The First King of Shannara

‘No one would have you — that’s why you’re here. Be grateful to me.’ He would say that when he had drunk too much and was thinking about beating me. His drinking loosened his tongue and gave him a boldness that was otherwise absent. The longer I was with him, the more he drank — but it was not because of me. He had been drinking too much for most of his life, and it was the aging and the incumbent failure to achieve success of any kind that encouraged him. As his drinking increased, his work time and output lessened. I took his place many times, taking on the tasks I could manage. I taught myself a great deal and acquired an early skill.”


She shook her head sadly, a distance creeping into her voice. “I was fifteen when I left him. He tried once too often to beat me for no reason, and I fought back. By then, I had matured. I had my magic to protect me. I did not understand the extent of its power until the day I fought back. Then I knew. I almost killed him. I ran from the village and its people and my life, knowing I would never go back. I realized something on that day that I had only suspected before. I realized that I was indeed my father’s child.”

She paused, her face intense, a fierce resolve apparent in hei dark eyes. “I had discovered the truth about my father, you see The potter had gotten drunk one too many times and told me. He would drink until he could barely stand, and then he would taunt me. He would say it over and over. ‘Don’t you know who you are Don’t you know what you are? Your father’s child! A black spot on the earth, birthed by a demon and his bitch! You have the eyes, little girl! You have the stain of his blood and his dark presence’

‘Worthless to all but me, so better listen when I tell you to do something! Better heed what I say! Else you’ll have no place in the world at all!‘

“So it went, followed each time by a new beating. I didn’t feel the blows much by then. I knew how to cover myself and how to say what he wished to hear so that he would stop. But I grew tired of it. I grew angry at my degradation. On the day I left him, I knew before he tried to strike me that I would resist. When he began to shout at me about my father, I laughed in his face. I called him a liar and a drunk. I told him he didn’t know anything about my father. He lost control of himself completely. He called me things I will not repeat. He told me that my father had come down out of the north, out of the border country where his black order made its home. He told me my father was a conjurer of magic and a stealer of souls. ‘A demon disguised as a man! Him in his black robes! With his wolfs eyes! Your father, girl! Oh, we knew what he was! We knew his dark secret! And you, made in such a perfect image of him, secretive and sharp-eyed! You think we don’t see, but we do! We all do, the whole village! Why do you think you were given to me? Why do you think those people who raised you were so anxious to be rid of you? They knew what you were! They knew you were a Druid’s whelp!’ ”

She took a long, slow breath, looking at him, waiting for him to speak. She wanted to hear his reaction, he could tell. She was hungry for it. But he did not answer.

“I knew he was right,” she said finally, the words a low hiss ot challenge unmistakably directed at him. “I think I had known for some time. There was talk now and again of the black-robed men who prowled the Four Lands, the ones who kept their order at the castle of Paranor. Conjurers of magic, all-powerful and all-seeing, creatures more spirit than human, the cause of so much pain and suffering among the people of the Southland. They spoke of how now and again one would pass close by. ‘Once,’ it was whispered when the speaker did not realize I could hear, ‘one stayed. There was a woman seduced by him. There was a child!’ Then hands would lift in a warding motion and the voice would go still. My father. That was who they were speaking of in their hushed, frightened voices. My father!”

She hunched forward, and Bremen could tell that in doing so she was bringing her formidable magic up from the center of her small body to the tips of her fingers, readying it. A twinge of doubt passed through him. He forced himself to remain calm, to stay perfectly still, to let her finish.

“I have come to believe,” she said slowly, purposefully, “that they were speaking of you.”



The shopkeeper was just closing up as Kinson Ravenlock stepped through the door from the darkness and stood looking at the sword. The hour was late, and the streets of Dechtera had begun to empty of everyone but the men passing to and from the ale houses. Kinson was weary of his search, and he had been on his way to find a room at one of the inns when he passed down a street lined with weapons shops and saw the sword. It was displayed in a window framed by crosshatched iron bars inset with small, grimy panes of glass. He had almost missed it in his need for sleep, but the brilliant glint of the metal blade had caught his eye.