the darkness of the night. She could see herself reflected in its
facets. She could feel herself reach within. The Ruhk Staff had
given strength to the rulers of Arborlon for more than a century
But the Staff could not protect the Elves either.
“Cort?” she called softly.
The Home Guard materialized beside her.
“Stand with me a moment,” she said.
They stood without speaking and looked out over the city.
She felt impossibly alone. Her people were threatened with ex-
tinction. She should be doing something. Anything. What if the
dreams were wrong? What if the visions of Eowen Cerise were
mistaken? That had never happened, of course, but there was
so much at stake! Her mouth tightened angrily. She must be-
lieve. It was necessary that she believe. The visions would come
to pass. The girl would appear to them as promised, blood of
her blood. The girl would appear.
But would even she be enough?
She shook the question away. She could not permit it. She
could not give way to her despair.
She wheeled about and walked swiftly back through the
Gardens to the pathway leading down again. Cort stayed with
her for a moment, then faded away into the shadows. She did
not see him go. Her mind was on the future, on the foretellings
of Eowen, and on the fate of the Elven people. She was deter-
mined that her people would survive. She would wait for the
girl for as long as she could, for as long as the magic would keep
their enemies away. She would pray that Eowen’s visions were
true.
She was Ellenroh Elessedil, Queen of the Elves, and she
would do what she must.
Fire.
It burned within as well.
Sheathed in the armor of her convictions, she went down
out of the Gardens of Life in the slow hours of the early morn-
ing to sleep.
CHAPTER
2
REN OHMSFORD YAWNED. She sat on a bluff overlooking
the Blue Divide, her back to the smooth trunk of an
ancient willow. The ocean stretched away before her,
a shimmering kaleidoscope of colors at the horizons
edge where the sunset streaked the waters with splashes of red
and gold and purple and low-hanging clouds formed strange pat-
terns against the darkening sky. Twilight was settling comfort-
ably in place, a graying of the light, a whisper of an evening
breeze off the water, a calm descending. Crickets were begin-
ning to chirp, and fireflies were winking into view.
Wren drew her knees up against her chest, struggling to stay
upright when what she really wanted to do was lie down. She
hadn’t slept for almost two days now, and fatigue was catching
up with her. It was shadowed and cool where she sat beneath
the willow’s canopy, and it would have been easy to let go, slip
down, curl up beneath her cloak, and drift away. Her eyes closed
involuntarily at the prospect, then snapped open again instantly.
She could not sleep until Garth returned, she knew. She must
stay alert.
She rose and walked out to the edge of the bluff, feeling the
breeze against her face, letting the sea smells fill her senses.
Cranes and gulls glided and swooped across the waters, graceful
and languid as they flew. Far out, too far to be seen clearly,
some great fish cleared the water with an enormous splash and
disappeared. She let her gaze wander. The coastline ran unbro-
ken from where she stood for as far as the eye could see, ragged,
tree-grown bluffs backed by the stark, whitecapped mountains
of the Rock Spur north and the Irrybis south. A series of rocky
beaches separated the bluffs from the water, their stretches lit-
tered with driftwood and shells and ropes of seaweed.
Beyond the beaches, there was only the empty expanse of
the Blue Divide. She had traveled to the end of the known
world, she thought wryly, and still her search for the Elves
went on.
An owl hooted in the deep woods behind her, causing her
to turn. She cast about cautiously for movement, for any sign
of disturbance, and found none. There was no hint of Garth.