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

She kissed him again, a deeper kiss, and this time Kirisin looked away. “You don’t have to like it,” she told Tragen. “You just have to do it.”


She opened the cottage door, peered out momentarily, and then led Kirisin and Angel back into the night. They moved swiftly toward the shadow of the surrounding trees, eager to gain their concealment, to blend into the darkness. In the distance, south toward the city, the buzz of activity had grown more pronounced. In the east, the sky was flooded with light from the sunrise.

Kirisin glanced back to where Tragen stood in the doorway watching after them. The big Elf waved halfheartedly, and the boy waved back.

But his thoughts were of Culph and Erisha and Ailie and his nagging certainty that everything he was trying to do—for the Elves, for the Ellcrys, for those with him, even for himself—was going wrong.





Chapter FOURTEEN


WITH SIMRALIN IN THE LEAD, the fugitives made their way clear of Arborlon, glancing back over their shoulders at every turn, scanning the trees and pathways of the city they were fleeing, watchful for signs of pursuit. For a time, those signs were everywhere—lights fading in and out of the buildings they slipped through, shouts and cries in the dawn’s silent waking, voices in the distance, shadows in the trees, their fears and doubts heightened at every turn. Elves and demons both would be hunting them, and the odds of discovery were huge.

Even as the sounds diminished and the number of cottages dwindled, their fear of being caught trailed after them like their shadows.

There was for Kirisin a pervasive sense of futility about their efforts. It was impossible that no one would catch them, that all efforts at finding them would fail. He waited for the movement or sound that would confirm this certainty. He knew his sister and Angel were waiting, too. No one talked; no one even looked at the others. All eyes swept the forest; all ears strained for the smallest sound. The Elven Trackers were too skilled and experienced to be fooled; the demons were too determined and relentless. One or the other would find them.

Yet somehow, neither did. Somehow, they got clear.

Eventually, they were climbing into the mountains, pushing deeper into the Cintra. The high passes were more difficult to navigate, and that was why Simralin was taking them there. She wanted to make it harder for those hunting them to discover their trail by choosing terrain that would hide best any evidence of their passing. Neither Kirisin nor Angel questioned her decision. Both understood that Simralin was the one they must rely on to get them safely away, the one who best knew how. Their primary objectives this day were to put distance between themselves and those who followed, and to hide any traces of their passing.

As their trek wore on, Kirisin found himself feeling marginally better. Although he knew it was coming, no evidence of immediate pursuit revealed itself. Perhaps the Elves and demons were still attempting to discover where they had gone. With luck, neither might have realized they had fled the city.

Both might think they were still in hiding, waiting out the storm. Whatever they thought, they did not appear to be tracking them yet.

As well, movement seemed to help lessen the pain of what had happened to them in Ashenell. Even though he could still see Erisha’s face in those last moments—confused, scared, and shocked by the knowledge of what was happening to her—the immediacy of her death had diminished and a determination to make it count for something had surfaced in its place. He could not bring his cousin back; he might not even be able to gain justice for her. But he could finish what together they had set out to do. He could find the Loden and use it to help the Ellcrys and the Elven people. Nothing of what had occurred, however dreadful, had done anything to cause him to rethink his commitment or his promise to the tree. He had lost three people he cared about and suffered a strange sense of violation as a result of their deaths, but those losses only increased his resolve.

They climbed into the mountains all morning, ascending until they were through the first of the passes and deep amid the highest peaks. The air was thin, and breathing came hard. It was cold, too, and Kirisin shivered inside his tightly wrapped travel cloak. All around him the sky was a clear, bright blue, and the brilliance of the light caused him to squint sharply as he walked. He felt the solitude of the rock and the earth close about him like a wall, but was not afraid.

He thought of his parents more than once, wishing he had been given a chance to say good-bye to them and to explain what he was doing and why. He thought of how relieved they would have been if he had been able to tell them what had happened. He worried that something bad would befall them because of this failing, that Arissen Belloruus would find a way to make them suffer for what he perceived to be their son’s treachery.