The Elf Queen of Shannara

He wondered how he appeared to them. He must not have seemed someone they recognized or they would have said something. He must have seemed an ordinary traveler. It made him wonder why Rimmer Dall had looked like his father in the cloak. It made him wonder why the magic acted differently toward him.

The first day passed swiftly, and he camped in a small copse of ash still within view of the Runne. The sun collapsed behind the Westland forests in a splash of red-gold, and the warm night air was scented by grassland wildflowers. He built a fire and ate wild fruit and vegetables. He had a craving for meat, but no real way to catch any. The stars came out, and the night sounds died.

Again the Shadowen appeared, hunting him. Sometimes they came close—and again he was reluctant to remove the cloak. He did so long enough to wash, careful to keep concealed within the trees, and then quickly put it back on again. He was finding it more comfortable to wear now, less constricting and less unfamiliar. He was actually growing to like the sense of invisibility it gave him.

He went on again at first light, striding out across the grasslands, fixing on the dark edges of the Dragon’s Teeth where they broke the blue skyline north. Just this side of those mountains lay Tyrsis and Par. The heat of this new day seemed more intense, and he found the light uncomfortable. Perhaps he would begin traveling at night, he decided. The darkness seemed somehow less threatening. He took shelter at midday in a cluster of rocks, crouching back within their shadows, hidden. His mind wandered, scattering to things that were forgotten almost as soon as they were remembered. He hunched down, his cowled head lowered between his knees, and he slept.

Nightfall took him from his shelter. He hunted down a rabbit, spying it out in the dark and chasing it to its den as if he were a cat. He dug down to it with his hands, wrung its neck, carried it back to his rock-walled shelter, and ate it before it was finished cooking over the little fire. He sat staring at the bones afterward, wondering what creature it had been.

Stars and moon brightened in the darkening sky. Somewhere distant, an owl hooted. Coll Ohmsford no longer searched for the Shadowen that hunted him. Somehow, they no longer mattered.

When the night had settled comfortably in about him, he rose, kicked out the fire, and crept from his place of concealment like an animal. Far distant still, but growing closer, was the city. He could smell it in the wind.

There was a rage inside him that he could not explain. There was a hunger. Somehow, though he could not yet determine how, it was tied to Par.

Swiftly he passed north toward the mountains. In the moonlight his eyes glinted blood-red.





XXII


Nightfall

Wren Ohmsford walked back across the Harrow through the deepening gloom, empty of feeling. Shadows layered the lava rock, cast by the bones of the ravaged trees and the shifting mists. Daylight had faded to a tinge of brightness west, a candle’s slender glow against the dark. The Harrow stretched silent and lifeless all about, a mirror of herself. The magic of the Elfstones had scoured her clean. The death of Eowen had hardened her to iron.

Who am I? she asked herself.

She chose her path without really thinking about it, moving in the direction from which she had come because that was the only way she knew to go. She stared straight ahead without seeing; she listened without hearing.

Who am I?

All of her life she had known the answer to that question. The fact of it had been her one certainty. She was a Rover girl, free of the constraints of personal history, of the ties and obligations of family, and of the need to live up to anyone’s expectations but her own. She had Garth to teach her what she needed to know and she could do with herself as she pleased. The future stretched away intriguingly, a blank slate on which her life could be written with any words she chose.

Now that certainty was gone, disappeared as surely as her youthful misconceptions of who and what she would be. She would never be as she had been or had thought she would be. Never. She had lost it all. And what had she gained? She almost laughed. She had become a chameleon. Just look at her; she could be anyone. She couldn’t even be sure of her name. She was an Ohmsford and an Elessedil both. Choose either—it would fit. She was an Elf and a human. She was the child of several families, one who birthed her, two more who raised her.