bothered to look for him, he would not be there. She could
picture him in her mind, a small, stocky youth with incredible
quickness and strength. He was one of the Home Guard, pro-
tectors of the Elven rulers, the weapons that defended them, the
lives that were given up to preserve their own. Cort was her
shadow, and if not Cort, then Dal. One or the other of them
was always there, keeping her safe. As she moved along the
pathway, her thoughts slipped rapidly, one to the next. She felt
the roughness of the ground through the thin lining of her slip-
pers. Arborlon, the city of the Elves, her home, brought out of
the Westland more than a hundred years ago-here, to this .
She left the thought unfinished. She lacked the words to
complete it.
Elven magic, conjured anew out of faerie time, sheltered the
city, but the magic was beginning to fail. The mingled fragrances
of the Garden’s flowers were overshadowed by the acrid smells
of Killeshan’s gases where they had penetrated the outer barri-
er of the Keel. Night birds sang gently from the trees and cov-
erings, but even here their songs were undercut by the guttural
sounds of the dark things that lurked beyond the city’s walls in
the jungles and swamps, that pressed up against the Keel, wait-
ing.
The monsters.
The trail she followed ended at the northern most edge of
the Gardens on a promontory overlooking her home. The pal-
ace windows were dark, the people within asleep, all but her.
Beyond lay the city, clusters of homes and shops tucked behind
the Keel’s protective barrier like frightened animals hunkered
down in their dens. Nothing moved, as if fear made movement
Impossible, as if movement would give them away. She shook
her head sadly. Arborlon was an island surrounded by enemies.
Behind, to the east, was Killeshan, rising up over the city, a
great, jagged mountain formed by lava rock from eruptions over
the centuries, the volcano dormant until only twenty years ago,
now alive and anxious. North and south the jungle grew, thick
and impenetrable, stretching away in a tangle of green to the
shores of the ocean. West, below the slopes on which Arborlon
was seated, lay the Rowen, and beyond the wall of Blackledge.
None of it belonged to the Elves. Once the entire world had
belonged to them, before the coming of Man. Once there had
been nowhere they could not go. Even in the time of the Druid
Allanon, just three hundred years before, the whole of the West-
land had been theirs. Now they were reduced to this small space,
besieged on all sides, imprisoned behind the wall of their failing
magic. All of them, all that remained, trapped.
She looked out at the darkness beyond the Keel, picturing
in her mind what waited there. She thought momentarily of the
irony of it-the Elves, made victims of their own magic, of their
own clever, misguided plans, and of fears that should never have
been heeded. How could they have been so foolish?
Far down from where she stood, near the end of the Keel
where it buttressed the hardened lava of some long past runoff,
there was a sudden flare of light-a spurt of fire followed by a
quick, brilliant explosion and a shriek. There were brief shouts
and then silence. Another attempt to breach the walls and an-
other death. It was a nightly occurrence now as the creatures
grew bolder and the magic continued to fail.
She glanced behind her to where the topmost branches of
the Ellcrys lifted above the Garden trees, a canopy of life. The
tree had protected the Elves from so much for so long. It had
renewed and restored. It had given peace. But it could not pro-
tect them now, not against what threatened this time.
Not against themselves.
She grasped the Rukh Staff in defiance and felt the magic
surge within, a warming against her palm and fingers. The Staff
wac thick and gnarled and polished to a fine sheen. It had been
hewn from black walnut and imbued with the magic of her
people. Fixed to its tip was the Loden, white brilliance against