The First King of Shannara

The locat rose. “He just lost six men who trusted him to an attack he feels he should have better anticipated.” Tay stared at him, and he shrugged. “It’s what he’s thinking about right now. He couldn’t hide it from me, even though he clearly wanted to.”


“But those men dying, that wasn’t his fault,” Tay declared. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

The locat squinted down at him. “Jerle Shannara doesn’t look at it like that. If you were in his shoes, would you?”

Then he turned and walked off, leaving Tay to ponder the matter alone.



The company set off again at daybreak, working its way north through the mountains toward Worl Run. Preia Starle had returned during the night to report that there was no sign of a close pursuit.

None of them believed for a moment that this meant they were safe. It only meant that they had gained a little extra breathing room. The Gnomes were still out there searching for them, but the Elves would be hard to find in these mountains, where tracks had a tendency to disappear amid the jumbled boulders and twisting passes. If they were lucky, they might avoid discovery just long enough to find what they were looking for.

It was wishful thinking, Tay supposed, but it was the best they could hope for. They rode north for the remainder of the day without seeing anything of their pursuers, following a line of deep valleys that cut through the eastern edge of the mountains snakelike to the entrance to Worl Run. They camped that night on a flat overlooking the pass and the valleys leading in from the Sarandanon, close now to where Jerle remembered seeing the V formation he called the Pinchers. He was in a somewhat better mood this day, still withdrawn and taciturn, but no longer curt, helped perhaps by the fact that they now had a better idea of where they were going. He actually apologized to Tay in a rather offhanded way, commenting lightly at one point on the unfortunate shortness of his temper. He said nothing to Vree Erreden, but Tay let the matter lie.

Preia Starle seemed unfazed by Jerle’s shift in attitude and spent her time talking to him as if everything were fine. Tay thought she must know his friend’s moods well enough by now to have developed an appropriate way of responding to each. He felt a pang of jealousy, for there was no such closeness between them.

Again he was reminded that he was the outsider, come back into his old life from another, still trying to make himself fit in. He did not know why this bothered him so except that his life at Paranor was completely gone and his life here seemed to revolve around the duplicity of his relationship with Preia and Jerle. He couldn’t claim it was an honest one, because he hid so much of what he felt for Preia from both of them. Or thought he did. Perhaps they knew far more than they were letting on, and he was playing a game of secrets where the secrets were all known.

They rode out again at sunrise and reached the Pinchers by midday. Tay recognized the peaks immediately, a clear match for the rendering provided by Bremen’s vision. The peaks rose in a sharp V against the horizon, breaking apart in a deep split fronted by a tangle of small mountains worn by age and the elements and left bare save for sparse stands of fir and alder and struggling patches of grasses and wildflowers. Beyond, through the gap in the V, rose a wall of mountains so misty that their features were unrecognizable.

Jerle brought the company to a halt at the low end of a pass leading up into the peaks and dismounted. Overhead, hunting birds soared against the blue, wings spread as they circled in long, graceful sweeps. The day was clear and bright; the rain clouds had moved east into the Sarandanon. Tay felt the sun on his face, warm and reassuring as he stared upward into the vast expanse of cliffs and defiles and wondered at their secrets.

“We’ll leave the horses here and walk in,” Jerle announced. He smirked, seeing the look on Tay’s face. “We could only ride them a short distance farther in any event, Tay. Then they would be left exposed to any who follow us. If we leave them now, we can hide them in the forest. We may have to make a run for it before we’re finished.”

Preia added her support, and Tay knew they were right, although it made him feel uncomfortable to give up the animals that had carried them past so many close calls. It had been hard enough to gain possession of them in the first place. But those who pursued them would have to proceed afoot as well if they reached this point, so he supposed that was as much as could be hoped for.