The Elves of Cintra (Book 2 of The Genesis of Shannara)

“Where’s Hawk?” she asked as they ran toward the buildings across the way. “Why are you back here alone?”


“Don’t know about Hawk. Don’t know about that Knight of whatever, either. He left me at the edge of the square, told me to wait until he came back. He never came, but these Croaks did and I had to make a break for it. They’re all over. Did you see the fires on the water?”

She glanced over at his dark face. “I saw them from the roof. Boats filled with invaders. If they’re the ones I think, we’re in big trouble. Mama used to tell me about them. Once-men, she called them. They destroy everything, kill everyone except the ones they put in the slave camps.

Worse than the militias. We have to warn the others and get out of here.”

“You won’t get no argument from me.” He slowed suddenly, grabbing her arm. “Uh-oh.”

A pair of Croaks had appeared out of the buildings in front of them, blocking their escape. “What is it with these things?” Panther snapped furiously.

“We don’t see any for weeks, then all of a sudden they’re everywhere! Where’d they all come from?”

Sparrow took a quick look around at the ones following.

Another few minutes and they would be right on top of them. “We have to get past these two,” she said. “You take the one on the left. Try not to do anything stupid.”

Without waiting for his response, she launched herself at the one on the right, her finger on the prod’s trigger and the staff’s electric charge at full strength. She jabbed the prod’s end into the Croak’s leg, and the Croak grunted and began to shake and jerk uncontrollably. Sparrow didn’t back away, keeping the prod jammed into its leg, knowing that if she gave ground it would be on her in a second. To her left, she caught a glimpse of Panther moving in close, his prod lancing into the other Croak’s throat with such force that it broke the heavy skin. The Croak gasped and tried to extract the killing tip, but Panther used his strength to force it backward and down to its knees.

In seconds both Croaks lay twitching on the concrete. Sparrow grabbed Panther’s arm and pulled him toward the building’s alleyway. “Stop staring at them! Run!”

Prods held at the ready, they disappeared into the dark corridor of the alley.

LOGAN TOM took a few minutes more to look around the rubble where he had told Panther to wait, and then gave up. He didn’t know what had happened to the boy, but he couldn’t take the time to find out. He had to get back to the other street kids and hope that Panther would find his own way. Maybe something had scared him. That didn’t seem like Panther, but you never knew.

Whatever the case, he wasn’t here now.

Unless he was, but couldn’t answer.

Logan didn’t want to dwell on that possibility, but he couldn’t quite put it aside, either. He hated the thought that he might have somehow failed the boy, that he might have brought him along only to get him killed. He had lived for years with the guilt of never being able to do quite enough for the children in the slave camps. He didn’t need another name added to that list. Funny. He had known Panther for less than twenty-four hours, but it felt a lot longer. He liked the dark-humored, moody boy—liked his aggressiveness and readiness to take on anything. Maybe it was because he admired the toughness in street kids that he liked Panther so much.

Or maybe it was because he reminded him of himself.

He started back up the street into Pioneer Square, chased by the sounds of the drums on the bay and the marching of the compound defenders to the docks. He hated the thought of taking on this new responsibility, looking after the Ghosts, shepherding them to wherever it was he was supposed to go.

Losing the gypsy morph was a major breach of his duty to protect it. Pretty hard to protect something that had been swallowed up by a ball of light and was now who-knew-where. But being left with the morph’s family…He stopped himself, rethinking his choice of language.

Being left with Hawk’s family, with a pack of street kids to look after, was galling. It limited his freedom of movement. What was he supposed to do with these kids and the old man and that wolf dog while he was trying to figure out how to find Hawk? He realized that until he had come face-to-face with the morph, he had never thought of it as a child. Even though it had started out as one in the time of John Ross and Nest Freemark, even though it had never been seen as anything else after those first few weeks, he had never thought of it that way. He hadn’t really given it any thought at all.

When Two Bears had asked him to find the morph, he had seen it as an escape from what he had been doing for so many years: attacking the camps, killing the defenders, setting free the prisoners, and—he hesitated before finishing the thought—destroying the experiments that someday would become demons. The children. He had thought he would be leaving all that behind. He had thought himself free of it.