The First King of Shannara

“No,” the other quickly agreed, “it isn’t. I keep some sense of right and wrong about me, and I am not yet a slave to the magic. Though that is what you fear I will become, isn’t it?”


Kinson did not answer. “Tell me how you managed to get so close. How was it that you were not discovered?”

Bremen’s eyes looked away, focusing on some distant place and time. “It was not easy,” he replied softly. “The cost was high.”

He reached again for the aleskin and drank deeply, the weariness mirrored in his face so heavy it might have been formed of iron links dragging against his skin. “I was forced to make myself appear one of them,” he said after a moment. “I was required to shroud myself in their thoughts and impulses, in the evil rooted within their souls. I was cloaked in invisibility, so that my physical presence did not register, and I was left only with my spirit self. That I cloaked in the darkness that marks their own spirits, reaching deep within myself for the blackest part of who I am. Oh, I see you question that this was possible. Believe me, Kinson, the potential for evil lodges deep in every man, myself included. We restrain it better, keep it buried deeper, but it lives within us. I was forced to bring it out of concealment in order to protect myself. The feel of it, the rub of it against me, so close, so eager, was terrible. But it served its purpose. It kept the Warlock Lord and his minions from discovering me.”

Kinson frowned. “But you were damaged.”

“For a time. The walk back gave me a chance to heal.” The old man smiled anew, a brief twist of his thin lips. “The trouble is that once brought so far out of its cage, a man’s evil is reluctant thereafter to be contained. It presses against the bars. It is more anxious to escape. More prepared. And having lived in such close proximity to it, I am more vulnerable to the possibility of that escape.”

He shook his head. “We are always being tested in life, aren’t we? This is just one more instance.”

There was a long moment of silence as the two men stared at one another. The moon had moved across the sky to the southern edge of the horizon and was sinking from view. The stars were brightening with its passing, the sky clear of clouds, a brilliant black velvet in the vast, unbroken silence.

Kinson cleared his throat. “As you said, you did what was required of you. It was necessary that you get close enough to determine if your suspicions were correct. Now we know.” He paused. “Tell me. Did you see the book as well? The Ildatch?”

“There, in his hands, out of my reach, or I would surely have taken it and destroyed it, even at the cost of my own life.”

The Warlock Lord and the Ildatch, there in the Skull Kingdom, as real as life, not rumor, not legend. Kinson Ravenlock rocked back slightly and shook his head. Everything true, just as Bremen had feared. As they had both feared. And now this army of Trolls come down out of the Northland to subdue the Races. It was history repeating itself. It was the First War of the Races beginning all over again. Only this time there might not be anyone to bring it to an end.

“Well, well,” he said sadly.

“There is more,” the Druid observed, lifting his eyes to the Borderman. “You must hear it all. There is an Elfstone they search for, the winged ones. A Black Elfstone. The Warlock Lord learned of it from the Ildatch. Somewhere within the pages of that wretched book, there is mention of this stone. It is not an ordinary Elfstone like the others we have heard about. It is not one of three, one each for the heart, mind, and body of the user, their magic to be joined when summoned. This stone’s magic is capable of great evil. There is some mystery about the reason for its creation, about the use it was intended to serve. All that has been lost in the passing of time. But the Ildatch makes deliberate and purposeful reference to its capabilities, it seems. I was fortunate to learn of it. While I clung to the shadows of the wall in the great chamber where the winged ones gather and their Master directs, I heard mention of it.”

He leaned close to the Borderman. “It is hidden somewhere in the Westland, Kinson — deep within an ancient stronghold, protected in ways that you or I could not begin to imagine. It has lain concealed since the time of faerie, lost to history, as forgotten as the magic and the people who once wielded it. Now it waits to be discovered and brought back into use.”

“And what is that use?” Kinson pressed.

“It has the power to subvert other magic, whatever its form, and convert it to the holder’s use. No matter how powerful or intricate another’s magic might be, if you hold the Black Elfstone, you can master your adversary. His magic will be leached from him and made yours. He will be helpless against you.”