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ideal
example.
    By trial and
error, Emily had found the perfect revenge. Day after day, she ignored the lessons, reading her own books
during class. She never
once did the assignments or turned in any homework. But she earned a perfect
score on every one of Ruby's fabulously hard tests. None
of the other goblins ever managed it. Only Seylin even came close.
    Ruby ground her
yellow teeth with rage over those perfect scores, which
made all her careful teaching seem unnecessary. She knew how Emily would gloat the next day in class.
"It's so easy," she would say cheerfully to the other pages, showing
off her test. "But I suppose it's one of those things only a human
can do."
    Now Emily faced her foe again in the
empty guardroom. "Did the King actually choose you to accompany me?"
she demanded.
    "He did. He
said it was most important. Please don't imagine that
I volunteered."
    '"And if I complain, he'll just
tell me to stay home." Emily gave an exasperated
sigh. "Oh, very well. Let's go. If my luck holds, we'll be back
before nightfall."
    But Emily's good
luck had vanished. She found no sign of Seylin
in the forest outside and couldn't determine which way he had gone. Day after
day, she searched for him while her former teacher
scolded and grumbled. The goblin kingdom was a small, tidy place. She
had forgotten how big the human world could be. Every road stretched on forever. Finding one young man in that vast expanse
began to seem impossible.
    Meanwhile, Marak
paused every day to consult two maps that he had
fastened to the wall of his workroom. One showed Seylin's wanderings, and the other showed Emily's progress.
Hanging on two hooks next to the maps were the braided rings made from
their hair. Marak smiled as he took down Emily's ring and held it in his palm.
    "The
scholars say that persistence is one of the most basic human traits,"
he told it. "We're going to find out if that's true."

Chapter Three
    Seylin retraced his
former trading journey, but no call came to tell him that elves were nearby. Before the death of the last elf King,
several thousand elves had lived in eighteen camps scattered through the elf King's forest. Each camp had contained as
many as two hundred and fifty people under the guidance of a camp lord.
The nomadic elves had moved from location to location throughout the year, but
the camps had retained a precise pattern in relation to each other. They had
formed the shape of the Warrior constellation, with the King's camp in the
center.
    Now Seylin
spent weeks combing the elf King's silent forest for the remains of the camps. He found ancient sites that had
been used by the elves
for thousands of years, but no sign showed that anyone had
been near them in perhaps a century.
    Failing to find
elves in the forest, he began to spend more time in the
little human villages that dotted the edge of the elf King's old domain. He
told himself that this was a prudent decision because the humans might have some information for him, but the fact of the matter was that he was lonely. Goblins were very
gregarious. They lived and ate
together, worked together, went on patrol together, and visited one
another almost constantly.
    Seylin had been alone for several
weeks now, and he began to prefer any companionship to that. But because humans
were only out during the day, he couldn't have very much contact with them. In
the twilit evenings, he could sit inside the public houses over a beer, or he could
change into a cat and watch humans going about their daylight business from the
cover of nearby bushes.
    One morning,
Seylin decided to stay up for a while and do some people, watching. Before dawn, he came to a little town
and found a deserted shed right next to the
forest. He hid his pack carefully behind some old junk, changed into a cat, and
strolled out into the early morning. He headed down a weedy garden path toward
the ramshackle old house that his shed
belonged to. Perhaps some people inside
were awake over their