The Heritage of Shannara (223 page)

Still there was no sign of Damson and the free-born.

Finally they reached a divergence in the passageway that forced them to choose. Morgan did the best he could, but there was nothing to help him decide. If the rainwater hadn't flooded the sewer floor, there might have been tracks. They pressed on, side by side, Matty Roh holding onto him as if frightened she might lose him to the dark. The distance between the grates began to widen until the tunnel was so black they could barely see.

“I think we missed a turn,” Morgan said softly, angrily.

They backtracked and tried again. The new passage angled sharply one way and then another, and again the distance between grates widened and the light began to fail. They found a blackened torch wedged in the rock wall and managed to light it using a strip of cloth and Matty's fire-making stones. It took a long time to get a flame in the dampness, and by the time they had the torch burning, they could hear movement in the watery corridors behind them.

“They've dug through—or found another way,” the girl whispered, and gave him a secretive smile. “But they won't catch us—or if they do, they'll wish they hadn't. Come on!”

They pushed ahead into tunnels that grew increasingly narrow. The grates finally disappeared entirely and the torch became their only light. The hours wore on, and it became obvious that they were hopelessly lost. Neither said so, but both knew. Somehow they had chosen the wrong direction. It was still possible that they would find their way clear, but Morgan didn't care for the odds. Even Damson, who lived in the city and came down into the tunnels often, did not feel she could navigate the maze of corridors without the Mole. He wondered what had become of her and the others of the free-born. He wondered if they thought Matty and he were dead.

They found another torch, this one in better condition, and took it with them as a spare. When the pitch-coated length of the first was burned away, Morgan used the stub to light the spare and they continued on. They were angling deeper into the bluff and could no longer see or hear the rain. Sounds grew muffled and then disappeared; there was only their breathing and their footsteps. Morgan tried to set a direct course, but the tunnels intersected and cut back so often that he gave it up. Time ticked away, but there was no way to be certain how much of it had passed. They grew hungry and thirsty, but there was nothing to eat or drink.

Finally Morgan stopped and turned to Matty. “We're not getting anywhere. We have to try something else. Let's find our way back up to the first level. Maybe we can slip out into the city tonight and sneak through the gates tomorrow.”

It was a faint hope at best—the Federation would be looking for them everywhere—but anything was better than wandering around hopelessly in the dark. Night would be coming soon, and Morgan kept thinking about
the Shadowen that Damson had told him prowled the tunnels closest to the Pit. Suppose they stumbled into one of those. It was too dangerous for them to remain down here any longer.

They worked their way back toward the bluff face, choosing tunnels that angled upward, winding about with their torch slowly burning away. They knew they were running out of time; if they did not regain the streets of the city soon, their light would be used up and they would be stuck there in the dark. But now they were hearing continual sounds in the distance, the movement of men through water and damp, the whisper of voices. Their hunters were out in force, and they were no closer than before to finding a way past them.

It was a long time before they reached the sewers again and caught a glimpse of daylight through a street grating. The light was thin and fading now, the day easing quickly toward dark. The rain had turned to a slow drizzle, and the city was silent and empty feeling. They walked until they found a ladder leading up, and Morgan took a deep breath and climbed. When he peered out from between the bars he saw Federation soldiers stationed across from him, grim and silent in the gloom. He climbed back down noiselessly, and they continued on.

Their torch burned out, the daylight turned to dark—the skies so clouded that almost no light showed down into the tunnels, and the sound of their hunters faded away and was replaced by the scurrying of rats and the drip of runoff. All of the grate openings they checked were under watch. They kept moving because there was nothing else for them to do, afraid that if they stopped they might not be able to start again.

Morgan was beginning to despair when the eyes appeared in front of him. Cat's eyes, they gleamed in the darkness and then disappeared.

Morgan came to an immediate stop. “Did you see that?” he whispered to Matty Roh.

He felt, rather than saw, her nod. They stood frozen for a long time, not wanting to move until they knew what was out there. Those eyes had not belonged to any rat.

Then there was a whisper of water disturbed and a scrape of boots.

“Morgan?” someone called softly. “Is that you?”

It was Damson. Morgan answered, and an instant later she was hugging him, then Matty, telling them she had been looking for them for hours, searching the tunnels from end to end, trying to find their trail.

“Alone?” Morgan asked incredulously. He was so relieved to see her he was almost giddy. “Do you have any food or water?”

She gave them both an aleskin and bread and cheese from her pack. “I had the Mole to help me,” she said, keeping her voice at a whisper. “When you collapsed the ceiling to the warehouse, a part of the tunnel went with it. Maybe you didn't even notice. At any rate, we were cut off from you, and you ended up going the wrong way.” She shook back her fiery hair and sighed. “We had to get Padishar and the others out first. There was no time to look for you then. When they were safe, the Mole and I came back for you.”

In the darkness to one side, the Mole's bright eyes blinked and gleamed. Morgan was dumbfounded. “But how did you find us? We were completely lost, Damson. How could you… ?”

“You left a trail,” she said, clutching at his arm to slow his argument.

“A trail? But the rainwater washed everything away!”

She smiled, although she was clearly trying not to. “Not in the earth, Morgan—in the air.” He shook his head in confusion. “Mole?” she called. “Tell him.”

The Mole's furry face eased into the light. He blinked almost sleepily, and his nose twitched as he sniffed at the Highlander. “Your smell is very strong,” he said. “All through the tunnels. Lovely Damson is right. You were easy to track.”

Morgan stared. He could hear Matty Roh's smothered laughter, and he turned bright red.

They rested only long enough to eat, then set out again, this time with the Mole as their guide. There were no encounters with either Federation soldiers or Shadowen wraiths and their passage was smooth and easy. As he walked, Morgan's thoughts wandered into the past and out again, a slow, deliberate journey of self-evaluation. He looked at himself and the ways he had changed. When he was done, he found he was not displeased. The lessons he had learned were important ones, and he was better for having traveled the road that had brought him north from Leah.

When they emerged from the side of the mountain north, the skies were clear once more and filled with light from the moon and stars. The air was rain-washed and smelled of the forest, and the breeze that blew out of the west was cool and soft as down. They stood together in grasses still damp with the storm, looking out across the plains and hills to the Dragon's Teeth and the horizon beyond.

Morgan glanced at Matty Roh and found her studying him, smiling slightly, her thoughts private and secretive and strangely compelling. She was plain and pretty, reticent and forward, and a dozen other contradictions, a paradox of moods and behavior he did not understand but wanted to. He saw her in fragments of memory—as the boy he had believed her to be at the Whistledown, as the girl with the ruined feet and shattered past at Firerim Reach, as the deadly quick swordswoman standing against the Federation and the Shadowen at Tyrsis, and as the quixotic waif who could be either demon or sprite at a moment's passing.

He could not help himself. He smiled back at her, trying to share a secret that only she knew.

Damson was kneeling before the Mole. “Won't you come with us this time?” she was asking him. The Mole was shaking his head. “It grows more dangerous for you every time you go back.”

The Mole considered. “I am not afraid for myself, lovely Damson. I am afraid only for you.”

“The monsters, the Shadowen, are in the city,” she reminded him gently.

He gave her a small shrug and a serious look. “The monsters are everywhere.”

Damson sighed, nodded, reached out carefully, put her arms around the little fellow, and hugged him. “Goodbye, Mole. Thank you for everything. Thank you for Padishar. I owe you so much.”

The Mole blinked. His bright eyes glistened.

She released him and rose. “I will come back for you when I can,” she said. “I promise.”

“When you find the Valeman?” The Mole suddenly looked embarrassed.

“Yes, when I find Par Ohmsford. We will both come back.”

The Mole brushed at his face. “I will wait for you, lovely Damson. I will always wait for you.”

Then he turned and disappeared back into the rocks, melting away like one of night's shadows. Morgan stood with Matty Roh and stared after him, not quite believing he was really gone. The night was still and cool, empty of sound and filled with memories that jumbled together like words spoken too fast, and it seemed as if everything was a dream that could end in the blink of a waking eye.

Damson turned to look at him. “I'm going after Par,” she announced quietly. “Chandos has taken Padishar and the others back to Firerim Reach where they will rest a day or two before making their journey north to meet with the Trolls. I have done what I can for him, Morgan. He doesn't need me for anything more. But Par Ohmsford does, and I intend to keep my promise to him.”

Morgan nodded. “I understand. I'm going with you.”

Matty Roh looked inexplicably defiant. “Well, I'm going, too,” she declared. She searched first one face and then the other for an objection, found none, and then asked in a more reasonable tone, “Who is Par Ohmsford?”

Morgan almost laughed. He had forgotten that Matty knew only a little of what was going on. There was no reason, he guessed, that she shouldn't know it all. She had earned the right by coming with them into Tyrsis after Padishar Creel.

“Tell her on the way,” Damson interjected suddenly, and gave an uneasy glance over her shoulder. “We're too exposed, standing about out here. Don't forget they're still hunting for us.”

Within moments they were moving east away from the bluff and toward the Mermidon. An hour's walk would bring them to the shelter of the forests and a few hours' sleep. It was the best that they could hope for this night.

As they traveled, Morgan told again the story of Par Ohmsford and the dreams of Allanon. The three figures receded slowly into the distance, midnight came and went, and the new day began.

T
hey spent what remained of the night in an arbor of white oaks bordering the Mermidon a few miles below the Kennon Pass. It was cool and shady where they slept, protected from the late summer heat that gathered early on the open grasslands, and they did not wake until well after sunrise. They washed and ate from the supplies that Damson carried, listening to the steady flow of the river and an effervescent birdsong. Morgan rubbed sleep from his eyes and tried to remember everything that had happened the previous day, but it was already growing vague in his mind, a memory that seemed to have been stored away a long time ago. That Padishar Creel was safe again, however distant the event, was all that mattered, he told himself wearily, and he let the matter slide into the distance of yesterday.

He pulled on his boots as he munched on bread and cheese and considered what lay ahead. Today was a hot, sultry expectation that shimmered through the dappled shadows of the leaves and branches, and it might take him anywhere. The past was a reminder of the vicissitudes of life, chance playing off opportunity and giving back what she would. The hardships and losses that Morgan had experienced had tempered him like iron run through the fire, and a vacuum had formed around him that he did not think anything would ever get past again, a dead place where hurt and disappointment and fear could not survive, a shield that let him keep everything away so that he might go on when sometimes he did not think he could. The problem, of course, was that it kept other things away as well— hope and caring and love among them. He could admit them when he chose, but there was always the danger that the other feelings would come in as well. When you let in one, you always risked letting in the others. It was his legacy from Steff and Quickening, from the Jut and Eldwist, from Druid wraiths and Shadowen. It was a truth that haunted him.

He brushed aside the musings and speculation, finished off his meal, and stood and stretched.

“Ready?” Damson Rhee asked. She was flushed from cold water splashed on her skin, and her fiery hair was brushed out so that it shone. She was pretty and vital and filled with a determination that radiated like heat from a flame. Morgan looked at her and thought again how lucky Par was to have someone like that in love with him.