servants had been defiant and gotten their throats slashed for their trouble.
And she still had not found any of the children.
She had told the other women to look. She had let them out of that room where they were gathered in the bottom of the tower. Well, she had opened the door, anyway, but the women had all stayed inside in a clump, gazing out into the hall with trepidation. They had not come after her.
She had said she was going to look, and she had left.
She supposed she could look for the children on her way to the kitchens. She set off, in her third—no fourth—dress of the day, thinking of how she had begun the day with dread, for she had no desire to marry Celedin, but that she’d had no idea what a day it would become.
The kitchens were a series of interconnected rooms on the bottom level of the keep, just across from the dungeons, and one had to descend a steep stone staircase to get there. As the lady of the Peak, she almost never went down here.
There were orcs everywhere. They were taking things out of the kitchens, removing food stores, barrels of ale, things of that nature. They looked her over, contempt written on theirgray-green features. All of them were taller than she was, broad and muscled and lethal.
None of their own servants were down here.
She ascended the steps only to be stopped by Dathor, who took her by the arm and told her that he had found the children, that they’d been huddled under the stairwell.
“Oh,” she said. “Why didn’t I think to look there?”
“Good hiding place, as we well know,” he said. For they had played hiding games as children, often, and the stairwell hiding place was one that was used so often that no one bothered to hide there. There was a little room under the stairwell, one with a small door. There wasn’t anything in the room. It wasn’t tall enough for adults to even stand in. But its small door and small ceiling made it quite enticing to children, and she could see why they had gone in there. “I tried to get them to come out, but they are frightened of me.”
“I can’t imagine why,” she said with a sniff.
“You’ll go and take them to the women,” he said. “We’ll have dinner at six o’clock. Make sure everyone is there. That’s when we’ll discuss how things are going to work around here.”
“All right,” she said.
“All right,” he said.
She rushed off to the stairwell.
The children were solemn. She had expected them to be crying, quite distraught, begging for their mothers, that sort of thing. They were not.
“If we come out there, are they going to kill us?” asked one of the boys, who must have been around seven or eight years old.
“No,” she said. “I promise you, no.”
“Well, all right, then,” he said, and led the others out. There were around ten of them. The youngest must have only been three years old, trailing along, holding her sister’s hand, looking around with the same sort of solemnity as the others.
Aerhril led them back to the room where the women had been and she was not entirely surprised to find that very fewof them had left. Those that had were the mothers of the children she was bringing with her, which also did not surprise her.
She left the children with the other women and went off in search of their mothers. Luckily all of the women were together, and she found them in the hallway near the chapel, surveying the bodies.
“I found the children,” she called and they raced to her.
Aerhril got to witness the tearful reunion, and that made her wish to cry again.
She gave them all the news that they would eat at six, and then she retreated.
She looked in on Celedin. He was still asleep.
She did not know where to find Hafindel.
She climbed all the way to the top of the keep, to stand on the turrets connecting the north and south tower. She was planning to look at how far the tents stretched out.
But he was up there.
