It’s too heavy, Wren thought in dismay. She won’t be able to lift it.
But somehow Faun managed, easing it away from the layers of human deadwood, the sticks of once-life. Faun cradled it in her tiny hands, the Staff three times as long as she was, and began to walk a tightrope back, using the Staff as a pole. Wren came to her knees, breathless.
Triss nudged Wren urgently, pointing. The Wisteron had shifted in its hammock, legs stretching. It was coming awake. Wren started to rise, but Garth hurriedly pulled her back. The Wisteron curled up again, legs retracting. Faun continued toward them, tiny face intense, sinewy body taut. She reached the near side of the ravine again and paused.
Wren went cold. Faun doesn’t know how to climb out!
Then abruptly Killeshan coughed and belched fire, miles distant, so far removed that the sound was scarcely a murmur in the silence. But the eruption triggered shock waves deep beneath the earth, ripples that spread outward from the mountain furnace like the rings that emanate from the splash of a stone. Those tremors traveled all the way to the In Ju and to the Wisteron’s island lair, and swiftly a chain reaction began. The shock waves gathered force, turned quickly to heat, and the heat exploded from the mud flats directly behind Wren in a fountain of steam.
Instantly the Wisteron was awake, legs braced in its webbing, head swiveling on a thick, boneless stalk as its black mirrored eyes searched. Faun, caught unprepared for the tremors and explosion, bolted up the side of the ravine, lost her grip, and immediately fell back again. Bones clattered as the Ruhk Staff tumbled down. The hiss of the Wisteron matched that of the geyser. It spun down its webbing with blinding speed, half spider, half monkey, and all monster.
But Garth was faster. He went over the side of the ravine with the swiftness of a shadow cast by a passing cloud at night. Down the rocky outcropping he bounded, as nimble as light, dropping the last dozen feet without slowing. He landed in a crash of broken bones, stretched for the Ruhk Staff, and snatched it up. Faun was already scrambling for the safety of his broad back. Garth whirled to start up again, and the Wisteron’s shadow closed over him as the creature spun down its webbing to smash him flat.
Wren came to her feet, her hand opened and her arm thrust forth, and she summoned the Elfstone power. As quick as thought it responded, streaking forth in a blinding rope of fire. It caught the Wisteron still descending, hammered into it like a massive fist, and sent it spinning away. Wren felt all of her strength leave her as the blow struck. In her urgency to save Garth, she held nothing back. The exhilaration swept through her in an instant and was gone. She gasped in shock, started to collapse, and Triss caught her about the waist. Stresa yelled at them to run.
Garth heaved up out of the ravine, his face sweat-streaked and grim, the Ruhk Staff in one hand, Faun in the other. The Tree Squeak flew to Wren, shivering. On hands and knees they crawled frantically back through the trees, rose, and began to run across the mud flats.
Wren shot a frantic glance over one shoulder.
Where was the Wisteron?
It appeared an instant later. It did not come through the trees as she had expected, but over them. It cleared the topmost limbs, surged into view in a cloud of gray, and dropped on them like a stone. Triss flung himself at Wren and knocked her from its path or she would have been crushed. Stresa turned into a ball of needles and was knocked flying. The Wisteron hissed, one clawed foot bristling with the Splinterscat’s spines, and landed in a crouch. Garth dropped the Staff and turned to face it, broadsword drawn. Using both hands, the big Rover slashed at the Wisteron’s face, missing as the beast drew back. It spit at Garth, a steaming spray that burned through the air like fire. “Poison!” Stresa screamed from what sounded like the bottom of a well, and Garth went down, flat against the mud.
The moment he dropped, the Wisteron charged.
The Elf Queen of Shannara
Terry Brooks's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene