The Elf Queen of Shannara

The queen’s smile, when it came, was unexpected and bitter. “As I said, you are like Alleyne.” She released Wren’s hands as if anxious to establish a boundary between them. “There are some things I would like to tell you that I cannot, Wren. Not yet, in any case. I have my reasons, and you will have to accept my assurance that they are good ones. So I will tell you what I can and there the matter must rest.”


She sighed and let the bitterness of her smile drift away. “The magic is unpredictable, Wren. It was so in the beginning; it remains so now. You know yourself from the tales of the Sword of Shannara and the Elfstones that the magic is not a constant, that it does not always do what is expected, that it reveals itself in surprising ways, and that it evolves with the passage of time and use. It is a truth that seems to continually elude us, one that must be constantly relearned. When the Elves came into Morrowindl, they decided to recover the magic, to rediscover the old ways, and to model themselves after their forefathers. The problem, of course, was that the model had long since been broken and no one had kept the plans. Recovery of the magic was accomplished more easily than expected, but mastering it once in hand was something else again. Attempts were made; many failed. In the course of those attempts, the demons were let into being. Inadvertent and unfortunate, but a fact just the same. Once here, they could not be dispatched. They flourished and reproduced and despite every effort employed to destroy them, they survived.”

She shook her head, as if seeing those efforts parade before her eyes. “You would ask me why they cannot be sent back to wherever they came from, wouldn’t you? But the magic doesn’t work that way; it will not permit so easy a solution. Gavilan, among others, believes that further experimentation with the magic will produce better results, that trial and error will eventually give us a way to defeat the creatures. I do not agree. I understand the magic, Wren, because I have used it and I know the extent of its power. I am afraid of what it can do. There are no limits, really. It dwarfs us as mortal creatures; it lacks the restraints of our humanity. It is greater than we are; it will survive after we are all long dead. I have no faith in it beyond that which has been gleaned out of experience and is required by necessity. I believe that if we continue to test it, if we continue to believe that the solution to our problems lies in what it can do, then some new horror will find its way into our lives and we will wish that the demons were all that we had to deal with.”

“What of the Elfstones?” Wren asked her quietly.

Ellenroh nodded, smiled, and looked away. “Yes, child, what of the Elfstones? What of their magic? We know what it can do; we have seen its results. When Elven blood fails, when it is not strong enough as it was not strong enough in Wil Ohmsford, it creates unexpected results. The wishsong. Good and bad, both.” She looked back again. “But the magic of the Elfstones is known and it is contained. No one believes or suggests that it could be subverted to another use. Nor the Loden. We have some understanding of these magics and will employ them because we must if we are to survive. But there is much greater magic waiting to be discovered, child—magic that lives beneath the earth, that can be found in the air, and that cries out for recognition. That is the magic that Gavilan would gather. It is the same magic that the Druid called Brona sought to harness more than a thousand years ago—the same magic that convinced him to become the Warlock Lord and then destroyed him.”

Wren understood her grandmother’s fear of the magic, could see the dangers as she saw them, and could share with her as could no one else the feelings that invocation of the magic aroused—in the Elfstones, in the Loden—power that could overwhelm, that could subvert, and that could swallow you up until you were lost.

“You said that you wanted the Elves to go back to the way they were before they recovered the magic,” she said, thinking back to the previous night when Ellenroh had addressed the High Council. “But can that happen? Won’t some among the Elves simply bring it back again, perhaps find it in another way?”

“No.” Ellenroh’s eyes were suddenly distant. “Not again. Not ever again.”

She was leaving something out. Wren sensed it immediately—sensed as well that it was not something Ellenroh would discuss. “And what of the magic you have already invoked, that which protects the city?”

“It will all disappear once we leave—all but that required to fulfill the Loden’s use and to carry the Elves and Arborlon back into the Westland. All but that.”

“And the Elfstones?”

The queen smiled. “There are no absolutes, Wren. The Elfstones have been with us for a long time.”

“I could cast them away once we are safe.”

“Yes, child, you could—should you choose to do so.”