enough so as not to lose contact. He made steady progress de-
spite his wound, the pain a dull throbbing he had relegated to
the back of his mind, working his way ahead with the practice
and determination of an experienced woodsman, able to sense
what was happening about him, to feel a part of the land. He
The Talismans of Shannara 345
listened to the sounds of the birds and animals, sensing what
they were about, knowing that nothing was amiss.
The day edged on toward noon, and still there was no sign
of any pursuit. He began to hope that perhaps he had avoided
it completely. He found fruit and wild greens to chew on and
more drinking water, and when he reached the wall of the
Runne, he turned south again. He shifted the Sword of Lean to
take the strain off his wound and thought on its history. So
many years of dormancy, a relic of another time, its magic for-
gotten until his encounter with the Shadowen during the jour-
ney to Culhaven. Happenstance, and nothing more. Strange
how things worked out. He pondered the effect that the Sword
had had upon his life, of the ways it had worked both for and
against him, and of the legacy of hope and despair it had be-
queathed. He thought that it no longer mattered whether he ap-
proved of it or not, whether he believed his link with the magic
was a good or bad thing, because in the final analysis it didn’t
matter—the magic simply was. Quickening, he thought, had
recognized the inevitability of it better than he, and she had
given back the Sword whole because she knew that if the
magic was to be his, it should be his complete and not dimin-
ished or failed. Quickening had understood how the game was
played; her legacy to him had been to teach him the rules.
He stopped to rest when the heat of the day was at its peak,
a scathing, burning glare that rose off the parched earth in a
white-hot shimmer. He sat in the shade of an aging maple,
broad-leaved boughs canopied above him like a tent, squirrels
and birds moving through the sheltering branches in apparent
disregard of his presence, bound up in their own pursuits. He
stared out through the trees to the hills and grasslands south
and east, the Sword of Lean propped blade down between his
legs, his arms folded across its hilt and grips. He wondered if
Wren was safe. He wondered where everybody was, all those
who had started out with him on this adventure and been lost
somewhere along the way. Some, of course, were dead. But
what of the others? He scuffed at the earth with his boot heel
and wished he could see things that were hidden from him,
then thought that maybe it was better that he couldn’t.
Late afternoon brought the temperature back down to bear-
able, and he resumed walking. Shadows were lengthening
346 The Talismans of Shannara
again, easing away from the trees and rocks and gullies and
ridges behind which they had been hiding. Southwatch came
into view, its dark obelisk rising up out of the poisoned flats
that bridged the mouth of the Mermidon with the Rainbow
Lake. The lake ttself was flat and silvery, a mirror of the sky
and the land. and the colors of its bow were pale and washed
out in the fading light. Cranes and herons swooped and glided
above its surface, vague flashes of white against the gray haze
of an approaching dusk.
He stopped to watch, and it probably saved his life.
The birds went suddenly still, and there was movement
ahead in the trees, barely perceptible, but there nevertheless.
distant and indistinct in the failing light. Morgan eased back
into the brush, as silent as shadows falling, and froze. After a
moment, Shadowen appeared, one, two, then four more, a pa-
trol working its way soundlessly through the trees. They did
not seem to be tracking, merely searching, and the idea that
they might be using their sense of smell to hunt turned Morgan
cold. They were several hundred yards away still and moving