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

He reached down and touched Cheney between his big shoulders, and the dog lifted his head in response. The gray eyes shifted to settle on him, and for just an instant Hawk believed that the wolfish dog understood what was happening.

He looked ahead to the bridge itself, a huge ugly span of girders and struts, the paint long since peeled and stripped away, the bare metal beneath rusted and scarred by weather and time. It had the look of something that might rise up from its sleep and attack in the manner of a giant insect. The comparison chilled him, recalling the centipede and the terrible struggle the Ghosts had survived in their Pioneer Square home. He stared at the bridge and willed it not to move.

“Better get ready,” Helen Rice said sharply, disrupting his thinking.

They had reached the steps that climbed to the bridgehead.

Already the militia guards were forming up across the mouth, taking note of the size of the group approaching. No warning had been given yet, so Helen took her company of men and women up the steps in a line, warning them to stay ready, but to keep their weapons lowered. Hawk walked right behind her as she led the way, his stomach churning, his heart beating fast.

What was he going to do? He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t even have a weapon. He was woefully unprepared.

As they reached the flat that approached the bridge, Helen’s company spread out to either side, stopping where she told them to, still fifty feet from the nearest barricades and soldiers. The men on the bridge had all come forward to the near end, weapons held ready, eyes shifting nervously as they waited to discover what was happening. Atop the bridge spans, more soldiers crouched in metal crow’s nests. There was a tank of some sort at the far end, and a pair of spray cannons set to either side of the gates warding the bridge entrance.

Too many weapons and men to do this without serious damage to both sides, thought Hawk. He glanced at Tessa, who gave him a brave smile.

“What are you going to do now?” Helen Rice asked him quietly.

He stood where he was for a moment, letting his emotions settle and his scattered thoughts come together. He waited until he was calm inside, until he could measure his heartbeat and feel the steady pulsing of the finger bones against his thigh. He waited until he could sense their response to his thinking—until he could gauge whether they would slow or quicken. He waited until he could feel something of that pulse seep into him, join with him, and become more than an external presence.

He waited to discover what he should do to fulfill his need. He waited for guidance and understanding, for this strange co-joining with the external world to reveal its purpose.

“Hawk,” Tessa whispered, an unmistakable urgency in her voice.

He walked forward alone, not directly toward the militia and the barricades, but toward a ragged clump of scrub, stunted trees, and withered vines growing bravely to one side of the approach. He was responding to the voice, but acting on instinct, as well. His course of action was decided, but its intended result still remained vague and uncertain. He could feel the eyes of both armed camps on him, could almost hear what both were thinking. He wondered at the stupidity of the militia holding the bridge, playing with matches while the rest of the world was already afire. What did they think they were going to gain by trying to collect a fee—whatever its nature—from those seeking to cross the river? What was the point of such an undertaking in a world like this? He knelt amid the scrub and trees and vines, running his fingers over dried-out grasses and leaves.

The world at his fingertips, waiting to be reborn; the thought came to him unbidden. Life waiting to be quickened.

I know what to do, he realized suddenly.

He took the withered plants in his hands, closing his fingers gently but firmly, taking care not to crush their brittle stalks. He held them as he would a child’s fingers, reaching down into their roots by strength of will alone. He could feel them stir, coming awake from the deep dormancy into which they had lapsed. They took their nourishment, fresh and new, from him, from the magic that he fed them, come to him from a source still unknown, one that might have its origins either in his mother’s finger bones or in his own life force. But it came from the earth, as well, from the elements that were intrinsic to her soil and rock and metal and molten core.

Come awake, he urged the plants he held in his fingers.

Come awake for me.

That he might be able to do this was at once astonishing and exhilarating.

That he could command magic of any sort was the fulfillment of the promise made to him by Logan Tom in the revealing of his origins and the delivery of his mother’s finger bones. He had not dared to think it possible—yet he had known, too, that it must be if he was to do what he had been given.