intense, and he found the light uncomfortable. Perhaps he would
begin traveling at night, he decided. The darkness seemed some-
how less threatening. He took shelter at midday in a cluster of
rocks, crouching back within their shadows, hidden. His mind
wandered, scattering to things that were forgotten almost as soon
as they were remembered. He hunched down, his cowled head
lowered between his knees, and he slept.
Nightfall took him from his shelter. He hunted down a rab-
bit, spying it out in the dark and chasing it to its den as if he
were a cat. He dug down to it with his hands, wrung its neck,
carried it back to his rock-walled shelter, and ate it before it
Was finished cooking over the little fire. He sat staring at the
bones afterward, wondering what creature it had been.
Stars and moon brightened in the darkening sky. Somewhere
distant, an owl hooted. Coil Ohmsford no longer searched for
the Shadowen that hunted him. Somehow, they no longer mat-
tered.
When the night had settled comfortably in about him, he
rose, kicked out the fire, and crept from his place of conceal-
ment like an animal. Far distant still, but growing closer, was
the city. He could smell it in the wind.
There was a rage inside him that he could not explain. There
was a hunger. Somehow, though he could not yet determine
how, it was tied to Par.
Swiftly he passed north toward the mountains. In the moon-
light his eyes glinted blood-red.
CHAPTER
22
NIGHTFALL.
Wren Ohmsford walked back across the Harrow
through the deepening gloom, empty of feeling. Shad-
ows layered the lava rock, cast by the bones of the
ravaged trees and the shifting mists. Daylight had faded to a
tinge of brightness west, a candle’s slender glow against the dark.
The Harrow stretched silent and lifeless all about, a mirror of
herself. The magic of the Elfstones had scoured her clean. The
death of Eowen had hardened her to iron.
Who am I? she asked herself.
She chose her path without really thinking about it, moving
in the direction from which she had come because that was the
only way she knew to go. She stared straight ahead without
seeing; she listened without hearing.
Who am I?
All of her life she had known the answer to that question.
The fact of it had been her one certainty. She was a Rover girl,
free of the constraints of personal history, of the ties and obli-
gations of family, and of the need to live up to anyone’s expec-
tations but her own. She had Garth to teach her what she needed
to know and she could do with herself as she pleased. The future
stretched away intriguingly, a blank siate on which her life could
be written with any words she chose.
Now that certainty was gone, disappeared as surely as her
youthful misconceptions of who and what she would be. She
would never be as she had been or had thought she would be.
Never. She had lost it all. And what had she gained? She almost
laughed. She had become a chameleon. Just look at her; she
could be anyone. She couldn’t even be sure of her name. She
was an Ohmsford and an Elessedil both. Choose either-it would
fit. She was an Elf and a human. She was the child of several
families, one who birthed her, two more who raised her.
Who am I?
She was a creature of the magic, heir to the Elfstones, keeper
of the Ruhk Staff and the Loden. She bore them all, trusts she
had been given to hold, responsibilities she had been empow-
ered to manage. The magic was hers, and she hated the very
thought of it. She had never asked for it, certainly never wanted
it, and now could not seem to get rid of it. The magic was a
shadow within, a dark reflection of herself that rose on corn;
mand to do her bidding, a trickster that made her feel as nothing
else could and at the same time stole away her reason and sanity
and threatened to take her over completely. The magic even