Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [154]
Her grandmother had let her vent, sitting quietly, saying nothing. But when she was finished, she very calmly and deliberately told her to grow up and be the woman her mother had been. What constituted loyalty to the throne and to the Elven people was a matter of opinion. The Elfstones were never intended exclusively for those who sat upon the Elven throne. Possession of magic that powerful was not a given right, but an earned one. The Elfstones had been passed to Kirisin Belloruus because he had made a commitment to do what was needed to save his people from a demon army and to make certain that the legacy of magic that had once been inherent in the Elven way of life was revived. He had fulfilled that commitment, but those who had gained possession of the Elfstones after him had lost their way. They had accepted blindly that the valley would keep them forever safe and that magic of the sort contained in the Elfstones was unnecessarily dangerous. They had embraced instead the old belief that magic belonged to the age of Faerie and had no place in their world, and so the magic had languished anew.
Her mother had thought differently, but her father had not supported her and so nothing had been done during his reign as King to experiment with the magic. Yes, the Elves still used small amounts to sustain and heal the land, but that was nothing new. It was not the intent of those who had passed the Elfstones to Kirisin Belloruus that usage of the magic should stop there. Had Phryne’s mother lived, they would not be having this conversation; the Elfstones would have passed to her. Now they would pass to Phryne—not because she was her mother’s daughter, but because she had the strength of character her father did not and that was what was needed if the Elves were to survive.
The session had ended in a shouting match, and Phryne had stormed out, furious with her grandmother and determined to have no part in her misguided scheming.
Yet here she was, just three days later, responding to a summons to return to her grandmother’s cottage, another written message delivered by another oldster. In spite of herself, she was going back. She did so for several reasons. For one thing, she loved her grandmother, and no argument between them would ever change that. For another, the recovery of the Elfstones was too important to allow personal feelings to govern her actions. No matter her dismay with her grandmother, she knew she must continue trying to persuade her that the Elfstones should be given to her father. Reason must prevail, and clearly it would have to come from her.
Her grandmother had other plans, of course. She had not tried to give Phryne the Elfstones on the day they first spoke of them—had not even shown them to her, in fact. But this time she produced them shortly after her granddaughter walked through the door. There was no time for arguing, Mistral Belloruus declared as Phryne attempted to pick up where she had left off. What was needed was an object lesson. If Phryne was to persist in her insistence that the Elfstones belonged in her father’s hands, she needed to know exactly what that meant.
She marched Phryne outside and through the gardens, going deep into the woods to where they could no longer even see her cottage. They went alone, the old woman making her way with slow, painful steps, the girl holding her arm in case she should trip. It was a measure of her grandmother’s determination to win her over that she let Phryne help her, and the girl did not miss what this meant.
When they had reached a place where her grandmother felt comfortable with doing so, she reached into the pocket of her dress and produced a cloth pouch, loosened the drawstrings, and dumped the contents into her hand. Three brilliant blue stones, perfectly faceted and unblemished, their color so extraordinary