She found the Elves’ response remarkable. There was no panic, no sense of despair, and no threats or accusations against the queen for making her decision. There was uncertainty, of course, and a healthy measure of doubt. None among the Elves had been alive when Arborlon had been carried out of the Westland, and while all had heard the story of the migration to Morrowindl, few had given much thought to migrating out again. Even with the city ringed by the demons and life drastically altered from what it was in the time of Ellenroh’s father, concern for the future had not embraced the possibility of employing the Loden’s magic. As a result the people talked of leaving as if the idea was an entirely new one, a prospect freshly conceived, and for the most part the conversations that Wren listened in on suggested that if Ellenroh Elessedil believed it best, then certainly it must be so. It was a tribute to the confidence that the Elves placed in their queen that they would accept her proposal so readily—especially when it was as drastic as this one.
“It will be nice to be able to go out of the city again,” more than one said. “We’ve lived behind walls for too long.”
“Travel the roads and see the world,” others agreed. “I love my home, but I miss what lies beyond.”
There was more than one mention of life without the constant threat of demons, of a world where the dark things were just a memory and the young could grow without having to accept that the Keel was all that allowed them to survive and there could never be any kind of existence beyond. Some expressed concern about how the magic worked, or if it even would, but most seemed satisfied with the queen’s assurance that life within the city would go on as always during the journey, that the magic would protect and insulate against whatever happened without, and that it would be as before except that in place of the Keel there would be a darkness that none could pass through until the magic of the Loden was recalled.
She ran across Aurin Striate in the market center. The Owl had been up since dawn gathering together the supplies the company of nine would require to make the journey down Killeshan’s slopes to the beaches. His task was made difficult mostly by the queen’s determination that they would take only what they could carry on their backs and that stealth and quickness would serve them best in their efforts to elude the demons.
“The magic, as I understand it, works like this,” he explained as they walked back toward the palace. “There’s both a wrapping about and a carrying away when it is invoked. Once in place, it protects against intrusions from without, like a shell. At the same time, it removes you to another place—city and all—and keeps you there until the spell is released. There is a kind of suspension in time. That way you don’t feel anything of what’s happening during the journey,—you don’t have any sense of movement.”
“So everything just goes on as before?” Wren queried, trying to envision how that could happen.
“Pretty much. There isn’t any day or night, just a grayness as if the skies were cloudy, the queen tells me. There’s air and water and all the things you need to survive, all wrapped carefully away in this sort of cocoon.”
“And what happens once you get to where you are going?”
“The queen removes the Loden’s spell, and the city is restored.”
Wren’s eyes shifted to find the Owl’s. “Assuming, of course, that what Ellenroh has been told about the magic is the truth.”
The Owl sighed. “So young to be so skeptical.” He shook his head. “If it isn’t the truth, Wren, what does any of this matter? We are trapped on Morrowindl without hope, aren’t we? A few might save themselves by slipping past the dark things, but most would perish. We have to believe the magic will save us, girl, because the magic is all we have.”
She left him as they neared the palace gates, letting him go on ahead, tired eyed and stoop shouldered, his thin, rumpled shadow cast against the earth, a mirror of himself. She liked Aurin Striate. He was comfortable and easy in the manner of old clothes. She trusted him. If anyone could see them through the journey that lay ahead, it was the Owl.
She turned away from the palace and wandered absently toward the Gardens of Life. She had not looked for Garth when she had risen, slipping from her room instead to search out the queen. But Ellenroh was nowhere to be found once again, and so she had decided to walk out into the city by herself. Now, her walk completed, she found that she still preferred to be alone. She let her thoughts stray as she entered the deserted Gardens, making her way up the gentle incline toward the Ellcrys, and her thoughts, as they had from the moment she had come awake, gravitated stubbornly toward Gavilan Elessedil. She stopped momentarily, picturing him. When she closed her eyes she could feel him kissing her. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She had only been kissed once or twice in her life—always too busy with her training, aloof and unapproachable, caught up in other things, to be bothered with boys. There had been no time for relationships. She had had no interest in them. Why was that? she wondered suddenly. But she knew that she might as well inquire as to why the sky was blue as to question who she had become.
She opened her eyes again and walked on.
When she reached the Ellcrys, she studied it for a time before seating herself within its shade. Gavilan Elessedil. She liked him. Maybe too much. It seemed instinctual, and she distrusted the unexpected intensity of her feelings. She barely knew him, and already she was thinking of him more than she should. He had kissed her, and she had welcomed it. Yet it angered her that he was hiding what he knew about the magic and the demons, a truth he refused to share with her, a secret so many of the Elves harbored—Ellenroh, Eowen, and the Owl among them. But she was bothered more by Gavilan’s reticence because he had come to her to proclaim himself a friend, he had promised to answer her questions when she asked them, he had kissed her and she had let him, and despite everything he had gone back on his word. She smoldered inwardly at the betrayal, and yet she found herself anxious to forgive him, to make excuses for him, and to give him a chance to tell her in his own time.
But was it any different with Gavilan than it had been with her grandmother? she asked herself suddenly. Hadn’t she used the same reasoning with both?
Perhaps her feelings for each were not so very different.
The thought troubled her more than she cared to admit, and she shoved it hastily away.
It was still and calm within the Gardens, secluded amid the trees and flower beds, cool and removed beneath the silken covering of the Ellcrys. She let her eyes wander across the blanket of colors that formed the Gardens, studying the way they swept the earth like brush strokes, some short and broad, some thin and curving, borders of brightness that shimmered in the light. Overhead, the sun shone down out of a cloudless blue sky, and the air was warm and sweet smelling. She drank it in slowly, carefully, savoring it, aware as she did so that it would all be gone after tonight, that when the magic of the Loden was invoked she would be cast adrift once more in the wilderness dark of Morrowindl. She had been able to forget for a time the horror that lay beyond the Keel, to block away her memories of the stench of sulfur, the steaming fissures in the crust of lava rock, the swelter of Killeshan’s heat rising off the earth, the darkness and the vog, and the rasps and growls of the demons at hunt. She shivered and hugged herself. She did not want to go back out into it. She felt it waiting like a living thing, crouched down patiently, determined it would have her, certain she must come.
She closed her eyes again and waited for the bad feelings to subside, gathering her determination a little at a time, calming herself, reasoning that she would not be alone, that there would be others with her, that they would all protect one another, and that the journey down out of the mountains would pass quickly and then they would be safe. She had climbed unharmed to Arborlon, hadn’t she? Surely she could go back down again.