Терри Брукс - The Talismans of Shannara

Two days ago. They had traveled all night to get here and spent the first of those two days without sleep. They had all gone exploring instead.

She shook her head, looking off into the darkened trees, smelling moss and bark mold and wildflowers and wondering that so much could happen in such a little time. She heard Stresa shift in the darkness before her, restless, and she looked back again.

“Did you find the Thing?” she asked him, not knowing what else to call it.

“Hssstt.” Stresa was laughing. “Not Thing, Wren Elessedil. Things! There have been some changes in three hundred years, it seems. There are more than the one now.”

And perhaps always were, and only one was ever seen, she thought suddenly. She rose, contemplating the advent of the new day. Before her, east, waited the Wing Riders and the Home Guard, and beyond them, somewhere on the grasslands, the Creepers. Behind her, west, lay the Matted Brakes.

More than one. Well, now.

“Wait for me, Stresa,” she ordered, rising again, anxious now to begin. “The valley opens into a draw that will bring them right through here. It shouldn’t be long.”

Stresa turned and moved back into the shadows. “I’ll take a nap. I’m tired from all this rooting about. It stinks in the Brakes, you know. Pfffttt. Watch yourself until you get back here, Queen of the Elves.”

She let him go without comment, then turned into the trees east and made her way back toward the dawn’s brightening light. The forest was thin here, the draw she had described a broad wash down out of the higher ground where runoff and wind had swept away most of the cover. She found Faun almost immediately, the little creature leaping onto her shoulder and riding there as she slipped ahead through the trees. The plan would work, she told herself, and to make certain, she went over it again in her mind. The mechanics were simple enough. It was the execution that would make the difference. And the execution was almost entirely in her hands.

She moved down into the valley, following the north slope where the shadows were deepest in the growing light, peering out onto the plains beyond where a faint haze concealed what lay there. They had scouted everything thoroughly the day before in preparation. The Home Guard knew the terrain well enough to take advantage of it, and the Wing Riders had found hiding places within the trees close by the Brakes. Games within games, she thought. Wheels within wheels. She thought back to Morrowindl, where she had learned to play cat and mouse with the Shadowen creatures, to put into practice all that Rover knowledge Garth had imparted to her. She thought how far-sighted her mother and father had been to give her into Garth’s keeping, knowing how life must one day be for her. It was strange even now to think how much had been given up for her, but it was no longer so difficult to accept. Life delegated responsibility as need required and never in equal shares. The trick was in not being afraid when you learned that this was so. Faun chittered softly in her ear, and she reached up to stroke the warm, fuzzy face. We must look after each other, she thought to herself. We must nurture and love, if life is to have any real meaning. But first, unfortunately, we must find a way to survive against the things that would prevent us from doing so.

She found Triss and the Home Guard hidden at the mouth of the valley within a cluster of pine and heavy brush. It was still and hazy on the plains beyond, the coming light diffuse within the ground mist, giving it the look of snow. There was a dampness in the air, and it had a pungent, coppery taste.

“They are no more than a mile below where we wait,” Triss advised quietly, calm and steady-eyed as he faced her. The way Garth had once been. “Scouts screen their coming so that we will not be surprised. Are you ready, my lady?”

She nodded, and tucked Faun down into the backpack she had brought for her to ride in. Faun would not leave her either. “Send someone to Tiger Ty and let’s be off.”

A messenger was dispatched, and the remainder of the Home Guard, armed with longbows and quivers of arrows, slipped out of their concealment and onto the plains, working their way through the heavy grasses and scrub. The plains were wet with dew, but the ground beneath as hard as stone. They moved slowly, cautiously, dropping into a crouch when the lead men signaled to do so, watchful for the monsters that approached.

As it was, they heard them before they saw them, the heavy armored bodies shaking the ground, more quiet nevertheless in their movement than Wren would have thought. The forward scouts dropped back to report that the Creepers were ahead and to the east, not more than five hundred yards away, eight strong, marching two abreast. There were Seekers with them, black-robed and bearing the wolf’s-head marking so that there could be no mistake. Wren was surprised. She had seen no Seekers before. But their presence changed nothing, and so she gave Triss the order to deploy. Silently, the Home Guard slipped away into the haze, fanning out like ghosts.

Then they could only wait. The seconds slipped by, agonizingly slow. They listened to the sounds of the Creepers and to the sudden silence of the land about that marked their coming. Triss muttered something about the mist. He glanced at her, and she smiled. Triss looked away. Even now, after all they had been through together, he kept his distance. She was queen, after all. She must always stand apart.

The sky continued to brighten and the mist to dissipate.

The first pair of Creepers appeared, materializing like spectral apparitions, huge and monstrous, dwarfing the black-cloaked figures that marched beside them. Twenty or so of the latter, Wren counted rapidly.

She reached down into her tunic and took out the Elfstones. The Stones lay comfortably within her palm and glittered like bits of blue fire. Mine alone to use, she thought. She closed her fingers over them and waited.

When the second pair of Creepers was directly abreast, she rose, held out the Elfstones, summoned the power within, and sent the blue fire streaking out. It lanced through the half light and mist and hammered into the closest of the Shadowen monsters. The Creepers jerked in shock, and one went down, smoldering and burning. The others wheeled toward her, and instantly the Home Guard attacked. A rain of arrows showered down on the Creepers and the Shadowen, and shouts rose up from the Elves. There were a few moments of confusion while the Creepers and their tenders milled about uncertainly, and then they counterattacked in a lumbering rush, pounding across the grasslands in search of their assailants.

But the Home Guard were already falling back toward the treeline, firing arrows, screaming oaths, and running for their lives. The Creepers were huge, but very quick, and they began to close the gap. Wren slowed them with a rush of blue fire from the Stones, retreating as she did, Triss at her side. The Creeper who had gone down was back up again, and all eight were coming on. It was what she had hoped for, what she had expected, but now that it was happening it was terrifying. As they lurched through the mist she saw again the Wisteron on Morrowindl, replicated eight times over, and she had to fight down the fear that the memory engendered. She could hear the scrape of claws and the click of mandibles and pincers. She saw the trees west come into view, pocketed the Elfstones, and made a dash for them.

They entered the valley ahead of the Creepers, not bothering to slow yet to see if they were being followed because the sounds of pursuit were unmistakable. Midway through the valley, Wren turned, brought out the Elfstones once more, and sent a wall of blue flame back across the entrance. She could hear the Creepers scream in fury, the sound like the scrape of rusting metal, shrill and inhuman. The Creepers came through the wall with flesh smoking and armor steaming. She sent another strike into them, rising up on her toes with the force of it, so buoyed by the magic that she thought she could float on air. Filled with its power, she began screaming in challenge.