luck, Par Ohmsford,” she said. “You will be needing it if you
continue to follow him.”
She gave Padishar a hard look, took the children by the hand,
and strode off into the crowds without looking back, her red hair
shining. The outlaw chief and the Valeman watched her go.
“Who is she, Padishar?” Par asked when she was no lonj
in view.
Padishar shrugged. “Whoever she chooses to be. There
as many stories about her origins as there are about my own.
Come now. Time for us to be going as well.”
He took Par back through the city, keeping to the lesser streets
and byways. The crowds were still heavy, everyone pushing and
shoving, their faces dust-streaked and their tempers short. Twi-
light had chased the sunlight west, lengthening the shadows into
evening, but the heat of midday remained trapped by the city’s
walls, rising out of the stone of the streets and buildings to hang
in the still summer air. It was like being in a furnace. Par glanced
skyward. Already the quarter-moon was visible northward, ‘
sprinkling of stars east. He tried to think about what he ‘
learned of the disappearance of the Sword of Shannara, but found
himself thinking instead of Damson Rhee.
Padishar had him safely back down in the basement of die
storage house behind the weapons shop before dark, where Coil
and Morgan waited impatiendy to receive them. Cutting short
a flurry of questions, the outlaw chief smiled cheerfully and
announced that everything was arranged. At midnight the Vale-
men, the Highlander, Ciba Blue, and he would make a brief
foray into the ravine that fronted what had once been the palace
of the city’s rulers. They would descend using a rope ladder.
Stasas and Drutt would remain behind. They would haul the
ladder up when their companions were safely down and hide
until summoned. Any sentries would be dispatched, the ladder
would be lowered again, and they would all disappear back the
way they had come.
He was succinct and matter-of-fact. He made no mention of
why they were doing all this and none of his own men bothered
to ask. They simply let him finish, then turned immediately back
to whatever they had been doing before. Coil and Morgan, on
me other hand, could barely contain themselves, and Par was
forced to take them aside and tell them in detail everything that
had happened. The three of them huddled in one comer of the
basement, seated on sacks of scrubbing powder. Oil lamps lit
me darkness, and the city above them began to go still.
When Par concluded, Morgan shook his head doubtfully.
“It is hard to believe that an entire city has forgotten there
was more than one People’s Park and Bridge of Sendic,” he
declared softly.
“Not hard at all when you remember that they have had more
than a hundred years to work on it,” Coil disagreed quickly.
Think about it, Morgan. How much more than a park and a
bridge has been forgotten in that time? The Federation has sad-
dled the Four Lands with three hundred years of revisionist
history.”
“Coil’s right,” Par said. “We lost our only true historian
when Allanon passed from the Lands. The Druid Histories were
the only written compilations the Races had, and we don’t know
what’s become of those. All we have left are the storytellers,
with their word-of-mouth recitations, most of them imperfect.”
Everything about the old world has been called a lie,” Coil
his dark eyes hard. “We know it to be the truth, but we
are virtually alone in that belief. The Federation has changed
everything to suit its own purposes. After a hundred years, it is
little wonder that no one in lyrsis remembers that the People’s
Park and the Bridge of Sendic are not the same as they once
were. The fact of the matter is, who even cares anymore?”
Morgan frowned. “Perhaps so. But something’s still not right
about this.” His frown deepened.’ ‘It bothers me that the Sword
of Shannara, vault and all, has been down in this ravine all these
years and no one’s seen it. It bothers me that no one who’s gone