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

Then she remembered the boy with the ruined face.

She rolled her wheelchair around to the side of the shed where Logan had left him chained to an iron ring. The chains lay in a heap, still attached to the ring, but the boy was gone. Somehow during the night he had managed to free himself and had fled.

Had he forced Candle to go with him? Chalk charged back into view, gasping for breath. “I looked everywhere! I can’t find her! I can’t find any sign of her!”

There was no reason for the boy to take the little girl with him when he fled, nothing to be gained from taking her.

Yet Owl was convinced that he had.





Chapter TWENTY


“IT ISN’T MUCH FARTHER,” the girl named Cat told Logan Tom as they continued their march through the empty buildings of the city.

Logan hoped not. They had been walking for the better part of an hour, and there was nothing to indicate what it was they were walking toward. He had thought to ask her once or twice, but then decided not to. Cat seemed to know exactly where she was going. He had little choice but to trust her if he didn’t want to have to start over on his own—a thought that held little appeal. Time was precious for River and Fixit, and he needed to get the plague medicine to them as quickly as he could manage. Cat still seemed his best bet.

“Are you worried that I don’t know where I’m going?” she asked suddenly, as if reading his mind.

Her dappled face turned toward him, the patches of Lizard skin glistening faintly in the moonlight. He was struck anew by the strangeness of her look. “

I’m worried about time, that’s all,” he said.

She nodded. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have been so foolish as to come into the city on your own and with no weapons.” She continued to study him. “Or maybe you’re better prepared than it seems. You look pretty confident.

Do you have weapons I can’t see?”

He shook his head. “Only my staff.”

“Then your staff must be pretty special.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You don’t seem to have any weapons, either. What do you do if you have to protect yourself?”

She turned away from him. “I show my face. It terrifies my enemies, and they run and hide.”

She tossed it off, quick and light, almost a verbal shrug. But it cost her something to say it, and she had said it before this, perhaps practicing how it would sound. Her transformation was more than skin-deep, and she was still coming to terms with it.

In any case, she was too confident not to have some sort of defense against predators. She wouldn’t be out here like this if all she had to rely on was a cat that hopped like a rabbit.

Speaking of which, he hadn’t seen the cat in quite some time. He glanced around, but there was no sign of her.

“What happened to your cat?” he asked.

“She’s gone ahead.”

“Ahead to where?”

“To where we’re going. Not far.”

He gave it up and just kept walking after that, staying alert for any danger but oddly unworried in her company. The streets down which they passed, while as cluttered with debris and overgrown with weeds and scrub as every other road in America, were otherwise empty. Now and then, he caught sight of feeders working their way through the shadows, their sleek forms quicksilver and ephemeral as they flitted past building walls and around tree trunks on their way to destinations that only they knew. He had seen little of feeders since leaving the city of Seattle, but he was conscious of the fact that they were always there, watching and waiting for an opportunity to feast. Humankind’s heritage to the world, the product of their dark emotions, he thought. He wondered if feeders had been there before humans and if they would survive when humans were gone.

Were demons and Faerie creatures fair game, as well? Were Knights of the Word? He thought again about the gypsy morph and its purpose—to save the human race, its only chance. And maybe he was the morph’s only chance, but how could he be sure? The Lady had said so. O’olish Amaneh had said so. But they were Faerie creatures, and Faerie creatures never revealed to anyone the whole of what they knew. Logan had been told only what he needed to know and nothing more. That was the way it worked. He had learned that from his time attacking the slave camps.

He was still contemplating the nature and extent of his efforts when he caught sight of movement off to one side. The movement was slow and deliberate, the shifting of a large body against a building wall. They were in a section of old warehouses, close by the water where it extended south from Seattle. Logan glanced at the girl, but she seemed preoccupied. He glanced back at where he had seen the movement, but now there was nothing.

He tightened his grip on his staff and summoned the magic.

The runes began to glow a deep blue in response.

“I thought so,” the girl said suddenly, looking over at him.

Her words startled him. “What?”