The Elves of Cintra

by Terry Brooks

  Adios, mi amigo, she whispered to the wind, thinking of him once more. You were the best of us all. Rest in peace forever.

  The chop of the waters quickened, and the waves grew higher. The earlier haze had settled lower on the waters, long trailers fanning out, weaving strange patterns. She looked back at the shoreline and found that it was already fading away.

  Vaya con Dios. Tu madre sueña contigo. Your mother dreams of you.

  Then, as she lifted her eyes toward the high bluffs that Larkin Quill’s little cottage backed up against, she caught sight of something moving. Three figures, indistinct and shadowy, appeared out of the veil of the mist. They stood at the edge of the bluff and looked down at her.

  A boy, a girl, and a very large dog.

  They were visible for just a few seconds, and then they faded back into the mist. As the boat moved farther out into the channel, she tried repeatedly to find them again, but could not do so.

  When she finally turned away, setting her gaze on the shoreline ahead, she was not even certain of what she had seen.

  ON THE FAR BANK, two figures crouched behind a screen of heavy brush and peered out at the boat that was crossing toward them. The boat could not put in anywhere close to where they waited, which was atop a sheer cliff wall that dropped straight into the rough waters of the river. Instead the boat would land farther upriver, where an inlet offered shallow waters running up to a small sandbar. After disembarking, the occupants would be forced to ascend a steep, rocky slope to the heights, a climb that would consume the better part of an hour. By then, the watchers would be gone, leading the way to their mutual destination, a place known as well to them as to the three they shadowed.

  Shadowed, rather than tracked, thought the one.

  “It would trouble them to know that we will be there to greet them,” the two-legged demon whispered to the four. “See how they look behind, searching the shoreline for some sign of us? How worried they must be that we will catch them unawares! How helpless they must feel! They have no idea that we passed them by more than a week ago, do they?”

  It reached over and stroked the other demon’s sleek, scaly form, feeling it press itself against its hand, anxious for its touch.

  “They have no idea of anything,” the speaker whispered.

  They watched the boat sail slowly closer, buffeted by the waves, knocked about by the current, straining mightily to stay on course for the inlet. But the watching quickly grew tedious, and the four-legged demon became restless. The other demon understood. It was time to quit this place, to continue on with their journey.

  The two-legged demon edged backward until it could no longer see the river, then rose to a standing position. “We know where they will go next, don’t we, pretty thing?” it murmured to its companion. “Oh, yes, we know. We know everything.”

  The Elves and the Knight of the Word would soon find that out.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  W HEN HAWK WOKE, it was dawn on a gray and mist-draped morning, the sky and earth of a single hue, the air smelling of damp and old earth. He lay in a sparse woods close by the edge of a bluff that sloped away toward a deep gorge; through this a broad-banked river churned, its surface white-capped and choppy. He could see the far side of the river and the high, cliff-edged bank beyond, but the land after that was shrouded in a deep, impenetrable haze.

  He had no idea at all where he was.

  He glanced over to find Tessa lying several feet away, still asleep, and beyond her—a dark shaggy lump against the wintry grasses—was Cheney.

  For just a moment, his thoughts returned to the gardens of the King of the Silver River. His senses were infused with its colors and its smells, his memories of what the old man had told him fresh and new, and his vision of his destiny as clear as still water. Then the moment was gone and he was staring into the gray, past the sleeping forms of his companions to a future he could only imagine.

  Tessa woke. Her eyes opened and she sat up slowly, her eyes fixing on him. “We’re alive,” she said softly.

  He moved to sit close to her and took her hands in his. “Are you all right? Are you hurt in any way?”

  She touched herself experimentally. “No. Are you?”

  He shook his head.

  “How can that be, Hawk? We were thrown from the compound wall and we fell and…” She trailed off, brushing nervously at her tousled hair. “And what?” She stared at him in bewilderment. “I can’t remember anything after that.”

  “And we lived happily ever after,” he said, smiling. “Just like Owl’s stories.”

  She arched one eyebrow. “That would be nice. Now tell me the truth. What happened to us?”

  So he told her, taking his time, remembering things as he went, trying not to leave anything out. Mostly Tessa just listened, but once or twice she couldn’t help herself and had to stop him to ask a question. There was incredulity and disbelief mirrored in her eyes, but she did not try to tell him he might be mistaken or had dreamed this story or was a victim of delusion. She sat facing him, and her eyes never left his.

  When he was finished and silence had enveloped them, she sat without moving for a moment. Then she leaned forward suddenly and kissed him on the lips, her hand behind his neck so that he would not move away, and she held the kiss for a very long time.

  “I love you,” she told him when she finally broke away. “I love you so much.” She cupped his face in her hands. “I knew there was something special about you. I knew there was nobody else like you. I knew it from the moment we met. The stories Owl told are true. You are the boy who will save his children. You are the one who will find a safe place for all of us.”

  He took a deep breath. “It’s only what I’ve been told. I don’t know how much of it I can believe.”

  “But you’re not like the rest of us, are you? You’re something different. I mean, you don’t look it, but you are. You’re a Faerie creature of some sort. Both Logan Tom and the old man said so. So maybe it’s true. Maybe you are.” She seemed to consider the idea more carefully. “What does that mean, Hawk?” she asked finally. “How are you different? Can you tell me anything?”

  He studied her for a moment. “Does knowing I might be different make you afraid of me?” he asked.

  She shook her head quickly. “No, that isn’t what I mean. What I mean is…I just want to know. I want to understand. Are you put together differently? When you were born, were you…?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, and he saw tears. “Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wish I hadn’t asked. It doesn’t matter. You are still the boy I fell in love with. You are the one I will always love. It doesn’t matter how you are made or what you can do or any of it.” She clasped his hands tightly in her own. “Just forget I asked. Please. We won’t say anything about it again. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me what we are going to do?”

  Cheney was waking up now, his big head lifting to look over at them. His gray eyes were calm, and his gaze steady. He did not look to Hawk as if he thought anything strange had happened to him. He looked just the way he always looked—alert and ready.

  “I don’t know where we are going,” he told Tessa, getting to his feet and then helping her stand, as well. “I don’t even know where we are. I know there is a river in the gorge below us. That’s about all.”

  “You must have some idea,” she insisted. Her dusky face broke into a sudden grin. “How can you save anyone if you don’t know how to find them?”

  He shrugged. “I’m kind of new at this. I have to learn as I go. Do you have any ideas?”

  She looked around. “Let’s walk over to the edge of the bluff and see if we can tell anything from that.”

  They left the shelter of the trees, walked across the bluff to its edge, and peered over. A solitary boat was making a slow, arduous passage from their side of the river to the far bank. There were four passengers. The first of them, cloaked and hooded in black, stood at the steering wheel on the bridge, starin
g forward into the haze. Two more were seated on the decking benches just below. The last—a woman, Hawk thought—stood at the aft railing looking up at him. For a moment it seemed their eyes met, and it almost felt to him that they knew each other.

  Then the mist rolled in again, and the boat disappeared. Hawk stared after it for a long time without speaking.

  “We have to cross that river,” he said finally.

  “Do you know where we are now?” Tessa asked him.

  “No, but it doesn’t matter. What I know is that we have to cross that river.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t explain it. I just do.” He looked over at her. “Something inside tells me.”

  Cheney moved up beside them, his big head lowering to sniff the ground. A light rain was beginning to fall, and the mist on the water was thickening. The dawn should have brought a steady brightening into day; instead, the light seemed to be failing and the dark growing stronger.

  “I wish I could tell you something more,” Hawk said softly.

  Tessa looked at him for a moment, and then she took his arm and turned him toward her. “You’ve told me enough. We’d better get started.”

  HAWK CHOSE THEIR PATH. They could have turned either way along the riverbank, but his instincts sent them right, upriver toward the faint brightness of the sunrise. The rain fell steadily, but not in sheets, only as something slightly damper than a mist. Rain of any sort was unusual, and particularly so for any length of time. But it rained all morning as they traveled, and into the afternoon. The river followed a mostly straight course, and they were able to stay within sight of it as they walked the bluff. They saw no other traffic on the river and no sign of life on the banks. The land stretched away about them—hills and forests, fields and meadows dotted with rocky monoliths, and in the distance huge, barren mountains.

  By early afternoon, Hawk was beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake. It bothered him that the King of the Silver River had deposited him back in the world with no clear idea of where he was supposed to go. It was difficult enough coming to terms with the idea that he wasn’t entirely human, that he was in part, at least, a creature of Faerie, imbued with wild magic and the promise of performing an impossible feat. How he was supposed to find and lead thousands of people—children, in particular—to safety, to the gardens from which he had been sent, was difficult to imagine, no matter what anyone said. At least he should have been given a better idea of how and where he was supposed to undertake this task.

  Instead he was in a foreign place, not even Seattle and Pioneer Square, the only home he had ever known. He was separated from the Ghosts, his only family, and told that his memories of his early life of growing up in Oregon were not real. All he had to sustain him was his dog and the girl he loved.

  He glanced covertly at Tessa, at her fine dark features, her dusky skin and curly black hair, at the way she carried herself, at the sway of her body as she walked. Her presence comforted him as nothing else could, and he was grateful for her beyond anything words could express. Tessa. She made him ache inside. She made him feel that everything he had been asked to do was not too much if she was with him. He remembered anew how frightened he had been for her during the tribunal at the compound when the judges had pronounced the death sentence on them both. He remembered how terrible he had felt for her when her mother spit on her and refused to take her side.

  His determination hardened.

  We are the Ghosts, and we haunt the ruins of the world our parents destroyed.

  He repeated the litany silently, testing the strength of the words. The world they had inherited was poisoned, plague-ridden, and decimated. Adults who ought to have known better had left it in tatters. How much would it take for an eighteen-year-old boy to salvage any part of what was left?

  More than he had to offer, he thought. Much more. They could say what they wanted about who and what he was, all of them. They could say anything. But deep down inside, down where his heart and his determination were strongest, he knew that he was just a boy and that his limitations were brick walls through which he could not break free. He was expected to save thousands of children. He was expected to help them survive. He was expected to find a safehold that would shelter them all from a fire that would consume everything.

  He was expected to perform miracles.

  It was too much to ask of anyone.

  It was nearing midafternoon when they saw the first roofs of the distant buildings, a cluster of gray surfaces that reflected back the dull slick of rainfall and dust that had collected. The buildings were set down in a flat between two higher bluffs facing out toward the river at a narrows. A bridge spanned the water about a mile farther on where the river narrowed even more. Although the rain clouded his vision sufficiently that he couldn’t be sure from this distance, Hawk thought that its steel trusses and cables were intact.

  Tessa took his arm suddenly. “Look, Hawk,” she said. “Down there.”

  He shifted his gaze to where she was pointing, away from the river and back toward an open field that extended from a cluster of large warehouses to woods backed up against low hills that disappeared into the haze. The field was filled with tents and vehicles and people—hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. Many were busy doing things, but from where he stood he couldn’t tell what those things were. He saw fires and makeshift kitchens through which lines of people passed with their plates empty and reappeared with them full. He was looking at a camp, but he had no idea why there would be a camp of any kind in this place.

  Then he realized all at once that most of the people he was seeing were children.

  He took a closer look at the perimeter of the camp and found guards, all of them heavily armed and keeping close watch on the approaches. He knew from the extent of their vigilance that he and Tessa had already been spotted. But he stood where he was awhile longer, not wanting to appear furtive or frightened, not wanting to create a wrong impression, studying the busy sprawl below, waiting to see what would happen. These were not Freaks or once-men or anything threatening; they were people like himself, and if he did not pose a threat to them perhaps they would not cause problems for him.

  When Cheney growled, low and deep in his throat, he knew he was about to find out if he was right.

  “Stay,” he told the big dog softly and reached down to touch the grizzled head.

  A man emerged from the trees to one side, carrying a flechette. He did not raise it in a threatening manner or even look particularly worried. “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello,” Hawk and Tessa said together.

  “Are you looking for someone? Can I help you find them?”

  He was a tall, thin man with glasses and a soft look that suggested that serving as guard for this camp was not his usual line of work. But he held the flechette in a familiar manner, and Hawk knew that no man or woman who had survived in this world outside the compounds was doing what he or she had done before.

  “I’m looking for whoever is in charge,” he said.

  The man studied him a moment. “What’s the trouble? Are you lost?”

  Hawk shook his head. “No. In fact, that’s why I’m here. To help you find your way. I came to be your guide.”

  A flicker of amusement crossed the man’s face, but then he simply smiled and shrugged. “Can’t wait to hear how you plan to do that. Is your dog okay down there with the kids?”

  Hawk nodded. “He does what I tell him.”

  A white lie at best, a misplaced hope at worst. The man gave him a doubtful look and said, “He better. If he doesn’t, I’ll shoot him.”

  He took them down off the rise through the trees and into the camp. They passed other guards on the way, men and women of all ages, a ragtag bunch if ever Hawk had seen one. A few were big and tough looking, hardened veterans with obvious experience, but most were something less. It looked like whoever could still walk and was over the age of eighteen had been pressed into ser
vice. Those placed in their care were much younger. They were playing games and reading stories and completing small tasks to occupy their time. Older children supervised the younger. Everyone was behaving. Everything looked well ordered and thoroughly organized.

  The guard brought them through the camp and across the field to one of the tents. A small cluster of men and women were gathered around a makeshift table that had maps spread out on it, most of them worn and heavily marked. A small, slight woman with short-cropped blond hair and quick energetic movements was speaking.

  “…patrols along both banks, and let’s keep a close watch on that bridge, Allen. Those militia boys may want to play rough, and we want to be ready if they do. We don’t want to encourage them by looking unprepared. All right. Now, the woods are ringed with sentries all the way along the tree line and back to…”

  She stopped and looked up as the guard approached with Hawk, Tessa, and Cheney in tow. She gave the wolfish dog a long, hard look before saying, “What is it, Daniel?”

  The guard looked flustered. “I found these three on the bluff. The boy says he came here to guide us. I thought maybe you should speak to him.”

  The woman studied Hawk a moment, as if trying to make up her mind about him. She straightened up from the table over which she was bent, ran her fingers through her disheveled hair, and put her hands on her hips. Hawk could feel her taking his measure, looking hard at this lean, not particularly interesting, dark-haired boy standing in front of her and trying to decide if he was worth her time.

  Then she looked at those gathered around her and said, “Give us a moment to talk, please.”

  Her companions moved away, some reluctantly. One or two stayed close enough that they could still protect her if it proved necessary. The woman herself did not seem concerned. She was the leader, Hawk decided, even though she didn’t look the part. The men were bigger and stronger and might even know more about fighting, but she was the one whose judgment they had learned to trust.