The Elf Queen of Shannara

They turned down a side street dappled with shards of light cast through the slats of shutters closed against windows high on a back wall, hearing laughter and the clink of drinking glasses from the alehouse within. Garbage littered the street, damp and stinking. Tyrsis wore her cheapest perfume in this quarter, and the smell of her body was rank and shameless where the poor and the homeless had been crowded away by the occupiers. Once a proud lady, she was used up and cast off now, a chattel to be treated as the Federation wished, a spoil of a war that had been over before it had begun.

Damson paused, searched carefully the empty swath of a lighted crossing, listened momentarily for sounds that didn’t belong, then took him swiftly across. They passed down a second side street, this one as silent and musty as an unopened closet, then through an alcove and into an alley that connected to another street. Par was thinking of the Sword of Shannara again, wondering how he could discover if it was real and what test he could put it to that would determine the truth.

“Here,” Damson whispered, turning him abruptly through the broken opening of an ancient board wall.

They stood in a barnlike room thick with gloom, the rafters overhead barely visible in the faint light of other buildings where it seeped through cracks in the split, dry boards of the walls. Machines hunkered down like animals crouched to spring, and rows of bins yawned empty and black. Damson steered him across the room, their boots crunching on stone and straw in the deep silence. Close to the back wall she stopped, reached down, seized an iron ring embedded in the floor, and pulled free a trapdoor. A glimmer of light showed stairs leading down into blackness.

“You first,” she ordered, motioning. “Just inside, then stop.”

He did as he was told, listened to the sound of her footsteps as she followed, then of the trapdoor as it closed behind them. They stood listening for a moment, then she pushed carefully past and fumbled quietly in the dark. A spark struck, a flame appeared, and the pitch of a torch caught and began to burn. Light filled the chamber in which they stood, weak and hazy, revealing a low cellar filled with old iron-banded casks and disintegrating crates. She gestured for him to follow, and they moved ahead through the debris. The cellar stretched on for a time, then ended at a passageway. Damson bent low against the black, thrust the torch ahead of her, and entered. The passage took them down a series of intersecting corridors to a room that had once been a sleeping chamber. A worn bed was positioned against one wall, a table and chairs against another. A second passage led out the other side and back into blackness. Where the torchlight ended, Par could just make out the beginning of a set of ancient stairs.

“We should be safe here for tonight, maybe longer,” she advised, turning now so that the light caught her features, the bright gleam of her green eyes, the softness of her smile. “It’s not much, is it?”

“If it’s safe, it’s everything,” he replied, smiling back. “Where do the stairs lead?”

“Back to the street. But the door is locked from the outside. We would have to break it down if we needed to escape that way, if we were unable to use the cellar entry. Still, that’s at least a measure of protection against being trapped. And no one will think to look where the lock is old and rusted and still in place.”

He nodded, took the torch from her hand, looked about momentarily, then carried it to a ruined lamp bracket and jammed it in place. “Home it is,” he declared, unslinging the Sword of Shannara and leaning it against the bed. His eyes lingered momentarily on the crest graven in its hilt, the upraised hand with its burning torch. Then he turned away. “Anything to eat in the cupboard?”

She laughed. “Hardly.” Impulsively she went to him, put her arms about his waist, held him momentarily, then kissed his cheek. “Par Ohmsford.” She spoke his name softly.

He hugged her, stroked her hair, felt the warmth of her seep through him. “I know,” he whispered.

“It will be all right for you and me.”

He nodded without speaking, determined that it would be, that it must.

“I have some fresh cheese and bread in my pack,” she said, pulling away. “And some ale. Good enough for refugees like us.”

They ate in silence, listening to the muffled tick of cooling iron nails embedded in the building’s walls, tightening as the night grew deeper. Once or twice there were voices, so distant the words were indistinguishable, carried from the street through the padlocked door and down the ancient stairs. When they had finished, they carefully packed away what was left, extinguished the torch, wrapped themselves in their blankets, lay close together on the narrow bed, and quickly fell asleep.

Daybreak brought a glimmer of light creeping through cracks and crevices, cool and hazy, and the sounds of the city grew loud and distinct as people began to venture forth on a new day’s business. Par woke refreshed for the first time in a week, wishing he had water in which to wash, but grateful simply to be shed momentarily of his weariness. Damson was bright-eyed and lovely to look upon, tousled and at the same time perfectly ordered, and Par felt as if the worst might at last be behind them.