The Heritage of Shannara (136 page)

She could sense it watching.

It frightened her more than she cared to admit, and she could not seem to dispel her fear. It was an insidious shadow that crept through the corridors of her mind, whispering words whose meanings were unintelligible
but whose intent was clear. She felt oddly bereft of her skills and her training, as if all had been stripped from her at the moment she had arrived. Even her instincts seemed muddled. She could not explain it. It made no sense. Nothing had happened, and yet here she was, her confidence shredded and scattered like straw. Another woman might have been able to take comfort from the fact that she possessed the legendary Elfstones—but not Wren. The magic was foreign to her, a thing to be mistrusted. It belonged to a past she had only heard about, a history that had been lost for generations. It belonged to someone else, someone she did not know. The Elf-stones, she thought darkly, had nothing to do with her.

The words brought a chill to the pit of her stomach. They, of course, were a lie.

She put her hands over her face, hiding herself away. Doubts crowded in on every side, and she wondered briefly, futilely, whether her decision to come to Morrowindl had been wrong.

Finally she took her hands away and edged forward until she was close enough in the darkness to see clearly Garth's bearded face. The big man watched unmoving as she lifted her hands and began to sign.

Do you think I made a mistake by insisting we come here?
she asked him.

He studied her for a moment, then shook his head.
It is never a mistake to do something you feel is necessary.

I did feel it necessary.

I know.

“But I did not come just to discover if the Elves are still alive,” she said, fingers moving. “I came to find out about my parents, to learn who they were and what became of them.”

He nodded without replying.

“I didn't use to care, you know,” she went on, trying to explain. “It didn't use to make any difference. I was a Rover, and that was enough. Even after Cogline found us and we went east to the Hadeshorn and met with the Shade of Allanon, even when I began asking about the Elves, hoping to learn something of what had happened to them, I wasn't thinking about my parents. I didn't have any idea where it was all leading. I just went along, asking my questions, learning finally of the Addershag, then of the signal fire. I was just following a trail, curious to see where it would lead.”

She paused. “But the Elfstones, Garth—that was something I hadn't counted on. When I discovered that they were real—that they were the Elf-stones of Shea and Wil Ohmsford—everything changed. So much power— and they belonged to my parents. Why? How did my parents come by them in the first place? What was their purpose in giving them to me? You see, don't you? I won't ever have any answers unless I find out who my parents were.”

Garth signed,
I understand. I wouldn't be here with you if I didn't.

“I know that,” she whispered, her throat tightening. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”

They were silent for a moment, eyes turned away. Something huge splashed far out in the water. The sound reverberated momentarily and disappeared. Wren pushed at the rough sand with her boot.

Garth,
she signed, catching his eye.
Is there anything about my parents that you haven't told me?

Garth said nothing, his face expressionless.

“Because if there is,” she signed, “you have to tell me now. You cannot let me continue with this search not knowing.”

Garth shifted, his head lowering into shadow. When he lifted it again, his fingers began to move.
I would not keep anything from you that was not necessary. I keep nothing from you now about your parents. What I know, I have told you. Believe me.

“I do,” she affirmed quietly. Yet the answer troubled her. Was there something else he kept from her, something he considered necessary? Did she have the right to demand to know what it was?

She shook her head. He would never hurt her. That was the important thing. Not Garth.

We will discover the truth about your parents,
he signed suddenly.
I promise.

She reached out briefly to take his hands, then released them. “Garth,” she said, “you are the best friend I shall ever have.”

She kept watch then while he slept, feeling comforted by his words, reassured that she was not alone after all, that they were united in their purpose. Hidden by the darkness, Morrowindl continued to brood, sinister and threatening. But she was not so intimidated now, her resolve strengthened, her purpose clear. It would be as it had been for so many years—she and Garth against whatever waited. It would be enough.

When Garth woke at midnight, she went quickly to sleep.

Sunrise brightened the skies with pale silver, but Morrowindl was a black wall that shut that light away. The island stood between the dawn on the one hand and Garth and Wren on the other as if seeking to lock the Rovers permanently in shadow. The beach was still and empty, a black line that stretched away into the distance like a scattered bolt of mourning crepe. Rocks and cliffs jutted out of the green tangle of the jungle, poking forth like trapped creatures seeking to breathe. Killeshan thrust skyward in mute silence, steam curling from fissures down the length of its lava-rock skin. Far distant to the north, a glimpse of the island's desert side revealed a harsh, broken surface over which a blanket of sulfuric mist had been thrown and on which nothing moved.

The Rover girl and her companion washed and ate a hurried breakfast, anxious to be off. The day's heat was already beginning to settle in, chasing the ocean's breezes back across her waters. Seabirds glided and swooped about them, casting for food. Crabs scuttled about the rocks cautiously, seeking shelter in cracks and crevices. All about, the island was waking up.

Wren and Garth shouldered their packs, checked the readiness of their weapons, glanced briefly at each other, and started in.

The beach faded into a short patch of tall grass that in turn gave way to a forest of towering acacia. The trunks of the ancient trees rose skyward like pillars, running back until distance gave them the illusion of being a wall. The floor of the forest was barren and cleared of scrub; storms and risen tides had washed away everything but the giant trees. Within the acacia, all was still. The sun was masked yet in the east, and shadows lay over everything. Wren and Garth walked slowly, steadily ahead, watchful for any form of danger. They passed out of the acacia and into a stand of bamboo. They skirted it until they found a narrowing of the growth and used short swords to hack their way through. From there they proceeded along a meadow where the grasses were waist-high and wildflowers grew in colorful profusion amid the green. Ahead, the forest rose along the slopes of Killeshan, trees and brush amid odd formations of lava rock, all of it disappearing finally into the vog.

The first day passed without incident. They traveled through open country whenever they could find it, choosing a path that let them see what they were walking into. They camped that night in a meadow, comfortably settled on high ground that again gave them a clear view in all directions. The second day passed in the same manner as the first. They made good progress, navigating rivers and streams and climbing ravines and foothills without difficulty. There was no sign of the monsters that Tiger Ty had warned them about. There were brightly colored snakes and spiders that were most certainly poisonous, but the Rovers had dealt with their cousins in other parts of the world and knew enough to avoid any contact. They heard the harsh cough of moor cats, but saw nothing. Once or twice predatory birds flew overhead, but after a series of cursory passes these hunters soon sped away in search of easier prey. It rained frequently and heavily, but never for very long at one time, and except for threatening to trap them in dry riverbeds with an unexpected flash flood or to drop them into newly formed sinkholes, the rain did little more than cool them off.

All the while the haze blanketing Killeshan's slopes drew closer, a promise of harsher things to come.

The third day began in the same way as the two before, shadowed and still and brooding. The sun rose and was visible briefly through the trees ahead, a warm and inviting beacon. Then abruptly it disappeared as the lower edges of the vog descended. The haze was thin and untroubling at first, not much more than a thickening of the air, a graying of the light. But slowly it began to deepen, gathering in patches that screened away everything more than thirty feet from where they walked. The country grew rougher as the shoreline lowlands and grassy foothills gave way to slides and drops, and the lava rock turned crumbly and loose. Footing grew uncertain and the pace slowed.

They ate a hurried, troubled, silent lunch and started out again cautiously. They tied thick hides about their legs above the boot tops and below the knees to protect against snakes. They pulled on their heavy cloaks and wrapped them close. The heat of the lower slopes was absent here, and
the air—which they had thought would turn warm as they moved closer to Killeshan—grew cold. Garth took the lead, deliberately shielding Wren. Shadows moved all about them in the mist, things that lacked shape and form but were there nevertheless. The familiar sounds of birds and insects died away, fading into an expectant hush. Dusk fell early, a draining away of light, and rain began to fall in steady sheets.

They made their camp at the foot of an ancient koa that fronted a small clearing. With their backs to the tree, they ate their dinner and watched the light deepen from smoke to charcoal. The rain slowed to an intermittent drizzle, and mist began to creep down the mountainside in probing tendrils. Already the forest was beginning to turn to jungle, the trees thickly grown and tangled with vines, the ground damp and soft and yielding. Slugs and beetles crawled through brush and rotting logs. The ground was dry beneath the koa, but the dampness in the air seemed to penetrate everywhere. There was no possibility of a fire. Wren and Garth hunched within their cloaks and pushed closer to each other. The night settled down about them, turning the world an inky black.

Wren offered to stand the first watch, too edgy to sleep. Garth acquiesced without comment. He pulled up his knees, put his head on his crossed arms, and was asleep almost immediately.

Wren sat staring into the blackness. The trees and mist screened away any light from moon and stars, and even after her eyes had adjusted it was impossible to see more than a dozen feet from where she kept watch. Shadows drifted at the periphery of her vision, brief, quick, and suggestive. Sounds darted out of the haze to challenge and tease—the shrill call of night birds, the click of insects, scrapes and rustlings, huffings and snarls. The low cough of hunting cats came from somewhere distant. She could smell faintly the sulfur fumes of Killeshan, wafting on the air, mingling with the thicker, more pungent scents of the jungle. All around her an invisible world was waking up.

Let it,
she thought defiantly.

The air grew still as even the drizzle faded away and only fog remained. Time slipped away. The sounds slowed and softened, and there was a sense that everything out there in the blackness lay in wait, that everything watched. She was aware that the shadows at the edge of the encroaching mist had faded away. Garth was snoring softly. She shifted her cramped body but made no effort to rise. She liked the feel of the tree against her back and Garth pressing close. She hated how the island made her feel— exposed, vulnerable, unprotected. It was the newness, she told herself. It was the unfamiliarity of the terrain, the isolation from her own country, the memory of Tiger Ty's warning that there were monsters here. It would take time to adjust …

She left the thought unfinished as she saw the silhouette of something huge appear at the edge of the mist. It walked upright on two legs momentarily, then dropped down on four. It stopped and she knew it was looking
at her. The hair on the back of her neck prickled, and she edged her hand down until her fingers closed about the long knife at her waist.

She waited.

The thing that watched did not move. It seemed to be waiting with her.

Then she saw another of the shadows appear, similar to the first. And another. And a fourth. They gathered in the darkness and went still, invisible eyes glittering. Wren took slow, deep breaths. She thought about waking Garth, but told herself over and over that she would wait just one more minute, just long enough to see what would happen.

But nothing happened. The minutes crawled past, and the shadows stayed where they were. Wren wondered how many were out there. Then she wondered if they were behind her where she couldn't see them, sneaking up until they were close enough to …

She turned quickly and looked. There was nothing there. At least, nothing within the limited range of her vision.

She turned back again. She knew suddenly that the things in the darkness were waiting to see what she would do, trying to ascertain how dangerous she might be. If she sat there long enough they would grow impatient and decide to test her. She wondered how much time she had. She wondered what it would take to discourage them. If the monsters were here already, only three nights off the beach, they would be there every night from here on in, watching and waiting. And there would be others. There were bound to be.

Wren's blood pumped through her, racing as quickly as her thoughts. Together, Garth and she were a match for most things. But they could not afford to fight everything they came across.

The shadows had begun to move again, restless. She heard murmurings, not words exactly, but something. She could feel movement all about her, something other than the shadows, things she could not see. The inhabitants of the jungle had discovered them and were gathering. She heard a growl, low and menacing. Beside her, Garth shifted in his sleep, turning away.

Wren's face felt hot.

Do something,
she whispered to herself.
You have to do something.