The Scions of Shannara

Par fell asleep with the matter still unresolved.

They rose again at sunrise, crossed the Mermidon at a shallows less than a mile upstream and turned south for Tyrsis. The day was hot and still, and the dust of the grasslands filled their nostrils and throats. They kept to the shade when they could, but the country south grew more open as the forests gave way to grasslands. They used their water sparingly and paced themselves as they walked, but the sun climbed steadily in the cloudless summer sky and the travelers soon were sweating freely. By midday, as they approached the walls of the city, their clothing lay damp against their skin.

Tyrsis was the home city of Callahorn, its oldest city, and the most impregnable fortress in the entire Southland. Situated on a broad plateau, it was warded by towering cliffs to the south, and a pair of monstrous battle walls to the north. The Outer Wall rose nearly a hundred feet above the summit of the plateau, a massive armament that had been breached only once in the city’s history when the armies of the Warlock Lord had attacked in the time of Shea Ohmsford. A second wall sat back and within the first, a redoubt for the city’s defenders. Once the Border Legion, the Southland’s most formidable army, had defended the city. But the Legion was gone now, disbanded when the Federation moved in, and now only Federation soldiers patrolled the walls and byways, occupiers of lands that, until a hundred years ago, had never been occupied. The Federation soldiers were quartered in the Legion barracks within the first wall, and the citizens of the city still lived and worked within the second, housed in the city proper from where it ran back along the plateau to the base of the cliffs south.

Par, Coll, and Morgan had never been to Tyrsis. What they knew of the city, they knew from the stories they had heard of the days of their ancestors. As they approached it now, they realized how impossible it was for words alone to describe what they were seeing. The city rose up against the skyline like a great, hulking giant, a construction of stone blocks and mortar that dwarfed anything they had ever encountered. Even in the bright sunlight of midday, it had a black cast to it—as if the sunlight were being absorbed somehow in the rock. The city shimmered slightly, a side effect of the heat, and assumed a miragelike quality. A massive rampway led up from the plains to the base of the plateau, twisting like a snake through gates and causeways. Traffic was heavy, wagons and animals traveling in both directions in a steady stream, crawling through the heat and the dust.

The company of seven worked their way steadily closer. As they reached the lower end of the rampway, Padishar Creel turned back to the others and said, “Careful now, lads. Nothing to call attention to ourselves. Remember that it is as hard to get out of this city as it is to get in.”

They blended into the stream of traffic that climbed toward the plateau’s summit. Wheels thudded, traces jingled and creaked, animals brayed, and men whistled and shouted. Federation soldiers manned the checkpoints leading up, but made no effort to interfere with the flow. It was the same at the gates—massive portals that loomed so high overhead that Par was aghast to think that any army had managed to breach them—the soldiers seeming to take no notice of who went in or out. It was an occupied city, Par decided, that was working hard at pretending to be free.

They passed beneath the gates, the shadow of the gatehouse overhead falling over them like a pall. The second wall rose ahead, smaller, but no less imposing. They moved toward it, keeping in the thick of the traffic. The grounds between the walls were clear of everyone but soldiers and their animals and equipment. There were plenty of each, a fair-sized army housed and waiting. Par studied the rows of drilling men out of the corner of one eye, keeping his head lowered in the shadow of his hooded cloak.