The Elf Queen of Shannara

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Fire.

It sputtered in the oil lamps that hung distant and solitary in the windows and entryways of her people’s homes. It spat and hissed as it licked at the pitch-coated torches bracketing road intersections and gates. It glowed through breaks in the leafy branches of the ancient oak and hickory where glassed lanterns lined the treelanes. Bits and pieces of flickering light, the flames were like tiny creatures that the night threatened to search out and consume.

Like ourselves, she thought.

Like the Elves.

Her gaze lifted, traveling beyond the buildings and walls of the city to where Killeshan steamed.

Fire.

It glowed redly out of the volcano’s ragged mouth, the glare of its molten core reflected in the clouds of vog—volcanic ash that hung in sullen banks across the empty sky. Killeshan loomed over them, vast and intractable, a phenomenon of nature that no Elven magic could hope to withstand. For weeks now the rumbling had sounded from deep within the earth, dissatisfied, purposeful, a buildingup of pressure that would eventually demand release.

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