Terry Brooks - First King of Shannara

No enemy cavalry would pursue, for the Northland horses were captured or scattered. The Trolls were all they must avoid.

But the Trolls came on more quickly than the king had expected. The Home Guard stood virtually alone on the plains now, the bowmen and Elven Hunters fled back to the safety of the Rhenn, the horsemen under Kier Joplin returned north. Gnome arrows flew out of the glare of the Northland camp, sent by archers rushed to the fore. Several of the Home Guard went down and did not move. Bremen, who had come onto the plains with the attackers to lend his protection to the king, brushed past them, black robes flying, and threw Druid fire into the teeth of the advancing Trolls. The grasslands exploded in flames, and for a moment the pursuit broke apart. The Home Guard began to fall back anew, the old man and the king in their midst, besieged on all sides as they hastened toward the shelter of the valley. Smoke rolled across the flats, carried on the back of a sudden wind, filled with heat and ash. Preia Starle darted ahead, trying to find a path through the haze. But the confusion brought on by the smoke and the howls of their pursuers was too great. The small band of Home Guard broke apart, some going one way with Bremen, some another with the king. Jerle Shannara called out, heard his name called in response, and suddenly everything disappeared in the smoke.

Then something huge crashed into those who fled with the king, sending the Home Guard spinning away into the night, flinging aside those closest as if they were stuffed with straw. A massive form materialized, a brutish monster in service to the Dark Lord, called from the netherworld and abroad with the night, all teeth and claws and scales. It came at Jerle Shannara with a howl, and the king barely had time to draw free his sword. Up flashed the magical blade, its bright surface fiery in the near dark. Now! thought the king, wheeling to strike. Now, we shall see! He willed the sword’s magic forth, calling on it to protect him as the creature closed, summoning its great power. But nothing happened. The beast reached for him, fully twice as tall and again as broad, and in desperation the king struck at it as he would at any enemy. The sword hammered into the beast, the force of the blow slowing the attack. But still no magic appeared. Jerle Shannara felt his stomach knot with sudden fear. The beast was cut at from either side by Home Guard come back into the fray, but it smashed the life out of the closest, brushed aside the rest, and came on.

In that moment Jerle Shannara realized that he could not compel the sword’s magic and that any hope he might have had that it would protect him was lost. He had thought, despite what Bremen had admonished, that there was magic of a sort that would strike down an enemy—something of fire, something with an otherworldly edge. But truth was what the sword revealed, the old man had insisted, and it seemed plain now that truth was all the sword could offer. Fear threatened to paralyze the King, but with a fierce cry he launched himself at the attacking beast. With both hands wrapped about the pommel of the broadsword, he defended himself in the only way left to him. The sword’s bright blade flashed downward and cut deep into the massive creature, dark blood spurting at the juncture of the blow. But the beast broke past the king’s guard, knocked aside his weapon, and threw him to the ground.

Then Bremen appeared, come out of the dark like an avenging wraith, hands thrust forward, bathed in Druid fire. The fire lanced from his fingertips in a frantic burst and slammed into the monster as it reached for the king, enveloping it, consuming it, turning it into a writhing torch. The beast reared back, shrieked in fury, turned, and raced away into the night, flames trailing after Bremen did not wait to see what became of it. He reached down for the king. Elves of the Home Guard reappearing to assist him, and hauled Jerle Shannara to his feet.

“The sword...” the king began brokenly, shaking his head in despair.

But Bremen stopped him with a hard look, saying, “Later, when there is time and privacy, Elven King. You are alive, you fought well, and the attack succeeded. That is enough for one night’s work. Now come, hurry away, before other creatures find us.”

They fled once more into the night, the king, the Druid, and a handful of Home Guard. Smoke and ash chased after them, and farther off, lighting the whole of the horizon like beacons, the fires from the supply wagons and the siege machines burned on. Preia Starle returned out of the dark, breathless, harried, eyes revealing both anger and fear. She shouldered her way under Jerle Shannara’s left arm and bolstered him as he walked. The king did not resist. His eyes met her own and looked away. His mouth was set.

The fear that smoldered in the dark comers of his consciousness had burst forth in flames this night—fear that somehow the sword with which he had been entrusted was not right for him and would not respond when needed. It had emerged to challenge him, and he had failed to meet that challenge. If not for Bremen, he would be dead. A thing of lesser magic would have finished him, a thing of far less power than the Warlock Lord. Doubt riddled his resolve.

All he had believed possible just hours earlier was lost. The magic of the sword was wrong for him. The magic would not answer to his call. It needed someone else, someone more attuned to its use.

He was not that man. He was not.

He could hear the words echo in the pounding of his heart, cold and certain. He tried to close his mind and his ears to the sound, but found he could not. In hopeless despair, he ran on.

With Bremen gone west to bear the Druid sword to the Elves, Kinson Ravenlock and Mareth turned east along the Silver River in search of the Dwarves. They traveled that first day through the hill country that buttressed the river’s north bank, winding their way steadily closer to the forests of the Anar. Mist clung to the hills with dogged persistence, then began to burn away as the sun rose higher in the midday sky. By early afternoon, the travelers had reached the Anar and started in.

Here the land flattened and smoothed. Sunlight pierced the leafy canopy and dappled the earthen carpet. They had enough food and water for that day only, and they divided it carefully when they paused for their lunch, reserving enough for dinner in the event that no better choice presented itself.

The Anar was bright with the green of the trees and the blue of the river, with shafts of sunlight from the mostly cloudless sky, and with birdsong and the cluttering of small creatures darting through the undergrowth. But the trail was trampled and strewn with the leavings of the Northland army, and no human life revealed itself anywhere. Now and again the faint scent of charred wood and old ashes wafted on the wind, and moments of silence would descend—a quiet so intense it caused the man and the woman to look about guardedly. They passed small cottages and outbuildings, some still standing, some burned out, but all vacant.

No Dwarves appeared. No one passed them on the trail.

“We shouldn’t be surprised,” Mareth observed at one point when Kinson had remarked on the subject. “The Warlock Lord has only just withdrawn from the Eastland. The Dwarves must still be in hiding.”

It seemed a logical conclusion, but it bothered Kinson nevertheless to pass through country so improbably deserted. The absence of even the most transient peddler was disturbing to him.

It suggested that there was no reason for anyone to be here anymore, as if life no longer had a purpose in these forests. It gave him pause to think that an entire people could vanish as if they had never been. He had no frame of reference for an eradication of this magnitude. What if the Dwarves had been annihilated? What if they had simply ceased to exist? The Four Lands would never recover from such a loss. They would never be the same.