The Heritage of Shannara (180 page)

With help from Triss, she got Garth to his feet once more and they started out. It was past midday, the light faint and hazy through the screen of vog, the heat a blanket of sweltering damp. Stresa led, working his way doggedly through the jungle's maze, choosing a path that gave those following a chance to maneuver with Garth. The In Ju seemed empty, as if the death of the Wisteron had killed everything that lived within it. But the silence was mostly a response to the earth tremors, Wren thought. The creatures of Morrowindl sensed that all was not well, and for the moment at least they had suspended their normal activities and gone into hiding, waiting to discover what would happen.

She watched Garth's face as they walked, saw the intensity of his eyes, the mask of pain that stretched his skin tight across his bones. He did not look at her, his gaze fixed purposefully on the path ahead. He was keeping upright through sheer determination.

It was twilight by the time they cleared the In Ju and passed into the forested hill country beyond. They found a clearing with a spring, and she cleaned her giant friend's wounds anew. There was nothing to eat; all of their provisions had been consumed or lost, and they were uncertain which of the island's roots and tree fruit was safe. They had to make do with spring water. Triss found enough dry wood to make a fire, but it began to rain almost immediately, and within seconds everything was soaked. They huddled back within the shelter of a broad-limbed koa, shoulder to shoulder against the encroaching dark. After a time, Stresa moved out to where he could keep watch, muttering something about being the only one left who was fit for the job. Wren didn't argue the point; she was half-inclined to agree. The light faded steadily from silver to gray to black. The forest was transformed, suddenly alive with movement as the need for food brought its creatures forth to hunt, but nothing that went abroad made any attempt to approach their refuge. Mist seeped through the trees and grasses in lazy tendrils. Water dripped softly from the leaves. Faun squirmed in Wren's arms, burrowing deep into her shoulder.

At midnight, Killeshan erupted. Fire belched out in a shower of sparks and flaming debris, and ash and smoke spewed forth. The sound it made was terrifying, a booming that shattered the night stillness and brought everyone awake with a start. The initial explosion turned quickly to a series of rumbles that built one upon the other until the entire island was shaking. Even from as far away as they were, the eruption was visible, a deep red glow against the black that lifted skyward and seemed to hang there. Close at hand, the earth split in small rents and steam rose in geysers, hissing and burning. In the shadows beyond, the island's creatures raced wildly about, fleeing without direction or purpose, frightened by the intensity of the tremors, by the sound and the glare. The company huddled back against
the koa, fighting the urge to join them. But flight in such blackness was dangerous, Wren knew, and Stresa was quick to remind her that they must stay put until daylight.

The eruptions continued all night long, one after the other, a series of thundering coughs and fiery convulsions that threatened to rend Morrowindl from end to end. Fires burned high on Killeshan's slopes as lava flows began their descent to the sea. Cliffs slid away in a roar of broken stone, avalanches that tore free whole mountainsides. Giant trees snapped at their centers and tumbled to the earth.

Wren closed her eyes and tried unsuccessfully to sleep.

Toward dawn, Stresa rose to scout the area leading out and Triss took the Splinterscat's place at watch. Wren was left alone with Garth. The big man slept fitfully, his face bathed in sweat, his body wracked with convulsions. He was running a fever, and the heat of his body was palpable. As she watched him twist and turn against his discomfort, she found herself thinking of all they had been through together. She had worried about him before, but never as much as now. In part, her concern was magnified by her sense of helplessness. Morrowindl remained a foreign world to her, and her knowledge of it was too little. She could not help thinking that there must be something more that she could do for her big friend if she only knew what. She was reminded of Ellenroh, stricken by a fever similar to Garth's, a fever that none of them had understood. She had lost her grandmother; she did not intend to lose her best friend. She reassured herself over and over that Garth was strong, that he possessed great endurance. He could survive anything; he always had.

It was growing light, and she had just closed her eyes against her fatigue and depression when the big man surprised her by touching her gently on the arm. When she lifted her head to look at him, he began to sign.

I want you to do something for me.

She nodded, and her fingers repeated her words. “What?”

It will be difficult for you, but it is necessary.

She tried to see his eyes and couldn't. He was turned too far into the shadows.

I want you to forgive me.

“Forgive you for what?”

I have lied to you about something. I have lied repeatedly. Ever since I have known you.

She shook her head, confused, anxious, weary to the bone. “Lied about what?”

His gaze never faltered.
About your parents. About your mother and father. I knew them. I knew who they were and where they came from. I knew everything.

She stared, not quite ready to believe what she was hearing.

Listen to me, Wren. Your mother understood the impact of Eowen's prophecy far better than the queen. The prophecy said that you must be taken from Mor
rowindl if you were to live, but it also said that you would one day return to save the Elves. Your mother correctly judged that whatever salvation you could provide your
people would be tied in some way to a confrontation with the evil they had created. I did not know this at the time; I have surmised it since. What I did know was that your mother was determined that you be raised to be strong enough to withstand any danger, any foe, any trial that was required of you. That was why she gave you to me.

Wren was stunned. “To you? Directly to you?”

Garth shifted, pushing himself into a sitting position, giving his hands more freedom. He grunted with the effort. Wren could see blood soaking through the bandages of his wounds.

She came with her husband to the Rovers, sent by the Wing Riders. She came to us because she was told that we were the strongest of the free peoples, that we trained our children from birth to survive because survival is the hardest part of every Rover's life. We have always been an outcast people and as such have found it necessary to be stronger than any other. So your mother and your father came to us, to my family, a tribe of several hundred living on the plains below the Myrian, and asked if there were someone among us who could be trusted in the schooling of their daughter. They wished her to be trained in the Rover way, to begin learning as soon as she was old enough how to survive in a world where everyone and everything was a potential enemy. I was recommended. We talked, your parents and I, and I agreed to be your teacher.

He coughed, a deep, racking sound that tore from the depths of his chest. His head lowered momentarily as he gasped for breath.

“Garth,” she whispered, frightened now. “Tell me about this later, after you have rested.”

He shook his head.
No. I want this finished. I have carried it with me for too long.

“But you can hardly breathe, you can barely …”

I am stronger than you think.
His hand closed over her own momentarily and released.
Are you afraid I might be dying?

She swallowed against her tears. “Yes.”

Does that frighten you so? After all I have taught you?

“Yes.”

The dark eyes blinked, and he gave her a strange look.
Then I will not die until you are ready for me to do so.

She nodded wordlessly, not understanding what he meant, wary of the look, anxious only that he live, whatever bargain it required.

His breath exhaled in a thick rattle.
Good. Your mother, then. She was everything you have been told—strong, kind, determined, devoted to you. But she had decided that she must return to her people. She had made up her mind before she left Morrowindl, I think. Your father acquiesced. I don't know the reason for their decision; I only know that your mother was bound in countless ways to her own mother and to her people, and your father was desperately in love with her. In any case, it was agreed that you should be sent to live with the Ohmsfords in Shady Vale until you were five—the beginning age for training a Rover child—and then given back to me. You were to be told that your mother was a Rover and your father an Ohmsford and that your ancestors were Elves. You were to be told nothing else.

Wren shook her head in disbelief. “Why, Garth? Why keep it all a secret from me?”

Because your mother understood how dangerous it was to try to influence the workings of a prophecy. She could have tried to keep you safe, to prevent you from returning to Morrowindl. She could have stayed with you and told you what was foreordained. But what harm might she have caused by interfering so? She knew enough of prophecies to recognize the threat. It was better, she believed, that you grow to womanhood without knowing the specifics of what Eowen had foretold, that you find your destiny on your own, however it was meant to be. It was given to me to prepare you.

“So you knew everything? All of it? You knew about the Elfstones?”

No. Not about the Elfstones. Like you, I thought them painted rocks. I was told to make certain that you knew where they came from, that they were your heritage from your parents. I was to see to it that you never lost them. Your mother was convinced, I suppose, that like your destiny, the power of the Elfstones would reveal itself when it was time.

“But you knew the rest, all the time I was growing up? And after, when I went to the Hadeshorn, when I was sent in search of the Elves?”

I knew.

“And didn't tell me?” There was a hint of anger in her voice now, the first. The impact of what he was telling her was beginning to set in. “Never a word, even when I asked?”

I could not.

“What do you mean, you could not?” She was incensed. “Why?”

Because I promised your mother. She swore me to secrecy. You were to know nothing of your true heritage, nothing of the Elessedils, Arborlon, or Morrowindl, nothing of the prophecy. You were to discover it on your own or not, as fate decreed. I was not to aid you in any way. I was to go with you when it came time if I chose. I was to protect you as best I could. But I was to tell you nothing.

“Ever?”

The big man's breath rattled in his chest, and his fingers hesitated.
I swore an oath. I swore that I would tell you nothing until the prophecy came to pass, if it ever did—nothing until you had come back into Arborlon, until you had discovered the truth for yourself, until you had done whatever it was you were fated to do to help your people. I promised.

She sank back on her heels, despair washing through her.
Trust no one,
the Addershag had warned.
No one.
She had believed she realized the impact of those words. She had thought she understood.

But this …

“Oh, Garth,” she whispered in dismay. “I trusted you!”

You lost nothing by doing so, Wren.

“Didn't I?”

They faced each other, silent, motionless. Everything that had happened to Wren since Cogline had first come to her those many weeks past seemed to gather and settle on her shoulders like an enormous weight. So many harrowing escapes, so many deaths, so much lost—she felt it all, the
whole of it, come together in a single moment, in this truth terrible and unexpected.

Had you known before coming, it might have changed everything. Your mother understood that. Your father as well. Perhaps I would have told you if I could, but my promise bound me.
The big frame shifted, and the sharply etched bones of the other's face lifted into the light.
Tell me, if you can, that I should have done otherwise. Tell me, Wren, that I should have broken my promise.

Her mouth was a tight, bitter line. “You should have.”

He held her gaze, dark eyes flat and expressionless.

“No,” she admitted finally, tears in her eyes. “You shouldn't have.” She looked away, empty and lost. “But that doesn't help. Everyone has lied to me. Everyone. Even you. The Addershag was right, Garth, and that's what hurts. There were too many lies, too many secrets, and I wasn't part of any of them.”

She cried silently, head lowered. “Someone should have trusted me. My whole life has been changed, and I have had nothing to say about it. Look what's been done!”

One big hand brushed her own.
Think, Wren. The choices have all been yours. No one has made them for you; no one has shown you the way. Had you known the truth of things, had you understood the expectations held for you, would it have been the same? Could you say the choices were yours in that case?

She looked back, hesitant.

Would it have been better to know you were Ellenroh Elessedil's granddaughter, that the Elfstones you thought painted rocks were real, that when you grew to womanhood you would one day be expected to travel to Morrowindl and, because of a prophecy given before you were born, save the Elves? How free would you have been to act then? How much would you have grown? What would you have become?

She took a deep breath. “I don't know. But perhaps I should have been given the chance to find out.”

The light was stronger now as dawn broke somewhere beyond the pall of the mist and trees. Faun lifted her head from out of Wren's lap where she had lain motionless. Triss had come back from the edge of the dark; he stood watching them in silence. The night sounds had died away, and the frantic movement had ceased. In the distance, the sounds of Killeshan's eruption continued unabated, steady and ominous. The earth shook faintly, and the fire of the lava rose skyward into gray smoke and ash.