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

The wounds are all healing pretty well. There doesn’t even seem to be any infection from the viper-prick, and that should have killed him. Whatever’s wrong, it’s in his head somewhere.”


Panther thought that was a bunch of crap, but he kept it to himself. “Man’s gonna die,” he said instead.

“Don’t say that,” Catalya snapped at him from behind his back.

He grimaced. “Okay, okay. I’m just making a…a observation, that’s all.” Girl’s got ears like a hawk, he thought irritably.

Hawk. There was another mystery that didn’t seem close to getting solved.

Bird-Man disappears off a wall, goes into the light—isn’t that what happens when you die?—and now they were supposed to find him somewhere just by heading south. Like that was going to happen. A vision said it would, but Panther had never had a whole lot of faith in visions. Not even the ones Hawk used to have, the ones that Owl turned into stories about the boy and his children. He liked those stories, liked the way Owl told them. But he didn’t actually believe them. Believing stories like that was what got you killed in this man’s world. You wanted to believe in something, you were better off believing in a Parkhan Spray or a Tyson Flechette. Something you could put in your hands and use to kill your enemies.

Cat believed like that, too, he thought. Practical girl, no nonsense. She might be half Freak, but she was more like him than any of the others. He still couldn’t believe how she had taken out those militia clowns.

She was frickin’ dangerous, was what she was.

She probably thought the same thing he did about this hunting around for Hawk, too. Waste of time.

Sometimes it made him wonder about things. They did stuff that seemed to have a purpose, but how much of it really mattered? Right now, right this moment, he felt like a drowning man treading water in the middle of the ocean.

“You know, we ain’t going to find him,” he said to Sparrow.

“The Bird-Man, I mean. We can look until every last one of us is underground with Squirrel, and we ain’t ever going to see him again.”

She didn’t look at him. She was looking straight ahead, into the distance. “We might,” she said quietly.

He stared at her in confusion, the way she said it sounding odd, and then he shifted his gaze ahead to where she was looking. Three figures were just coming into view from out of the fold of the hills, stepping onto the freeway surface and turning toward them.

A boy, a girl, and a burly, butt-ugly dog.

Panther’s jaw dropped. “Damn!” he whispered.

A bright smile broke out on Sparrow’s face, and her somber features were transformed. The weariness fell away. Fresh life blossomed.

Without a word, she sprinted toward the approaching figures, calling out to them by name, the sound of her voice a beacon that drew the others.

“Damn!” Panther repeated, and then he was running, too.

TWILIGHT IN THE MOUNTAINS

Angel Perez woke to near darkness and freezing cold. She was lying where she had collapsed after her battle with the demon, sprawled facedown on the ice and snow, her all-weather cloak wrapped about her damaged arm, her black staff cradled against her body. There was blood everywhere, and large patches of the mountain’s white expanse were burned and still smoking from the Word’s fire. The remains of the demon lay to one side, all but unrecognizable save for the lower parts. Angel looked away quickly. Even in death, it was monstrous.

She was aware that she had to get up and find shelter, that she would freeze to death if she didn’t. The light was almost gone from the sky, and the temperature dropping quickly. It might be that winter had virtually disappeared from almost everywhere else in the United States of America, but it was present here. She tried moving and found that her body didn’t like it. She ached everywhere, but she imagined that the cold was helping to numb the pain and slow the bleeding. She knew she had damaged her ribs and maybe her arm, as well. She knew she was losing blood from a dozen deep slashes. She couldn’t be sure of anything else.

She felt momentarily for internal damage and then quickly stopped. “No toques,” she whispered. “Don’t touch. You don’t want to know. You don’t want to think about it.”

She took a moment to collect herself, taking slow, deep breaths, tightening her resolve. Then she clasped her staff tightly and levered herself to her feet. She almost didn’t make it, swaying and stumbling forward a few steps, pain lancing through her like a hot knife through butter. She fought to stay upright, knowing that if she went down it was likely she would not rise again.

She unraveled the all-weather cloak and pulled it on. It took a long time, and when she was finished she looked like a vagrant. Rips and tatters everywhere. Blood smeared in dark stains. Barely any protection at all against the cold.

But some, at least. It was the best she could do. She would take what she could find.