by Terry Brooks
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” The Owl’s seamed face was clouded with doubt.
“There is no one better able to survive outside the walls than you, Aurin Striate. You will be our eyes and ears out there, my friend.”
The Owl nodded wordlessly in acknowledgment.
Ellenroh glanced about. “Triss, I’ll need you and Cort and Dal to safeguard the Loden and the rest of us. That’s five. Eowen will go. We may have need of her visions if we are to survive. Gavilan.” She looked hopefully at her nephew. “I would like you to go as well.”
Gavilan Elessedil surprised them all with a brilliant smile. “I would like that, too, my Lady.”
Ellenroh beamed. “You can go back to calling me ‘Aunt Ell,’ Gavilan, after tonight.”
She turned finally to Wren. “And you, child. Will you go with us, too? You and your friend Garth? We need your help. You have made the journey from the beach and survived. You know something of what is out there, and that knowledge is valuable. And you are the one the Wing Rider has promised to come back for. Am I asking too much?”
Wren was silent for a moment. She didn’t bother looking over at Garth. She knew that he would go along with whatever she decided. She knew as well that she had not come all the way to Arborlon to be shut away, that Allanon had not dispatched her here to hide, and that she had not been given possession of the Elfstones only to forbear any use of them. The reality was harsh and demanding. She had been sent as more than a messenger, to do more than simply learn about who she was and from where she had come. Her part in this business—whether she liked it or not—was just beginning.
“Garth and I will come,” she answered.
She believed her grandmother wanted to reach over and hug her then, but the queen remained straight backed in her chair and simply smiled instead. What Wren saw in her eyes, though, was better than any hug.
“Are we really agreed on doing this, then?” Eton Shart asked suddenly from the other end of the table.
The room was silent as Ellenroh Elessedil rose. She stood before them, pride and confidence reflected in her finely sculpted features, in the way she held herself, and in the glitter of her eyes. Wren thought her grandmother beautiful at that moment, the ringlets of her flaxen hair tumbling to her shoulders, the robes falling to her feet, and the lines of her face and body smooth and soft against the mix of shadows and light.
“We are, Eton,” she replied softly. “I asked you to meet with me to hear what I had decided. If I could not persuade you, I told myself, I would not proceed. But I think I would have gone ahead in any case—not out of arrogance, not out of a sense of certainty in my own vision of what must be, but out of love for my people and fear that if they were lost the fault would be mine. We have a chance to save ourselves. Eowen foretold in her vision that this would be. Wren by coming has said that now is the time. All that we are and would ever be is at risk whatever choice we make, but I would rather the risk be taken in doing something than nothing. The Elves will survive, my friends. I am certain of it. The Elves always do.”
She looked from face to face, her smile radiant. “Do you stand with me in this?”
They rose then, one by one, Aurin Striate first, Triss, Gavilan, Eton Shart, and Barsimmon Oridio after a brief hesitation and with obvious misgiving. Wren came to her feet last of all, so caught up in what she was seeing that she forgot for a moment that she was a part of it.
The queen nodded. “I could not ask for better friends. I love you all.” She gripped the Ruhk Staff before her. “We will not delay. One day to advise our people, to prepare ourselves, and to make ready for what lies ahead. Sleep now. Tomorrow is already here.”
She turned away from them then and walked from the room. In silence, they watched her go.
Wren was standing just outside the High Council doors, staring absently at patches of bright, star-filled sky and thinking that she could barely remember her life before the beginning of her search for the Elves, when Gavilan came up to her. The others had already gone, all but Garth, who lounged against a tree some distance off, looking out at the city. Wren had searched for Eowen, hoping to speak with her, but the seer had disappeared. Now she turned as Gavilan approached, thinking to speak with him instead, to ask him the questions she was still anxious to have answered.
The ready smile appeared immediately. “Little Wren,” he greeted, ironic, a bit wistful. “Do you see our future as Eowen Cerise does?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure I want to see it just now.”
“Hmmm, yes, you might be right. It doesn’t promise to be as soft and gentle as this night, does it?” He folded his arms comfortably and looked into her eyes. “What will we see once we’re outside these walls, can you tell me? I’ve never been out there, you know.”
Wren pursed her lips. “Demons. Vog, fire, ash, and lava rock until you reach the cliffs, then swamp and jungle, and then there’s mostly vog. Gavilan, you shouldn’t have agreed to come.”
He laughed. “And you should? No, Wren, I want to die a whole man, knowing what’s happened, not wondering from within the shield of the Loden’s magic. If it even works. I wonder. No one really knows, not even the queen. Perhaps she’ll invoke it and nothing will happen.”
“You don’t believe that, though, do you?”
“No. The magic always works for Ellenroh. Almost always, at least.” The hands dropped away wearily.
“Tell me about the magic, Gavilan,” she asked impulsively. “What is it about the magic that doesn’t work? Why is it that no one wants to talk about it?”
Gavilan shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat, seeming to hunch down within himself as he did so. “Do you know, Wren, what it will be like for the Elves if Aunt Ell invokes the Loden’s magic? None of them were alive when Arborlon was brought out of the Westland. None of them have ever seen the Four Lands. Only a few remember what it was like when Morrowindl was clean and free of the demons. The city is all they know. Imagine what it will be like for them when they are taken away from the island and put back into the Westland. Imagine what they will feel. It will terrify them.”
“Perhaps not,” she ventured.
He didn’t seem to hear her. “We will lose everything we know when that happens. The magic has sustained us for our entire lives. The magic does everything for us. It cleans the air, shelters against the weather, keeps our fields fertile, feeds the plants and animals of the forest, and provides us with our water. Everything. What if these things are lost?”
She saw the truth then. He was terrified. He had no concept of life beyond the Keel, of a world without demons where nature provided everything for which the Elves now relied upon the magic.
“Gavilan, it will be all right,” she said quietly. “Everything you enjoy now was there once before. The magic only provides you with what will be there again if nature’s balance is restored. Ellenroh is right. The Elves will not survive if they remain on Morrowindl. Sooner or later, the Keel will fail. And it may be that the Four Lands, in turn, cannot survive without the Elves. Perhaps the destiny of the Races is linked in some way, just as Ellenroh suggested. Perhaps Allanon saw that when he sent me to find you.”
His eyes fixed on hers. The fear was gone, but his look was intense and troubled. “I understand the magic, Wren. Aunt Ell thinks it is too dangerous, too unpredictable. But I understand it and I think I could find a way to master it.”
“Tell me why she fears it.” Wren pressed. “What is it that causes her to think it dangerous?”
Gavilan hesitated, and for a moment he seemed about to answer. Then he shook his head. “No, Wren. I cannot tell you. I have sworn I wouldn’t. You are an Elf, but . . . It is better if you never find out, believe me. The magic isn’t what it seems. It’s too . . .”
He brought up his hands as if to brush the matter aside, frustrated and impatient. Then abruptly his mood changed, and he was suddenly buoyant. “Ask me something else, and I will answer. Ask me anything.”
&nb
sp; Wren folded her arms angrily. “I don’t want to ask you anything else. I want to know about this.”
The dark eyes danced. He was enjoying himself. He stepped so close to her that they were almost touching. “You are Alleyne’s child, Wren. I’ll give you that. Determined to the end.”
“Tell me, then.”
“Won’t give it up, will you?”
“Gavilan.”
“So caught up in wanting an answer you won’t even see what’s right in front of your face.”
She hesitated, confused.
“Look at me,” he said.
They stared at each other without speaking, eyes locked, measuring in ways that transcended words. Wren could feel the warmth of his breath and could see the rise and fall of his chest.
“Tell me,” she repeated stubbornly.
She felt his hands come up to grip her arms, their touch light but firm. Then his face lowered to hers, and he kissed her.
“No,” he whispered, gave her a quick, uncertain smile, and disappeared into the night.
XIII
By noon of the following day everyone in Arborlon knew of Ellenroh Elessedil’s decision to invoke the power of the Loden and return the Elves and their home city to the Westland. The queen had sent word at first light, dispatching select messengers to every quarter of her besieged kingdom—Barsimmon Oridio to the officers and soldiers of the army, Triss to the Elven Hunters of the Home Guard, Eton Shart to the remainder of the High Council and from there to the officials who served in the administrative bureaus of the government, and Gavilan to the market district to gather together the leaders in the business and farming communities. By the time Wren had awakened, dressed, eaten breakfast, and gone out into the city, the talk was of nothing else.
She found the Elves’ response remarkable. There was no panic, no sense of despair, and no threats or accusations against the queen for making her decision. There was uncertainty, of course, and a healthy measure of doubt. None among the Elves had been alive when Arborlon had been carried out of the Westland, and while all had heard the story of the migration to Morrowindl, few had given much thought to migrating out again. Even with the city ringed by the demons and life drastically altered from what it was in the time of Ellenroh’s father, concern for the future had not embraced the possibility of employing the Loden’s magic. As a result the people talked of leaving as if the idea was an entirely new one, a prospect freshly conceived, and for the most part the conversations that Wren listened in on suggested that if Ellenroh Elessedil believed it best, then certainly it must be so. It was a tribute to the confidence that the Elves placed in their queen that they would accept her proposal so readily—especially when it was as drastic as this one.
“It will be nice to be able to go out of the city again,” more than one said. “We’ve lived behind walls for too long.”
“Travel the roads and see the world,” others agreed. “I love my home, but I miss what lies beyond.”
There was more than one mention of life without the constant threat of demons, of a world where the dark things were just a memory and the young could grow without having to accept that the Keel was all that allowed them to survive and there could never be any kind of existence beyond. Some expressed concern about how the magic worked, or if it even would, but most seemed satisfied with the queen’s assurance that life within the city would go on as always during the journey, that the magic would protect and insulate against whatever happened without, and that it would be as before except that in place of the Keel there would be a darkness that none could pass through until the magic of the Loden was recalled.
She ran across Aurin Striate in the market center. The Owl had been up since dawn gathering together the supplies the company of nine would require to make the journey down Killeshan’s slopes to the beaches. His task was made difficult mostly by the queen’s determination that they would take only what they could carry on their backs and that stealth and quickness would serve them best in their efforts to elude the demons.
“The magic, as I understand it, works like this,” he explained as they walked back toward the palace. “There’s both a wrapping about and a carrying away when it is invoked. Once in place, it protects against intrusions from without, like a shell. At the same time, it removes you to another place—city and all—and keeps you there until the spell is released. There is a kind of suspension in time. That way you don’t feel anything of what’s happening during the journey; you don’t have any sense of movement.”
“So everything just goes on as before?” Wren queried, trying to envision how that could happen.
“Pretty much. There isn’t any day or night, just a grayness as if the skies were cloudy, the queen tells me. There’s air and water and all the things you need to survive, all wrapped carefully away in this sort of cocoon.”
“And what happens once you get to where you are going?”
“The queen removes the Loden’s spell, and the city is restored.”
Wren’s eyes shifted to find the Owl’s. “Assuming, of course, that what Ellenroh has been told about the magic is the truth.”
The Owl sighed. “So young to be so skeptical.” He shook his head. “If it isn’t the truth, Wren, what does any of this matter? We are trapped on Morrowindl without hope, aren’t we? A few might save themselves by slipping past the dark things, but most would perish. We have to believe the magic will save us, girl, because the magic is all we have.”
She left him as they neared the palace gates, letting him go on ahead, tired eyed and stoop shouldered, his thin, rumpled shadow cast against the earth, a mirror of himself. She liked Aurin Striate. He was comfortable and easy in the manner of old clothes. She trusted him. If anyone could see them through the journey that lay ahead, it was the Owl.
She turned away from the palace and wandered absently toward the Gardens of Life. She had not looked for Garth when she had risen, slipping from her room instead to search out the queen. But Ellenroh was nowhere to be found once again, and so she had decided to walk out into the city by herself. Now, her walk completed, she found that she still preferred to be alone. She let her thoughts stray as she entered the deserted Gardens, making her way up the gentle incline toward the Ellcrys, and her thoughts, as they had from the moment she had come awake, gravitated stubbornly toward Gavilan Elessedil. She stopped momentarily, picturing him. When she closed her eyes she could feel him kissing her. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She had only been kissed once or twice in her life—always too busy with her training, aloof and unapproachable, caught up in other things, to be bothered with boys. There had been no time for relationships. She had had no interest in them. Why was that? she wondered suddenly. But she knew that she might as well inquire as to why the sky was blue as to question who she had become.
She opened her eyes again and walked on.
When she reached the Ellcrys, she studied it for a time before seating herself within its shade. Gavilan Elessedil. She liked him. Maybe too much. It seemed instinctual, and she distrusted the unexpected intensity of her feelings. She barely knew him, and already she was thinking of him more’ than she should. He had kissed her, and she had welcomed it. Yet it angered her that he was hiding what he knew about the magic and the demons, a truth he refused to share with her, a secret so many of the Elves harbored—Ellenroh, Eowen, and the Owl among them. But she was bothered more by Gavilan’s reticence because he had come to her to proclaim himself a friend, he had promised to answer her questions when she asked them, he had kissed her and she had let him, and despite everything he had gone back on his word. She smoldered inwardly at the betrayal, and yet she found herself anxious to forgive him, to make excuses for him, and to give him a chance to tell her in his own time.
But was it any different with Gavilan than it had been with her grandmother? she asked herself suddenly. Hadn’t she used the same reasoning with both?
Perhaps her feelings for each were not so very different.
&n
bsp; The thought troubled her more than she cared to admit, and she shoved it hastily away.
It was still and calm within the Gardens, secluded amid the trees and flower beds, cool and removed beneath the silken covering of the Ellcrys. She let her eyes wander across the blanket of colors that formed the Gardens, studying the way they swept the earth like brush strokes, some short and broad, some thin and curving, borders of brightness that shimmered in the light. Overhead, the sun shone down out of a cloudless blue sky, and the air was warm and sweet smelling. She drank it in slowly, carefully, savoring it, aware as she did so that it would all be gone after tonight, that when the magic of the Loden was invoked she would be cast adrift once more in the wilderness dark of Morrowindl. She had been able to forget for a time the horror that lay beyond the Keel, to block away her memories of the stench of sulfur, the steaming fissures in the crust of lava rock, the swelter of Killeshan’s heat rising off the earth, the darkness and the vog, and the rasps and growls of the demons at hunt. She shivered and hugged herself. She did not want to go back out into it. She felt it waiting like a living thing, crouched down patiently, determined it would have her, certain she must come.
She closed her eyes again and waited for the bad feelings to subside, gathering her determination a little at a time, calming herself, reasoning that she would not be alone, that there would be others with her, that they would all protect one another, and that the journey down out of the mountains would pass quickly and then they would be safe. She had climbed unharmed to Arborlon, hadn’t she? Surely she could go back down again.
And yet her doubts persisted, nagging whispers of warning that echoed in the Addershag’s warning at Grimpen Ward. Beware, Elf-girl. I see danger ahead for you, hard times, and treachery and evil beyond imagining.