returning to normal. His memories lingered, however—the
feeling of pain and nausea, the sense of helplessness, the fear
that the sickness was the door to the darkness that would come
at the end of his life. The memories stayed, for Morgan had
come close to dying too often in the past few weeks to be able
to put them aside easily. He was marked by what he had ex-
perienced and endured as surely as if scarred in battle, and
even the farmer and his wife could see in his eyes and face
what had been done to him. They never asked for an explana-
tion, but they could see.
He offered to pay them for their care and predictably they
refused. When he said good-bye to them seventeen days later,
he slipped half of what money remained to him into the pocket
of the wife’s worn apron when she wasn’t looking. They
watched after him as parents might a child until he was out of
sight.
And so not only was his arrival at Varfleet and his search
for Padishar and Par and Coil considerably delayed, but he was
left as well with a renewed sense of his own mortality. Morgan
Leah had come down out of Eldwist and the Chamals still
grappling with Quickening’s death, devastated by the loss he
felt with her passing, in awe of her strength in carrying out her
father’s wish that she give up her own life in order that the
land should be restored. An elemental that had become more
human than her father had anticipated, she remained for Mor-
gan an enigma for which he did not believe he would ever find
a resolution. Coupled with this realization was the undeniable
pride and strength he had found in helping to defeat Uhl Belk
and in regaining anew the magic of the Sword of Leah. When
80 The Talismans of Shannara
the Sword had been made whole again, somehow so had he.
Quickening had given him that. In the loss of Quickening,
Morgan realized, he had somehow found himself. The contra-
dictions between what had been lost and gained had warred
within him as he traveled south with Walker and Homer Dees,
a conflict that would never be entirely settled, and it was not
until the sickness had overtaken him that their raging was
forced to give way to the more basic need of finding a way to
stay alive.
Now, staring down at the city, come back out of several
nightmare worlds, out of the lives he had expended in those
worlds, so distant that they might have been lived by someone
else, Morgan reflected that he stood at the beginning of yet an-
other life. He found himself wondering if those who had
known him in the old life would ever recognize now who he
was.
He entered Varfleet as just another traveler come down out
of the north, a Southlander weathered and seasoned from trou-
bles that were his own business, and he was pretty much ig-
nored by the people of the city, who, after all, had troubles of
their own to worry about. He passed through the poorer sec-
dons where families lived in makeshift shelters and children
begged in the streets, conscious again of how little the ill-
named Federation Protectorate had done to help anyone in
Callahom. He passed into the city proper, where the smells of
cooking and sewage mingled unpleasantly, the merchants
hawked their wares in strident voices from carts and
shopfronts, and the tradesmen serviced the needs of those who
could afford the price. Federation soldiers patrolled the streets,
a threatening presence wherever they went, looking as uncom-
fortable as the people they were charged with policing. If you
stripped away the weapons and uniforms, the Highlander
thought darkly, it would be hard to tell who was who.
He found a clothing shop and used most of his remaining
money to buy pants, a tunic, a well-made forest cloak, and
some new boots. His own clothing was frayed and soiled and
worn beyond help, and he left it all behind in the shop when
he departed, taking only his weapons. He asked for directions
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