The First King of Shannara

Oh, Shades! For him!

A moth drawn to a flame, he reached for it — impulsive, unthinking, unable to resist. He reached for it with the desperation and need of a drowning man, and this time Jerle Shannara was not there to stop him. An image only, a wraith without substance, he gave no thought to what he did. In that moment, reason was lost to him and his need was all that mattered.

That he was a ghost and nothing more was what saved him. The moment his hand closed about the Elfstone, he was known. He could feel the lines of power shimmer in response to his presence, feel them vibrate and whine in warning. He tried to draw back, to flee what was coming, but there was no escape. The watcher he had not been able to identify, the thing that lived within the ruins of the Chew Magna, took sudden, hideous shape. The earth trembled in response to its waking, and the vines that grew throughout the garden, limp and flaccid a moment earlier, thrust upward — become the coils of death of which Galaphile’s shade had warned. They whipped through the spaces between the slender trees like snakes, searching. Magic drove them, fed them, gave life to them, and Tay Trefenwyd, even in his spirit form, knew them for what they were instantly. They fastened on his arms and legs, about his body and head, dozens strong, come from everywhere. They fastened, and then they began to squeeze. Tay could feel the pressure. He should not have been able to do so — he had made himself a spirit. But the garden’s magic had the power to ferret him out even in this elusive form. Magic to hold magic — magic to destroy even a Druid. Tay felt himself being ripped apart. He heard himself scream in response — the pain a reality within his psyche. Gathering himself within the core of his shattered form, bringing the small part that mattered into a particle no larger than a dust mote, he hurtled out through a gap in the writhing mass of vines and into the light.

Then abruptly he was back inside his body, twisting and screaming, arching as if electrified, struggling so hard to break free that it was all Jerle Shannara and the Elven Hunters could do to hold him. He gasped, shuddered, and collapsed finally into their arms, spent. He was drenched in sweat, and his clothes were ripped from his efforts to rid himself of their hands. Before him, the garden undulated with life, an ocean of deadly intent, a quagmire that nothing caught within could hope to escape.

Yet he had done so.

His eyes closed and tightened into slits. “Shades!” he whispered, fighting down his memory of the tenacious vines as they crawled over him, tightening.

“Tay!” Jerle’s voice was harsh, desperate. The big man held him, arms wrapped about his body. He trembled violently. “Tay, do you hear me?”

Tay Trefenwyd gripped his friend in response and his eyes snapped open. He was all right now, he told himself. He was safe, unharmed. He took a long, slow, steadying breath. He was returned to the living, and of the horror of the Black Elfstone’s dark magic he had discovered all that he needed to know.

He told the others of the company what he had learned. He gathered them close, all of them, for there was no reason they should not all know, and told them what had occurred. He did not lie, but he kept from them the darkest of the truths he had uncovered. He tried not to show how frightened he was, though his fear worked through him anew as he recounted the experience, a river vast and wide and deep. He kept his voice calm and steady and his story brief. When he was finished, he told them he needed to think awhile about what they should do next.

They left him alone save for Vree Erreden. The locat came away with him unbidden, and as soon as they were out of hearing of the others, he took Tay’s arm.

“You said nothing of the watcher. You did not name it, yet you must know its identity.” The thin, strong fingers tightened. “I sensed it waiting for you — you, in particular, as if you were special to it. Tell me what it is, Tay Trefenwyd.”

They moved onto the spiral staircase and sat together in the echoing silence of the fortress depths. Before them, the garden had gone still again, a garden once more, and nothing else. It was as if nothing had happened.

Tay glanced at the locat and then looked away. “If I tell you, it must remain between us. No one else is to know.”