The Elves of Cintra (Book 2 of The Genesis of Shannara)

Simralin continued. “


We rely on him. He keeps a boat to ferry us across the Redonnelin Deep so we can avoid using the bridges. He takes us across and then comes back to get us when we’re done. He reads the currents of the river the same way he reads the faces of the Elves who think he can’t see.” She smiled. “Don’t you, Larkin?”

“If you say so. Who would know better than you?” He took a deep swallow from his glass. “She hasn’t told you yet that she was the one who saved me when I lost my sight. We were on patrol together below the Cintra and came across a mantis field.”

“The insects,” Simralin interjected. “Thousands of them.”

“Thousands, devouring everything in their path. But some of these had mutated. They spit out a poison that blinded me before I realized the danger. Poor instincts, that day. Simralin was lucky. They missed her, and she was able to get us both away. The Elves went out later and eradicated the mantis field. Too late for me, though.”

“He was my mentor before and after the accident,” Simralin said, continuing the story. “He taught me how to be a Tracker, taught me everything I know.

He still teaches me. He still knows more than I do.”

“That’s because I’m older and I’ve had time to learn more.

Now why don’t you go bathe, you and Angel Perez? Then we’ll wash down our junior member of the family. Meanwhile, Kirisin, you can keep me company and tell me everything I don’t know about your sister. Come on, now. Don’t be shy.

I’m willing to bet that there’s lots you can tell me that she doesn’t want me to know.”

There was a rudimentary shower out in back of the cottage at the base of the cliffs that took its water from a narrow falls. Angel and Simralin stripped off their clothes and began to wash. The water felt icy cold as it splashed over Angel’s hot skin.

“I can’t believe anyone who is blind could live out here alone like this,” she said, scrubbing off the dirt. “In fact, I can’t believe that he can tell as much as he can about what’s going on around him.”

Simralin caught the bar of soap she was tossed. “He sees in ways none of us can. He won’t talk about it, but it’s there in the way he knows things no blind person should be able to know. Not even with enhanced senses.

He’s a different breed.”

“But the Elves don’t know this?”

The Tracker shrugged. “Elves aren’t so different from humans. They make up their minds and pass judgment without knowing as much as they should. ‘Blind people can’t see. Blind people can’t do as much as sighted people.’ You’ve heard something like it. No one questions that it could be any different for him. Certainly, they don’t want to take a chance on him as a Tracker.”

They finished washing, and then sent Kirisin out to do the same. When they were all clean and wearing the one change of clothes they had brought with them as they fled Arborlon, they sat down to eat. Dinner was hot and tasty.

Angel never even bothered to ask what it was she was eating; she just ate it and washed it down with ale and felt a little of the aching weariness seep from her body.

Afterward, they sat out on Larkin’s tiny porch while Simralin told him what had brought them north from the Cintra and what sort of danger he might be in if he agreed to help.

“We need a crossing,” she finished. “We need to get to the far shore without being seen and without anyone knowing you helped.”

The blind man said nothing, made no movement.

“In truth, you shouldn’t help,” she added as they stared at one another in the ensuing silence. “A smart man would tell us to take our troubles somewhere else.”

He nodded, and his Elven face wrinkled with amusement.

“Good advice, I’m sure.”

“Arissen Belloruus will have sent his Elven Hunters looking for us. Those demons will come looking, too.”

“I expect so. They might even show up at the same time.”

Simralin gazed at him. “You don’t sound as if you are taking this seriously enough. You sound like you think this is amusing. But there are three dead people back in Arborlon who would tell you differently if they could still talk.”

Larkin brushed off her comments with a wave of his hand.

“Do you want my help or not, Simralin? Did you come all this way to talk me out of doing anything or to talk me into it? You can’t have it both ways.”

“I just want to make certain you understand—”

“Yes, that this is dangerous business.” He leaned forward, his milky eyes fixed and unseeing, but his attention all on her. “What have we ever done as Trackers that isn’t dangerous? We live in a world that is filled with dangerous creatures, infected with plague and poison, and saturated in madness at every turn. I think I have the picture.”