The First King of Shannara

“T here is a way to reach the Black Elfstone,” Tay said quietly to Jerle Shannara. “But only I can do it, and I have to do it alone.”


They stood apart from the others, Tay’s crooked smile belying the knot that tightened his throat. The day was beginning to fade toward nightfall, the sun already gone west beyond the rim of the mountains surrounding them. He did not want to be caught down here in the dark.

Jerle studied him wordlessly for a moment. “You require some use of the Druid magic, I gather?”

“I do.”

The shrewd eyes fixed him. “A disguise?”

“Yes. Of a sort.” Tay paused. “I would rather not explain the specifics. I would rather you simply trusted me. I need to be left alone, no matter what happens. No one must come near me until I say it is permitted. This will be hard, because you will want to do otherwise.”

“This will be dangerous.” Jerle made it a statement of fact.

Tay nodded. “I must go into the garden. If I do not come out, you are to take the company and return to Arborlon. Wait, hear me out,” he said, cutting short the other’s protest. “If I am killed, there is no one else who stands a chance. You have a brave heart, Jerle, but no magic, and you cannot overcome what lives in the garden without magic. You must go back to Arborlon and wait for Bremen. He will be able to help. We have found the Black Elfstone, so it only remains to discover a way to retrieve it. If I cannot, he must.”

Jerle Shannara put his hands on his hips and looked away in disgust. “I am not much good at standing around while someone else risks his life — especially when it is you.”

Tay folded his arms across his chest and looked down at his feet. “I understand. I would feel the same way if our positions were reversed. Waiting is hard. But I have to ask it of you. I will need your strength later, when mine is gone. One thing more. When I come out again, when you see me, even if you are not sure it is me, speak my name.”

“Tay Trefenwyd,” the other repeated dutifully.

They stared at each other, thinking back on the years they had been friends, measuring what was being asked against their private expectations of themselves.

“All right,” Jerle said finally. “Go. Do what you must.”

At Tay’s request, he took the other members of the company to stand with him at the bottom of the spiral staircase, well back from the edge of the garden. Tay glanced at them only once, locking eyes momentarily with Preia Starle before turning away. He had distanced himself from his feelings for her since coming into the Chew Magna, knowing he could not afford the distraction. He did so anew now, focusing on his life as a Druid, on the years given over to the study of his special talents, on the disciplines and skills he had mastered. He pictured Bremen: the lean, creased face; the strange, commanding eyes; the sense of purpose stamped everywhere. He repeated the charge the old man had given him, the charge he had accepted in coming here.

He faced the garden then, the deadly tangle of vines, the shadowed recesses, the invisible life force that waited somewhere deep within. He stilled himself, slowed his heartbeat and his pulse, quieted his thoughts, and enveloped himself in a blanket of calm. He reached out for the elements that fueled his magic — for air, water, fire, and earth, for the tools of his trade. He summoned what he could find of them, searched them out and retrieved them, and surrounded himself in their heady mix. He breathed them in, infused himself with their feel, and slowly began to change.

He worked carefully to achieve the result he desired, taking small steps as he invoked his Druid magic, altering himself without haste. He stripped away his own identity layer by layer, removing his features, changing his look. He scrubbed himself clean so that nothing of his physical identity remained. Then he went down inside his body to change what was there as well. He locked away feelings and beliefs, emotions and thoughts, codes of conduct and values of life — everything that marked him for who and what he was. He gathered them up and hid them where they could not be found, where nothing would release them save Jerle Shannara speaking his name.