Ilse Witch

And not from the direction of the ruins, but from the direction of the airship.

Bek straightened, eased himself away from the seer, and came to his feet, listening. The night was silent save for the soft patter of a slow rain on the forest canopy. Bek reached back for the Sword of Shannara, then took his hand away. Instead, he moved to one side, deeper into the shadows. He could feel the other’s presence as if it were an aura of heat or light. He could feel it as he could the skin of his own body.

A cloaked figure materialized in front of him, appearing all at once, wraithlike. The figure was small and slight and not physically imposing, and the boy could not identify it from its look. It approached without slowing, robed and hooded, a mystery waiting to be uncovered. Bek watched in fascination, unable to decide what to do.

An arm lifted within the robes and stretched out toward Ryer Ord Star. “Tell me what has happened,” a woman said, her voice soft but commanding. “Why are you here? You were instructed—”

Then she saw Bek. It must have startled her, because she stiffened and her arm dropped away abruptly. Something in her carriage changed, and it seemed to him that she was unsettled by his unexpected presence.

“Who are you?” she asked.

There was no friendliness in her voice, no hint of the softness that had been there only seconds before. She had changed in the blink of an eye, and he did not think he was the better off for it. But he heard something familiar in her voice, too, something that connected them so strongly he could not miss it. He stared at her, sudden recognition flooding through him.

“Who are you?” she repeated.

He knew her now, and the certainty of it left him breathless. Years dropped away, shed like rainwater from his skin, and a kaleidoscope of patchwork memories returned. Most he had forgotten until his use of the Sword of Shannara had caused them to resurface. They were of her, holding him close as she ran through smoke and fire, through screams and shouts. They were of her, tucking him away in a dark, close place, hiding him from the death that was all around them. They were of her, a child herself, long ago, in a place and time he could only barely remember.

“Grianne,” he1 answered, speaking her name aloud for the first time since infancy. “It’s me, Grianne. It’s your brother.”

Here ends Book One of The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara. Book Two, Antrax, will reveal the secrets of Castledown and its magic as the Druid Walker and his companions confront the mysterious creature that wards both.

What will happen next?

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The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara:



Antrax

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ONE





Grianne Ohmsford was six years old on the last day of her childhood. She was small for her age and lacked unusual strength of body or extraordinary life experience and was not therefore particularly well prepared for growing up all at once. She had lived the whole of her life on the eastern fringes of the Rabb Plains, a sheltered child in a sheltered home, the eldest of two born to Araden and Biornlief Ohmsford, he a scribe and teacher, she a housewife. People came and went from their home as if it were an inn, students of her father, clients drawing on the benefit of his skills, travelers from all over the Four Lands. But she herself had never been anywhere and was only just beginning to understand how much of the world she knew nothing about when everything she did know was taken from her.