Copyright: 2001, Terry Brooks
Published by: Ballantine Books
Cover Artist: Steve Stone
Dedication: To John Saul and Mike Sack
For fifteen years of wry insight, wicked humor, and invaluable advice
Extras: Sample Chapter 1 Sample Chapter 2
Buy It: Hardcover(2001)
Now in Antrax, as the crew aboard the airship Jerle Shannara is attacked by evil forces, the Druid?s protégé Bek Rowe and his companions are pursued by the mysterious Ilse Witch. Meanwhile, Boh is alone, caught in a dark maze beneath the ruined city of Castledown, stalked by a hungry, unseenenemy.
For there is something alive in Castledown. Something not human. Something old beyond reckoning that covets the magic of Druids, elves, even the Ilse Witch. Something that hunts men for its own designs: Antrax. It is a spirit that commands ancient technologies and mechanical monsters, feeds off enchantment, and traps the souls of men.
With the Jerle Shannara under siege and Antrax threatening the bold and unwary, the Ilse Witch finds herself face-to-face with a boy who claims to be the brother she last saw as an infant. Now a young man, Bek wields the magic of the wishsong and carries the Sword of Shannara upon his back. Unsure whether to trust Bek or to slay him, the Ilse Witch takes him prisoner. One has come pursuing truth, the other revenge. Yet both seek Walker Boh with the fate of the Four Lands hanging in the balance.
Return to the world of beloved novelist Terry Brooks, where creatures drift up from the earth like mist, a hypnotic song can kill, a sword can cut through a veil of lies and one man, the true heir of an ancient magic, must choose between betrayal and redemption.
This is a list I made myself of Characters, Magic Items and some notes I took while rereading this book. The information is on a book by book basis. If you dont see any informtion about a character, that is because there was none in this book.
CHARACTERS:
Grainne Ohmsford – (human) six when the book starts. Lived on the eastern fringes of the Rabb Plains. Strangers who made the mistake of staring into Grainne’s startling blue eyes found themselves glancing quickly away and left them with a sense of having given something up. Direct decended from Brin and Jair and Par and Coll Ohmsford, and Queen Wren.
She was born with the talent of the wishsong, a latent power that surfaced in the Ohmsford family bloodline only once in every four or five generations. “She was learning the importance of never giving away everything of who and what she was.” She could sense oddities in the air and find out shape-shifters. Could probe others minds.
Araden Ohmsford – (human) Father of Grainne and Bek. A scribe. Thought Druids represented violence.
Biornlief Ohmsford – (human) Mother of Grainne and Bek. A housewife.
Morgawr – (human/mwellret) “I am of mixed breed, both Man and Mwellret.” Raised Grainne from the time she was 6. Commanded a Shirke. Taught Grainne to use the wishsong.
Shirke – Large War Bird
Ilse Witch - (Grainne Ohmsford)
Bek Ohmsford – (human) Grainne’s younger brother. Was two when Grainne was taken.
Ryer Ord Star – (human) a seer, an Empath. She can absorb the hurt in others. “…He is special to me in a way you know nothing about…” “in healing walker she formed a link with his subconscious. Perhaps intentional on his part. “I became joined to him through the bond created by my willingness to give up something of my life in order to save his. It happens now and then with empaths, though usually it fades after the healing is finished. It did not do so here.” She can see the futures of those around her. 12 years old when she came to Grimpen Ward. Studied under the Addershag. Told by the Addershage that her empathic gift would killer her some day.
Truls Rokh – (shape-shifter) Saved Bek when he was a baby. Smelled of earth and chemicals. Has know Walker a long time. “Truls Rohk looked like something cobbled together from stray parts of human debris, some if it half-formed, some of it half-rotted, all of it shifting like a mirage that might not be ther at all. The watery look came from the way in which pieced of him constantly changed from flesh and bone to mist and air.”
Walker Boh – (human) Druid
Cree Bega – (mwellret)
Creepers – (?)
Mwellret – shape-shifters of a sort. Excellent tracers due to their highly developed senses.
Quentin – (human) Bek cousin
Panax – (dwarf)
Ahren Elessedil – (elf) Prince
Ard Patrinell – (elf) Captain of the Home Guard. Taught Quentin how to fight.
Tamis – (elf)Tracker
Rue Meridian – (human/rover)
Coran Leah – (human)
Liria – (human)
Caull – a beast of reshaped flesh and bone, a creature of magic molded and obedient to its master.
Furl Hawken – (human/rover)
Redden Alt Mer – (human/rover)Rue Meridian’s brother
Spanner Frew – (human/rover)
Kelson Rait – (human/rover)
Johnon Pakabbon -
Hunter Predd – (elf/wingrider)
Kian – (elf) Elven Hunter
Wye – (elf) Elven Hunter
Rusten – (elf) Elven Hunter
Joad Rish – Healer
Creepers – metal compositions. Parts awkwardly grafted onto them, giving them a barbaric, half-finished look.
Sweepers – Tiny metal creatures. Each built to perform a specific task. No more that 2 feet high.
Allardon Elessedil – (elf)
Wren Elessedil – (elf)
Rindge – (human) Native to Parkasia. Reddish skin with redder still hair and cinnamon eyes. “..part of the land and know how to disappear into it.”
Wronks – Looks like humans but are made of metal and human parts. By taking pieces of you, it steals you soul and you can never really die. Controlled by Antrax.
Antrax – (machine) Traveled between the speed of light and sound. Lacking substance and shape it could be everywhere at once. Used metal threads, cables, for passage. Used solar power. Built three thousand years earlier when artificial intelligence was commonplace. “Antrax had lived for more than twenty-five hundred years.” Directive: Those chambers, the complex, and everything hosed within had been given to Antrax to ward. They must not be compromised. No one may enter without the proper code. Antrax had a vague memory of a blueprint of when the creators might return but had blurred and finally erased the specifics by the final creator. There seemed to be no rules for when the catacombs should be opened up again or to whom. Creators of Antrax “ were archivists and visionaries, who primary interest was in preserving for the future that which might otherwise be lost.” “The creator had been specific. The lives of humans were expendable. It was Antrax who must survive.” “Antrax had been programmed to believe that nothing was more important than its survival.”
Obatedequist Parsenon – (human/rindge) subchief of the village
Kael Elessedil – (elf) Trapped by Antrax for thirty years. Had possession of the elfstones.
Po Kelles – (elf/wing rider)
Niciannon – (roc) Large bird
Obsidian – (roc) Large bird
Donell Brae – (human) Federation soldier. A pilot.
Aden Kett – (human) Frederation soldier. Airship Commander
NOTES:
“Though claiming to be the girl’s mentor and friend, Morgawr was more Mwellret than human. His connection to Cree Bega’s people was ancient and blooded.” His heart and soul were those of a Mwellret. Cree Bega “…the Ilse Witch was an inept practitioner of an are that had been mastered by the Mwellrets and their kind centuries ago, before the Druids had even thought to take up the Elven magic as their sword and shield.”
“Yet he had to find a way to bring her back to herself, to something of the girl she had been fifteen years ago…”
Quentin: “He had lost himself in the magic, had become someone else.”
“There hadn’t been an Ohmsford in Leah or Shady Vale or anywhere in that part of the world in fifty years.”
“It was a relic of the Old World, of that time before the Great Wars when science ruled and all of the races were one.”
“It was not impossible to imagine that before the Great Wars destroyed the old civilization, humans had developed machines that could think and feel.” “A sentient machine. Sophisticated and capable of feeling.”
“Lesser minds dominated the thinking of the times; they manipulated the rules of power and politics to stir within the populace a mix of rage and frustration that eventually would consume them all.”
“…Elements could be found in weapons and talismans borne by the descendants of his creators. But genetics and training had infused a few of those men and women with the elements of power, so that in some the power was generated from within.”
“A dream, or what the dreamer though was one, had brought the first of the Great War survivors to Antrax thirty years before.”
“Already the process of joining flesh to metal and synthetics had begun, a fusing technique developed in the waning days of the Old World and perfected since by Antax through study and experimentation.”
“But the technology of the Old World could accomplish anything.”
Bek to Truls: “I know you said you felt there was a link between us, through our magic – “
Truls: “When you save another’s life, you become responsible for it.”
Shape-shifters : “We are whatever we wish to be, we are the living and the dead. We are flesh and blood and wind and water.”
Parkasia seemed to be a peninsula attached to a much larger body of land north and west in which tribes other than the Rindge lived. The Rindge had been on Parkasia for two thousand years. They seemed to date everything from then as if nothing had existed before. They believed Antrax was a demon.
It snows inland, farther north and west, on the other side of the mountains, but the seasons around Antrax never change. Not to mention the glaciers and ice fields on the coast.
The Sword of Leah will only work for Quentin.
“Sealed doors, some of them round rather than rectangular…”
Black Moclips - Air ship
Jerle Shannara – Air ship
Flying Mourn – Air ship
“cavernous room filled with huge metal cabinets and clusters of plinking lights set into panels. Wheels spun behind Smokey windows; brilliant silver disks reflected the soft light of flameless lamps tubes that ran up and down the walls and across the room’s high ceiling. The hum of machinery was everywhere, punctuated by beeps and chirps and other strange sounds, all of it coming from the chamber below.”
“fifteen-foot-high cabinets filled with rows of spinning silver disks.”
“It was books they had come to find.”
“They were equipped with strange metal limbs that reached out in all directions,….inserting odd-shapped digits into slots and openings.”
Bek to Grainnne “Explain to me how you differ from Walker. Tell me what he has done in his life that you have not done in yours. Show me where the road you have traveled branches from his.”
Rovers are nomads, self-sufficient people, sailors and shipbuilders and mercenaries….
“If his body should die, his shade was lost. If he strayed too far or allowed himself to be trapped outside his body, he might never get back again.”
“Only the Word could know, and even that was not given to Mankind as truth.”
“A hundred and thirty years ago, when he had gone to Eldwist to recover the black elfstone….”
“Castledown was a place where only machines had functioned for more than twenty-five hundred years.”
“She had done things that she could probably never live with if she were to discover how completely she had been manipulated.”
Grainne: “…Morgawr was every bit as devious as the Druid. He kept things from her that he believed enabled him to maintain his hold over her.” “She was not so different from the Morgawr, and the Morgawr was very like the druid.”
“She had ended up a druid anyway, in another place, in another form.”
“In escaping him she had allowed the Morgawr to turn her into a mirror image of her enemy. Her use of magic and her efforts at accumulating power were very much the same as his.”
“The druid know as Walker, who had once been Walker Boh and was now on the threshold of still another life altering transition….”
“Triggered by her empathic touch and her talent as a seer, the purpose of his coming to that place and time, once so clear to him, once indisputable, was revealed to be something else entirely.”
Walker to Ahren: “The choice was mine to make, and I made it. Whether it was worth the cost remains to be seen. You will have to make your own judgment. Remember that. One day , you will be given the chance.”
Walker to Ryer: “This is not the last time we will see each other. We will meet again. Soon, it will happen. I promise.”
Ilse Witch: “Death steals away all our chances. Yours flee from y9u even as we speak.”
Walker: “Perhaps not”
Walker: “I found the magic and took from it what I could. But while I live, it is beyond your reach.”
Walker to Grainne “My dying is only the beginning of your journey.”
“if you do not use the sword you can never gain control over the magic I have hidden from you. Everything I have acquired, all the knowledge of the old world gleaned from these catacombs, all of the power granted by the Druids, is locked away inside me. It can be released if you use the sword, if you are strong enough to master it, but not otherwise.”
“I can use the sword while you cannot.”
“As he did so, he seemed to lose focus for a moment, and his hand extended past the talisman to brush lightly against her forehead…. She flinched at his touch, aware of the damp smear of his fingers had left against her skin. She heard him say something, words spoken so softly she could not make them out.”
MAGIC ITEMS:
Wishsong – “A latent power that surfaced in the Ohmsford family bloodline only once in every four or five generations.” “The slightest change in pitch or tone could alter health to sickness and life to death.” “Her singing, she discovered, could color its fading body heat and movements just enough to show her its progress, if the trail wasn’t too old.” “Because she had the use of the wishsong, she could speak their (animals) language and gain their acceptance. She could make herself appear one with them.”
“Using the magic of the wishsong, she caused it to evolve in very specific ways, focusing her attention on its predatory instincts, tracking skills, and resiliency. To enhance it’s intelligence was to difficult a task, to complex even for her.”
Phoenix Stone – Bek Rowe’s magic given to him by The King of the Silver River. Bek inturn gave it to Ahren Elessidel.
“When you are most lost, it will help you find your way. With your heart as well as your eyes. Back from dark places into which you have strayed and through dark places into which you must go.” “Not just physically, but emotionally.” “You can use it only once for casting it to the earth to release its magic will shatter it.”