Copyright: 2000, Terry Brooks
Published by: Ballantine Books
Cover Artist: Steve Stone
Dedication: TO CAROL AND DON MCQUINN
For redefining the word friends in more ways than I can count.
Extras: Sample Chapter 1 -- Sample Chapter 2 -- Excerpt
Buy It!: Hardcover(2000), Paperback(2001).
Del Rey as set up an site exclusive to this new novel.
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:
Hunter Predd – (elf/wing rider)
Obsidian – (Roc) Large Black bird. Could tell a man from a piece of wood or a fish from a thousand yards away. Third Roc for Hunter. Ben with Hunter for five years. Rocs could fly for three days straight.
Dorne – (elf) Healer of Bracken Cell. Treated Kael Elessedil.
Allardon Elessedil – (elf) Elven King. Been king for 25 years after the death of his mother. Direct descendent of Queen Wren (great-great-grandson). Two sons, a wife and daughters. “And if you disappear as my brother did, then the matter ends there. I will not be bound to an agreement with a dead man.”
Wren Elessedil – (elf)
Perin – (elf) Home Guard
Wye – (elf) Home Guard
Queen Aine – (elf) Mother of Allardon. Direct descendent of Queen Wren. Dead for 25 years. Was told of a lost treasure from the Old World located across the sea by her seer.
Kael Elessedil – (elf) Allarden’s older brother. Given the Elfstones by his mother. Disappeared 30 years ago during an expedition to find a lost treasure located across the sea. “He was living in another place and time, unable to forget what he had suffered, and it was not pleasant.”
Kylen Elessedil – (elf) Allardon’s eldest son. Commander of an elven regiment.
Ahren – (elf) Son of Allardon. Next in line to be king. He had a wife and children.
Ilse Witch – (human/elf) Her name means singer. Born to magic and power. “It was her destiny to shape and alter the lives of others.” “When she let them speak her name again, when she chose to speak it herself, it would be remembered.” “It mirrored her own life, a collage of images and voices, of memories that had shaped her growing, not all fitting tightly in sequence, not all linked together in ways that made sense.” “He knew she hated rets.” “She could not see inside their minds.” “But they would act as her keepers.” “But by the time you discover that, Morgawr, it will already be to late for you.”
War Shrike – Fighting bird. Fought to the death with little thought to protect itself.
Morgawr – His name means wraith. “He was a warlock, and there fore solitary and independent by nature” “It was rumored, these same caverns had been occupied by the witch sisters, Mallenroh and Morag…Once, it was rumored, the Morgawr had claimed them as his sisters.” “He had not been born to the magic. He had gained his master through leeching it way and building it up, through study and experimentation, and through slow torturous exposure to side effects that had changed him irrevocable from what he had been born.” “He could shape-shift like the rets, but far better and with greater versatility, for he had the magic to aid him.”, “The Morgawr has lived for a very long time. He may have been an ally of the Shadowen, but he was not one of them and was not destroyed as they were. He surfaced about fifty years ago and began to expand his influence to the Federation. He is a very powerful warlock, with ties to the Eastland Mwellrets and Shape-shifters.”
Rumor – (moor cat)
Walker – (human/druid) He was said to have lived for more than 150 years and still be young. “He was a reluctant Druid” “He had accepted the blood trust bestowed by the dying Allanon hundreds of years earlier on his ancestor Brin Ohmsford” He hoped that he might change the image and work of the Druids. Cousin to Wren Elessedil. “I inherited the blood trust bestowed on her by Allanon as he lay dying, the trust that foretold that one of her descendants would be the first of the new Druids.”, “But Walker was not chiseled from the same rock as his predecessor and made no claims to being his equal.”
Redden Alt Mer – cabin boy at seven, a First Officer by Fifteen, a Captain by twenty. Served the Federation for three years.
Furl Hawken – (human/rover)
Rue Meridian (little red) – (human/rover) Redden Alt Mer’s younger half sister. They shared the same mother. Served the federation for three years. Her mother read bones and her father the stars.
Blenud Trock – (human) Federation soldier.
Ebben Bonner – (elf) First Minister of the Elven High Council and nominal leader of the Elves.
Bek Rowe – (human/elf) His father died when he was 2. “Your magic is the legacy of your family , Bek. It was absorbed by Wil Ohmsford into his body hundreds of years ago when he used the elfstones to save the lives of two women , one who became the Ellcrys, one who became his wife. His elven blood was to thin to permit him to do so safely, and he was altered irrevocably.”
Quentin Leah – (human) Five years Bek’s senior. Bek’s cousin.
Coran Leah – (human) Quentin’s father. Distant cousin of Bek’s father. Owed Walker a favor for something that happened a longtime ago. 50 years old.
Truls Rohk – (shape-shifter)”When he looked at you, you felt as if you were being flayed alive.” His father was a famous borderman scout. He was 33 when he met Truls mother. His mother was a shape-shifter.
Liria Leah – (human) Coran Leah’s wife.
Holm Rowe – (human/elf)Thought to have been Bek’s father. Had not seen Coran Leah for 10 years before Bek showed up.
Ezael Sterret – (human/rover) Built the first air ship twenty-four years ago.
Cicatrix – (human) Walker: “I know Cicatrix from other places and times.”
Spanner Frew – (human/rover) Best ship builder alive. Use to be a pirate.
King of the Silver River – (faerie)”I am a chameleon of time and age, my true form so old I have forgotten it.” Spirit creature, a magical being who had survived from times long before even the Great Wars had destroyed the world. He was as old as the Word, it was said, a creature who had been born into and survived the passing of faerie.
Panax – (dwarf) Saved by Truls Rohk, Truls taught him how to survive in the Wolfsktaag. 20 when we met Truls.
Werebeasts – Part animal part spirit. Fed off your fear and took shape from your imagination.
Koden - ?
Addershag – A seer. Had been dead for five years. Had been alive almost as long as Walker without the help of the Druid Sleep.
Ryer Ord Star – (human) A seer. “Like she had already grown old inside her child’s body. Intense and secretive, but passionate. Very powerful in her talent. Could see the future clearly. Was an Empath (she could heal others by taking the hurt unto herself) “I will die here, Walker”, “I see three moles who seek to burrow into the earth, They carry keys to a lock. One is caught in an endless maze. Ribbons of fire trap another. Metal dogs hunt a third. All are blind and cannot see. All have lost their way and cannot find it again. But one will discover a door that lead to the past. Inside, the future waits.”
Sen Dunsidan – (human) Minister of Defense for the Federation for 15 years.
Black Watch – (elves) Guards
Joad Rish – (elf) healer.
Giant Eels – Some more than 30 feet long.
Gill – (elf/wing rider)
Tashin - (roc) Gills Roc
Po Kelles – (elf/wing riger)
Niciannon – (roc) Po Kelles’s Roc
Kain – (elf) Elven Hunter
Brae – (elf) Elven Hunter
Dace – (elf) Elven Hunter
Aden Kett – (human) Helmsman of the Black Moclips and a federation soldier.
NOTES:
Wing Riders had served the land elves as scouts and messengers for more than 130 years.
War with the Federation had been raging for ten years. “They’ve been fighting over the same piece of ground for fifty years and over control of the Borderlands for more than five hundred.”
Elessedil Crest: “The spreading boughs of the sacred Ellcrys surrounded by a ring of bloodfire.”
“This treasure, if recovered, had the power to change the course of history and the lives of all who come in contact with it.”
Ilse Witch discovery from: The treasure was Magic… “ It was a magic of spells invoked by words – but so many! The numbers seemed endless.”
“Within the bag of gold she had given him nested a tiny snake whose bite was so lethal that even the smallest nick from a single fang was fatal.”
“It was a derivation of a language spoken in the Old World, before the Great Wars, a language that had been dead for two thousands years. I was a language of symbols rather than of words.”
Black Moclips – (ship) just under 110 feet long and 35 feet wide.
The first air ships had been built and flown only two dozen years ago and been used in service as fighting vessels for less than five. Used light as energy.
Parts: ambient-light sails, radian draws, and diapason crystals. Crystals were fed light by the draws. Light is converted to energy and expelled through the parse tubes. Parse tubes fed power to the radian draws to the crystals in steady increments. Air ships could fly comfortable at a thousand feet.
Sails/light sheaths – gather light. Direct or ambient from the sky.
Radian Draws – lines that take heat down to the decking and into parse tubes.
Parse Tubes – containers housed diapson crystals.
Diapson Crystals – received and converted light energy to energy that propelled and steered the airship. Hooding and un hooding determined the amount of thrust and direction the airship took.
Rovers had survived as nomads for two thousand years. The land was their mother.
Walkers view of a Druid council: Independent Druid Council, free to study, explore, and develop all forms of magic. Will answer to no one nation or people or ruler, but only to its own conscience and the dictates of the order. Will share it’s finding equally with all people, when and if those findings can be implemented peacefully and for the betterment of all races.
Magic found on the voyage that the elves can use without the help of the Druids belongs to the elves. Magic which only Walker can use belongs to the Druids.
“But a confrontation with her – a confrontation that must surely come – would be resolved only if he could blunt her rage by revealing the truth that had been hidden for many years.”
“Numerous once, the rets had been reduced over the past five hundred years to a small community. They were secretive and manipulative of others.”
The Leah family had ruled for nine hundred years until Federation rule. It was only in the last fifty years that the Federation had occupied Leah. Coran Leah was not king but First Minister, elected.
“The palace had been destroyed during Federation occupation – burned, it was rumored, by Morgan Leah himself in defiance of its occupiers.”
“The light she held emanated from on end of a polished metal cylinder and cast long, narrow beam on the ground between them.”
“Choices were made between shades of gray, and there was healing and harm to be weighed on both sides of each.”
“Those who accompany you will be both brave and strong of heart, but only some will return. One will save your life. One will try to take it. One will love you unconditionally. One will hate you with unmatched passion. One will lead you astray. One will bring you back again.”
Over a thousand years ago Jerle Shannara stood against the Warlock Lord.
Over five hundred years ago the elves fought against the demons from the Forbidding.
Less than 150 years ago Wren Elessedil fought against the Federation army led by Rimmer Dal.
“There is no treasure big or rich enough to interest a Druid. A Druid cares only for magic.”
“There had been magic in the world since the new races had been born out of the Great Wars, reinvented by the need to survive.”
The name of the three islands that hold the key to Castledown are Flay Creech, Shatterstone, and Mephitic.
“Flat metal rectangle with symmetrical ridges that connected in a geometrical pattern to a small raised square that vibrated softly. A red light embedded in the square blinked on and off.” “A key, but not a dey of the sort we know. This key belongs to the technology of the Old World, from before the Great Wars, from the old civilization of man. It’s a form of machine and has a life of its own.” “It has secrets to tell if we can unlock them.”
“Using a method they had employed countless time before, the Wing Riders had flown a spiral search pattern that eventually brought them back on course with the Jerle Shannara”
“We are the same, boy,” Truls Rohk said again. “We were born of the ashes of our parents, of the heritage of our blood, of a history and fate that was never ours to change. We are kindred in ways you can only guess at.”
Walker, Bek, and Grainne are all scions of Brin Ohmsford.
Walker:
Grainne is three years older than Bek.
Walker tried to rescue Grainne and to gain her trust, but all of his efforts failed.
Walker about Bek’s insight: “You spy out causes while they’re still seeking to create an effect.”
“The magic of the castle and the jungle are Faerie-induced and have been resident since the time of the Word. The eels probably mutated after the Great Wars.”
“you will take the Jerle Shannara out of this bay and back down the channel toward the Squirm. Then take a bearing and fly back out over the peninsula to the coast and find the Wing Riders.”
Castledown: Buildings were low and flat, not tall and very thing was made of metal. They looked like buildings for housing machines.
“Books. Of spells and magic. Gathered during the time of the Old World, then lost in the Great Wars.
MAGIC ITEMS:
Elfstones: Given to Kael Elessedil by his mother.
Hadeshorn – Where the spirits of the dead might be summoned to reveal secrets hidden from the living.
The Sword of Leah – Handed down to Quentin by his father. The magic of the sword responds to need. There must be a threat to the bearer. “The magic originated with Allanon and the shades of the Druids who preceded him in life.”
Phoenix stone – “When you are most lost, it will help you find your way, No just from what you cannot see with your eyes, but from what you cannot find with you heart, as well. It will show you the way back from dark places into which you must go. When you have need of it, remove it from the chain and cast it to the ground, breaking it apart. Remember. In you body, heart, and mind – all will be revealed with this.”
Ellcrys – A tree imbued with magic that formed a Forbidding to shut away the demons banished by the Word from the Faerie world centuries ago at the beginning of life. She had begun her life as an Elf and had transformed into the tree as a result of exposure to the Bloodfire.” “When she began to fail another would have to take her place.” Lived for thousands of years.
The Sword of Shannara - “Like all elven talismans, the sword draws it’s power from the wielder.” “The Sword of Shannara relies on the bearer’s willingness to shed personal deceptions, half-truths, and lies in order to see clearly the same in others.”