But here she was nevertheless. And the answers to all her questions lay just beyond the light.
“Stresa,” she whispered, “is there a way to get into the city?”
The Splinterscat’s eyes shone in the dark. “Wrroowwll, Wren of the Elves. You are determined to go down there, are you?” When she failed to respond, he said, “Within a ravine that—hrrwwll—lies close to where the demons prowl, there are tunnels hidden. Sssstttpht. The tunnels lead into the city. The Elves use them to sneak away—or did once upon a time. That was how they let us out to keep watch for them. Phhffft. Perhaps there is still one in use, do you think?”
“Can you find it?” she asked softly.
The Splinterscat blinked.
“Will you show it to me?”
“Hssstttt. Will you remember your promise to take me with you when this is finished?”
“I will.”
“Very well.” The cat face furrowed. “The tunnels, then. Which of us goes? Ssttpht.”
“Garth, you, and me.”
The Tree Squeak chittered instantly.
Stresa purred. “I thought as much. The Squeak plans on going, too. Rwwwll. Why not? It’s only a Squeak.”
Wren hesitated. She felt the Tree Squeak’s fingers clutch tightly at her arm. The Squeak chittered once more.
“Sssttt.” Stresa might have been laughing. “She says to tell you that her name is Faun. She has decided to adopt you.”
“Faun.” Wren repeated the name and smiled faintly. “Is that your name, little one?” The round eyes were fixed on her, the big ears cocked forward. It seemed odd that the Tree Squeak should even have a name. “So you would adopt me, would you? And go where I go?” She shook her head ruefully. “Well, it is your country. And I probably couldn’t keep you from going if I tried.”
She glanced at Garth to make certain he was ready. The rough face was calm and the dark eyes fathomless. She took a last look down at the madness below, then pushed back the fear and the doubt and told herself with as much conviction as she could muster that she was a Rover girl and that she could survive anything.
Her fingers passed briefly across the hard surface of the Elfstones.
If it becomes necessary...
She blocked the thought away. “Lead us in, Stresa,” she whispered. “And keep us safe.”
The Splinterscat didn’t bother to reply.
Chapter Nine
Wren Ohmsford could not remember a time when she had been afraid of much of anything. It simply wasn’t her nature. Even when she was small and the world was still new and strange and virtually everyone and everything in it was either bigger and stronger or quicker and meaner, she was never frightened. No matter the danger, whatever the uncertainty, she remained confident that somehow she would find a way to protect herself. This confidence was innate, a mix of iron-willed determination and self-assurance that had given her a special kind of inner strength all her life. As she grew, particularly after she went to live with the Rovers and began her training with Garth, she acquired the skill and experience needed to make certain that her confidence was never misplaced, that it never exceeded her ability.
All that had changed when she had come in search of the Elves. Twice since she had begun that search she had found herself unexpectedly terrified. The first time had been when the Shadowen that had tracked them all through the Westland had finally shown itself on the first night of the signal fire, and she had discovered to her horror that she was powerless against it. All of her training and all of her skill availed her nothing. She should have known it would be like that; certainly Par had warned her when he had related the details of his own encounter with the dark creatures. But for some reason she had thought it would be different with her—or perhaps she simply hadn’t considered what it would be like at all. In any case, there she had been, bereft of Garth—Garth, whom she had believed stronger and quicker than anything!—face to face with something against which no amount of confidence and ability could prevail.
She would have died that night if she had not been able to call upon the magic of the Elfstones. The magic alone had been able to save them both.
Now, as she made her way forward with the others of her little company through the darkness and vog of Morrowindl, as they crept slowly ahead into a nightmare world of shadows and monsters, she found herself terrified anew. She tried to rationalize it away,—she tried to argue against it. Nothing helped. She knew the truth of things, and the truth was the same as it had been that night at the ruins of the Wing Hove when she had confronted the Shadowen. Confidence, skill, experience, and Garth’s protective presence, however formidable in most instances, were of little reassurance here. Morrowindl was a cauldron of unpredictable magic and unreasoning evil, and the only weapon she possessed that was likely to prove effective against it was the Elfstones. Magic alone kept the Elves alive inside the walls of Arborlon. Magic, however misguided, had apparently summoned the evil that besieged them. Magic had changed forever the island and the things that lived upon it. There was no reason for Wren to think that she could survive on Morrowindl for very long without using magic of her own.
Yet use of the Elfstones was as frightening to her as the monsters the magic was intended to protect against. Look at her; as a Rover girl, she had spent her entire life learning to depend upon her own skills and training and to believe that there was nothing they could not overcome. That was how Garth had schooled her and what life with the Rovers had taught her, but more important it was what she had always believed. The world and the things in it were governed by a set of behavioral laws; learn those laws and you could withstand anything. Reading trail signs, understanding habits, knowing another’s weaknesses and strengths, using your senses to discover what was there—those were the things that kept you alive. But magic? What was magic? It was invisible, a force beyond nature’s laws, an unknown that defied understanding. It was power without discernible limits. How could you trust something like that? The history of her family, of Ohmsfords ten generations gone, suggested you could not. Look what the magic had done to Wil and Brin and Jair. What certainty was there if she was forced to rely on something so unpredictable? What would using the magic do to her? True, it had been summoned easily enough in her confrontation with the Shadowen. It had flowed ever so smoothly from the Stones, come almost effortlessly, striking at the mere direction of her thoughts. There had been no sense of wrongness in its use—indeed, it was as if the power had been waiting to be summoned, as if it belonged to her.
She shivered at the recognition of what that meant. She had been given the Elfstones, she knew, in the belief that one day she would need them. Their power was intended to be hers.
She tightened her resolve against such an idea. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want the magic. She wanted her life to stay as it was, not to be irrevocably changed—for it would be so—by power that exceeded her understanding and, she believed, her need.
Except, of course, now—here on Killeshan’s slopes, surrounded by demons, by things formed of magic and dark intention, set upon a landscape of fire and mist, where in a second’s time she could be lost, unless...
She cut the thought short, refusing to complete it, focusing instead on Stresa’s quilled bulk as the Splinterscat tunneled his way through the gloom. Shadows wafted all about as the vog shifted and reformed, cloaking and lifting clear from islands of jungle scrub and bare lava rock, as if the substance of a kaleidoscopic world that could not decide what it wanted to be. Growls sounded, disembodied and directionless, low and threatening as they rose and fell away again. She crouched down in the haze, a frantic inner voice shrieking at her to disappear, to burrow into the rock, to become invisible, to do anything to escape. She ignored the voice, looking back for Garth instead, finding him reassuringly close, then thinking in the next instance that it made no difference, that he was not enough, that nothing was.