The Elfstones of Shannara (56 page)

 

LIII

 

T
he Elves found him there moments later. At Ander Elessedil's command, they carried him to Arborlon. Too stunned by the loss of Amberle to argue, his body racked with fever, he let them take him. He was carried to the manor house of the Elessedils, down its hallways and corridors, silent and shadowed, to a room where he was bedded. Elven Healers washed and dressed his wounds and bound his shattered arm. They gave him a bitter liquid to drink that made him drowsy, and they wrapped him carefully in linen and blankets. Then they left him, closing the door quietly as they went. In seconds, he was asleep.

As he slept, he dreamed that he wandered through a deep, impenetrable darkness, hopelessly lost. Somewhere within the same darkness was Amberle, but he could not find her; when he called, her response was faint and distant. Gradually he became aware of another presence, cold and evil and strangely familiar—a thing that he had encountered before. Terrified, he began to run, faster and faster, fighting his way through webs of black silence. But the thing pursued him; though it made no sound, he could sense it nevertheless, always just a step behind. At last its fingers touched him, and he cried out in fear. Then abruptly the darkness disappeared. There were gardens all about him, beautiful and rich with color, and the thing was gone. Relief flooded through him; he was safe again. But in the next instant the ground beneath his feet buckled and he was lifted into the air. Suddenly he could see that a black wave beyond the gardens was sweeping slowly inward, closing about him, rising like an ocean in which he would surely drown. Desperately he turned to find Amberle, and he saw her now, darting like some voiceless wraith through the garden's center—just a glimpse and then she was gone. Over and over he called for her, but there was no answer. Then the black wave washed over him, and he began to sink . . . .

Amberle!

He awoke with a start, his body damp with sweat. On a small table set against the far wall, a single candle burned. Shadows wrapped the room, and nightfall lay over the city.

“Wil Ohmsford.”

He turned at the sound of his name, searching. A tall, cowled figure sat at his bedside, black and faceless against the faint glow of the candle's flame.

The Valeman blinked slowly in recognition.

Allanon.

Then everything came back to him in a rush. Bitterness stirred within him, bitterness so tangible that he could taste it. When at last he was able to speak, his voice was a low hiss.

“You knew, Allanon. You knew all the time.”

There was no reply. Tears stung the Valeman's eyes. He thought back to that first night in Storlock, when he had met the Druid. He had known then that he could not afford to trust Allanon, that he must not trust him. Flick had warned him; Allanon was a man of secrets, and he hid those secrets well.

But this—how could he have hidden this!

“Why didn't you tell me?” The words were a whisper. “You could have told me.”

There was a movement within the shadows of the cowl. “It would not have helped you to know, Valeman.”

“It would not have helped you—isn't that what you mean? You used me! You let me think that if I could protect Amberle from the Demons, if she could be brought safely back to Arborlon, then everything would be all right. You knew that was what I believed and you knew it wasn't so!”

The Druid was silent. Wil shook his head in disbelief. “Couldn't you at least have told her?”

“No, Valeman. She would not have believed me. She would not have let herself. It would have been too much to ask of her. Think back to what happened when I spoke with her at Havenstead. She did not even want to believe that she was still a Chosen. Her selection as a Chosen had been a mistake, she insisted. No, she would not have believed me. Not then. She needed time to learn the truth about herself and to understand that truth. It was not something that I could have explained to her; it was something that she had to discover for herself.”

The Valeman's voice shook. “Words, Allanon—you are so practiced in their use. You can persuade so easily. You persuaded me once, didn't you? But I will not be persuaded this time; I know what you did.”

“Then you must know also what I did not do,” Allanon replied quietly. He bent forward. “The final decision was hers, Valeman—not mine. I was never there to make that decision, only to see to it that she was given the opportunity to make it herself. I did that and nothing more.”

“Nothing more? You made certain that she made the decision the way you wanted it made. I wouldn't call that nothing.”

“I made certain she understood what the consequences of the decision would be, whichever way she chose to make it. That is somewhat different . . .”

“Consequences!” Wil's head jerked up from the pillow and his sudden laugh was laced with irony. “What do you know about consequences, Allanon?” His voice broke. “Do you know what she meant to me? Do you know?”

Tears streamed down his face. Slowly he lay back again, feeling strangely ashamed. All of the bitterness drained out of him, and he ached with the emptiness that was left. He looked away from Allanon self-consciously, and they both stayed silent. In the darkness of the sleeping room, the lone candle's glow touched them softly.

It was a long time before the Valeman looked back again. “Well, it's finished now. She's gone.” He swallowed hard. “Would you at least explain why?”

The Druid said nothing for a moment, hunched down within the concealing shadows of his robe. When he finally spoke, his voice was almost a whisper.

“Listen then, Valeman. She is a marvelous creature—this tree, this Ellcrys—a living bit of magic formed by the bonding of human life with earth-fire. Before the Great Wars, she was made. The Elven wizards conceived her when the Demons were finally brought to bay and there was a need to prevent them from again threatening the land of faerie. The Elves, you remember, were not a violent people. Preservation of life was their purpose and their work. Even with creatures as destructive and evil as the Demons, they would not consider deliberate annihilation of a species. Banishment from the land appeared the most acceptable alternative, but they knew it would have to be a banishment of such power that the Demons thousands of years hence would still be subject to its laws. And the banishment would have to be to a place where no harm would come to others. So the Elven wizards used their most powerful magics, the ones that called for the greatest sacrifice of all, the willing gift of life. It was this gift that enabled the Ellcrys to come into being and the Forbidding to be created.”

He was quiet a moment. “You must understand the Elven way of life, the nature of the code that governs that way of life, to appreciate what the Ellcrys truly represents and why, therefore, Amberle chose to become her. The Elves believe that they owe a debt to the land, for the land is the creator of and the provider for all life. The Elves believe that when one takes from the land, one must give something back in return. This belief is traditional; it is ritual. Their lives are given them; therefore they must give life back again. They accomplish this, Valeman, through a life marked by service to the land, endeavoring each in his own way to see to it that the land is preserved. The Ellcrys is but an expansion of that dedication. She is the embodiment of the belief that the land and the Elves are mutually dependent. The Ellcrys is a joining of the land with Elven life, a joining conceived to protect against an evil that would see both destroyed. Amberle understood that in the end. She saw that the only way in which the Westland and her people could be saved was through her sacrifice, her willingness to become the Ellcrys. She saw that the seed she bore could be given life only through a giving up of her own.”

He paused and bent forward slowly, his dark figure casting its shadow over the listening Valeman. “You realize that the first Ellcrys was a woman also; it is not by chance that we refer to the tree as a lady. The Ellcrys must always be a woman, for only a woman can reproduce others of her kind. The wizards foresaw this need for procreation, though they were not able to foresee how often it might be necessary. They chose a woman, a young girl who, I would imagine, was very much like Amberle, and they transformed her. Then they established the order of the Chosen so that she might be cared for and when the time came might have the means to select her successor. But it was men, not women, that she selected as her Chosen down through the years, all but a handful. The histories do not record why—even she no longer knew. The selections had been made from habit for a very long time; she chose women only when the need was there. Perhaps it had something to do with her creation in the time of the Elven wizards. Perhaps they promised her young men to serve her—perhaps she requested it. Perhaps the choice of young men to serve was more acceptable to the Elves. I don't know.

“In any case, when she chose Amberle, the Ellcrys suspected that she might be dying. She could not be certain, of course, because she was the first of her kind, and no one had ever known when her death might come or what signs might foretell it. Indeed, many believed that she could not die. And the physical characteristics of that part of her that had been human had long since evolved into something far different, so there was no help there. There had been other times in her life when she had thought she might be dying, when she had thought she was in such danger that she must choose the one who would succeed her. Each time she selected a woman—a handful of times only. The last was five hundred years ago. I don't know what prompted it, so don't ask. It isn't really important.

“When Amberle was made a Chosen, the first woman in five hundred years, there was no small amount of surprise among the Elves. But the selection of Amberle had far greater significance than anyone realized because the Ellcrys in making her choice was looking upon the girl as a possible successor. And more than that really. She was looking upon Amberle as a mother would her unborn child. An odd characterization you might argue, but consider the circumstances. If the tree were to die, she would then produce a seed, and that seed and Amberle would become one, a new Ellcrys born in part at least from the old. The selection of Amberle was made with that foreknowledge, and it necessarily entailed much of the feeling that a mother would bear for an unborn child. Physically the woman that had been the Ellcrys had changed, but emotionally she retained much of what she had been. Something of this the tree sensed in the Elven girl. That was why they were so close in the beginning.”

He reflected a moment. “Unfortunately it was this closeness that eventually caused problems. When I first came to Arborlon, awakened by the erosion of the Forbidding and the threatened crossover of the Demons, I went to the Gardens of Life to speak with the Ellcrys. She told me that after her selection of Amberle as a Chosen, she attempted to strengthen the ties that bound the Elven girl to her. She did this because she felt the sickness within her growing. Her life, she realized, was coming to an end; the seed that was beginning even then to form within her was to be passed to Amberle. In her dying, she responded to the girl with that same mothering instinct. She wanted to prepare her for what was to come, to see something of the beauty and grace and peace that she had enjoyed in her life. She wanted Amberle to be able to appreciate what it meant to become one with the land, to see its evolution through the years, to experience its changes—in short, I suppose, to understand a little of the growing up that a mother knows and a child does not.”

Wil nodded slowly. He was thinking of the dream that Amberle and he had shared after the King of the Silver River had rescued them from the Demons. In that dream they had searched for each other—he within a beautiful garden, so breathtaking that it had made him want to cry; she in darkness, calling out as he stood there but would not answer. Neither had understood that the dream was a prophecy. Neither had understood that the King of the Silver River had given them a glimpse of what was destined to be.

The Druid continued. “The Ellcrys was well intentioned, but overzealous. She frightened Amberle with her visions and her constant motherings and her stealing away of Amberle's identity. The Elven girl was not yet ready for the transition that the Ellcrys was so anxious for her to make. She became frightened and angry, and she left Arborlon. The Ellcrys did not understand; she kept waiting for Amberle to come back. When the sickness grew irreversible and the seed was completely formed, she called the Chosen to her.”

“But not Amberle?” Wil was listening closely now.

“No, not Amberle. She thought Amberle would come on her own, you see. She did not want to send for her because, when she had done that before, it had only driven the girl further away. She was certain that once Amberle knew that she was dying, the girl would come. Unfortunately there was less time remaining to her than she thought. The Forbidding began to erode, and she could not maintain it. A handful of the Demons broke through and the Chosen were slain—all but Amberle. When I appeared, the Ellcrys was desperate. She told me that Amberle must be found, so I went to seek her out.”

A hint of renewed bitterness darkened the Valeman's face.

“Then you knew at Havenstead that the Ellcrys still considered Amberle a Chosen.”

“I knew.”

“And you knew that she would give Amberle the seed to bear.”

“I will save you the trouble of asking further questions. I knew everything. The Druid histories at Paranor revealed to me the truth of how the Ellcrys had come into being—the truth of how she must come into being again.”

There was a brief hesitation. “Understand something, Valeman. I cared for this girl also. I had no desire to deceive her, if you wish to characterize my omissions as deceptions. But it was necessary that Amberle discover the truth about herself another way than through me. I gave her a path to follow; I did not give her a map that would explain its twists and turns. Such choices as might be necessary I thought were hers. Neither you, I, nor anyone else had the right to make those choices for her. Only she had that right.”