The First King of Shannara

Tay’s brother and family lived in the Sarandanon, miles to the west and south, and so Tay learned what he could of them from his parents. He had never been close to his brother and had not seen him in more than eight years, but he listened dutifully and was pleased to hear that he was doing well with his farming.

His sister Kira was another matter. She lived in Arborlon, and he went to see her on his first day home, finding her wrestling clothes onto her smallest child, her face still young and fresh, her energy still boundless, her smile as warm and heartbreaking as birdsong. She came to him with a welcoming laugh, flinging herself into his arms and hugging him until he thought he might explode. She took him into the kitchen and gave him cold ale, sitting him down at the old trestle bench, asking him of his life and telling him of hers, all at once. They shared concerns about their parents, and swapped stories of their childhood, and it was dark before they knew it. They met again the following day, and with Kira’s husband and the children went into the woods along the Rill Song for a picnic. Kira asked if he had seen Jerle Shannara yet, and then did not mention him again. The hours slipped away, and Tay was almost able to forget he had come home for any other reason. The children played games with him, tired eventually, and sat on the riverbank kicking their feet in the cold water while he talked with their parents of the ways in which the world was changing. His brother-in-law was a maker of leather goods and traded regularly with the other Races. He no longer sent his traders into the Northland, now that the nations had been subjugated and made one. There were rumors, he said, of evil creatures, of winged monsters and dark shades, of beasts that would savage humans and Elves alike. Tay listened and nodded and affirmed that he had heard the rumors, too. He tried not to look at Kira too closely when he spoke. He tried not to let her see what was in his eyes.

He saw old friends as well, some of whom had been barely grown when he had seen them last. Some had been close once. But they had traveled down different roads, and all had gone too far to turn back. Or perhaps it was he who had gone too far. They were strangers now, not in appearance or voice, for those were still familiar, but in choices made that long since had shaped their lives. He shared nothing with them but memories of what had once been. It was sad, but not surprising. Time stole away commitments and loosened ties. Friendships were reduced to tales of the past and vague promises for the future, neither strong enough to recover what was lost. But that was what life did — it took you down separate roads until one day you found yourself alone.

Arborlon seemed strange as well, though not in a way he would have expected. Physically, it was the same, a village grown into a city, full of excitement and expectation, become the crossroads of the Westland. Twenty years of steady growth had made it the largest and most important city in the northern half of the known world. The conclusion of the First War of the Races had altered irrevocably the role of the Elven people in the future of the Four Lands, and with the decline of the Southland as a major influence, Arborlon and the Elves had become increasingly important. But while the city and its surroundings were familiar to Tay, even with his long absence and infrequent visits, he could not escape the feeling that he no longer belonged. This was not his home now; it hadn’t been for the better part of fifteen years, and it was too late to change that. Even if Paranor was destroyed and the Druids gone, he was not sure he could ever come back. Arborlon was a part of his past, and somehow he had grown beyond it. He was a stranger here, as much as he tried to convince himself otherwise, and it made him feel awkward when he tried to fit in again.

How quickly everything slipped away when you weren’t paying attention, he thought more than once in his first few days back. How swiftly your life changed.