Terry Brooks - First King of Shannara

Tay stayed in the home of his parents, both grown old now, concerned mostly with the passing of the days and the welfare of their children. His parents asked him of his life at Paranor, but tired easily and did not press him for details when he gave his answers. Of the Warlock Lord and his Skull Bearers, they knew nothing. Of the Troll army, they had heard only rumors. They lived in a small cottage at the edge of the Gardens of Life along the Carolan, and their days were spent working in their tiny garden and at their individual crafts, his father’s screen painting and his mother’s weaving. They spoke to him while they worked, taking turns at asking questions, absorbed in their efforts, listening with half an ear. Small, brittle, fading away before his eyes, they reminded him of the frailty of his own life, the one he had assumed until so recently to be secure.

Tay’s brother and family lived in the Sarandanon, miles to the west and south, and so Tay learned what he could of them from his parents. He had never been close to his brother and had not seen him in more than eight years, but he listened dutifully and was pleased to hear that he was doing well with his farming.

His sister Kira was another matter. She lived in Arborlon, and he went to see her on his first day home, finding her wrestling clothes onto her smallest child, her face still young and fresh, her energy still boundless, her smile as warm and heartbreaking as birdsong. She came to him with a welcoming laugh, flinging herself into his arms and hugging him until he thought he might explode. She took him into the kitchen and gave him cold ale, sitting him down at the old trestle bench, asking him of his life and telling him of hers, all at once. They shared concerns about their parents, and swapped stories of their childhood, and it was dark before they knew it. They met again the following day, and with Kira’s husband and the children went into the woods along the Rill Song for a picnic. Kira asked if he had seen Jerle Shannara yet, and then did not mention him again. The hours slipped away, and Tay was almost able to forget he had come home for any other reason. The children played games with him, tired eventually, and sat on the riverbank kicking their feet in the cold water while he talked with their parents of the ways in which the world was changing. His brother-in-law was a maker of leather goods and traded regularly with the other Races. He no longer sent his traders into the Northland, now that the nations had been subjugated and made one. There were rumors, he said, of evil creatures, of winged monsters and dark shades, of beasts that would savage humans and Elves alike. Tay listened and nodded and affirmed that he had heard the rumors, too. He tried not to look at Kira too closely when he spoke. He tried not to let her see what was in his eyes.

He saw old friends as well, some of whom had been barely grown when he had seen them last. Some had been close once. But they had traveled down different roads, and all had gone too far to turn back. Or perhaps it was he who had gone too far. They were strangers now, not in appearance or voice, for those were still familiar, but in choices made that long since had shaped their lives. He shared nothing with them but memories of what had once been. It was sad, but not surprising. Time stole away commitments and loosened ties. Friendships were reduced to tales of the past and vague promises for the future, neither strong enough to recover what was lost. But that was what life did—it took you down separate roads until one day you found yourself alone.

Arborlon seemed strange as well, though not in a way he would have expected. Physically, it was the same, a village grown into a city, full of excitement and expectation, become the crossroads of the Westland. Twenty years of steady growth had made it the largest and most important city in the northern half of the known world. The conclusion of the First War of the Races had altered irrevocably the role of the Elven people in the future of the Four Lands, and with the decline of the Southland as a major influence, Arborlon and the Elves had become increasingly important. But while the city and its surroundings were familiar to Tay, even with his long absence and infrequent visits, he could not escape the feeling that he no longer belonged. This was not his home now; it hadn’t been for the better part of fifteen years, and it was too late to change that. Even if Paranor was destroyed and the Druids gone, he was not sure he could ever come back. Arborlon was a part of his past, and somehow he had grown beyond it. He was a stranger here, as much as he tried to convince himself otherwise, and it made him feel awkward when he tried to fit in again.

How quickly everything slipped away when you weren’t paying attention, he thought more than once in his first few days back. How swiftly your life changed.

On the fourth day of his return, Jerle Shannara came to him in the late-afternoon hours accompanied by Preia Starle. Tay hadn’t seen Preia yet, although he had wondered about her more than once. She was easily the most astonishing woman he had ever known, and if she hadn’t been in love with Jerle for as far back as anyone could remember but had been in love with Tay instead, he might have changed his life for her. She was beautiful, with small, perfect features, cinnamon hair and eyes to match, a dusky tone to her skin that glowed like the surface of water caught in a sunrise, and a body that curved and flowed with the grace and supple ease of a cat’s. That was Preia at first glance, but it didn’t begin to tell you about her. Preia was as much a warrior as Jerle, trained as a Tracker, skilled at her chosen craft beyond anyone Tay had ever known, tough and steady and as certain as sunrise. She could track a ferret in a swamp. She could tell you the size and number and sex of a herd of goats crossing rocks. She could live out in the wilderness for weeks on literally nothing but what she scavenged.

She disdained to follow the life most Elven women chose, forsaking the comforts of a home and the companionship of a husband and children. Preia was distanced from all that. She was happy enough with the life she was leading, she had told Tay once.

Those other things would come to her when Jerle was ready for them. Until then, she would wait.

Jerle, for his part, was content to let her. He was ambivalent, Tay thought, about what he felt for her. He loved her in his way, but it was Kira that he had loved first and best and was unable to forget, even after all these years. Preia must have known that—she was too smart to miss it—but she never said anything. Tay had expected their relationship to have changed since his last visit, but it did not appear that it had. There had been no mention of Preia in his conversations with Jerle. Preia was still standing outside the gates of the fortress of self-sufficiency and independence that Jerle Shannara had erected around himself, waiting to be let in.

She came to Tay with a smile as he looked up from the Westland maps he was studying at a small table in his parents’ garden.

He rose to meet her, his throat tightening at the sight of her, and he bent to receive her welcoming embrace and kiss.

“You look well, Tay,” she greeted, stepping back to view him more closely, hands resting lightly on his arms.

“Better, now that I’m seeing you,” he replied, surprising himself with the boldness of his response.

Preia and Jerle took him from the house to the Carolan, where they could talk privately. They sat at the edge of the Gardens of Life, looking out across the bluff to the tips of the tall trees beyond the Rill Song. Jerle had chosen a circular bench that allowed them to face each other and close out the distractions of passersby. He had said almost nothing since he had come for Tay, his look distant and preoccupied, and he faced Tay squarely now for the first time.