The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [142]
He did not finish. Preia rose and stood looking across the room at him. “It would give you a chance to accomplish the things Tay Trefenwyd could not. If you were king, you could persuade the High Council to send the Elves to give aid to the Dwarves. If you were king, you could dispose of the Black Elfstone at a time and place of your own choosing and not be answerable to any. Most important of all, you would have an opportunity to destroy the Warlock Lord.”
Jerle Shannara’s head snapped around quickly. “The Warlock Lord destroyed the Druids. What chance would I have against a thing so monstrous?”
“A better chance than anyone else I can think of,” she answered at once. “The vision has been shown twice now, once to Bremen, once to Vree. Perhaps it is prophetic. If so, then you have a chance to do something that not even Tay could do.You have a chance to save us all.”
He stared at her. She was telling him she believed he would be king. She was saying that he must. She was asking him to agree with her.
“She is right,” Vree Erreden said softly.
But Jerle wasn’t listening to him. He continued to stare at Preia, thinking back to several hours earlier when she had demanded that he make his choice on a different matter. How much do I mean to you? How important am I? Now she was asking the questions again, the words altered only slightly. How much do your people mean to you? How important are they to you? He was aware of a sudden, precipitous shift in both the nature of their relationship and the direction of his life, both brought about by Tay Trefenwyd’s death. Events he would never have dreamed possible had conspired to create this shift. Fate of a willful and deliberate sort had settled her hands squarely on his shoulders. Responsibility, leadership, and the hopes of his people — all hung in the balance of the decision demanded of him.
His mind raced in search of answers that would not come. But he knew, with a certainty that was terrifying, that whatever choice he made, it would haunt him always.
“You must stand and face this,” Preia said suddenly. “You must decide.”
He felt as if the world was spinning out of control. She asked too much of him. There was not yet need to decide anything. Any present need was fueled by rumors and speculation. No formal overture had been made concerning the kingship. Alyten’s fate was not determined. What of Courtann Ballindarroch’s grandchildren? Tay Trefenwyd himself had saved their lives. Were they to be cast aside without a thought? His own mind was not made up on any of this. He could barely conceive of what he was being asked to consider.
But his thoughts had a hollow and ill-considered ring to them, and in the silence of their aftermath he found himself face-to-face with the grinning specter of his own desperation.
He turned away from the two who waited for him to speak and looked out the window into the night.
No answer would come.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was sunset, and the city of Dechtera was bathed in blood-red light. The city sprawled across a plain between lowIt lying hills that ran north and south, the buildings a ragged, uneven jumble of walls and roofs silhouetted against the crimson horizon. Darkness crept out of the eastern grasslands, pushing back against the stain of the dying light, swallowing up the land in its black maw. The sun had settled behind a low bank of clouds, turning both sky and land first orange and then red, painting with vibrant, breathtaking colors, a defiant parting gesture as the day came to its reluctant close.
Standing east with Bremen and Mareth where the darkness already commanded the low heights and the plains below were beginning to streak with shadows, Kinson Ravenlock stared wordlessly down at the destination they had traveled so far to find.
Dechtera was an industrial city, easily reached from the other major Southland cities, set close to the mines that served its needs.
It was large, far larger than any city that lay