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 resolve. “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 coming 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 … ?”
“No.”
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 vision's 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 que
st.
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.
11
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 meaning 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 Rim-mer 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.”
But Coll's death might have been for exactly that, he feared, and the fear chased after him in his darkest thoughts. Exactly what had his brother's death accomplished? What did he have to show for it? The Sword of Shan-nara? Yes, he had gained possession of the legendary blade of his Elvenblooded ancestors, the talisman the shade of Allanon had sent him to find. And what use was it? It had failed utterly as a weapon against Rimmer Dall, even after the First Seeker had revealed himself as a Shadowen. If the Sword was a necessary magic as Allanon had claimed, why hadn't it destroyed his greatest enemy? Worse, if Dall were to be believed, the Sword of Shannara could have been his simply for the asking. There was no need for their agonizing, destructive descent into the Pit—no need, then, for the death of Coll.
And no purpose to it either if Rimmer Dall was right about one thing more—that Par Ohmsford, like himself, was a Shadowen. For if Par were the very thing they were fighting to protect the Four Lands against …
If Coll had died to save a Shadowen …
Unthinkable? He was no longer sure.
So the memories plagued him, bitter and terrible, and he was awash in a slew of anguish and disbelief and anger. He fought through that morass, struggled to keep himself afloat, to breathe, to survive. The fever disappeared, the starkness of his emotions softened, the edges dulled, and the aching of his heart and body scarred and healed.
He rose at the end of the two weeks' time, determined to lie about no longer, and began to walk short distances within the Mole's dark quarters. He washed at the basin, dressed, and took his meals at the table. He navigated the lair end to end, doorway to doorway, testing himself, feeling his way through his weakness. He pushed back the memories; he kept them carefully at bay. He did so mostly through simple motion. Doing something, anything, helped to keep him from dwelling so much on what was over and done. He made note of the smells and tastes that hung upon the trapped air. He studied the texture of the ruined furniture, of the various discards of the upper world, and of the walls and floors themselves. His resolution stiffened. He was alive and there was a reason for it. He shifted in and out of the candlelight and shadows, a ghost impelled by an inner vision.
Even when he was too tired to move about further he was reluctant to rest. He spent hours seated on the edge of his bed examining the Sword of Shannara, pondering its mystery.
Why had it failed to respond to him when he had touched its blade to Rimmer Dall?
“Is it possible,” Damson asked him at one point, her voice cautious, “that you have been deceived in some way and that this is not the Sword of Shannara?”
He thought carefully before he answered. “When I saw it in the vault, Damson, and then when I touched it, I knew it was the Sword. I was certain of it. I have sung the story of it so many times, pictured it so often. There was no doubt in my mind.” He shook his head slowly. “I still feel it to be so.”
She nodded. She was seated next to him on the bed, legs folded beneath her, green eyes intense. “But your anticipation of finding it might have colored your judgment, Par. You might have wanted it so badly that you allowed yourself to be fooled.”
“It might have happened like that, yes,” he agreed. “Then. But now, as well? Look at the blade. See here. The handle is worn, aged—yet the blade shines like new. Like Morgan's sword—magic protects it. And see the carving of the torch with its flame …”
His enthusiasm trailed off with a sigh. He saw the doubt mirrored in her eyes. “Yet it doesn't work, it's true. It doesn't do a thing. I hold it, and it seems right, what it should be—and it doesn't do anything, give back anything, or let me feel even the slightest hint of its magic. So how can it be the Sword?”
“Counter-magic,” the Mole said solemnly. He was crouched in a corner of the room close to them, almost invisible in the shadows. “A mask that hides.” He stretched his face with his hands to change its shape.
Par looked at him and nodded. “A concealment of some kind. Yes, Mole. It might be. I have considered the possibility. But what magic exists that is strong enough to suppress that of the Sword of Shannara? How could the Shadowen produce such a magic? And if they could, why not simply use it to destroy the blade? And shouldn't I be able to break past any counter-magic if I am the rightful bearer of the Sword?”
The Mole regarded him solemnly, voiceless. Damson gave no reply.
“I don't understand,” he whispered softly. “I don't understand what's wrong.”
He wondered, too, at how willingly Rimmer Dall had let him depart with the Sword. If it were truly the weapon it was supposed to be, the weapon that could destroy the Shadowen, Dall would surely not have let Par Ohmsford have it. Yet he had given it to the Valeman without argument, almost with encouragement in fact, telling him instead that what he had been told of the Shadowen and the Sword was a lie.
And then virtually proved it by demonstrating that the touch of the Sword would not harm him.
Par wandered the Mole's quarters with the blade in hand, hef
ting it, balancing it, working to invoke the magic that lay within. Yet the secret of the Sword of Shannara continued to elude him.
Periodically Damson left their underground concealment and went up into the streets of Tyrsis. It was odd to think of an entire city existing just overhead, just beyond sight and sound, with people and buildings, sunlight and fresh air. Par longed to go with her, but she wisely counseled against it. He lacked strength yet for such an undertaking, and the Federation was still searching.
A week after Par had left his sickbed and begun moving about on his own, Damson returned with disquieting news.
“Some weeks ago,” she advised, “the Federation discovered the location of the Jut. A spy in the outlaw camp apparently betrayed it. An army was dispatched from Tyrsis to penetrate the Parma Key and lay siege. The siege was successful. The Jut fell. It was taken close to the time, Par, when you escaped the Pit.” She paused. “Everyone found there was killed.”
Par caught his breath. “Everyone?”
“So the Federation claims. The Movement, it says, is finished.”
There was momentary silence. They sat at the Mole's long table surrounded by his voiceless, unseeing children, saucers and cups set before them. It had become a midafternoon ritual.
“More tea, lovely Damson?” the Mole asked softly, his furry face poking up from the table's edge. She nodded without taking her eyes from Par.
Par frowned. “You don't seem distressed by this,” he responded finally.
“I think it odd that it took weeks for word of this victory to reach thecity.”
“So it isn't true, then?”
She bit into one of the crackers that the Mole had provided for them and chewed. “It may be true that the Jut was taken. But I know Padishar Creel. It doesn't seem likely that he would let himself be trapped in his own lair. He's much too clever for that. More to the point, friends of the Movement here in the city with whom I spoke tell me that line soldiers with the army claim they killed almost no one, several dozen at most, and those were already dead when the Jut's summit was breached. What happened, then, to the others? There were three hundred men in that camp. Besides, if the Federation really had Padishar Creel, they'd spike his head atop the city gates to prove it.”