The Elf Queen of Shannara

Then abruptly he was gone, slipping away into the dark, having become one of the shadows about him.

The Owl beckoned, and Wren and Garth began to run once again, still following the curve of the ravine. There was movement all about them in the mist, swift and furtive. Jets of steam gushed from the earth through cracks in the lava, and the stench of sulfur filled the air. A slide of rocks blocked their way, and they scrambled past it hurriedly. Ahead, Arborlon glowed behind its protective wall, a shimmer of buildings and towers amid forest trees. In the mixed light of the city’s magic and the volcano’s fire, Killeshan’s barren, ravaged slope was dotted with islands of scrub and trees that had somehow escaped the initial devastation and were now reduced to a slow suffocation from the heat. Vog hung across the landscape in a ragged curtain, and the monsters that hid within it passed through its ashen haze like bore worms through earth.

A depression lay ahead, a continuation of the ravine they had been following. The Owl had them hurrying toward it when the demons attacked again. They flew at them from both sides this time, materializing out of the gloom as if risen from the earth. The Owl was knocked sprawling, and Wren went down in a flurry of claws and teeth. Only Garth remained standing, and there were demons all over him, clinging, tearing, trying to bring him down. Wren kicked out violently and freed herself. Faun had already disappeared, quick as a thought, back into the night. Wren’s sword slashed blindly, cut into something, held momentarily, then jerked free. She scrambled up and was borne back again, hammered against the rock. She could feel gashes open on the back of her head and neck. Pain brought tears to her eyes. She rolled clear and came to her feet, demons circling all about. Night and mist had swallowed up the Owl. Garth was down, the demons atop him a writhing mass of black limbs. She screamed and struggled to reach him, but crooked hands clutched roughly at her and held her back.

The Elfstones seared her chest like fire.

Burdened by the weight of her attackers, she began to fall. She knew instinctively that this time she would not be able to get back up, that this was the end for all of them.

She could hear herself scream soundlessly somewhere deep inside.

Reason fled before her need, and fear gave way to rage. There were bodies all about her, claws and teeth ripping, and fetid breath against her skin. Her fingers plunged into her tunic and yanked the Stones free.

They flared to life instantly, an eruption of light and fire. The leather bag disintegrated. The magic exploded through cracks in the Rover girl’s fingers, too impatient and too willful to wait for her hand to open. It swept the air like a scattering of knives, cutting apart the black things, turning them to dust almost before their screams died away. Wren was suddenly free again. She stumbled to her feet, with the Elfstones stretched forth now, the fire and the light racing from within her, joining with the magic until there was no distinction. She threw back her head as the power ripped through her—harsh, defiant, and exhilarating. She was transformed, and her fears of what would become of her in the wake of the magic’s use dissipated and were lost. It made no difference who or what she had been or how she had lived her life. The magic was everything. The magic was all that mattered.

She turned its power on the mass of bodies atop Garth and it hammered into them. In seconds, they disintegrated. Some withstood the fury of the attack a few moments longer than the others—those that were larger and more hardened—but in the end they all died. Garth rose, bloodied, his clothes in tatters, and his dark, bearded face ashen. What was he staring at? she wondered vaguely. She marveled at the look on his face as she used the power of the Stones to sweep the landscape clean. The Owl reappeared out of the haze, and there was awe etched on his leathery face as well. And fear. They were both so afraid . . .

Suddenly she understood. She closed her fingers in shock, and the magic was gone. The exhilaration and the fire left her, draining away in an instant, and it was as if she had been stripped naked and set out for everyone to see. Weariness flooded through her. She felt ashamed. The magic had snared her, taken her for its own, destroyed her resolution to withstand its lure, and buried all her promises that she would not give way to it, that she would not become another of the Ohmsfords it had claimed.

Ah, but she had needed its power, hadn’t she? Hadn’t it kept her alive—kept them all alive? Hadn’t she wanted it, even gloried in it? What else could she have done?