The Scions of Shannara

As they walked away, veering back toward the outskirts of the village, Par asked, “How do you know all this, Morgan? Your father?”


Morgan shook his head. “My father hasn’t been back since that first visit. I think he prefers not to see what it looks like now, but to remember it as it was. No, I have friends here who tell me what life for the Dwarves is like—that part of life I can’t see for myself whenever I come over. I haven’t told you much about that, have I? Well, it’s only been recently, the last half year or so. I’ll tell you about it later.”

They retraced their steps to the poorer section of the village, following a new roadway that was nevertheless as worn and rutted as the others. After a short walk, they turned into a walkway that led up to a rambling stone and wood structure that looked as if once it might have been an inn of some sort. It rose three stories and was wrapped by a covered porch filled with swings and rockers. The yard was bare, but clear of debris and filled with children playing.

“A school?” Par guessed aloud.

Morgan shook his head. “An orphanage.”

He led them through the groups of children, onto the porch and around to a side door settled well back in the shadows of an alcove. He knocked on the door and waited. When the door opened a crack, he said, “Can you spare a poor man some food?”

“Morgan!” The door flew open. An elderly Dwarf woman stood in the opening, gray-haired and aproned, her face bluff and squarish, her smile working its way past lines of weariness and disappointment. “Morgan Leah, what a pleasant surprise! How are you, youngster?”

“I am my father’s pride and joy, as always,” Morgan replied with a grin. “May we come in?”

“Of course. Since when have you needed to ask?” The woman stepped aside and ushered them past, hugging Morgan and beaming at Par and Coll, who smiled back uncertainly. She shut the door behind them and said, “So you would like something to eat, would you?”

“We would gladly give our lives for the opportunity,” Morgan declared with a laugh. “Granny Elise, these are my friends, Par and Coll Ohmsford of Shady Vale. They are temporarily . . . homeless,” he finished.

“Aren’t we all,” Granny Elise replied gruffly. She extended a callused hand to the brothers, who each gripped it in his own. She examined them critically. “Been wrestling with bears, have you, Morgan?”

Morgan touched his face experimentally, tracing the cuts and scrapes. “Something worse than that, I’m afraid. The road to Culhaven is not what it once was.”

“Nor is Culhaven. Have a seat, child—you and your friends. I’ll bring you a plate of muffins and fruit.”

There were several long tables with benches in the center of the rather considerable kitchen and the three friends chose the nearest and sat. The kitchen was large but rather dark, and the furnishings were poor. Granny Elise bustled about industriously, providing the promised breakfast and glasses of some sort of extracted juice. “I’d offer you milk, but I have to ration what I have for the children,” she apologized.

They were eating hungrily when a second woman appeared, a Dwarf as well and older still, small and wizened, with a sharp face and quick, birdlike movements that never seemed to cease. She crossed the room matter-of-factly on seeing Morgan, who rose at once and gave her a small peck on the cheek.

“Auntie Jilt,” Morgan introduced her.

“Most pleased,” she announced in a way that suggested they might need convincing. She seated herself next to Granny Elise and immediately began work on some needlepoint she had brought with her into the room, fingers flying.

“These ladies are mothers to the world,” Morgan explained as he returned to his meal. “Me included, though I’m not an orphan like their other charges. They adopted me because I’m irresistibly charming.”

“You begged like the rest of them the first time we saw you, Morgan Leah!” Auntie Jilt snapped, never looking up from her work. “That is the only reason we took you in—the only reason we take any of them in.”

“Sisters, though you’d never know it,” Morgan quickly went on. “Granny Elise is like a goose-down comforter, all soft and warm. But Auntie Jilt—well, Auntie Jilt is more like a stone pallet!”

Auntie Jilt sniffed. “Stone lasts a good deal longer than goose down in these times. And both longer still than Highland syrup!”