Терри Брукс - The Elf Queen of Shannara

“I don’t know,” she said wearily.

“But Dal...?”

“What difference does it make?” she interrupted, more angry than she should have been, regretting her harshness immediately. She took a deep breath. “What matters is that he has taken the Ruhk Staff and the Loden, and we have to get them back. We have to find him. Quickly.”

She turned. “Stresa?”

“No,” the Splinterscat said at once. “Hssstt. It is too dangerous to track at night. Stay here until daybreak.”

She shook her head deliberately. “We don’t have that much time.”

“Rrrwwll Wren Elessedil. We had best find it then, if we want to stay alive!” Stresa’s rough voice deepened to a growl. “Only a fool would venture down off the Blackledge and into the In Ju at night:”

Wren felt her anger building. She did not care to be challenged just now. She could not permit it. “I have the Elfstones, Stresa!” she snapped. “The Elven magic will protect us!”

“The Elven magic you—hssstt—are so anxious not to use?” Stresa’s words were a taunt. “Phhffft. I know you cared for him, but...”

“Stresa!” she screamed.

“... the magic will not protect against what you cannot see,” the other finished, calm, unruffled. “Ssstttpp! We must wait until morning.”

The silence was immense. Inside, Wren could hear herself shriek. She looked up as Garth stepped in front of her. The Splinterscat is right Remember your training, Wren Remember who you are.

What she could remember at the moment was the look she had seen in Gavilan Elessedil’s eyes when she had given him the Ruhk Staff. She met Garth’s gaze squarely. What she saw in his eyes stayed her anger. Reluctantly she nodded. “We’ll wait until morning.”

She kept watch then while the others slept, her own exhaustion forgotten, buried in her anger and despair over Gavilan. She could not sleep while feeling so unsettled, her mind racing and her emotions in disarray. She sat alone with her back against a stand of rocks while the men curled up in sleep a dozen feet away and Stresa hunkered down at the clearing’s edge, perhaps asleep, perhaps not. She stared into blackness, stroking Faun absently, thinking thoughts darker than the night.

Gavilan. He had been so charming, so comfortable when she had met him. She had liked him—perhaps more than liked him. She had harbored expectations for them that even now she could not bring herself to admit. He had promised to be a friend to her, to look after her, to give her what answers he could to the questions she asked, and to be there when she needed him. He had promised so much. Perhaps he could have kept those promises if they had not been forced to leave the protection of the Keel. For she had not been mistaken in assessing Gavilan’s weakness; he was not strong enough for what lay beyond the safety of Arborlon’s walls. The changes in him had been apparent almost immediately. His charm had faded into worry, then edginess, and finally fear. He had lost the only world he had ever known and been left naked and unprotected in a waking nightmare. Gavilan had been as brave as he could manage, but everything he had known and relied upon had been stripped away. When the queen had died and the Staff had been entrusted to Wren, it had just been too much. He had counted himself the queen’s logical successor, and with the power of the Elven magic he still believed he could accomplish anything. He was committed to it; he had made it his cause. He was convinced that he could save the Elves, that he was destined to do so, that the magic would give him the means.

Let me have the Staff, she could still hear him plead.

And she had foolishly given it to him.

Tears came to her eyes. He probably panicked, she thought. He probably decided that she was dead, that they were all dead, and that he was alone. He tried to leave, and Dal stopped him, telling him, no, wait, underestimating the depth of his fear, his madness. He would have heard the sounds of the Drakuls, the whispers, and the lures. They would have affected him. He killed Dal then because...

No! She was crying, unable to stop. She let herself, furious that she should try to make excuses for him. But it hurt so to admit the truth, harsh and unavoidable—that he had been weak, that he had been greedy, that he had rationalized instead of reasoned, and that he had killed a man who was there to protect him. Stupid! Such madness! But the stupidity and the madness were everywhere, all about them, a mire as vast and impenetrable as Eden’s Murk. Morrowindl fostered it, succored it within each of them, and for each there was a threshold of endurance that once crossed signaled an end to sanity. Gavilan had crossed that threshold, unable to help himself perhaps, and now he was gone, faded into mist. Even if they found him, what would be left?

She bit at her wrist, making herself feel pain. They must find him, of course—even though he no longer mattered. They must regain possession of the Ruhk Staff and the Loden or everything they had gone through to get clear of Morrowindl and all of the lives that had been given up—her grandmother’s, the Owl’s, Eowen’s, and those of the Elven Hunters—would have been for nothing. The thought burned through her. She could not tolerate it. She would not permit them to fail. She had promised her grandmother. She had promised herself. It was the reason she had come—to bring the Elves back into the Westland and to help find a way to put an end to the Shadowen. Allanon’s charge—hers now as well, she admitted in black fury. Find yourself, and she had. Discover the truth, and she had. Too much of both, but she had. Her life was revealed now, past, present, and future, and however she felt about it she would not let it be taken away without her consent.

I don’t care what it takes, she vowed. I don’t care!

She was sleeping when Triss touched her shoulder and brought her awake again. “Lady Wren,” he whispered gently. “Go lie down. Rest now.”

She blinked, accepting the blanket he slipped about her. “In a minute,” she replied. “Sit with me first.”

He did so, a silent companion, his lean brown face strangely untroubled, his eyes distant. She remembered how he had looked when she had told him of Gavilan’s treachery. Treachery, wasn’t that what it was. That look was gone now, washed away by sleep or by acceptance. He had found a way to come to terms with it. Triss, the last of those who had come out of Arborlon’s old life—how alone he must feel.

He looked over at her, and it seemed as if he could read her thoughts. “I have been Captain of the Home Guard for almost eight years,” he ventured after a moment. “A long time, Lady Wren. I loved your grandmother, the queen. I would have done anything for her.” He shook his head. “I have spent my whole life in service to the Elessedils and the Elven throne. I knew Gavilan as a child; we were children together. I grew to manhood with him. We played. My family and his still wait within the Loden, friends,...” He drew a deep breath, groping for words, understanding. “I knew him. He would not have killed Dal unless ... Could it be that something happened to change him? Could one of the demons have done something to him?”

She had not considered that possibility. It could have happened. There had been opportunity enough. Or why not something else, a poison, for instance, or a sickening like that which had killed Ellenroh? But she knew in her heart that it was none of those, that it was simply a wearing away of his spirit, a breaking apart of his resolve.

“It could have been a demon,” she lied anyway.

The strong face lifted. “He was a good man,” he said quietly. “He cared about people; he helped them. He loved the queen. She would have named him king one day, perhaps.”