“No, the Ellcrys is well.” She paused, uncertain.
“Then where did these demons come from?”
There was a barely perceptible tightening of the queen’s
smooth face. “We are not certain, Wren.”
She was lying. Wren knew it instinctively. She heard it in
her grandmother’s voice and saw it in the sudden lowering of
Eowen’s green eyes. Shocked, hurt, angry as well, she stared at
the queen in disbelief. No more secrets between us? she thought,
repeating the other’s own words. What are you hiding?
Ellenroh Elessedil seemed not to notice her grandchild’s dis-
tress. She reached out again and embraced her warmly. Though
tempted, Wren did not push away, thinking there must be a
reason for this secrecy and it would be explained in time, think-
ing as well that she had come too far to discover the truth about
her family and give up on finding it out because some part of it
was slow in coming. She forced her feelings aside. She was a
Rover girl, and Garth had trained her well. She could be patient.
She could wait.
“Time enough to speak more of this tomorrow, child,” the
queen whispered in her ear. “You need sleep now. And I need
to think.”
She drew back, her smile so sad that it almost brought tears
to Wren’s eyes. “Eowen will show you to your room. Your friend
Garth will be sleeping right next door, should you need him.
Rest, child. We have waited a long time to find each other and
we must not rush the greeting.”
She came to her feet, bringing Wren up with her. Across
from them, Eowen Cerise rose as well. The queen gave her
grandchild a final hug. Wren hugged her back, masking the
doubts that crowded within. She was tired now, her eyes heavy,
and her strength ebbing. She felt warm and comforted and she
needed to rest.
“I am glad to be here, Grandmother,” she said quietly, and
meant it.
But I will know the truth, she added to herself. I will know it all.
She let Eowen Cerise lead her from the bedchamber and
into the darkened hallway beyond.
CHAPTER
11
WHEN WREN AWOKE the following morning she found
herself in a room of white-painted walls, cotton bedding
with tiny flowers sewn into the borders, and tapestries
woven of soft pastel threads that shimmered in the wash
of brilliant light flooding through breaks in lace curtains that
hung in folds across the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Sunlight, she marveled, in a land where beyond the walls of
the city and the power of the Elven magic there was only dark-
ness.
She lay back, drowsy still, taking time to gather her thoughts.
She had not seen much of the room the night before. It had
been dark, and Eowen had used only candlelight to guide her.
She had collapsed into the down-stuffed bed and been asleep
almost immediately.
She closed her eyes momentarily, trying to connect what
she was seeing to what she remembered, this dreamlike, trans-
lucent present to the harsh, forbidding past. Had it all been
real-the search to find where the Elves had gone, the flight to
Morrowindl, the trek through the In Ju, the climb up Black-
ledge, the march to the Rowen and then Arborlon? Lying there
as she was, swathed in sunlight and soft sheets, she found it hard
to believe so. Her memory of what lay without the city’s walls-
the darkness and fire and haze, the monsters that came from
everywhere and knew only how to destroy-seemed dim and
far away.
Her eyes blinked open angrily, and she forced herself to
remember. Events paraded before her, vivid and harsh. She saw
Garth as he stood with her against the Shadowen at the edge of
the cliffs above the Blue Divide. She pictured once more how
it had been that first night on the beach when Tiger Ty and
Spirit had left them. She thought of Stresa and Faun, forced
herself to remember how they looked and talked and acted, and
what they had endured in helping her travel through this mon-
strous world, friends who had helped her only to be left behind.
Thinking of the Splinterscat and the Tree Squeak was what