know something about you that you wouldn’t tell me yourself.
Then I wanted to talk to you about it, but I didn’t know how.
I’m very good at listening, but not so good at asking.”
Morgan blinked. He saw Quickening in his mind, a flawless,
silver-haired vision as ephemeral as smoke. The pain he felt in
remembering was palpable. He tried to shut it away, but it was
274 The Talismans of Shannara
pointless. He did not want to remember, but the memory was
always there, just at the edges of his thinking.
Matty Roh put her hand over his, impulsive, hesitant. “I
could listen now, if you would let me,” she said. “I would like
it if I could.”
He thought. No, I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t even
want to think about it, not with you, not with anybody! But
then he saw her again in his’ mind bathing her ruined feet in
the stream and telling him how she had come to be disfigured,
how the poisoning of the land had changed her life forever.
Was the pain of her memories any less than his own? He
thought, too, of Quickening as she lay dying, healing the shat-
tered Sword of Leah, giving him a part of herself to take with
him, something that would transcend her death. What she had
left behind was not meant to be kept secret or hidden. It was
meant to be shared.
And memories, he knew, were not glass treasures to be kept
locked within a box. They were bright ribbons to be hung in
the wind.
He turned his hand over and clasped hers. Then he leaned
close so that he could see her face clearly and began to speak.
He talked for a long time, rinding it hard at first and then
easier, working his way through the maze of emotions that rose
within him, searching for the words that sometimes would not
come, forcing himself to go on even when he thought that
maybe he could not.
When he was done, she held him close and some of the pain
slipped away.
They set out again at dawn, the daylight gray and misty with
a promise of rain. Clouds rolled out of the west, a heavy, dark
avalanche that sealed away everything in its path. It was hot
and still on the river, and the slap of the water against the can-
yon walls echoed sharply as they wound their way downriver.
Morgan put up the mast and sail, but there was little wind to
help, and after a while he took it down again and let the cur-
rent carry them. It was nearing midday when they passed be-
neath Southwatch, the black obelisk towering over them, vast
and silent and impenetrable, its shadow cast like a Forbidding
across the Mermidon. They stared at it with loathing as they
passed, imagining the dark things that waited within, uneasy
The Talismans of Shannara 275
with the possibility that they might be watched. But no one ap-
peared, and they sailed by unchallenged. Southwatch receded
into the distance, melted into the haze, and was gone.
They reached the mouth of the river shortly after, the waters
widening and stretching away to become the Rainbow Lake,
smoothing into a glassy surface and brightening into a richer
blue. The rainbow from which the lake took its name was in
pale evidence, shimmering in the heat and mist, suspended
above the water like a weathered, faded banner whose stays
had come loose so that it floated free. They guided the skiff to
the west bank, beached it, and walked out onto a barren flat
that dropped away east and south into the water and spread
northwest across a plain empty of everything but scrub grass
and stunted, leafless ironwood to where a line of hills shad-
owed the horizon. They breathed the air and looked about,
finding no sign of anything for as far as they could see.
Damson brushed back her fiery hair, tied it in place with a
bandanna across her forehead, and drew out the Skree. Holding
it forth in her open palm, she faced south. Morgan watched as