Indomitable: The Epilogue to The Wishsong of Shannara

“I need you to come back with me,” she said suddenly, looking at him with unexpected intensity. “I might as well tell you so. It has more to do with me than with Grandfather. I am worn out by him. I hate admitting it because it makes me sound weak. But he grates on me the older and more difficult he gets. I don’t know if this business about the Ildatch is real or not. But I don’t think I can get to the truth of it alone. I’m being mostly selfish by coming here and asking you to come to Hearthstone with me. Grandfather is set on this happening. Just having you talk with him might make a difference.”


Jair shook his head doubtfully. “I barely know him. I don’t see what difference having me there would make to anything.”

She hesitated, then exhaled sharply. “My grandfather was there to help your sister when she needed it, Jair. I am asking you to return the favor. I think he needs you, whether the danger from the Ildatch is real or not. What’s bothering him is real enough. I want you to come back with me and help settle things.”

He thought about it a long time, making himself do so even though he already knew what he was going to say. He was thinking of what Garet Jax would do.

“All right, I’ll come,” he said finally.

Because he knew that this is what the Weapons Master would have done in his place.



He left a letter with the innkeeper for his parents, explaining where he was going, packed some clothes, and closed up the house. He already knew he would be in trouble when he returned, but that wasn’t enough to keep him from going. The innkeeper loaned him a horse, a steady, reliable bay that could be depended on not to do anything unexpected or foolish. Jair was not much for horses, but he understood the need for one here, where there was so much distance to cover.

It took them a week to get to Hearthstone, riding north out of Shady Vale and the Duln Forests, around the western end of the Rainbow Lake, then up through Callahorn along the Mermidon River to the Rabb Plains. They crossed the Rabb, following its river into the Upper Anar, then rode down through the gap between the Wolfsktaag Mountains and Darklin Reach, threading the needle of the corridor between, staying safely back from the edges of both. As they rode, Jair found himself pondering how different the circumstances were now from the last time he had come into the Eastland. Then, he had been hunted at every turn, threatened by more dangers than he cared to remember. It had been Garet Jax who had saved his life time and again. Now he traveled without fear of attack, without having to look over his shoulder, and Garet Jax was only a memory.

“Do you think we might have lived other lives before this one?” Kimber asked him on their last night out before reaching Hearthstone.

They were sitting in front of a fire in a grove of trees flanking the south branch of the Rabb, deep within the forests of Darklin Reach. The horses grazed contentedly a short distance off, and moonlight flooded the grassy flats that stretched away about them. There was a hint of a chill in the air this night, a warning of autumn’s approach.

Jair smiled. “I don’t think about it at all. I have enough trouble living the life I have without wondering if there were others.”

“Or if there will be others after this one?” She brushed at her long hair, which she kept tied back as they rode, but let down at night in a tumbled mass. “Grandfather thinks so. I guess I do, too. I think everything is connected. Lives, like moments in time, are all linked together, fish in a stream, swimming and swimming. The past coming forward to become the future.”

He looked off into the dark. “I think we are connected to the past, but mostly to the events and the people that shaped it. I think we are always reaching back in some way, bringing forward what we remember, sometimes for information, sometimes just for comfort. I don’t remember other lives, but I remember the past of this one. I remember the people who were in it.”

She waited a moment, then moved over to sit beside him. “The way you said that—are you thinking about what happened two years ago at Heaven’s Well?”

He shrugged.

“About the one you called the Weapons Master?”

He stared at her. “How did you know that?”

“It isn’t much of a mystery, Jair. You talked about no one else afterward. Only him, the one who saved you on the Croagh, the one who fought the Jachyra. Don’t you remember?”

He nodded. “I guess.”

“Maybe your connection with him goes farther back in time than just this life.” She lifted an eyebrow at him. “Have you thought about that? Maybe you were joined in another life as well, and that’s why he made such an impression on you.”

Jair laughed. “I think he made an impression on me because he was the best fighter I have ever seen. He was so . . .” He stopped himself, searching for the right word. “Indomitable.” His smile faded. “Nothing could stand against him, not even a Jachyra. Not even something that was too much for Allanon.”