ployed to destroy them, they survived.”
She shook her head, as if seeing those efforts parade before
her eyes. “You would ask me why they cannot be sent back to
wherever they came from, wouldn’t you? But the magic doesn’t
work that way; it will not permit so easy a solution. Gavilan,
among others, believes that further experimentation with the
magic will produce better results, that trial and error will even-
tually give us a way to defeat the creatures. I do not agree. I
understand the magic, Wren, because I have used it and I know
the extent of its power. I am afraid of what it can do. There are
no limits, really. It dwarfs us as mortal creatures; it lacks the
restraints of our humanity. It is greater than we are; it will sur-
vive after we are all long dead. I have no faith in it beyond that
which has been gleaned out of experience and is required by
necessity. I believe that if we continue to test it, if we continue
to believe that the solution to our problems lies in what it can
do, then some new horror will find its way into our lives and
we will wish that the demons were all that we had to deal with.”
“What of the Elfstones?” Wren asked her quietly.
Ellenroh nodded, smiled, and looked away. “Yes, child, what
of the Elfstones? What of their magic? We know what it can
do; we have seen its results. When Elven blood fails, when it is
not strong enough as it was not strong enough in Wil Ohmsford,
it creates unexpected results. The wishsong. Good and bad,
both.” She looked back again. “But the magic of the Elfstones is
known and it is contained. No one believes or suggests that it
could be subverted to another use. Nor the Loden. We have
some understanding of these magics and will employ them be-
cause we must if we are to survive. But there is much greater
magic waiting to be discovered, child-magic that lives beneath
the earth, that can be found in the air, and that cries out for
recognition. That is the magic that Gavilan would gather. It is
the same magic that the Druid called Brona sought to harness
more than a thousand years ago-the same magic that convinced
him to become the Warlock Lord and then destroyed him.”
Wren understood her grandmother’s fear of the magic, could
see the dangers as she saw them, and could share with her as
could no one else the feelings that invocation of the magic
aroused-in the Elfstones, in the Loden power that could over-
whelm, that could subvert, and that could swallow you up until
you were lost.
“You said that you wanted the Elves to go back to the way
they were before they recovered the magic,” she said, thinking
back to the previous night when Ellenroh had addressed the
High Council. “But can that happen? Won’t some among the
Elves simply bring it back again, perhaps find it in another way?”
“No.” Ellenroh’s eyes were suddenly distant. “Not again. Not
ever again.”
She was leaving something out. Wren sensed it immedi-
ately-sensed as well that it was not something Ellenroh would
discuss. “And what of the magic you have already invoked, that
which protects the city?”
“It will all disappear once we leave-all but that required to
fulfill the Loden’s use and to carry the Elves and Arborlon back
into the Westland. All but that.”
“And the Elfstones?”
The queen smiled. “There are no absolutes, Wren. The Elf-
stones have been with us for a long time.”
“I could cast them away once we are safe.”
“Yes, child, you could-should you choose to do so.”
Wren felt something unspoken pass between them, but she
could not identify its meaning. “Will the magic of the Loden
really do as you believe, Grandmother? Will it carry the Elves
safely out of Morrowindl?”
The queen’s smooth face lowered momentarily, shaded with
doubt and something more. “Oh, the magic is there, certainly.
I have felt it in my use of the staff. I have been told its secret
and I know it be the truth.” Her face lifted abruptly. “But it