The Wishsong of Shannara Read Online Free PDF Page B

do.”
    “That’s easy.” Rone grunted. “He would tell you to forget the whole idea. It’s too dangerous. He’d also tell you—as he’s told both of us many times—that Allanon is not to be trusted.”
    Brin brushed back her long black hair and smiled faintly. “You didn’t hear what I said, Rone. I said, I keep asking myself what my father would do—not what my father would tell me to do. It’s not the same thing, you know. If he were being asked to go, what would he do? Wouldn’t he go, just as he went when Allanon came to him in Storlock twenty years ago, knowing that Allanon was not altogether truthful, knowing that there was more than he was being told, but knowing, too, that he had magic that could be useful and that no one other than he had that magic?”
    The highlander shifted uneasily. “But, Brin, the wishsong is  . . . well, it’s not the same as the Elfstones. You said it yourself. It’s just a toy.”
    “I know that. That is what makes all of this so difficult—that and the fact that my father would be appalled if he thought even for a minute that I would consider trying to use the magic as a weapon of any sort.” She paused. “But Elven magic is a strange thing. Its power is not always clearly seen. Sometimes it is obscured. It was so with the Sword of Shannara. Shea Ohmsford never saw the way in which such a small thing could defeat an enemy as great as the Warlock Lord—not until it was put to the test. He simply went on faith  . . .”
    Rone sat forward sharply. “I’ll say it again—this journey is too dangerous. The Mord Wraiths are too dangerous. Even Allanon can’t get past them; he told you so himself! It would be different if you had the use of the Elfstones. At least the Stones have power enough to destroy creatures such as these. What would you do with the wishsong if you came up against them—sing to them the way you used to do to that old maple?”
    “Don’t make fun of me, Rone.” Brin’s eyes narrowed.
    Rone shook his head quickly. “I’m not making fun of you. I care too much about you to ever do that. I just don’t feel the wishsong is any kind of protection against something like the Wraiths!”
    Brin looked away, staring out through curtained windows into the night, watching the shadowed movements of the trees in the wind, rhythmic and graceful.
    “Neither do I,” she admitted softly.
    They sat in silence for a time, lost in their separate thoughts. Allanon’s dark, tired face hung suspended in the forefront of Brin’s mind, a haunting specter that accused. You must come. You will see that by morning. She heard him speak the words again, so certain as he said them. But what was it that would persuade her that this was so? she asked herself. Reasoning only seemed to lead her deeper into confusion. The arguments were all there, all neatly arranged, both those for going and those for staying, and yet the balance did not shift in either direction.
    “Would you go?” she asked Rone suddenly. “If it were you with the wishsong?”
    “Not a chance,” he said at once—a bit too quickly, a bit too flip.
    You’re lying, Rone, she told herself. Because of me, because you don’t want me to go, you’re lying. If you thought it through, you would admit to the same doubts facing me.
    “What’s going on?” a weary voice asked from the darkness.
    They turned and found Jair standing in the hall, squinting sleepily into the light. He came over to them and stood looking from face to face.
    “We were just talking, Jair,” Brin told him.
    “About going after the magic book?”
    “Yes. Why don’t you go on back to bed?”
    “Are you going? After the book, I mean?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “She’s not going if she possesses an ounce of common sense,” Rone grumbled. “It’s entirely too dangerous a journey. You tell her, tiger. She’s the only sister you’ve got, and you don’t want the black walkers getting hold of her.”
    Brin shot him an