She would have died that night if she had not been able to call upon the magic of the Elfstones. The magic alone had been able to save them both.
Now, as she made her way forward with the others of her little company through the darkness and vog of Morrowindl, as they crept slowly ahead into a nightmare world of shadows and monsters, she found herself terrified anew. She tried to rationalize it away; she tried to argue against it. Nothing helped. She knew the truth of things, and the truth was the same as it had been that night at the ruins of the Wing Hove when she had confronted the Shadowen. Confidence, skill, experience, and Garth’s protective presence, however formidable in most instances, were of little reassurance here. Morrowindl was a cauldron of unpredictable magic and unreasoning evil, and the only weapon she possessed that was likely to prove effective against it was the Elfstones. Magic alone kept the Elves alive inside the walls of Arborlon. Magic, however misguided, had apparently summoned the evil that besieged them. Magic had changed forever the island and the things that lived upon it. There was no reason for Wren to think that she could survive on Morrowindl for very long without using magic of her own.
Yet use of the Elfstones was as frightening to her as the monsters the magic was intended to protect against. Look at her; as a Rover girl, she had spent her entire life learning to depend upon her own skills and training and to believe that there was nothing they could not overcome. That was how Garth had schooled her and what life with the Rovers had taught her, but more important it was what she had always believed. The world and the things in it were governed by a set of behavioral laws; learn those laws and you could withstand anything. Reading trail signs, understanding habits, knowing another’s weaknesses and strengths, using your senses to discover what was there—those were the things that kept you alive. But magic? What was magic? It was invisible, a force beyond nature’s laws, an unknown that defied understanding. It was power without discernible limits. How could you trust something like that? The history of her family, of Ohmsfords ten generations gone, suggested you could not. Look what the magic had done to Wil and Brin and Jair. What certainty was there if she was forced to rely on something so unpredictable? What would using the magic do to her? True, it had been summoned easily enough in her confrontation with the Shadowen. It had flowed ever so smoothly from the Stones, come almost effortlessly, striking at the mere direction of her thoughts. There had been no sense of wrongness in its use—indeed, it was as if the power had been waiting to be summoned, as if it belonged to her.
She shivered at the recognition of what that meant. She had been given the Elfstones, she knew, in the belief that one day she would need them. Their power was intended to be hers.
She tightened her resolve against such an idea. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want the magic. She wanted her life to stay as it was, not to be irrevocably changed—for it would be so—by power that exceeded her understanding and, she believed, her need.
Except, of course, now—here on Killeshan’s slopes, surrounded by demons, by things formed of magic and dark intention, set upon a landscape of fire and mist, where in a second’s time she could be lost, unless . . .
She cut the thought short, refusing to complete it, focusing instead on Stresa’s quilled bulk as the Splinterscat tunneled his way through the gloom. Shadows wafted all about as the vog shifted and reformed, cloaking and lifting clear from islands of jungle scrub and bare lava rock, as if the substance of a kaleidoscopic world that could not decide what it wanted to be. Growls sounded, disembodied and directionless, low and threatening as they rose and fell away again. She crouched down in the haze, a frantic inner voice shrieking at her to disappear, to burrow into the rock, to become invisible, to do anything to escape. She ignored the voice, looking back for Garth instead, finding him reassuringly close, then thinking in the next instance that it made no difference, that he was not enough, that nothing was.
Stresa froze. Something skittered away through the shadows ahead, claws clicking on stone. They waited. Faun hung expectantly upon her shoulder, head stretched forward, ears cocked, listening. The soft brown eyes glanced at her momentarily, then shifted away.
The Elf Queen of Shannara
Terry Brooks's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene