The Elves of Cintra (Book 2 of The Genesis of Shannara)

ANGEL PEREZ was indeed conflicted. Conflicted enough that she was becoming increasingly disenchanted with her place in the world. It wasn’t that she didn’t intend to do her best to help Kirisin and his sister in their efforts to find the Loden Elfstone; it was that she wasn’t yet convinced that this was what she should be doing. Ailie had said so, but Ailie, her conscience in this strange business, was gone. She had only herself to turn to for reassurance, and she wasn’t finding much of what she needed by doing so.

She could chart her discontent like a map. She had gone from the East LA barrio and its residents to the magically enhanced Cintra forest and its Elves in a matter of only days. She had gone with almost no warning or preparation. Everything with which she was familiar had been stripped from her. She had never been anywhere but the neighborhood and city in which she was born until now. She had never believed in even the possibility of the existence of Elves. Since losing Johnny and finding O’olish Amaneh, she had fought to battle that involved helping children.

What battle was she fighting now? A battle to find a magic Stone that would help save a magic tree? Just thinking the words seemed to point out the obvious. She didn’t understand them, didn’t really know what obeying them was meant to accomplish. She was here because the Lady had sent her but, as Kirisin feared, that didn’t mean she was emotionally committed to what she was doing. Commitment for her did not come easily and was not given without strong reason. Helping children from the compounds and on the streets of LA was something she understood. She had been one of those children. But these were Elves she had come to serve—Elves, who were a people of which she knew practically nothing. A people, she added quickly, who in large part did not like or trust humans. They looked and acted like humans, but their thinking was formed by centuries of life and experience that preceded human existence.

She was doing what she had been sent to do, but was she doing the right thing? Her misgivings haunted her in a dull, repetitive sort of way, always present to remind her of her blind and possibly foolish trust in the words of a dead tatterdemalion.

She could not get past it.

THEY WALKED on into the second week, coming down off the slopes of the northernmost peaks in the Cintra Mountain chain and within clear sight of the river that separated the states of Oregon and Washington. Humans called it the Columbia, Elves the Redonnelin Deep. Ahead, across the river and hidden by haze and distance, Syrring Rise waited.

As they stopped to assess the lay of the land they must travel through, Angel found herself thinking of the children she had left in the care of Helen Rice and the others, the children rescued from the Southern California compounds. Helen would be bringing them north to the Columbia as Angel had asked her to do and would wait there for help. What sort of help and from whom remained a mystery. It should have been her, but Ailie had left that particular issue in doubt. Angel felt consumed by helplessness. Had they gotten this far? Had they even gotten out of the state? Or had the demons and the once-men tracked them down? Those children were her responsibility and her charge to herself, and she had let herself be persuaded to give up on both.

“Not so far now,” Simralin said quietly, passing Angel her water skin.

“Far enough,” Angel murmured, thinking of something else entirely.

The Elven girl glanced over. “We’ve done well, Angel. A lot that could have happened hasn’t. We could have been caught and attacked by those demons, but we’ve managed to stay one step ahead of them.”

“You don’t think they’ve given up, do you?” Kirisin asked hopefully.

His face was haggard and worn, and his eyes had a haunted look to them. Angel did not like what she was seeing. The boy’s physical condition had deteriorated since they had set out, and there was no way of knowing how he was doing emotionally. He looked worn to the bone.

Simralin was shaking her head. “No, I don’t think they’ve given up. I don’t expect them ever to give up. All we can do is make it as hard as we canto find us. Now that we’re coming up on Redonnelin Deep, I have a chance to make it almost impossible.”

Angel glanced over, her brow knitting. “What do you mean?”

Simralin stopped and pointed ahead to the broad stretch of the river. “I mean that if we can get across before they catch up to us, we can hide from them where we come ashore. It could take them days, maybe weeks to find the right spot. If they can’t track us to where we land, they won’t know where we are going.”

Angel shook her head. “I think they already know.”

Simralin and her brother stared. “How could they?” the Tracker asked. “We didn’t know ourselves until Kirisin used the Elfstones.”

“Just a hunch.” Angel handed back the water skin. “Ever since this business started, they’ve been one step ahead of us. One of them tracked me all the way north from LA. It shouldn’t have been able to do that, but it did. The other seems to have known what Kirisin and Erisha were trying to do almost from the moment they did. I just have a feeling they know this time, too.”

Kirisin gave her an exasperated look. “Well, what should we do, Angel?”