The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [236]
The robed arms flung toward him, and a skeletal hand pointed with cold purpose.
How can you judge me? You left her to die! You abandoned her for this! You killed her!
He flinched from the words, and he saw in harsh images Preia Starle’s helpless form sprawled on the ground, bleeding and broken, a Skull Bearer reaching for her with claws extended.
Dying because of me, he thought in horror. Because I failed her The Warlock Lord’s voice pressed in upon his thoughts.
And your friend. Elf King. At the Chew Magna. He died for you! You let him die for you!
Jerle Shannara screamed in dismay and rage, and wielding the Sword as he would an ordinary weapon, he slashed at the Warlock Lord with all the power he could muster. The Sword cut down ward through the dark robes, but the light that shone from the blade flickered as if stricken. The Warlock Lord crumpled, his hateful voice fading in a whisper of despair, his dark robes collapsing in a heap.
Left behind was a shadowy presence that fled instantly into the mist.
The Elf King went rigid in the ensuing silence, staring at the air before him, then at the empty robes, his eyes filled with uncertainty and questions that refused all answers.
Mareth stood alone on a stretch of ground scorched black by her magic. The Druid fire had expended itself finally, and her power was contained once more. Bodies lay everywhere, and an eerie silence hung across the battleground like a pall. She squinted through the haze and watched it begin to clear. There was a long, low wail of anguish, a cacophony of voices lifting in despair. Out from the mist rose wraiths as substanceless as smoke, dark images against the failing daylight, shapeless and adrift. Were they the spirits of the dead? They rose into the red of the sunset and disappeared, gone as if they had never been. Below, the bodies of the Skull Bearers turned to ash, the netherworld creatures faded away, and the wolves ran howling across the empty plains.
It is finished, she thought in stunned disbelief.
The mist churned and brightened and then disappeared. The battleground lay revealed, a chamel house, strewn with dead and wounded, bloodied and scorched and ruined. At its center stood the Elf King with his sword lowered and his eyes fixed on nothing.
Mareth reached for ths Druid staff she had lost in her struggle.
She saw Risca then, sprawled amid a cluster of enemy dead. He had sustained so many wounds that his clothing was soaked through with his blood. There was a startled look in his open, staring eyes, as if he were surprised that the fate he had challenged so often had claimed him at last. When had he fallen? She hadn’t even seen. Her gaze shifted. Kinson Ravenlock lay a few feet behind her, his chest rising and falling weakly against the bloodied ground. Beyond, a little farther back on the flats, crouched Bremen and the boy. Her eyes locked on the Druid’s, and for a moment they stared fixedly at each other. She thought of how long and hard she had looked for him, of how much she had given of herself to become a Druid, and of the price that had been exacted from her. Bremen and she. They were the past and present of things, the Druid in twilight and the Druid to be. Tay Trefenwyd was gone. Risca lay dead. Bremen was an old man. Soon, she would be all that remained of their order, the last of the Druids.
Her eyes left Bremen’s, and she picked up the staff. She held it in her hands as if it were weighted with the responsibility of being who and what she was, and she gazed out across the battleground in despair.
Tears came to her eyes.
Let it end here, she thought.
Then she cast the staff away from her