The First King of Shannara

When the creature was within two dozen feet, Risca brought up his battle-axe, gripped it in both hands, whirled about to gain momentum, and sent the gleaming blade flying at the monster.

The beast was right on top of him by then, rushing to the attack, and had no chance to deflect the blow. The axe struck the heavybrowed forehead and split it apart with a grating of metal on bone.

The force of the blow snapped the massive head back. Blood poured down the ruined face, a black ichor that filled the crea Hire’s gaping maw. The beast dropped to its knees, already dead, and began to topple forward.

Risca was already drawing back, racing for the safety of the door, when something moved in the shadows to either side and he threw up his magic instinctively. The sudden glare of the flames illuminated the handful of Skull Bearers that slunk from the shadows, dark-winged and red-eyed as they sought to close on him. Risca gritted his teeth in disgust. They had been quicker than he thought, coming over the wall while he obligingly waited on their decoy. He darted left at the closest of them, sending the Druid fire hammering into it. The winged hunter fell back, hissing in fury, and red fire exploded in front of Risca as he sought to gain the tower entry. Something slammed into him, knocking him sprawling — one of the Bearers, claws slashing. Risca rolled free and came back to his feet. Steam rose out of the places where the fire had burned, mingling with the rain and mist. Thunder rumbled and cracked with new fury. Cries of glee lifted as the Northlanders surged through the unprotected gap into the courtyard behind him.

Another of the Skull Bearers attacked, a sudden dark lunge that he only barely avoided. Spears and arrows flew all about him. He was so stupid, delaying like this! The thought came and went in a flash. He threw shards of Druid fire to either side and sprinted through weapons and teeth and claws for the doorway. He did not look back, knowing what he would find, afraid that it would freeze him where he stood. He threw back another of the Bearers, this one flinging itself in front of him in an effort to slow his escape. In desperation, he sent a wash of Druid fire in all directions, forcing back the enemies seeking to close, and he ran the last few yards to the entry as if on fire himself and catapulted through the open door.

Tumbling into the dark, he was back on his feet in an instant and racing ahead. It was pitch dark within the castle corridors, the torches all extinguished, but he knew Stedden Keep and did not require light to find his way. He heard the pursuit that came after him, and when he had gone the length of the first corridor, he turned long enough to fire the passageway from end to end. It was enough to slow them, no more. But that was all he needed.

Moments later, he was through a massive, iron-plated door that he slammed shut and barred against further pursuit. They would not catch him now. Not this night. But he had come too close to discount the possibility that next time he might not be so lucky.

He brushed away the blood that ran into his eyes, feeling the sting of the gash in his forehead. He was not badly hurt. Time enough to deal with it later. Raybur and the others would be waiting somewhere back in the tunnels. Risca knew the Dwarf King too well to think he would abandon him. Friends didn’t do that.

He swallowed against the dryness in his throat.

What then, he wondered bleakly, of Tay Trefenwyd and the Elves?



Night lay over Arborlon, a soft, warm blanket of darkness. No rain fell here as it did farther east. Jerle Shannara stood at a front window of the summerhouse and waited for dawn. He had not slept at all that night, beset by doubts whose roots he could trace to the loss of Tay Trefenwyd, haunted by the possibility of what might have been and what must now surely be. He was on the summit of a climb that had begun some weeks earlier and would culminate with the arrival of morning, and he could not shake the despair he felt at knowing that circumstance and fortune had determined his fate in ways he could never have foreseen and could not now change.

“Come to me, love,” Preia Starle called to him from the darkened hall, standing with her arms wrapped protectively about her body.

“I was thinking,” he replied distantly.

She walked over to him and put her arms about his waist, holding him against her. “You think too much lately.”

It was true, he supposed. It hadn’t been that way before, not when Tay had been alive, not before the coming of the Warlock Lord and the misery he had visited on the Elves. He had been freer then, unfettered by responsibilities or obligations of any real significance, his life and his future his own, all the possibilities in the world his to choose from. How quickly it had all changed.