Pe Ell’s long, narrow face remained expressionless. “How are we supposed to do that?” he asked.
“You will find a way,” the girl said, looking at each of them in turn. “My father said you would, that you possess the means. But it will take all three of you to succeed. Each of you has the magic that is required; we have not spoken of it, but it is so. All three magics are needed. All three of you must go.”
“All three.” Pe Ell glanced doubtfully at Walker and Morgan. “What is it that this Black Elfstone does? What sort of magic does it possess?”
Walker leaned forward to hear her answer, and Quickening’s black eyes fixed on him. “It steals away the power of other magics. It swallows them up and makes them its own.”
There was stunned silence. Walker had never heard of such magic. Even in the old Druid legends, there was no mention of it. He thought about the words contained in the Druid History that Cogline had brought to him, the words that described how Paranor could be restored:
Once removed, Paranor shall remain lost to the world of men for the whole of time, sealed away and invincible within its casting. One magic alone has the power to return it—that singular Elfstone which is colored Black and was conceived by the lactic people of the old world in the manner and form of all Elfstones, combining nevertheless in one stone alone the necessary properties of heart, mind, and body. Whosoever shall have cause and right shall wield it to its proper end.
He had memorized the words before hiding the book in a crevice in the fireplace of the cottage before departing for the Hall of Kings. The words explained something of how the Black Elfstone could be used to bring back Paranor. if Druid magic had sealed it away, the Black Elfstone would negate the magic and restore the Keep. Walker frowned. That seemed awfully easy. Worse, the power of such a magic suggested that once employed, nothing could defeat it. Why would the Druids take the chance that something so powerful would fall into the hands of an enemy like Uhl Belk?
On the other hand, they had done what they could to protect it, he supposed. Almost no one could have retrieved it from the Hall of Kings. Or even known it was there. How had the Stone King discovered it? he wondered.
“If the Black Elfstone can take away other magics,” Pe Ell said suddenly, putting an end to Walker’s musings, “how can anything overcome it? Our own magic, any magic, will be useless against it.”
“Especially mine, since I don’t have any,” Morgan spoke up suddenly, causing all of them to glance sharply at him. “At least, not enough to bother about.”
“Is there something you can do to help us against the Stone King?” Walker asked. “Can you make use of your own magic in some way?”
“No,” the girl said, and they went silent, staring at her. “My magic is useless until you have regained possession of the Black Elfstone from Uhl Belk. Nor must he be allowed to discover who I am. If he should, he would make a quick end of me. I will go with you and advise you when I can. I will help if possible. But I cannot use my magic—not the smallest amount, not for even the shortest time.”
“But you think that we can?” Pe Ell demanded incredulously.
“The Stone King will find your magic of no consequence; he will not feel threatened by you.”
Pe Ell’s face assumed such a black look that Walker was momentarily distracted from wondering what it was that Quickening was hiding from them. He was certain now that she was hiding something. Not lying to them, he didn’t think that. But there was definitely something she wasn’t telling them. The problem was, he hadn’t the faintest idea what.
She said then, “There is another reason that you should help me.” Her eyes held them. “All things are possible if you come with me. Walker Boh. I have driven the poison from your body and made you well. I have healed your arm, but I cannot make you whole again. Come with me in search of the Black Elfstone and you will find a way to do so. Morgan Leah. You would restore the magic of your shattered Sword. Come with me. Pe Ell. You would seek out magic greater than that of the Shadowen. Come with me. My father tells me that together you possess the keys that will unlock all of these secrets. My father knows what is possible. He would not lie.”
Her face lifted toward them. “The Four Lands and her people are threatened by the Shadowen; but no more so than by Uhl Belk. The means of ending one threat shall be found through ending the other. The Black Elfstone is the talisman that shall enable the ending of both. I know you cannot yet understand that; I know I cannot explain it to you. I do not know how you shall fare in this quest. But I shall go with you, live or die with you, succeed or fail with you. We shall be bound forever by what happens.”
As we are somehow bound already, Walker thought to himself and wondered anew why the feeling persisted.
Silence crystallized about them. No one wanted to break its shell. There were questions yet unasked and answers yet ungiven; there were doubts and misgivings and fears to be conquered. A future that had been settled for them all not a week gone now stretched ahead, a dark and uncertain pathway that would take them where it chose. Uhl Belk, the Stone King, waited at the end of that path, and they were going to seek him out. It was already decided. Without anyone having said so, it was resolved. Such was the strength of Quickening’s magic, the magic she exercised over the lives of others, a magic that not only restored life to what was believed dead and gone but also liberated hopes and dreams in the living.
It was like that now.
Morgan Leah was thinking what it would be like to have the Sword of Leah restored to him. He was remembering how it felt when its magic was his to command. Pe Ell was thinking what it would be like to have possession of a weapon that no one could stand against. He was remembering how it felt when he used the Stiehl. He was wondering if this would be the same.
But Walker Boh was thinking not so much of himself as of the Black Elfstone. It remained the key to all the locked doors. Could Paranor be restored; could the Druids be brought back again? Allanon’s charge to him, part of what must be done if the Shadowen were to be destroyed. And now, for the first time since the dreams had come to him, he wanted them destroyed. More, he wanted to be the one to do it.
He looked into Quickening’s black eyes, and it seemed as if she could read his thoughts. A Druid trick. A faerie gift.
And suddenly, shockingly, he remembered where he had seen her before.
He went to her later that night to tell her. It took him a long time to decide to do so. It would have been easier to say nothing because in speaking he risked jeopardizing both his newfound friendship with her and his participation in the journey to Eldwist. But keeping silent would have been the same as lying, and he could not bring himself to do that. So he waited until Morgan and Pe Ell were slumbering, until the night was cloaked in blackness and time’s passage slowed to a crawl, and he rose soundlessly from beneath his blankets, still aching and stiff from his ordeal, and crossed the fire-lit clearing to where she waited.
As he passed the ruins of the cottage, he glanced over. Earlier, while it was still light, he had searched the smoldering ashes for the missing Druid History. He had found nothing.
Quickening was not asleep; he knew she wouldn’t be. She was sitting in the shadow of a massive fir where the trees that ringed the clearing were farthest from the sleepers. He was still weak and could not go far, but he did not wish to speak to her where the other two might hear. She seemed to sense this; she rose as he approached and went with him wordlessly into the forest. When they were a safe distance away, she slowed and faced him.
“What would you tell me, Walker Boh?” she asked and pulled him down with her onto the cool matting of the woodland floor.
It took him a moment to speak. He felt that odd kinship to her without yet understanding why, and it almost changed his mind, making him frightened of the words he had come to say and of the reaction they would cause.
“Quickening,” he said finally, and the sound of her name coming from his lips stopped him anew. He tightened his re
solve. “I was given a book of the Druid Histories by Cogline before he died. The book was destroyed in the fire. There was a passage in the book that said that the Black Elfstone is a Druid magic and possesses the power to bring back disappeared Paranor. That is the charge I was given by the shade of Allanon when I went to speak with him at the Hadeshorn some weeks ago—to restore Paranor and the Druids to the Four Lands. It was a charge that Cogline urged me to accept. He brought the Druid History to me to convince me it could be done.”
“I know this,” she said softly.
Her black eyes threatened to swallow him up, and he forced himself to look away. “I doubted him,” he continued, the words coining harder now. “I questioned his purpose in telling me, accused him of serving the interests of the Druids. I wanted nothing to do with any of them. But my curiosity about the Black Elfstone persuaded me to pursue the matter anyway, even after he was gone. I decided to try to find out where the Elfstone was hidden. I went to see the Grimpond.”
He looked up at her again and kept his gaze steady. “I was shown three visions. All three were of me. In the first I stood before the others in the company that had journeyed to the Hadeshorn to meet with the shade of Allanon and declared that I would sooner cut off my hand than help bring back the Druids. The vision mocked what I had said and showed me with my hand already gone. And now it is gone indeed. My hand and my arm both.”
His voice was shaking. “The third vision is of no importance here. But in the second vision I stood at the crest of a ridgeline that looked out over the world. A girl was with me. She lost her balance and reached for me. When she did, I thrust her away, and she fell. That girl, Quickening, was you.”
He waited for her response, the silence filling the space between them until it seemed to Walker as if nothing separated them. Quickening did not speak. She kept her eyes fixed on him, her features swept clean of expression.
“Surely you know of the Grimpond!” he exclaimed to her finally in exasperation.
Then he saw her blink and realized that she had been thinking of something else entirely. “It is an exiled spirit,” she said.
“One that riddles and lies, but speaks a measure of truth as well, hiding it in devious ways. It did so with the first vision. My arm is gone. I would not have the same thing happen with your life!”
She smiled faintly then, just a trace of movement at the corners of her mouth. “You will not hurt me, Walker Boh. Are you worried that you must?”
“The vision,” he repeated.
“The vision is that and nothing more,” she interrupted gently. “Visions are as much illusion as truth. Visions tell us of possibilities and do not speak in absolutes. We are not bound by them; they do not govern what is to be. Especially those of a creature like the Grimpond. It teases with falsehoods; it deceives. Do you fear it, Walker Boh? No, not you. Nor I. My father tells me what is to be and that is enough. You will bring no harm to me.”
Walker’s face felt pinched and tight. “He might be mistaken in what he says; he might not see everything that is to be.”
Quickening shook her head, reached out her slim hand, and touched his own. “You will be my protector on this journey, Walker Boh—all three of you, for as long as is necessary. Do not worry. I will be safe with you.”
Walker shook his head. “I could remain behind…”
Her hand lifted quickly to his mouth and touched it as if to wipe away some new poison. “No.” The word was sheathed in iron. “I will be safe if you are with me; I will be in danger only if you are not. You must come.”
He stared at her doubtfully. “Can you tell me anything of what I am expected to do?”
She shook her head.
“Or of the means by which I am to claim the Black Elfstone from Uhl Belk?”
Again, no, firmly.
“Or even how I am to protect you when I have but one arm and…?”
He let his body sag; he was suddenly very weary. The darkness was a cloak of doubt and indecision that hung about him in suffocating folds. “I am half a man,” he whispered. “I have lost faith in who and what I am, in the promises I made to myself, in the tasks I set myself. I have been dragged about by Druid dreams and charges in which I do not believe. I have been stripped of my two closest friends, my home, and my sense of worth. I was the strongest of those who went to meet with Allanon, the one the others relied upon; now I am the weakest, barely able to stand on my own two feet. I cannot be as quick as you to dismiss the Grimpond’s visions. I have been wrongly confident too many times. Now I must question everything.”
“Walker Boh,” she said.
He stared at her wonderingly as she reached out for him and brought him to his feet. “You will be strong again—but only if you believe.”
She was so close he could feel the heat of her reaching out to him through the cool night air. “You are like me,” she said quietly. “You have sensed as much already, though you fail to understand why it is so. It is because we are, before all other things, creatures of the magic we wield. The magic defines us, shapes us, and makes us who we are. For both of us, it is a birthright we cannot escape. You would protect me by telling me of this vision, by taking away the danger that your presence poses if the vision should be true. But, Walker Boh, we are bound in such a way that despite any visions telling we cannot separate ourselves and survive. Do you not feel it? We must pick up the thread of this trail that leads to Eldwist and Uhl Belk and the Black Elfstone and follow it to its end. Visions of what might be cannot be allowed to deter us. Fears of our future cannot be permitted to intrude.”
She paused. “Magic, Walker Boh. Magic governs my life’s purpose, the magic given to me by my father. Can you say that it is any different for you?”
It wasn’t a question she put to him; it was a statement of fact, of indisputable truth. He took a deep breath. “No,” he acknowledged. “I cannot.”
“We can neither deny it nor run from it, can we?”
“No.”
“We have this in common—this, and separate charges to find the Black Elfstone and preserve the Four Lands, yours from the shade of Allanon, mine from my father. Beyond that, nothing matters. All paths lead to the Druid talisman.” She lifted her face into the faint trailers of light that seeped downward through the trees from the starlit skies. “We must go in search of it together, Walker Boh.”
She was so positive in her statement, so certain of what she said. Walker met her gaze, still filled with the doubts and fears she had urged him to cast aside, but comforted now in her sense of purpose and her strength of will. Once he had possessed both in equal measure. It made him ashamed and angry that he no longer did. He remembered Par Ohmsford’s determination to do what was right, to find a use for his gift of magic. He thought of his own unspoken promise to the ghosts of Cogline and Rumor. He was still wary of the Grimpond’s vision, but Quickening was right. He could not let it dissuade him from his quest.
He looked at her and nodded. A measure of determination returned. “We will not speak of the Grimpond’s vision again,” he promised.
“Not until there is need,” she replied.
She took him by the arm and led him back through the darkened forest to sleep.
XI
Par Ohmsford’s strength returned to him slowly. Two weeks passed while he lay bedded in the Mole’s underground lair, a gaunt and motionless skeleton draped in old linen, dappled by a mingling of shadows and candlelight, and surrounded by the strange, changeless faces of the Mole’s adopted children. Time had no meaning at first, for he was lost to anything remotely connected with the real world. Then the madness faded, and he began to come back to himself. The days and nights took on definition. Damson Rhee and the Mole became recognizable. The blur of darkness and light sharpened to reveal the shapes and forms of the subterranean rooms in which he rested. The stuffed castoffs grew familiar once more, button noses and eyes, thread-sewn mouths, worn cloth limbs and bodies. He was able to give them names. Words assumed meanin
g out of idle talk. There was nourishment and there was sleep.
Mostly, though, there were the memories. They tracked him through sleep and waking alike, wraiths that hovered at the edge of his thoughts, anxious to sting and bite. There were memories of the Pit, the Shadowen, Rimmer Dall, and the Sword of Shannara, but mostly of Coll.
He could not forgive himself. Coll was dead because of him—not simply because he had struck the fatal blow, the killing stroke of his wishsong’s magic, not because he had failed to adequately protect his brother from the packs of Shadowen that roamed the Pit while he was engaged with Rimmer Dall, not for any of this, but because he had from the first, from the moment they had fled Varfleet and the Seekers, thought only of himself. His need to know the truth about the wishsong, the Sword of Shannara, the charges of Allanon, the purpose of the magic—this was what had mattered. He had sacrificed everything to discover that truth, and in the end that sacrifice had included his brother.
Damson Rhee strove mightily to persuade him otherwise, seeing his torment and instinctively recognizing its cause.
“He wanted to be there with you, Par,” she would tell him, over and over, her face bent close, her red hair tumbling down about her slender shoulders, her voice soft and gentle. “It was his choice. He loved you enough that it could not have been otherwise. You did your best to keep him from coming, to keep him safe. But there was that in Coll that would not be compromised. A sense of what’s right, what’s necessary. He was determined to protect you from the dangers you both knew waited. He gave his life to keep you safe, don’t you see? Don’t be so quick to steal away what that sacrifice meant by insisting it was your fault. There were choices and he made them. He was strong-willed, and you could not have changed his mind even had you tried harder than you did. He understood, Par. He recognized the purpose and need in what you do. You believed that was true before; you must believe it now. Coll did. Don’t let his death have been for nothing.”