banished, and you were simply there; a well-meaning soul with a bit of pretty magic clutched in his hand."
She looked upon him with new understanding in her eyes, and new sorrow. "Thrice you saved me that day; from enslavement, from death, from the short season that would have been my lot, had I remained myself, a very ordinary water-sprite.
"And all of this time you have blamed yourself! You blamed yourself, yet all the while the true cause had been here!" She began to rise, to pull away from him, weeping. "You must blame yourself no more! I give you your freedom! With the Summoning Stone I may have strength enough to reclaim my own life! But surely you must know this?"
Anest's mouth had gone dry at hearing her words, and a far worse dread than any he had ever known clutched at his heart. After some moments, he said haltingly, in a parched voice, "I had suspected as much from the moment you first mastered the Summoning Stone, just as I know that, since then, you would keep the Stone in place of your own heart if you could.
"But I know, too, that such doubt and misery as afflicts your spirit, and confounds your trust in our union, was placed there by the Enemy, and serves Him only too well.