The Elves of Cintra by Terry Brooks Read Free Book Online Page B

asked.
    “Someone who knows you from before you were born,” the other answered, smiling as if having Hawk standing before him was the most welcome of sights. “Someone who remembers how important that event was.” His eyes never left Hawk’s face. “What matters is not who I am, but who you are. Here and now, in this time and place, in the world of the present. Do you know the answer?”
    Hawk nodded slowly. “I think so. The Knight of the Word told me when I was locked away in the compound. He said I was a gypsy morph and that I had magic. I saw something of what he was talking about in a vision when I touched my…my mother’s finger bones.” He hesitated. “But I still don’t know if I believe it.”
    The old man nodded. “What he told you is the truth. Or at least, the part of it he knows. It is given to me to tell you the rest. Walk with me.”
    He started away, and Hawk followed without thinking. Together they moved down the pathways and grassy strips that crisscrossed the gardens, passing through rows of flower beds and flowering bushes and trellises of flowering vines. They moved without purpose and without any seeming destination, simply walking, first in one direction and then in another, the boundaries of the gardens—if there were any—never drawing any nearer, never even coming into sight. They continued for a long time, the old man moving slowly but purposefully, with Hawk matching his pace as he tried to gather his thoughts, to give voice to the questions swimming in his head. Spoor and tiny seedlings drifted in the air around him, shimmering with a peculiar brightness. Hawk could hear insects buzzing and chirping. He could see flashes of bright color from birds and butterflies. He could not stop looking.
    “Did you bring me here?” he asked the old man finally.
    The old man nodded. “I did.”
    “Tessa, too? She’s all right? She’s not hurt?”
    “She sleeps until we are done.”
    Hawk scuffed his tennis shoes on a patch of gravel, looking down at the skid marks, still trying to make what was happening feel real. “I don’t understand any of this,” he said finally.
    The old man had been studying the landscape ahead, but now he looked over. “No, I don’t suppose you do. It must all seem very strange to you. A lot has happened in the past few weeks. A lot more will happen in the weeks ahead. You are different from who you were, but not as different as you will be.”
    He made a sweeping gesture at the gardens. “This is where you were conceived, young one. Here, in these gardens. A small, unexpected gathering in the evening air of magic from earth and water brought you into existence, a wild magic that only happens now and then with the passing of the centuries. I have seen it before, but not like this. The brightness of the gathering was unusual, the joining quick and sure, the suddenness and the frantic need so apparent that it caught me by surprise. That takes something special. I have been alive a long time.”
    Hawk believed it. The old man had the look of something about to crumble and be scattered by the winds. “How old are you?”
    “I was here at the beginning.”
    Hawk shuddered despite himself. At the beginning? He knew instinctively what the old man was talking about, and at the same time he did not believe such a thing was possible. “How do you know what you saw happening with the magic was me?” he asked sharply. “I mean, it wasn’t me then. It was just…just something happening in the air, wasn’t it?”
    “Oh, it was you. Such things cannot be mistaken. You weren’t a boy then, just a possibility of becoming something wonderful. I saw the potential of the magic that would form you and dispatched it into the world at a time and place where you might find help in making the necessary transformation. I could not tell what that transformation would be; only that it would be special and powerful and mean something to the world. You were found and caught up by