The Talismans of Shannara Page 12

  He nodded, watching her face. “I wanted to hear what happened from you.”

  “All right.” She did not seem surprised. She glanced over her shoulder, then came out into the light. “Let’s talk out here. I’m tired of being shut away. Tired of being inside where there’s no light. How much did Chandos tell you?”

  She moved away from the hut into the trees, a very determined stride, and he was swept along in her wake. “He told me that Padishar had been taken by the Federation when he and Par came to rescue you. He said Par had left you to go find Coll—that it had something to do with the Shadowen.”

  “Everything has something to do with the Shadowen, doesn’t it?” she whispered, her head lowering wearily.

  She walked over to one end of a crumbling log and sat down. Morgan hesitated, still guarded, then sat with her. She turned slightly so that she was facing him. “I have a very long story to tell you, Morgan Leah,” she advised.

  She began with finding Par and Coll after they had escaped the Pit in Tyrsis. She told of how they had decided to go back down into the Shadowen breeding ground one final time, how they had enlisted the help of the Mole and found their way through the tunnels beneath the city to the old palace. From there the brothers had gone off together in search of the Sword of Shannara. Par had come back alone, carrying with him what he believed to be the talisman, half-mad with grief and horror because he had killed his brother. She had nursed him for weeks in the Mole’s underground home, slowly bringing him back to himself, carefully bringing him out of his dark nightmare. From there they had fled from safe house to safe house, the Sword of Shannara in tow, hiding from the Seekers and the Federation, looking for a way to escape the city. Finally Padishar had found them, but in the process of yet another escape from the Federation, Damson herself had been taken. Padishar and Par had come back to rescue her, and that in turn had led to Padishar’s capture. Fleeing the city completely, because at last there was a way to do so and there was nothing they could do for Padishar without help, they had come north through the Kennon.

  She touched his arm impulsively. “And what we saw, Morgan Leah, from high in the pass, far off in the distance beyond the Federation watch fires, but as clear as I see you, was Paranor. It is back, Highlander, returned out of the past. Par was certain of it. He said it meant that Walker Boh had succeeded!”

  Then, growing subdued again, she described their journey back out of the pass and their fateful encounter with Coll—or the thing Coll had become, wrapped in mat strange, shimmering cloak, hunched and twisted as if his bones had been rearranged. In the struggle that followed the power of the Sword of Shannara had somehow been invoked, revealing what Par now thought to be the truth about the brother he believed dead.

  “He went after Coll, of course,” she finished. “What else could he do? I did not want him to go, not without me—but I did not have the (right to stop him.” She searched Morgan’s eyes. “I am not as certain as he that it is Coll he tracks, but I realize that he must find out one way or the other if he is ever to be at peace.”

  Morgan nodded. He was thinking that Damson Rhee had given up an awful lot of herself to help Par Ohmsford, that she had risked more than he would have expected anyone to risk besides himself and Coll. He was thinking as well that the story she had told him had a feeling of truth to it, that it seemed right in the balance of things. The doubts he had brought with him coming in began to fade away. Certainly Par’s persistence in going after the Sword of Shannara was in character, as was this new search to find his brother. The problem now was that Par was more alone than ever, and Morgan was reminded once again of his failure to watch out for his friend.

  He realized Damson was studying him, a hard, probing look, and without warning his suspicions flared anew. Damson Rhee—was she the friend that Par believed or the enemy he sought so desperately to escape. Certainly she could have been the reason he’d had so many narrow escapes, the reason the Shadowen had almost trapped him so many times. But then, too, wasn’t she also the reason he had escaped?

  “You’re not certain of me, are you?” she asked quietly.

  “No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”

  She nodded. “I don’t know what I can do to convince you, Morgan. I don’t know that I even want to try. I have to spend whatever energy is left me finding a way to free Padishar. Then I will go in search of Par.”

  He looked away into the trees, thinking of the dark suspicions that the Shadowen bred in all of them, wishing it could be otherwise. “When I was at the Jut with Padishar,” he said, “I was forced to kill a girl who was really a Shadowen.” He looked back at her. “Her name was Teel. My friend Steff was in love with her, and it cost him his life.”

  He told her then of Teel’s betrayals and the eventual confrontation deep within the catacombs of the mountains behind the Jut where he had killed the Shadowen who had been Teel and saved Padishar Creel’s life.

  “What frightens me,” he said, “is that you could be another Teel and Par could end up like Steff.”

  She did not respond, her gaze distant and lost. She might have been looking right through him. There were tears in her eyes.

  He reached back suddenly and drew out the Sword of Leah. Damson watched him without moving, her green eyes fixing on the gleaming blade as he placed it point downward in the earth between them, his hands fastened on the pommel.

  “Put your hands on the flat of the blade, Damson,” he said softly.

  She looked at him without answering, and for a long time she did not move. He waited, listening to the distant sounds of the free-born as they gathered for dinner, listening to the silence closer at hand. The light was fading rapidly now, and there were shadows all about. He felt oddly removed from everything about him, as if he were frozen in time with Damson Rhee.

  Not this girl, he found himself praying. Not again.

  At last she reached out and touched the Sword of Leah, her palms tight against the metal. Then she deliberately closed her fingers about the edge. Morgan watched in horror as the blade cut deep into her flesh, and her blood began to trickle down its length.

  “A Shadowen couldn’t do that, could it?” she whispered.

  He reached down quickly and pried her fingers away. “No,” he said. “Not without triggering the magic.” He lay the talisman aside, tore strips of cloth from his cloak, and began to bind her hands. “You didn’t have to do that,” he reproached her.

  Her smile was faint and wistful. “Didn’t I? Would you have been sure of me otherwise, Morgan Leah? I don’t think so. And if you’re not sure of me, how can we be of help to each other? There has to be trust between us.” She fixed him with her gentle eyes. “Is there now?”

  He nodded quickly. “Yes. I’m sorry, Damson.”

  Her bound hands reached up to clasp his own. “Let me tell you something.” The tears were back in her eyes. “You said that your friend Steff was in love with Teel? Well, Highlander, I am in love with Par Ohmsford.”

  He saw it all then, the reason she had stayed with Par, had given herself so completely to him, following him even into the Pit, watching over him, protecting him. It was what he would have done—had tried to do—for Quickening. Damson Rhee had made a commitment that only death would release.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, thinking how inadequate it sounded.

  Her hands tightened on his and did not let go. They faced each other in the dusk without speaking for a long time. As he held her hands, Morgan was reminded of Quickening, of the way she had felt, of the feelings she had invoked in him. He found that he missed her desperately and would have given anything to have her back again.

  “Enough testing,” Damson whispered. “Let’s talk instead. I’ll tell you everything that’s happened to me. You do the same about yourself. Par and Padishar need us. Maybe together we can come up with a way to help.”

  She squeezed his hands as if there were no pain in her own and gave him an encouraging smile. He bent to retrieve the Sword
of Leah, then started back with her through the trees toward the glow of the cooking fires. His mind was spinning, working through what she had told him, sorting out impressions from facts, trying to glean something useful. Damson was right. The Valeman and the leader of the free-born needed them. Morgan was determined not to let either down.

  But what could he do?

  The smell of food from the cooking fire reached out to him enticingly. For the first time since he had arrived, he was hungry.

  Par and Padishar.

  Padishar first, he thought.

  Chandos had said five days.

  If the Seekers didn’t reach him first …

  It came to him in a rush, the picture so clear in his mind he almost cried out. He reached over impulsively and put his arm around Damson’s shoulders.

  “I think I know how to free Padishar,” he said.

  X

  Five days the Four Horsemen circled the walls of Paranor, and five days Walker Boh stood on the castle battlements and watched. Each dawn they assembled at the west gates, shadows come from the gloom of fading night. One would approach, a different one each time, and strike the gates once in challenge. When Walker failed to appear they would resume their grim vigil, spreading out so that there was one at each compass point, one at each of the main walls, riding in slow, ceaseless cadence, circling like birds of prey. Day and night they rode, specters of gray mist and dark imaginings, silent as thought and certain as time.

  “Incarnations of man’s greatest enemies,” Cogline mused when he saw them for the first time. “Manifestations of our worst fears, the slayers of so many, given shape and form and sent to destroy us.” He shook his head. “Can it be that Rimmer Dall has a sense of humor?”

  Walker didn’t think so. He found nothing amusing about any of it. The Shadowen appeared to possess boundless raw power, the kind of power that would let them become anything. It was neither subtle nor intricate; it was as straightforward and relentless as a flood. It seemed able to build on itself and to sweep aside anything that it found in its path. Walker did not know how powerful the Horsemen were, but he was willing to bet that they were more than a match for him. Rimmer Dall would have sent nothing less to deal with a Druid—even one newly come to the position, uncertain of his own strength, of the extent of his magic, and of the ways it might be made to serve him. At least one of Allanon’s charges to the Ohmsfords had been carried out, and it posed a threat that the Shadowen could not afford to ignore.

  Yet the purpose of the charges remained a mystery that Walker could not solve. Standing atop Paranor’s walls, watching the Four Horsemen circle below, he pondered endlessly why the charges had been given. What was it that the Sword of Shannara was supposed to accomplish? What purpose would it serve to have the Elves brought back into the world of men? What was the reason for returning Paranor and the Druids? Or one Druid at least, he mused darkly. One Druid, made over out of bits and pieces of others. He was an amalgam of those who had come and gone, of their memories, of their strengths and weaknesses, of their lore and history, of their magic’s secrets. He was an infant in his life as a Druid, and he did not yet know how he was supposed to act. Each day he opened new doors on what others before him had known and passed on, knowledge that revealed itself in unexpected glimpses, light coming from the darkened corners of his mind as if let in through shuttered windows thrown wide. He did not understand it all, sometimes doubted it, often questioned its worth. But the flow was relentless, and he was forced to measure and weigh each new revelation, knowing it must have had worth once, accepting that it might again.

  But what role was he supposed to play in the struggle to put an end to the Shadowen? He had become the Druid that Allanon had sought, and he had made himself master of Paranor. Yet what was he supposed to do with this? Surely he had magic now that might be used against the Shadowen—just as the Druids had used magic before to give aid to the Races. He possessed knowledge as well, perhaps more knowledge than any man alive, and the Druids had used this as a weapon, too. But it seemed to Walker that his newfound power lacked any discernible focus, that he needed first to understand the nature of his enemy before he could settle on a way to defeat it.

  Meanwhile, here he was, trapped within his tower fortress where he could not help anyone.

  “They do not try to enter,” Cogline observed at one point after three days of vigilance atop the castle walls. “Why do you think that is?”

  Walker shook his head. “Perhaps they do not need to. As long as we remain locked within, their purpose is served.”

  The old man rubbed his whiskered chin. He had grown older since his release from the half life to which the magic of the Druid Histories had consigned him. He was lined and wrinkled anew, more stooped than before, slower in his walk and speech, frail beyond what his years allowed. Walker did not like what he saw, but said nothing. The old man had given much for him, and what he had given had clearly taken its toll. But he did not complain or choose to talk of it, so there was no reason for Walker to do so either.

  “It may be that they are afraid of the Druid magic,” Walker continued after a moment, his good hand lifting to rest on the battlement stone. “Paranor has always been protected from those that would enter uninvited. The Shadowen may know of this and choose to stay without because of it.”

  “Or perhaps they wait until they have tested the nature and extent of that magic,” Cogline said softly. “They wait to discover how dangerous you are.” He looked at Walker without seeing him, eyes focused somewhere beyond. “Or until they simply grow tired of waiting,” he whispered.

  Walker considered ways in which he might defeat these Shadowen, turning those ways over and over in his mind like artifacts hiding clues to the past. The Black Elfstone was an obvious choice, secreted now in a vault deep within the catacombs of the Keep. But the Elfstone would exact its own price if called upon, and it was not a price that Walker was willing to pay. There was no reason to think that the Elfstone would not work against the Four Horsemen, draining their magic away until nothing remained but ashes. But the nature of the Elfstone required that the stolen magic be transferred into the holder, and Walker had no wish to have the Shadowen magic made part of him.

  There was also the Stiehl, the strange killing blade taken from the assassin Pe Ell at Eldwist, the weapon that could kill anything. But Walter did not relish the prospect of using an assassin’s weapon, especially one with the history of the Stiehl, and thought that if weapons were required, there were plenty at hand that could be used against the Shadowen.

  What he needed most, he knew, was a plan. He had three choices. He could remain safely within Paranor’s walls, hoping to wait the Shadowen out; he could go out and face them; or he could try to slip past them without being seen. The first offered only the faintest possibility of success, and besides, time was not something of which he had an abundance in any case. The second seemed incontestably foolhardy.

  That left the third.

  Five days after the Four Horsemen laid siege to Paranor, Walker Boh decided to attempt an escape.

  Underground.

  He told Cogline of his plan at dinner that night—a dinner comprising some few small stores left over from three centuries gone and frozen in time with the castle, sorely depleted stores that reinforced the importance of breaking the siege. There were tunnels beneath the castle that opened into the forests beyond, concealments known only to Druids past and now to him. He would slip through such a tunnel that night and emerge behind where the Horsemen patrolled the walls. He would be clear of them and gone before they knew he had escaped.

  Cogline frowned and looked doubtful. It seemed entirely too easy to him. Surely the Shadowen would have thought of such a possibility.

  But Walker had made up his mind. Five days of standing about was long enough. Something had to be tried, and this was the best he could come up with. Cogline and Rumor would remain within the Keep. If the Horsemen attempted an assault before Walker returned, they sho
uld slip out the same way he had gone. Cogline reluctantly agreed, bothered by something he refused to discuss, so agitated that Walker came close to pressing for an explanation. But the old man’s enigmatic behavior was nothing new, so in the end Walker let the matter drop.

  He waited for midnight, watching from the walls until late to make certain that the Shadowen kept to their rounds. They did, spectral shapes in the dark below, circling ceaselessly. The fog that had blanketed the valley for the better part of four days had lifted that dawn, and now with the coming of night Walker Boh saw something new in the valley. Far west, where the Dragon’s Teeth turned north into the Streleheim, there were watch fires at the mouth of the Kennon Pass. An army was camped there, blocking all passage. The Federation, Walker thought, staring out across the trees of the forest below, across the hills beyond, to the light. Perhaps their presence in the pass was unrelated to that of the Shadowen at Paranor, but Walker didn’t think so. Knowingly or not, the Federation served the Shadowen cause—a tool for Rimmer Dall and others in the Coalition Council hierarchy—and it was safe to assume that the soldiers in the Kennon had something to do with the Four Horsemen.

  Not that it mattered. Walker Boh wasn’t worried for a moment that Federation soldiers would prove any hindrance to him.

  When midnight came, he left the castle walls and went down through the Keep. He wore clothes as black as night, loose-fitting and serviceable, and carried no weapons. He left Cogline and Rumor peering after him as he entered the fire pit. His memories were Allanon’s and those of Druids gone before, and he found he knew his way as well as if the Keep had always been his home. Doors hidden within the castle stone opened at his touch, and passageways were as familiar as the haunts of Hearthstone in the days before the dreams of Allanon. He found the tunnels that ran beneath the rock on which Paranor rested and worked his way down into the earth. All about him he could hear the steady thrum of the fires contained in the furnaces beneath the Keep, throbbing steadily within their core of rock deep below the castle walls, the only sound within the darkness and silence.