The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [199]
Then Bremen appeared, come out of the dark like an avenging wraith, hands thrust forward, bathed in Druid fire. The fire lanced from his fingertips in a frantic burst and slammed into the monster as it reached for the king, enveloping it, consuming it, turning it into a writhing torch. The beast reared back, shrieked in fury, turned, and raced away into the night, flames trailing after Bremen did not wait to see what became of it. He reached down for the king. Elves of the Home Guard reappearing to assist him, and hauled Jerle Shannara to his feet.
“The sword...” the king began brokenly, shaking his head in despair.
But Bremen stopped him with a hard look, saying, “Later, when there is time and privacy, Elven King. You are alive, you fought well, and the attack succeeded. That is enough for one night’s work. Now come, hurry away, before other creatures find us.”
They fled once more into the night, the king, the Druid, and a handful of Home Guard. Smoke and ash chased after them, and farther off, lighting the whole of the horizon like beacons, the fires from the supply wagons and the siege machines burned on. Preia Starle returned out of the dark, breathless, harried, eyes revealing both anger and fear. She shouldered her way under Jerle Shannara’s left arm and bolstered him as he walked. The king did not resist. His eyes met her own and looked away. His mouth was set.
The fear that smoldered in the dark comers of his consciousness had burst forth in flames this night — fear that somehow the sword with which he had been entrusted was not right for him and would not respond when needed. It had emerged to challenge him, and he had failed to meet that challenge. If not for Bremen, he would be dead. A thing of lesser magic would have finished him, a thing of far less power than the Warlock Lord. Doubt riddled his resolve.
All he had believed possible just hours earlier was lost. The magic of the sword was wrong for him. The magic would not answer to his call. It needed someone else, someone more attuned to its use.
He was not that man. He was not.
He could hear the words echo in the pounding of his heart, cold and certain. He tried to close his mind and his ears to the sound, but found he could not. In hopeless despair, he ran on.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
With Bremen gone west to bear the Druid sword to the Elves, Kinson Ravenlock and Mareth turned east along the Silver River in search of the Dwarves. They traveled that first day through the hill country that buttressed the river’s north bank, winding their way steadily closer to the forests of the Anar. Mist clung to the hills with dogged persistence, then began to burn away as the sun rose higher in the midday sky. By early afternoon, the travelers had reached the Anar and started in.
Here the land flattened and smoothed. Sunlight pierced the leafy canopy and dappled the earthen carpet. They had enough food and water for that day only, and they divided it carefully when they paused for their lunch, reserving enough for dinner in the event that no better choice presented itself.
The Anar was bright with the green of the trees and the blue of the river, with shafts of sunlight from the mostly cloudless sky, and with birdsong and the cluttering of small creatures darting through the undergrowth. But the trail was trampled and strewn with the leavings of the Northland army, and no human life