The Elf Queen of Shannara

On the other hand, perhaps it was best.

She shivered every time she repeated Eowen’s words: The Elves are the Shadowen. The Elves, with their magic, and with their insistence on recovering their past, had turned themselves into monsters. They had created the demons. They had devastated Morrowindl and initiated the destruction of the Four Lands. Practically every danger that threatened could be traced to them. It might be better, given that truth, if they ceased to exist altogether.

She did not think she was overstating her concerns. Once the Elves were restored to the Westland, there was nothing to prevent them from beginning anew with the magic, from trying to recall it yet again so that it could be used in some newly terrible and destructive way. There was nothing that said that Ellenroh had disposed of all those who sought to play with its power, that some one or two had not survived. It would be easy enough for those few to begin to experiment once again, to create new forms of monsters, new horrors that Wren did not care to envision. Hadn’t the Elves already proved that they were capable of anything?

Like the Druids, she thought sadly, victims of a misguided need to know, of an injudicious self-confidence, of a foolish belief that they could master something which by its very nature was dependably unreliable.

How had they let it all come to this, these people with so many years of experience in using the magic, these faerie folk brought into the new world out of the devastation of the old by lessons they could not have failed to learn? Surely they must have had some small inkling of the dangers they would encounter when they began to make nature over in their own ill-conceived image. Surely they must have realized something was wrong. Yet time’s passage had rendered the Elves as human as the other Races, changed them from faerie creatures to mortals, and altered their perceptions and their knowledge. Why shouldn’t they be as prone to make mistakes as anyone else—as anyone else had, in fact, from Druids to Men?

The Elves. She was one of them, of course, and worse, an Elessedil. However she might wish it otherwise, she was consumed with guilt for what their misjudgments had wrought and with remorse for what their folly had cost. A land, a nation, countless lives, a world’s sanity and peace—they had set in motion the events that would destroy it all. Her people. She might argue that she was a Rover girl, that she shared nothing with the Elves beyond her bloodline and appearance, but the argument seemed hollow and feckless. Responsibility did not begin and end with personal needs—Garth had taught her that much. She was a part of everything about her, and not only survival but the measure of her life was directly related to whether she accepted that truth. She could not back away from the unpleasantnesses of the world; she could not forget its pain. Once upon a time, the Elves had been foremost among Healers, their given purpose to keep the land whole and instill in others the wisdom of doing so. What had happened to that commitment? How had the Elves become so misdirected?

She ate without tasting her food and she spoke little, consumed by her thoughts. Eowen sat across from her, eyes lowered. Garth and the other men moved past them unseeing, focused on the trek before them. Stresa was already gone, scouting ahead to make certain of his path. Faun was a ball of fur in her lap.

What am I to do? she asked herself in despair. What choice am I to make?