Excerpt from Ilse Witch by Terry Brooks, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When the message was in place, he tossed the bird into the air, and it rose into the darkness and disappeared. They flew only at night, these birds. Sometimes, they returned with messages from her. Sometimes, they simply reappeared, waiting to be placed back in their cages. He never questioned their origins. It was better, he sensed, simply to accept their usefulness.

He stared into the night sky. He had done what he could. There was nothing to do now, but wait.

She would tell him what was needed next. She always did.

Closing the doors to the pen so that the cages were hidden once more, he crept silently back the way he had come.


Two days later, Allardon Elessedil had just emerged from a long session with the Elven High Council centered on the renewal of trade agreements with the cities of Callahorn and on the seemingly endless war they fought as allies with the Dwarves against the Federation, when he was advised that a Wing Rider was waiting to speak to him. It was late in the day, and he was tired, but the Wing Rider had flown all the way to Arborlon from the southern seaport of Bracken Clell, a two-day journey, and was refusing to deliver his message to anyone but the King. The aide who advised Allardon of the Wing Rider's presence conveyed quite clearly the other's determination not to be swayed on this issue.

The Elf King nodded and followed his aide to where the Wing Rider waited. His arrangement with the Wing Hove demanded that he accede to any request for privacy in the conveyance of messages. Pursuant to a contract drawn up in the early years of Wren Elessedil's rule, the Wing Riders had been serving the Land Elves as scouts and messengers along the coast of the Blue Divide for more than 130 years. They were provided with goods and coin in exchange for their services, and it was an arrangement that the Elven Kings and Queens had found useful on more than one occasion. If the Wing Rider who waited had asked to speak with Allardon personally, then there was good reason for the request, and he was not about to ignore it.

With Home Guards Perin and Wye flanking him protectively, he trailed after his aide as they departed the High Council and walked back through the gardens to the Elessedil palace home. Allardon Elessedil had been King for more than twenty years, since the death of his mother, the Queen Aine. He was of medium height and build, still fit and trim in spite of his years, his mind sharp and his body strong. Only his graying hair and the lines on his face gave evidence of his advanced years. He was a direct descendant of the great Queen Wren Elessedil, who had brought the Elves and their city out of the island wilderness of Morrowindl into which the Federation and the hated Shadowen had driven them. He was her great-great-grandson, and he had lived the whole of his life as if measuring it against hers.

It was difficult to do so in these times. The war with the Federation had been raging for ten years and showed no signs of ending anytime soon. The Southland coalition of Bordermen, Dwarves, and Elves had halted the Federation advance below the Duln two years earlier on the Prekkendorran Heights. Now the armies were stalemated in a front that had failed to shift one way or the other in all that time and continued to consume lives and waste energy at an alarming rate. There was no question that the war was necessary. The Federation's attempt at reclaiming the Borderlands it had lost in the time of Wren Elessedil was invasive and predatory and could not be tolerated. But the King couldn't help thinking that his ancestor would have found a way to put an end to it by now, where he had failed to do so.

None of which had anything to do with the matter at hand, he chided himself. The war with the Federation was centered at the crossroads of the Four Lands and had not yet spilled over onto the coast. For now, at least, it was contained.

Excerpted from Ilse Witch (Voyage of the Jerle Shannara) by Terry Brooks. Copyright© 2000 by Terry Brooks. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.