The First King of Shannara

All that night it had scratched and worried at itself like a stricken animal, the sounds of pain and anguish rising up out of the mist and rain, transcending the fading thunder of the receding storm.

All that night the army had tended to its needs and regrouped its forces. It held the eastern pass entire, the floor and the heights alike. It brought forward all of its siege machines, supplies, and equipment, and settled them within the lines of its encampment across the broad mouth of the pass. Its progress might be slow and lumbering, but it remained an inexorable, unstoppable juggernaut.

“They’re out there,” muttered one-eyed Am Banda, standing just to Bremen’s left, his face twisted in a worrisome scowl.

Jerle Shannara nodded, his tall form fixed and unmoving. “But what are they up to?”

“Indeed.” Bremen pulled his dark robes closer to his lean body to ward off the dawn chill. They could not see the far end of the valley, their eyes unable to penetrate the gloom, but they could feel the enemy’s presence even so. The night had been filled with sound and fury as the Northlanders prepared anew for battle, and it was only in the last hour that they had gone ominously still. The attack this day would take a new form, the old man suspected. The Warlock Lord had been repulsed the previous day with heavy losses and would not be inclined to repeat the experience. Even his power had limits, and sooner or later his hold on those who fought for him would weaken if no gains were made. The Elves must be driven back or defeated soon or the ‘Northlanders would begin to question the Master’s invincibility. Once that house of cards began to topple, there would be no stopping it.

There was movement to his right, small and furtive. It was the boy, Allanon. He glanced over surreptitiously. The boy was staring straight ahead, his lean face taut, his eyes fixed on nothing.

He was seeing something, though — that much was clear from his expression. He was looking through the mist and gloom to something beyond, those strange eyes penetrating to what was hidden from the rest of them.

The old man followed the direction of the boy’s gaze. Mist swirled, a shifting cloak across the whole of the valley’s eastern end. “What is it?” he asked softly.

But the boy only shook his head. He could sense it, but not yet identify it. His eyes remained fixed on the haze, his concentration complete. He was good at concentrating, Bremen had learned. In fact, he was better than good. His intensity was frightening. It was not something he had learned while growing or been imbued with as a result of the shock he had suffered in the destruction of Varfleet. It was something he had been born with — like the strange eyes and the razor-sharp mind. The boy was as hard and fixed of purpose as stone, but he possessed an intelligence and a thirst for knowledge that were boundless. Just a week earlier, following the night raid on the Northland camp, he had come to Bremen and asked the old man to teach him to use the Druid magic. Just like that. Teach me how to use it, he had demanded — as if anyone could learn, as if the skill could be taught easily.

“It takes years to master even the smallest part,” Bremen had replied, too stunned by the request to refuse it outright.

“Let me try,” the boy had insisted.

“But why would you even want to?” The Druid was genuinely perplexed. “Is it revenge you seek? Do you think the magic will gain you that? Why not spend your time learning to use conventional weapons? Or learning to ride? Or studying warfare?”

“No,” the boy had replied at once, quick and firm. “I don’t want any of that. I don’t care about revenge. What I want is to be like you.”

And there it was, the whole of it laid bare in a single sentence.

The boy wanted to be a Druid. He was drawn to Bremen and Bremen to him because they were more kindred than the old man had suspected. Galaphile’s fourth vision was another glimpse of the future, a warning that there were ties that bound the boy to the Druid, a promise of their common destiny. Bremen knew that now. The boy had been sent to him by a fate he did not yet understand. Here, perhaps, was the successor he had looked so long to find. It was strange that he should find him in this way, but not entirely unexpected. There were no laws for the choosing of Druids, and Bremen knew better than to try to start making them now.