The Elf Queen of Shannara

  She felt his breath on her face. She felt the closeness of him and thought of the comfort it had given her as a child.

  “Garth,” she whispered in despair, and felt the great hands come up to tighten over her own.

  Then she thrust the long knife home.

  XXVIII

  She fled then. She ran from the clearing into the trees, numb with grief, half blind with tears, the Ruhk Staff clutched before her in both hands like a shield. She raced through the shadows and half-light of the island’s early morning, oblivious to Killeshan’s distant rumble, to Morrowindl’s shudder in response, lost to everything but the need to escape the time and place of Garth’s death, even knowing she could never escape its memory. She tore past brush and limbs with heedless disregard, through tall grasses and brambles, along ridges of earth encrusted with lava rock, and over deadwood and scattered debris. She sensed none of it. It was not her body that fled; it was her mind.

  Garth!

  She called out to him endlessly, chasing after her memories of him, as if by catching one she might bring him back to life. She saw him race away, spectral, phantasmagoric. Parts of him appeared and faded in the air before her, blurred and distant images from times gone by. She saw herself give chase as she had so many times when they had played at being Tracker and prey, when they had practiced the lessons of staying alive. She saw herself that last day in the Tirfing before Cogline had appeared and everything had changed forever, skirting the shores of the Myrian, searching for signs. She watched him drop from the trees, huge, silent, and quick. She felt him grapple for her, felt herself slip away, felt her long knife rise and descend. She heard herself laugh. You’re dead, Garth.

  And now he really was.

  Somehow—it was never entirely clear—she stumbled upon the others of the little company, the few who remained alive, Triss, the last of the Elves, the last besides herself, and Stresa and Faun. She careened into them, spun away angrily as if they were hindrances, and kept going. They came after her, of course, running to catch up, calling out urgently, asking what was wrong, what had happened, where was Garth?

  Gone, she said, head shaking. Not coming.

  But it was okay. It was all right.

  He was safe now.

  Still running, she heard Triss demand again, What is wrong? And Stresa reply, Hsssstt, can’t you see? Words, whispered furtively, passed between them, but she didn’t catch their meaning, didn’t care to. Faun leapt from the pathway to her arm, clinging possessively, but she shook the Tree Squeak off roughly. She didn’t want to be touched. She could barely stand to be inside her own skin.

  She broke free of the trees.

  “Lady Wren!” she heard Triss cry out to her.

  Then she was scrambling up a lava slide, clawing and digging at the sharp rock, feeling it cut into her hands and knees. Her breath rasped heavily from her throat, and she was coughing, choking on words that wouldn’t come. The Ruhk Staff fell from her hands, and she abandoned it. She cast everything away, the whole of who and what she was, sickened by the thought of it, wanting only to flee, to escape, to run until there was nowhere left to go.

  When she collapsed finally, exhausted, stretched flat on the slide, sobbing uncontrollably, it was Triss who reached her first, who cradled her as if she were a child, who soothed her with words and small touches and gave her a measure of the comfort she needed. He helped her to her feet, turned her about, and took her back down to the forest below. Carrying the Ruhk Staff in one arm and supporting her with the other, he guided her through the morning hours like a shepherd a stray lamb, asking nothing of her but that she place one foot before the other and that she continue to walk with him. Stresa took the lead, his bulky form becoming the point of reference on which she focused, the steadily changing object toward which she moved, first one foot, then the other, over and over again. Faun returned for another try at scrambling up her leg and onto her arm, and this time she welcomed the intrusion, pressing the Tree Squeak close, nuzzling back against the little creature’s warmth and softness.

  They traveled all day like this, companions on a journey that required no words. The few times they paused to rest, Wren accepted the water Triss gave her to drink and the fruit he pressed into her palm and did not bother to ask where it came from or if it was safe to eat. The daylight dimmed as clouds massed from horizon to horizon, as the vog thickened beneath. Killeshan stormed behind them, the eruptions unchecked now, fire and ash and smoke spewing skyward in long geysers, the smell of sulfur thick in the air, the island shaking and rocking. When darkness finally descended, the crest of the mountain was bathed in a blood-red corona that flared anew with each eruption and sent trailers of fire all down the distant slopes where the lava ran to the sea. Boulders grated and crunched as the molten rock carried them away, and trees burned with a sharp, crackling despair. The wind died to nothing, a haze settled over everything, and the island became a fire-rimmed cage in which the inhabitants bumped up against one another in frightened, angry confusion.

  Stresa settled them that night in a cleft of rock that sheltered on three sides amid a grove of wiry ironwood stripped all but bare of foliage. They huddled in the dark with their backs to the wall and watched the holocaust beyond grow brighter. They were still a day from the beaches, a day from any rendezvous with Tiger Ty, and the destruction of the island was imminent. Wren came back to herself enough to realize the danger they were in. Sipping at the cup of water Triss gave her, listening to the sound of his voice as he continued to speak quietly, reassuringly, she remembered what it was that she was supposed to do and that it was Tiger Ty alone who could help her to do it.

  “Triss,” she said finally, unexpectedly, seeing him for the first time, speaking his name in acknowledgment, making him smile in relief.

  Shortly after, the demons appeared, Morrowindl’s Shadowen, the first of those that had escaped Killeshans fiery flow, fled down out of the hills toward the beaches, lost and confused and ready to kill anything they came upon. They stumbled out of the fiery gloom, a ragged collection of misshapen horrors, and attacked unthinkingly, responding to instinct and to their own peculiar madness. Stresa heard them coming, sharp ears picking out the sound of their approach, and warned the others seconds before the attack. Sword drawn, Triss met the rush, withstood it, and very nearly turned it aside, almost a match for the things even with only one useful arm. But the demons were crazed past fear or reason, driven from their high country by something beyond understanding. These humans were a lesser threat. They rallied and attacked anew, determined to exact some measure of revenge from the source at hand. But now Wren was facing them, consumed by her own madness, cold and reasoned, and she sent the magic of the Elfstones scything into them like razors. Too late, they realized the danger. The magic caught them up and they vanished in bursts of fire and sudden screams. In seconds nothing remained but smoke and ash.

  Others came all during the night, small bunches of them, launching out of the darkness in frenzied rushes that carried them to quick and certain deaths. Wren destroyed them without feeling, without regret, and then burned the forest about until it was as fiery as the slopes above where the lava rivers steamed. As morning approached, the whole of their shelter for fifty yards out was barren and smoking, a charnel house of bodies blackened beyond recognition, a graveyard in which only they survived. There was no sleep, no rest, and little respite against the assaults. Dawn found them hollow-eyed and staring, gaunt and ragged figures against the coming light. Triss was wounded in half a dozen new places, his clothing in rags, all of his weapons lost or broken but his short sword. Wren’s face was gray with ash, and her hands shook with the infusion of the Elfstones’ power. Stresa’s quills fanned out in every direction, and it did not seem as if they would ever settle back in place. Faun crouched next to Wren like a coiled spring.

  As the light crept out of the east, silver sunrise through the haze of fire and smoke, Wren told them finally what had become of Garth, needing at last to tell,
anxious to rid herself of the solitary burden she bore, the bitter knowledge that was hers alone. She told them quietly, softly, in the silence that followed the last of the attacks. She cried again, thinking that perhaps she would never stop. But the tears were cleansing this time, as if finally washing away some of the hurt. They listened to her wordlessly, the Captain of the Home Guard, the Splinterscat, and the Tree Squeak, gathered close so that nothing would be missed, even Faun, who might or might not have understood her words, nestled against her shoulder. The words flowed from her easily, the dam of her despair and shame giving way, and a kind of peace settled deep within her.

  “Rwwffl Wren, it was what was needed,” Stresa told her solemnly when she had finished.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” she asked in reply.

  “Hssstt. Yes. I understood what the poison would do. But I could not tell you, Wren of the Elves, because you would not have wanted to believe. It had to come from him.”

  And the Splinterscat was right, of course, although it no longer really mattered. They talked a bit longer while the light seeped slowly past the gloom, brightening the world about them, their world of black ruin in which smoke still curled skyward in wispy spirals and the earth still trembled with the fury of Killeshan’s discontent.

  “He gave his life for you, Lady Wren,” Triss offered solemnly. “He stood over you when the Wisteron would have claimed you and fought to keep you safe. None of us would have fared as well. We tried, but only Garth had the strength. Keep that as your memory of him.”

  But she could still feel herself pushing against the handle of the long knife as it slipped into his heart, still feel his hands closing over hers, almost as if to absolve her of responsibility. She would always feel them there, she thought. She would always see what had been in his eyes.

  They started out again soon after, crossing the charred battleground of the night gone past to the fresh green landscape of the day that lay ahead, passing toward the last of the country that separated them from the beach. The tremors underfoot were constant still, and the fires of the lava rivers were burning closer, streaming down the mountainside above. Things fled about them in all directions, and even the demons did not pause to attack. Everything raced to escape the burning heat, driven by Killeshan’s fury toward the shores of the Blue Divide. Morrowindl was turning slowly into a cauldron of fire, eating away at itself from the center out. Cracks were beginning to appear everywhere, vast fissures that opened into blackness, that hissed and spit with steam and heat. The world that had flourished in the wake of the Elven magic’s use was disappearing, and within days only the rocks and the ashes of the dead would remain. A new world was evolving about the little company as it fled, and when it was complete nothing of the old would be left upon it.

  They passed down into the meadows of tall grasses that bounded the final stretches of old growth bordering the shoreline. The grasses had already begun to curl and die, smoked and steamed by heat and gases, the life seared out of them. Scrub brush broke apart beneath their boots, dried and lifeless. Fires burned in hot spots all about, and to their right, across a deep ravine, a thin ribbon of red fire worked its way relentlessly through a patchwork of wildflowers toward a stand of acacia that waited in helpless, frozen anticipation. Clouds of black soot roiled down out of the heights of the In Ju, where the jungle burned slowly to the waterline, the swamp beneath already beginning to boil. Rock and ash showered down from somewhere beyond their vision like hail out of clouds, thrown by the volcano’s continuing explosions. The wind shifted and it grew harder to see. It was midday, and the sky was as raw and gray and hazy as autumn twilight.

  Wren’s head felt light and substanceless, a part of the air she breathed. Her bones were loose within her body, and the fire of the Elfstones’ magic still flared and sparked like embers cooling. She searched the land about her and could not seem to focus. Everything drifted in the manner of clouds.

  “Stresa, how much farther?” she asked.

  “A ways,” the Splinterscat growled without turning.

  “Phhfftt. Keep walking, Wren of the Elves.”

  She did, knowing that her strength was failing and wondering absently if it was from so much use of the magic or from exhaustion. She felt Triss move close, one arm coming about her shoulders.

  “Lean on me,” he whispered, and took her weight against his own.

  The meadows passed away with the sweep of the sun west, and they reached the old growth. Already it was aflame to the south, the topmost branches burning, smoke billowing. They pushed through rapidly, skidding and slipping on moss and leaves and loose rock. The trees were silent and empty, the pillars of a hall roofed in low-hanging clouds and mist. Growls and snarls rose up out of the haze, distant, but all about.

  The trek wore on. Once something huge moved in the shadows off to one side, and Stresa wheeled to face it, spines lifting. But nothing appeared, and after a moment they moved on. The sound of water crashing against rocks sounded ahead, the rise and fall of the ocean. Wren found herself smiling, clasping the Ruhk Staff tight against her breast. There was still a chance for them, she thought wearily. There was still hope that they might escape.

  Then finally, as daylight faded behind them and sunset brightened into silver and red ahead, they broke clear of the trees and found themselves staring out from a high bluff over the vast expanse of the Blue Divide. Smoke and ash clouded the air close at hand, but beyond its screen the horizon was ablaze with color.

  The company staggered forward and stopped. The bluff fell away sharply to a shoreline jagged with rocks. There were no beaches anywhere and no sign of Tiger Ty.

  Wren leaned heavily on the Staff, searching the sky. It stretched away, a vast and empty expanse.

  “Tiger Ty!” she whispered in despair.

  Triss released her and moved away, searching the bluff. “Down there,” he signaled after a moment, pointing north. “There’s a beach, if we can get to it.”

  But Stresa was already shaking his grizzled head. “Ssssstt! We’ll have to go back through the woods, back into the smoke and the things it hides. Not a smart idea with daftness coming. Phffftt!”

  Wren watched helplessly as the sun settled down against the ocean’s edge and began to disappear. In minutes it would be dark. They had come so far, she thought, and whispered, “No,” so that only she could hear.

  She laid down the Staff and slipped free the Elfstones. Holding them forth, she sent the white magic streaking across the sky from end to end, a flare of brightness against the gray twilight. The light shimmered like fire and disappeared. They all stood looking after it, watching the dark approach, watching the sun paint the sky with color as it sank from view.

  Behind them, the hunters began to gather, the demons come down from the heights, the black things either tracking them or drawn by the magic. Their shadows pushed against the edges of the twilight, growling, snarling, edging steadily closer. Wren and her companions were trapped on the bluff, caught against the drop into the ocean. Wren felt the rattle of her bones, of her breath, of her failing strength. It was too much to expect that Tiger Ty would be there for them after all this time, too much to hope for. Yet she refused to let go of the only hope left to them. Once more she would use the magic, if need be. Once more, for good measure. Because there wasn’t enough left in any case to keep them alive another night. There was not enough strength left in her to use it, not enough left in any of them to matter.

  Triss stepped out to confront the shadows in the trees, lean and hard, broken arm banging stiff, sword arm bent and ready. “Keep behind me,” he ordered.

  The seconds slipped quickly away. The colors in the western sky faded into gray. Twilight deepened to a pale shade of ash.

  “There!” Stresa warned.

  Something launched itself out of the dark, a massive form, hammering into Triss, throwing him down. Another rushed in behind it, and Stresa showered it with quills. Wren swung the Elfstones up and sent the magic streaking forth, burni
ng the things closest. They screamed and hastily withdrew. Triss lay unconscious on the earth.

  Wren sagged to her knees, exhausted.

  “Sssttt stand up!” Stresa growled desperately.

  A handful of misshapen forms detached themselves anew and began to inch forward.

  “Stand up!”

  Then a shriek split the near silence, a sound like the tearing out of a human life, and a huge shadow swept the bluff. Claws raked the edges of the trees and sent the attackers scattering into the dark. Wren stared upward in disbelief, speechless. Had she seen . . . ? The shadow swung away, black wings knifelike against the sky, and another shriek emitted from its throat.

  “Spirit!” Wren screamed in recognition.

  Back swung the Roc and plummeted to the bluff edge where it settled with a mad beating of wings. A small, wiry form leapt down, yelling and shouting wildly.

  “Ho, this way, quick now! They won’t stay frightened long!”

  Tiger Ty!

  And when Wren pulled Triss to his feet and staggered forward to meet the little man, she found the Tiger Ty she remembered from all those weeks ago, wrinkled and smiling within his brown skin, a scarecrow of bones and leather, rough hands ready and bright eyes quick. He looked at her, at her companions, at the Ruhk Staff she carried, and he laughed.

  “Wren Elessedil,” he greeted. “You are as good as your word, girl! Come back out of death to find me, come back to spit in my face, to prove you could do it after all! Shades, you must be tough as nails!”

  She was too happy to see him to disagree.

  He hurried them atop Spirit then—but only after a sharp glance at Stresa and a pointed warning to the Splinterscat that he had best keep his quills to himself. Muttering something about Wren’s choice of traveling companions, he wrapped the Splinterscat in a leather coverlet and boosted him up. Although Stresa remained still and compliant, his eyes darted anxiously. Wren bound Faun to her back, mounted Spirit, and pulled a semiconscious Triss up in front of her where she could hold him in place. Her hands full, she jammed the Ruhk Staff beneath her legs in the harness. They worked swiftly, Tiger and she, chased by the snarls and growls that rose from the darkness of the trees, driven by their fear of the things hidden there. Twice black forms darted from the shadows as if to attack, but each time Spirit’s angry shriek sent them scrambling away again.