But what would the Elves do when they reappeared?
XIX
Walker Boh blinked.
It was a crystalline clear day, the kind of day in
which the sunlight is so bright and the colors so bril-
liant that it almost hurts the eyes to look. The skies were
empty of clouds from horizon to horizon, a deep blue void that
stretched away forever. Out of that void and those skies blazed
the sun at midday, a white-hot glare that could only be seen by
squinting and quickly looking away again. It flooded down
upon the Four Lands, bringing out the colors of late summer
with startling clarity, even the dull browns of dried grasses and
dusty earth, but especially the greens of the forests and grass-
lands, the blues of the rivers and lakes, and the iron grays and
burnt coppers of the mountains and flats. The sun’s heat rose
in waves in those quarters where winds did not cool, but even
there everything seemed etched and defined with a craftsman’s
precision, and there was the sense that even a sharp cry might
shatter it all.
It was a day for living, where all the promises ever made
might find fulfillment and all the hopes and dreams conceived
might come to pass. It was a day for thinking about life, and
thoughts of death seemed oddly out of place.
Walker’s smile was faint and bitter. He wished he could find
a way to make such thoughts disappear.
He stood alone outside Paranor’s walls, just at their north-
west comer beneath a configuration in the parapets that jutted
out to form a shallow overhang, staring out across the sweep
of the land. He had been there since sunrise, having slipped
out through the north gates while the Four Horsemen were
213
214 The Talismans of Shannara
gathered at the west sounding their daily challenge. Almost six
hours had passed, and the Shadowen hadn’t discovered him.
He was cloaked once again in a spell of invisibility. The spell
had worked before, he had argued to Cogline while laying out
his plan. No reason it shouldn’t work again.
So far, it had.
Sunlight washed the walls of the Dragon’s Teeth, chasing
even the most persistent of shadows, stripping clean the flat,
barren surface of the rocks. He could see north above the
treeline to the empty stretches of the Streleheim. He could see
east to the Jannisson and south to the Kennon. Streams and
ponds were a glimmering of blue through the trees that circled
the Keep, and songbirds flew in brilliant bursts of color that
surprised and delighted.
Walker Boh breathed deeply the midday air. Anything was
possible on a day like this one. Anything.
He was dressed in loose-fitting gray robes cinched about his
waist, the hood pulled down so that his black hair hung loose
to his shoulders. He was bearded, but trimmed and combed.
Nothing of this was visible, of course. To anyone passing, and
particularly to the Shadowen, he was just another part of the
wall. Rest and nourishment had restored his strength. The
wounds he had suffered three days earlier were mostly healed,
if not forgotten. He did not give thought to what had befallen
him then except in passing. He was focused on what was to
happen now, this day, this hour.
It was the tenth day of the Shadowen siege. It was the day
he meant for that siege to end.
He glanced back over his shoulder along the castle wall as
another of the Four Horsemen circled into view. It was Fam-
ine, edging around the turn that would take it along the north
wall, skeletal frame hunched over its serpent mount, looking
neither left nor right as it proceeded, lost in its own peculiar
form of madness. Gray as ashes and ephemeral as smoke, it
slouched along the pathway. It passed within several feet of
Walker Boh and did not look up.
Today, the newest of the Druids thought to himself.
He looked out again across the valley, thinking of other
times and places, of the history that had preceded him, of all
the Druids who had come to Paranor and made it their home.