ers and cellars, free of the confinement of her walls, safe from
the things that had hunted him there. He looked over at Dam-
son often and smiledJwhen he did. He thought of Padishar and
tried to keep from being sad. His thoughts scattered through
the trees and across the carpet of the earthen floor like small
creatures at play. He let them wander where they chose, con-
tent to let them go.
The Talismans of Shannara 61
Not once did it occur to him that it might be wise to hide
his trail.
Sunset burned like fire across the plains below Tyrsis as day
inched toward night and the heat began to dissipate. Shadows
lengthened and grew, taking on strange and suggestive shapes,
coming alive with the dark. They rose out of gullies and ra-
vines, from forests and solitary groves, stretching this way and
that as if to flex their limbs on waking from the sleep that pre-
pared them for going abroad to hunt
One of those shadows moved with insidious purpose along
the empty stretches running north to the Mermidon, a faint
darkness hidden within the long grasses through which it
passed. As the light failed it grew bolder, rising up now and
again to sniff me air before lowering back to the earth to keep
the scent it followed fresh. It ate as it went, sustaining itself
with whatever it found, roots and berries, insects and small an-
imals, anything it came across that was unable to escape. For
the most part its attention was focused on the trail it followed,
on the smell of the one it hunted so diligently, the one that was
the source of its madness.
At the Mermidon it lifted to its hindquarters, a bunched-
over, gnarled form wrapped in a shining black cloak that some-
how resisted the dust and grime that coated its wearer. Hands
skinned and scraped so badly they bled clutched at the cloak
so that it would not wash free as it forded that river at a shal-
lows. The cloak never left it, not for a moment. The cloak sus-
tained it in some way, it knew. The cloak was what protected
it.
Yet it seemed a source of the madness as well. Some part of
the creature’s mind whispered that this was so. It whispered it
to the creature in warning, over and over again.
But most of what worked in the creature’s thoughts assured
it that the cloak was good and necessary to its survival, and
that the madness was caused instead by the one it tracked. By
him. (My brother?) The name would not come. Only the face.
The madness buzzed within its head, through its ears, and out
its mouth like a swarm of gnats, itching and biting and con-
suming its reason until it could think of nothing else.
Earlier that day, in the shadow of late afternoon, come
62 The Talismans of Shannara
abroad in the hated light because the madness drove it from its
den with increasing frequency, it had found at last the scent of
the one it hunted. (His name? What was his name?) Prowling
the base of the bluff night after night for more than a week
now, it had grown increasingly desperate, needing to find him,
to search him out so that relief would come, so that the mad-
ness would end.
But how? How would it end?
It didn’t know. Somehow it would happen. When it found
the cause. When it … hurt him like he was hurting it …
The thought drifted before its eyes, unclear. But there was
pleasure in the thought, in the taste and feel of it.
Teeth and eyes gleamed in the brightening moonlight.
On the far side of the river, the creature picked up the trail
easily and again began to track. Fresh it was. As clear as the
stench of something dead and left to rot in the sun. Not far it
was. Another few hours, perhaps less …
A shudder passed through the creature. Anticipation. Need.
The seeds of the madness in flower.
Coil Ohmsford put his nose to the ground like the animal he