Elves. Twice since she had begun that search she had found
herself unexpectedly terrified. The first time had been when the
Shadowen that had tracked them all through the Westland had
finally shown itself on the first night of the signal fire, and she
had discovered to her horror that she was powerless against it.
All of her training and all of her skill availed her nothing. She
should have known it would be like that; certainly Par had
warned her when he had related the details of his own encounter
with the dark creatures. But for some reason she had thought it
would be different with her-or perhaps she simply hadn’t con-
sidered what it would be like at all. In any case, there she had
been, bereft of Garth-Garth, whom she had believed stronger
and quicker than anything!-face to face with something against
which no amount of confidence and ability could prevail.
She would have died that night if she had not been able to
call upon the magic of the Elfstones. The magic alone had been
able to save them both.
Now, as she made her way forward with the others of her
little company through the darkness and vog of Morrowindl, as
they crept slowly ahead into a nightmare world of shadows and
monsters, she found herself terrified anew. She tried to ration-
alize it away; she tried to argue against it. Nothing helped. She
knew the truth of things, and the truth was the same as it had
been that night at the ruins of the Wing Hove when she had
confronted the Shadowen. Confidence, skill, experience, and
Garth’s protective presence, however formidable in most in-
stances, were of little reassurance here. Morrowindl was a caul-
dron of unpredictable magic and unreasoning evil, and the only
weapon she possessed that was likely to prove effective against
it was the Elfstones. Magic alone kept the Elves alive inside the
walls of Arborlon. Magic, however misguided, had apparently
summoned the evil that besieged them. Magic had changed for-
ever the island and the things that lived upon it. There was no
reason for Wren to think that she could survive on Morrowindl
for very long without using magic of her own.
Yet use of the Elfstones was as frightening to her as the
monsters the magic was intended to protect against. Look at her;
as a Rover girl, she had spent her entire life learning to depend
upon her own skills and training and to believe that there was
nothing they could not overcome. That was how Garth had
schooled her and what life with the Rovers had taught her, but
more important it was what she had always believed. The world
and the things in it were governed by a set of behavioral laws;
learn those laws and you could withstand anything. Reading trail
signs, understanding habits, knowing another’s weaknesses and
strengths, using your senses to discover what was there-those
were the things that kept you alive. But magic? What was magic?
It was invisible, a force beyond nature’s laws, an unknown that
defied understanding. It was power without discernible limits.
How could you trust something like that? The history of her
family, of Ohmsfords ten generations gone, suggested you could
not. Look what the magic had done to Wil and Brin and Jair.
What certainty was there if she was forced to rely on something
so unpredictable? What would using the magic do to her? True,
it had been summoned easily enough in her confrontation with
the Shadowen. It had flowed ever so smoothly from the Stones,
come almost effortlessly, striking at the mere direction of her
thoughts. There had been no sense of wrongness in its use-
indeed, it was as if the power had been waiting to be summoned,
as if it belonged to her.
She shivered at the recognition of what that meant. She had
been given the Elfstones, she knew, in the belief that one day
she would need them. Their power was intended to be hers.
She tightened her resolve against such an idea. She didn’t
want it. She didn’t want the magic. She wanted her life to stay
as it was, not to be irrevocably changed-for it would be so-