The Elf Queen of Shannara

In the shadows ahead, something moved.

Cogline slowed and stopped. Rumor dropped to a crouch and growled. A figure materialized out of the gloom, come from a place where the sunlight could not reach, all black and featureless. The figure approached, the light beginning to define it, a man hooded and cowled, tall and thin against the gloom, moving slowly but purposefully.

“Walker?” Cogline asked.

The other did not reply. When he was less than a dozen feet away, he stopped. Rumor’s growl had died to heavy breathing. The man’s arm reached up and drew back the hood.

“Tell me what you see,” Walker Boh said.

Cogline stared. It was Walker, and yet it was not. His features were the same, but he was bigger somehow, and even with his white skin he seemed as black as wet ashes, the cast of him so dark it seemed any light that approached was being absorbed. His body, even beneath the robes, gave the impression of being armored. His right arm was still missing. His left hand held the Black Elfstone.

“Tell me,” Walker asked him again.

Cogline stared into his eyes. They were flat and hard and depthless, and he felt as if they were looking right through him.

“I see Allanon,” the old man answered softly.

A shudder passed through Walker Boh and was gone. “He is part of me now, Cogline. That was what he left to guard the Keep when he sent it from the Four Lands; that was what was waiting for me in the mist. They were all there, all of the Druids—Galaphile, Bremen, Allanon, all of them. That was how they passed on their knowledge, one to the next—a kind of joining of spirit with flesh. Bremen carried it all when he became the last of the Druids. He passed it on to Allanon, who passed in turn to me.”

His eyes were bright; there were fires there that Cogline could not define. “To me!” Walker Boh cried out suddenly. “Their teachings, their lore, their history, their madness—all that I have mistrusted and avoided for so long! He gave it all to me!”

He was trembling, and Cogline was suddenly afraid. This man he had known so well, his student, at times his friend, was someone else now, a man made over as surely as day changed to night.

Walker’s hand tightened about the Black Elfstone as he lifted it before him. “It is done, old man, and it can’t be undone. Allanon has his Druid and his Keep back in the world of Men. He has his charge to me fulfilled. And he has placed his soul within me!” The hand lowered like a weight pressing down against the earth. “He thinks to make the Druids over through me. Brin Ohmsford’s legacy. He gives me his power, his lore, his understanding, his history. He even gives me his face. You look at me, and you see him.”

A distant look came into the dark eyes. “But I have my own strength, a strength I gained by surviving the rite of passage he set for me, the horror of seeing what becoming a Druid means. I have not been made over completely, even in this.”

He stared hard at Cogline, then stepped forward and placed his arm about the thin shoulders. “You and I, Cogline,” he whispered. “The past and the future, we are all that remain of the Druids. It will be interesting to see if we can make a difference.”

He turned the old man slowly about, and together they began to walk back along the corridor. Rumor stared after them momentarily, sniffed at the floor where Walker Boh’s feet had trod as if trying it identify his scent, then padded watchfully after.




Here ends Book Three of The Heritage of Shannara. Book Four, The Talismans of Shannara, will conclude the series as Walker, Wren, Par, Coll, and their friends engage in a final struggle against Rimmer Dall and the Shadowen.





Read on for an excerpt from

The Measure of the Magic

by Terry Brooks

Published by Del Rey Books





ONE


HUMMING TUNELESSLY, THE RAGPICKER WALKED the barren, empty wasteland in the aftermath of a rainstorm. The skies were still dark with clouds and the earth was sodden and slick with surface water, but none of that mattered to him. Others might prefer the sun and blue skies and the feel of hard, dry earth beneath their feet, might revel in the brightness and the warmth. But life was created in the darkness and damp of the womb, and the ragpicker took considerable comfort in knowing that procreation was instinctual and needed nothing of the face of nature’s disposition that he liked the least.