The Heritage of Shannara (164 page)

She took a deep breath. “Not all of those who sought to reclaim the old ways went with us to Morrowindl. Not all of those who were Elves came out of the Four Lands. A handful of the magic-wielders remained behind, disowned by their people, cast out by the Elessedil rulers.” Her voice lowered until it was almost inaudible. “That handful, Wren, created monsters of another sort.”

There was a long, terrible silence as the seer and the Rover girl faced each other in the gloom. The cold in Wren's stomach began to snake into her limbs. “Shades!” she whispered in horror, realizing the truth now, a truth that had been hidden all this time from those summoned to the Hadeshorn by the shade of Allanon. “You're saying that the Elves made the Shadowen!”

“No, Wren.” Eowen's voice choked as she struggled to finish. “The Elves didn't
make
the Shadowen. The Elves
are
the Shadowen.”

Wren's breath caught in her throat, a knot that threatened to strangle her. She remembered the Shadowen at the Wing Hove, the one that had stalked her for so long, the one that in the end would have killed her if not for the Elfstones. She tried to picture it as an Elf and failed.

“Elves, Wren.” Eowen's husky voice drew her attention back again. “My people. Ellenroh's. Your own. Just a few, you understand, but Elves still. There are others now, I expect, but in the beginning it was only Elves. They sought to be something better, I think, something more. But it all went wrong, and they became … what they are. Even then, they refused to change, to seek help. Ellenroh knew. All of the Elves knew, once upon a time at least. It was why they left, why they abandoned their homeland and fled. They were terrified of what their brethren had done. They were appalled that the magic had been so misused. For it was an inaccurate and changeable magic at best, and what they created was not always what they desired.”

She smiled bitterly. “Do you see now why the queen could not reveal to you the truth of things? Do you understand the burden she carried? She was an Elessedil, and her forefathers had allowed this to happen! She had aided in the misuse of the magic herself, albeit because it was all she could
do if she wished to save her people. She couldn't tell you. I can barely stand doing it myself ! I wonder even now if I have made a mistake …”

“Eowen!” Wren seized the other's hands and would not let go. “You were right to tell me. Grandmother should have done so in the beginning. It is a terrible, awful thing, but …”

She trailed off helplessly, and her eyes locked on the seer's.
Trust no one,
the Addershag had warned. Now she understood why. The secrets of three hundred years lay scattered at her feet, and only death's presence had given them away.

Eowen started up, freeing her hands. “I have given you enough of truth this night,” she whispered. “I wish it could have been otherwise.”

“No, Eowen …”

“Be kind, Wren Elessedil. Forgive the queen. And me. And the Elves, if you can. Remember the importance of the trust you have been given. Carry the Loden back into the Four Lands. Let the Elves begin anew. Let them help set matters right again.”

She turned, ignoring Wren's hushed plea to stay, and disappeared from view.

Wren sat awake after that until dawn, watching the mist swirl against the void, staring out into the impenetrable night. She listened to the movements of those on watch, to the breathing of those who slept, to the empty whisper of her thoughts as they wrestled with the truth that Eowen had left her.

The Shadowen are Elves.

The words repeated themselves, a whispered warning. She was the only one who knew, the only one who could warn the others. But she had to get off Morrowindl first. She had to survive.

The night seemed to close about her. She had wanted the truth. Now she had it. It was a bitter, wrenching triumph, and the cost of attaining it had yet to be fully measured.

Oh, Grandmother!

Her hands gripped the Ruhk Staff, and frustration, anger, and sadness rushed through her. She had found her birthright, discovered her identity, learned the history of her life, and now she wished that it would all disappear forever. It was vile and tainted and marked with betrayal and madness at every turn. She hated it.

And then, when the darkness of her mood had reached a point where it appeared complete, where it seemed that nothing worse could happen, a thought that was blacker still whispered to her.

The Shadowen are Elves—and you carry the entire Elven nation back into the Four Lands.

Why?

The question hung like an accusation in the silence of her mind.

W
ren was still struggling with the ambiguity of what her grandmother had given her to do when the rest of the company awoke at sunrise.

On the one hand, thousands of lives depended on her carrying the Loden and the Ruhk Staff safely from the island of Morrowindl back into the Westland. The whole of the Elven nation, all save the Wing Riders who resided on the coastal islands far away and had not migrated with the Land Elves to Morrowindl, had been gathered up by the magic and enclosed, there to remain until Wren—or, she supposed, another of the company, should she die as Ellenroh had—set them free. If she failed to do so, the Elves would perish, the oldest Race of all, the last of the faerie people, an entire history from the time of the world's creation gone.

On the other hand, perhaps it was best.

She shivered every time she repeated Eowen's words:
The Elves
are
the Shadowen
. The Elves, with their magic, and with their insistence on recovering their past, had turned themselves into monsters. They had created the demons. They had devastated Morrowindl and initiated the destruction of the Four Lands. Practically every danger that threatened could be traced to them. It might be better, given that truth, if they ceased to exist altogether.

She did not think she was overstating her concerns. Once the Elves were restored to the Westland, there was nothing to prevent them from beginning anew with the magic, from trying to recall it yet again so that it could be used in some newly terrible and destructive way. There was nothing that said that Ellenroh had disposed of all those who sought to play with its power, that some one or two had not survived. It would be easy enough for those few to begin to experiment once again, to create new forms of monsters, new horrors that Wren did not care to envision. Hadn't the Elves already proved that they were capable of anything?

Like the Druids, she thought sadly, victims of a misguided need to know, of an injudicious self-confidence, of a foolish belief that they could master something which by its very nature was dependably unreliable.

How had they let it all come to this, these people with so many years of experience in using the magic, these faerie folk brought into the new world out of the devastation of the old by lessons they could not have failed to learn? Surely they must have had some small inkling of the dangers they would encounter when they began to make nature over in their own ill-conceived image. Surely they must have realized something was wrong. Yet time's passage had rendered the Elves as human as the other Races, changed
them from faerie creatures to mortals, and altered their perceptions and their knowledge. Why shouldn't they be as prone to make mistakes as anyone else—as anyone else had, in fact, from Druids to Men?

The Elves. She was one of them, of course, and worse, an Elessedil. However she might wish it otherwise, she was consumed with guilt for what their misjudgments had wrought and with remorse for what their folly had cost. A land, a nation, countless lives, a world's sanity and peace— they had set in motion the events that would destroy it all. Her people. She might argue that she was a Rover girl, that she shared nothing with the Elves beyond her bloodline and appearance, but the argument seemed hollow and feckless. Responsibility did not begin and end with personal needs—Garth had taught her that much. She was a part of everything about her, and not only survival but the measure of her life was directly related to whether she accepted that truth. She could not back away from the unpleasantnesses of the world; she could not forget its pain. Once upon a time, the Elves had been foremost among Healers, their given purpose to keep the land whole and instill in others the wisdom of doing so. What had happened to that commitment? How had the Elves become so misdirected?

She ate without tasting her food and she spoke little, consumed by her thoughts. Eowen sat across from her, eyes lowered. Garth and the other men moved past them unseeing, focused on the trek before them. Stresa was already gone, scouting ahead to make certain of his path. Faun was a ball of fur in her lap.

What am I to do?
she asked herself in despair.
What choice am I to make?

The climb up the Blackledge resumed, and still she could not settle on an answer. The day was dark and hazy like all the ones before, the sun screened away by the vog, the air thick with heat and ash and the faint stench of sulfur. Swamp sounds rose behind them out of Eden's Murk, a jumbled collection of screams and cries, fragmented and distant for the most part, scattered in the mist. Below, things hunted and foraged and struggled to stay alive for another day. Above, there was only silence, as if nothing more than clouds awaited. The trail was steep and winding, and it cut back upon itself frequently, a labyrinthine maze of ledges, drops, and defiles. Sporadic showers swept across them, quick and furious, the rain dampening the earth and rock to slickness and then fading back into the heat.

Time passed, and Wren's thoughts drifted. She found herself missing things she had never even considered before. She was young still, barely a woman, and she was struck by the possibility that she might never have a husband or children and that she would always be alone. She found herself envisioning faces and voices and small scenes out of an imagined life where these things were present, and without reason and to no particular purpose she mourned their loss. It was the discovery of who and what she was that triggered these feelings, she decided finally. It was the trust she carried, the responsibilities she bore that induced this sense of solitude, of aloneness.

There was nothing for her beyond fleeing Morrowindl, beyond determining the fate of the Elven people, beyond coming to terms with the horror of what she had discovered. Nothing of her life seemed simple anymore, and the ordinary prospects of things like a husband and children were as remote as the home she had left behind.

She made herself consider the possibility then, a tentative conjecture brought on by a need to establish some sense of purpose for all that had come about, that what she might really have been given to do—by Al-lanon's shade, by Ellenroh, and by choice and chance alike—was to be for her people both mother and wife, to accept them as her family, to shepherd them, to guide and protect them, and to oversee their lives for the duration of her own. Her mind was light and her sense of things turned liquid, for she had barely slept at all now in three days and her physical and emotional strength had been exhausted. She was not herself, she might argue, and yet in truth she had perhaps found herself. There was purpose in everything, and there must be a purpose in this as well. She had been returned to her people, given responsibility over whether they lived or died, and made their queen. She had discovered the magic of the Elfstones and assumed control of their power. She had been told what no one else knew—the truth of the origin of the Shadowen. Why? She gave a mental shrug. Why not, if not to make some difference? Not so much where the Shadowen were concerned, although there could be no complete separation of problems and solutions, as Allanon had indicated in making his charges to the children of Shannara. Not so much in the future of the Races, for that was too broad an undertaking for one person and must inevitably be decided by the efforts of many and the vagaries of fortune. But for the Elves, for their future as a people, for the righting of so many wrongs and the correcting of so many mistakes—in this she might find the purpose of her life.

It was a sobering thought, and she mulled it through as the ascent of Blackledge wore on, lost within herself as she considered what an undertaking of such magnitude would require. She was strong enough, she felt; there was little she could not accomplish if she chose. She had resolve and a sense of right and wrong that had served her well. She was conscious of the fact that she owed a debt—to her mother, who had sacrificed everything so that her child would have a chance to grow up safely; to her grandmother, who had entrusted her with the future of a city and its people; to those who had already given their lives to help preserve her own; and to those who were prepared to do so, who trusted and believed in her.

But even that was not enough by itself to persuade her. There must be something more, she knew—something that transcended expectations and conscience, something more fundamental still. It was the existence of need. She already knew, deep within herself, that genocide was abhorrent and that she must find some other solution to the dilemma of the future of the Elves and their magic. But if they lived, if she was successful in restoring them to the Westland, what would become of them then if she was to walk
away? Who would lead them in the fight that lay ahead? Who would guide and counsel them? Could she leave the matter to chance, or even to the dictates of the High Council? The need of the Elven people was great, and she did not think she could ignore it even if it meant changing her own life entirely.