Leah still found strength in their beliefs. She wondered if they
had any beliefs left. She thought of the losses she had suffered
and wondered if they had suffered as much. She wondered fi-
nally if they would have given heed to the charges of Allanon
had they known from the start the price that pursuing them
would exact. She did not think so.
Light broke east where the sun crested the lip of the world,
a faint silver glow that outlined the Dragon’s Teeth and the for-
estland below. The light seeped down into the valley and
chased the shadows from the mist, separating the two and turn-
ing the landscape stark and certain. The sound of drums and
marching feet grew audible in the distance, faint still, but rec-
ognizable in its coming. Padishar Creel was arguing with
The Talismans of Shannara 417
Barsiminon Oridio. They did not agree on what the combined
army’s strategy should be when the attack commenced. They
were both strong-willed men, and they mistrusted each other.
Axhind listened without saying anything, impassive, expres-
sionless. Triss had moved away. The leader of the free-bom re-
sented Bar’s insistence that overall command should be his.
She had separated them once already. She might have to do so
again and resented it. She did not want any part of what was
happening, not anymore. She stood watching and did not move
as the argument grew more heated. Triss looked over, waiting
for her to step in. South, the drums grew louder.
Then suddenly Stresa appeared, bursting unexpectedly from
the brush, quills lifting to shake away the dust and leaves, hur-
rying to reach her. Wren turned, everything else forgotten.
There was an urgency to the Splinterscat’s coming that was un-
mistakable.
“Elf Queen,” he hissed, his voice ragged and dry. “They’ve
brought Creepers!”
She felt her heart stop and her throat constrict. “We left
them all in the swamp,” she managed.
“They’ve found more! Sssttt!” The wet snout lifted, the dark
eyes dilated and hard. “From Tyrsis, it seems. Phhffttt! Sol-
diers, too, but it is the Creepers who matter. Five at least. I
came as soon as I saw them.”
She wheeled back to the others. Padishar Creel and Bar had
stopped arguing. Axhind and Chandos stood shoulder to shoul-
der like stone figures. Triss was already next to her.
Creepers.
The light was brightening and the haze diffusing as the army
of the Federation marched out of the gloom toward the Valley
of Rhenn. It came with its divisions of black and scarlet spread
wide across the valley mouth and up its broadening slopes, the
columns of men deep and long. Cavalry rode the flanks, and
there were rolling, timbered buttresses behind which their arch-
ers could hide, with slits for firing through. There were shield
walls and fire catapults, and there were black-cloaked Seekers
anew at every command.
But it was toward the very center of the army that all eyes
turned. There were the Creepers, glinting black metal and jag-
ged, hairy limbs, a mesh of machine and beast, lurching to-
418 The Talismans’ of Shannara
ward the Elves and their allies, toward the men they had been
sent to destroy.
Wren Elessedil stared at them and felt nothing. Their com-
ing marked the end of the Elves, she knew. Their coming
marked the end of everything.
She reached into her tunic for the Elfstones and stepped for-
ward to make her final stand.
“Get up. Par!”
Coil was shouting at him, pulling on his arm and dragging
him to his feet. He scrambled up obediently, still in shock from
what had happened to him, stunned by the revelations of the
Sword. There was a whirl of movement in the stairwell as
those who had come for him—Walker, Damson, Coil, Morgan,
and the tall, slight, black-haired woman whose face he did not
recognize—hurried to surround him. Rumor prowled the room
anxiously. There was a whisper of something coming down the
stairs, but the gloom hid what crept there. The doors leading
from the well were all closed save one that led back across a
courtyard to walls and an opening to the land beyond. That