The Heritage of Shannara (245 page)

Walker Boh's voice turned as hard as iron. “Use the Sword, Coll. Use it, or we're going to lose him!”

Coll turned away quickly and knelt next to Par and Damson. He held the Sword of Shannara before him, both hands knotting on its handle. It was his talisman to use, but the consequences of that use his to bear.

“Morgan, watch the stairs,” Walker Boh ordered. “Matty Roh, the halls.” He moved toward Par. “Damson, let him go.”

Damson Rhee stared upward with stricken eyes. There was unexpected warmth in Walker's gaze, a mix of reassurance and kindness. “Let him go, Damson,” he said gently. “Move away.”

She released Par, and the Valeman slumped forward. Coll caught him, cradled him in his arms momentarily, then took his brother's hands and placed them on the handle of the Sword beneath his own. “Walker,” he whispered beseechingly.

“Use it!” the Dark Uncle hissed.

Morgan glanced over uneasily. “I don't like this, Walker …”

But he was too late. Coll, persuaded by the strength of Walker Boh's command, had summoned forth the magic. The Sword of Shannara flared to life, and the dark well of the Shadowen keep was flooded with light.

Wrapped in a choking cloud of paralyzing indecision and devastating fear, Par Ohmsford felt the Sword's magic penetrate like fire out of darkness, burning its way down into him. The magic of the wishsong rose to meet it, to block it, a white wall of determined silence. Protective doors flew closed within, locks turned, and the shivering of his soul rocked him back on his heels. He was aware, vaguely, that Coll had summoned the Sword's magic,
that the power to do so was somehow his where it had not been Par's, and there was a sense of things being turned upside down. He retreated from the magic's approach, unable to bear the truth it might bring, wanting only to hide away forever within himself.

But the magic of the Sword of Shannara came this time with the weight of his brother's voice behind it, pressing down within him.
Listen, Par. Listen. Please, listen.
The words eased their way past the wishsong's defenses and gave entry to what followed. He thought it was Coll's words alone at first that breached his defenses, that let in the white light. But then he saw it was something more. It was his own weary need to know once and for all the worst of what there was, to be free of the doubt and terror that not knowing brought. He had lived with it too long to live with it longer. His magic had shielded him from everything, but it could not do so when he no longer wished it. He was backed to the wall of his sanity, and he could not back away farther.

He reached for his brother's voice with his own, anxious and compelling.
Tell me. Tell me everything.

The wishsong spit and hissed like a cornered cat, but it was, after all, his to command still, his birthright and his heritage, and nothing it might do could withstand both reason and need. He had bent to its will when his fear and doubt had undermined him, but he had never broken completely, and now he would be free of his uncertainty forever.

Coll,
he pleaded. His brother was there, steadying him.
Coll.

Holding on to each other and to the Sword, they locked their fingers tight and slipped down into the magic's light. There Coll soothed Par, reassuring him that the magic would heal and not harm, that whatever happened, he would not abandon his brother. The last of Par's defenses gave way, the locks releasing, the doors opening, and the darkness dispelling. Shedding the last of the wishsong's trappings, he gave himself over with a sigh.

And then the truth began, a trickle of memories that grew quickly to a flood. All that was and had ever been in Par's life, the secrets he had kept hidden even from himself, the shames and embarrassments, the failures and losses he had locked away, marched forth. They came parading into the light, and while Par shrank from them at first, the pain harsh and unending, his strength grew with each remembering, and the task of accepting what they meant and how they measured him as a man became bearable.

The light shifted then, and he saw himself now, come in search of the Sword of Shannara at Allanon's urging, anxious for the charge, eager to discover the truth about himself. But how eager, in fact? For what he found was that he might be the very thing he had committed against. What he found was Rimmer Dall waiting, telling him he was not who he thought, that he was someone else entirely, one of the dark things, one of the Shad-owen. Only a word, Rimmer Dall had whispered, only a name. A Shad-owen, with Shadowen magic to wield, with power no different than that of the red-eyed wraiths, able to be what they were, to do as they did.

What he saw now, in the cool white light of the Sword's truth, was that it was all true.

One of them.

He was one of them.

He lurched away from the recognition, from the inescapability of what he was being shown, and he thought he might have screamed in horror but could not tell within the light. A Shadowen! He was a Shadowen! He felt Coll flinch from him. He felt his brother jerk away. But Coll did not let go. He kept holding him.
It doesn't matter what you are, you are my brother,
he heard.
No matter what. You are my brother.
It kept Par from falling off the edge of sanity into madness. It kept him grounded in the face of his own terror, of his frightening discovery of self.

And it let him see the rest of what the truth would reveal.

He saw that his Elven blood and ancestry bound him to the Shadowen, who were Elven, too. Come from the same lineage, from the same history, they were bound as people are who share a similar past. But the choice to be something different was there as well. His ancestry was Shannara as well as Shadowen, and need not be what his magic might make him. His belief that he was predestined to be one of the dark things was the lie Rimmer Dall had planted within him, there within the vault that held the Sword of Shannara, there when he had come down into the Pit for the last time with Coll and Damson. It was Rimmer Dall who had let him try the Sword, knowing it would not work because his own magic would not let it, a barrier to a truth that might prove too unpleasant to accept. It was Rimmer Dall who had suggested he was Shadowen spawn, was one of them, was a vessel for their magic, giving him the uncertainty required to prevent the warring magics of Sword and wishsong from finding a common ground and thereby beginning the long spiral of doubt that would lead to Par's final subversion when the possibility of what he might be grew so large that it became fact.

Par gasped and reared back, seeing it now, seeing it all. Believe for long enough and it will come to pass. Believe it might be so, and it will be so. That was what he had done to himself, blanketed in magic too strong for anything to break down until he was willing to allow it, locked away by his fears and uncertainties from the truth. Rimmer Dall had known. Rimmer Dall had seen that Par would wrestle alone with the possibilities the First Seeker offered. Let him think he killed his brother with his magic. Let him think the Sword of Shannara's magic could never be his. Let him think he was failing because of who he might be. As long as he unwittingly used the wishsong to keep the Sword's magic at bay, what chance did he have to resolve the conflict of his identity? Par would be savior of the Druids and pawn of the Shadowen both, and the twist of the two would tear him apart.

“But I do not have to be one of them,” he heard himself say. “I do not have to!”

He shuddered with the weight of his words. Coll's understanding smile
warmed him like the sun. As it had been for his brother when the Sword's truth tore away the dark lie of the Mirrorshroud, recognition became the pathway by which Par now came back to himself. Had Allanon known it would be like this? he wondered as he began to rise out of light. Had Allanon seen that this was the need for the Sword of Shannara?

When the magic died away and his eyes opened, he was surprised to find that he was crying.

S
hadows and mist tangled and twisted down the length of the Valley of Rhenn, a sea of movement that rolled across the bodies of the dead and beckoned in grim invitation for the living to join them. Wren Elessedil stood at the head of the valley with the leaders of the army of the Elves and their newfound allies and pondered the lure of its call. From out of the corpses still strewn below, mostly Southlanders abandoned by their fellows, arms rose, cocked in death, signposts to the netherworld. The carnage spread south onto the flats until the dark swallowed it up, and it seemed to the Queen of the Elves that it might very well stretch away forever, a glimpse of a future waiting to claim her.

She stood apart from the others—from Triss and Barsimmon Oridio, from the free-born leader Padishar Creel and his gruff friend Chandos, and from the enigmatic Troll commander Axhind. They all faced into the valley, as if each was considering the same puzzle, the mix of mist and shadows and death. No one spoke. They had been standing there since news had arrived that the Federation was on the march once more. It was not yet dawn, the light still below the crest of the horizon east, the skies thick with clouds, the world a place of blackness.

Despair ran deep in Wren. It ran to the bone and out again, and it seemed to have no end. She had thought she had cried her last when Garth had died, but the loss of Faun had brought the tears and the grief anew, and now she believed she might never be free of them again. She felt as if the skin had been stripped from her body and the blood beneath allowed to run, leaving her nerve endings exposed and raw. She felt as if the purpose of her life had evolved into a testing of her will and endurance. She was sick at heart and empty in her soul.

“She was just a Squeak,” Stresa had hissed to her unconvincingly when he had found her toward midnight. She had told him of Faun's death, but death was nothing new to Stresa. “They grow up to die, Wren of the Elves. Don't trouble yourself about it.”

The words were not meant to hurt, but she could not help challenging
them. “You would not be so quick with your advice if I were grieving for you.”

“Phhffft. One day you will.” The Splinterscat had shrugged. “It is the way of things. The Squeak died saving you. It was what she wanted.”

“No one wants to die.” The words were bitter and harsh. “Not even a Tree Squeak.”

And Stresa had replied, “It was her choice, wasn't it?”

He had gone off again, deep into the forests west to keep watch for what might come that way, to bring warning to the Elves if the need arose. They were drifting apart, she sensed. Stresa was a creature of the wild, and she was not. He would go out one day and not come back, and the last of her ties with Morrowindl would be gone. Everything would be consigned to memory then, the beginning of who she was now, the end of who she had been.

She wondered that her life could evolve so thoroughly and she feel so much the same.

Yet perhaps she lied to herself on that count, pretending she was unchanged when in fact she was and simply could not admit it. She frowned into the gloom, searching the killing ground below, and she wondered how much of herself had survived Morrowindl's horror and how much had been lost. She wished she had someone of whom she could ask that question. But most of those she might have asked were dead, and those still living would be reticent to answer. She would have to provide her own answer to her question and hope her answer was true.

Padishar Creel's lean face glanced in her direction, searching, but she did not acknowledge him. She had not spoken with any of them since rising, not even Triss, wrapped in her solitude as if it were armor. The freeborn had come finally, bringing with them Axhind and his Rock Trolls, the reinforcements she had prayed for, but she suddenly found it difficult to care. She did not want the Elves to perish, but the killing sickened her. Yesterday's battle had ended in a draw, settling nothing, and today's did not promise a new result. The Federation had stopped running and regrouped and were coming on again. They would keep coming, she thought. There were enough that they could do so. The addition of the free-born and Trolls strengthened the Elven chances of surviving, but did not give reason to hope that the Federation could be stopped. Reinforcements would be sent from the cities south and from Tyrsis. An unending stream, if necessary. The invasion would continue, the push into the Elven Westlands, and the only thing left undecided was how long the destruction would go on.

She bit back against the bitterness and the despair, angry at her self-perceived weakness. The Queen of the Elves could not afford to give up, she chided. The Queen of the Elves must always believe.

Ah, but in what was there left to believe?

That Par and Coll Ohmsford were alive and in possession of the Sword
of Shannara, she answered determinedly. That Morgan Leah followed after them. That Walker Boh had brought back Paranor and the Druids. That Allanon's charges had been fulfilled, that the secret of the Shadowen was known, and that there was hope for them. She had these to believe in, and she must find her strength there.