Terry Brooks - The Scions of Shannara

“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.”

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 set 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.