The Elf Queen of Shannara

“Wren.” She turned when he spoke her name and faced him. “Let me tell you something you haven’t learned yet, something you learn only by living awhile. As you get older, you find that life begins to wear you down. Doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, it happens. Experience, time, events—they all conspire against you to steal away your energy, to erode your confidence, to make you question things you wouldn’t have given a second thought to when you were young. It happens gradually, a chipping away that you don’t even notice at first, and then one day it’s there. You wake up and you just don’t have the fire anymore.”


He smiled faintly. “Then you have a choice. You can either give in to what you’re feeling, just say ‘okay, enough is enough’ and be done with it, or you can fight it. You can accept that every day you’re alive you’re going to have to face it down, that you’re going to have to say to yourself that you don’t care what you feel, that it doesn’t matter what happens to you because sooner or later it is going to happen anyway, that you’re going to do what you have to because otherwise you’re defeated and life doesn’t have any real purpose left. When you can do that, little Wren, when you can accept the wearing down and the eroding, then you can do anything. How did I manage to keep going out nights? I just told myself I didn’t matter all that much—that those in here mattered more. You know something? It’s not so hard really. You just have to get past the fear.”

She thought about it a minute and then nodded. “I think you make it sound a lot easier than it is.”

The Owl lifted off the wall. “Do I?” he asked. Then he smiled anew and walked away.

Wren drifted back over to stand with Garth. The big Rover pointed to the ramparts of the Keel. Elven Hunters were coming down off the heights—furtive, silent figures easing out of the light and down into the shadows. Wren glanced eastward and saw the first faint tinge of dawn against the black.

“It is time,” Ellenroh said suddenly, and motioned them toward the wall.

They moved quickly, Aurin Striate in the lead, pulling open the doorway that led down into the tunnels, pausing at the entry to look back at the queen. Ellenroh had moved away from the wall to the bridgehead, stopping just before she reached its ramp to plant the butt end of the Ruhk firmly in the earth. From somewhere within Arborlon a bell tolled, a signal, and those few Elven Hunters who remained atop the Keel slipped hurriedly away. In seconds, the wall was deserted.

Ellenroh Elessedil glanced back at the eight who waited just once, then turned to face the city. Her hands clasped the polished shaft of the Ruhk, and her head lowered.

Instantly the Loden began to glow. The brightness grew rapidly to white fire, flaring outward until the queen was enveloped. Steadily the light continued to spread, rising up against the darkness, filling the space within the walls until all of Arborlon was lit as bright as day. Wren tried to watch what was happening, but the intensity of the light grew until it blinded her and she was forced to look away. The white fire flooded to the parapets of the Keel and began to chum. Wren could feel it happen more than she could see it, her eyes closed against the glare. Without, the demons began to shriek. There was a rush of wind that came out of nowhere and grew into a howl. Wren dropped to her knees, feeling Garth’s strong arm come up about her shoulders and hearing Gavilan’s voice call to her. Images formed in her mind, triggered by Ellenroh’s summoning, wild and erratic visions of a world in chaos. The magic was racing past her, a brushing of fingers that whispered and sang.

It ended in a shriek, a sound that no voice could have made, and then the light rushed away, whipping back into the black, withdrawing as if sucked down into a whirlpool. Wren’s eyes jerked up, following the motion, trying to see. She was just quick enough to catch the last of it as it disappeared into the Loden’s brilliant orb. She blinked once, and it was gone.

The city of Arborlon was gone as well—the people, the buildings, the streets and walkways, the gardens and lawns, the trees, everything from wall to wall within the Keel, disappeared. All that remained was a shallow crater in the earth—as if a giant hand had simply scooped Arborlon up and spirited it away.

Ellenroh Elessedil stood alone at the edge of what had once been the moat and was now the lip of the crater, leaning heavily on the Ruhk Staff, her own energy drained. Above her, the Loden was a prism of many-colored fire. The queen stirred herself, tried to move and failed, stumbled, and fell to her knees. Triss raced back for her instantly, lifted her as if she were a weary child, and started back again. It was then that Wren realized that the magic that had protected the Keel had faded as well, just as her grandmother had forewarned, its glow vanished completely. Overhead, the sky was enveloped in a haze of vog and the sunrise was a sullen lightening of the eastern skies barely able to penetrate the night’s blackness. Wren drew a breath and found the stench of sulfur bad returned. All that had been of Arborlon’s shelter had vanished.

The silence of a moment earlier gave way to a cacophony of demon howls and shrieks as the realization of what had happened set in. The sound of bodies scrambling onto the walls and of claws digging in rose from every quarter.

Triss had reached them, the queen and the Ruhk Staff clutched in his arms.