The Heritage of Shannara (132 page)

Not that they were real, not what they could do, nothing?

No.

She studied his face for a moment without moving. Then she reached into her tunic and drew out the leather bag that hung about her neck. She had slipped the Elfstones back inside when she had gone to help Garth. She wondered if they had transformed again, if they had returned to being the painted rocks they once were. She even wondered if she had somehow been mistaken in what she had seen. She turned the bag upside down and shook it over her hand.

Three bright blue stones tumbled free, painted rocks no longer, but glittering Elfstones—the Elfstones that had been given to Shea Ohmsford by Allanon over five hundred years ago and had belonged to the Ohmsford family ever since. She stared at them, entranced by their beauty, awed that she should be holding them. She shivered at the memory of their power.

“Garth,” she whispered. She placed the Elfstones in her lap. Her fingers moved. “You must know something. You must. I was given into your care, Garth. The Elfstones were with me even then. Tell me. Where did they really come from?”

You already know. Your parents gave them to you.

My parents. She felt a welling up of pain and frustration. “Tell me about them. Everything. There are secrets, Garth. There have always been secrets. I have to know now. Tell me.”

Garth's dark face was frozen as he hesitated, then signed to her that her mother had been a Rover and that her father had been an Ohmsford. They brought her to the Rovers when she was a baby. He was told that the last thing they did before leaving was to place the leather bag with its painted rocks about her neck.

“You did not see my mother. Or my father?”

Garth shook his head. He was away when they came and when he returned they were gone. They never came back. Wren was taken to Shady Vale to be raised by Jaralan and Mirianna Ohmsford. When she was five, the Rovers took her back again. That was the agreement the Ohmsfords had made. It was what her parents had insisted upon.

“But why?” Wren interrupted, bewildered.

Garth didn't know. He had never even been told who had made the bargain on behalf of the Rovers. She was given into his care by one of the family elders, a man who had died shortly after. No one had ever explained
why he was to train her as he did—only what was to be done. She was to be quicker, stronger, smarter, and better able to survive than any of them. Garth was to make her that way.

Wren sat back in frustration. She already knew everything that Garth was telling her. He had told it all to her before. Her jaw tightened angrily. There must be something more, something that would give her some insight into where she had come from and why she was carrying the Elfstones.

“Garth,” she tried again, insistent now. “What is it that you haven't told me? Something about my mother? I dreamed of her, you know. I saw her face. Tell me what you are hiding!”

The big man was expressionless, but there was hurt in his eyes. Wren almost reached out to reassure him, but her need to know kept her from doing so. Garth stared at her for long moments without responding. Then his fingers signed briefly.

I can tell you nothing that you cannot see for yourself.

She flinched. “What do you mean?”

You have Elven features, Wren. More so than any Ohmsford. Why do you think that is?

She shook her head, unable to answer.

His brow furrowed.
It is because your parents were both Elves.

Wren stared in disbelief. She had no memory at all of her parents looking like Elves and she had always thought of herself as simply a Rover girl.

“How do you know this?” she asked, stunned.

I was told by one who saw them. I was also told that it would be dangerous for you to know.

“Yet you choose to tell me now?”

Garth shrugged, as much as if to say, What difference does it make after what has happened? How much more danger can you be in by knowing? Wren nodded. Her mother a Rover. Her father an Ohmsford. But both of them Elves. How could that be? Rovers weren't Elves.

“You're sure about this?” she repeated. “Elves, not humans with Elven blood, but Elves?”

Garth nodded firmly and signed,
It was made very clear.

To everyone but her, she thought. How had her parents come to be Elves? None of the Ohmsfords had been Elves, only of Elven descent with some percentage of Elven blood. Did this mean that her parents had lived with the Elves? Did it mean that they had come from them and that this was why Allanon had sent her in search of the Elves, because she herself was one?

She looked away, momentarily overwhelmed by the implications. She saw her mother's face again as she had seen it in her dream—a girl's face, of the race of Man, not Elf. That part of her that was Elf, those more distinctive features, had not been evident. Or had she simply missed seeing them? What about her father? Funny, she thought. He had never seemed very important in her musings of what might have been, never as real, and she had no idea why. He was faceless to her. He was invisible.

She looked back again. Garth was waiting patiently. “You did not know that the painted rocks were Elfstones?” she asked one final time. “You knew nothing of what they were?”

Nothing.

What if she had discarded them? she asked herself peevishly. What then of her parents' plans—whatever they were—for her? But she knew the answer to that question. She would never have given up the painted rocks, her only link to her past, all she had to remind her of her parents. Had they relied on that? Why had they given her the Elfstones in the first place? To protect her? Against what? Shadowen? Something more? Something that hadn't even existed when she was born?

“Why do you think I was given these Stones?” she asked Garth, genuinely confused.

Garth looked down a moment, then up again. His great body shifted. He signed.
Perhaps to protect you in your search for the Elves.

Wren stared, blank faced. She had not considered that possibility. But how could her parents have known she would go in search of the Elves? Or had they simply known she would one day seek out her own heritage, that she would insist on knowing where she had come from and who her people were?

“Garth, I don't understand,” she confessed to him. “What is this all about?”

But the big man simply shook his head and looked sad.

They kept watch together through the night, one dozing while the other stayed awake, until finally dawn's light brightened the eastern skies. Then Garth fell asleep until noon, his strength exhausted. Wren sat staring out at the vast expanse of the Blue Divide, pondering the implications behind her discovery of the Elfstones. They were the Elfstones of Shea Ohmsford, she decided. She had heard them described often enough, listened to stories of their history. They belonged to whomever they were given and they had been given to the Ohmsford family—and then lost again, supposedly. But perhaps not. Perhaps they had been simply taken away at some point. It was possible. There had been many Ohmsfords after Brin and Jair and three hundred years in which to lose track of the magic— even a magic as personal and powerful as the Elfstones. There had been a time when no one could use them, she reminded herself. Only those with sufficient Elven blood could invoke the magic with impunity. Wil Ohms-ford had been damaged that way. His use of the Stones had caused him to absorb some of their magic. When his children were born, Brin and Jair, the magic had transformed itself into the wishsong. So perhaps one of the Ohmsfords had decided to take the Elfstones back to those who could use them safely—to the Elves. Was that how they had found their way to her parents?

The questions persisted, overwhelming, insistent, and unanswerable. What was it that Cogline had said to her when he had found her that first time in the Tirfing and persuaded her to come with him to the Hadeshorn
to meet with Allanon?
It is not nearly so important to know who you are as who you might be.
She was beginning to see how that might be true in a way she had never envisioned.

Garth rose at noon and ate the vegetable stew and fresh bread she had prepared. He was stiff and sore, and his strength had not yet returned. Nevertheless, he thought it necessary that he make a sweep of the area to make certain that there wasn't another of the wolf things about. Wren had not considered the possibility. Both of them had recognized their attacker as a Shadowen—a thing once human that had become part beast, a thing that could track and hunt, that could hide and stalk, and that could think as well as they and kill without compunction. No wonder it had tracked them so easily. She had assumed it had come alone. It was an assumption she could not afford to make. She told Garth that she was the one who would go. She was better suited at the moment than he, and she had the Elfstones. She would be protected.

She did not tell him how frightened she was of the Elven magic or how difficult she would find it if she were required to invoke it again.

As she backtracked the country south and east, searching for prints, for signs, or for anything out of place, relying mostly on her instincts to warn her of any danger, she thought about what it meant to be in possession of such magic. She remembered when Par had kidded her about the dreams, saying that she had the same Elven blood as he and perhaps some part of the magic. She had laughed. She had only her painted rocks, she had said. She remembered the Addershag's touch at her breast where the Elfstones hung in their leather bag and the unbidden cry of “Magic!” She hadn't even thought of the painted rocks that time. All her life she had known of the Ohmsford legacy, of the magic that had belonged to them as the descendants of the Elven house of Shannara. Yet she had never thought to have use of the magic herself, never even desired it. Now it was hers as the Elfstones were hers, and what was she to do about it? She did not want the responsibility of the Stones or their magic. She wanted nothing of the legacy. The legacy was a millstone that would drag her down. She was a Rover, born and raised free, and that was what she knew and was comfortable with being—not any of this other. She had accepted her Elven looks without questioning what they might imply. They were part of her, but a lesser part, and nothing at all of the Rover she was. She felt as if she had been turned inside out by the discovery of the Elfstones, as if the magic by coming into her life was somehow taking life out of her and making her over. She did not like the feeling. She was not anxious to be changed into someone other than who she was.

She pondered her discomfort all that day and had not come close to resolving it on her return to the camp. The signal fire was a guiding beacon, and she followed its glow to where Garth waited. He was anxious for her— she could see it in his eyes. But he said nothing, passing her food and drink and sitting back quietly to watch her eat. She told him she had not found
any trace of other Shadowen. She did not tell him that she was beginning to have second thoughts about this whole business. She had asked herself once before, once right at the beginning when she had decided she would try to learn something about who she was, What would happen if she did not like what she discovered? She had dismissed the possibility. She was worried now that she had made a very big mistake.

The second night passed without incident. They kept the signal fire burning steadily, feeding it new wood as the old was consumed, patiently waiting. Another day began and ended, and still no one appeared. They searched the skies and the land from horizon to horizon, but there was no sign of anyone. By nightfall, both were edgy. Garth, his superficial wounds already healed and the deeper ones beginning to close, prowled the campsite like a caged animal, repeating meaningless tasks to keep from having to sit. Wren sat to keep from prowling. They slept as often as they could, resting themselves because they needed to and because it was something to do. Wren found herself doubting the Addershag, questioning the old woman's words. How long had the Addershag been a captive of those men, chained and imprisoned in that cellar? Perhaps her memory had failed her in some way. Perhaps she had become confused. But she had not sounded feeble or confused. She had sounded dangerous. And what about the Shadowen that had tracked them the length and breadth of the Westland? All those weeks it had kept hidden, following at a distance. It had shown itself only after the signal fire had been lit. Then it had come forth to destroy them. Wasn't it reasonable to assume that its appearance had been brought about by what it was seeing them do, that it believed the signal fire posed some sort of threat and so must be stopped? Why else would it have chosen that moment to strike?

So don't give up,
Wren kept telling herself, the words a litany of hope to keep her confidence from failing completely.
Don't give up.

The third night dragged away, minutes into hours. They changed the watch frequently because by now neither could sleep for more than a short time without waking. More often than not they kept watch together— uneasy, anxious, worried. They fed deadwood into the flames and watched the fire dance against the night. They stared out over the black void above the Blue Divide. They sifted through the night sounds and their scattered thoughts.

Nothing happened. No one came.

It was nearing morning when Wren dozed off in spite of herself, some time during the final hour of her watch. She was still sitting up, her legs crossed, her arms about her knees, and her head dipped forward. It seemed only moments had passed when she jerked awake again. She glanced about warily. Garth was asleep a few feet away, wrapped in his great cloak. The fire continued to burn fiercely. The land was cloaked in a frost-tipped blanket of shadows and half-light, the sunrise no more than a faint silver lightening at the rim of the mountains east. A scattering of stars still brightened
the sky west, although the moon had long since disappeared. Wren yawned and stood up. Clouds were moving in from out on the ocean, low-hanging, dark …

She started. She was seeing something else, she realized, something blacker and swifter, moving out of the darkness for the bluffs, streaking directly for her. She blinked to make certain, then stepped back hurriedly and reached down for Garth. The big Rover was on his feet at once. Together they faced out across the Divide, watching the black thing take shape. It was a Roc, they realized after a few seconds more, winging its way toward the fire like a moth drawn by the flames. It swept across the bluff and wheeled back again, its outline barely visible in the faint light. It flew over them twice, turning each time, crossing and recrossing as if studying what lay below. Wren and Garth watched wordlessly, unable to do anything else.