The Elf Queen of Shannara

And one thing more.

Her fingers brushed against the Elfstones once more and fell away as if burned. Their power was hers to summon and command whenever she chose. Twice now she had called upon them to save her. Both times she had done so either out of ignorance or desperation. But if she used them again, she sensed, if she employed them a third time now that she knew the magic was there and understood what wielding it meant, she risked giving up everything she was and becoming something else entirely. Nothing would ever be the same for her again, she cautioned herself. Nothing.

Yet, as she considered the failure of strength, experience, training, and resolve to come to her aid, as she lamented the apparent absence of any luck, it seemed that the power of the Stones was all that was left to her, the only resource that remained.

She turned her head into the blankets and fell asleep in a spider’s web of doubt.





XVII


Wren dreamed, and her dreams were of Ohmsfords come and gone, a kaleidoscopic, fragmented rush of images that exploded out of memory. They careened into her like an avalanche and swept her away, tossed and tumbled in a slide that would not end. A spectator with no voice, she watched the history of her ancestors take shape in bits and flashes of time, saw events unfold that she had never seen but only heard described, the legends of the past carried forward in the words of the stories Par and Coll Ohmsford told.

Then she was awake, sitting bolt upright, startled from her sleep with a suddenness that was frightening. Faun, curled at her throat, skittered hurriedly away. She stared into blackness, listening to the sound of her heartbeat in her throat, to the rush of her breathing. All around her, the others of the little company slept, save whoever among them kept guard, a dim, faceless shape at the edge of their camp.

What was it? she thought wildly. What was it that I saw?

For something in her dreams had brought her awake, something so unnerving, so unexpected, that sleep was no longer possible.

What?

The memory, when it came, was shocking and abrupt. Her hand flew at once to the small leather bag tucked within her tunic.

The Elfstones!

In her dreams of Ohmsford ancestors, she had caught a singular glimpse of Shea and Flick, one brief image out of many, one story out of all those told about the search for the Sword of Shannara. In that image, the brothers were lost with Menion Leah in the lowlands of Clete at the start of their journey toward Culhaven. No amount of skill or woodlore seemed able to help them, and they might have died there if Shea, in desperation, had not discovered that he possessed the ability to invoke the power of the Elfstones given him by the Druid Allanon—the same Elfstones she carried now. In that image, dredged up by her dreams out of a storehouse of tales only barely remembered, she uncovered a truth she had forgotten—that the magic could do more than protect, it could also seek. It could show the holder a way out of the darkest maze; it could help the lost be found again.

She bit her lip hard against the sharp intake of breath that caught in her throat. She had known once, of course—all of them had, all of the Ohmsford children. Par had sung the story to her when she was little. But it had been so long ago.

The Elfstones.

She sat frozen within the covering of her blankets, stunned by her revelation. She had possessed the power all along to get them free of Eden’s Murk. The Elfstones, if she chose to invoke the magic, would show the way clear. Had she truly forgotten? she wondered in disbelief. Or had she simply blocked the truth away, determined that she would not be made to rely on the magic, that she would not become subverted by its power?

And what would she do now?

For a moment she did nothing, so paralyzed with the fears and doubts that using the Elfstones raised that she could only sit there, clutching her blankets to her like a shield, voicing within her mind the choices with which she had suddenly been presented in an effort to make sense of them.

Then abruptly she was on her feet, the blankets and the fears and doubts cast aside as she made her way on cat’s feet to where her grandmother lay sleeping. Ellenroh Elessedil’s breathing was shallow and quick, and her hands and face were cold. Her hair curled damply about her face, and her skin was tight against her bones. She lay supine within blankets that swaddled her like a burial shroud.

She’s dying, Wren realized in dismay.

The choices fell away instantly, and she knew what she must do. She crept to where Garth slept, hesitated, then moved on past Triss to where Gavilan lay.