Tavia used her knife to skin and gut the rabbit, and then some of the water in her canteen was used to clean her kill. In another few minutes, the rabbit meat was roasting on a spit over a briskly burning fire. She sat back against a tree, feeling the rough bark against her tired back. It felt good to relax, but even now her mind wouldn�t stop working. The mages wouldn�t just stop following her now, especially after she had made fools of them not once, but twice. They would probably put a notice out for her capture complete with a description of what she looked like. She could only hope that they wouldn�t want to alarm the general public with the news that a fire-mage that the flawless Order of the Doves couldn�t capture was on the loose. But even so, a lone woman traveling alone would be very conspicuous.
As the thought passed through her head, the Elven Lady�s words echoed around her as if Minerva was standing next to her, repeating them. �No one will question your presence in a human town if you have a mage with you, especially if that mage is of the Order of the Dove. The other mages will be more careful in pursuing you, too, since they wouldn�t want to harm one of their own.� She had said and it made sense. It would be so much easier to get to the Temple if she had one of the mages with her to give her presence credibility and to give the other mages pause. It was almost as if Minerva had known that something like this would happen. Some said that among the elves� powers was that of foresight.
But all other thoughts were flung from her mind as she remembered the promise she had made to her mother. It was the last thing that her mother had wanted from her; how could she just forget that? But this wouldn�t be hurting the mage, exactly, just taking him captive and if she set him free the minute they reached the Temple, there would be no harm done beyond the initial shocks while they realized their new limits. She would just have to be careful not to lose her temper and hit them or something like that and it wouldn�t be too hard to do since she would feel the mage�s every pain. Besides, her mother wouldn�t want her to fall into the mages� hands simply because she didn�t want to break a promise to her.
With that rub on her conscious soothed, the only problem with her plan would be that she wouldn�t be able to enter a town during her journey in case the mage would shout for help. She may have avoided a handful of Dove mages, but a whole town of people turning against her would be much harder to deal with. However, that would be a small sacrifice to pay in order to get her parents� ashes to their final resting place.
Tavia took the locket out from beneath her shirt and opened it. Orrin was no longer visible on the map; instead, a tiny house sat almost on top of the golden dot that marked her position. The label �Cellack Manor� floated above it and a continuation of the black �Forest Road� snaked its way eastward for a short way, ending in a yellow dot, slightly smaller than the one marking Orrin. This one was labeled �Hiram-next town 6 miles�. It was situated along the banks of an unnamed river represented as a blue line among small green triangles clumped heavily around its banks. As the fire-mage stared at the picture, a plan began to manifest itself in her mind.
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