advised quietly, calm and steady-eyed as he faced her. The way
Garth had once been. “Scouts screen their coming so that we
will not be surprised. Are you ready, my lady? ”
She nodded, and tucked Paun down into the backpack she
had brought for her to ride in. Faun would not leave her either.
“Send someone to Tiger Ty and let’s be off.”
A messenger was dispatched, and the remainder of the
Home Guard, armed with longbows and quivers of arrows,
slipped out of their concealment and onto the plains, working
their way through the heavy grasses and scrub. The plains
were wet with dew, but the ground beneath as hard as stone.
They moved slowly, cautiously, dropping into a crouch when
the lead men signaled to do so, watchful for the monsters that
approached.
As it was, they heard them before they saw them, the heavy
armored bodies shaking the ground, more quiet nevertheless in
their movement than Wren would have thought. The forward
scouts dropped back to report that the Creepers were ahead
and to the east, not more than five hundred yards away, eight
strong, marching two abreast. There were Seekers with mem,
black-robed and bearing the wolf’s-head marking so that there
could be no mistake. Wren was surprised. She had seen no
Seekers before. But their presence changed nothing, and so she
gave Triss the order to deploy. Silently, the Home Guard
slipped away into the haze, fanning out like ghosts.
Then they could only wait. The seconds slipped by, agoniz-
ingly slow. They listened to the sounds of the Creepers and to
the sudden silence of the land about that marked their coming.
The Talismans of Shannara 369
Triss muttered something about the mist. He glanced at her,
and she smiled. Triss looked away. Even now, after all they
had been through together, he kept his distance. She was
queen, after all. She must always stand apart.
The sky continued to brighten and the mist to dissipate.
The first pair of Creepers appeared, materializing like spec-
tral apparitions, huge and monstrous, dwarfing the black-
cloaked figures that marched beside them. Twenty or so of the
latter. Wren counted rapidly.
She reached down into her tunic and took out the Elfstones.
The Stones lay comfortably within her palm and glittered like
bits of blue fire. Mine alone to use, she thought. She closed her
fingers over them and waited.
When the second pair of Creepers was directly abreast, she
rose, held out the Elfstones, summoned the power within, and
sent the blue fire streaking out. It lanced through the half light
and mist and hammered into the closest of the Shadowen mon-
sters. The Creepers jerked in shock, and one went down,
smoking and burning. The others wheeled toward her, and in-
stantly the Home Guard attacked. A rain of arrows showered
down on the Creepers and the Shadowen, and shouts rose up
from the Elves. There were a few moments of confusion while
the Creepers and their tenders milled about uncertainly, and
then they counterattacked in a lumbering rush, pounding
across the grasslands in search of their assailants.
But the Home Guard were already falling back toward the
treeline, firing arrows, screaming oaths, and running for their
lives. The Creepers were huge, but very quick, and they began
to close the gap. Wren slowed them with a rush of blue fire
from the Stones, retreating as she did, Triss at her side. The
Creeper who had gone down was back up again, and all eight
were coming on. It was what she had hoped for, what she had
expected, but now that it was happening it was terrifying. As
they lurched through the mist she saw again the Wisteron on
Morrowindl, replicated eight times over, and she had to fight
down the fear that the memory engendered. She could hear the
scrape of claws and the click of mandibles and pincers. She
saw the trees west come into view, pocketed the Elfstones, and
made a dash for them.
They entered the valley ahead of the Creepers, not bothering
370 The Talismans of Shannara
to slow yet to see if they were being followed because the