THE VOYAGE OF THE JERLE SHANNARA : Morgawr (BOOK THREE)

With dawn an hour away, she went down into the valley and stood at the edge of the lake. From what she had been shown by the magic of the Sword of Shannara, she understood what had happened to Walker in this place and would happen now to her. There was a power in the presence of the dead that was disconcerting even to her. Shades were beyond the living and yet still held sway over them because of what they knew.

The future. Its possibilities. Her fate, with all of its complex permutations.

Walker would see what she could not. He would know the choices that awaited her, but would not be able to tell her of their meaning. Knowledge of the future was forbidden to the living because the living must always determine what that future would be. The best the dead could do was to share glimpses of its possibilities and let the living make of them what they would.

She stared off into the distance, thinking that she didn’t care to know the future in any case. She was here to discover if what the magic had shown her was real—if she was meant to be a Druid, to be Walker’s successor, to carry on his work. She had told Bek and the others that she was, but she could not be sure until she heard it from the Druid’s shade. She wanted it to be so; she wanted to be given a chance at doing something that would matter in a good way, that would help secure the work Walker had begun. She wanted to give him back something for the pain she had caused him. Mostly, she wanted to think that she was useful again, that she could find purpose in life, that things did not begin and end with her time as the Ilse Witch.

She glanced down at the waters of the Hadeshorn. Poison, the magic of the Sword of Shannara had whispered. But she was poison, too. She bent impulsively to dip her hand into the dark mirror of moonlight and stars but snatched it back as the waters began to stir. At the center of the lake, steam hissed like dragon’s breath. It was time. Walker was coming.

She straightened within the dark folds of her cloak and waited for him.





“I did not think to see you again, little brother,” Kylen Elessedil declared, sweeping into the room with his customary brusqueness, not bothering with formalities or greetings, not wasting unnecessary time.

“Your surprise is no greater than my own,” Ahren allowed. “But here I am anyway.”

It had been two days since he had said good-bye to Quentin Leah in the Highlands and three since Grianne Ohmsford had walked into the Dragon’s Teeth. Afterwards, Ahren had flown west with the Rovers aboard the Jerle Shannara to Arborlon, thinking the whole time of what he would say when this moment came. He knew what was expected of him—not only by those with whom he had traveled, but also by himself. His was arguably the most important task of all, certainly the most tricky, given the way his brother felt about him. The boy he had been when he had left to follow the tracings of Kael Elessedil’s map would not have been able to handle it. It remained to be seen if the man he had become could.

That he had been met by Elven Home Guard and brought to this small room at the back of the palace, quietly and without fanfare, testified to the fact that his brother still regarded him mostly as a nuisance. Kylen would tolerate his return just long enough to determine if anything more was necessary. The reappearance of Ahren was no cause for celebration absent a recovery of the Elfstones.

“Where is the Druid?” his brother asked, getting right to the point. He walked to the curtained windows at the back of the room and looked out through the folds. “Still aboard ship?”

“Gone back into the Dragon’s Teeth,” Ahren answered. It was not a lie exactly, just a shading of the truth. Kylen didn’t need to know everything just yet. In particular, he didn’t need to know how things stood with the Druids.

“Were you successful in your efforts on this expedition, brother?”

“Mostly, yes.”

Kylen arched an eyebrow. “I am told you return with less than a quarter of those who went.”

“More than that. Some have gone on to their homes. There was no need for them to come here. But, yes, many were lost, Ard Patrinell and his Elven Hunters among them.”

“So that of all the Elves who went, you alone survived?”

Ahren nodded. He could hear the accusation in the other’s words, but he refused to dignify it with a response. He did not need to justify himself to anyone now, least of all to his brother, whose only disappointment was that even a single Elf had survived.

Kylen Elessedil moved away from the window and came over to stand in front of him. “Tell me, then. Did you find the Elfstones? Do you have them with you?”

He could not quite hide the eagerness in his voice or the flush that colored his fair skin. Kylen saw himself empowered by the Elfstones. He did not understand their demands. He might not even realize that they were useless in most of the situations in which he would think to use them. It was the lure of their power that drew him, and the thought of it obscured his thinking.