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

” She smiled broadly and reached out to squeeze his shoulder affectionately. “That’s Syrring Rise, the mountain our parents called Paradise.”


HIGH ON THE SLOPES above them, lost in the darkness of the thinning forest line, the demon put its hand on Delloreen to stop her forward progress. She responded immediately, a shiver running through her. Once, had anyone or anything touched her, she would have responded much differently. But this one knew how to touch her in a way that gave her such pleasure, even in the smallest brushing of clawed fingers, that it made her instantly want more.

Already it had taught her more about pleasure than she had imagined it was possible to learn.

“Not too quickly, pretty thing,” her demon whispered in that rough, soothing voice. “Let them go on a bit before we follow. Let them be.”

She did not want to let them be. She did not want to waste another moment tracking them. She wanted to catch up to them and tear them apart, especially the female Elf who had taken her eye. The knife had blinded her; she would never see again out of her right side. It had been luck, nothing more, but it was done and her sight was gone. Her rage would not be quenched until she had tasted the Elf’s warm blood.

“Does it hurt still?” the other asked her softly.

One hand came down to stroke her scaly head, lingering near but not touching the wound. The hand that had extracted the blade and stanched the flow of blood and taken away most of the pain, she thought absently, reveling in its feel. The hand that gave her such pleasure when it touched her.

“You are so eager to kill her, aren’t you?” the other said.

“But now is not the time. Everything is happening as I intended it should. We have them fleeing the safety of the Cintra. We have them alone and cut off from any help. We have them responding to the incentives we have given them. All we need do is be patient. When it is time, you may kill them all.”

Delloreen’s growl was a mingled hiss and purr. She showed her teeth and panted softly.

“Lead us down into the trees,” it instructed her. “We will make our bed there for the night. We will rest and resume tracking when it is light. Their trail will be easy to follow. Their scent will be unmistakable.

But we will stay safely behind them and out of sight.”

Delloreen accepted this. She knew that they could not escape her—that once she set her mind to it, nothing ever escaped her. But the urge to kill was strong, and she felt itchy and restless within her scaly body.

She looked up into the eyes of her companion and let it see her need clearly. The other demon nodded.

“Go, then. Do what you must. There will be other prey for you besides our little Elves and the Knight. Take what you need elsewhere, but leave them be for now.” It bent down and kissed Delloreen on the muzzle. “Go, but come back soon.”

Her blood was hot with expectation and her body taut with the thrill of the hunt as she bounded away into the night.





Chapter FIFTEEN


SQUIRREL’S FAMILY buried him at dawn.

They were all awake by then, perhaps because they were no longer safely tucked away in their Pioneer Square home, perhaps because they were already anticipating the uncertainty of the journey that lay ahead. It was barely light, the sunrise still little more than a faint brightening on the eastern horizon, its glow muted by a heavy screen of smoke and ash blown south from the city. Glimmerings of the fires dying out on the docks and in the adjacent buildings could still be seen against the fading darkness. North, a single star was all that remained, a tiny pinprick of light that seemed to have lost its way.

Logan Tom had risen before the rest and was standing by himself on the crest of the hilltop where they had made their camp when Owl rolled up in her wheelchair.

“We have to bury the boy,” he told her. “It isn’t safe to keep him with us another day.”

She knew what he meant. Too many diseases; too many ways to infect the others. There wasn’t any choice, no matter how you felt about it.

“We can bury him here, beneath this spruce,” she said, pointing to a majestic old growth that the wilt and sickness had not yet killed and stripped of life.

“He would like sleeping here, I think. Will you help us dig the grave?”

He put down his black staff and retrieved a couple of shovels from the AV while the others were still rising and dressing. Then Bear joined him, big and strong and silent as they worked together to make the hole deep enough to keep the carrion away. Fixit and Chalk wandered over, as well, but there weren’t any more shovels, so there wasn’t much they could do to help.

Chalk sat down with a board and began to scratch something on it. Fixit stood watching with Sparrow.

Panther was staring at the boy inside the Lightning. The boy tried to pretend he didn’t care, but Logan could read the uneasiness in the shift of his body as Panther walked from one side to the other, stone-faced.