The Wishsong of Shannara Page 6

  When the raft was finished, he carried it down to the river’s edge and suddenly recalled one of the lessons taught to him by the old tracker. They had been talking of ways to throw off a pursuit. Water was the best disguise of one’s tracks, the old man had announced in his cryptic way. Couldn’t follow tracks through water—unless, of course, you were stupid enough to try losing a pursuer in water so shallow that your footprints left their mark in the mud. But deep water—ah, that was the best. The current always took you downstream, and even if your pursuer tracked you to the water’s edge and knew you’d gone across—didn’t have to go across, of course, but that was another trick—he’d still have to find your trail on the other side. So—and here was glimmer of genius to the game—the very smartest quarry would wade upstream, then swim the deep water so that he would come out still above the point on the far bank where his tracks ended. Because the hunter knew you’d be carried downstream, too, didn’t he—so where do you think he would be looking? He wouldn’t think to look upstream right away.

  Jair had always been impressed with that bit of trickery and resolved now to put it to the test. Maybe he wasn’t being followed, but on the other hand, he couldn’t be sure. He was still two days from Leah. If someone had come after him, this device of the old tracker would give him a bigger head start yet.

  So he stripped off his boots, tucked them under one arm with the raft, then waded upstream several hundred yards to where the channel narrowed. Far enough, he decided. He took off the rest of his clothing, placed it on the raft and pushed off into the cold waters of the river.

  The current caught him almost at once, pulling him downstream at a rapid pace. He let it take him, swimming with it, the raft held firmly in his trailing hand, angling as he swam toward the far bank. Bits of deadwood and brush swirled past him, rough and chill to the touch, and the sounds of the forest faded into the churning rush of the water. Overhead, the night sky darkened as the sun slipped below the treeline. Jair kicked steadily on, the far bank drawing closer.

  Then at last his feet touched bottom, kicking into the soft mud, and he stood up, the night air chill against his skin. Snatching his clothes from the raft, he shoved it back into the river’s current and watched it swirl away. A moment later he was back on dry land, brushing the water from his body and slipping back into his clothes. Insects buzzed past him, bits of sound in the dark. On the bank from which he had come, the forest trees were fading stalks of black in the night’s deepening haze.

  Within those dark stalks, something suddenly moved.

  Jair froze, his eyes fixed on the spot from which the movement had come. But it was gone now, whatever it had been. He took a deep breath. It had looked—just for a moment—to be a man.

  Carefully, slowly, he backed into the shelter of the trees behind him, still watching the other bank, waiting for the movement to come again. It did not. He finished dressing hurriedly, checked to be certain that the Elfstones were still tucked safely within his tunic, then turned and trotted soundlessly into the forest. He was probably mistaken, he told himself.

  He walked all night, relying again on the moon and stars visible in small patches of forest sky to point him in the right direction. He traveled at a slow trot where the forest thinned, less certain than before that no one had come after him. When he had been alone with the memory of those few moments in his home with that black thing behind him, he had felt secure. But the idea that someone or something was back there, following him, brought back the sense of panic. Even in the cool autumn night, he was sweating, his senses sharp with fear. Time and again, his thoughts wandered back to Brin, and he found himself imagining her to be as alone as he—alone and hunted. He wished she were there with him.

  When sunrise came, he kept walking. He was not yet clear of the Duln, and the sense of uneasiness was still with him.

  He was tired, but not so tired that he felt the need to sleep just yet. He walked on while the sun rose before him in a golden haze, thin streamers of brightness slipping down into the forest gray, reflecting rainbow colors from the drying leaves and emerald moss. From time to time he found himself glancing back, watching.

  Several hours into morning, the forest ended and rolling grasslands appeared, a threshold to the distant blue screen of the highlands. It was warm and friendly here, less confining than the forest, and Jair felt immediately more at ease. As he walked further into the grasslands, he began to recognize the countryside about him. He had come this way before on a visit to Leah just a year ago when Rone had brought him to his hunting lodge at the foot of the highlands where they had stayed and fished the mist lakes. The lodge lay another two hours eastward, but it offered a soft bed and shelter for the remainder of the day so that he might set out again refreshed with nightfall. The idea of the bed decided him.

  Disregarding the weariness he felt, Jair continued to march east through the grasslands, the rise of the highlands broadening before him as he drew closer. Once or twice he looked back into the countryside through which he had come, but each time the land lay empty.

  It was midday when he reached the lodge, a timber and stone house set back within a tall stand of pine at the edge of the highland forests. The lodge sat upon a slope overlooking the grasslands, but was hidden by the trees until approached within hailing distance. Jair stumbled wearily up the stone steps to the lodge door, turned to locate the key that Rone kept concealed in a crevice in the stones, then saw that the lock was broken. Cautiously he lifted the latch and peered in. The building was empty.

  Of course it was empty, he grumbled to himself, eyes heavy with the need for sleep. Why wouldn’t it be?

  He closed the door behind him, glanced briefly about at the immaculate interior—wood and leather furniture, shelves of stores and cooking ware, ale bar, and stone fireplace—and moved gratefully down the short hallway at the rear of the main room that led to the bedrooms. He stopped at the first door he came to, released the latch, pushed his way in, and collapsed on the broad, feather-stuffed bed.

  In seconds, he was asleep.

  It was almost dark when he came awake, and the autumn sky was deep blue, laced with dying silver sunlight through the curtained bedroom window. A noise brought him awake, a small scuffling sound—boots passing over wooden planking.

  Without thinking, he was on his feet, still half-asleep as he walked quickly to the bedroom door and peered out. The darkened room at the front of the lodge stood empty, bathed in shadow. Jair blinked and stared through the dusk. Then he saw something else.

  The front door stood open.

  He stepped out into the hallway in disbelief, sleep-filled eyes blinking.

  “Taking another walk, boy?” a familiar voice asked from behind.

  Frantically he whirled—far too slowly. Something hammered into the side of his face, and lights exploded before his eyes. He fell to the floor and into blackness.

  V

  It was still summer where the Mermidon flowed down out of Callahorn and emptied into the vast expanse of the Rainbow Lake. It was green and fresh, a mix of grassland and forest, foothill and mountain. Water from the river and its dozens of tributaries fed the earth and kept it moist. Mist from the lake drifted north with each sunrise, dissipated, and settled into the land, giving life beyond the summer season. Sweet, damp smells permeated the air, and autumn was yet a stranger.

  Brin Ohmsford sat alone on a rise overlooking the juncture of lake and river and was at peace. The day was almost gone, and the sun was a brilliant reddish gold flare on the western horizon, its light staining crimson the silver waters that stretched away before her. No wind broke the calm of the coming evening, and the lake’s surface was mirrorlike and still. High overhead, its bands of color a sharper hue against the coming gray of night where the eastern sky darkened, the wondrous rainbow from which the lake took its name arched from shoreline to shoreline. Cranes and geese glided gracefully through the fading light, their cries haunting in the deep silence.

  Brin’s tho
ughts drifted. It had been four days since she had left her home and come eastward on a journey that would take her to the deep Anar, farther than she had ever gone before. It seemed odd that she knew so little about the journey, even now. Four days had gone, and she was still little more than a child who gripped a mother’s hand, trusting blindly. From Shady Vale they had gone north through the Duln, east along the banks of the Rappahalladran, north again, and then east, following the shoreline of the Rainbow Lake to where the Mermidon emptied down. Never once had Allanon offered a word of explanation.

  Both Rone and she had asked the Druid to explain, of course. They had asked their questions time and again, but the Druid had brushed them aside. Later, he would tell them. Your questions will be answered later. For now, simply follow after me. So they had followed as he had bidden them, wary and increasingly distrustful, promising themselves that they would have their explanations before the Eastland was reached.

  Yet the Druid gave them little cause to believe that their promise would be fulfilled. Enigmatic and withdrawn, he kept them from him. In the daytime, when they traveled, he rode before them, and it was clear that he preferred to ride alone. At night, when they camped, he left them and moved into the shadows. He neither ate nor slept, behavior that seemed to emphasize the differences between them and thereby widen the distance. He watched over them like a hawk over its prey, never leaving them alone to stray.

  Until now, she corrected. On this evening of the fourth day, Allanon unexpectedly had left them. They had encamped here, where the Mermidon fed into the Rainbow Lake, and the Druid had stalked off into the woodlands bordering the river’s waters and disappeared without a word of explanation. Valegirl and highlander had watched him go, staring after in disbelief. At last, when it became apparent that he had indeed left them—for how long, they could only guess—they resolved to waste no further time worrying about him and turned their attention to preparing the evening meal. Three days of eating fish pulled first from the waters of the Rappahalladran and then from the waters of the Rainbow Lake had blunted temporarily their enthusiasm for fish. So armed with ash bow and arrows, a weapon Menion Leah had favored, Rone had gone in search of different fare. Brin had taken a few minutes to gather wood for a cooking fire, then settled herself on this rise and let the solitude of the moment slip over her.

  Allanon! He was an enigma that defied resolution. Committed to the preservation of the land, he was a friend to her people, a benefactor to the races, and a protector against evil they could not alone withstand. Yet what friend used people as Allanon did? Why keep so carefully concealed the reasons for all he did? He seemed at times as much enemy, malefactor, and destroyer as that which he claimed to stand against.

  The Druid himself had told her father the story of the old world of faerie from which all the magic had come along with creatures who wielded it. Good or bad, black or white, the magic was the same in the sense that its power was rooted in the strength, wisdom, and purpose of the user. After all, what had been the true difference between Allanon and the Warlock Lord in their struggle to secure mastery over the Sword of Shannara? Each had been a Druid, learning the magic from the books of the old world. The difference was in the character, of the user, for where one had been corrupted by the power, the other had stayed pure.

  Perhaps. And perhaps not. Her father would argue the matter, she knew, maintaining that the Druid had been corrupted by the power as surely as the Dark Lord, if only in a different way. For Allanon was also governed in his life by the power he wielded and by the secrets of its use. If his sense of responsibility was of a higher sort and his purpose less selfish, he was nevertheless as much its victim. Indeed, there was something strangely sad about Allanon, despite his harsh, almost threatening demeanor. She thought for a time about the sense of sadness that the Druid invoked in her—a sadness her father had surely never felt—and she wondered how it was that she felt it so keenly.

  “I’m back!”

  She turned, startled. But it was only Rone, calling up to her from the campsite in the pine grove below the rise. She climbed to her feet and started down.

  “I see that the Druid hasn’t returned yet,” the highlander said as she came up to him. He had a pair of wild hens slung over one shoulder and dropped them to the ground. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and he won’t come back at all.”

  She stared at him. “Maybe that wouldn’t be so lucky.” He shrugged. “Depends on how you look at it.”

  “Tell me how you look at it, Rone.”

  He frowned. “All right. I don’t trust him.”

  “And why is it that you don’t?”

  “Because of what he pretends to be: protector against the Warlock Lord and the Bearers of the Skull; protector against the Demons released from the old world, of faerie; and now protector against the Mord Wraiths. But always, it’s with the aid of the Ohmsford family and their friends, take note. I know the history, too, Brin. It’s always the same. He appears unexpectedly, warning of a danger that threatens the races, which only a member of the Ohmsford family can help put an end to. Heirs to the Elven house of Shannara and to the magics that belong to it—those are the Ohmsfords. First the Sword of Shannara, then the Elfstones and now the wishsong. But somehow things are never quite what they seem, are they?”

  Brin shook her head slowly. “What are you saying, Rone?”

  “I’m saying that the Druid comes out of nowhere with a story designed to secure Shea or Wil Ohmsford’s aid—and now your aid—and each time it’s the same. He tells only what he must. He gives away only as much as he needs give away. He keeps back the rest; he hides a part of the truth. I don’t trust him. He plays games with people’s lives!”

  “And you believe that he’s doing that with us?”

  Rone took a deep breath. “Don’t you?”

  Brin was silent a moment before answering. “I’m not sure.”

  “Then you don’t trust him either?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  The highlander stared at her a moment, then slowly settled himself on the ground across from her, folding his long legs before him. “Well, which way is it, Brin? Do you trust him or don’t you?”

  She sat down as well. “I guess I haven’t really decided.”

  “Then what are you doing here, for cat’s sake?”

  She smiled at his obvious disgust. “I’m here, Rone, because he needs me—I believe that much of what I have been told. The rest I’m not sure about. The part he keeps hidden, I have to discover for myself.”

  “If you can.”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” he said flatly.

  She smiled, rose, and came over to where he sat. Gently she kissed his forehead. “That’s why I wanted you here with me, Rone Leah—to be my protector. Isn’t that why you came?” He flushed bright scarlet and muttered something unintelligible, and she laughed in spite of herself. “Why don’t we leave this discussion until later and do something with those hens. I’m starved.”

  She built a small cooking fire while Rone cleaned the hens. Then they cooked and ate the birds together with a small portion of cheese and ale. They ate their meal in silence, seated back atop the small rise, watching the night sky darken and the stars and gibbous moon cast their pale silver light on the waters of the lake.

  By the time they had finished, night had fallen and Allanon still had not returned.

  “Brin, you remember what you said before, about my being here to protect you?” Rone asked her after they had returned to the fire. She nodded. “Well, it’s true—I am here to protect you. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you—not ever. I guess you know that.”

  He hesitated, and she smiled through the dark. “I know.”

  “Well.” He shifted about uneasily, his lands lifting the battered scabbard that housed the Sword of Leah. “There’s another reason I’m here, too. I hope you can understand this. I’m here to prove something to myself.” He hesitated again, groping for
the words to explain. “I am a Prince of Leah, but that’s just a title. I was born into it, just like my brothers—and they’re all older. And this sword, Brin.” He held up the scabbard and its weapon. “It isn’t really mine; it’s my great-grandfather’s. It’s Menion Leah’s sword. It always has been, ever since he carried it in search of the Sword of Shannara. I carry it—the ash bow, too—because Menion carried them and I’d like to be what he was. But I’m not.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said quickly.

  “That’s just the point,” he continued. “I’ve never done anything to find out what I could be. And that’s partly why I’m here. I want to know. This is how Menion found out—by going on a quest, as protector to Shea Ohmsford. Maybe I can do it this way, too.”

  Brin smiled. “Maybe you can. In any case, I’m glad you told me.” She paused. “Now I’ll tell you a secret. I came for the same reason. I have something to prove to myself, too. I don’t know if I can do what Allanon expects of me; I don’t know if I am strong enough. I was born with the wishsong, but I have never known what I was meant to do with it. I believe there is a reason for my having the magic. Maybe I will learn that reason from Allanon.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “So you see, we’re not so different after all, are we, Rone?”

  They talked a while longer, growing drowsy as the evening lengthened and the weariness of the day’s travel overcame them. Then at last their talk gave way to silence, and they spread their bedding. Clear and cool, the autumn night wrapped them in its solitude and peace as they stretched out next to the dark embers of the fire and pulled their blankets close.