The Druid of Shannara (59 page)

He stood there, solitary, filled with indecision and dread, wondering what it was that had brought him to this end. He saw his hand begin to shake.

Then suddenly, unexpectedly, the whispers broke through his defenses in a torrent and turned to screams.

No!

He brought the Black Elfstone up almost without thinking, opened his hand, and thrust the dark gem forth.

Instantly the Elfstone flared to life, its magic a sharp tingling against his skin. Black light—the nonlight, the engulfing darkness.
Whosoever
. He watched the light gather before him, building on itself.
Shall have cause and right
. The backlash of the magic rushed through him, shredding doubt and fear, silencing whispers and screams, filling him with unimaginable power.
Shall wield it to its proper end
.

Now!

He sent the black light hurtling forth, a huge tunnel burrowing through the air, swallowing everything in its path, engulfing substance and space and time. It exploded against the crest of the empty bluff, and Walker was hammered back as if struck a blow by an invisible fist. Yet he did not fall. The magic rushed through him, bracing him, wrapping him in armor. The black light spread like ink against the sky, rising, broadening, angling first this way, then that, channeling itself as if there were runnels to be followed, gutters down which it must flow. It began to shape. Walker gasped. The light of the Black Elfstone was etching out the lines of a massive fortress, its parapets and battlements, and its towers and steeples. Walls rose and gates appeared. The light spread higher against the skies, and the sunlight was blocked away. Shadows cast down by the castle enveloped Walker Boh, and he felt himself disappear into them.

Something inside him began to change. He was draining away.
No, rather he was filling up! Something, the magic, was washing through.
The other
, he thought, weak before its onslaught, helpless and suddenly terrified. It was the magic that encased lost Paranor being drawn down into the Elfstone!

And into him.

His jaw clenched, and his body went rigid.
I will not give way!

The black light flooded the empty spaces of the image atop the bluff, coloring it, giving it first substance and then life—Paranor, the Druid’s Keep, come back into the world of men, returned from the dark half-space that had concealed it all these years. It rose up against the sky, huge and forbidding. The Black Elfstone dimmed in Walker’s hand; the nonlight softened and then disappeared.

Walker’s hoarse cry ended in a groan. He fell to his knees, wracked with sensations he could not define and riddled with the magic he had absorbed, feeling it course through him as if it were his blood. His eyes closed and then slowly opened. He saw himself shimmering in a haze that stole away the definition of his features. He looked down in disbelief, then felt himself go cold. He wasn’t really there anymore! He had become a wraith!

He forced his terror aside and climbed back to his feet, the Black Elfstone still clutched in his hand. He watched himself move as if he were someone else, watched the shimmer of his limbs and body and the shadings that overlapped and gave him the appearance of being fragmented.
Shades, what has been done to me!
He stumbled forward, scrambling to gain the bluff, to reach its crest, not knowing what else to do. He must gain Paranor, he sensed. He must get inside.

The climb was long and rugged, and he was gasping for breath by the time he reached the Keep’s iron gates. His body reflected in a multitude of images, each a little outside of the others. But he could breathe and move as a normal man; he could feel as he had before. He took heart from that, and hastened to reach Paranor’s gates. The stone of the Keep was real enough, hard and rough to his touch—yet forbidding, too, in a way he could not immediately identify. The gates opened when he leaned into them, as if he had the strength of a thousand men and could force anything that stood before him.

He entered cautiously. Shadows enfolded him. He stood in a well of darkness, and there was a whisper of death all about.

Then something moved within the gloom, detached, and took
shape—a four-legged apparition, hulking and ominous. It was a moor cat, black as pitch with luminous gold eyes, there and not there, like Walker himself.

Walker froze. The moor cat looked exactly like …

Behind the cat, a man appeared, old and stooped, a translucent ghost, shimmering. As the man drew near, his features became recognizable.

“At last you’ve come, Walker,” he whispered in an anxious, hollow voice.

The Dark Uncle felt the last vestiges of his resolve fade away.

The man was Cogline.

T
he King of the Silver River sat in the Gardens that were his sanctuary and watched the sun melt into the western horizon. A stream of clear water trickled across the rocks at his feet and emptied into a pond from which a unicorn drank, and a breeze blew softly through the maidenhair, carrying the scent of lilacs and jonquils. The trees rustled, their leaves a shimmer of green, and birds sang contented day-end songs as they settled into place in preparation for the coming of night.

Beyond, in the world of Men, the heat was sullen and unyielding against the fall of darkness, and a pall of weariness draped the lives of the people of the Four Lands.

So must it be for now
.

The eyes that could see everything had seen the death of his child and the transformation of the land of the Stone King. The Maw Grint was no more. The city of Eldwist had gone back into the earth, returned to the elements that had created it, and the land was green and fertile again. The magic of his child was rooted deep, a river that flowed invisibly about the solitary dome
in which Uhl Belk was imprisoned. It would be long before his brother could emerge into the light again.

Iridescent dragonflies buzzed past him without slowing and disappeared into the twilight’s glow.

Elsewhere, the battle against the Shadowen went on. Walker Boh had invoked the magic of the Black Elfstone, as Allanon had charged him, and the Druid’s Keep had been summoned out of the mists that had hidden it for three centuries. What would the Dark Uncle make, the King of the Silver River wondered, of what he found there? West, where the Elves had once lived, Wren Ohmsford continued her search to discover what had become of them—and, more important, though she did not yet realize it, what would become of herself. North, the brothers Par and Coll Ohmsford struggled toward each other and the secrets of the Sword of Shannara and the Shadowen magic. There were those who would help and those who would betray, and all of the wheels of chance that Allanon had set in motion could yet be stopped.

The King of the Silver River rose and slipped into the waters of the pond momentarily, reveling in the cool wetness, letting himself become one with the flow. Then he emerged and passed down the Garden pathways, through stands of juniper and hemlock onto a hillock of centauries and bluebells that reflected gold about the edges of their petals with the day’s fading light. He paused there, staring out again into the world beyond.

His daughter had done well, he reflected.

But the thought was strangely bleak and empty. He had created an elemental out of the life of his Gardens and sent that elemental forth to serve his needs. She had been nothing to him—a daughter in name only, a child merely by designation. She had been only a momentary reality, and he had never intended that she be anything more.

Yet he missed her. Shaping her as he did, breathing his life into her, he had brought himself too close. The human feelings they had shared would not dissolve as easily as their human forms. She should have meant nothing to him, now that she was gone. Instead, her absence formed a void he could not seem to fill.

Quickening
.

A child of the elements and his magic, he repeated. He would do the same again—yet perhaps not so readily. There was something in the ways of the creatures of the mortal Races that endured beyond the leaving of the flesh. There was a residue of
their emotions that lingered. He could still hear her voice, see her face, and feel the touch of her fingers against him. She was gone from him, yet remained. Why should it be so?

He sat there as darkness cloaked the land and wondered at himself.

Here ends Book Two of
The Heritage of Shannara
. Book Three,
The Elf Queen of Shannara
, will reveal more of the mystery of Cogline and Paranor and chronicle the efforts of Wren Ohmsford to discover what has become of the missing Westland Elves.

Don’t miss one exciting installment of the
Magic Kingdom of Landover series!

Find out which Terry Brooks novel you need…

MAGIC KINGDOM
FOR SALE—SOLD!

Landover was a genuine magic kingdom, with fairy folk and wizardry, just as the advertisement had promised. But after he purchasedit, Ben Holiday learned that there were a few details left out.

The kingdom was in ruin. The Barons refused to recognize a king, and the peasants were without hope. A dragon was laying waste the countryside while an evil witch plotted to destroy everything.

The task of proving his right to be King seemed hopeless. But Ben Holiday was not about to give up…

MAGIC KINGDOM FOR SALE—SOLD!
Book One of
The Magic Kingdom of Landover
by Terry Brooks
Published by Del Rey
^®
Books.
Available in your local bookstore.

THE BLACK UNICORN

A year had passed since Ben Holiday had bought the Magic Kingdom from the wizard Meeks, who had set a series of pitfalls against him. Troubled by dreams of disaster to his former partner, Miles Bennett, Ben had traveled to Earth. But unknown to Ben, the dreams had been a trap set by Meeks, who then returned to the Magic Kingdom as a tiny insect hidden in Bens clothing and cast a spell to switch appearances with him. Soon Ben became an outcast, no longer recognized by any friend. Of course, there was the prism cat, whatever that was … And where was Willow—and the mysterious black unicorn she had set out to find?

THE BLACK UNICORN
Book Two of
The Magic Kingdom of Landover
by Terry Brooks
Published by Del Rey® Books.
Available in your local bookstore.

WIZARD AT LARGE

It all began when the half-able wizard Questor Thews announced that, finally, he could restore the Court Scribe Abernathy to human form. It was his spell that had turned Abernathy into a Wheaten Terrier—though with hands and the ability to talk.

All went well—until the wizard breathed in the magic dust of his spell and suddenly sneezed. Then, where Abernathy stood, there was only a bottle containing a particularly evil imp.

High Lord Ben Holiday set forth for Earth, but without the soil of Landover in which to root as a tree at times, Willow could not long survive.

That left it up to Questor Thews to save them. And to make matters worse, the imp had escaped…

WIZARD AT LARGE
Book Three of
The Magic Kingdom of Landover
by Terry Brooks
Published by Del Rey® Books.
Available in your local bookstore.

THE TANGLE BOX

Everything should have been quiet and pleasant for Ben Holiday, former Chicago lawyer become sovereign of the Magic Kingdom of Landover. But it wasn’t.

Horris Kew, conjurer, confidence man, and trickster, had returned to Landover from Ben’s own world, sent by the Gorse, a sorcerer of great evil, whom Horris had unwittingly freed from the magic Tangle Box. Now it had returned to enslave those who had once dared condemn it. But first it would rid Landover of all who could stand in its way…

THE TANGLE BOX
Book Four of
The Magic Kingdom of Landover
by Terry Brooks
Published by Del Rey® Books.
Available in your local bookstore.

WITCHES’ BREW

Former Chicago lawyer Ben Holiday was proud and happy. And why not? The Magic Kingdom of Landover, which he ruled as High Lord, was finally at peace, and he and his wife, the sylph Willow, could watch their daughter Mistaya grow.

Ben’s idyll was interrupted when Rydall, a king of lands beyond the fairy mist, threatened to invade unless Ben met his challenge. But Ben could not refuse, for Mistaya had been snatched from her guardians by foul magic. And Rydall held the key to her fate…

WITCHES’ BREW
Book Five of
The Magic Kingdom of Landover
by Terry Brooks
Published by Del Rey® Books.
Available in your local bookstore.

Read on for an excerpt from

The Measure of the Magic

by Terry Brooks

Published by Del Rey Books

ONE

H
UMMING TUNELESSLY, THE RAGPICKER WALKED
the barren, empty wasteland in the aftermath of a rainstorm. The skies were still dark with clouds and the earth was sodden and slick with surface water, but none of that mattered to him. Others might prefer the sun and blue skies and the feel of hard, dry earth beneath their feet, might revel in the brightness and the warmth. But life was created in the darkness and damp of the womb, and the ragpicker took considerable comfort in knowing that procreation was instinctual and needed nothing of the face of nature’s disposition that he liked the least.

He was an odd-looking fellow, an unprepossessing, almost comical figure. He was tall and whipcord-thin, and he walked like a long-legged waterbird. Dressed in dark clothes that had seen much better days, he tended to blend in nicely with the mostly colorless landscape he traveled. He carried his rags and scraps of cloth in a frayed patchwork bag slung over one shoulder, the bag looking very much as if it would rip apart completely with each fresh step its bearer took. A pair of scuffed leather boots completed the ensemble, scavenged from a dead man some years back, but still holding up quite nicely.

Everything about the ragpicker suggested that he was harmless. Everything marked him as easy prey in a world where predators dominated the remnants of a decimated population. He knew how he looked to the things that were always hunting, what they thought when they saw him coming. But that was all right. He had stayed alive this long by keeping his head down and staying out of harm’s way. People like him, they didn’t get noticed. The trick was in not doing anything to call attention to yourself.