The Scions of Shannara Read Online Free

from a lake, a figure that might be Allanon, a lake that might be the Hadeshorn. There was a shimmering of images in his dreams, an ethereal quality to the visions that made them difficult to decipher. The figure always spoke to him, always with the same words. “Come to me; you are needed. The Four Lands are in gravest danger; the magic is almost lost. Come now, Shannara child.”
    There was more, although the rest varied. Sometimes there were images of a world born of some unspeakable nightmare. Sometimes there were images of the lost talismans—the Sword of Shannara and the Elfstones. Sometimes there was a call for Wren as well, little Wren, and sometimes a call for his uncle Walker Boh. They were to come as well. They were needed, too.
    He had decided quite deliberately after the first night that the dreams were a side effect of his prolonged use of the wishsong. He sang the old stories of the Warlock Lord and the Skull Bearers, of Demons and Mord Wraiths, of Allanon and a world threatened by evil, and it was natural that something of those stories and their images would carry over into his sleep. He had tried to combat the effect by using the wishsong on lighter tellings, but it hadn’t helped. The dreams persisted. He had refrained from telling Coll, who would have simply used that as a new excuse to advise him to stop invoking the magic of the wishsong and return to the Vale.
    Then, three nights ago, the dreams had stopped coming as suddenly as they had started. Now he was wondering why. He was wondering if perhaps he had mistaken their origin. He was considering the possibility that instead of being self-induced, they might have been sent.
    But who would have sent them?
    Allanon? Truly Allanon, who was three hundred years dead?
    Someone else?
    Some
thing
else? Something that had a reason of its own and meant him no good?
    He shivered at the prospect, brushed the matter from his mind, and went quickly back up the hallway to find Coll.
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    The crowd was even larger for the second telling, the walls lined with standing men who could not find chairs or benches to sit upon. The Blue Whisker was a large house, the front serving room over a hundred feet across and open to the rafters above a stringing of oil lamps and fish netting that lent a sort of veiled appearance that was apparently designed to suggest intimacy. Par couldn’t have tolerated much more intimacy, so close were the patrons of the ale house as they pressed up against the platform, some actually sitting on it now as they drank. This was a different group than earlier, although the Valeman was hard-pressed to say why. It had a different feel to it, as if there was something foreign in its makeup. Coll must have felt it, too. He glanced over at Par several times as they prepared to perform, and there was uneasiness mirrored in his dark eyes.
    A tall, black-bearded man wrapped in a dun-colored forest cloak waded through the crowd to the platform’s edge and eased himself down between two other men. The two looked up as if they intended to say something, then caught a close glimpse of the other’s face and apparently thought better of it. Par watched momentarily and looked away. Everything felt wrong.
    Coll leaned over as a rhythmic clapping began. The crowd was growing restless. “Par, I don’t like this. There’s something . . .”
    He didn’t finish. The owner of the ale house came up and told them in no uncertain terms to begin before the crowd got out of hand and started breaking things. Coll stepped away wordlessly. The lights dimmed, and Par started to sing. The story was the one about Allanon and the battle with the Jachyra. Coll began to speak, setting the stage, telling those gathered what sort of day it was, what the glen was like into which the Druid came with Brin Ohmsford and Rone Leah, how everything suddenly grew hushed. Par created the images in the minds of his listeners, instilling in