The big man was expressionless, but there was hurt in his
eyes. Wren almost reached out to reassure him, but her need
to know kept her from doing so. Garth stared at her for long
moments without responding. Then his fingers signed briefly.
I can tell you nothing that you cannot see for yourself.
She flinched. “What do you mean?”
You have Elven features, Wren. More so than any Ohmsford. Why
do you think that is?
She shook her head, unable to answer.
His brow furrowed. It is because your parents were both Elves.
Wren stared in disbelief. She had no memory at all of her
parents looking like Elves and she had always thought of herself
as simply a Rover girl.
“How do you know this?” she asked, stunned.
I was told by one who saw them. I was also told that it would be
dangerous for you to know.
“Yet you choose to tell me now?”
Garth shrugged, as much as if to say, What difference does
it make after what has happened? How much more danger can
you be in by knowing? Wren nodded. Her mother a Rover. Her
father an Ohmsford. But both of them Elves. How could that
be? Rovers weren’t Elves.
“You’re sure about this?” she repeated. “Elves, not humans
with Elven blood, but Elves?”
Garth nodded firmly and signed, It was made very clear.
To everyone but her, she thought. How had her parents
come to be Elves? None of the Ohmsfords had been Elves, only
of Elven descent with some percentage of Elven blood. Did this
mean that her parents had lived with the Elves? Did it mean
that they had come from them and that this was why Allanon
had sent her in search of the Elves, because she herself was one?
She looked away, momentarily overwhelmed by the impli-
cations. She saw her mother’s face again as she had seen it in
her dream-a girl’s face, of the race of Man, not Elf. That part
of her that was Elf, those more distinctive features, had not been
evident. Or had she simply missed seeing them? What about
her father? Funny, she thought. He had never seemed very im-
portant in her musings of what might have been, never as real,
and she had no idea why. He was faceless to her. He was invis-
ible.
She looked back again. Garth was waiting patiently. “You
did not know that the painted rocks were Elfstones?” she asked
one final time. “You knew nothing of what they were?”
Nothing.
What if she had discarded them? she asked herself peevishly.
What then of her parent’s plans-whatever they were-for her?
But she knew the answer to that question. She would never have
given up the painted rocks, her only link to her past, all she had
to remind her of her parents. Had they relied on that? Why
had they given her the Elfstones in the first place? To protect
her? Against what? Shadowen? Something more? Something that
hadn’t even existed when she was born?
“Why do you think I was given these Stones?” she asked
Garth, genuinely confused.
Garth looked down a moment, then up again. His great body
shifted. He signed. Perhaps to protect you in your search for the Elves.
Wren stared, blank faced. She had not considered that pos-
sibility. But how could her parents have known she would go
in search of the Elves? Or had they simply known she would
one day seek out her own heritage, that she would insist on
knowing where she had come from and who her people were?
“Garth, I don’t understand,” she confessed to him. “What is
this all about?”
But the big man simply shook his head and looked sad.
They kept watch together through the night, one dozing
while the other stayed awake, until finally dawn’s light bright-
ened the eastern skies. Then Garth fell asleep until noon, his
strength exhausted. Wren cat staring out at the vast expanse of
the Blue Divide, pondering the implications behind her discov-
ery of the Elfstones. They were the Elfstones of Shea Ohmsford
she decided. She had heard them described often enough, lis-
tened to stories of their history. They belonged to whomever