Wards of Faerie: The Dark Legacy of Shannara (25 page)

Soon enough she had arrived, and she was back in her childhood for a few precious moments before taking out the pouch with the Elfstones and spilling them into her palm. She stood staring down at the perfectly formed gemstones, admiring the simplicity of their design, the stunning depth of their blue color, and the play of light through their smooth facets. She had never seen them, had only been able to imagine how they would look. Her imagination had not been equal to the task.

She took a deep breath. What should she do next?

Three stones—one each for the heart, mind, and body of the user, representing a combination of personal strengths that must be brought to bear. The weight and intensity of those strengths would determine the success of her effort.

But she had no image she could bring to mind of what it was she sought. She knew nothing of the place in which the missing Elfstones might be hidden, or even what they looked like. Those who had lived at the time they’d been stolen were long dead.

On what could she focus that would reveal what she wanted to know? What image would it take?

For a moment, she felt overwhelmed. What she had been given to do was so important that even the thought of failure was debilitating. This was the only chance the Druids might have to find what they sought, the only opportunity that might be given to them. And the opportunity belonged to her. What she made of it might well influence everything that happened afterward. She could not afford to make a mistake.

But what must she do? What image must she attempt to summon?

She stood lost in thought for a long time, considering her choices, finding them weak or convoluted or simply useless. Why was she finding this so difficult?

Finally, she walked over to a fallen log and sat down to think. She knew she was distraught, confused, worried, and a dozen other things and all of these were working against her. She took a moment
to distance herself from the present, recalling the times she had come here as a child. She looked out across the few segments of the Rill Song that were visible through the trees where the river snaked its way west, a silver thread amid the deep greens. She looked at the sky, streaked with wisps of clouds and washed with sunlight. The day was bright and clear and smelled of home.

She wondered suddenly if perhaps she did belong here among her own people rather than at Paranor with the Druids.

Perhaps Ellich and the others were right.

Abruptly she was back on her feet, pushing the thought aside, burying it. Elfstones tightly clasped, she stretched out her arm, eyes closed, summoning an image of three blue Elfstones nestled among a collection of others, their colors varied and shifting, all of them back-dropped by a wash of whiteness that caused everything else to disappear.

She focused her thoughts on the image, allowed her breathing to slow and her body to relax and disappear into herself.
Where are you?

She felt a slow, insistent heat begin to rise. The magic was awake, an unmistakable presence within her. It stirred sluggishly, troubling her like an itch, then began to spread, flowing from her hand into her outstretched arm, into her chest and through her body, filling her up until she was consumed. She felt no fear as this happened; she experienced no distress. If anything, it felt natural to her. It felt familiar in the way that something you have never seen but always known in your heart feels familiar.

Show me what I need to know
.

The heat turned to a brilliant blue light that enveloped her fist, swallowing it. The light intensified, building strength. She watched it happen, fascinated. The light pulsated; its steady throbbing seemed to match the beating of her heart.

Then the light broke free and shot away into the afternoon light and took her with it.

Surrounded by the blue glow of Elven magic, she rides it across the landscape of the Elven Westland, a passenger aboard a swift bird in flight. She is frightened at first, but almost as fast as it appears the fear is gone. She senses she is in no danger; she can feel the rightness of what is happening to her. She has summoned the magic, communicated her wishes, and now she is to be shown what she has asked to see. She need only pay attention to the signposts along the way. She need only take note of the path that the Druids would soon be required to follow. She must remember everything to help them do so
.

She is whisked across the Rill Song and into the broad valley of the Sarandanon, the bread basket of the Elven nation. Planted fields and orchards spread away in patchwork fashion, squares and rectangles. Men and women work those fields. Livestock graze them. Homes and barns and pens mark the beginning and end of territories claimed and cultivated. Sunlight bathes the landscape, and time slows
.

Then she is past the farmland and heading for the stark wall of the Kensrowe Mountains, the light suddenly angling north of the passes at Halys Cut and Baen Draw, north of the broad flat surface of the Innisbore. She is being taken into territory she has never seen, farther north still toward the juncture of the Breakline and Hoare Flats. This is Troll country, wild and mostly unexplored. The light angles this way and that through the mountain peaks, dropping far enough that she can see clearly the features of the ground beneath her. She sees strange, remarkable formations. A trio of rock columns have the look of sentries. A deep depression in the earth is riven with gullies and splits. Marshland is cradled between huge mountains and given life by a microclimate peculiar to a piece of land that cannot consist in total of more than a dozen miles
.

The light carries her farther still, deeper into the mountains, much closer to the earth than earlier. She is skimming the ground like a swimmer riding the crest of a wave. She feels heat and cold envelop her in sudden bursts, unaccounted for by anything she is seeing. The mountains surround her, vast and immutable. Ahead, beyond the Breakline and Hoare Flats, lie miles of bleak wilderness that eventually lead to the Blue Divide. Only Wing Riders venture this far into the mountains, able to fly safely overhead aboard their Rocs, and even they come only when it is necessary. This is dangerous country, a treacherous landscape filled with creatures and strangeness that Elves have only heard about and no one she knows has ever seen
.

But this is where she has been taken, so this is where the Druids must come
.

Then everything begins to happen very fast. The blue light seems to pick up speed and the landscape to blur. The mountains and their distinctive formations lose shape and sharpness, and everything flashes by so quickly that she loses her sense of direction entirely
.

Ahead, something shimmers in the darkness
.

A curtain of some kind. A waterfall, perhaps
.

But it is dark and troubling
.

The blue light spears directly toward the shimmering, carrying her in its grip, a suddenly unwilling passenger fearful of what is about to happen. She feels an unmistakable urgency and finds herself holding her breath
.

Caught up in the Elfstone magic, she strikes the shimmering surface and passes through. She feels no impact on doing so, but senses an odd change in her makeup—as if she has lost some part of herself
.

Things get even stranger after that
.

The blue light carries her through forests and over mountains and plains and across rivers and lakes. None of them look familiar. There is a fresh sense of urgency to the light’s movement. A fortress flashes past, dark and scarred and jagged, and then something else—something she cannot identify—vast and circular and menacing. Down she sweeps through an opening in the earth, down into depths so dark she can see almost nothing. A flash of stone steps startles her, what appears to be a passageway follows, then a cavern, and then something massive and alive that stirs in recognition of the magic’s intrusion
.

And finally she spies a small metal box on which is carved a crest of crossed blades athwart a field of wheat with a bird flying overhead
.

An instant later the blue light fades, the magic dies away, and she is back in her forest sanctuary staring out at the sunlit sweep of the Elven Westland
.

She stood where she was for a moment, still caught up in the swiftness of her journey, stunned by the abruptness of her return. She
stared out across the plains west from her vantage point on the heights, knowing she must remember everything.

It was all a jumble of images, but she knew she had to sort those images out, had to place them in sequence and store them carefully.

She was attempting to do so when she sensed movement behind her.

She turned just as the five black-garbed figures came at her out of the trees. They carried iron bars and wooden cudgels, and there were too many of them. She would have been finished if she hadn’t still been holding the Elfstones. Her fear and desperation triggered their magic instantly. A fireball of blue light exploded from her clenched fist and hammered into her attackers, stopping them before they reached her, tossing them aside as if they weighed nothing.

She hesitated only an instant before bolting for freedom.

It was an instant too long.

They lay scattered about her in various stages of semi-consciousness, and she had thought to get past them before they could recover their wits. She ran hard, dodging bodies and limbs, but she missed noticing the man who had been farthest away from the blow dealt to the others. He was on his knees, crouched and ready as she sped past him. She was well within reach of the iron bar he gripped, and he swung hard at her as she fled, the bar connecting with her left leg. She went down screaming in pain, her shinbone broken, and he was on her instantly.

Sitting astride her chest, pressing the bar down hard against her throat so that she could not breathe, he whispered. “Give me the Elfstones. Quick now, or I’ll break your neck, too.”

Her air cut off, her body pinned, black spots obscuring her vision, she opened her fingers.

In the next instant, the man disappeared, his weight gone as he tumbled away. She gave out a gasp of relief, able to breathe again, and tried to see what was happening. A battle was being fought between her attackers and someone else. But there were bodies flying everywhere, and forest shadows were mixed with black-clad attackers. She could hear grunts and cries, the sounds of metal on metal and the sharp hiss of life suddenly cut short. Several of her attackers went
sprawling anew, and this time they did not get up. Two—she thought them the last—fought in silent desperation against a newcomer. No one spoke. The battle was swift and brutal and final.

In seconds all of those who had sought to hurt her lay still, and Cymrian was kneeling next to her.

“You test my patience, Aphen.”

She struggled to rise, but he pushed her down. “Don’t do that. Your leg is broken and needs to be set.”

She nodded and lay back obediently. “Thanks for coming,” she whispered.

“I would have come sooner if I had known where you were.”

She nodded again. “I know. It was foolish not to tell you the truth. I’m sorry.”

“Just promise me you won’t lie to me again.”

“I promise.” She met his gaze and held it. “I do.”

He reached down and handed her the Elfstones. “I think it would be best if you kept these.”

She took the Stones from him, fumbled them into her pocket, and watched in silence as he began the work of splinting her leg.

15

T
HE TALL THIN MAN WITH THE FLAT-BLACK ROBES AND
eyes to match strode through the halls of the Federation Council chambers at midday like a wraith through a graveyard. His passage was soundless, but it drew immediate attention. Men and women stepped aside for him, offering fawning words and submissive gestures. He gave them nods of recognition, small acknowledgments with a lifting of his hand and a ruffling of his sleeve, meaningless gestures, his face dispassionate, his expression unrevealing. He kept his body still as he walked so that it appeared as if he were gliding. He kept his head bowed so that it seemed as if he were in some sense as deferential to them as they were to him.

But he was nothing of what he appeared, neither deferential nor dispassionate. He saw those he passed not as colleagues or equals, certainly not as friends or fellow citizens. They were of little importance to him, there to serve his purposes, whatever those purposes might be, there to fulfill whatever wishes might need fulfilling.

Though he would never let them see this. How he used them and how they responded were acts seemingly unrelated, in which everything was achieved as if in the natural course of things, as predestined and inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun.

It had taken him a while to reach a point where he was able to accomplish this. He had toiled as a mere functionary in the beginning,
quiet and obsequious, always in the background, always letting others claim credit for the successes he had fostered. Years passed before he was able to elevate himself to a Minister’s position, still a shadow among substantial men and women, still helping others without asking for their consideration, toiling in the warrens and hallways of the Council chambers and offices, one among many, but never one they noticed.