The Elf Queen of Shannara (8 page)

It was nearing sunset when at last they came in sight of Morrowindl. The sun had drifted west to the edge of the horizon, its light growing soft, changing from white to pale orange. A streaking of purple and silver laced a long line of odd-shaped clouds that paraded across the sky like strange animals. Silhouetted against this panorama was the island, dark and misted and forbidding. It was much larger than any other landmass they had encountered, rising up like a wall as they approached. Killeshan lifted its jagged mouth skyward, steam seeping from its throat, slopes dropping away into a thick blanket of fog and ash, disappearing for hundreds of feet until they surfaced again at a shoreline formed of rocky projections and ragged cliffs. Waves crashed against the rocks, white foaming caldrons that threw their spray skyward.

Spirit flew closer, winging down toward the shroud of vog. A stench filled the air, the smell of sulfur escaped from beneath the earth where the volcano's fire burned rock to ash. Through the clouds and mist they could see valleys and ridges, passes and defiles, all heavily forested, a thick, strangling jungle. Tiger Ty glanced back over his shoulder and gestured. They were going to circle the island. Spirit wheeled right at his command. The north end of the island was engulfed in driving rain, a monsoon that inundated everything, creating vast waterfalls that tumbled down cliffs thousands of feet high. West the island was as barren as a desert, all exposed lava rock except for a scattering of brightly flowering shrubs and stunted, gnarled, wind-blown trees. South and east the island was a mass of singular rock formations and black-sand beaches where the shoreline met the waters of the Blue Divide before rising to disappear into jungle and mist.

Wren stared down at Morrowindl apprehensively. It was a forbidding, inhospitable place, a sharp contrast to the other islands they had seen. Weather fronts collided and broke apart. Each side of the island offered a different set of conditions. The whole of it was shadowed and clouded, as if Killeshan were a demon that breathed fire and had wrapped itself in the cloak of its own choking breath.

Tiger Ty wheeled Spirit about one final time, then took him down. The Roc settled cautiously at the edge of a broad, black-sand beach, claws digging into the crushed lava rock, wings folding reluctantly back. The giant bird turned to face the jungle, and his piercing eyes fixed on the mist.

Tiger Ty ordered them to dismount. They released their harness straps and slid to the beach. Wren looked inland. The island rose before her, all rock and trees and mist. They could no longer see the sun. Shadows and half-light lay over everything.

The Wing Rider faced the girl. “I suppose you're still set on this? Stubborn as ever?”

She nodded wordlessly, unwilling to trust herself to speak.

“You listen, then. And think about changing your mind while you do. I showed you all four sides of Morrowindl for a reason. North, it rains all the time, every day, every hour of the day. Sometimes it rains hard, sometimes drizzles. But the water is everywhere. Swamps and pools, falls and drops. If you can't swim, you drown. And there's nests of things waiting to pull you down in any case.”

He gestured with his hand. “West is all desert. You saw. Nothing but open country, hot and dry and barren. You could walk it all the way to the top of the mountain, you probably think. Trouble is, you wouldn't get a mile before you ran crosswise of the things that live under the rock. You'd never see them; they'd have you before you could think. There's thousands of them, all sizes and shapes, most with poison that will kill you quick. Nothing gets through.”

His frown etched the lines of his seamed face even deeper. “That leaves south and east, which it happens are pretty much the same. Rock and jungle and vog and a lot of very unpleasant things that live within. Once off this beach, you won't be safe again until you're back. I told you once that it was a death trap in there. I'll tell you again in case you didn't hear me.

“Miss Wren,” he said softly. “Don't do this. You don't stand a chance.”

She reached out impulsively and took his gnarled hands in her own. “Garth and I will look out for each other,” she promised. “We've been doing so for a long time.”

He shook his head. “It won't be enough.”

She tightened her grip. “How far must we travel to find the Elves? Can you give us some idea?”

He released himself and pointed inland. “Their city, if it's still there, sits halfway down the mountain in a niche that's protected from the lava flows. Most of the flows run east and some of those tunnel under the rock to the sea. From here, it's maybe thirty miles. I don't know what the land's like in there anymore. Ten years changes a lot of things.”

“We'll find our way,” she said. She took a deep breath to steady herself aware of how impossible this effort was likely to prove. She glanced at Garth, who stared back at her stone-faced. She looked again at Tiger Ty. “I need to ask one thing more of you. Will you come back for us? Will you give us sufficient time to make our search and then come back?”

Tiger Ty folded his arms across his chest, his leathery face managing to look both sad and stern. “I'll come, Miss Wren. I'll wait three weeks—time enough for you to make it in and get out again. Then I'll look for you once a week four weeks running.” He shook his head. “But I have to tell you that I think it will be a waste of time. You won't be back. I won't ever see you again.”

She smiled bravely. “I'll find a way, Tiger Ty.”

The Wing Rider's eyes narrowed. “Only one way. You better be meaner and stronger than anything you run up against. And—” He jabbed at her with a bony finger. “—you better be prepared to use your magic!”

He wheeled abruptly and stalked to where Spirit waited. Without pausing, he pulled himself up the harness loops and settled into place. When he had finished fastening the safety straps, he looked back at them.

“Don' try going in at night,” he advised. “The first day, at least, travel when it's light. Keep Killeshan's mouth to your right as you climb.” He threw up his hands. “Demon's blood, but this is a foolish thing you're doing!”

“Don't forget about us, Tiger Ty!” Wren called in reply.

The Wing Rider scowled at her for an instant, then kicked Spirit lightly. The Roc lifted into the air, wings spreading against the wind, rising slowly, wheeling south. In seconds, the giant bird had become nothing more than a speck in the fading light.

Wren and Garth stood silently on the empty beach and watched until the speck had disappeared.

 

 

VI

 

 

T
hey remained on the beach that first night, heeding the advice of Tiger Ty to wait until it was daybreak before starting in. They chose a spot about a quarter of a mile north from where the Wing Rider had dropped them to set up their camp, a broad, open expanse of black sand where the tide line ended more than a hundred feet from the jungle's edge. It was already twilight by then, the sun gone below the horizon, its failing light a faint shimmer against the ocean's waters. As darkness descended, pale silver light from moon and stars flooded the empty beach, reflecting off the sand as if diamonds had been scattered, brightening the shoreline for as far as the eye could see. They quickly ruled out having a fire. Neither light nor heat was required. Situated as they were on the open beach, they could see anything trying to approach, and the air was warm and balmy. A fire would only succeed in drawing attention to them, and they did not want that.

They ate a cold meal of dried meat, bread, and cheese and washed it down with ale. They sat facing the jungle, their backs to the ocean, listening and watching. Morrowindl lost definition as night fell, the sweep of jungle and cliffs and desert disappearing into blackness until at last the island was little more than a silhouette against the sky. Finally even that disappeared, and all that remained was a steady cacophony of sounds. The sounds were indistinguishable for the most part, faint and muffled, a scattering of calls and hoots and buzzings, of birds and insects and animals, all lost deep within the sheltering dark. The waters of the Blue Divide rolled in steady cadence against the island's shores, washing in and retreating again, a slow and steady lapping. A breeze sprang up, soft and fragrant, washing away the last of the day's lingering heat.

When they had finished their meal, they stared wordlessly ahead for a time—at the sky and the beach and the ocean, at nothing at all.

Already Morrowindl made Wren feel uneasy. Even now, cloaked in darkness, invisible and asleep, the island was a presence that threatened. She pictured it in her mind, Killeshan rising up against the sky with its ragged maw open, a patchwork of jungled slopes, towering cliffs, and barren deserts, a chained giant wrapped in vog and mist, waiting. She could feel its breath on her face, anxious and hungry. She could hear it hiss in greeting.

She could sense it watching.

It frightened her more than she cared to admit, and she could not seem to dispel her fear. It was an insidious shadow that crept through the corridors of her mind, whispering words whose meanings were unintelligible but whose intent was clear. She felt oddly bereft of her skills and her training, as if all had been stripped from her at the moment she had arrived. Even her instincts seemed muddled. She could not explain it. It made no sense. Nothing had happened, and yet here she was, her confidence shredded and scattered like straw. Another woman might have been able to take comfort from the fact that she possessed the legendary Elfstones—but not Wren. The magic was foreign to her, a thing to be mistrusted. It belonged to a past she had only heard about, a history that had been lost for generations. It belonged to someone else, someone she did not know. The Elfstones, she thought darkly, had nothing to do with her.

The words brought a chill to the pit of her stomach. They, of course, were a lie.

She put her hands over her face, hiding herself away. Doubts crowded in on every side, and she wondered briefly, futilely, whether her decision to come to Morrowindl had been wrong.

Finally she took her hands away and edged forward until she was close enough in the darkness to see clearly Garth's bearded face. The big man watched unmoving as she lifted her hands and began to sign.

Do you think I made a mistake by insisting we come here?
she asked him.

He studied her for a moment, then shook his head.
It is never a mistake to do something you feel is necessary.

I did feel it necessary.

I know.

“But I did not come just to discover if the Elves are still alive,” she said, fingers moving. “I came to find out about my parents, to learn who they were and what became of them.”

He nodded without replying.

“I didn't use to care, you know,” she went on, trying to explain. “It didn't use to make any difference. I was a Rover, and that was enough. Even after Cogline found us and we went east to the Hadeshorn and met with the Shade of Allanon, even when I began asking about the Elves, hoping to learn something of what had happened to them, I wasn't thinking about my parents. I didn't have any idea where it was all leading. I just went along, asking my questions, learning finally of the Addershag, then of the signal fire. I was just following a trail, curious to see where it would lead.”

She paused. “But the Elfstones, Garth—that was something I hadn't counted on. When I discovered that they were real—that they were the Elfstones of Shea and Wil Ohmsford—everything changed. So much power—and they belonged to my parents. Why? How did my parents come by them in the first place? What was their purpose in giving them to me? You see, don't you? I won't ever have any answers unless I find out who my parents were.”

Garth signed,
I understand. I wouldn't be here with you if I didn't.

“I know that,” she whispered, her throat tightening. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”

They were silent for a moment, eyes turned away. Something huge splashed far out in the water. The sound reverberated momentarily and disappeared. Wren pushed at the rough sand with her boot.

Garth,
she signed, catching his eye.
Is there anything about my parents that you haven't told me?

Garth said nothing, his face expressionless.

“Because if there is,” she signed, “you have to tell me now. You cannot let me continue with this search not knowing.”

Garth shifted, his head lowering into shadow. When he lifted it again, his fingers began to move.
I would not keep anything from you that was not necessary. I keep nothing from you now about your parents. What I know, I have told you. Believe me.

“I do,” she affirmed quietly. Yet the answer troubled her. Was there something else he kept from her, something he considered necessary? Did she have the right to demand to know what it was?

She shook her head. He would never hurt her. That was the important thing. Not Garth.

We will discover the truth about your parents, he
signed suddenly.
I promise.

She reached out briefly to take his hands, then released them. “Garth,” she said, “you are the best friend I shall ever have.”

She kept watch then while he slept, feeling comforted by his words, reassured that she was not alone after all, that they were united in their purpose. Hidden by the darkness, Morrowindl continued to brood, sinister and threatening. But she was not so intimidated now, her resolve strengthened, her purpose clear. It would be as it had been for so many years—she and Garth against whatever waited. It would be enough.

When Garth woke at midnight, she went quickly to sleep.

 

Sunrise brightened the skies with pale silver, but Morrowindl was a black wall that shut that light away. The island stood between the dawn on the one hand and Garth and Wren on the other as if seeking to lock the Rovers permanently in shadow. The beach was still and empty, a black line that stretched away into the distance like a scattered bolt of mourning crepe. Rocks and cliffs jutted out of the green tangle of the jungle, poking forth like trapped creatures seeking to breathe. Killeshan thrust skyward in mute silence, steam curling from fissures down the length of its lava-rock skin. Far distant to the north, a glimpse of the island's desert side revealed a harsh, broken surface over which a blanket of sulfuric mist had been thrown and on which nothing moved.

The Rover girl and her companion washed and ate a hurried breakfast, anxious to be off. The day's heat was already beginning to settle in, chasing the ocean's breezes back across her waters. Seabirds glided and swooped about them, casting for food. Crabs scuttled about the rocks cautiously, seeking shelter in cracks and crevices. All about, the island was waking up.

Wren and Garth shouldered their packs, checked the readiness of their weapons, glanced briefly at each other, and started in.

The beach faded into a short patch of tall grass that in turn gave way to a forest of towering acacia. The trunks of the ancient trees rose skyward like pillars, running back until distance gave them the illusion of being a wall. The floor of the forest was barren and cleared of scrub; storms and risen tides had washed away everything but the giant trees. Within the acacia, all was still. The sun was masked yet in the east, and shadows lay over everything. Wren and Garth walked slowly, steadily ahead, watchful for any form of danger. They passed out of the acacia and into a stand of bamboo. They skirted it until they found a narrowing of the growth and used short swords to hack their way through. From there they proceeded along a meadow where the grasses were waist-high and wildflowers grew in colorful profusion amid the green. Ahead, the forest rose along the slopes of Killeshan, trees and brush amid odd formations of lava rock, all of it disappearing finally into the vog.

The first day passed without incident. They traveled through open country whenever they could find it, choosing a path that let them see what they were walking into. They camped that night in a meadow, comfortably settled on high ground that again gave them a clear view in all directions. The second day passed in the same manner as the first. They made good progress, navigating rivers and streams and climbing ravines and foothills without difficulty. There was no sign of the monsters that Tiger Ty had warned them about. There were brightly colored snakes and spiders that were most certainly poisonous, but the Rovers had dealt with their cousins in other parts of the world and knew enough to avoid any contact. They heard the harsh cough of moor cats, but saw nothing. Once or twice predatory birds flew overhead, but after a series of cursory passes these hunters soon sped away in search of easier prey. It rained frequently and heavily, but never for very long at one time, and except for threatening to trap them in dry riverbeds with an unexpected flash flood or to drop them into newly formed sinkholes, the rain did little more than cool them off.

All the while the haze blanketing Killeshan's slopes drew closer, a promise of harsher things to come.

The third day began in the same way as the two before, shadowed and still and brooding. The sun rose and was visible briefly through the trees ahead, a warm and inviting beacon. Then abruptly it disappeared as the lower edges of the vog descended. The haze was thin and untroubling at first, not much more than a thickening of the air, a graying of the light. But slowly it began to deepen, gathering in patches that screened away everything more than thirty feet from where they walked. The country grew rougher as the shoreline lowlands and grassy foothills gave way to slides and drops, and the lava rock turned crumbly and loose. Footing grew uncertain and the pace slowed.

They ate a hurried, troubled, silent lunch and started out again cautiously. They tied thick hides about their legs above the boot tops and below the knees to protect against snakes. They pulled on their heavy cloaks and wrapped them close. The heat of the lower slopes was absent here, and the air—which they had thought would turn warm as they moved closer to Killeshan—grew cold. Garth took the lead, deliberately shielding Wren. Shadows moved all about them in the mist, things that lacked shape and form but were there nevertheless. The familiar sounds of birds and insects died away, fading into an expectant hush. Dusk fell early, a draining away of light, and rain began to fall in steady sheets.

They made their camp at the foot of an ancient koa that fronted a small clearing. With their backs to the tree, they ate their dinner and watched the light deepen from smoke to charcoal. The rain slowed to an intermittent drizzle, and mist began to creep down the mountainside in probing tendrils. Already the forest was beginning to turn to jungle, the trees thickly grown and tangled with vines, the ground damp and soft and yielding. Slugs and beetles crawled through brush and rotting logs. The ground was dry beneath the koa, but the dampness in the air seemed to penetrate everywhere. There was no possibility of a fire. Wren and Garth hunched within their cloaks and pushed closer to each other. The night settled down about them, turning the world an inky black.

Wren offered to stand the first watch, too edgy to sleep. Garth acquiesced without comment. He pulled up his knees, put his head on his crossed arms, and was asleep almost immediately.

Wren sat staring into the blackness. The trees and mist screened away any light from moon and stars, and even after her eyes had adjusted it was impossible to see more than a dozen feet from where she kept watch. Shadows drifted at the periphery of her vision, brief, quick, and suggestive. Sounds darted out of the haze to challenge and tease—the shrill call of night birds, the click of insects, scrapes and rustlings, huffings and snarls. The low cough of hunting cats came from somewhere distant. She could smell faintly the sulfur fumes of Killeshan, wafting on the air, mingling with the thicker, more pungent scents of the jungle. All around her an invisible world was waking up.

Let it,
she thought defiantly.

The air grew still as even the drizzle faded away and only fog remained. Time slipped away. The sounds slowed and softened, and there was a sense that everything out there in the blackness lay in wait, that everything watched. She was aware that the shadows at the edge of the encroaching mist had faded away. Garth was snoring softly. She shifted her cramped body but made no effort to rise. She liked the feel of the tree against her back and Garth pressing close. She hated how the island made her feel—exposed, vulnerable, unprotected. It was the newness, she told herself. It was the unfamiliarity of the terrain, the isolation from her own country, the memory of Tiger Ty's warning that there were monsters here. It would take time to adjust . . .