The Heritage of Shannara (229 page)

“Does it disturb your sleep?” the big man asked.

Par shook his head. The nightmares disturbed his sleep. “If I were to decide to believe you,” he said, letting the words slip free before his stubborn side could think better of it, “what would you do to help me control the magic of the wishsong?”

Rimmer Dall sat perfectly still. “I would teach you to manage it. I would teach you to be comfortable with it. You could learn how to use it safely again.”

Par stared straight ahead without seeing. He wanted to believe. “You think you could do that?”

“I have had years to learn how. I was forced to do so with my own magic, and the lessons have not been lost on me. The magic is a powerful weapon, Par, and it can turn against you. You need discipline and understanding to rule it properly. I can give you that.”

Par's mind felt leaden and his eyes drooped. His weariness was a dark cloud that would not let him think. “We could talk about it, I guess,” he said.

“Talk, yes. But experiment, too.” Rimmer Dall was leaning forward, intense. “Control of the magic comes from practice; it is an acquired skill. The magic is a birthright, but it needs training.”

“Training?”

“I could show you. I could let you see inside my mind, let you see how the magic functions within me. I could give you access to the ways in which I block it and channel it. Then you could do the same for me.”

Par looked up. “How?”

“You could let me see inside your mind. You could let me explore and help set in place the protections you need. We could work together.”

He went on, explaining carefully, persuasively, but Par had ceased to hear, locked on something vaguely alarming, something that lacked an identity, but was there nevertheless. The stubborn part that refused to believe anything the First Seeker said had risen up with a gasp and closed down his mind like a trapdoor. He pretended to listen, heard bits and pieces of what the other was saying, and gave responses that committed nothing.

What was it? What was the matter?

After a time, Rimmer Dall left him alone. “Think about what I have told you,” he urged. “Consider what might be done.” The night settled in, and the darkness of Par's chamber was complete. He lay down to sleep, exhausted without reason, then fought against the urge to close his eyes because he did not want the nightmares to come again. He stared at the ceiling and then out the windows at a sky that was clear and filled with stars. He thought of his brother and the Sword of Shannara, and he wondered what the King of the Silver River had done with them. He thought of Damson and Padishar, Walker and Wren, and all the others who had been involved in his struggle. He wondered vaguely what the struggle had been for.

He slept finally, drifting off before he knew what was happening, sinking into a soothing blackness. But the nightmare surfaced instantly, and he experienced for the third time a confrontation with himself as a Shadowen wraith. He thrashed and twisted and fought to come awake, and afterward lay sweating and gasping in the dark.

He realized then, with chilling certainty, that something was dreadfully wrong.

Look at what was happening to him. He could not sleep without dreaming, and the dream was always the same. He ate, but he lost strength. He spent his time in his room doing nothing, yet he was always tired. He
could not think straight. He could not concentrate. His energy was being sapped away.

This wasn't happening by chance, he admonished himself. Something was causing it.

He sat upright on the bed, swung his legs to the floor, and stared into the room's shadows.
Think!
He fought back against his exhaustion, against the chains of his lethargy and disorientation. Recognition came, a slow untangling of threads that had knotted. There were two possibilities. The first was that the magic of the wishsong was infecting him in some new way, and he needed to do what Rimmer Dall was urging. The second was that the magic infecting him was Shadowen, that Rimmer Dall was working to break down his defenses, and that all his talk about helping him was some sort of trick.

But a trick to do what?

Par took a deep, steadying breath. He wanted to crawl back beneath the covers but would not let himself. He felt an urge to scream and choked it down. Was Rimmer Dall lying or telling the truth? What were his real intentions in all this? Par clasped his hands together to keep them from shaking. He was falling apart. He could feel himself unraveling, and he did not know how to stop it. If Rimmer Dall was telling the truth about the wishsong, then he needed his help. If he was lying, it was a deception so intricate and so vast that it dwarfed anything the Valeman could imagine, because it had to have been at work from the moment the First Seeker had come looking for him weeks ago at the Blue Whisker Ale House.

Shades! I need to know!

Par rose, walked to the windows, and stood looking out at the night, breathing the cool air. He was paralyzed with indecision. How was he going to learn the truth? Was there some way to see past his own uncertainty, to recognize if there was a deception being played? The Sword of Shannara had showed him nothing, he reminded himself. Nothing! What else was there to try?

He watched shadows thrown by the night clouds shift like animals through the trees across the river. He would have to stall, he told himself. He could listen and talk, but he could not allow anything to happen. He would have to find a way to dispel his confusion so that he could recognize what was truth and what a lie, and at the same time he would have to find a way to keep himself from disintegrating completely.

He closed his eyes, put his face in his hands, and wondered how he was going to do that.

H
eat rose off the grasslands east of Drey Wood in sweltering waves, the midday sun a fiery ball in the cloudless sky, the air thick with the smell and taste of sweat and dust. Wren Elessedil lay flat against the crest of a rise and watched the Federation army toil its way across the plains like a slow-moving, many-legged insect.

Mindless and persistent, she thought bleakly.

She did not bother glancing over at the others—Triss, Erring Rift, and Desidio. She already knew what she would see in their faces. She already knew what they were thinking.

They had been watching the Federation's progress for more than an hour—not with any expectation that they would learn anything, but out of a need to do something besides sit around and wait for the inevitable. The Elves were in trouble. The Federation march north to the Rhenn had resumed two days ago, and time was running out. Barsimmon Oridio had finally completed the mobilization and provisioning of the main body of the Elven army and was headed east to the pass, a forced march that would bring the Elves into the Rhenn at least three days ahead of the enemy. But the Elves were still outnumbered ten to one, and any kind of direct engagement would result in their annihilation. Worse, the Creepers continued their approach, closer now than before, catching up quickly to the slower Southlanders. In four, maybe five days, the Creepers would overtake them and become their vanguard, the advance for a search-and-destroy action. When that happened, it would be the end of the Elves.

Wren felt a vague hopelessness nudging at her, and she angrily thrust it away.

What can I do to save my people?

She focused again on the crawling army and tried to think. Another midnight raid was out of the question. The Federation was alerted to them now and would not be caught napping twice. Cavalry patrols rode day and night all around the main body of the army, scouring the countryside for any sign of the Elves. Once or twice riders more bold than smart had even ventured into the forests. Wren had let them pass, the Elves melting back into the trees, invisible in the shadows. She did not want the Federation to know where they were. She did not want to give them anything she didn't have to. Not that it mattered. The patrols kept them at bay, and sentry lines were extended a quarter-mile out from the camp once darkness fell. The Wing Riders could come in from overhead, but she did not care to risk
her most valuable weapon when she could bring no strength to bear in its support.

Besides, it made little difference what she did about the Federation army if she did not first find a way to stop the Creepers. Though still distant, the Creepers were the most dangerous and immediate threat. If they were allowed to reach the Rhenn, or even the Westland forests immediately south, there would be nothing to stop them from carving a path straight through to Arborlon. The Creepers wouldn't worry about finding a roadway leading in. They wouldn't concern themselves with ambushes and traps. They didn't need scouts or patrols to search out the enemy. The Creepers would find the Elves wherever they tried to hide and destroy them in the same manner they had destroyed the Dwarves fifty years earlier. Wren knew the stories. She knew what kind of enemy they were up against.

The sweat lay against her face like a damp mask. She exhaled slowly, beckoned to the others, and began backing off the rise. When they were safely within the shelter of the trees once more, they rose and walked to where their horses were held by the Elven Hunters who had come with them. No one spoke. No one had anything to say. Wren led the way, trying to look as if she had something in mind even though she didn't, worried that she was beginning to lose the confidence she had won in leading the attack three nights earlier, confidence that she needed if she was to control events once Barsimmon Oridio arrived. She was Queen of the Elves, she told herself. But even a queen could fail.

They mounted and rode back to the Elven camp. Wren thought back over all that had happened since the coming of Cogline, wondering what had become of the old man—what, for that matter, had become of the others he had gathered at the Hadeshorn to speak with the shade of Allanon. She experienced a vague sense of regret that she knew so little of their fates. She should be searching for them, seeking them out and telling them the truth about the Shadowen origins. It was important that they know, she sensed. Something about who and what the Shadowen were would lead to their destruction. Allanon had known as much, she believed. But if he had known, why hadn't he simply told them? She shook her head. It was more complex than that; it had to be. But wasn't everything in this struggle?

They reached the vanguard camp, settled several miles north, dismounted, and handed over their horses. Wren strode away from the others, still without speaking, took food from a table not because she was hungry but because she knew she must eat, and sat alone at one end of a bench and stared off into the trees. The answers were out there somewhere, she told herself. She kept thinking that they were tied to the past, that history repeats, that you learn from what has gone before. Morrowindl's lessons paraded themselves before her eyes in the form of dead faces and brief images of unending sacrifice. So much had been given up to get the Elves safely away from
that deathtrap; it could not have been simply for this. It had to have been for something more than dying here instead of there.

She wished suddenly for Garth. She missed his steadying presence, the way he could take any problem and make it seem solvable. No matter how dark things had gotten, Garth had always gone on, taking her with him when she was little, letting her lead when she was grown. She missed him so. Tears came to her eyes, and she brushed them away self-consciously. She would not cry for him again. She had promised she would not.

She rose and carried her plate back to the table, looking about for Erring Rift. She would fly south again, she decided, for another look at the Creepers. There had to be a way to stop or at least slow them. Maybe something would suggest itself. It was a faint hope, but it was all she had. She wished Tiger Ty was there; he provided some of the same steadiness that she had gotten from Garth. But the gnarled Wing Rider had not returned from his search for the free-born, and bringing the free-born to the aid of the Elves was more important than providing solace for her.

She caught sight of Rift and whistled him over.

“We're going up for another look at the Creepers,” she announced, keeping her gaze steady as she faced him. His bearded face clouded. “I need to do this. Don't argue with me.”

Rift shook his head. “I wouldn't dream of it,” he muttered. “My lady.”

She took his arm and walked him through the camp. “We won't stay out long. Let's just see where they are, all right?”

Obsidian eyes glanced over and away again. “They're too confounded close, is where they are. We both know that already.” He rubbed at his beard. “There's no mystery to this. We have to stop them. You don't happen to have a plan for doing that, do you?”

She gave him a faint smile. “You'll be the first to know.”

They were moving toward the clearing where the Rocs were settled when Tib Arne came running up, breathless and flushed.

“My lady! My lady! Are you flying one of the great birds? Take me with you this time, please? You said you would, my lady. The next time you went out, you said you would. Please? I'm tired of sitting about doing nothing.”