Morgan caught Par and Coll staring and said, “I forgot—the Culhaven you’re familiar with is the one you tell about in your stories. Well, all that’s in the past. I know you’re tired, but, now that you’re here, there are things you need to see.”
He took them down a pathway that led into the village. The housing grew quickly worse, the cottages replaced by shacks, the gardens and animals disappearing entirely. The path became a roadway, rutted and pocked from lack of repair, filled with refuse and stones. There were more children here, playing as the others had, and there were more women working at household chores, exchanging a few words now and then with each other and the children, but withdrawn mostly into themselves. They watched guardedly as the three strangers walked past, suspicion and fear mirrored in their eyes.
“Culhaven, the most beautiful city in the Eastland, the heart and soul of the Dwarf nation,” Morgan mused quietly. He didn’t look at them. “I know the stories. It was a sanctuary, an oasis, a haven of gentle souls, a monument to what pride and hard work could accomplish.” He shook his head. “Well, this is the way it is now.”
A few of the children came up to them and begged for coins. Morgan shook his head gently, patted one or two, and moved past.
They turned off into a lane that led down to a stream clogged with trash and sewage. Children walked the banks, poking idly at what floated past. A walkway took them across to the far bank. The air was fetid with the smell of rotting things.
“Where are all the men?” Par asked.
Morgan looked over. “The lucky ones are dead. The rest are in the mines or in work camps. That’s why everything looks the way it does. There’s no one left in this city but children, old people, and a few women.” He stopped walking. “That’s how it has been for fifty years. That’s how the Federation wants it. Come this way.”
He led them down a narrow pathway behind a series of cottages that seemed better tended. These homes were freshly painted, the stone scrubbed, the mortar intact, the gardens and lawns immaculate. Dwarves worked the yards and rooms here as well, younger women mostly, the tasks the same, but the results as different from before as night is to day. Everything here was bright and new and clean.
Morgan took them up a rise to a small park, easing carefully into a stand of fir. “See those?” he pointed to the well-tended cottages. Par and Coll nodded. “That’s where the Federation soldiers and officials garrisoned here live. The younger, stronger Dwarf women are forced to work for them. Most are forced to live with them as well.” He glanced at them meaningfully.
They walked from the park down a hillside that led toward the center of the community. Shops and businesses replaced homes, and the foot traffic grew thick. The Dwarves they saw here were engaged in selling and buying, but again they were mostly old and few in number. The streets were clogged with outlanders come to trade. Federation soldiers patrolled everywhere.
Morgan steered the brothers down byways where they wouldn’t be noticed, pointing out this, indicating that, his voice at once both bitter and ironic. “Over there. That’s the silver exchange. The Dwarves are forced to extract the silver from the mines, kept underground most of the time—you know what that means—then compelled to sell it at Federation prices and turn the better part of the proceeds over to their keepers in the form of taxes. And the animals belong to the Federation as well—on loan, supposedly. The Dwarves are strictly rationed. Down there, that’s the market. All the vegetables and fruits are grown and sold by the Dwarves, and the profits of sale disposed of in the same manner as everything else. That’s what it’s like here now. That’s what being a ‘protectorate’ means for these people.”
He stopped them at the far end of the street, well back from a ring of onlookers crowded about a platform on which young Dwarf men and women chained and bound were being offered for sale. They stood looking for a moment and Morgan said, “They sell off the ones they don’t need to do the work.”
He took them from the business district to a hillside that rose above the city in a broad sweep. The hillside was blackened and stripped of life, a vast smudge against a treeless skyline. It had been terraced once, and what was left of the buttressing poked out of the earth like gravestones.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked them softly. They shook their heads. “This is what is left of the Meade Gardens. You know the story. The Dwarves built the Gardens with special earth hauled in from the farmlands, earth as black as coal. Every flower known to the races was planted and tended. My father said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He was here once, when he was a boy.”
Morgan was quiet a moment as they surveyed the ruin, then said, “The Federation burned the Gardens when the city fell. They burn them anew every year so that nothing will ever grow again.”
The Scions of Shannara
Terry Brooks's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene