Terry Brooks - First King of Shannara

Tay thought it over. “Expect the worst. That way we won’t be surprised. Is that it?”

Jerle Shannara nodded, suddenly solemn. “That’s it.”

They started back up the path. “I’m not sleepy,” the big man complained. He stopped again. “Where can we go for a glass of ale? One, to celebrate.”

Tay shrugged. “The palace?”

“Not the palace! I hate the palace! All those parents and children rummaging about, family everywhere. No, not there. Your house?”

“My parents are asleep. Besides, I feel as much a stranger there as you do at the palace. How about the Home Guard barracks?”

Jerle beamed. “Done! A glass or two, then bed. We have much to talk about, Tay.”

They walked on, glancing together at the palace as they passed.

The downstairs was dark and the grounds quiet. There was no sign of movement anywhere. From an upstairs room, a single light burned behind a curtained window, a candle lit in a child’s room to give promise of another morning.

From somewhere distant, a night bird cried out in a series of shrill calls that echoed forlornly before dying back into the silence.

Jerle slowed and stopped, bringing Tay up short with him. He stared at the palace.

“What is it?” Tay asked after a moment.

“I don’t see any guards.”

Tay looked. “Any guards where? I thought you weren’t supposed to see them.”

Jerle shook his head. “You aren’t. But I am.”

Tay stared with him, seeing nothing against the black of the buildings or across the tree-canopied sweep of the grounds. No shapes even vaguely human. He searched for movement and did not find any. Elven Hunters were trained to fade away. Home Guard were better still. But he should still be able to find them as easily as Jerle.

He used his magic then, a small sending that raked the whole of the palace enclosure from end to end, fingers of disclosure that picked at everything. There was movement now, discovered in his search, swift and furtive and alien.

“Something is wrong,” he said at once.

Jerle Shannara started forward wordlessly, heading for the palace entry, picking up speed as he went. Tay went with him, a strange sense of dread welling up inside. He tried to give it definition, to place its source, but it slipped away from him, elusive and defiant. Tay searched the shadows to either side, finding everything suddenly black and secretive. His hands tested the air, the Ups of his fingers releasing his Druid magic in a widening net. He felt the net close on something that twisted and squirmed and then darted away.

“Gnomes!” he exclaimed.

Jerle broke into a run, reaching down to his belt and yanking out his short sword, the blade gleaming faintly against the dark as it slipped free. Jerle Shannara never went anywhere without his weapons. Tay hurried to keep up. Neither of them spoke, falling in beside each other as they neared the front doors, glancing left and right warily, ready for anything.

The doors stood open. No light shone from within. From the walkway, it had been impossible to tell this. Jerle did not slow.

He went through the doors in a crouch, sword held ready. Tay followed.

The hall stretched away before them like a cavernous tunnel.

There were bodies everywhere, strewn about like sacks of old clothing, bloodied and still. Elven Hunters, slain to a man, but a scattering of Gnome Hunters as well. The floor was slick with their blood. Jerle motioned Tay to one side while he went to the other, and together they worked their way down the hall to the main rooms. The rooms were quiet and empty of life. The companions backtracked, moving swiftly toward the stairs leading up. Jerle did not speak, even now. He did not ask Tay if he wanted a weapon. He did not try to tell him what to do. He did not need to.

Tay was a Druid and knew.

They went up the stairs like ghosts, listening to the silence, waiting for a betraying sound. There was none. They reached the upstairs landing and looked down the darkened corridors beyond.

More guards lay dead. Tay was astonished. There had been no outcry of any kind! How could these men, these trained Elven Hunters, have died without sounding an alarm?

The hall branched both ways, burrowing into the darkness and angling off into the wings of the palace where the royal family slept within their bedrooms. Jerle glanced at Tay, eyes bright and hard, motioned him right, and went left himself. Tay glanced after his friend, crouched against the gloom like a moor cat, then turned swiftly away.

He moved ahead, hands clenched into fists, the magic called up and gathered within his palms like a hard pulse, waiting to be released. Fear mingled with horror. There were sounds now, small voices, sobs and little cries that went still almost as quickly as they came, and he raced toward them, heedless. Shadows moved in the hallway before him as he turned the comer to the back wing.

Blades glinted wickedly, and gnarled forms came at him.

Gnomes. He stopped thinking and simply reacted. His right hand lifted and opened, and the magic exploded into his attackers, picking them up and throwing them against the walls so hard that he could hear their bones snap. He went through them as if they were not there, past open doorways where the occupants lay sprawled in death—mothers, fathers, and children alike—to where the doors still stood closed and there might yet be hope.

A new clutch of attackers burst from hiding as he rushed past, flinging themselves onto him and bearing him to the floor.

Weapons rose and fell with desperate purpose, edges sharp and deadly. But he was a Druid, and his defenses were already in place. The blades slid off him as if come up against armor, and his hands fastened on the wiry bodies and threw them away. He was strong, even without his magic, and with his magic to aid him the Gnomes were no match. He was back on his feet almost immediately, his fire sweeping about him in a deadly arc, cutting apart those few still standing. New cries rose, and he went on, horror-stricken at what he knew was happening. An attack, a deadly strike against the whole of the Elven royal family. He knew immediately that it was the same band of Gnome Hunters he had encountered and bypassed on the plains below the Streleheim, that they were neither scouts nor foragers but assassins, and that somewhere close by was the Skull Bearer who led them.

He passed door after door of slain Ballindarrochs, large and small alike, killed in their sleep or immediately on waking. Once past the Home Guard, there was nothing to stop the Gnomes from completing their deadly mission. Tay hissed in frustration. Magic had been used in this. Nothing less would have gained the assassins entry without warning being given. Rage boiled through him.

He reached another door and found the Gnomes within killing a man and woman they had backed against their bedroom wall. Tay threw his magic into the attackers and burned them alive. Cries rose up now as if in response, the warning he had wished for finally given, coming not from his wing, but from the other, where Jerle Shannara would be fighting as well.

He left the man and woman slumped against the wall and went on, unable to help them. There were only a few doors left. One, he realized suddenly, despairingly, was where Courtann Ballindarroch slept.

He went to that one first, desperate now, losing hope that he would be in time for anyone. He went past a closed door on his left and an open one on his right. Through the open door, a pair of Gnomes appeared, bloodied weapons raised, yellow eyes glinting, surprise revealed on their cunning faces. He gestured at them and they vanished in an explosion of fire, dead before they knew what was happening. Tay could feel his strength diminished by the expenditure of power. He had not been tested like this before, and he must be cautious. Bremen had warned him more than once that use of the magic was finite. He must hoard what remained for when it was truly needed.