One-eye struck first, his blade coming in low and swift toward the ragpicker’s belly. The second man was only a step behind, striking out in a wild slash aimed at his victim’s exposed neck. Neither blow reached its intended mark. The ragpicker never seemed to move, but suddenly he had hold of both wrists, bony fingers locking on flesh and bone and squeezing until his attackers cried out in pain, dropped their weapons, and sank to their knees in shock, struggling to break free. The ragpicker had no intention of releasing them. He just held them as they moaned and writhed, studying their agonized expressions.
“You shouldn’t make assumptions about people,” he lectured them, bending close enough that they could see the crimson glow in his eyes, a gleam of bloodlust and rage. “You shouldn’t do that.”
His hands tightened further, and smoke rose through his fingers where they gripped the men’s wrists. Now the men were howling and screaming as their imprisoned wrists and hands turned black and charred, burned from the inside out.
The ragpicker released them then and let them drop to the ground in huddled balls of quaking, blubbering despair, cradling their damaged arms. “You’ve ruined such a lovely day, too,” he admonished. “All I wanted was to be left alone to enjoy it, and now this. You are pigs of the worst sort, and pigs deserve to be roasted and eaten!”
At this they cried out anew and attempted to crawl away, but the ragpicker was on them much too quickly, seizing their heads and holding them fast. Smoke rose from between his clutching fingers and the men jerked and writhed in response.
“How does that feel?” the ragpicker wanted to know. “Can you tell what’s happening to you? I’m cooking your brains, in case you’ve failed to recognize what you are experiencing. Doesn’t feel very good, does it?”
It was a rhetorical question, which was just as well because neither man could manage any kind of intelligible answer. All they could do was hang suspended from the ragpicker’s killing fingers until their brains were turned to mush and they were dead.
The ragpicker let them drop. He thought about eating them, but the idea was distasteful. They were vermin, and he didn’t eat vermin. So he stripped them of their clothing, taking small items for his collection, scraps of cloth from each man that would remind him later of who they had been, and left the bodies for scavengers he knew would not be picky. He gathered up his soiled rags from the earth into which they had been ground, brushed them off as best he could, and returned them to his carry bag. When everything was in place, he gave the dead men a final glance and started off once more.
Bones of the dead left lying on the ground.
One more day and they will never be found.
Ragpicker, ragpicker, you never know
There are rags to be found wherever you go.
He sang it softly, repeated it a few times for emphasis, rearranging the words, and then went quiet. An interesting diversion, but massively unproductive. He had hoped the two creatures might have information about the man with the black staff, but they had disappointed him. So he would have to continue the search without any useful information to aid him. All he knew was what he sensed, and what he sensed would have to be enough for now.
The man he sought was somewhere close, probably somewhere up in those mountains ahead. So eventually he would find him.
Eventually.
The ragpicker allowed himself a small smile. There was no hurry. Time was something he had as much of as he needed.
Time didn’t really matter when you were a demon.
For Judine,
at the start of another journey.
By Terry Brooks
The Magic Kingdom of Landover
MAGIC KINGDOM FOR SALE—SOLD!
THE BLACK UNICORN
WIZARD AT LARGE
THE TANGLE BOX
WITCHES’ BREW
Shannara
FIRST KING OF SHANNARA
THE SWORD OF SHANNARA
THE ELFSTONES OF SHANNARA
THE WISHSONG OF SHANNARA
The Heritage of Shannara
THE SCIONS OF SHANNARA
THE DRUID OF SHANNARA
THE ELF QUEEN OF SHANNARA
The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara
ILSE WITCH
ANTRAX
MORGAWR
THE WORLD OF SHANNARA
Word and Void
RUNNING WITH THE DEMON
A KNIGHT OF THE WORD
ANGEL FIRE EAST
STAR WARS®:
EPISODE I THE PHANTOM MENACE™
HOOK
SOMETIMES THE MAGIC WORKS:
LESSONS FROM A WRITING LIFE
High Druid of Shannara: Jarka Ruus is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Excerpt from The Measure of the Magic copyright © 2011 by Terry Brooks.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreydigital.com
The Cataloging-in-Publication-Data for this title is available
from the Library of Congress.
This book contains an excerpt from The Measure of the Magic by Terry Brooks. This excerpt has been set for this edition and may not reflect the final content of the book.
eISBN: 978-0-345-46972-4
v3.0_r1