The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [191]
Jerle Shannara moved away then, shaking his head, looking down at the sword doubtfully. “I know better than to disbelieve what I find difficult to accept,” he said, stopping before the window and looking out into the rain. “But this is hard. This asks so much.” His mouth tightened in a hard line. “Why was I chosen for this? It doesn’t make sense to me. So many others would be better suited to a weapon of this sort. I understand iron and brute strength. This... this clever artifice is too obscure for me. Truth as a weapon makes sense only in terms of councils or politics. It seems useless on a battlefield.”
He turned toward the Druid. “I would face the Warlock Lord without hesitation if I could wield this sword as a simple blade forged of metal and a master smith’s skill. I could accept it as a weapon without question if I could bear it just as it appears.”
Anguish pulsed in his blue eyes. “But this? I am wrong for this, Bremen.”
The Druid nodded slowly, not in agreement so much as in understanding. “But you are all we have, Jerle. We cannot know why you were selected. It may be because you were fated to become King of the Elves. It may be for reasons beyond what we can see. The dead know things we cannot. Perhaps they could tell us, but they have not chosen to do so. We must accept this and go on. You are to be the bearer of the sword. You are to carry it into battle. It is predestined. There is no other choice. You must do the best you can.”
His voice trailed off in a whisper. Outside, the rain continued to fall in a soft, steady patter, cloaking the forestland in a silver shimmer. Twilight had fallen, and the day had gone west with the sun. Arborlon was silent and damp within her forest shelter, a city slowly pulling on her nighttime wrappings. It was silent in the study, silent in the summerhouse, and there might have been no one alive in all the world but the two men who stood facing each other in the candlelit gloom.
“Why must no one know of the sword’s secret but me?” Jerle Shannara asked quietly.
The old man smiled sadly. “You could answer your own question if you chose, Elven King. No one must know because no one would believe. If your doubts of the sword’s capabilities are so great, think of what the doubts of your people will be. Even Preia, perhaps. The power of the sword is truth. Who will beheve that such a simple thing can prevail against the power of the Warlock Lord?”
Who, indeed? thought the king.
“You have said it yourself. A sword is a weapon of battle.” The smile turned to a weary sigh. “Let the Elves be content with that. Show them the sword you carry, the weapon that has been bequeathed to you, and say only that it will serve them well. They require no more.”
Jerle Shannara nodded wordlessly. No, he thought, they do not. Belief is best when uncomplicated by reason.
He wished, in that sad, desperate moment of self-doubt and fear, of silent acquiescence to a pact that he could neither embrace nor forsake, that belief could be made so simple for him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In The midaftemoon of the following day, Jerle Shannara was nearing the Valley of Rhenn and the confrontation that fate had ordained for him. He had ridden out shortly after sunrise in the company of Preia, Bremen, and a handful of advisors and his army commanders, taking with him three companies of Elven Hunters, two afoot and one on horse. Four companies were already in place at the mouth of the valley, and two more would follow on