Twice now I’ve left him, she was thinking.
Triss reached down to tighten the stays on the sword he had picked up from the supplies they had salvaged. “Cort went down with the serpent. I don’t think he was able to get free.”
Wren barely heard him, her thoughts dark and brooding. I should have looked for him when the raft sank. I should have tried to help.
But she knew, even as she thought it, that there was nothing she could have done.
“We have to go on,” the Owl said quietly. “We can’t stay here.”
As if to emphasize his words, Killeshan rumbled in the distance, and the haze swirled sluggishly in response. They hesitated a moment longer, bunched close at the riverbank, water dripping from their clothing, silent and unmoving. Then slowly, one after another, they turned away. After picking up the backpacks and supplies and checking to be certain that their weapons were in place, they stalked off into the trees.
Behind them, the Rowen stretched away like a silver-gray shroud.
XVI
The company had gone less than a hundred yards from the Rowen’s edge when the trees ended and the nightmare began. A huge swamp opened before them, a collection of bogs thick with sawgrass and weeds and laced through with sparse stretches of old-growth acacia and cedar whose branches had grown tight about one another in what appeared to be a last, desperate effort to keep from being pulled down into the mud. Many were already half fallen, their root systems eroded, their massive trunks bent over like stricken giants. Through the tangle of dying trees and stunted scrub, the swamp spread away as far as the eye could see, a vast and fin-penetrable mire shrouded in haze and silence.
The Owl brought them to an uncertain halt, and they stood staring doubtfully in all directions, searching for even the barest hint of a pathway. But there was nothing to be found. The swamp was a clouded, forbidding maze.
“Eden’s Murk,” the Owl said tonelessly.
The choices available to the company were limited. They could retrace their steps to the Rowen and follow the river upstream or down until a better route showed itself, or they could press on through the swamp. In either case, they would eventually have to scale the Blackledge because they had come too far downstream to regain the valley and the passes that would let them make an easy descent. There was not enough time left them to try going all the way back; the demons would be everywhere by now. The Owl worried that they might already be searching along the river. He advised pressing ahead. The journey would be treacherous, but the demons would not be so quick to look for them here. A day, two at the most, and they should reach the mountains.
After a brief discussion, the remainder of the company agreed. None of them, with the exception of Wren and Garth, had been outside the city in almost ten years—and the Rover girl and her protector had passed through the country only once and knew little of how to survive its dangers. The Owl had lived out there for years. No one was prepared to second-guess him.
They began the trek through Eden’s Murk. The Owl led, followed by Triss, Ellenroh, Eowen, Gavilan, Wren, Garth, and Dal. They proceeded in single file, strung out behind Aurin Striate as he worked to find a line of solid footing through the mire. He was successful most of the time, for there were still stretches where the swamp hadn’t closed over completely. But there were times as well when they were forced to step down into the oily water and mud, easing along patches of tall grass and scrub, clutching with their hands to keep from losing their footing, feeling the muck suck eagerly in an effort to draw them in. They traveled slowly, cautiously through the gloom, warned by the Owl to stay close to the person ahead, peering worriedly into the haze whenever the water bubbled and the mud belched.
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
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- 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
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- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
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- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
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- 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
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- 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