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more than eight years, but he listened dutifully and was pleased to hear that he was doing well with his
farming.
His sister Kira was another matter. She lived in Arborlon, and he went to see her on his first day
home, finding her wrestling clothes onto her smallest child, her face still young and fresh, her energy still
boundless, her smile as warm and heartbreaking as birdsong. She came to him with a welcoming laugh,
flinging herself into his arms and hugging him until he thought he might explode. She took him into the
kitchen and gave him cold ale, sitting him down at the old trestle bench, asking him of his life and telling
him of hers, all at once. They shared concerns about their parents, and swapped stories of their
childhood, and it was dark before they knew it. They met again the following day, and with Kira s
husband and the children went into the woods along the Rill Song for a picnic. Kira asked if he had seen
Jerle Shannara yet, and then did not mention him again. The hours slipped away, and Tay was almost
able to forget he had come home for any other reason. The children played games with him, tired
eventually, and sat on the riverbank kicking their feet in the cold water while he talked with their parents
of the ways in which the world was changing. His brother-in-law was a maker of leather goods and
traded regularly with the other Races. He no longer sent his traders into the Northland, now that the
nations had been subjugated and made one. There were rumors, he said, of evil creatures, of winged
monsters and dark shades, of beasts that would savage humans and Elves alike. Tay listened and nodded
and affirmed that he had heard the rumors, too. He tried not to look at Kira too closely when he spoke.
He tried not to let her see what was in his eyes.
He saw old friends as well, some of whom had been barely grown when he had seen them last. Some
had been close once. But they had traveled down different roads, and all had gone too far to turn back.
Or perhaps it was he who had gone too far. They were strangers now, not in appearance or voice, for
those were still familiar, but in choices made that long since had shaped their lives. He shared nothing with
them but memories of what had once been. It was sad, but not surprising. Time stole away commitments
and loosened ties. Friendships were reduced to tales of the past and vague promises for the future,
neither strong enough to recover what was lost. But that was what life did  it took you down separate
roads until one day you found yourself alone.
Arborlon seemed strange as well, though not in a way he would have expected. Physically, it was the
same, a village grown into a city, full of excitement and expectation, become the crossroads of the
Westland. Twenty years of steady growth had made it the largest and most important city in the northern
half of the known world. The conclusion of the First War of the Races had altered irrevocably the role of
the Elven people in the future of the Four Lands, and with the decline of the Southland as a major
influence, Arborlon and the Elves had become increasingly important. But while the city and its
surroundings were familiar to Tay, even with his long absence and infrequent visits, he could not escape
the feeling that he no longer belonged. This was not his home now; it hadn t been for the better part of
fifteen years, and it was too late to change that. Even if Paranor was destroyed and the Druids gone, he
was not sure he could ever come back. Arborlon was a part of his past, and somehow he had grown
beyond it. He was a stranger here, as much as he tried to convince himself otherwise, and it made him
feel awkward when he tried to fit in again.
How quickly everything slipped away when you weren t paying attention, he thought more than once
in his first few days back. How swiftly your life changed.
On the fourth day of his return, Jerle Shannara came to him in the late-aftemoon hours accompanied
by Preia Starle. Tay hadn t seen Preia yet, although he had wondered about her more than once. She
was easily the most astonishing woman he had ever known, and if she hadn t been in love with Jerle for
as far back as anyone could remember but had been in love with Tay instead, he might have changed his
life for her. She was beautiful, with small, perfect features, cinnamon hair and eyes to match, a dusky tone
to her skin that glowed like the surface of water caught in a sunrise, and a body that curved and flowed
with the grace and supple ease of a cat s. That was Preia at first glance, but it didn t begin to tell you
about her. Preia was as much a warrior as Jerle, trained as a Tracker, skilled at her chosen craft beyond
anyone Tay had ever known, tough and steady and as certain as sunrise. She could track a ferret in a
swamp. She could tell you the size and number and sex of a herd of goats crossing rocks. She could live
out in the wilderness for weeks on literally nothing but what she scavenged.
She disdained to follow the life most Elven women chose, forsaking the comforts of a home and the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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