The Wishsong of Shannara Read online

  “Allanon, why are you here?” she asked once more, struggling to keep her hands from shaking.

  The Druid’s eyes lifted again. On the table before him, the oil lamp’s thin flame sputtered. “I want you to come with me into the Eastland to the Mord Wraiths’ keep. I want you to use the wishsong to gain passage into the Maelmord—to find the Ildatch and bring it to me to be destroyed.”

  His listeners stared at him speechlessly.

  “How?” Jair asked finally.

  “The wishsong can subvert even the dark magic,” Allanon replied. “It can alter behavior in any living thing. Even the Maelmord can be made to accept Brin. The wishsong can gain passage for her as one who belongs.”

  Jair’s eyes widened in astonishment. “The wishsong can do all that?”

  But Brin was shaking her head. “The wishsong is just a toy,” she repeated.

  “Is it? Or is that simply the way in which you have used it?” The Druid shook his head slowly. “No, Brin Ohmsford, the wishsong is Elven magic, and it possesses the power of Elven magic. You do not see that yet, but I tell you it is so.”

  “I don’t care what it is or isn’t, Brin’s not going!” Rone looked angry. “You cannot ask her to do something this dangerous!”

  Allanon remained impassive. “I do not have a choice, Prince of Leah. No more choice than I had in asking Shea Ohmsford to go in search of the Sword of Shannara nor Wil Ohmsford to go in quest of the Bloodfire. The legacy of Elven magic that was passed first to Jerle Shannara belongs now to the Ohmsfords. I wish as you do that it were different. We might as well wish that night were day. The wishsong belongs to Brin, and now she must use it.”

  “Brin, listen to me.” Rone turned to the Valegirl. “There is more to the rumors than I have told you. They also speak of what the Mord Wraiths have done to men, of eyes and tongues gone, of minds emptied of all life, and of fire that burns to the bone. I discounted all that until now. I thought it little more than the late-night fireside tales of drunken men. But the Druid makes me think differently. You can’t go with him. You can’t.”

  “The rumors of which you speak are true,” Allanon acknowledged softly. “There is danger. You may even die.” He paused. “But what are we to do if you do not come? Will you hide and hope the Mord Wraiths forget about you? Will you ask the Dwarves to protect you? What happens when they are gone? As with the Warlock Lord, the evil will then come into this land. It will spread until there is no one left to resist it.”

  Jair reached for his sister’s arm. “Brin, if we have to go, at least there will be two of us . . .”

  “There will most certainly not be two of us!” she contradicted him instantly. “Whatever happens, you are staying right here!”

  “We’re all staying right here.” Rone faced the Druid. “We’re not going—any of us. You will have to find another way.”

  Allanon shook his head. “I cannot, Prince of Leah. There is no other way.”

  They were silent then. Brin slumped back in her chair, confused and more than a little frightened. She felt trapped by the sense of necessity that the Druid created within her, by the tangle of obligations he had thrust upon her. They spun in her mind; as they spun, the same thought kept coming back, over and over. The wishsong is only a toy. Elven magic, yes—but still a toy! Harmless! No weapon against an evil that even Allanon could not overcome! Yet her father had always been afraid of the magic. He had warned against its use, cautioning that it was not a thing to be played with. And she herself had determined to discourage Jair’s use of the wishsong . . .

  “Allanon,” she said quietly. The lean face turned. “I have used the wishsong only to change appearance in small ways—to change the turning of leaves or the blooming of flowers. Little things. Even that, I have not done for many months. How can the wishsong be used to change an evil as great as this forest that guards the Ildatch?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation. “I will teach you.”

  She nodded slowly. “My father has always discouraged any use of the magic. He has warned against relying upon it because once he did so, and it changed his life. If he were here, Allanon, he would do as Rone has done and advise me to tell you no. If fact, he would order me to tell you no.”

  The craggy face reflected new weariness. “I know, Valegirl”

  “My father came back from the Westland, from the quest for the Bloodfire, and he put away the Elfstones forever,” she continued, trying to think her way through her confusion as she spoke. “He told me once that he knew even then that the Elven magic had changed him, though he did not see how. He made a promise to himself that he would never use the Elfstones again.”

  “I know this as well.”

  “And still you ask me to come with you?”

  “I do.”

  “Without my being able to consult him first? Without being able to wait for his return? Without even an attempt at an explanation to him?”

  The Druid looked suddenly angry. “I will make this easy for you, Brin Ohmsford. I ask nothing of you that is fair or reasonable, nothing of which your father would approve. I ask that you risk everything on little more than my word that it is necessary that you do so. I ask trust where there is probably little reason to trust. I ask all this and give nothing back. Nothing.”

  He leaned forward then, half-rising from his chair, his face dark and menacing. “But I tell you this. If you think the matter through, you will see that, despite any argument you can put forth against it, you must still come with me!”

  Even Rone did not choose to contradict him this time. The Druid held his position for a moment longer, dark robes spread wide as he braced himself on the table. Then slowly he settled back. There was a worn look to him now, a kind of silent desperation. It was not characteristic of the Allanon Brin’s father had described to her so often, and she was frightened by that.

  “I will think the matter through as you ask,” she agreed, her voice almost a whisper. “But I need this night at least. I have to try to sort through . . . my feelings.”

  Allanon seemed to hesitate a moment, then nodded. “We will talk again in the morning. Consider well, Brin Ohmsford.”

  He started to rise and suddenly Jair was on his feet before him, his Elven face flushed. “Well, what about me? What about my feelings in this? If Brin goes, so do I! I’m not being left behind!”

  “Jair, you can forget . . . !” Brin started to object, but Allanon cut her short with a glance. He rose and came around the table to stand before her brother.

  “You have courage,” he said softly, one hand coming up to rest on the Valeman’s slender shoulder. “But yours is not the magic that I need on this journey. Your magic is illusion, and illusion will not get us past the Maelmord.”

  “But you might be wrong,” Jair insisted. “Besides, I want to help!”

  Allanon nodded. “You shall help. There is something that you must do while Brin and I are gone. You must be responsible for the safety of your parents, for seeing to it that the Mord Wraiths do not find them before I have destroyed the Ildatch. You must use the wishsong to protect them if the dark ones come looking. Will you do that?”

  Brin did not care much for the Druid’s assumption that it was already decided that she would be going with him into the Eastland, and she cared even less for the suggestion that Jair ought to use the Elven magic as a weapon.

  “I will do it if I must,” Jair was saying, a grudging tone in his voice. “But I would rather come with you.”

  Allanon’s hand dropped from his shoulder. “Another time, Jair.”

  “It may be another time for me as well,” Brin announced pointedly. “Nothing has been determined yet, Allanon.”

  The dark face turned slowly. “There will be no other time for you, Brin,” he said softly. “Your time is here. You must come with me. You will see that by morning.”

  Nodding once, he started past them toward the front entry, dark robes wrapped close.

  “Where are you going, Allanon?
” the Valegirl called after him.

  “I will be close by,” he replied and did not slow. A moment later he was gone. Brin, Jair, and Rone Leah stared after him.

  Rone was the first to speak. “Well, now what?”

  Brin looked at him. “Now we go to bed.” She rose from the table.

  “Bed!” The highlander was dumbfounded. “How can you go to bed after all that?” He waved vaguely in the direction of the departed Druid.

  She brushed back her long black hair and smiled wanly. “How can I do anything else, Rone? I am tired, confused, and frightened, and I need to rest.”

  She came over to him and kissed him lightly on the forehead. “Stay here for tonight.” She kissed Jair as well and hugged him. “Go to bed, both of you.”

  Then she hurried down the hall to her bedroom and closed the door tightly behind her.

  She slept for a time, a dream-filled, restless sleep in which subconscious fears took shape and came for her like wraiths. Chased and harried, she came awake with a start, the pillow damp with sweat. She rose then, slipped on her robe for warmth and passed silently through the darkened rooms of her home. At the dining room table she lighted an oil lamp, the flame turned low, seated herself, and stared wordlessly into the shadows.

  A sense of helplessness curled about Brin. What was she to do? She remembered well the stories told her by her father and even her great-grandfather Shea Ohmsford when she was just a little girl—of what it had been like when the Warlock Lord had come down out of the Northland, his armies sweeping into Callahorn, the darkness of his coming enfolding the whole of the land. Where the Warlock Lord passed, the light died. Now, it was happening again: border wars between Gnomes and Dwarves; the Silver River poisoned and with it the land it fed; darkness falling over the Eastland. All was as it had been seventy-five years ago. This time, too, there was a way to stop it, to prevent the dark from spreading. Again, it was an Ohmsford who was being called upon to take that way—summoned, it seemed, because there was no other hope.

  She hunched down into the warmth of her robe. Seemed—that was the key word where Allanon was concerned. How much of this was what it seemed? How much of what she had been told was truth—and how much hall-truth? The stories of Allanon were all the same. The Druid possessed immense power and knowledge and shared but a fraction of each. He told what he felt he must and never more. He manipulated others to his purpose, and often that purpose was kept carefully concealed. When one traveled Allanon’s path, one did so knowing that the way would be kept dark.

  Yet the way of the Mord Wraiths might be darker still, if they were indeed another form of the evil destroyed by the Sword of Shannara. She must weigh the darkness of one against the darkness of the other. Allanon might be devious and manipulative in his dealings with the Ohmsfords, but he was a friend to the Four Lands. What he did, he did in an effort to protect the races, not to bring them harm. And he had always been right before in his warnings. Surely there was no reason to believe that he was not right this time as well.

  But was the wishsong’s magic strong enough to penetrate this barrier conceived by the evil? Brin found the idea incredible. What was the wishsong but a side effect of using the Elven magic? It had not even the strength of the Elfstones. It was not a weapon. Yet Allanon saw it as the only means by which the dark magic could be passed—the only means, when even his power had failed him.

  Bare feet padded softly from the dining room entry, startling her. Rone Leah slipped clear of the shadows, crossed to the table, and seated himself.

  “I couldn’t sleep either,” he muttered, blinking in the light of the oil lamp. “What have you decided?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I don’t know what to decide. I keep asking myself what my father would do.”

  “That’s easy.” Rone grunted. “He would tell you to forget the whole idea. It’s too dangerous. He’d also tell you—as he’s told both of us many times—that Allanon is not to be trusted.”

  Brin brushed back her long black hair and smiled faintly. “You didn’t hear what I said, Rone. I said, I keep asking myself what my father would do—not what my father would tell me to do. It’s not the same thing, you know. If he were being asked to go, what would he do? Wouldn’t he go, just as he went when Allanon came to him in Storlock twenty years ago, knowing that Allanon was not altogether truthful, knowing that there was more than he was being told, but knowing, too, that he had magic that could be useful and that no one other than he had that magic?”

  The highlander shifted uneasily. “But, Brin, the wishsong is . . . well, it’s not the same as the Elfstones. You said it yourself. It’s just a toy.”

  “I know that. That is what makes all of this so difficult—that and the fact that my father would be appalled if he thought even for a minute that I would consider trying to use the magic as a weapon of any sort.” She paused. “But Elven magic is a strange thing. Its power is not always clearly seen. Sometimes it is obscured. It was so with the Sword of Shannara. Shea Ohmsford never saw the way in which such a small thing could defeat an enemy as great as the Warlock Lord—not until it was put to the test. He simply went on faith . . .”

  Rone sat forward sharply. “I’ll say it again—this journey is too dangerous. The Mord Wraiths are too dangerous. Even Allanon can’t get past them; he told you so himself! It would be different if you had the use of the Elfstones. At least the Stones have power enough to destroy creatures such as these. What would you do with the wishsong if you came up against them—sing to them the way you used to do to that old maple?”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Rone.” Brin’s eyes narrowed.

  Rone shook his head quickly. “I’m not making fun of you. I care too much about you to ever do that. I just don’t feel the wishsong is any kind of protection against something like the Wraiths!”

  Brin looked away, staring out through curtained windows into the night, watching the shadowed movements of the trees in the wind, rhythmic and graceful.

  “Neither do I,” she admitted softly.

  They sat in silence for a time, lost in their separate thoughts. Allanon’s dark, tired face hung suspended in the forefront of Brin’s mind, a haunting specter that accused. You must come. You will see that by morning. She heard him speak the words again, so certain as he said them. But what was it that would persuade her that this was so? she asked herself. Reasoning only seemed to lead her deeper into confusion. The arguments were all there, all neatly arranged, both those for going and those for staying, and yet the balance did not shift in either direction.

  “Would you go?” she asked Rone suddenly. “If it were you with the wishsong?”

  “Not a chance,” he said at once—a bit too quickly, a bit too flip.

  You’re lying, Rone, she told herself. Because of me, because you don’t want me to go, you’re lying. If you thought it through, you would admit to the same doubts facing me.

  “What’s going on?” a weary voice asked from the darkness.

  They turned and found Jair standing in the hall, squinting sleepily into the light. He came over to them and stood looking from face to face.

  “We were just talking, Jair,” Brin told him.

  “About going after the magic book?”

  “Yes. Why don’t you go on back to bed?”

  “Are you going? After the book, I mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s not going if she possesses an ounce of common sense,” Rone grumbled. “It’s entirely too dangerous a journey. You tell her, tiger. She’s the only sister you’ve got, and you don’t want the black walkers getting hold of her.”

  Brin shot him an angry glance. “Jair doesn’t have anything to say about this, so quit trying to scare him.”

  “Him? Who’s trying to scare him?” Rone’s lean face was flushed. “It’s you I’m trying to scare, for cat’s sake!”

  “Anyway, the black walkers don’t scare me,” Jair declared firmly.

  “Well, they ought to!
” Brin snapped.

  Jair shrugged, yawning. “Maybe you should wait until we have a chance to talk with father. We could send him a message or something.”

  “Now that makes good sense,” Rone added his approval. “At least wait until Wil and Eretria have a chance to talk this over with you.”

  Brin sighed. “You heard what Allanon said. There isn’t enough time for that.”

  The highlander folded his arms across his chest. “He could make the time if it were necessary. Brin, your father might have a different slant on all this. After all, he’s had the benefit of experience—and he’s used the Elven magic.”

  “Brin, he could use the Elfstones!” Jair’s eyes snapped open. “He could go with you. He could protect you with the Elfstones, just as he protected the Elven girl Amberle!”

  Brin saw it then; those few words gave her the answer that she had been looking for. Allanon was right. She must go with him. But the reason was not one she had considered until now. Her father would insist on accompanying her. He would take the Elfstones from their hiding place and go with her in order that she should be protected. And that was exactly what she must avoid. Her father would be forced to break his pledge never to use the Elfstones again. He probably wouldn’t even agree to her accompanying Allanon. He would go instead in order that she, her mother, and Jair be kept safe.

  “I want you to go back to bed, Jair,” she said suddenly.

  “But I just got . . .”

  “Go on. Please. We’ll talk this all out in the morning.”

  Jair hesitated. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be only a few minutes, I promise. I just want to sit here alone for a time.”

  Jair studied her suspiciously for a moment, then nodded. “All right. Good night.” He turned and walked back into the darkness. “Just be sure you come to bed, too.”

  Brin’s eyes found Rone’s. They had known each other since they were small children, and there were times when each knew what the other was thinking without a word being said. This was one such time.