The Heritage of Shannara (199 page)

He turned as a familiar burly figure lumbered up to meet them, black-bearded and ferocious-looking with his missing eye and ear and his scarred face. Chandos embraced Matty Roh warmly, nearly swallowing her up in his embrace, and then reached out for Morgan.

“Highlander,” he greeted, taking Morgan's hand in his own and crushing it. “It's good to have you back with us.”

“It's good to be back.” Morgan extracted his hand painfully. “How are you, Chandos?”

The big man shook his head. “Well enough, given everything that's happened.” There was an angry, frustrated look in his dark eyes. His jaw tightened. “Come with me where we can talk.”

He took Morgan and Matty Roh from the rim of the cliffs across the bluff. The guards who had brought them in disappeared back the way they
had come. Chandos moved deliberately away from the encampment and the other outlaws. Morgan glanced questioningly at Matty Roh, but the girl's face was unreadable.

When they were safely out of earshot, she said immediately to Chandos, “They have him, don't they?”

“Padishar?” Chandos nodded. “They took him two nights earlier at Tyrsis.” He turned and faced Morgan. “The Valeman was with him, the smaller one, the one Padishar liked so well—Par Ohmsford. Apparently the two of them went into the Federation prisons to rescue Damson Rhee. They got her out, but Padishar was captured in the attempt. Damson's here now. She arrived yesterday with the news.”

“What happened to Par?” Morgan asked, wondering at the same time why there had been no mention of Coll.

“Damson said he went off in search of his brother—something about the Shadowen.” Chandos brushed the question aside. “What matters at the moment is Padishar.” His scarred face furrowed. “I haven't told the others yet.” He shook his head. “I don't know if I should or not. We're supposed to meet with Axhind and his Trolls at the Jannisson at the end of the week. Five days. If we don't have Padishar with us, I don't think they'll join up. I think they'll just turn around and go right back the way they came. Five thousand strong!” His face flushed, and he took a steadying breath. “We need them if we're to have any kind of chance against the Federation. Especially after losing the Jut.”

He looked at them hopefully. “I was never much at making plans. So if you've any ideas at all …”

Matty Roh shook her head. “If the Federation has Padishar, he won't stay alive very long.”

Chandos scowled. “Maybe longer than he'd like, if the Seekers get their hands on him.”

Morgan recalled the Pit and its inhabitants momentarily and quickly forced the thought away. Something about all this didn't make sense. Padishar had gone looking for Par and Coll weeks ago. Why had it taken him so long to find them? Why had the Ohmsford brothers remained in Tyrsis all that time? And when Par and Padishar had gone into the prisons to rescue Damson Rhee, where was Coll? Did the Shadowen have Coll as well?

It seemed to Morgan that there was an awful lot unaccounted for.

“I want to speak with Damson Rhee,” he announced abruptly. He had wondered about her at the beginning, and suddenly he was beginning to wonder about her all over again.

Chandos shrugged. “She's sleeping. Walked all night to get here.”

Images of Teel danced in Morgan's head, whispering insidiously. “Then let's wake her.”

Chandos gave him a hard stare. “All right, Highlander. If you think it's important. But it will be your doing, not mine.”

They crossed to the encampment and passed through the cooking fires
and the free-born at work about them. The sun had dropped further in the west, and it was nearing dinnertime. There was food in the cooking kettles, and the smells wafted on the summer air. Morgan scarcely noticed, his mind at work on other matters. Shadows crept out of the trees, lengthening as dusk approached. Morgan was thinking about Par and Coll, still in Tyrsis after all this time. They had escaped the Pit weeks ago. Why had they stayed there? he kept wondering. Why for so long?

As the questions pressed in about him, he kept seeing Teel's face—and the Shadowen that had hidden beneath.

They reached a small hut set well back in the trees, and Chandos stopped. “She's in there. You wake her if you want. Come have dinner with me when you're finished, the both of you.”

Morgan nodded. He turned to Matty Roh. “Do you want to come with me?”

She gave him an appraising look. “No. I think you should do this on your own.”

It seemed for a moment as if she might say more, but then she turned and walked off into the trees after Chandos. She knew something she wasn't telling, Morgan decided. He watched her go, thinking once again that Matty Roh was a good deal more complex than what she revealed.

He looked back at the hut, momentarily undecided as to how he should go about bracing Damson Rhee. Suspicions and fears shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of common sense. But he couldn't shake the image of Teel as a Shadowen. It could easily be the same with this girl. The trick was in finding out.

He reached back over his shoulder to make certain that the Sword of Leah would slide free easily, took a deep breath, then walked up to the door and knocked. It opened almost immediately, and a girl with flaming red hair and emerald eyes stood looking out at him. She was flushed, as if she had just awakened, and her dark clothing was disheveled. She was tall, though not as tall as Matty, and very pretty.

“I'm Morgan Leah,” he said.

She blinked, then nodded. “Par's friend, the Highlander. Yes, hello. I'm Damson Rhee. I'm sorry, I've been sleeping. What time is it?” She peered up at the sky through the trees. “Almost dusk, isn't it? I've slept too long.”

She stepped back as if to go inside, then stopped and turned to face him again. “You've heard about Padishar, I suppose. Did you just get here?”

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 Shad-owen 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 that 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.