The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [176]
He closed his eyes and rubbed at them wearily. When he opened them again, one of the enemy watch fires was moving toward him. He blinked in disbelief, certain he must be imagining it. But the fire came on, a small, flickering brightness in the vast darkness of the plains, wending its way closer. It seemed to float.
As it neared, he rose in spite of himself, trying to decide what he should do. Oddly, he did not feel threatened, only curious.
Then the light settled and took shape, and he could see that it was carried by a small boy. The boy was smooth-faced and his clear blue eyes were inquisitive. He smiled in greeting as he approached, holding the light aloft. Bremen blinked anew. The light was like nothing he had ever seen. It burned no flame, but shone out of a glass and metal casing, as if powered by a miniature star.
“Greetings, Bremen,” the boy said softly.
“Greetings,” Bremen replied.
“You look weary. Your journey has required much of you. But you have accomplished much, so perhaps the sacrifice was a fail trade.” The blue eyes shone. “I am the King of the Silver River Do you know of me?”
Bremen nodded. He had heard of this faerie creature, the last ot his kind, a being said to reside close to the Rainbow Lake and along the near stretch of the river for which he was named. It was said he had survived for thousands of years, that he had been one of the first beings created by the Word. It was said that his vision and his magic were by equal measures ancient and far-reaching He appeared on occasion to travelers in need, often as a boy sometimes as an old man.
“You sit within the fringe of my gardens,” the boy said. His hand gestured in a slow sweep. “If you look closely, you can see them.”
Bremen did look, and suddenly the bluff and the plains faded away and he found himself seated in gardens thick with flowering trees and vines, the air fragrant with their smells, the whisper ot boughs a soft singing against the silky black of the night.
The vision faded. “I have come to give you rest and reassurance,” said the boy. “This night at least, you shall sleep in peace No watch will be necessary. Your journey has taken you a long way from Paranor, and it is far from over. You will be challenged at every turn, but if you walk carefully and heed your instincts, you will survive to destroy the Warlock Lord.”
“Do you know what I must do?” Bremen asked quickly. “Can you tell me?”
The boy smiled. “You must do what you think best. That is the nature of the future. It is not given to us already cast. It is given as a set of possibilities, and we must choose which of these we would make happen and then try to see it done. You go now to the Hadeshorn. You carry the sword to the spirits of the Druids dead and gone. Does that choice seem wrong to you?”
It did not. It seemed right. “But I am not certain,” the old man confessed.
“Let me see the sword,” the boy asked gently.
The Druid lifted it for the boy to inspect. The boy reached out as if he might take hold of it, then stayed his hand when it was almost touching, and instead passed his fingers down the length of the blade and drew his hand clear again.
“You will know what you must do when you are there,” he said.
“You will know what is required.”
To his surprise, Bremen understood. “At the Hadeshorn.”
“There, and afterward, at Arborlon, where all is changed and a new beginning is made. You will know.”
“Can you tell me of my friends, of what has become...?”
“The Ballindarrochs