The Scions of Shannara Read Online Free PDF

along with everything else they owned. They had only the clothes on their backs and a growing fear that perhaps they should have stuck with the nameless stranger a bit longer.
    The waterfront was a ramshackle mass of boathouses, piers, mending shops, and storage sheds. Lights burned along its length, and dockworkers and fishermen drank and joked in the light of oil lamps and pipes. Smoke rose out of tin stoves and barrels, and the smell of fish hung over everything.
    â€œMaybe they’ve given up on us for the night,” Par suggested at one point. “The Seekers, I mean. Maybe they won’t bother looking anymore until morning—or maybe not at all.”
    Coll glanced at him and arched one eyebrow meaningfully. “Maybe cows can fly too.” He looked away. “We should have insisted we be paid more promptly for our work. Then we wouldn’t be in this fix.”
    Par shrugged. “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t? We’d at least have some money!”
    â€œOnly if we’d thought to carry it with us to the performance. How likely is that?”
    Coll hunched his shoulders and screwed up his face. “That ale house keeper owes us.”
    They walked all the way to the south end of the docks without speaking further, stopped finally as the lighted waterfront gave way to darkness, and stood looking at each other. The night was cooler now and their clothes were too thin to protect them. They were shivering, their hands jammed down in their pockets, their arms clamped tightly against their sides. Insects buzzed about them annoyingly.
    Coll sighed. “Do you have any idea where we’re going, Par? Do you have some kind of plan in mind?”
    Par took out his hands and rubbed them briskly. “I do. But it requires a boat to get there.”
    â€œSouth, then—down the Mermidon?”
    â€œAll the way.”
    Coll smiled, misunderstanding. He thought they were headed back to Shady Vale. Par decided it was best to leave him with that impression.
    â€œWait here,” Coll said suddenly and disappeared before Par could object.
    Par stood alone in the dark at the end of the docks for what seemed like an hour, but was probably closer to half that. He walked over to a bench by a fishing shack and sat down, hunched up against the night air. He was feeling a mix of things. He was angry, mostly—at the stranger for spiriting them away and then abandoning them—all right, so Par had asked to have it that way, that didn’t make him feel any better—at the Federation for chasing them out from the city like common thieves, and at himself for being stupid enough to think he could get away with using real magic when it was absolutely forbidden to do so. It was one thing to play around with the magics of sleight of hand and quick change; it was another altogether to employ the magic of the wishsong. It was too obviously the real thing, and he should have known that sooner or later word of its use would get back to the authorities.
    He put his legs out in front of him and crossed his boots. Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. Coll and he would simply have to start over again. It never occurred to him to quit. The stories were too important for that; it was his responsibility to see to it that they were not forgotten. He was convinced that the magic was a gift he had received expressly for that purpose. It didn’t matter what the Federation said—that magic was outlawed and that it was a source of great harm to the land and its people. What did the Federation know of magic? Those on the Coalition Council lacked any practical experience. They had simply decided that something needed to be done to address the concerns of those who claimed parts of the Four Lands were sickening and men were being turned into something like the dark creatures of Jair Ohmsford’s time, creatures from some nether existence that defied