The Elf Queen of Shannara

The big man was expressionless, but there was hurt in his eyes. Wren almost reached out to reassure him, but her need to know kept her from doing so. Garth stared at her for long moments without responding. Then his fingers signed briefly.

I can tell you nothing that you cannot see for yourself.

She flinched. “What do you mean?”

You have Elven features, Wren. More so than any Ohmsford. Why do you think that is?

She shook her head, unable to answer.

His brow furrowed. It is because your parents were both Elves.

Wren stared in disbelief. She had no memory at all of her parents looking like Elves and she had always thought of herself as simply a Rover girl.

“How do you know this?” she asked, stunned.

I was told by one who saw them. I was also told that it would be dangerous for you to know.

“Yet you choose to tell me now?”

Garth shrugged, as much as if to say, What difference does it make after what has happened? How much more danger can you be in by knowing? Wren nodded. Her mother a Rover. Her father an Ohmsford. But both of them Elves. How could that be? Rovers weren’t Elves.

“You’re sure about this?” she repeated. “Elves, not humans with Elven blood, but Elves?”

Garth nodded firmly and signed, It was made very clear.

To everyone but her, she thought. How had her parents come to be Elves? None of the Ohmsfords had been Elves, only of Elven descent with some percentage of Elven blood. Did this mean that her parents had lived with the Elves? Did it mean that they had come from them and that this was why Allanon had sent her in search of the Elves, because she herself was one?

She looked away, momentarily overwhelmed by the implications. She saw her mother’s face again as she had seen it in her dream—a girl’s face, of the race of Man, not Elf. That part of her that was Elf, those more distinctive features, had not been evident. Or had she simply missed seeing them? What about her father? Funny, she thought. He had never seemed very important in her musings of what might have been, never as real, and she had no idea why. He was faceless to her. He was invisible.

She looked back again. Garth was waiting patiently. “You did not know that the painted rocks were Elfstones?” she asked one final time. “You knew nothing of what they were?”

Nothing.

What if she had discarded them? she asked herself peevishly. What then of her parent’s plans—whatever they were—for her? But she knew the answer to that question. She would never have given up the painted rocks, her only link to her past, all she had to remind her of her parents. Had they relied on that? Why had they given her the Elfstones in the first place? To protect her? Against what? Shadowen? Something more? Something that hadn’t even existed when she was born?

“Why do you think I was given these Stones?” she asked Garth, genuinely confused.

Garth looked down a moment, then up again. His great body shifted. He signed. Perhaps to protect you in your search for the Elves.

Wren stared, blank faced. She had not considered that possibility. But how could her parents have known she would go in search of the Elves? Or had they simply known she would one day seek out her own heritage, that she would insist on knowing where she had come from and who her people were?

“Garth, I don’t understand,” she confessed to him. “What is this all about?”

But the big man simply shook his head and looked sad.

They kept watch together through the night, one dozing while the other stayed awake, until finally dawn’s light brightened the eastern skies. Then Garth fell asleep until noon, his strength exhausted. Wren sat staring out at the vast expanse of the Blue Divide, pondering the implications behind her discovery of the Elfstones. They were the Elfstones of Shea Ohmsford, she decided. She had heard them described often enough, listened to stories of their history. They belonged to whomever they were given and they had been given to the Ohmsford family—and then lost again, supposedly. But perhaps not. Perhaps they had been simply taken away at some point. It was possible. There had been many Ohmsfords after Brim and Jair and three hundred years in which to lose track of the magic—even a magic as personal and powerful as the Elfstones. There had been a time when no one could use them, she reminded herself. Only those with sufficient Elven blood could invoke the magic with impunity. Wil Ohmsford had been damaged that way. His use of the Stones had caused him to absorb some of their magic. When his children were born, Brim and Jair, the magic had transformed itself into the wishsong. So perhaps one of the Ohmsfords had decided to take the Elfstones back to those who could use them safely—to the Elves. Was that how they had found their way to her parents?