First King of Shannara

Generations before the Sword of Shannara is forged, the Druid Bremen defies his order's ban on magic to keep studying it in secret, certain that the Warlock Lord, believed destroyed in the First War of the Races, is coming back. With Paranor fallen and the remaining races scattered and mistrustful of one another, Bremen has to talk them into an alliance they don't want against an enemy most of them refuse to believe still exists, while working out a desperate plan that fuses science and magic into a single weapon. Terry Brooks's prequel to the original Shannara trilogy.