by Terry Brooks
“It was just a thought,” she added, brushing the matter off quickly.
“A nice thought,” he said quietly. “But I was thinking that maybe you’d like to come back with me now.”
The words were spoken almost before he realized what he had decided. There was a long, long silence, and they kept walking along the pathway, neither one looking at the other, almost as if nothing at all had been said.
“Maybe I would,” she replied finally. “If you mean it.”
“I mean it.”
Then he saw her smile—that wondrous, dazzling smile. She stopped and turned toward him.
“It is reassuring to see, Wil Ohmsford, that you have come to your senses at last.”
Her hand reached for his and clasped it tightly.
Riding back along the Carolan toward the city, his mind still occupied by thoughts of the rebuilding of the Elfitch, Ander Elessedil caught sight of the Valeman and the Rover girl as they walked back from the Gardens of Life. Reining in his horse for a moment, he watched the two who had not yet gone home, saw them stop, then saw the girl take the Valeman’s hand in her own.
A slow smile creased his face as he swung his horse wide of where they stood. It looked very much as if Wil Ohmsford, too, would be going home now. But not alone.
A writer since high school, Terry Brooks published his first novel, The Sword of Shannara, in 1977. It was a New York Times bestseller for more than five months. He has published seventeen consecutive bestsellers since, including The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara: Antrax and the novel based upon the screenplay and story by George Lucas: Star Wars ® : Episode I The Phantom Menace ™. His novels Running with the Demon and A Knight of the Word were selected by the Rocky Mountain News as two of the best science fiction/fantasy novels of the twentieth century.
The author was a practicing attorney for many years but now writes full-time. He lives with his wife, Judine, in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii.
Visit us online at www.shannara.com and at www.terrybrooks.net.
A Del Rey® Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1982 by Terry Brooks
Map by the Brothers Hildebrandt. Copyright © 1977
by Random House, Inc.
All other interior art by Darrell K. Sweet. Copyright © 1982
by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.randomhouse.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-69187
eISBN: 978-0-345-45540-6
v3.0