The Sword of Shannara - Terry Brooks [266]
For a moment his thoughts drifted back to his homeland — to Culhaven and to his family, whom he hadn’t seen in weeks. He had never spent much time with them, his whole life expended in the ceaseless border wars in the Anar. He missed the woodlands and the green shading that came with the spring and summer months, and he suddenly wondered how he had let so much time pass without a visit home. Perhaps he would never get back. The thought swept through his mind and vanished, he had no time for regrets.
Durin and Dayel conversed soberly with Balinor, their own thoughts centered on the Westland. Dayel, like Hendel, was thinking of his home. He was frightened of the battle that lay ahead, but he accepted his fear, encouraged by the presence of the others and determined that he would do, no less than they in standing firm against the army that had come to destroy them. He thought quietly of Lynliss, her shy, warm face a permanent fixture in his mind. He would be fighting for her safety as well as his own. Durin studied his brother, noting the sudden smile, and he knew without asking that the youth was thinking of the Elven girl he was to marry. Nothing was more important to Durin than the safety of Dayel; from the beginning he had made a point of staying close to his brother, to protect him. Several times during the long journey to Paranor, they had nearly lost their lives. Tomorrow would bring still greater danger, and once again, Durin would be watching over his brother.
Briefly he thought of Eventine and the mighty Elven armies, wondering if they would reach Tyrsis in time. Without their great strength to supplement the Border Legion, the hordes of the Warlock Lord would eventually break through the city’s defenses. He picked up his wineglass and drank deeply, the liquid warm in his throat. His sharp eyes surveyed the faces of the others and came to rest momentarily on the troubled face of Menion Leah.
The lean highlander had devoured his dinner ravenously, having eaten nothing for almost twenty-four hours. Finishing long before his companions, he had contented himself with a fresh glass of wine, directing continual questions to Balinor about the afternoon’s battle. Now, in the quiet hours of early morning, with dinner completed and the wine seeping through him like a slow drowsiness, it suddenly occurred to him that the key to everything that had happened since Culhaven, and everything that would happen in the days remaining, was Allanon. He could not bring himself to think any more of Shea and the Sword, nor even of Shirl. He could only see in the forefront of his mind the dark, forbidding figure of the mysterious Druid. Allanon held the answers to every question. He alone knew the secret of the talisman men called the Sword of Shannara. He alone knew the purpose behind the strange appearance of the shrouded wraith in the Valley of Shale — the Druid Bremen, a man over five hundred years dead. He alone, in every instance, along every step of the dangerous journey to Paranor, had known what to expect and how to deal with it. Yet the man himself had remained an enigma.
Now he was gone from them, and only Flick, if he were still alive, could ask him what was going to happen to them. They all depended on Allanon for survival — but what would the giant Druid do? What was left to him when the Sword of Shannara was lost? What was left when the young heir of Jerle Shannara was missing and probably dead? Menion bit his lip in anger as