“You must stand and face this,” Preia said suddenly. “You must decide.”
He felt as if the world was spinning out of control. She asked too much of him. There was not yet need to decide anything. Any present need was fueled by rumors and speculation. No formal overture had been made concerning the kingship. Alyten’s fate was not determined. What of Courtann Ballindarroch’s grandchildren? Tay Trefenwyd himself had saved their lives. Were they to be cast aside without a thought? His own mind was not made up on any of this. He could barely conceive of what he was being asked to consider.
But his thoughts had a hollow and ill-considered ring to them, and in the silence of their aftermath he found himself face-to-face with the grinning specter of his own desperation.
He turned away from the two who waited for him to speak and looked out the window into the night.
No answer would come.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was sunset, and the city of Dechtera was bathed in blood-red light. The city sprawled across a plain between lowIt lying hills that ran north and south, the buildings a ragged, uneven jumble of walls and roofs silhouetted against the crimson horizon. Darkness crept out of the eastern grasslands, pushing back against the stain of the dying light, swallowing up the land in its black maw. The sun had settled behind a low bank of clouds, turning both sky and land first orange and then red, painting with vibrant, breathtaking colors, a defiant parting gesture as the day came to its reluctant close.
Standing east with Bremen and Mareth where the darkness already commanded the low heights and the plains below were beginning to streak with shadows, Kinson Ravenlock stared wordlessly down at the destination they had traveled so far to find.
Dechtera was an industrial city, easily reached from the other major Southland cities, set close to the mines that served its needs.
It was large, far larger than any city that lay north, any of the border cities, any of the Dwarf or Elven cities, and any but the greatest of the Troll cities. There were people and homes and shops in Dechtera, but mostly there were the furnaces. They burned without ceasing, grouped in clusters throughout the city, defined in daylight by the plumes of thick smoke that rose from their stacks and at night by the bright, hot glow of their open mouths. They drank greedily of the wood and coal that fed the firings of the ores that passed into their bellies to be melted down and shaped. The hammers and anvils of the smiths clanged and sparked at all hours, and Dechtera was a city of never-ending color and sound. Smoke and heat, ash and grit filled the air and coated the buildings and the people. Amid the cities of the Southland, Dechtera was a grime-encrusted member of a family that needed more than wanted her, put up with more than embraced her, and never once thought to view her with anything approaching pride or hope.
It was an unlikely choice for the forging of their talisman, thought Kinson Ravenlock once more, for it was a city that cared nothing for imagination, a city that survived by toil and rote, a city notoriously inhospitable to Druids and magic alike. Yet it was here, Bremen had countered when the Borderman had first mentioned his concerns some days ago, that the man they needed would be found.
Whoever he was, Kinson amended, because although the Druid had been willing enough to tell them where they were going, he hadn’t been willing to tell them who they were going to see.
It had taken them almost two weeks to complete their journey.
The First King of Shannara
Terry Brooks's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
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- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
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- The Gate Thief
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- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
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- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
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- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene