Wren smiled, a trifle uncomfortable with the prospect. “Tell me anyway, Owl.”
Aurin Striate nodded. “This is what I’ve been told, then—not what I necessarily know. The Elves recovered some part of their faerie magic more than a hundred years back, before Morrowindl, while they were still living in the Westland. I don’t know how they did it; I don’t really suppose I care. What’s important to know is that when they made the decision to migrate, they supposedly channeled what there was of the magic into an Elfstone called the Loden. The Loden, I think, had always been there, hidden away, kept secret for the time when it would be needed. That time didn’t come for hundreds of years—not in all the time that passed after the Great Wars. But the Elessedils had it put away, or they found it again, or something, and when the decision was made to migrate, they put it to use.”
He took a steadying breath and tightened his lips. “This Elfstone, like all of them, I’m told, draws its strength from the user. Except in this case, there wasn’t just a single user but an entire race. The whole of the strength of the Elven nation went into invoking the Loden’s magic.” He cleared his throat. “When it was done, all of Arborlon had been picked up like... like a scoop of earth, shrunk down to nothing, and sealed within the Stone. And that’s what I mean when I say Arborlon was brought to Morrowindl. It was sealed inside the Loden along with most of its people and carried by just a handful of caretakers to this island. Once a site for the city was found, the process was reversed and Arborlon was restored. Men, women, children, dogs, cats, birds, animals, houses and shops, trees, flowers, grass—everything. The Ellcrys, too. All of it.”
He sat back and the sharp eyes narrowed. “So now what do you say?”
Wren was stunned. “I say you’re right, Owl. I don’t believe it. I can’t conceive of how the Elves were able to recover something that had been lost for thousands of years that fast. Where did it come from? They hadn’t any magic at all in the time of Brin and Jair Ohmsford—only their healing powers!”
The Owl shrugged. “I don’t pretend to know how they did any of it, Wren. It was long before my time. The queen might know—but she’s never said a word about it to me. I only know what I was told, and I’m not sure if I believe that. The city and its people were carried here in the Loden. That’s the story. And that’s how the Keel was built, too. Well, it was actually constructed of stone by hand labor first, but the magic that protects it came out of the Loden. I was a boy then, but I remember the old king using the Ruhk Staff. The Ruhk Staff holds the Loden and channels the magic.”
“You’ve seen this?” Wren asked doubtfully.
“I’ve seen the Staff and its Stone many times,” the Owl answered. “I saw them used only that once.”
“What about the demons?” Wren went on, wanting to learn more, trying to make sense of what she was hearing. “What of them? Can’t the Loden and the Ruhk Staff be used against them?”
The Owl’s face darkened, changing expression so quickly that it caught Wren by surprise. “No,” he answered quietly. “The magic is useless against the demons.”
“But why is that?” she pressed. “The magic of the Elfstones I carry can destroy them. Why not the magic of the Loden?”
He shook his head. “It’s a different kind of magic, I guess.”
He didn’t sound very sure of himself. Quickly Wren said, “Tell me where the demons came from, Owl?”
Aurin Striate looked uncomfortable. “Why ask me, Wren Elessedil?”
“Ohmsford,” she corrected at once.
“I don’t think so.”
There was a strained silence as they faced each other, eyes locked. “They came out of the magic, too, didn’t they?” Wren said finally, unwilling to back off.
The Owl’s sharp gaze was steady. “You ask the queen, Wren. You talk with her.”
He rose abruptly. “Now that you know how the city got here, according to legend at least, let’s finish looking around. There’s three sets of gates in the Keel, one main and two small. See over there...”
He started off, still talking, explaining what they were seeing, steering the conversation away from the questions no one seemed to want to answer. Wren listened halfheartedly, more interested in the tale of how the Elves had come to Morrowindl. It required such incredible magic to gather up an entire city, reduce it to the size of an Elfstone, and seal it inside for a journey that would carry it over an ocean. She still could not conceive of it. Elven magic recovered from out of faerie, from a time that was barely remembered—it was incredible. All that power, and still no way to break free of the demons, no way to destroy them. Her mouth tightened against a dozen protestations. She really didn’t know what to believe.
They spent the morning and the early part of the afternoon walking through the city. They climbed to the ramparts and looked out over the land beyond, dim and hazy, empty of movement save where Killeshan’s steam erupted and the vog swirled. They saw Phaeton again, passing from the city to the Keel, oblivious to them, his strong features scarred and rough beneath his sun-bleached hair. The Owl watched stone faced and was turning to continue their walk when Wren asked him to tell her about Phaeton. The queen’s field commander, Aurin Striate answered, second in command only to Barsimmon Oridio and anxious to succeed him.
“Why don’t you like him?” Wren asked bluntly.
The Owl cocked one eyebrow. “That’s a hard one to explain. It’s a fundamental difference between us, I suppose. I spend most of my time outside the walls, prowling the night with the demons, taking a close look at where they are and what they’re about. I live like them much of the time, and when you do that you get to know them. I know the kinds and their habits, more about them than anyone. But Phaeton, he doesn’t think any of that matters. To him, the demons are simply an enemy that need to be destroyed. He wants to take the Elven army out there and sweep them away. He’s been after Barsimmon Oridio and the queen to let him do exactly that for months. His men love him; they think he’s right because they want to believe he knows something they don’t. We’ve been shut away behind the Keel for almost ten years. Life goes on, and you can’t tell by just looking or even by talking to the people, but they’re all sick at heart. They remember how they used to live and they want to live that way again.”
Wren considered momentarily bringing up the subject of how the demons got there and why they couldn’t simply be sent back again, but decided against it. Instead she said, “You think that there isn’t any hope of the army winning out there, I gather.”
The Owl fixed her with a hard stare. “You were out there with me, Wren—which is more than Phaeton can say. You traveled up from the beach to get here. You faced the demons time and again. What do you think? They’re not like us. There’s a hundred different kinds, and each of them is dangerous in a different way. Some you can kill with an iron blade and some you can’t. Down along the Rowen there’s the Revenants—all teeth and claws and muscle. Animals. Up on Blackledge there’s the Draculs—ghosts that suck the life out of you, like smoke, nothing to fight, nothing to put a sword to. And that’s only two kinds,Wren.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think we can win out there. I think we’ll be lucky if we can manage to stay alive in here.”
They walked on a bit farther and then Wren said, “The Splinterscat told me that the magic that shields the city is weakening.”
She made it a statement of fact and not a question and waited for an answer. For a long time the Owl did not respond, his head lowered toward his stride, his eyes on the ground before him.
Finally, he looked over, just for a moment, and said, “The Scat is right.”
They went down into the city proper for a time, wandering into the shops and poring over the carts that dominated the marketplace, perusing the wares and studying the people buying and selling them. Arborlon was a city that in all respects but one might have been any other. Wren gazed at the faces about her, seeing her own Elven features reflected in theirs, the first time she had ever been able to do that, pleased with the experience and with the idea that she was the first person to be able to do so in more than a hundred years. The Elves were alive; the Elves existed. It was a wondrous discovery, and it still excited her to have been the one to have made it.