The Heritage of Shannara (241 page)

The big hands settled on his shoulders once more, holding him firm, filling him with strength.

And Par felt all his resolve crumble in that instant, cracking and falling away like shards of shattered glass. He was so tired. He wanted someone to help. Anyone. He could not go on. The demons whispered insidiously. Their eyes gleamed with anticipation. He brushed at them futilely, and they only laughed. He gritted his teeth at them in fury. He felt the magic build within him and with an effort he forced it back.

“Let me help you, Par,” Rimmer Dall pleaded, holding him. “It won't take a moment for me to do so. Remember? Let me come into you just long enough to see where the magic threatens. Let me help you find the protection you need.”

Enough of Allanon. Enough of the Druids and their warnings. Enough of everything. Where are those who said they would help me now that I need them? All gone, all lost. Even Coll. I am so tired.

“If you wish,” Rimmer Dall whispered, “you can come into me first. It is not difficult. You can lift out of yourself quite easily if you try. I can show you how, Par. Just look at me. Turn around and look at me.”

The Sword of Shannara lost. Wren and Walker and Morgan disappeared. Where is Damson? Why am I always alone?

There were tears in his eyes, blinding him.

“Look at me, Par.”

He turned slowly and started to look up.

But in that instant a shadow passed between them, swift as light, come and gone in the blink of an eye, and in its wake Par Ohmsford thrust out violently.

No!

Fire exploded between them, generated by the friction of their contact, sparking and flying out into the shadows. Rimmer Dall wheeled away, the features of his rawboned face knotted in rage. His black robes billowed out and his gloved hand lifted in a blaze of red fury. Par, still unsure about what had happened, gasped and fell back, throwing up his own protection, feeling the blue fire of the wishsong's magic rise to shield him. In an instant, he was sheathed in light, and now it was Rimmer Dall's turn to draw back.

They faced each other in the gloom, the fires of their magics gathered at the tips of their fingers, eyes mirroring anger and fear.

“Stay away from me!” Par hissed.

Rimmer Dall remained unmoving before him for an instant more, huge and black and unyielding. Then he drew back his fire, lowered his gloved hand, and stalked from the room without a word.

Par Ohmsford let the fire of his magic die as well. He stood staring into the shadows that surrounded him, wondering at what he had done.

All about him, his demons danced in seeming glee.

“How long is he going to stay like that?” Matty Roh finally asked.

Morgan Leah shook his head. Walker Boh hadn't moved for more than an hour. He was in some sort of trance, a self-induced half sleep. He sat wrapped in his dark cloak, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and barely discernible. He had told them to keep watch and wait for his return. He hadn't told them where he was going. In truth, it didn't appear that he had gone anywhere, but Morgan knew better than to question the Dark Uncle.

They were gathered in a stand of spruce high within the forests bordering the cliffs of the Runne—Morgan, Matty, Damson Rhee, Coll Ohms-ford, and Walker Boh. In the darkness beyond where they waited, Rumor's eyes gleamed watchfully. The night was deep and still, the sky a blanket of clouds from horizon to horizon, the air fresh with the smell of a north wind out of the trees. Five days had passed since Walker had found Morgan
and saved him from the encircling Shadowen. He had tricked the dark things by cloaking one of them in Morgan's image and letting the others tear it to pieces. It had satisfied the Shadowen that the intruder they were tracking was destroyed, and they had drifted back into Southwatch. Yesterday the Valeman and his rescuers had reappeared, crossing the Rainbow Lake in a small skiff. Walker and Morgan had intercepted them at the mouth of the Mermidon and brought them here.

“What do you think he is doing?” Matty persisted, her voice anxious and uneasy.

“I don't know,” Morgan confessed.

He leaned forward for a closer look but moved quickly back again when he heard Rumor growl. He looked at Matty and shrugged. The other two sat silent, faceless in the gloom. They were better rested and fed than they had been in a while, but they were all emotionally drained and physically worn from the long struggle to stay alive. What kept them going was their common determination to find Par Ohmsford and the sense they got from Walker Boh that their journey from the Hadeshorn was coming to a close.

“He's looking for Par,” Damson said suddenly, her voice a low whisper in the silence.

He was, of course. He was following the secondary trail of the Skree to Southwatch to see if the Valeman was a prisoner there. Coll had always been certain his brother was in Shadowen hands, and so were the rest of them by now. But Walker was searching for something more, Morgan sensed. He would not talk about it yet, had been careful to keep it to himself, in fact. He knew something he wasn't telling them, but then that was the way it was with the Druids, and that was what Walker was now. A Druid. Morgan breathed deeply and relaxed, staring off into the dark. How strange. Walker Boh had become the very thing he had once abhorred. Who would have believed it? Well, they had all come from different worlds than this one, he thought philosophically. They had all lived different lives.

He was staring right at Walker when the other's eyes opened, and it startled him so he jumped. The pale face lifted within the cloak's hood, ghostly white, and the lean body shivered.

“He is alive,” the Dark Uncle whispered, coming back to himself as they stared at him. “Rimmer Dall and the Shadowen have him imprisoned.”

He rose tentatively, hugging himself as if cold. The others rose with him, exchanging uncertain glances. Rumor moved in from the dark.

“What did you see?” Coll asked anxiously. “Did you have a vision?”

Walker Boh shook his head. He reached down absently to stroke Ru-mor's broad head as the cat nuzzled up against him. “No, Coll. I used a Druid trick and went out of my body in spirit form to enter the Shadowen keep. They could not sense me so easily that way. I found Par locked within the tower. Rimmer Dall was with him. The First Seeker was trying to persuade Par to let him take control of the wishsong's magic. He says that Par is a Shadowen like himself.”

“He has told Par that before,” Damson said quietly.

“It is a lie,” Coll insisted.

But Walker Boh shook his head. “Perhaps not. There is some truth to what he says. I can sense it in the words. But the truth is an elusive thing here. There is more of it than is being told. Par is confused and angry and frightened. He is on the verge of accepting what the First Seeker tells him. He was close to letting the other have his way.”

“No,” Damson whispered, white-faced.

Walker breathed the night air and sighed. “No, indeed. But time is running out for Par. His strength is fading. I risked a small intrusion to disrupt the acceptance and for now it will not happen. But we have to get to him quickly. The secret to destroying the Shadowen lies with Par. It always has. Rimmer Dall ignores everything in his efforts to win Par over. He knows of my return, of Wren's return, of our escapes from other Shad-owen. He knows we draw steadily closer to him. The Shadowen are threatened, but he concentrates only on Par. Par is the key. If we can free him of his fear of the wishsong, we may have all the pieces to the puzzle. Allanon sent us to find the talismans and we have done so. He sent us to bring back the Elves and Paranor and we have done that as well. We have everything we require to defeat the Shadowen; we just need to discover how to use it. The answer lies down there.”

He looked off into the valley, down through the trees to where the dark obelisk of Southwatch rose against the horizon.

“The Sword of Shannara will free Par,” Coll promised, stepping forward determinedly. “I know it will.”

Walker didn't seem to hear him. “There is one thing more. The Shad-owen keep something locked within the cellars of the keep, something living, chained by magic and held against its will. I don't know what it is, but I sense that it is powerful and that we have to find a way to set it free if we are to win this fight. Whatever it is, the Shadowen guard it with their lives. The wards protecting it are very strong.”

He looked back at them again. “The Shadowen are Elven-born and use Elven magic out of the time of faerie. Their strengths and weaknesses all derive from that. Par may be one of them in some sense because he is of Elven blood. I can't be sure. But I think the question of what he will become has not yet been settled.”

“He would never turn against us,” Damson whispered, and looked away.

“What do we do, Walker?” Coll asked quietly. He held the Sword of Shannara in both hands, and his blocky face was set like a piece of granite.

“We go down after him, Valeman,” the other answered. “We go after him now, before it is too late.”

“Not all of us,” Morgan interjected hastily, and glanced at the women.

Walker looked at him. “They are resolved to go, Highlander.”

Morgan refused to back off. He didn't want Damson and Matty going down into the Shadowen den. The men all possessed magic of one sort or another to protect themselves. The women had nothing. It seemed a mistake.

“You're not leaving me,” Damson interjected quickly, and he saw Matty nod in agreement.

“It's too dangerous,” he heard himself object. “We can't protect you. You have to stay here.”

They glared at him, and he faced them down. For a moment no one spoke, the three of them standing toe to toe in the darkness, daring one another to say something more.

Then Walker lifted one hand and brought Damson and Matty before him and in the same motion moved Morgan and Coll back. He was taller than Morgan remembered, and broader as well, as if he had grown and put on weight. It wasn't possible, of course, but it seemed that way. It appeared as if he were more than one man. He filled the space between them, huge and forbidding, and the night about them was hushed suddenly with expectation.

“I cannot give you magic with which to fight,” he told the women softly, “but I can give you magic with which to shield yourselves from the Shadowen attack. Stand quiet now. Don't move.”

He reached out then and swept the air about them with his hand. The air filled with a brightness that seemed to spread and fall like dust, burning and fading away as it touched them. He brought his hand up one side and down the other, glazing them with the brightness from head to foot, leaving them momentarily shimmering and then cloaked once more in blackness.

“If you are resolved to go,” he said, “this will help keep you safe.”

He brought them all back about him, gathering them in like small children to a father's embrace. He looked suddenly tired and lost, but he looked determined as well. “We will do what we must and what we can,” he told them. “Everything we have fought for, every road we have traveled, every life given up along the way, has been for this. I was told so by Allanon after the return of Paranor, after my own transformation, after Cogline had given up his life for me. The end of the Shadowen or the end of us happens here. No one has to go who doesn't choose to. But everyone is needed.”

“We're going,” Damson said quickly. “All of us.”

The others, even Morgan Leah, nodded in agreement.

“Five, then.” Walker smiled faintly. “We go to Par first to set him free, to give him back the use of his magic. If we succeed in that, we go down into the cellars. We leave now, so that we can enter Southwatch at dawn.” He paused as if searching for something more to say. “Look out for yourselves. Stay close to me.”

In the darkness of the grove, the five faced one another and gave voiceless acquiescence to the pact. They would try to finish what so many had begun so long ago, and while they might have wished it otherwise, they were all that were left to do so.

Silent shadows, the three men, the two women, and the moor cat
slipped out from the trees and down the mountainside ahead of the coming light.

T
wo days following the destruction of the Creepers in the Matted Brakes, the Elves attacked the Federation army on the flats below the Valley of Rhenn. They struck just before dawn when the light was weak and sleep still thick in the eyes of their enemy. The skies were clouded from a rain that had fallen all through the night, the air damp-smelling and cool, the ground sodden and treacherous underfoot, the land filled with a low-lying blanket of mist that stretched away from the Westland forests toward the sunrise. The grasslands had the look of some phantasmagoric netherworld, shadows shifting within the haze, skies black and threatening and pressing down against the earth, sounds muted and indistinct and somehow given to suggest things not really there. Everything took on the look and feel of something else. The timing was perfect for the Elves.

They had not intended to attack at all. They had planned a defense that would begin at the Valley of Rhenn and give way as required back toward the home city of Arborlon. But Barsimmon Oridio had arrived the day before, linking up at last with Wren Elessedil and the advance column, bringing the Elven army up to full strength for the first time, and after Elf Queen and General huddled with Desidio, Tiger Ty, and a handful of high-ranking commanders from the main army, it was decided that there was no point in waiting on a Federation attack, that waiting only gave the Federation time to dispatch further reinforcements, and that the best defense was an unexpected offense. It was Desidio's suggestion, and Wren was surprised to hear him offer it and even more surprised to hear Bar accept. But the old general, though conservative by nature and set in his ways, was no fool. He recognized the precariousness of their situation and was sharp enough to understand what was needed to offset the Federation's superior numbers. Handled in the right manner, an attack might succeed. He organized its execution, scouted it out personally, and at dawn of the day following set it in motion.