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

He stepped around so that he was facing Logan squarely. “I asked them to join me, just as I am asking you. For one reason or another, they said no.

They were foolish. In this world, you must make your stand.

You cannot walk away. You cannot refuse.”

He pointed at Logan. “If you are not with me, then inevitably you are against me. Perhaps not today, not right now, but sometime.

The potential for it is there; there is no point in pretending otherwise. Those who are not our friends are our enemies in waiting. We cannot afford to let our enemies escape us. We would be foolish to do so.”

Logan got the gist of it, but still had trouble coming to terms with what he was hearing. “You said they killed themselves?”

“In a manner of speaking. I used them to measure my own strength and skill. I gave them the choice of joining me or testing themselves in combat against me.”

Logan almost laughed. If Michael had been insane at the end, Krilka Koos was beyond even that. “You made them fight you?”

The big man nodded, no longer smiling. “If you choose not to join me, you are choosing to set yourself against me. The matter is settled through a test of strengths, yours against mine. Trial by combat. Have you made the right decision by refusing to join me or have I by insisting you must? A battle to the death will decide. It is nothing new. It has been an approved method of judging right and wrong for thousands of years.”

He gestured at the wall. “These three—and all those others whose weapons hang here, those who were not Knights of the Word but who chose trial by combat nevertheless—fought and died in this arena. I was the stronger, the better trained, the more prepared. I was the one who prevailed.” He paused.

“I was in the right. They were not.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Now you must decide, just as they did. Do you wish to test me?”

Logan shook his head, a great feeling of hopelessness welling up in his heart. He should have tried to make his escape earlier; he should have taken his chances. “I wish to go back to where you found me, take my kids, and goon my way. Let me do so.”

The big man shook his head. “Choose. Join me or fight me.

Those are your options.”

“This doesn’t make any sense. What purpose does it serve for Knights of the Word to fight one another? We share a common enemy. Let me go. Let me carry the fight in the way I feel is best. I leave you to do the same. Why can’t we do that?”

Krilka Koos gave him a rueful smile. “Because combat is how we settle everything, Logan. Because the world is ending and the battle to save her is lost. What we have left, in the time we have left, is a chance to take the measure of ourselves. Do we stand around waiting to die like the sheep you are so anxious to save? Or do we die fighting like the men we are? You know the answer. In your heart, you know. We are the last and the best. How good are we?

Set against one another, we can discover the truth.”

Logan shook his head. “I won’t fight you. I won’t do it.”

“I think you will. I think you don’t know yourself as well as you imagine.”

He unfolded his arms and blew into a whistle hung on a chain about his neck. “Trial by combat, to the death. You have one hour to prepare yourself. Achille will keep you company until then. Do not attempt to escape.

If you do, you already know what will happen to your children. It will be on your head. If you defeat me, you will be allowed to take them and go. It is the code I have established, and my men will follow it.”

He shook his head. “I should have preferred it, of course, if you joined me.

But killing you will be exciting, too. One hour.”

He started to walk away, beckoning to Achille and the guards who were already responding to the sound of the whistle. “What does not kill us makes us stronger, Logan Tom,” he called back over his shoulder. “It’s an old saying. Try thinking on it.”

Logan watched him disappear into the shadows, lost to everything.

It was Michael at the end. It was madness.

“IS IT SETTLED?” Achille asked quietly, coming up to stand beside him. “You will face him in battle?”

Logan looked at him in disgust. “He seems to think I will.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why do you follow him?”

Achille’s face was cadaverous beneath the shock of wild black hair. “Isn’t it obvious? Because he is invincible.” He gestured toward the wall of weapons. “Because he prevails in combat against all who stand against him. No one has been able to defeat him. No one ever will. Not demons or once-men. Not even other Knights of the Word. He is too much for any of them.”

He gave Logan a long look. “You’ll see. He will be too much for you, too.”

Achille’s smile was rueful as he looked away. “You don’t know him as we do, we who follow him. He has given us hope, when there is no hope to be found. He is the one who will save us all.”





Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT