The Elf Queen of Shannara

Chapter Twenty

Daybreak arrived, a stealthy apparition cloaked iron-gray against the shadow of departing night as it crept uncertainly out of yesterday in search of tomorrow. The company rose to greet it, weary-eyed and disheartened, the weight of time’s passage and shortening odds a mantel of chains that threatened to drag them down. Pulling cloaks and packs and weapons across their shoulders, they set out once more, wrapped in the silence of their separate thoughts, grim-faced against a rising wall of fear and doubt.

If I could sleep but one night, Wren was thinking as she tried to blink away her exhaustion. Just one.

There had been little rest for her last night, restless again as she lay awake in the stillness, beset by demons of all shapes and kinds, demons that bore the faces of those who had been or were closest, friends and family, the tricksters of her life. They whispered words to her, they teased and taunted, they warned of secrets she could not know, they gave her trails to follow and burdens to carry, and then they faded from her side like the morning mist.

Her hands clasped the Ruhk Staff and she leaned upon it for support as she climbed. Trust no one, the Addershag hissed again from out of memory.

The climb was short, for they had emerged from the lava tubes close to the summit at the end of yesterday’s trek, with the ridgeline already in view. They reached it quickly this day, scrambling up the final stretch of broken trail to stand atop the wall, pausing to look back into the mists that cloaked the country they had passed through—almost as if they expected to find something waiting there. But there was nothing to see, the whole of it shrouded in clouds and fog, a world and a life vanished into the past. They could see it still in their minds, picture it as if it were drawn on the air before them. They could remember what it had cost them to come through it, what it had taken from them, and how little it had given back. They stared a moment longer, then quickly turned away.

They walked then through narrow stretches of rocks separated by trees that stretched from the edge of Blackledge like fingers until everything abruptly ended at a ragged tangle of ravines and ridges that split and folded back on themselves, huge wrinkles in the land’s skin. A lava flow had passed this way some years back, come down out of Killeshan’s maw to sweep the crest of Blackledge clean. Everything had been burned away save a scattering of silvered tree trunks standing bare and skeletal, some fallen away at strange angles, some propped against one another in hapless despair. Scrub grew out of the lava in gnarled clumps, and patches of moss darkened the shady side of roughened splits.

Stresa brought them to the edge of this forbidding world, lumbering to a halt atop a small rise, spines lifting guardedly. The company stared out bleakly at what lay ahead, listening for and hearing nothing, looking at and seeing nothing, feeling death’s presence at every turn. The devastation spread away before them, a vast and empty landscape wrapped in gray silence.

On Wren’s shoulder, Faun sat up stiffly and leaned forward, ears pricked. She could feel the Tree Squeak shiver.

“What is this place?” Gavilan asked.

A heavy rumble distracted them momentarily, causing them to glance north to where Killeshan’s bulk loomed darkly, seemingly as close to them now as it had been on their leaving Arborlon. The rumble receded and died.

Stresa swung slowly about. “This is the Harrow,” he said. “Hssttt! This is where the Drakuls live.”

A form of demon—or Shadowen—Wren recalled. Stresa had mentioned them before. Dangerous, he had intimated.

“Drakuls,” Gavilan repeated, weary recognition in his voice.

Killeshan rumbled again, more insistent than before, an unnecessary reminder of its presence, of the anger it bore them for having stolen the magic away, for having disrupted the balance of things. Morrowindl shuddered in response.

“Tell me about the Drakuls,” Wren instructed the Splinterscat quietly.

Stresa’s dark eyes fixed on her. “Demons, like the others. Phhfftt! They sleep in daylight, come out at night to feed. They drain the life out of the living things they catch—the blood, the fluids of the body. They make—hssstt—some into creatures like themselves.” The blunt nose twitched. “They hunt as wraiths, but take form to feed. As wraiths, they cannot be harmed.” He spit distastefully.

“We will go around,” Triss announced at once.

Stresa spit again, as if the taste wouldn’t go away. “Around! Phaaww! There is no ‘around’! North, the Harrow runs back toward Killeshan, miles and miles—back toward the valley and the demons that hunt us. Rwwlll. South, the Harrow stretches to the cliffs. The Drakuls hunt its edges, too. In any case, we would never—hrraaggh—get around it before nightfall and we must if we are to live. Crossing in daylight is our only chance.”

“While the Drakuls sleep?” Wren prompted.

“Yes, Wren of the Elves,” the Splinterscat growled softly. “While they sleep. And even so—hsssttt—it will not be entirely safe. The Drakuls are present even then—as voices out of air, as faces on the mist, as feelings and hunches and fears and doubts. Phhffttt. They will try to distract and lure, try to keep us within the Harrow until nightfall.”

Wren stared off into the blasted countryside, into the haze that hung from the skies to the earth. Trapped again, she thought. The whole island is a snare.

“There is no other passage open to us?”

Stresa did not answer—did not need to.

“And on the other side of the Harrow?”

“The In Ju. And the beaches beyond.”

Triss had moved up beside her. His lean face was intense. “Aurin Striate used to speak of the Drakuls,” he advised softly.

His gaze fixed on her. “He said there was no defense against them.”

“But they sleep now,” she replied, just as softly.

The gray eyes shifted away. “Do they?”

A new rumble shook the island, deep and forbidding, rising like a giant coming awake angry, thunderous as the tremors built upon themselves. Cracks appeared in the ground about them and rock and silt fell away into the void. Steam and ash belched out of the Killeshan, showering skyward in towering geysers, arcing away into the gloom. Fire trailed ominously from the volcano’s lip, a trickle only, just visible in the haze.

Garth caught Wren’s attention, a simple shifting of his shoulders. His fingers moved. Be quick, Wren The island begins to shake itself apart.

She glanced at them in turn—Garth, as enigmatic and impassive as ever, steady Triss, her protector now, given over to his new charge; Dal, restless as he stared out into the haze—she had never even heard him speak; Eowen, a white shadow against the gray, looking as if she might disappear into it; and Gavilan, uneasy, unpredictable, haunted, lost to her.

“How long will it take us to cross?” she asked Stresa. Faun scrambled down off her shoulder and moved away, picking at the earth.

“Half a day, a little more,” the Splinterscat advised.

“A lifetime if you are wrong, Scat,” Gavilan intoned darkly.

“Then we will have to hurry,” Wren declared, and called Faun back to her shoulder. She brought the Ruhk Staff before her, a reminder. “We have no choice. Let’s be off. Stay close to each other. Keep watch.”

They struck out across the flats, winding down into the maze of depressions, through the tangle of tree husks, cautious eyes scanning the blasted land about them. Stresa took them along as quickly as he could, but travel was slow, the terrain broken and uneven, filled with twists and turns that prevented either rapid or straight passage. The Harrow swallowed them after only moments, gathering about them almost magically until there was nothing else to be seen in any direction. Mist swirled and spun in the wind currents, steam rose out of cracks in the earth that burrowed all the way to Killeshan’s core, and vog drifted down from where it spewed out of the volcano. Nothing moved in the land; it was still and empty all about. Shadows played, black lines cast earthward by the skeletal trees, iron bars against the light. All the while the earth beneath rumbled ominously, and there was a sense of something dangerous awakening.

The voices began in the first hour. They lifted out of nothingness, whispers on the air that might have come from anywhere. They called compellingly, and for each of the company the words were different. Each would look at the others, thinking that all must have heard, that the voices were unmistakable. They asked, anxious, intense: Did you hear that? Did you hear? But none had, of course—only the speaker, called specifically, purposefully, drawn on by some mirror of self, by a reflection of sense and feeling.

The images came next, faces out of the air, figures that quickly formed and just as quickly faded in the shifting haze, visions of things peculiar to whomever they addressed—personifications of longings, needs, and hopes. For Wren, they took the form of her parents. For Triss and Eowen, it was the queen. For the others, something else. The images worked the fringes of their consciousness, struggling to break through the barriers they had erected to keep them at bay, working to turn them from their chosen path and lead them away.

It went on relentlessly. The voices were never loud, the images never clear, and the whole of the experience not unpleasant, not threatening, not even real—a false memory of what had never been. Stresa, familiar with the danger, started them talking to each other to ward off the attack—for there was no mistaking what it was. The Drakuls stalked them even in sleep, some part of what they were rising up to follow after, seeking to delay or detain, to turn aside or lead astray, to keep them within the Harrow until nightfall.

Time slowed, as cautious and measured as the haze through which they walked, as bleak as the landscape that stretched ahead. The depressions deepened, and in places the lifeless trees formed a barrier that could not be crossed, but had to be got around. Wren called to the others as they trudged ahead, pushing past the voices, casting through the faces, working to keep them all together, to keep them moving. Noon approached, and the day darkened. Clouds massed overhead, heavy with rain. It began to drizzle, then to pour. The wind quickened, and the rain blew into them in sheets. It would sweep across in a curtain, fade away to scattered drops, and start the cycle over again. It lasted for a time and was gone. The earth’s heat returned, and the mist began to thicken. It closed about them, and soon nothing was visible beyond a dozen feet. They stayed close then, so close they were tripping over each other, bumping together as if made sightless, feeling their way through the gloom.

“Stresa! How much farther?” Wren shouted through the cacophony of voices that whirled about her ears.

“Spptptt! Close, now,” the reply came. “Just ahead.”

They passed down into a particularly deep ravine, a jagged knife cut across the surface of the lava rock, all shadows and shifting haze. Wren knew it was dangerous, almost called them back, but saw, too, that it sliced directly across their pathway out, that it was the only way they could go. She descended into the gloom, the Ruhk Staff gripped before her like a shield. Faun chittered wildly on her shoulder, another sound to blend with the others, the unseen voices that buzzed and raged and filled her subconscious with a growing need to scream. She saw Triss a step ahead, with Stresa a faint dark spot beyond. She heard footsteps behind, someone following, the others...

And then the hands had her, abrupt, startling, as hard as iron. They reached up from nowhere, materializing from out of the mist, closed about her legs and ankles, and yanked her from the pathway. She yelled in fury and struck downward with the butt of the Ruhk Staff. White fire burst from the earth, flaring out in all directions, the magic of the talisman responding. It shocked her, stunned her that the magic should come so easily. There were shouts from the others, cries of warning. Wren wheeled about wildly, and the hands that had fastened on her fell away. Something moved in the mist—things, dozens of them, faceless, formless, yet there. The Drakuls, she realized, awake somehow when they should not have been. Perhaps it was dark enough here in this cut, black enough to pass for night. She cried out to the others, summoned them to her, and led them toward the ravine’s far slope. The figures swirled all about, grasping, touching, nonsubstantive, yet somehow real. She saw faces drained of life, pale images of her own, eyes empty and unseeing, teeth that looked like the fangs of animals, sunken cheeks and temples, and bodies wasted away to nothing. She fought through them, for they seemed centered on her, drawn to her as if she were the one who mattered most to them. It was the magic, she realized. Like all the Shadowen, it was the magic that drew them first.

Drakul wraiths materialized in front of her and Garth bounded past, short sword hacking. The images dissipated and reformed, unharmed. Wren wheeled about as she reached the floor of the ravine. One, two... She counted frantically. All six were there. Stresa was already scrambling ahead, and she turned to follow him. They went up the slope in a tangle, clawing their way over the rain-slick lava rock, past the scrub and fallen trees. The images followed, the voices, the phantoms come from sleep, undead monsters trailing after. Wren fought them off with anger and repulsion, with the fury of her movement, conscious of Faun clinging to her neck as if become a part of her, of the heat of the Ruhk Staff in her hands as its magic sought to break free again. Magic that could do anything, she lamented, that could create anything—even monsters like these. She recoiled inwardly at the prospect, at the horror of a truth she wished had never been, a truth she feared would rise up to haunt her if she were to keep the promise she had made to her grandmother to save the Elves.

Over the top of the ravine the members of the little company stumbled and began to run. The gloom was thick and shifted like layers of gauze before them, but they did not slow, racing ahead heedlessly, calling words of encouragement to each other, fighting back against their pursuers. The Drakuls hissed and spit like cats, the venom of their thoughts a fire that burned inside. Yet it was only voices and images now and no longer real, for the Drakuls could not leave the darkness of their shelter to venture into the Harrow while it was yet daylight. Slowly their presence faded, drawing away like the receding waters of some vast ocean, gone back with the tide. The company began to slow, their breathing heavy in the sudden stillness, their boots scraping as they came to a ragged halt.

Wren looked back into the haze. There was nothing there but the mist and the faint shadow of the scrub land and tree bones beyond, empty and stark. Faun poked her head up tentatively. Stresa lumbered over to join them, panting, tongue licking out. The Splinterscat spit. “Hsssttt! Stupid wraiths!”

Wren nodded. In her hands, the heat of the Ruhk Staff dissipated and was gone. She felt her own body cool in response. A small measure of relief welled up within.

Then abruptly Garth crowded forward, startled by something she had missed, intense and anxious as he searched the mist. Wren followed his gaze, frightened without yet knowing why. She saw the others glance at one another uneasily.

Her heart jumped. What was wrong?

She saw it then. There were only five of them. Eowen was missing.

At first she thought such a thing impossible, that she must be mistaken. She had counted all six when they had climbed from the ravine. Eowen had been among them; she had recognized her face...

She stopped herself. Eowen. She saw the red-haired seer in her mind, trailing after—too pale, too ephemeral. Almost as if she wasn’t really there—which, of course, she hadn’t been. Wren experienced a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, an aching that threatened to break free and consume her. What she had seen had been another image, one more clever and calculated than the others, an image designed to make them all believe they were together when in fact they were not.

The Drakuls had Eowen.

Garth signed hurriedly. I was watching out for her as I promised I would She was right behind us when we climbed from the ravine. How could I lose her?

“You didn’t,” Wren replied instantly. She felt an odd calm settle over her, a resignation of sorts, an acceptance of the inevitability of chance and fate. “It’s all right, Garth,” she whispered.

She felt the ground open beneath her, a hole into which she must surely fall. She waited for the feeling to pass, for stability to take hold. She knew what she had to do. Whatever else happened, she could not abandon Eowen. To save her, she would have to go back into the Harrow, back among the Drakuls. She could send the others, of course; they would go if she asked. But she would never do that—would never even consider it. Tracker skills, Rover experience, Elven Hunter training—all would be useless against the Drakuls. Only one thing would make any difference.

She took a few uncertain steps and stopped. Reason screamed at her to reconsider. She was aware of the others coming forward one by one to stand with her, their eyes following her own as she peered out into the Harrow’s gloom.

“No!” Stresa warned. “Phffft! It’s already growing dark!”

She ignored him, turning instead to Gavilan. Wordlessly she took his measure, then held forth the Ruhk Staff. “It is time for you to be a friend to me again, Gavilan,” she told him quietly. “Take the Staff. Hold it for me until my return. Keep it safe.”

Gavilan stared at her in disbelief, then cautiously reached for the talisman. His hands closed over it, tightened about it, and drew it away. She did not allow her eyes to linger on his, frightened of what she would find there. He was all that remained of her family,—she had to trust him.

Triss and Dal had dropped their packs and were cinching their weapons belts. Garth already had his short sword out.

“No,” she told them. “I am going back alone.”

They started to protest, the words quick and urgent, but she cut them off instantly. “No!” she repeated. She faced them. “I am the only one who stands a chance of finding Eowen and bringing her out again. Me.” She reached within her tunic and pulled forth the pouch with the Elfstones. “Magic to find her and to protect me—nothing less will do. If you come with me, I shall have to worry about protecting you as well. These things can’t be hurt by your weapons, and this one time at least you cannot help me.”

She put a hand on Triss’s arm, gentle but firm. “You are pledged to watch over me, I know. But I am ordering you to watch over the Loden instead—to stay with Gavilan, you and Dal, to see to it that whatever else happens, the Elves are kept safe.”

The hard, gray eyes narrowed. “I beg you not to do this, Lady. The Home Guard serve the queen first.”

“And the queen, if that is what in truth I am, believes you will serve best by staying here. I order it, Triss.”

Garth was signing angrily. Do what you wish with them. But I have no purpose in remaining. I come with you.

She shook her head, and her fingers moved as she spoke. “No, Garth. If I am lost, they will need you to see them safely to the beaches and to Tiger Ty. They will need your experience. I love you, Garth, but you can do nothing to help me here. You must stay.”

The big man looked at her as if she had struck him.

“This is the time we always knew would come,” she told him, quiet and insistent, “the time for which you have worked so hard to train me. It is too late now for any further lessons. I have to rely on what I know.”

She took Faun from her shoulder and placed her on the ground beside Stresa. “Stay, little one,” she commanded, and stepped away.

“Rrrwwlll! Wren, of the Elves, take me!” Stresa snapped, spines bristling. “I can track for you—better than any of these others!”

She shook her head once more. “The Elfstones can track better still. Garth will see you safely to the Westland, Stresa, if I should fail to return. He knows of my promise to you.”

She removed her pack, dropped her weapons—all but the long knife at her waist. The four men, the Splinterscat, and the Tree Squeak watched in silence. Carefully she shook the Elfstones from their pouch, dropping them into her open hand. Her fingers closed.

Then, before she could think better of it, she turned and stalked into the mist.

She walked straight ahead for a time, simply concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, distance between herself and those who would keep her safe. She crossed the bare lava rock, a solitary hunter, feeling herself turn cold within, numb from the intensity of her determination. Eowen spoke to her out of memory, telling her of the vision she had seen so long ago, the vision of her own death. No, Wren swore silently. Not now, now while I still breathe.

The Drakuls began to whisper to her, urging her on, calling her to them. Within, fury battled back against fear. I will come to you, all right—hut not as you would have me!

She passed through a line of silvered trunks, wood stakes barren and stark, a gate into the netherworld of the dead. She saw faces appear, gaunt and empty, skulls within the mist. She brought up the Elfstones, held them forth, and summoned their power. It came at once, obedient to her will, blazing to life with blue fire and streaking out into the haze. It took her left along a flat where nothing grew, where no trace of what had been survived. Ahead, far in the distance, she could see a gathering of white forms, bodies shifting, turning as if to greet her. Voices reached out, cries and whispers, a summons to death.

The blue fire faded, and she walked blindly on.

Wren, she heard Eowen call.

She shut her sense of urgency away, forcing herself to move cautiously, watching everything around her, the movement of shadows and mist, the hint of life coming awake. Stresa had been right. It was growing dark now, the afternoon lengthening toward evening, the light beginning to fail. She knew she would not reach Eowen before nightfall. It was what the Drakuls intended; it was what they had planned all along. Eowen’s magic drew them like her own—but it was hers that they wanted, that was most powerful, that would feed them best. Eowen was bait for the trap that was meant to snare her.

She shut her eyes momentarily against the inevitability of it. She should have known all along.

The voices grew louder, more insistent, and she saw figures begin to take form at the edges of her vision, faint and ethereal in the mist. A ravine opened before her—the one in which she had lost Eowen? she wondered. She didn’t know and didn’t care. She went down into it without slowing, following the magic’s lead, feeling the iron of it fill her now with its heat, fired in the forge of her soul. She didn’t know how much time had passed—an hour, more? She had lost all track of time, all sense of everything but what she had come to do. Queen of the Elves, keeper of the Rikh Staff and Loden, bearer of Druid magic, and heir to the blood of Elessedils and Ohmsfords alike—she was all these and she was none, made instead of something more, something undefinable.

Nothing, she told herself, could stand against her.

The darkness closed about as she reached the bottom of the ravine, the faint light above lost in mist and shadows. The Drakuls appeared boldly now, skeletal forms come slowly into view, gaunt and stripped of all life but that which their Shadowen existence gave them. They were hesitant still, afraid of the magic and at the same time eager for it. They looked upon her with hungry eyes, anxious to taste her, to make her their own. She felt the Elfstones burn against her palm in warning, but still she did not summon their magic. She walked ahead boldly, the living among the dead.

Wren, she heard Eowen call again.

A wall of pale bodies blocked her way. They were human of a sort, shaped as such, but twisted, pale imitations of what they had been in life. They turned to meet her, no longer apparitions that shimmered and threatened to dissolve at a breath of wind, but things taking on the substance of life.

“Eowen!” she cried out.

One by one the Drakuls stood away, and there was Eowen. She lay cradled in their arms, as white-skinned as they save for her fire-red hair and emerald eyes. The eyes glittered as they sought Wren’s own, alive with horror. Eowen’s mouth was open as if she were trying to breathe—or scream.

The mouths of the Drakuls were fastened to her body, feeding.

For an instant Wren could not move, stricken by the sight, trapped in a web of indecision.

Then Eowen’s head jerked up, and her lips parted in a snarl to reveal gleaming fangs.

Wren howled in dismay, and the Drakuls came for her. She brought the Elfstones up with the quickness of thought, called forth their power in rage and terror, and turned the fire of the magic on everything in sight. It swept through her attackers like a scythe, incinerating them. Those who had taken solid form, those feeding and Eowen with them, were obliterated. The others, wraiths still, vanished. Flames engulfed everything. Wren scattered fire in every direction, feeling the magic course through her, hot and raw. She howled, exultant as the fire burned the ravine from end to end. She gave herself over to its heat—anything to block away the image of Eowen. She embraced it as she would a lover. Time and place disappeared in the rush of sensations.

She began to lose control.

Then, a bare instant before she would have disappeared into the power completely, she realized what was happening, remembered who she was, and made a last, desperate attempt to recover herself. Frantically she clamped her fingers about the Stones. The fire continued to leak through. Her hand tightened, and her body convulsed. She doubled over with the effort, falling to her knees. Finally, the magic swept back within her, raked her one final time with the promise of its invincibility, and was gone.

She crouched in the mist, fighting to regain mastery of herself, seeing once more with her mind’s eye a picture of the Drakuls and Eowen as they disappeared into flames, consumed by the Elfstone magic.

Power! Such power‘ How she longed to have it back’

Shame swept through her, followed by despair.

She lifted her eyes wearily, already knowing what she would find, fully cognizant now of what she had done. Before her, the ravine stretched away, empty. Smoke and ash hung on the air. Her throat tightened as she tried to breathe. She had not had a choice, she knew—but the knowledge didn’t help. Eowen had been one of them, brought to her death as Wren watched, her own prophecy fulfilled. Though Wren had tried, she could not change the outcome of the seer’s vision. Eowen had told her once that her life had been built around her visions and she had come to accept them—even the one that foretold her death.

Wren felt tears fill her eyes and run down her cheeks.

Oh, Eowen!