The Heritage of Shannara (97 page)

They camped that night in a forest of deadwood where the air was so still they could hear each other breathe. The wood would not burn, so they had no fire. Light from a mix of elements in the earth reflected off the ceiling of clouds and cast the shadows of the trees across their huddled forms in clinging webs.

“We'll be there by nightfall tomorrow,” Horner Dees said as they sat facing each other in the stillness. “Eldwist.”

Dark stares were his only reply.

Uhl Belk's presence became palpable after that. He huddled next to them there in the fading dusk, slept with them that night, and walked with them when they set out the following day. His breath was what they breathed, his silence their own. They could feel him beckoning, reaching out to gather them in. No one said so, but Uhl Belk was there.

By midday, the land had turned to stone. It was as if the whole of it, sickened and withered and gone lifeless, had been washed of every color but gray and in the process petrified. It was all preserved perfectly, like a giant piece of sculpture. Trunks and limbs, scrub and grasses, rocks and earth— everything as far as the eye could see had been turned to stone. It was a starkly chilling landscape that despite its coldness radiated an oddly compelling beauty. The company from Rampling Steep found itself entranced. Perhaps it was the solidity that drew them, the sense that here was something lasting and enduring and somehow perfectly wrought. The ravages of time, the changing of the seasons, the most determined efforts of man—it seemed as if none of these could affect what had been done here.

Horner Dees nodded and the members of the company went forward.

A haze hung about them as they walked across this tapestry of frozen time, and it was only with difficulty that they were able, after several hours, to distinguish something else shimmering in the distance. It was a vast body of water, as gray as the land they passed through, blending into its bleakness, a backdrop merging starkly into earth and sky as if the transition were meaningless.

They had reached the Tiderace.

Twin peaks came into view as well, jagged rock spirals that lifted starkly against the horizon. It was apparent that the peaks were their destination.

Now and again the earth beneath them rumbled ominously, tremors reverberating as if the land were a carpet that some giant had taken in his hands and shaken. There was nothing about the tremors to indicate their source. But Horner Dees knew something. Morgan saw it in the way his bearded face tightened down against his chest and fear slipped into his eyes.

After a time the land about them began to narrow on either side and the Tiderace to close about, and they were left with a shrinking corridor of rock upon which to walk. The corridor was taking them directly toward the peaks, a ramp that might at its end drop them into the sea. The temperature cooled, and there was moisture in the air that clung to their skin in faint droplets. Their booted feet were strangely noiseless as they trod the hard surface of the rock, climbing steadily into a haze. Soon they became a line of shadows in the approaching dusk. Dees led, ancient, massive, and steady. Morgan followed with Quickening, the tall Highlander's face lined with wariness, the girl's smooth and calm. Handsome Carisman hummed beneath his breath while his gaze shifted about him as rapidly as a bird's. Walker Boh floated behind, pale and introspective within his long cloak. Pe Ell brought up the rear, his stalker's eyes seeing everything.

The ramp began to break apart before them, an escarpment out of
which strange rock formations rose against the light. They might have been carvings of some sort save for the fact that they lacked any recognizable form. Like pillars that had been hewn apart by weather's angry hand over thousands of years, they jutted and angled in bizarre shapes and images, the mindless visions of a madman. The company passed between them, anxious in their shadow, and hurried on.

They arrived finally at the peaks. There was a rift between them, a break so deep and narrow that it appeared to have been formed by some cataclysm that had split apart what had once been a single peak to form the two. They loomed to either side, spirals of rock that thrust into the clouds as if to pin them fast. Beyond, the skies were murky and misted, and the waters of the Tiderace crashed and rumbled against the rocky shores.

Horner Dees moved ahead and the others followed until all had been enveloped in shadows. The air was chill and unmoving in the gap, and the distant shrieks of seabirds echoed shrilly. What sort of creatures besides those of the sea could possibly live here? Morgan Leah wondered uneasily. He drew his sword. His whole body was rigid with tension, and he strained to catch some sign of the danger he sensed threatening them. Dees was hunched forward like an animal at hunt, and the three behind the Highlander were ghosts without substance. Only Quickening seemed unaffected, her head held high, her eyes alert as she scanned the rock, the skies, the gray that shrouded everything.

Morgan swallowed against the dryness in his throat.
What is it that waits for us?

The walls of the break seemed to join overhead, and they were left momentarily in utter blackness with only the thin line of the passageway ahead to give them reassurance that they had not been entombed. Then the walls receded again, and the light returned. The rift opened into a valley that lay cradled between the peaks. Shallow, rutted, choked with the husks of trees and brush and with boulders many times the size of any man, it was an ugly catchall for nature's refuse and time's discards. Skeletons lay everywhere, vast piles of them, all sizes and shapes, scattered without suggestion of what creatures they might once have been.

Horner Dees brought them to a halt. “This is Bone Hollow,” he said quietly. “This is the gateway to Eldwist. Over there, across the Hollow, through the gap in the peaks, Eldwist begins.”

The others crowded forward for a better look. Walker Boh stiffened. “There's something down there.”

Dees nodded. “Found that out the hard way ten years ago,” he said. “It's called a Koden. It's the Stone King's watchdog. You see it?”

They looked and saw nothing, even Pe Ell. Dees seated himself ponderously on a rock. “You won't either. Not until it has you. And it won't matter much by then, will it? You could ask any of those poor creatures down there if they still had tongues and the stuff of life to use them.”

Morgan scuffed his boot on a piece of deadwood as he listened. The deadwood was heavy and unyielding. Stone. Morgan looked at it as if understanding
for the first time. Stone. Everything underfoot, everything surrounding them, everything for as far as the eye could see—it was all stone.

“Kodens are a kind of bear,” Dees was saying. “Big fellows, live up in the cold regions north of the mountains, keep pretty much to themselves. Very unpredictable under any conditions. But this one?” He made his nod an enigmatic gesture. “He's a monster.”

“Huge?” Morgan asked.

“A
monster
,” Dees emphasized. “Not just in size, Highlander. This thing isn't a Koden anymore. You can recognize it for what it's supposed to be, but just barely. Belk did something to it. Blinded it, for one thing. It can't see. But its ears are so sharp it can hear a pin drop.”

“So it knows we are here,” Walker mused, edging past Dees for a closer look at the Hollow. His eyes were dark and introspective.

“Has for quite a while, I'd guess. It's down there waiting for us to try to get past.”

“If it's still there at all,” Pe Ell said. “It's been a long time since you were here, old man. By now it might be dead and gone.”

Dees looked at him mildly. “Why don't you go on down there and take a look?”

Pe Ell gave him that lopsided, chilling smile.

The old Tracker turned away, his gaze shifting to the Hollow. “Ten years since I saw it and I still can't forget it,” he whispered. He shook his grizzled head. “Something like that you don't ever forget.”

“Maybe Pe Ell is right; maybe it is dead by now,” Morgan suggested hopefully. He glanced at Quickening and found her staring fixedly at Walker.

“Not this thing,” Dees insisted.

“Well, why can't we see it if it's all that big and ugly?” Carisman asked, peering cautiously over Morgan's shoulder.

Dees chuckled. His eyes narrowed. “You can't see it because it looks like everything else down there—like stone, all gray and hard, just another chunk of rock. Look for yourself. One of those mounds, one of those boulders, something that's down there that doesn't look like anything— that's it. Just lying there, perfectly still. Waiting.”

“Waiting,” Carisman echoed.

He sang:

“Be still, tunesmith,” Pe Ell said, a warning edge to his voice. He scowled at Dees. “You got past this thing before, if we're to believe what you tell us. How?”

Dees laughed aloud. “I was lucky, of course! I had twelve other men with me and we just walked right in, fools to the last. It couldn't get us all, not once we started running. No, it had to settle for three. That was going in. Coming out, it only got one. Of course, there were just two of us left by then. I was the one it missed.”

Pe Ell stared at him expressionlessly. “Like you said, old man—lucky for you.”

Dees rose, as bearish as any Koden Morgan might have imagined, sullen and forbidding when he set his face as he did now. He faced Pe Ell as if he meant to have at him. Then he said, “There's all sorts of luck. Some you've got and some you make. Some you carry with you and some you pick up along the way. You're going to need all kinds of it getting in and out of Eldwist. The Koden, he's a thing you wouldn't want to dream about on your worst night. But let me tell you something. After you see what else is down there, what lies beyond Bone Hollow, you won't have to worry about the Koden anymore. Because the dreams you'll have on your worst nights after that will be concerned with other things!”

Pe Ell's shrug was scornful and indifferent. “Dreams are for frightened old men, Horner Dees.”

Dees glared at him. “Brave words now.”

“I can see it,” Walker Boh said suddenly.

His voice was soft, almost a whisper, but it silenced the others instantly and brought them about to face him. The Dark Uncle was staring out across the broken desolation of the Hollow, seemingly unaware that he had spoken.

“The Koden?” Dees asked sharply. He came forward a step.

“Where?” Pe Ell asked.

Walker's gesture was obscure. Morgan looked anyway and saw nothing. He glanced at the others. None of them appeared to be able to find it either. But Walker Boh was paying no attention to any of them. He seemed instead to be listening for something.

“If you really can see it, point it out to me,” Pe Ell said finally, his voice carefully neutral.

Walker did not respond. He continued to stare. “It feels …” he began and stopped.

“Walker?” Quickening whispered and touched his arm.

The pale countenance shifted away from the Hollow at last and the dark eyes found her own. “I must find it,” he said. He glanced at each of them in turn. “Wait here until I call for you.”

Morgan started to object, but there was something in the other man's eyes that stopped him from doing so.

Instead, he watched silently with the others as the Dark Uncle walked alone into Bone Hollow.

The day was still, the air windless, and nothing moved in the ragged expanse of the Hollow save Walker Boh. He crossed the broken stone in silence,
a ghost who made no sound and left no mark. There were times in the past few weeks when he had thought himself little more. He had almost died from the poison of the Asphinx and again from the attack of the Shad-owen at Hearthstone. A part of him had surely died with the loss of his arm, another part with the failure of his magic to cure his sickness. A part of him had died with Cogline. He had been empty and lost on this journey, compelled to come by his rage at the Shadowen, his fear at being left alone, and his wish to discover the secrets of Uhl Belk and the Black Elfstone. Even Quickening, despite ministering to his needs, both physical and emotional, had not been strong enough to give him back to himself. He had been a hollow thing, bereft of any sense of who and what he was supposed to be, reduced to undertaking this quest in the faint hope that he would discover his purpose in the world.

And now, here within this vast, desolate stretch of land, where fears and doubts and weaknesses were felt most keenly, Walker Boh thought he had a chance to come alive again.

It was the presence of the Koden that triggered this hope. Until now the magic had been curiously silent within him, a worn and tired thing that had failed repeatedly and at last seemed to have given up. To be sure, it was there still to protect him when he was threatened, to frighten off the Urdas when they came too close, to deflect their hurled weapons. Yet this was a poor and sorry use when he remembered what it had once been able to do. What of the empathy it had given him with other living things? What of his sense of emotions and thoughts? What of the knowledge that had always just seemed to come to him? What of the glimpses of what was to be? All of these had deserted him, gone away as surely as his old world, his life with Cogline and Rumor at Hearthstone. Once he had wished it would be so, that the magic would disappear and he would be left in peace, a man like any other. But it had become increasingly clear to him on this journey, his sense of who and what he was heightened by the passing of Cogline and his own physical and emotional devastation, that his wish had been foolish. He would never be like other men, and he would never be at peace without the magic. He could not change who and what he was; Cogline had known that and told him so. On this journey he had discovered it was true.

He needed the magic.

He required it.

Now he would test whether or not he could still call it his own. He had sensed the presence of the Koden before Pe Ell had. He had sensed what it was before Horner Dees had described it. Amid the strewn rock, hunched down and silent, it had reached out to him as creatures once had when he approached. He could feel the Koden call to him. Walker Boh was not certain of its purpose in doing so, yet knew he must respond. It was more than the creature's need that he was answering; it was also his own.