by Terry Brooks
During the age of Federation occupation, roads were built through Clete and the Black Oaks. Hundreds of man-hours were spent clearing the huge trees and filling the bog with gravel so that the Federation could move its wagons and men more easily to Leah and on to the Borderlands. Once the roads were complete, the wolves were no longer seen in the forest, apparently moving to deeper and safer territory. Travelers discovered Leah and the beauty of the Highlands.
Once the Federation left, there was no one to maintain the roads. The Lowlands of Clete began to reclaim her own. Many roads are now overgrown by brambles or have subsided into the quicksand. The roads in the Black Oaks are overgrown as well, though still useable by carts and larger wagons.
But even the Federation could not build roads through the Mist Marsh. Located between the northern edge of the Black Oaks and the Rainbow Lake, the Mist Marsh blocks the most direct route from Leah to Varfleet. Unchanged for centuries, slime-covered water hides the treacherous bottomless mud of the marsh. The green grasslike covering has lured many creatures to a slow death by suffocation. Thick mist constantly shrouds the marsh, making it impossible to tell location or even time of day. But the bog is not the only danger. Predators such as the Mist Wraiths prey on those who become confused in the constant twilight and wander too close to the swamp. Wolves from the Black Oaks may even feed on victims waiting to die in the unrelenting grasp of the marsh mud. Most wise travelers take the long route to the north and avoid the marsh at all costs.
Though Leah is no longer as isolated as in pre-Federation days, its people still prefer the wilds of the Highlands and their own company to that of the more advanced cities of the south. While they welcome the travelers that have come with the roads, and make use of those roads themselves to see the world, it seems clear that most within Leah would not regret a return to the age of isolation, when the men of Leah could choose their battles and fight for the one thing they never lost—Highlands pride.
Shady Vale
Though not a city, Shady Vale is typical in many ways of the many villages and hamlets that make up much of the rural population of the Southland. Located a day’s walk west of Leah, beyond the Rappahalladran and the Duln, Shady Vale sits nestled into one end of a valley ringed by the Duln forest. Its remote location has allowed it to escape most of the battles and difficulties faced by other areas. It was only occupied once, during the Shadowen War. For the most part the farming village has managed to continue almost unchanged through the centuries.
Mist Wraiths and Log Dwellers
Within the Mist Marsh, the fog and the murky waters hide a danger much greater than grasping mud, for powerful creatures of ancient magic lurk beneath the slime. Two such are the creatures known as Mist Wraiths and Log Dwellers. Born of ancient magic and the horrors unleashed during the Great Wars, both lie beneath the waters, buried in the mud of the marsh as they await their prey.
Log Dwellers are so named because they often appear to be partially submerged trees. When disturbed, they erupt from the water to attack with great jaws full of razor-sharp teeth and forelegs with sharp, grasping claws.
A Log Dweller, one of the deadly creatures native to the Mist Marsh.
The Mist Wraith has an affinity for slime, blending into the marsh with its mottled greenish skin. It attacks using its many powerful tentacles to grasp its prey and drag it into the waters to be devoured. Though none have ever been captured, survivors have estimated its average body size to range between fifteen and twenty feet in length, and eight to ten feet in height, with tentacles as much as twice that long. It appears to have a large tearing beak within the center of its tentacles, which it uses to crush and consume its meal.
Despite the size of both creatures, they are tremendously quick and can kill a full-grown man in minutes.
Within the town, single-story houses sit in tidy array along a dirt road that meanders through the valley. It is common to see farm animals wandering among the neatly trimmed hedges and carefully maintained cottages. The valley wall protects the village from the worst of the weather as well as unwanted attention.
The largest building in the Vale is the Inn, built by Curzad Ohmsford twenty years before the War of the Warlock Lord. Constructed of huge logs interlocked over a stone foundation and boasting one of the earliest shingle roofs in the Vale, the Inn consists of a main building and a lounging porch, with two long wings extending out and back on either side. The large lounging room contains benches, high-backed chairs, and several long wooden tables but is dominated by a fireplace on the opposite wall and a bar running down the length of the center wall. Sleeping rooms for the guests were located in the two wings, while the family lived in several rooms in the east wing. The Inn has been partially renovated over the years, though the basic construction remains sound. The Ohmsfords still own the Inn, though they now live in a cottage at the edge of the tree line and allow a friend of the family to run the Inn.
Most of the people who live within Shady Vale make their living by farming. The community is self-sufficient and considers itself large enough to give aid and support to the smaller farming communities and isolated homesteads within the area. Those willing to share their skills often travel to other hamlets and towns to give assistance. Payment is usually made in goods and hospitality. Simple values and a simple way of life are the focus for the people of the Vale.
But unlike other hamlets within the Southland, Shady Vale is more than a sleepy farming village. It is also home to the Ohmsfords, a family whose heroism has been proven in every conflict within the Four Lands since the Second War of the Races.
Two Families:
A Legacy of Courage
We are the children of Jerle Shannara, heirs to the magic of the Elven house of Shannara, keepers of a trust. —Walker Boh
ince the Second War of the Races, the house of Shannara and its Southland children have been at the fore of every major victory over the forces of darkness. Bound by their blood, they have been supported in almost all these conflicts by the children of the equally noble house of Leah.
A tiny kingdom and an isolated farming village seem unlikely places to find heroes, much less entire families of them. Yet the hamlet of Shady Vale is home to the Ohmsfords, heirs of Shannara. The neighboring Highlands of Leah are home to the Leahs, who for as many generations have stood with the Ohmsfords—at their side or guarding their back—in almost every conflict, proving the nobility of the line that once ruled that tiny highland kingdom. Only the Druids have made as great a continuing contribution to the protection of the Four Lands—though it must be noted that the last of the Druids still living is himself an Ohmsford.
Of course, the Druids, by the very nature of their order, assume a role as guardians of the land when they are ordained into the order. The Ohmsfords and the Leahs made no such vow. They were simple people who answered a call to defend the land. They were not born soldiers. Only the Leahs were even trained to fight. Yet if not for them, the history of the Four Lands would be far different. The world would almost certainly be shrouded in the power of dark magic and ruled by the beings who are enslaved by it.
The Blue Elfstones
During the Age of Faerie, when magic was commonplace and man was yet unborn, the Elves created a variety of talismans designed to contain and work with Elven magic. Among these were the jewel-like stones of power known as Elfstones. Originally there were many different kinds of Elfstones, each designed for different purposes and each identifiable by its color. Over the ages all were lost but three kinds: the Blue Elfstones, the Black Elfstone, and the Loden.
The Blue Elfstones, so named for their brilliant blue color, are “seeking stones” that can be used to find anything that is lost or hidden once the user wills it to be so. The three small stones represent the heart, the mind, and the body. They can only be used together, and only when the user has joined his or her heart, mind, and body toward one purpose. The power of their magic is directly proportional to the strength of the man or woman wielding
them.
All Elfstones also contain secondary defensive capabilities. They can be used for protection against other forms of magic or to defend against creatures made from magic or sorcery. Since they were made with Elven magic, only those with Elven blood can use the Blue Elfstones. They will also only work for one to whom they are freely given. If they are stolen or taken by force, they will not serve the bearer.
The Elves gave the stones to the Druid Allanon, and he in turn gave them to Shea Ohmsford to use on his quest for the Sword of Shannara. The stones allowed Shea to reach the Skull Kingdom during his search for the sword. It was the Elfstones that brought innate magic to the Ohmsford line. When Shea’s grandson Wil forced the stones to work despite his diluted Elven blood, the magic irrevocably changed him, becoming a part of his blood, to be passed to his children and from generation to generation. It is the Elfstones that began the heritage of Ohmsford magic.
The Blue Elfstones, “seeking stones” made with Elven magic.
The Ohmsfords secretly gave the stones back to the Elves, once their Elven blood was too diluted to make use of them. The Elves kept the stones for many years, but they were lost on an Elven expedition across the Blue Divide.
But how did a family of innkeepers and Healers become defenders of the land? Curzad Ohmsford, an innkeeper who had been recently widowed, discovered a young woman and a half-Elven baby at the door to his inn. The woman was a distant cousin who had been born in Shady Vale. All her other relatives were gone. She was also very ill. Curzad took her in and cared for her, glad to have someone besides his own small son to look after. Unfortunately, there were few skilled Healers in those days, and the woman quickly worsened and died. She never spoke of the baby’s father other than to say that he was dead. It is now known that minions of the Warlock Lord, who never knew that he had fathered a son with a human woman, killed him.
The Sword of Shannara
When the Warlock Lord and his armies swept out of the North, they appeared to be unstoppable. Weapons of iron or magic could not harm the Warlock himself. The Druid Council, which might have been able to stand against him, was gone, destroyed by his conquest of Paranor. Only a small handful of Druids escaped, but they did not have the means to defeat their foe. They needed a weapon that was unlike any other, a weapon that could breach the rebel Druid’s mystic defenses and destroy him. They needed a weapon of greater magic.
Bremen first saw the answer in a vision given to him by Galaphile’s spirit at the Hadeshorn. It was a sword of metal stronger than iron and magic greater than Brona’s. Bremen was the grandson of a smith, but he did not have the knowledge or the skill it would take to forge such a sword. He went to Cogline, who still kept the knowledge of the old world sciences of metallurgy. Cogline gave the Druid the formula for a metal that would be tremendously strong and impossibly light.
The Sword of Shannara.
To forge the sword, he sought out the finest smith in all the Southland—Uprox Screl. Together they combined Cogline’s science with Bremen’s magic and added the magic of the Elit Druin, talisman of the Druids—the talisman of truth. The resulting blade was the finest sword Uprox had ever made. Its burnished hilt bore the hand of the Druids holding forth the burning torch with the flame racing toward the tip of the blade. The blade was bright and sharp and of an unusual length and size, but was lighter and stronger than any other sword in existence. It could not be shattered in battle, whether struck by iron or magic. It was built to withstand any test.
Bremen took the finished sword to the Hadeshorn to present it to Galaphile’s shade. He writes in the Druid Histories: “I expected only Gallaphile to appear from the waterspout, but a line of dark forms began to emerge. I realized that they were the ghosts of all those Druids who had gone before, larger in death than they had ever been living. Despite their lack of substance, they radiated a terrible presence that struck fear in my heart. I held the sword out to them, and each one in turn touched the Elit Druin upon its hilt. Then Gallaphile spoke. ‘We have given what part of us we can. Our lives have passed away. Our teachings have been lost. Our magic has dissipated in the wane of time. Only our truth remains, all that belongs to us in our lives, in our teachings, in our magic, stark and hard-edged and killing strong.’ ”
The magic of the sword was truth, the one thing the Warlock Lord could not face, as his existence was based on illusion. Its magic drew its strength from the minds of those who wielded it—the power of the sword was their own desire to remain free, to give up even their lives to keep that freedom.
Bremen chose Jerle Shannara, King of the Elves as the rightful wielder of the sword. It was then that the sword received its name and became the Sword of Shannara. Bremen expected that Jerle would either succeed in destroying Brona, or he would fail and the lands would fall to the power of the Northland army. In fact, Jerle did engage the Warlock Lord in the climactic last battle of the Second War of the Races. The Sword’s magic of truth was effective, but the Elven King faltered at the last. Only Bremen knew the truth—the one event he had not considered had occurred: Brona was driven from the field, but not destroyed. The sword would be needed again.
Jerle Shannara carried the sword until his death, and then passed it to his heir, Alyten, who carried it for many years. When Allanon reinstated the Druids at Paranor, Alyten had the sword set in a block of Tre-Stone and sent to Paranor. It remained in the vault room of Paranor for five hundred years. The inscription on the base read: “To be held against the coming of the darkness. When the Warlock Lord rises again from out of the Northland, a son of Shannara shall come forth to take up this sword against him.” The Elven people saw the sword as a promise that they would never have to fear the creatures from the spirit world. The legend alone was a powerful amulet against the darkness.
Bremen had not realized at the time that by giving the sword to the Elven house of Shannara, he had insured that only those descended from Jerle’s blood could invoke its power. The Warlock Lord did realize the mistake, and when he had regained strength enough to return to the lands, he eradicated the entire line of Shannara Elves. He then attempted to capture the sword itself. His forces were intercepted by Elven forces, led by King Eventine Elessedil. In the resulting battle, the sword was lost. It reappeared in the hands of a maddened gnome deserter named Orl Fane who carried the sword all the way to the Skull Kingdom, where he was captured by the Warlock’s Trolls. They considered the sword a harmless trinket and left it locked in the hands of the raving prisoner. Shea Ohmsford and his party tracked and recovered the Sword in the dungeons of the Skull Kingdom.
It was there, in the very heart of the rebel Druid’s domain that Shea drew the sword for the first time. “At first, nothing happened. Then abruptly the pommel grew warm, releasing a pulsating wave of heat that coursed from the dark iron into my hands. I tried to release it, but my hands were frozen to the hilt. The blade began to glow with a blinding white light. I felt myself drawn inward, forced to face my innermost truth and confront the illusions that made up my life. It was the most terrifying and exhilarating moment I have ever known.” Moments later, the young valeman faced the Warlock Lord, armed only with the sword and its truth, and destroyed him.
After the War Shea left the Sword of Shannara with the border people of Callahorn, at Tyrsis. He felt that no one had a better right to be entrusted with its care and preservation than the people who had held the line against the might of the Northland Army. The legendary sword was implanted blade downward in a block of red marble and placed in a vault in the center of the gardens of the People’s Park.
Hundreds of years later the sword’s magic protected the Ohmsford bothers Par and Coll from the Shadowen lies that threatened to trap each of them in turn. Once the Shadowen were defeated, Walker Boh took control of the sword, returning it to Paranor. It remained within Paranor for over a century before the Druid removed it. It was last seen on board the Jerle Shannara.
The Sword of Shannara, a weapon that was built for the single purpo
se of defeating the Warlock Lord almost a thousand years ago, is still in service, and will remain in service so long as any live who can wield it, because the need for the power of truth is eternal.
Curzad felt the loss of the young woman keenly, even though he barely knew her, and adopted her baby as his own. Over the years the boy, Shea Ohmsford, matured and grew strong. When he was nearly grown, the armies of the Warlock Lord swept out of the north in a campaign of terror designed to subjugate the lands. At the time, no one but the Druid Allanon knew that Shea was actually the last of the heirs of Shannara, descendant of one of the greatest Elven kings in history, Jerle Shannara. As the last living descendant of the Shannara line, he was also the only person who could wield the legendary Sword of Shannara, the one weapon that could destroy the Warlock Lord.
All other blood descendants of the Elven royal house had been killed by the Warlock Lord. In the Second War of the Races, Jerle Shannara had used the sword to defeat the Warlock Lord but had failed to destroy his enemy. Five centuries later, the enemy was back. Though barely more than a boy, Shea Ohmsford was asked to finish the task his illustrious ancestor had begun. He joined the Druid Allanon on a quest to find the Sword of Shannara and destroy the Warlock Lord once and for all.
While Shea’s participation was mandated by his lineage, that of his adoptive brother, Flick, and his older friend Menion Leah, Crown Prince of Leah, was not. Yet both insisted on joining the dangerous quest to protect their friend. Each of the young men involved became a hero in his own right. Flick Ohmsford rescued the King of the Elves, Eventine Elessedil, from the midst of the Troll army, thus ensuring the involvement of the Elves in the final crucial battle of the war. Menion Leah is credited with creating and implementing the plan that enabled the people of Kern to escape from their besieged city. He also fought valiantly at the battle for Tyrsis, where the Border Legion held the line against the advancing Northland army until Shea and the Sword of Shannara could destroy the Warlock Lord and break the magic that held his army together.