She shook her head, and her fingers moved as she spoke. “No, Garth. If I am lost, they will need you to see them safely to the beaches and to Tiger Ty. They will need your experience. I love you, Garth, but you can do nothing to help me here. You must stay.”
The big man looked at her as if she had struck him.
“This is the time we always knew would come,” she told him, quiet and insistent, “the time for which you have worked so hard to train me. It is too late now for any further lessons. I have to rely on what I know.”
She took Faun from her shoulder and placed her on the ground beside Stresa. “Stay, little one,” she commanded, and stepped away.
“Rrrwwlll! Wren, of the Elves, take me!” Stresa snapped, spines bristling. “I can track for you—better than any of these others!”
She shook her head once more. “The Elfstones can track better still. Garth will see you safely to the Westland, Stresa, if I should fail to return. He knows of my promise to you.”
She removed her pack, dropped her weapons—all but the long knife at her waist. The four men, the Splinterscat, and the Tree Squeak watched in silence. Carefully she shook the Elfstones from their pouch, dropping them into her open hand. Her fingers closed.
Then, before she could think better of it, she turned and stalked into the mist.
She walked straight ahead for a time, simply concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, distance between herself and those who would keep her safe. She crossed the bare lava rock, a solitary hunter, feeling herself turn cold within, numb from the intensity of her determination. Eowen spoke to her out of memory, telling her of the vision she had seen so long ago, the vision of her own death. No, Wren swore silently. Not now, now while I still breathe.
The Drakuls began to whisper to her, urging her on, calling her to them. Within, fury battled back against fear. I will come to you, all right—hut not as you would have me!
She passed through a line of silvered trunks, wood stakes barren and stark, a gate into the netherworld of the dead. She saw faces appear, gaunt and empty, skulls within the mist. She brought up the Elfstones, held them forth, and summoned their power. It came at once, obedient to her will, blazing to life with blue fire and streaking out into the haze. It took her left along a flat where nothing grew, where no trace of what had been survived. Ahead, far in the distance, she could see a gathering of white forms, bodies shifting, turning as if to greet her. Voices reached out, cries and whispers, a summons to death.
The blue fire faded, and she walked blindly on.
Wren, she heard Eowen call.
She shut her sense of urgency away, forcing herself to move cautiously, watching everything around her, the movement of shadows and mist, the hint of life coming awake. Stresa had been right. It was growing dark now, the afternoon lengthening toward evening, the light beginning to fail. She knew she would not reach Eowen before nightfall. It was what the Drakuls intended; it was what they had planned all along. Eowen’s magic drew them like her own—but it was hers that they wanted, that was most powerful, that would feed them best. Eowen was bait for the trap that was meant to snare her.
She shut her eyes momentarily against the inevitability of it. She should have known all along.
The voices grew louder, more insistent, and she saw figures begin to take form at the edges of her vision, faint and ethereal in the mist. A ravine opened before her—the one in which she had lost Eowen? she wondered. She didn’t know and didn’t care. She went down into it without slowing, following the magic’s lead, feeling the iron of it fill her now with its heat, fired in the forge of her soul. She didn’t know how much time had passed—an hour, more? She had lost all track of time, all sense of everything but what she had come to do. Queen of the Elves, keeper of the Rikh Staff and Loden, bearer of Druid magic, and heir to the blood of Elessedils and Ohmsfords alike—she was all these and she was none, made instead of something more, something undefinable.
Nothing, she told herself, could stand against her.
The darkness closed about as she reached the bottom of the ravine, the faint light above lost in mist and shadows. The Drakuls appeared boldly now, skeletal forms come slowly into view, gaunt and stripped of all life but that which their Shadowen existence gave them. They were hesitant still, afraid of the magic and at the same time eager for it. They looked upon her with hungry eyes, anxious to taste her, to make her their own. She felt the Elfstones burn against her palm in warning, but still she did not summon their magic. She walked ahead boldly, the living among the dead.
Wren, she heard Eowen call again.
A wall of pale bodies blocked her way. They were human of a sort, shaped as such, but twisted, pale imitations of what they had been in life. They turned to meet her, no longer apparitions that shimmered and threatened to dissolve at a breath of wind, but things taking on the substance of life.
“Eowen!” she cried out.
One by one the Drakuls stood away, and there was Eowen. She lay cradled in their arms, as white-skinned as they save for her fire-red hair and emerald eyes. The eyes glittered as they sought Wren’s own, alive with horror. Eowen’s mouth was open as if she were trying to breathe—or scream.
The mouths of the Drakuls were fastened to her body, feeding.
For an instant Wren could not move, stricken by the sight, trapped in a web of indecision.
Then Eowen’s head jerked up, and her lips parted in a snarl to reveal gleaming fangs.
Wren howled in dismay, and the Drakuls came for her. She brought the Elfstones up with the quickness of thought, called forth their power in rage and terror, and turned the fire of the magic on everything in sight. It swept through her attackers like a scythe, incinerating them. Those who had taken solid form, those feeding and Eowen with them, were obliterated. The others, wraiths still, vanished. Flames engulfed everything. Wren scattered fire in every direction, feeling the magic course through her, hot and raw. She howled, exultant as the fire burned the ravine from end to end. She gave herself over to its heat—anything to block away the image of Eowen. She embraced it as she would a lover. Time and place disappeared in the rush of sensations.
She began to lose control.
Then, a bare instant before she would have disappeared into the power completely, she realized what was happening, remembered who she was, and made a last, desperate attempt to recover herself. Frantically she clamped her fingers about the Stones. The fire continued to leak through. Her hand tightened, and her body convulsed. She doubled over with the effort, falling to her knees. Finally, the magic swept back within her, raked her one final time with the promise of its invincibility, and was gone.
She crouched in the mist, fighting to regain mastery of herself, seeing once more with her mind’s eye a picture of the Drakuls and Eowen as they disappeared into flames, consumed by the Elfstone magic.
Power! Such power‘ How she longed to have it back’
Shame swept through her, followed by despair.
She lifted her eyes wearily, already knowing what she would find, fully cognizant now of what she had done. Before her, the ravine stretched away, empty. Smoke and ash hung on the air. Her throat tightened as she tried to breathe. She had not had a choice, she knew—but the knowledge didn’t help. Eowen had been one of them, brought to her death as Wren watched, her own prophecy fulfilled. Though Wren had tried, she could not change the outcome of the seer’s vision. Eowen had told her once that her life had been built around her visions and she had come to accept them—even the one that foretold her death.
Wren felt tears fill her eyes and run down her cheeks.