It was a particularly warm day, and Shea was beginning to perspire freely. The terrain had failed to level off at all, and traversing the stubborn, winding hills was laborious and slow. Panamon Creel talked on all the while, laughing and joking with Shea as if they were old friends, companions on the road to high adventure. He told him about the four lands; he had traveled them all, seen their people, studied their ways of life. Shea thought he seemed a bit vague about the Westland, and seriously doubted that the thief had learned much about the Elven people, but decided it would be unwise to pursue the matter. He listened dutifully to the tales of the women Panamon had met in his travels, including a standard narration about a beautiful king’s daughter whom he hid saved and fallen in love with, only to lose her when her father stepped between them and spirited her away to distant lands. The Valeman sighed with exaggerated pity, inwardly chuckling at the tale, as the anguished thief ended by confiding that to this day he continued his search for her. Shea remarked that he hoped Panamon would find her and she might persuade him to give up this way of life. The man looked at him sharply, studying the serious face, and for a few moments he was silent as he mulled the prospect over.
They reached the Jannisson Pass about two hours later. The pass was formed by a break at the meeting of the two mountain chains, a wide, easily accessible passage leading to the broad plainland beyond. The great mountain range coming up from the south was an extension of the towering Dragon’s Teeth, but the northern range was unfamiliar to Shea. He knew that the Charnal Mountains, the home of the huge Rock Trolls, lay somewhere to the north of them, and this second range could be a southerly extension. Those desolate and relatively unexplored peaks had for centuries remained a vast wilderness inhabited solely by the ferocious and warlike Troll colonies. While the Rock Trolls were the largest of that breed, there were several other types of Trolls living in that sector of the Northland. If Keltset were any example of the Rock Trolls, then Shea imagined they must be a more intelligent people than Southlanders believed. It seemed somehow strange that his own countrymen should be so misinformed about another race inhabiting the same world. Even the textbooks he had studied when he was younger had described the Troll nations as ignorant and uncivilized.
Panamon called a sudden halt at the entrance to the wide pass and walked ahead several yards, peering cautiously up into the high slopes to either side, obviously wary of what might be waiting there. After several minutes’ perusal, he ordered the stolid Keltset to investigate the pass to be certain it was safe for them to proceed. Quickly the giant Troll lumbered forward and was soon lost between the hills and rocks. Panamon suggested Shea sit down to wait, smiling that unforgivably smug smile that indicated the thief thought he was incredibly clever to take this added precaution to avoid any traps that friends of Shea might have arranged for him. While he felt safe enough keeping Shea with him, being reasonably certain that Shea posed no threat by himself, he was concerned that the Valeman might have friends powerful enough to cause trouble if they found the opportunity. While waiting for his companion to return, the garrulous adventurer decided to launch into still another wild tale of his hair–raising life as a road agent. Shea found this one, like the others, incredible and obviously exaggerated. Panamon seemed to enjoy telling these stories far more than anyone could possibly enjoy listening, as if each were the very first and not the five hundredth. Shea endured the tale in stoic silence, trying to look interested as he thought about what lay ahead. They had to be quite close to the borders of Paranor now, and once they reached that point, he would be left on his own. He would have to find his friends quickly if he expected to stay alive in this region of the country. The Warlock Lord and his hunters would be searching tirelessly for any trace of him, and if they reached him before he gained the protection of Allanon and the company, his death was certain. Still, it was possible that by this time they had taken possession of the Druid’s Keep and seized the precious Sword of Shannara. Perhaps the victory was already won.
Keltset appeared suddenly in the pass and signaled for them to come forward. They hastened to his side and together the three proceeded. There was little cover in the Jannisson Pass that would hide an ambush party, and it was apparent that there would be no trouble at this point. There were a few stray clumps of boulders and a few narrow hillocks, but none of these was big enough to hide more than one or two men. The pass was quite long, and it took the three travelers almost an hour to reach the other end. But it was a pleasant walk and the time passed quickly. When they reached the northern entrance, they could see plains stretching northward and beyond these still another mountain range which appeared to run toward the west. The travelers marched out of the pass onto the smooth floor of the plains which were set in a pocket, surrounded on three sides in horseshoe fashion by mountains and forests and opening out to the west. The plains were sparsely covered with a thin, pale green grass which grew in shaggy tufts over the dry earthen land. There were small bushes, all only knee–high on Shea, and these were bent and gaunt in appearance. Apparently, even in the spring, these plains were never very green, and little life existed in the lonely expanse of country beyond Paranor.
Shea knew they were nearing their destination when Panamon turned the little group westward, keeping their line of march several hundred yards north of the forest and mountain bordering to their left, careful to protect against any surprise assaults. When the Valeman asked the scarlet–clad leader where they were in relation to Paranor, the thief only smiled slyly and assured him they were getting closer all the time. Further questioning was pointless, and the youth resigned himself to being kept in the dark as to where they were until the other decided he was ready to let his uninvited guest go on alone. Instead, Shea tarried his attention to the plains ahead, their barren vastness awesome and fascinating to the Southlander. It was an entirely new world for him, and while he was understandably afraid for his life, he was determined that he would miss nothing. This was the fabulous odyssey Flick and he had always dreamed they would someday make, and while its end might find them both dead and forgotten, the quest a failure and the Sword lost, still he would see it all in the time remaining to him.
By midafternoon, the three were sweating and tempers were growing short in the steady heat of the open plainlands. Keltset walked slightly apart from the other two, his pace steady and unwavering, his rough face expressionless, his eyes dark and unfriendly in the hot, white sunlight. Panamon had stopped talking and was interested only in completing the day’s march and being rid of Shea, whom he had begun to regard as an unnecessary burden. Shea was tired and sore, his limited stamina greatly sapped by the two long days of constant travel. The three were walking right into the face of the burning sun, unprotected and unshaded on the open plains, their eyes squinting sharply in the piercing light. It became increasingly harder to distinguish the land ahead as the sun moved closer toward the western horizon, and after a while Shea gave up trying, relying on Panamon’s skill to get them to Paranor. The travelers were drawing closer to the end of the mountain range northward on their right, and it appeared that where the mountain peaks ceased the plains opened into an endless expanse. It was so vast that Shea could see the lateral line of the horizon where the sky dropped to the parched earth. When he asked at last if these were the Streleheim Plains, Panamon gave no immediate answer, but after a few moments’ consideration nodded shortly.