The Elf Queen of Shannara

Wren told them in turn of Eowen’s fate, of how the Drakuls had subverted her, of how she had been made one of them. She described the seer’s death, unwilling to gloss past it, needing to hear the words, to give voice to her grief. It felt as if she were speaking from some hollow place within, wrapped in a haze of emptiness and exhaustion. She was so tired. Yet she would not slow; she would not rest. She disdained all help once clear of the ravine. She walked because she would not let herself be carried, because that would be another demonstration of weakness and she had shown weakness enough for one night. She was dismayed by what had happened to her, appalled at how easily she had been misled by the wind voice, how close she had come to dying, and how willing she had been to allow it to happen—Wren Elessedil, called Queen of the Elves, bearer of the trust of a people, heir of so much magic. She could still remember how inviting the wind voice had made it seem for her to give up her life. She had been so ready, welcoming the peace she had supposed she would find. All of her life she had been strong in the face of death, never giving way to the possibility of it finding her, always certain that she would fight for her last breath. What had happened in the Harrow had shaken her confidence more than she cared to admit. She had failed to resist as she had always told herself she would. She had let exhaustion and despair work through her so thoroughly that she was as hollowed out as wormwood and as quick to crumble. She saw the way the magic pulled her, first one way, then the other, the Drakul’s, her own. Just as Eowen had been a prisoner of her visions, so Wren was now becoming a prisoner of the Elven magic. She hated herself for it. She despised what she had become.

I am nothing of what I believed, she thought in despair. I am a lie.

She talked to keep from thinking of it, speaking of what she had seen as she wandered the Harrow, of how the wind voice of the Drakuls had lulled her, of how Eowen—so vulnerable to visions and images—must have become ensnared. She rambled at times, the sound of her voice helping to distract her from dark thoughts, keeping her awake, keeping her moving. She thought of the dead on this nightmare journey, of Ellenroh and Eowen in particular. She was consumed by their loss, ravaged by feelings of helplessness at having been unable to save them and by guilt at being inadequate for the task they had left her. She clutched the Elfstones tightly in her hand, unable to persuade herself to put them away, frightened that the Drakuls would come again. They did not. Not even the wind voice whispered in the darkness now, gone back into the earth, leaving her alone. She gazed out into the black and felt it a mirror of the void within. She was heartsick for what she had become and what she feared she yet might be. The world was a place she no longer understood. She could not even decide which was the greater evil—the monsters or the monster makers. Shadowen or Elves—which should bear the blame? Where was the balance to life that should come from lessons learned and experience gained? Where was the sense that the madness would pass, that a purpose would be revealed for everything that was happening? She had no answers. The magic had caught them all up in a whirlwind, and it would drop them where it chose.

This night, it picked a darker hole than she would have imagined could exist. They came off the Harrow bone weary and numb, relieved to be clear, anxious to be gone. They would rest until dawn, then continue on. The greater part of Blackledge was behind them now, left in the shadow of Killeshan’s vog. Ahead, between themselves and the beaches, there was only the In Ju. They would pass through the jungle quickly, two days if they hurried, and reach the shores of the Blue Divide in two more. Quick, now, they urged themselves silently. Quick, and get free.

They reached the spot where their companions had been left, a clearing within a cluster of lava rocks in the shadow of a fringe of barren vines and famished scrub. Faun raced through the darkness, come out of hiding from some distance off, chittering wildly, springing to Wren’s shoulder and hunkering there as if no other haven existed. Wren’s hands came up reassuringly. The Tree Squeak was shivering with fear.

They found Dal then, sprawled at the clearing’s far edge, a lifeless tangle of arms and legs, his skull split wide. Triss bent close and turned the Elven Hunter over.

He looked up, stunned. Dal’s weapons were still sheathed.

Wren glanced away in despair, a dark certainty already taking hold. She didn’t have to look further to know that Gavilan Elessedil and the Ruhk Staff were gone.





XXIII


Par Ohmsford crouched in the shadow of the building wall, as dark as the night about him within the covering of his cloak, listening to the sounds of Tyrsis as she stirred restlessly beneath her blanket of summer heat, waiting for morning. The air was still and filled with the city’s smells, sweet, sticky, and cloying. Par breathed it in reluctantly, wearily, peering out from his shelter into the pools of light cast by the street lamps, watchful for thugs that didn’t belong, that crept and hunted, that searched relentlessly.

The Federation.

The Shadowen.

They were both out there, stalkers that never seemed to sleep and that refused to quit. For almost a week now Damson and he had been running from them, ever since they had fled the Mole’s underground hideout and made their way back through the sewers of the city to the streets. A week. He could barely sort through the debris of its passing, his memory in fragments, a jumble of buildings and rooms, of closets and crawlways, and of one concealment after another. They had not been able to rest anywhere for more than a few hours, always discovered somehow just when they had thought themselves safe, forced to run again, to flee the dark things that sought to claim them.

How was it, Par wondered for what must have been the thousandth time, that they were always found so quickly?