no one spoke, the three of them standing toe to toe in the dark-
ness, daring one another to say something more.
Then Walker lifted one hand and brought Damson and
Matty before him and in the same motion moved Morgan
and Coil back. He was taller than Morgan remembered, and
broader as well, as if he had grown and put on weight. It
wasn’t possible, of course, but it seemed that way. It appeared
as if he were more than one man. He filled me space between
them, huge and forbidding, and the night about them was
hushed suddenly with expectation.
“I cannot give you magic with which to fight,” he told the
women softly, “but I can give you magic with which to shield
yourselves from the Shadowen attack. Stand quiet now. Don’t
move.”
He reached out then and swept the air about them with his
hand. The air filled with a brightness that seemed to spread
and fall like dust, burning and fading away as it touched them.
He brought his hand up one side and down the other, glazing
them with the brightness from head to foot, leaving them mo-
mentarily shimmering and then cloaked once more in black-
ness.
“If you are resolved to go,” he said, “this will help keep you
safe.”
He brought them all back about him, gathering them in like
small children to a father’s embrace. He looked suddenly tired
and lost, but he looked determined as well. “We will do what
we must and what we can,” he told them. “Everything we
have fought for, every road we have traveled, every life given
up along the way, has been for this. I was told so by Allanon
after the return of Paranor, after my own transformation, after
Cogline had given up his life for me. The end of the Shadowen
or the end of us happens here. No one has to go who doesn’t
choose to. But everyone is needed.”
“We’re going,” Damson said quickly. “All of us.”
The others, even Morgan Leah, nodded in agreement.
“Five, then.” Walker smiled faintly. “We go to Par first to
set him free, to give him back the use of his magic. If we suc-
The Talismans of Shannara ^gg
ceed in that, we go down into the cellars. We leave now, so
that we can enter Southwatch at dawn.” He paused as if
searching for something more to say. “Look out for yourselves
Stay close to me.”
In the darkness of the grove, the five faced one another and
gave voiceless acquiescence to the pact. They would try to fin-
ish what so many had begun so long ago, and while they might
have wished it otherwise, they were all that were left to do so.
Silent shadows, the three men, the two women, and the
moor cat slipped out from the trees and down the mountainside
ahead of the coming light.
XXXIII
Two days following the destruction of the Creepers in the
Matted Brakes, the Elves attacked the Federation army
on the flats below the Valley of Rhenn. They struck just
before dawn when the light was weak and sleep still thick in
the eyes of their enemy. The skies were clouded from a rain
that had fallen all through the night, the air damp-smelling and
cool, the ground sodden and treacherous underfoot, the land
filled with a low-lying blanket of nrist that stretched away
from the Westland forests toward the sunrise. The grasslands
had the look of some phantasmagoric netherworld, shadows
shifting within the haze, skies black and threatening and press-
ing down against the earth, sounds muted and indistinct and
somehow given to suggest things not really there. Everything
took on the look and feel of something else. The timing was
perfect for the Elves.
They had not intended to attack at all. They had planned a de-
fense that would begin at the Valley of Rhenn and give way as
required back toward the home city of Arborion. But Barsim-
mon Oridio had arrived the day before, linking up at last with
Wren Elessedil and the advance column, bringing the Elven
army up to full strength for the first time, and after Elf Queen