night was clear and bright with stars, and the air smelled clean
and fresh. He breathed it deeply as he walked atop the walls,
not looking down at what waited there, letting his thoughts slip
free as he went, unburdened. He found himself thinking about
Quickening, the daughter of the King of the Silver River, the
elemental who had given everything to restore life to a land of
stone, to give the earth a chance to heal. He pictured her face
and listened in his memory to her voice. He felt the slight
weight of her that last time as he carried her to the edge of
Eldwist, the sense of sureness that had emanated from her, the
sense of power. Dying, she was fulfilling her promise. It was
what she had wanted. But she had bequeathed some part of her
life to him, a sense of purpose and need, a resolve that he
would do in life what she could only do in death.
He stopped, staring out at the night. How far he had trav-
eled, he thought in genuine amazement. How long a journey it
had been. All to reach this point, to arrive at this place and
time.
He paused in his meandering, faced inward to the castle
spires, to the walls and towers that loomed over him, rising
darkly into the night. Was this where his life was supposed to
152 The Talismans of Shannara
end? he wondered suddenly. Was this where the journey finally
stopped?
It had been a pointless struggle if that was so.
He turned and looked down over the wall. One of the
Horsemen was passing directly below, a faint luminescence
against the dark. Death, he thought, but it was hard to tell. It
made no difference in any case. Names notwithstanding, iden-
tities assumed aside, they were all Death in one form or an-
other. Shadowen killers lacking use and purpose beyond their
ability to destroy. Why had they allowed themselves to become
so? What choice had made them thus?
He watched that rider fade and waited for the next. All night
they would patrol and at dawn assemble once more before the
gates to issue their challenge anew …
He caught himself. All together, before the gates.
A glimmer of hope flickered in his mind. What if he were
to answer that challenge?
His face grim-set, he wheeled from the wall and went down
the battlements in search of Cogline.
Dawn arrived with a silvering of the eastern skies that hinted
of mist and heat. The air was still and sultry even this early, a
remnant of yesterday’s swelter, a promise that this summer did
not intend to give way easily to autumn. Birds sounded their
calls in snappish, weary tones, as if unwilling to herald the
morning’s start.
The Four Horsemen were assembled before the gates, lined
up in the grayness on their nightmare mounts. The serpents
clawed distractedly at the earth as their riders sat mutely before
Paranor’s high walls, specters without voice, lives without bal-
ance. As the light crested the tips of the Dragon’s Teeth, War
urged his monstrous carrier forward, lifted his armored hand,
and struck the gate with a hollow thud. The sound lingered in
the silence that followed, an echo that disappeared into the
trees and the gloom. The gate shuddered and went still.
War started to turn away.
Walker Boh was waiting. He was already outside the walls,
come through a hidden door in a tower barely fifty feet
away. He was cloaked by his magic in a spell of invisibility,
shrouded in the touch and look and smell of ancient stone so
The Talismans of Shannara 153
that he appeared just another part of Paranor. They had not
been looking for him. Even if they had, he believed he would
not have been discovered.
He brought up his good arm, the magic already summoned,
gathered within until it was white-hot, and he sent it hurtling
toward the Shadowen.
The magic exploded into War and cut the unsuspecting
wraith entirely in half. The serpent mount bolted. War’s legs
and lower torso still clinging to it, and disappeared.
Walker struck again. The magic hammered into the remain-