The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [153]
He retrieved the sword from a wondering Kinson and restored it to its case, resecuring the locks and chain that held it in place.
Then he reached farther in and brought out a knife, the blade alone fully twenty inches long, carved with the same intricate scrollwork, clearly crafted by the same skilled hands.
“This is the blade for you,” the shopkeeper declared softly and passed it to Kinson with a smile. “This is what I would sell you.”
It was as wondrous as the sword, if not so impressive in size.
Kinson was immediately entranced. Light, perfectly balanced, finely wrought, sharp as a cat’s claw, the knife was a weapon of impossible beauty and strength. Kinson smiled in recognition of the blade’s worth, and the shopkeeper smiled back. Kinson asked the cost, and the shopkeeper told him. They bargained for a few minutes, and a deal was struck. It cost Kinson almost every coin he had, which was a considerable sum, but he did not once think to walk away.
Kinson stuck the knife and its sheath in his belt, where the blade rested comfortably against his hip. “My thanks,” he offered. “It was a good choice.”
“It is my business to know,” the shopkeeper demurred.
“I still have my question to ask,” Kinson said as the other moved to show him out.
“Ah, that’s right. Your question. Haven’t I answered it? I thought it was about the sword that you ...?”
“It is about the sword, indeed,” Kinson interrupted, looking at the blade once more. “But another sword. I have a friend who is in need of such a weapon, but he would have it forged according to his own specifications. The task will require a master smith. The man who made your sword seems right for the job.”
The shopkeeper stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “You wish to have a weapon forged by the maker of my sword?”
Kinson nodded, then added quickly, “Are you him?”
The shopkeeper smiled bleakly. “No. But you might as well ask me as ask the man who is, for all the good it will do you.”
Kinson shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t guess you do.” The shopkeeper sighed. “Listen close, and I’ll explain.”
Bremen’s first reaction to Mareth’s words was to want to tell her straight out that the charge was ridiculous. But the look on her face warned him to reconsider. She must have spent a long time arriving at her conclusion, and she had not done so lightly. She deserved to be taken seriously.
“Mareth, how did you decide I was your father?” he asked gently.
The night was fragrant with the smell of grasses and flowers, and the light of moon and stars lent a soft silver cast to the hills above the garish brightness of the distant city. Mareth glanced away for a moment, as if looking for her answer in the darkness.
“You think me a fool,” she hissed.
“No, never that. Tell me your reasoning. Please.”
She shook her head at something unseen. “From long before the time of my birth, the Druids kept to themselves at Paranor. They had withdrawn from the Races, abandoning their earlier practice of going out among the people. Now and again, one would return home to visit family and friends, but none of these were from my village. Few bothered to venture into the Southland at all.
“But there was one who did, one who visited regularly. You. You came into the Southland in spite of the suspicion directed at the Druids. You were even seen now and again. It was whispered among the people of my village that when my mother conceived me, you were the demon, the dark wraith, who seduced her, who made her fall in love with him!”
She went silent again. She was breathing hard. There was an unspoken challenge in her words that dared him to deny that it was so. She was all tension and hard edges, her magic a crackle of dark energy at the tips other fingers.
Her eyes burned into him. “I have been looking for you for as long as I can remember. I have carried the burden of my magic like a weight around my neck, and not one day has passed when it has not reminded me of you. My mother could not tell me of you. The rumors were all I had. But in my travels I always looked. I knew that