Talismans of Shannara by Terry Brooks

brothers.

Two weeks. Morgan sighed. He should have reached

Varfleet in two days, even afoot. But then nothing much

seemed to work out the way he expected it these days.

What had befallen him was ironic considering what he had

survived during the weeks immediately preceding. On leaving

Walker, he had followed the Dragon’s Teeth south along the

western edge of the Rabb. He reached the lower branch of its

namesake river by sunset of his second day out and made

camp close-by, intent on crossing at sunrise and completing his

journey the next day. The plains were sweltering and dusty,

and there were pockets of the same sickness that marked the

Four Lands everywhere, patches of blight where everything

was poisoned. He thought that he had avoided these, that he

77

78 The Talismans of Shannara

had kept well clear in his passing. But when he woke at dawn

on that third morning he was hot and feverish and so dizzy that

he could barely walk. He drank some water and lay down

again, hoping the sickness would pass. But by midday he was

barely able to sit up. He forced himself to his feet, recognizing

then how sick he was, knowing it was necessary that he find

help immediately. His stomach was cramping so badly he

could not straighten up, and his throat was on fire. He did not

feel strong enough to cross the river, so instead he wandered

upstream onto the plains. He was hallucinating when he came

upon a farmhouse settled in a shady grove of elm. He stag-

gered to the door, barely able to move or even speak, and col-

lapsed when it opened.

For seven days he slept, drifting in and out of consciousness

just long enough to eat and drink the small portions of food

and water he was offered by whoever it was who had taken

him in. He did not see any faces, and the voices he heard were

indistinct. He was delirious at times, thrashing and crying out,

reliving the horrors of Eldwist and Uhl Belk, seeing over and

over again the stricken face of Quickening as she lay dying,

feeling again the anguish he had experienced as he stood help-

lessly by. Sometimes he saw Par and Coil Ohmsford as they

called to him from a great distance, and always he found that

try as he might he could not reach them. There were dark

things in his dreams as well, faceless shadows that came at

him unexpectedly and from behind, presences without names,

unmistakable nevertheless for who and what they were. He ran

from them, hid from them, tried desperately to fight back

against them—but always they stayed just out of his reach,

threatening in ways he could not identify but could only imag-

ine.

His fever broke at the end of the first week. When at last he

was able to open his eyes and focus on the young couple who

had cared for him, he saw in their faces an obvious relief and

realized how close he had come to not waking at all. His sick-

ness had left him drained of strength, and for several days after

he had to be fed by hand. He managed to stay awake for short

periods and to speak a little when he did. The young wife with

the straw-blond hair and the pale blue eyes looked after him

while her husband worked in the fields, and she smiled with

The Talismans of Shannara 79

concern when she told him that his dreams must have been

bad ones. She gave him soup and bread with water and a small

ration of ale. He accepted it gratefully and thanked her repeat-

edly for looking after him. Sometimes her husband would ap-

pear, standing next to her and looking down at him, bluff and

red-faced from the sun, with kind eyes and a broad smile. He

mentioned once that Morgan’s sword was safely put aside, that

it had not been lost. Apparently that had been part of the night-

mares as well.

At the end of the two weeks Morgan was taking his meals

with them at their dinner table, growing stronger daily, close to