The Scions of Shannara

“Maybe they’ve given up on us for the night,” Par suggested at one point. “The Seekers, I mean. Maybe they won’t bother looking anymore until morning—or maybe not at all.”


Coll glanced at him and arched one eyebrow meaningfully. “Maybe cows can fly too.” He looked away. “We should have insisted we be paid more promptly for our work. Then we wouldn’t be in this fix.”

Par shrugged. “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“It wouldn’t? We’d at least have some money!”

“Only if we’d thought to carry it with us to the performance. How likely is that?”

Coll hunched his shoulders and screwed up his face. “That ale house keeper owes us.”

They walked all the way to the south end of the docks without speaking further, stopped finally as the lighted waterfront gave way to darkness, and stood looking at each other. The night was cooler now and their clothes were too thin to protect them. They were shivering, their hands jammed down in their pockets, their arms clamped tightly against their sides. Insects buzzed about them annoyingly.

Coll sighed. “Do you have any idea where we’re going, Par? Do you have some kind of plan in mind?”

Par took out his hands and rubbed them briskly. “I do. But it requires a boat to get there.”

“South, then—down the Mermidon?”

“All the way.”

Coll smiled, misunderstanding. He thought they were headed back to Shady Vale. Par decided it was best to leave him with that impression.

“Wait here,” Coll said suddenly and disappeared before Par could object.

Par stood alone in the dark at the end of the docks for what seemed like an hour, but was probably closer to half that. He walked over to a bench by a fishing shack and sat down, hunched up against the night air. He was feeling a mix of things. He was angry, mostly—at the stranger for spiriting them away and then abandoning them—all right, so Par had asked to have it that way, that didn’t make him feel any better—at the Federation for chasing them out from the city like common thieves, and at himself for being stupid enough to think he could get away with using real magic when it was absolutely forbidden to do so. It was one thing to play around with the magics of sleight of hand and quick change; it was another altogether to employ the magic of the wishsong. It was too obviously the real thing, and he should have known that sooner or later word of its use would get back to the authorities.

He put his legs out in front of him and crossed his boots. Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. Coll and he would simply have to start over again. It never occurred to him to quit. The stories were too important for that; it was his responsibility to see to it that they were not forgotten. He was convinced that the magic was a gift he had received expressly for that purpose. It didn’t matter what the Federation said—that magic was outlawed and that it was a source of great harm to the land and its people. What did the Federation know of magic? Those on the Coalition Council lacked any practical experience. They had simply decided that something needed to be done to address the concerns of those who claimed parts of the Four Lands were sickening and men were being turned into something like the dark creatures of Jair Ohmsford’s time, creatures from some nether existence that defied understanding, beings that drew their power from the night and from magics lost since the time of the Druids.

They even had names, these creatures. They were called Shadowen.

Suddenly, unpleasantly, Par thought again of the dreams and of the dark thing within them that had summoned him.

He was aware then that the night had gone still; the voices of the fishermen and dockworkers, the buzz of the insects, and even the rustle of the night wind had disappeared. He could hear the sound of his own pulse in his ears, and a whisper of something else . . .

Then a splash of water brought him to his feet with a start. Coll appeared, clambering out of the Mermidon at the river’s edge a dozen feet away, shedding water as he came. He was naked. Par recovered his composure and stared at him in disbelief.

“Shades, you frightened me! What were you doing?”

“What does it look like I was doing?” Coll grinned. “I was out swimming!”

What he was really doing, Par discovered after applying a bit more pressure, was appropriating a fishing skiff owned by the keeper of the Blue Whisker. The keeper had mentioned it to Coll once or twice when bragging about his fishing skills. Coll had remembered it when Par had mentioned needing a boat, remembered as well the description of the boat shed where the man said it was kept, and gone off to find it. He’d simply swum up to where it was stored, snapped the lock on the shed, slipped the mooring lines and towed it away.