It took them most of the remainder of the day to make the return flight, and Wren used the time to think about what she would say to the High Council that night. She found herself thinking that it would be nice if she could just keep on flying, traveling to a place so far away that the Federation would never find her. But there was no such place, of course. For even if the Federation couldn’t reach her, the Shadowen could. They had proved that on Morrowindl. The Shadowen sickness was everywhere, and no one would be safe again until a cure was found.
It was nearing sunset when Arborlon, the home city of the Elves, came in sight again, a shading of wood colors, metal stays, and spots of bright clothing amid the green. Spirit swung wide above the Rill Song, the river’s blue waters turned diamond-tipped in the fading light, and settled gently down onto the grassy bluffs of the Carolan. Wren was barely out of her restraining straps and on the ground again before the Home Guard, Triss in the lead, were hurrying down from the city proper to make certain she was safe. She gave them a reassuring wave and a welcoming smile, then bent quickly to Tiger Ty.
“Not a word of what we saw,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
The Wing Rider’s fierce black eyes locked on her. “Until you meet with the High Council?”
She nodded. “Until.”
“They won’t like what you have to tell them—not that that’s anything new. Wooden-headed mules!”
She smiled, quick and furtive. “You know me. I just keep chipping away.”
The rough face grimaced. “Do you meet with them tonight?”
“Probably within the hour.”
“Mind if I sit in? Help do a little of that chipping? I pride myself on my woodcutting.”
The look she gave him was filled with gratitude. “Thanks, Tiger Ty. The Wing Riders should be represented in this, too. You can most certainly sit in.”
She turned away then as Triss and the others of the Home Guard reached her, relief reflected in their hard faces.
“My lady, you are well?” Triss asked quietly, his usual greeting. He was still scraped and bruised from their battle with the Wisteron on Morrowindl. His broken left arm was splinted and cradled in a cloth sling. But there was strength again in his lean face, and confidence and determination mirrored in his eyes. He had managed to put Morrowindl’s ordeal behind him better than she.
“Fine,” she answered, her usual reply. “I want you to call together the members of the High Council, Triss. All of them, within the hour.”
“Yes, my lady,” he acknowledged, and turned away, disappearing across the bluff.
Wren gave a short wave to Tiger Ty, then started after Triss, angling toward the Gardens of Life and the Elessedil palace. Lights were coming on in the treelanes and streets of the city as the shadows deepened, and the air was filled with the tantalizing aroma of cooking. She reached inside her tunic and brought Faun out to sit on her shoulder as she walked. She breathed the forest air, reaching out beyond the food smells for the tree and grass scents that lay beyond. A breeze wafted up from the river, cool and soothing in the dying heat of the day.
Home Guard fanned out around her. They would stay with her now everywhere she went, disappearing completely with the darkness, invisible protectors against any threat. She smiled. They worried so for her safety, and yet she was better able than they to protect against danger, better trained and better equipped. They thought themselves necessary, and she did not do anything to discourage that belief. But she always knew where they were, could always sense them out there watching over her, even in the deepest night. She had been trained to be aware of such things since she was a child. Her teacher had been the best.
Garth. The memories rushed through her, and she forced them away. Garth was gone.
She reached the entrance to the Gardens of Life. The Black Watch stood at attention as she approached, protectors of the Ellcrys, the tree of the Forbidding. Their eyes followed her as she passed, though she did not acknowledge them. She went into the Gardens, into their seclusion, listening to the chirps and clicks of insects come awake in the growing darkness, smelling the flowers and grasses more strongly here, the rich scent of black earth. She climbed the hill to where the Ellcrys stood and stopped in front of her. She did this every night, a ritual of sorts. At times she would do nothing but stand there, looking and thinking. At times she would reach out and touch the tree, as if to let it know that she was there. Coming to the Ellcrys seemed to renew her own strength, to give her a fresh determination to carry through with her life. The kinship she felt with the tree, with the woman it had been, with the strength of commitment embodied in the tale of how it had come into being, was sustaining. From flesh and blood to leaves and limbs, from woman to tree, from mortal life to life everlasting.
On her shoulder Faun rubbed against her neck as if to reassure her that everything was all right.
A cure for the Races, she mused, changing subjects if not moods, thinking again of the army that approached, of the Shadowen threat she must find a way to end. It would take more than the Elves to accomplish this, she knew. Allanon had told the Ohmsfords as much when he had sent them to fulfill their separate charges—Par to find the Sword of Shannara, Walker Boh to find the Druids and Paranor, and Wren to find the Elves. Had Par and Walker succeeded as she had? Were all the charges now fulfilled? She knew that she had to find out. Somehow she had to make contact with the others who had gathered at the Hadeshorn. On the one hand she must discover what had become of them and on the other apprise them of what had happened to her. They must be told the truth of the Shadowen, that the Shadowen were Elves who had recovered the old magic of faerie and become subverted by it in the same way as the Warlock Lord and his Skull Bearers nearly five hundred years earlier. How they had recovered this magic and how it sustained them remained a mystery. But the knowledge she held must be passed on to the others. She felt it instinctively. Until that was done, any cure for the Shadowen sickness would remain out of reach.
What to do? Already some among the Elves had gone out from Arborlon into the far reaches of the Westland to establish new homes. Farmers had begun to settle in the Sarandanon, the fertile valley that had served as the breadbasket of the Elven nation for centuries. Trappers and hunters had begun ranging north to the Breakline and south to the Rock Spur. Craftsmen were anxious to open new markets for their wares. Everywhere, there was a push to reclaim old homesteads and towns. Most important of all, Healers and their acolytes had gone forth to seek out those places in which the Westland’s sickness was worst in an attempt to stem its spread—carrying on an Elven tradition that had lasted since the beginning of time. For the Elves had always been healers, a people who believed that they were one with the earth into which they were born, the purveyors of the philosophy that something must be given back to the world that sustained them. As with the Gnome Healers at Storlock, who cared for the earth’s people, the Elven Healers were committed in turn to the people’s earth.
But they and the farmers, trappers, hunters, traders, and others were at risk in the Westland unless the Elven army protected them against the threat mounting from without. If the Queen of the Elves could not find a way to keep the Federation at bay long enough to put an end to the Shadowen...
She left the thought hanging, turning away from the Ellcrys in disgust. So much was needed, and try as she might she could not provide it alone.
The sky was streaked scarlet above the trees west, a vivid smear against the mountainous horizon that had the look of blood. Or at least that was the image that flashed in Wren Elessedil’s mind.
Your memories never leave you, she thought—even those you wish would, even those you wish had never been.
She walked down out of the Gardens, eyes on the ground in front of her. She wondered about Stresa. It had been days since she had seen the Splinterscat. Unlike Faun, Stresa was more comfortable in the wild and preferred the woods to the city. He had made his home somewhere close to Arborlon and would appear unexpectedly from time to time, but consistently refused to think about living with her in the Elessedil family home. Stresa was content with his new country, happy in his solitary life, and he had promised more than once that he would be there if she ever needed him. The trouble was that she needed him more than she cared to admit. But Stresa had gone through a lot for her already and was happy now; she did not have the right to place fresh demands on him just to assuage her own insecurity.