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

She stared at him, her lips tight. “Sometimes you make me want to scream.”


“Please resist the urge. Now then. We should make the crossing at first light, when the tide is out and the world mostly still at rest. In the meantime, it looks to me as if young Kirisin has the right idea.”

They glanced over. The boy was asleep in his chair.

Larkin rose without waiting for a response to his suggestion and gestured toward one corner of the room. “We can make a place for all three of you right over there. A little crowded, but if you are as tired as you look, it shouldn’t matter. I’ll keep watch while you rest.”

He paused, his head cocking slightly in the silence that followed, his blank gaze fixing on the space that separated them. “Have I been clear enough for you?”

ANGEL SLEPT POORLY that night, plagued by dreams of Johnny.

In her dreams, he was still alive, walking the streets of the barrio, keeping watch over the people who lived there in the wake of civilization’s collapse. She was a child still, and he was her protector. She would sit in the doorway of their home and wait for him to return, scanning the faces of those who passed, searching for his, afraid until she found it.

And then one day, in her dream as in her life, she searched for him in vain.

The dawn was unexpectedly chill and damp as they set out across Redonnelin Deep, the air thick with moisture off the river and the sky gray with roiling storm clouds. A change in the weather was coming, something no one saw much of anymore. It might even bring serious rain, although Angel was doubtful. No one had seen more than a trace of rain in LA in almost a year.

Could it be so different here?“The higher mountains might even see snow,” said Larkin Quill, smiling brightly into the wind and the light as he steered the boat from the shelter of the inlet toward the open water. His face was lifted into the wind, as if he took direction from its feel. “Once, there was snow on the upper slopes year-round. I was told that. Imagine.

Snowcaps all year long, brilliant veils of white. Wouldn’t that be something to see? Syrring Rise, draped in white?”

The boat that conveyed them northward was a blunt, heavy craft with a metal-reinforced bow, the cleats of her gunwales wrapped with old tires and lashed with protective fenders. She boasted a pilothouse, an open aft deck, a galley, and two berths below through a hatchway. Twin inboard engines thrummed softly and, in the same way as the lamps inside the little cottage, seemed to lack any source of fuel. When Angel asked Larkin how they worked, he just smiled and shrugged.

“Magic,” he said.

Not magic of a sort that she was used to, she thought. She had believed until now that the Elves had lost all their magic, but it seemed that a revision of her thinking was in order. She let the matter alone for the moment, but made a promise to herself to follow up on it later. For now, it was enough that they were leaving the land in which the demons prowled and the Elven King hunted and the dream of Johnny still haunted her in her sleep.

Adios, mi amigo, she whispered to the wind, thinking of him once more. You were the best of us all. Rest in peace forever.

The chop of the waters quickened, and the waves grew higher. The earlier haze had settled lower on the waters, long trailers fanning out, weaving strange patterns. She looked back at the shoreline and found that it was already fading away.

Vaya con Dios. Tu madre sue?a contigo. Your mother dreams of you.

Then, as she lifted her eyes toward the high bluffs that Larkin Quill’s little cottage backed up against, she caught sight of something moving. Three figures, indistinct and shadowy, appeared out of the veil of the mist. They stood at the edge of the bluff and looked down at her.

A boy, a girl, and a very large dog.

They were visible for just a few seconds, and then they faded back into the mist. As the boat moved farther out into the channel, she tried repeatedly to find them again, but could not do so.

When she finally turned away, setting her gaze on the shoreline ahead, she was not even certain of what she had seen.

ON THE FAR BANK, two figures crouched behind a screen of heavy brush and peered out at the boat that was crossing toward them. The boat could not put in anywhere close to where they waited, which was atop a sheer cliff wall that dropped straight into the rough waters of the river. Instead the boat would land farther upriver, where an inlet offered shallow waters running up to a small sandbar. After disembarking, the occupants would be forced to ascend a steep, rocky slope to the heights, a climb that would consume the better part of an hour. By then, the watchers would be gone, leading the way to their mutual destination, a place known as well to them as to the three they shadowed.