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

Kirisin kept waiting for his sister to move again, but she didn’t. Almost of their own volition his eyes drifted back to the demon with its cord and its rings and its madness. He watched the rings spin about the cord. What was the point of this long explanation? Whatever it was, the demon had just made a big mistake. It had revealed that the Elfstones were a weapon that could be used against it. Kirisin didn’t know how, but he would find a way. He would make it pay for that mistake.

His hand drifted into his pocket. His fingers closed about the pouch that held the Elfstones and began to work the drawstrings free.

“How much more convenient, Kirisin,” the demon resumed. Its hands wove and the rings spun. “Are you watching?” it asked softly. Kirisin was. Suddenly he couldn’t look away. “How much more convenient if we could gather them all in one place and keep them there until we were ready to deal with them. How much better if we could prevent any chance escape. It would save so much time and effort if we could do that. Are you watching?” The rings spun on the cord, flashing in brilliant bursts. “You are, aren’t you? Watching them spin and spin and spin. So beautiful. You like them, don’t you, little boy? You like to watch their colors.”

Kirisin nodded, suddenly unable to think of anything else, completely absorbed in the movement of the hands and the cord and the rings. He had never seen anything so intriguing. He could not seem to look away. He didn’t want to.

“So, if we were able to gather the Elves together in one place—say, inside the Loden Elfstone—why, think how much easier it would be to keep them under control! No worrying about any of them wandering off in search of dangerous talismans, no concerns for how long it might take to determine the best way to dispose of them. All it would require was that we find someone who could wield the Loden’s magic. It would require that we find an Elf who had both the right and the power. Someone like you, Kirisin. Someone who was willing to do what was needed.” The demon paused. “Someone under our control.”

Kirisin tried to speak and found that he couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything but stand there and watch the rings on the cord, the sparkle of their metal as it caught the light. He was vaguely aware that something was wrong, that he shouldn’t be letting this happen, but at the same time he was enormously happy that it was.

“Demons have a little magic, too,” the old man standing in front of him said softly, coming a step closer. “Now you belong to me, boy. You are my willing servant, and you will do what I tell you to do. So much easier than threats and beatings and the like. A simple spell and I control your mind.

It’s all I ever wanted from you. I don’t need you to do much. Just to come back with me to the Cintra and use the Loden as the Ellcrys has asked of you. Just to put the city and its people inside, nice and safe. Just to keep them there until it is time to take them out. My friends will be waiting to greet us, a good many of them, an entire army, in fact. I summoned them just before I left to come after you. Demons and once-men. There to be certain that no one leaves until we arrive.”

The old-man features twisted into something ugly and mean.

“It was so easy to deceive you. You are such a foolish boy. So willing to think that I was your friend. I am sick of you, sick of your kind. I am sick of playing at being one of you, sick of pretending that I am in any way like you.

I want you all dead. I want you obliterated from the earth.”

The hands wove, and the rings glistened.

“Just a moment longer, boy, and it will all be over. The spell will be in place and nothing will undo it. Just keep watching.”

Kirisin couldn’t do anything else. He heard the other’s voice, but could make little sense of the words. They sounded reassuring and pleasant, but he couldn’t seem to grasp their meaning. He stood statue-like within the cradle of the cave’s deep gloom, a lone figure in the small light of the solar torch, eyes glazed and fixed on the rings. Some small part of him screamed at him to do something, but he blocked the warning away because it disturbed his concentration on the rings.

The rings were everything.

“Just a little longer, foolish boy,” the demon whispered.

“You wanted to keep me talking, didn’t you? You wanted to gain enough time to find a way to escape me, didn’t you? Well, go ahead! Run away! Flee back the way you came and be free of me! What’s wrong, Kirisin? Can’t manage it? Are you really so happy that you would not try to escape? Can that be? I think maybe—”

Then it gasped sharply, and its head jerked back in rigid shock. The cord and its rings went flying into the darkness. The demon screamed, a frightening wail of disbelief and rage. Kirisin was jerked out of his trance instantly, his concentration on the cord and rings vanishing in the blink of an eye. He was back in the cavern, standing before the old man who was a demon, before old Culph who was groping at the air as if gone mad.

Simralin, levered up on her elbows, had plunged her long knife all the way through one gnarled leg.