The Heritage of Shannara (43 page)

He was in danger of losing control of himself, he knew. He had been afraid before, yes—when Coll and he fled Varfleet, when the woodswoman appeared to confront them below the Runne, when Cogline told them what they must do, when they crossed the Rainbow Lake in night and fog with Morgan, when they fought the giant in the forests of the Anar, when
they ran from the Gnawl in the Wolfsktaag, and when the Spider Gnomes and the girl-child who was a Shadowen seized him. He had been afraid when Allanon had come. But his fear then and since was nothing compared to what it was now. He was terrified.

He swallowed against the dryness he felt building in his throat and tried to tell himself he was all right. The feeling had come over him quite suddenly, as if it were a creature that had lain in wait along the rain-soaked streets of the city, its tentacles lashing out to snare him. Now he was caught up in a grip that bound him like iron and there was no way to break free. It was pointless to say anything to the others of what he was experiencing. After all, what could he say that would have any meaning—that he was frightened, even terrified? And what, did he suppose, were they?

A gust of wind shook the water-laden trees and showered him with droplets. He licked the water from his lips, the moisture cool and welcome. Coll was a bulky shape immediately ahead, Morgan another one behind. Shadows danced and played about him, nipping at his fading courage. This was a mistake, he heard himself whispering from somewhere deep inside. His skin prickled with the certainty of it.

He had a sense of his own mortality that had been missing before, locked away in some forgotten storeroom of his mind, kept there, he supposed, because it was so frightening to look upon. It seemed to him in retrospect as if he had treated everything that had gone before as some sort of game. That was ridiculous, he knew; yet some part of it was true. He had gone charging about the countryside, a self-declared hero in the mold of those in the stories he sang about, determined to confront the reality of his dreams, decided that he would know the truth of who and what he was. He had thought himself in control of his destiny; he realized now that he was not.

Visions of what had been swept through his mind in swift disarray, chasing one another with vicious purpose. He had caromed from one mishap to the next, he saw—always wrongly believing that his meddling was somehow useful. In truth, what had he accomplished? He was an outlaw running for his life. His parents were prisoners in their own home. Walker believed him a fool. Wren had abandoned him. Coll and Morgan stayed with him only because they felt he needed looking after. Padishar Creel believed him something he could never be. Worst of all, as a direct result of his misguided decision to accept the charge of a man three hundred years dead, five men were about to offer up their lives.

“Watch yourself,” he had cautioned Coll in a vain attempt at humor as they departed their warehouse concealment. “Wouldn't want you tripping over those feet, duck's weather or no.”

Coll had sniffed. “Just keep your ears pricked. Shouldn't be hard for someone like you.”

Teasing, playing at being brave. Fooling no one.

Allanon!
He breathed the Druid's name like a prayer in the silence of his mind.
Why don't you help me?

But a shade, he knew, could help no one. Help could come only from the living.

There was no more time to think, to agonize over decisions past making, or to lament those already made. The trees broke apart, and the Gatehouse was before them. A pair of Federation guards standing watch stiffened as the patrol approached. Padishar never hesitated. He went directly to them, informed them of the patrol's purpose, joked about the weather, and had the doors open within moments. In a knot of lowered heads and tightened cloaks, the little band hastened inside.

The men of the night watch were gathered about a wooden table playing cards, six of them, heads barely lifting at the arrival of the newcomers. The watch commander was nowhere to be seen.

Padishar glanced over his shoulder, nodded faintly to Morgan, Stasas, and Drutt, and motioned them to spread out about the table. As they did so, one of the players glanced up suspiciously.

“Who're you?” he demanded.

“Clean-up detail,” Padishar answered. He moved around behind the speaker and bent over to read his cards. “That's a losing hand, friend.”

“Back off, you're dripping on me,” the other complained.

Padishar hit him on the temple with his fist, and the man dropped like a stone. A second followed almost as fast. The guards surged to their feet, shouting, but the outlaws and Morgan felled them all in seconds. Par and Coll began pulling ropes and strips of cloth from their packs.

“Drag them into the sleeping quarters, tie and gag them,” Padishar whispered. “Make sure they can't escape.”

There was a quick knock at the door. Padishar waited until the guards were dispatched, then cracked the peep window. Everything was fine, he assured the guards without, who thought they might have heard something. The card game was breaking up; everyone thought it would be best to start getting things in order.

He closed the window with a reassuring smile.

After the men of the night watch were secured in the sleeping quarters, Padishar closed the door and bolted it. He hesitated, then ordered the locks to the entry doors thrown as well. No point in taking any chances, he declared. They couldn't afford to leave any of their company behind to make certain they were not disturbed.

With oil lamps to guide them, they descended through the gloom of the stairwell to the lower levels of the Gatehouse, the sound of the rain lost behind the heavy stone. The dampness penetrated, though, so chill that Par found himself shivering. He followed after the others in a daze, prepared to do whatever was necessary, his mind focused on putting one foot in front of the other until they were out of there. There was no reason to be frightened, he kept telling himself. It would all be over quick enough.

At the lower level, they found the watch commander sleeping—a new man, different from the one that had been waiting for them when they had tried to slip over the ravine wall. This one fared no better. They
subdued him without effort, bound and gagged him, and locked him in his room.

“Leave the lamps,” Padishar ordered.

They bypassed the watch commander's chambers and went down to the end of the hall. A single, ironbound door stood closed before them, twice as high as their tallest, the angular Drutt. A massive handle, emblazoned with the wolf 's head insigne of the Seekers, jutted out. Padishar reached down with both hands and twisted. The latch gave, the door slid open. Murk and darkness filled the gap, and the stench of decay and mold slithered in.

“Stay close, now,” Padishar whispered over his shoulder, his eyes dangerous, and stepped out into the gloom.

Coll turned long enough to reach back and squeeze Par's shoulder, then followed.

They stood in a forest of jumbled tree trunks, matted brush, vines, brambles, and impenetrable mist. The thick, sodden canopy of the treetops overhead all but shut out the little daylight that remained. Mud oozed and sucked in tiny bogs all about them. Creatures flew in ragged jumps through the jungle—birds or something less pleasant, they couldn't tell which. Smells assailed them—the decay and the mold, but something more as well, something even less tolerable. Sounds rose out of the murk, distant, indistinguishable, threatening. The Pit was a well of endless gloom.

Every nerve ending on Par Ohmsford's body screamed at him to get out of there.

Padishar motioned them ahead. Drutt followed, then Coll, Par, Morgan, and Stasas, a line of rain-soaked forms. They picked their way forward slowly, following the edge of the ravine, moving in the direction of the rubble from the old Bridge of Sendic. Par and Coll carried the grappling hooks and ropes, the others drawn weapons. Par glanced over his shoulder momentarily and saw the light from the open door leading back into the Gatehouse disappear into the fog. He saw the Sword of Leah glint dully in Morgan's hand, the rain trickling off its polished metal.

The earth they walked upon was soft and yielding, but it held them as they pushed steadily into the gloom. The Pit had the feel of a giant maw, open and waiting, smelling of things already eaten, its breath the mist that closed them away. Things wriggled and crawled through the pools of stagnant water, oozed down decaying logs, and flashed through bits of scrub like quicksilver. The silence was deafening; even the earlier sounds had disappeared at their approach. There was only the rain, slow and steady, seeping downward through the murk.

They walked for what seemed to Par a very long time. The minutes stretched away in an endless parade until there was no longer either beginning or end to them. How far could it be to the fallen bridge, he wondered? Surely they should be there by now. He felt trapped within the Pit, the wall of the ravine on his left, the trees and mist to his right, gloom and
rain overhead and all about. The black cloaks of his companions gave them the look of mourners at a funeral, buriers of the dead.

Then Padishar Creel stopped, listening. Par had heard it, too—a sort of hissing sound from somewhere deep within the murk, like steam escaping from a fissure. The others craned their necks and peered unsuccessfully about. The hissing stopped, the silence filling again with the sound of their breathing and the rain.

Padishar's broadsword glimmered as he motioned them ahead once more. He took them more quickly now, as if sensing that all was not right, that speed might have to take precedence over caution. Scores of massive, glistening trunks came and went, silent sentinels in the gloom. The light was fading rapidly, turned from gray to cobalt.

Par sensed suddenly that something was watching them. The hair on the back of his neck stiffened with the feel of its gaze, and he glanced about hurriedly. Nothing moved in the mist; nothing showed.

“What is it?” Morgan whispered in his ear, but he could only shake his head.

Then the stone blocks of the shattered Bridge of Sendic came into view, bulky and misshapen as they jutted like massive teeth from the tangled forest. Padishar hurried forward, the others following. They moved away from the ravine wall and deeper into the trees. The Pit seemed to swallow them in its mist and dark. Bridge sections lay scattered amid the stone rubble beneath the covering of the forest, moss-grown and worn, spectral in the failing light.

Par took a deep breath. The Sword of Shannara had been embedded blade downward in a block of red marble and placed in a vault beneath the protective span of the Bridge of Sendic, the old legends told.

It had to be here, somewhere close.

He hesitated. The Sword was embedded in red marble; could he free it? Could he even enter the vault?

His eyes searched the mist. What if it was buried beneath the rubble of the bridge? How would they reach it then?

So many unanswered questions, he thought, feeling suddenly desperate. Why hadn't he asked them before? Why hadn't he considered the possibilities?

The cliffs loomed faintly through the murky haze. He could see the west corner of the crumbling palace of the Kings of Callahorn, a dark shadow through a break in the trees. He felt his throat tighten. They were almost to the far wall of the ravine. They were almost out of places to look.

I won't leave without the Sword,
he swore wordlessly.
No matter what it takes, I won't!
The fire of his conviction burned through him as if to seal the covenant.

Then the hissing sounded again, much closer now. It seemed to be coming from more than one direction. Padishar slowed and stopped, turning guardedly. With Drutt and Stasas on either side, he stepped out a few
paces to act as a screen for the Valemen and the Highlander, then began inching cautiously along the fringe of the broken stone.

The hissing grew louder, more distinct. It was no longer hissing. It was breathing.

Par's eyes searched the darkness frantically. Something was coming for them, the same something that had devoured Ciba Blue and all those before him who had gone down into the Pit and not come out again. His certainty of it was terrifying. Yet it wasn't for their stalker that he searched. It was for the vault that held the Sword of Shannara. He was desperate now to find it. He could see it suddenly in his mind, as clear as if it were a picture drawn and mounted for his private viewing. He groped for it uncertainly, within his mind, then without in the mist and the dark.

Something strange began to happen to him.

He felt a tightening within that seemed grounded in the magic of the wishsong. It was a pulling, a tugging that wrenched against shackles he could neither see nor understand. He felt a pressure building within himself that he had never experienced before.

Coll saw his face and went pale. “Par?” he whispered anxiously and shook him.

Red pinpricks of light appeared in the mist all about them, burning like tiny fires in the damp. They shifted and winked and drew closer. Faces materialized, no longer human, the flesh decaying and half-eaten, the features twisted and fouled. Bodies shambled out of the night, some massive, some gnarled, all misshapen beyond belief. It was as if they had been stretched and wrenched about to see what could be made of them. Most walked bent over; some crawled on all fours.

They closed about the little company in seconds. They were things out of some loathsome nightmare, the fragments and shards of sleep's horror come into the world of waking. Dark, substanceless wraiths flitted in and out of their bodies, through mouths and eyes, from the pores of skin and the bristles of hair.

Shadowen!

The pressure inside Par Ohmsford grew unbearable. He felt something drop away in the pit of his stomach. He was seeing the vision in his dreams come alive, the dark world of animal-like humans and Shadowen masters. It was seeing Allanon's promise come to pass.

The pressure broke free. He screamed, freezing his companions with the sharpness of his cry. The sound took form and became words. He sang, the wishsong ripping through the air as if a flame, the magic lighting up the darkness. The Shadowen jerked away, their faces horrible in the unexpected glare, the lesions and cuts on their bodies vivid streaks of scarlet. Par stiffened, flooded with a power he had never known the wishsong to possess. He was aware of a vision within his mind—a vision of the Sword of Shannara.