The Elf Queen of Shannara

Wren 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 horizon’s edge where the sunset streaked the waters with splashes of red and gold and purple and low-hanging clouds formed strange patterns against the darkening sky. Twilight was settling comfortably in place, a graying of the light, a whisper of an evening breeze off the water, a calm descending. Crickets were beginning 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 unbroken 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 littered 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. He was still out, tracking . . .

She ambled back to the cooling ashes of the cooking fire and nudged the remains with her boot. Garth had forbidden any sort of real fire until he made certain they were safe. He had been edgy and suspicious all day, troubled by something that neither of them could see, a sense of something not being right. Wren was inclined to attribute his uneasiness to lack of sleep. On the other hand, Garth’s hunches were seldom wrong. If he was disturbed, she knew better than to question him.

She wished he would return.

A pool sat just within the trees behind the bluff and she walked to it, knelt, and splashed water on her face. The pond’s surface rippled with the touch of her hands and cleared. She could see herself in its reflection, the distortion clearing until her image was almost mirrorlike. She stared down at it—at a girl barely grown, her features decidedly Elven with sharply pointed ears and slanted brows, her face narrow and high checked, and her skin nut-brown. She saw hazel eyes that seldom stayed fixed, an off-center smile that suggested she enjoyed some private joke, and ash-blond hair cut short and tightly curled. There was a tautness to her, she thought—a tension that would not be dispelled no matter how valiant the effort employed.

She rocked back on her heels and permitted herself a wry smile, deciding that she liked what she saw well enough to live with it awhile longer.

She folded her hands in her lap and lowered her head. The search for the Elves—how long had it been going on now? How long since the old man—the one who claimed he was Cogline—had come to her and told her of the dreams? Weeks? But how many? She had lost count. The old man had known of the dreams and challenged her to discover for herself the truth behind them. She had decided to accept his challenge, to go to the Hadeshorn in the Valley of Shale and meet with the shade of Allanon. Why shouldn’t she? Perhaps she would learn something of where she had come from, of the parents she had never known, or of her history.

Odd. Until the old man had appeared, she had been disinterested in her lineage. She had persuaded herself that it didn’t matter. But something in the way he spoke to her, in the words he used—something—had changed her.

She reached up to finger the leather bag about her neck self-consciously, feeling the hard outline of the painted rocks, the play Elfstones, her only link to the past. Where did they come from? Why had they been given to her?

Elven features, Ohmsford blood, and Rover heart and skills—they all belonged to her. But how had she come by them?