The First King of Shannara

He walked into the city along one of several main streets, taking time to study the buildings and the people crowded around him.

He was in a working district, amid a cluster of warehouses and storage sheds. Flat carts pulled by donkeys hauled pieces of metal scrap for melting and reshaping at the furnaces. He scanned the rusted, broken buildings, a neglected, mostly dilapidated collection, and then moved on. He passed through a section of smaller forges manned by single smiths, the tools and molds rudimentary, the firings meant for simple tasks, and did not slow. He passed slag heaps and scrap piles, stacks of old building timbers and rows of abandoned buildings. Smells rose out of the gutters and refuse, rank and pervasive. Kinson shied away. Shadows flickered and jumped in the glare of the furnace fires and street lamps, small creatures darting momentarily from hiding places and then disappearing back again. The men who passed him were bent and worn, laborers all their lives, trudging from payday to payday until death laid claim to their souls. Few eyes even bothered to look up as he passed. No one spoke.

He went down into the center of the city, the evening close and sluggish with heat, the hour edging toward midnight. He glanced through the doors and windows of the ale houses and taverns, debating whether he should enter. He did finally, choosing one or two that suited his purpose, staying long enough to listen to the talk, to ask a question or two, to buy a glass when it was called for, then moving on. Who did the finest metalwork in all the city? he would ask. Which of the smiths was master of his craft? The choices differed each time, and the reasons supporting the choices differed even more. Using the names he had heard mentioned more than once, Kinson stopped at a handful of midsize forges to test them on the smiths at work there‘. Some responded with little more than grunts of disinterest. Some had more voluble opinions to offer. One or two gave a thoughtful response. Kinson listened, smiled agreeably, and moved on.

Midnight came and went.

“He will not be back tonight,” Bremen said, looking down at the city from the hills, his cloak wrapped tightly about his spare form in spite of the heat.

Mareth stood next to him in silence. They had watched the Borderman until he could no longer be seen, a diminishing figure melting away in the gathering dark. Even then, they had not moved, continuing their vigil as if sentinels posted against the coming of the night. Overhead the skies brightened with stars and a quarter-moon, visible from the heights, but not from the smokeshrouded city below.

Bremen turned away, walked a few steps to his left, and settled himself in a patch of soft, thick grass. Comfort for his aging bones.

He sighed contentedly. It took less and less to satisfy him, he found. He thought to eat, but realized he wasn’t really hungry. He looked up as Mareth came over to join him, seating herself unbidden, looking off into the dark as if something waited for her there.

“Would you like to eat?” he asked her, but she shook her head.

Lost in her thoughts, gone back into the past again or perhaps speculating on the future — he had learned to recognize the look.

More often somewhere other than where she was, possessed of a restless spirit and a dissatisfied heart, that was Mareth.

He left her alone for a time, gathering his own thoughts, not wanting to rush what he intended. It was a delicate matter, and if she felt she was being coerced, she would close herself off from him completely. Yet there must be a resolution, and it must come now.

“On nights like these, I think of my boyhood,” he said finally, looking not at her, but at the summit of the hills and the stars that hung above them. He smiled. “Oh, I suppose it seems as if someone as old as I am could not ever have been young. But I was. I lived in the hill country below Leah with my grandfather, who was a metalworker of great skill. Even when he was old, his hands were steady and his eye keen. I would watch him for hours, amazed at his dexterity and patience. He loved my grandmother, and when she died, he said she took a part of him with her that he could never have back again, but that the loss was worth it for the time they had shared. He said I had been given him in her place. He was a fine man.”

He looked at Mareth now and found her looking back, interested. “But my parents were another matter. They were nothing like my grandfather. They were never able to settle in one spot for long, not ever in their short lives, and nothing of my grandfather’s dedication to his craft ever took root in them. They were always moving about, changing their lives, looking for something new, something different. They left me with my grandfather shortly after I was born. They had no time for me.”