The First King of Shannara

“Something is wrong,” he said at once.

Jerle Shannara started forward wordlessly, heading for the palace entry, picking up speed as he went. Tay went with him, a strange sense of dread welling up inside. He tried to give it definition, to place its source, but it slipped away from him, elusive and defiant. Tay searched the shadows to either side, finding everything suddenly black and secretive. His hands tested the air, the Ups of his fingers releasing his Druid magic in a widening net. He felt the net close on something that twisted and squirmed and then darted away.

“Gnomes!” he exclaimed.

Jerle broke into a run, reaching down to his belt and yanking out his short sword, the blade gleaming faintly against the dark as it slipped free. Jerle Shannara never went anywhere without his weapons. Tay hurried to keep up. Neither of them spoke, falling in beside each other as they neared the front doors, glancing left and right warily, ready for anything.

The doors stood open. No light shone from within. From the walkway, it had been impossible to tell this. Jerle did not slow.

He went through the doors in a crouch, sword held ready. Tay followed.

The hall stretched away before them like a cavernous tunnel.

There were bodies everywhere, strewn about like sacks of old clothing, bloodied and still. Elven Hunters, slain to a man, but a scattering of Gnome Hunters as well. The floor was slick with their blood. Jerle motioned Tay to one side while he went to the other, and together they worked their way down the hall to the main rooms. The rooms were quiet and empty of life. The companions backtracked, moving swiftly toward the stairs leading up. Jerle did not speak, even now. He did not ask Tay if he wanted a weapon. He did not try to tell him what to do. He did not need to.

Tay was a Druid and knew.

They went up the stairs like ghosts, listening to the silence, waiting for a betraying sound. There was none. They reached the upstairs landing and looked down the darkened corridors beyond.

More guards lay dead. Tay was astonished. There had been no outcry of any kind! How could these men, these trained Elven Hunters, have died without sounding an alarm?

The hall branched both ways, burrowing into the darkness and angling off into the wings of the palace where the royal family slept within their bedrooms. Jerle glanced at Tay, eyes bright and hard, motioned him right, and went left himself. Tay glanced after his friend, crouched against the gloom like a moor cat, then turned swiftly away.

He moved ahead, hands clenched into fists, the magic called up and gathered within his palms like a hard pulse, waiting to be released. Fear mingled with horror. There were sounds now, small voices, sobs and little cries that went still almost as quickly as they came, and he raced toward them, heedless. Shadows moved in the hallway before him as he turned the comer to the back wing.

Blades glinted wickedly, and gnarled forms came at him.

Gnomes. He stopped thinking and simply reacted. His right hand lifted and opened, and the magic exploded into his attackers, picking them up and throwing them against the walls so hard that he could hear their bones snap. He went through them as if they were not there, past open doorways where the occupants lay sprawled in death — mothers, fathers, and children alike — to where the doors still stood closed and there might yet be hope.

A new clutch of attackers burst from hiding as he rushed past, flinging themselves onto him and bearing him to the floor.

Weapons rose and fell with desperate purpose, edges sharp and deadly. But he was a Druid, and his defenses were already in place. The blades slid off him as if come up against armor, and his hands fastened on the wiry bodies and threw them away. He was strong, even without his magic, and with his magic to aid him the Gnomes were no match. He was back on his feet almost immediately, his fire sweeping about him in a deadly arc, cutting apart those few still standing. New cries rose, and he went on, horrorstricken at what he knew was happening. An attack, a deadly strike against the whole of the Elven royal family. He knew immediately that it was the same band of Gnome Hunters he had encountered and bypassed on the plains below the Streleheim, that they were neither scouts nor foragers but assassins, and that somewhere close by was the Skull Bearer who led them.