The King of the Silver River stood at the edge of the Gardens that had been his domain since thedawn of the age of faerie and looked out over the world of mortal men. What he saw left him sad and
discouraged. Everywhere the land sickened and died, rich black earth turning to dust, grassy plains
withering, forests becoming huge stands of deadwood, and lakes and rivers either stagnating or
drying away. Everywhere the creatures who lived upon the land sickened
and died as well, unable to sustain themselves as the nourishment they
relied upon grew poisoned. Even the air had begun to turn foul.

And all the while, the King of the Silver River thought, the Shadowen
grow stronger.

His fingers reached out to brush the crimson petals of the cyclamen that
grew thick about his feet. Forsythia clustered just beyond, dogwood and
cherry farther back, fuchsia and hibiscus, rhododendrons and dahlias,
beds of iris, azaleas, daffodils, roses, and a hundred other varieties
of flowers and flowering plants that were always in bloom, a profusion
of colors that stretched away into the distance until lost from sight.
There were animals to be seen as well, both large and small, creatures
whose evolution could be traced back to that distant time when all
things lived in harmony and peace.

In the present world, the world of the Four Lands and the Races that had
evolved out of the chaos and destruction of the Great Wars, that time
was all but forgotten. The King of the Silver River was its sole
remnant. He had been alive when the world was new and its first
creatures were just being born. He had been young then, and there had
been many like him. Now he was old and he was the last of his kind.
Everything that had been, save for the Gardens in which he lived, had
passed away. The Gardens alone survived, changeless, sustained by the
magic of faerie. The Word had given the Gardens to the King of the
Silver River and told him to tend them, to keep them as a reminder of
what had once been and what might one day be again. The world without
would evolve as it must, but the Gardens would remain forever the same.

Even so, they were shrinking. It was not so much physical as spiritual.
The boundaries of the Gardens were fixed and unalterable, for the
Gardens existed in a plane of being unaffected by changes in the world
of mortal men. The Gardens were a presence rather than a place. Yet that
presence was diminished by the sickening of the world to which it was
tied, for the work of the Gardens and their tender was to keep that
world strong. As the Four Lands grew poisoned, the work became harder,
the effects of that work grew shorter, and the boundaries of human
belief and trust in its existence--always somewhat marginalaO"began to
fail altogether.

The King of the Silver River grieved that this should be. He did not
grieve for himself; he was beyond that. He grieved for the people of the
Four Lands, the mortal men and women for whom the magic of faerie was in
danger of being lost forever. The Gardens had been their haven in the
land of the Silver River for centuries, and he had been the spirit
friend who protected its people. He had watched over them, had given
them a sense of peace and well-being that transcended physical
boundaries, and gave promise that benevolence and goodwill were still
accessible in some corners of the world to all. Now that was ended. Now
he could protect no one. The evil of the Shadowen, the poison they had
inflicted upon the Four Lands, had eroded his own strength until he was
virtually sealed within his Gardens,...

A writer since high school, Terry Brooks published his first novel, The Sword of Shannara, in 1977. It was a New York Times bestseller for more than five months. He has published fifteen consecutive bestsellers since, including the novel based upon the screenplay and story by George Lucas: Star Wars®: Episode I The Phantom Menace. His novels Running with the Demon and A Knight of the Word both won the "Rocky Award" given by The Rocky Mountain News.

The author was a practicing attorney for many years but now writes full-time. He lives with his wife, Judine, in the Pacific Northwest and...