He stopped suddenly, as if his words had brought him farther than he wished to go. In that instant, Brin caught sight of what had been hidden from her before—a quick, elusive glimpse of the secret that the Druid had withheld from her in the Valley of Shale when Bremen had risen from the Hadeshorn and spoken of what was to be, and which gave substance to the whisperings of her premonition.
“I thought it done once,” Allanon went on, brushing past the sudden pause. “I thought it done when Shea Ohmsford destroyed the Warlock Lord—when the Valeman unlocked the secret of the Sword of Shannara and made himself its master. But I was wrong. The dark magic did not die with the Warlock Lord. Nor was it locked away again as Bremen had foresworn it must be. It survived, kept safe within the pages of the Ildatch, secreted away within the bowels of the Maelmord to await new discoverers. And, finally, the discoverers came.”
“And became the Mord Wraiths,” Rone Leah finished.
“Made slaves to the dark magic as had been the Warlock Lord and the Skull Bearers in old days. Thinking to be master, they became only slaves.”
But what is the secret that you hide? Brin whispered in her mind, still waiting to hear it told. Speak now of that!
“Then Bremen cannot be freed from his exile within the Hadeshorn until the book of the Ildatch is destroyed—and the magic with it?” Rone was too caught up in the history of the tale to see what Brin saw.
“He is pledged to that destruction, Prince of Leah,” Allanon whispered.
And you. And you. Brin’s mind raced.
“All of the dark magic gone from the land?” Rone shook his head wonderingly. “It does not seem possible. Not after so many years of its being—of wars fought because of it, of lives expended.”
The Druid looked away. “That age ends, highlander. That age must pass.”
There was a long silence then, a hushed stillness that filled the night shadows about the flame of the oil lamp and crowded close about the three who huddled there. Wrapped by it, they thought their separate thoughts, eyes slipping past one another’s faces to shield what whispered within. Strangers joined in common cause but without understanding, thought Brin. We strive for a common good, yet the bond is curiously weak…
“Can we succeed in this, Allanon?” Rone Leah asked suddenly. His wind-burned face turned toward the Druid. “Have we strength enough to destroy this book and its dark magic?”
The Druid did not answer for a moment. His eyes flickered with hidden knowledge, elusive and quick. Then he said quietly, “Brin Ohmsford has the strength. She is our hope.”
Brin looked at him and shook her head slowly. Her smile twisted with irony. “Hope and no hope. Savior and destroyer. Remember the words, Allanon? Your father spoke them of me.”
Allanon said nothing. He simply sat there, dark eyes staring into her own.
“What else did he tell you, Allanon?” she asked him quietly. “What else?”
There was a long pause. “That I shall not see him again in this world.”
The silence deepened. She was close now to the secret the Druid kept hidden, she realized. Rone Leah stirred uneasily in his chair, eyes shifting to find those of the Valegirl. There was uncertainty in those eyes, Brin saw. Rone did not want to know any more. She looked away. It was she who was the hope, and she who must know.
“Was there more?” she said.
Slowly Allanon straightened, dark robes wrapping close about him, and on his worn and haggard face, a small smile appeared. “There is an Ohmsford obsession with knowing the truth of all that is,” he replied. “Not a one of you has ever been content with less.”
“What did Bremen say?” she pressed.
The smile died away. “He said, Brin Ohmsford, that when I go from the Four Lands this time, I shall not come again.”
Valegirl and highlander stared at him in shocked disbelief. As certain as the cycle of the seasons was the return of Allanon to the Four Lands when the danger of the dark magic threatened the races. There had never been a time in memory when he had not come.
“I don’t believe you, Druid!” Rone insisted heatedly, unable to think of anything else to say, a trace of outrage in his voice.
Allanon shook his head slowly. “The age passes, Prince of Leah. I must pass with it.”
Brin swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “When … when will you …?”
“When I must, Brin,” the Druid finished gently. “When it is time.”
Then he rose, a tall and weathered form as black as night and as steady as its coming. The great, gnarled hands reached out across the table. Without fully understanding why, the Valegirl and the highlander reached to clasp them in their own, joining for just an instant the three as one.
The Druid’s nod was brief and somehow final. “Tomorrow we ride east into the Anar—east until our journey is done. Go now and sleep. Be at peace.”
The great hands released their own and dropped away. “Go,” he said softly.
With a quick, uncertain glance at each other, Brin and Rone stood up and walked from the room. All the way out, they could feel the dark gaze following after.
They walked in silence down the hallway beyond. The sound of voices, distant and fragmented, wafted through the shadows of the empty hall and drifted disembodied from some unseen place. The air was thick with the smell of herbs and medicines, and they breathed in the aromas, distracted from their thoughts. When they reached the doors to their sleeping rooms, they stopped and stood together, not touching or looking at each other, sharing without speaking the impact of what they had been told.
It cannot be true, Brin thought, stunned. It cannot.
Rone turned to face her then, and his hands reached down to take hers. For the first time since their departure from Hadeshorn and the Valley of Shale, she felt close to him again.
“What he told us, Brin … what he said about not returning …” The highlander shook his head. “That was the reason we went to Paranor and he sealed away the Keep. He knew he would not be coming back …”
“Rone,” she said quickly and put her finger to his lips.
“I know. It’s just that I cannot believe it.”
“No.”
For a long moment they stared at each other. “I am afraid, Brin,” he said finally, his voice a whisper.
She nodded without speaking, then wrapped her arms about him and held him close. Then she stepped back again, kissed him lightly on the mouth, and disappeared into her room.
Slowly, wearily Allanon turned from the closed door and seated himself once more at the small table. Eyes shifting from the flame of the oil lamp, he stared fixedly into the shadows beyond, his thoughts drifting. Once he would not have felt the need to reveal the secrets that were his. He would have disdained to do so. He was the keeper of the trust, after all; he was the last of the Druids and the power that had once been theirs belonged now to him. He had no need to confide in others.
It had been so with Shea Ohmsford. Much of the truth had been kept from Shea, left hidden for the little Valeman to discover on his own. It had been so as well with Brin’s father, when the Druid had taken him in quest of the Bloodfire. Yet Allanon’s resolve for secrecy, for deliberate and iron-willed refusal to tell to any—even those closest—all that he knew, had somehow weakened through the years gone past. Perhaps it was the aging, come upon him at last, or the inexorable passing of time that weighed so heavily upon him. Perhaps it was simply the need to share what he carried with some other living soul.
Perhaps.
He rose again from the table, another of night’s shadows floating beyond the reach of the light. A sudden breath of air, and the oil lamp went dark.
He had told so much more to the Valegirl and the highlander than to any of the others.
And still he had not told them all.
24
Dawn broke over the Eastland and the forests of the Anar, and the journey of the three who had come from Shady Vale resumed. Supplied with fresh provisions by the H
ealers of Storlock, they rode east out of the village into the woodlands beyond. Few saw them depart. A handful of white-robed Stors, sad-faced and voiceless, gathered at the stables behind the Center to lift their arms in farewell. Within minutes, the three had disappeared into the trees, gone as silently and as enigmatically as they had come.
It was the kind of autumn day fond memories conjure up of a milder season’s passing when winter snows lie deep about. It was warm and sun-filled, with the colors of the forest trees radiant and sprinkled with soft beams of light and the morning smells sweet and pleasant. Dark and chill as the days gone by had been in the wake of the passing of the late-year storms, this day was light and comforting with its dazzling blue skies and sunshine.
The promise of the day was lost, however, to Brin Ohmsford and Rone Leah. Haunted by Allanon’s dark revelation and by a tense expectation of what lay ahead, neither could share much of the warmth that the day had to offer. Separate and withdrawn, each within a dark covering of private emotions and secretive thoughts, Valegirl and highlander rode forward in determined silence through the dappled shadows of the great, dark trees, feeling only the cold that lay buried within themselves.
“Our path hereafter will be a treacherous one,” Allanon had told them as they gathered that morning before the stables where their horses had been tended, his voice low and strangely gentle. “All across the Eastland and through the forests of the Anar, the Wraiths will be watching for us. They know that we come; Paranor removed all question of that. They know as well that they must stop us before we reach the Maelmord. Gnomes will seek us, and where they do not, others who obey the walkers will. No path east into the Ravenshorn will be safe for us.”
His hands had come up then to rest upon their shoulders, drawing them close. “Still, we are but three and not so easily found. The Wraiths and their Gnome eyes will look two ways for our approach—north above the Rabb River and south out of Culhaven. Safe and unobstructed but for themselves, these are the approaches a wise man would choose. We will choose neither, therefore. Instead, we will pass where it is most dangerous—not only to us, but to them as well. We will pass directly east into the central Anar—through the Wolfsktaag, Darklin Reach, and Olden Moor. Older magics than theirs dwell within those regions—magics that they will be hesitant to challenge. The Wolfsktaag are forbidden to the Gnomes, and they will not enter, even though the Wraiths command it. There are things there more dangerous than the Gnomes we seek to avoid, but most lie dormant. If we are quick and cautious, we should pass through unharmed. Darklin Reach and the Moor are the haunts of other magics yet, but there perhaps we shall find some more friendly to our cause than to theirs …”
They rode through the western fringe of the central Anar up into the high ground that formed the doorstep to the rugged, forested humps of the Wolfsktaag. As they traveled, they searched past sunlight and warmth and the brilliant autumn colors for the dark things that lay hidden there. By midday, they had reached the Pass of Jade and begun a long, circuitous climb along its southern slope, where trees and scrub hid them from view as they walked their horses in the deep shadow. Midafternoon found them well east of the pass, wending their way upward toward the high peaks. Timber and rock stretched dark and silent about them as the daylight began to wane. By nightfall, they were deep within the mountains. In the trees through which they passed, the shadows slipped now like living things. All the while they searched, yet found no sign of other life and felt themselves to be alone.
It was curious and somehow frightening that they could be so alone, Brin thought as the dusk settled into the mountains and the day came to an end. She should sense at least a touch of life other than their own, yet it was as if these peaks and forests had been stripped. There were no birds within these trees, no insects, no living creatures of any kind. There was only the silence, deep and pervasive—the silence, itself become a living thing in the absence of all other life.
Allanon brought them to a halt in the shelter of a grove of rough and splintering hickory to set their camp. When provisions were sorted, the horses tended, and the camp at ready, the Druid called them to him, ordered that no fire be lighted, and stalked off into the trees with a quick word of farewell. Valegirl and highlander stared after him wordlessly until he was out of sight, then sat down to consume a cold meal of bread, cheese, and dried fruit. They ate in darkness, not speaking, watching the shadows about them for the life that never seemed to come. Overhead, the night sky brightened with a great scattering of stars.
“Where do you think he has gone this night?” Rone Leah wondered after a time. He spoke almost as if he were asking himself the question. Brin shook her head and said nothing, and the highlander glanced away again. “Just like a shadow, isn’t he? Shifts with every change of sun and moon, appears, and then he’s gone again—always for reasons all his own. He wouldn’t share those reasons with us, of course. Not with mere humans like us.” He sighed and set aside his plate. “Except that I guess we’re not mere humans anymore, are we?”
Brin toyed with the bit of bread and cheese that remained on her own plate. “No,” she answered softly.
“Well, no matter. We are who we always were, nevertheless.” He paused, as if wondering how sure of that he really was. Then he leaned forward. “It’s odd, but I don’t feel the same way about him now that I did before. I’ve been thinking about it all day. I still don’t trust him entirely. I can’t. He knows too much that I don’t. But I don’t mistrust him either. He is trying to help, I think, in the best way that he can.”
He stopped, waiting for Brin to agree with him, but the Valegirl stayed silent, eyes turned away.
“Brin, what’s troubling you?” he asked finally.
She looked at him and shook her head. “I’m not sure.”
“Is it what he told us last night—that we wouldn’t see him again after this?”
“That, yes. But it’s more than that.”
He hesitated. “Maybe you’re just …”
“Something is wrong,” she cut him short, and her eyes locked on his.
“What?”
“Something is wrong.” She said it slowly, carefully. “With him, with you, with this whole journey—but most especially with me.”
Rone stared at her. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand either. I just feel it.” She pulled her cloak tightly about her, hunching down within its folds. “I’ve felt it for days—ever since the shade of Bremen appeared in the Hadeshorn, and we destroyed that Wraith. I feel something bad coming … something terrible. And I don’t know what it is. I feel, too, that I’m being watched; all the time I’m being watched, but there is never anything there. I feel, worst of all, that I’m being … pulled away from myself, from you and Allanon. Everything is changing from what it was when we started out at Shady Vale. It’s all different, somehow.”
The highlander didn’t say anything for a moment. “I suppose it’s because of what’s happened to us, Brin. The Hadeshorn, Paranor—Allanon telling us what the shade of Bremen told to him. It had to change us. And we’ve been away from the Vale and the highlands for many days now, from everything familiar and comfortable. That has to be a part of it, too.”
“Away from Jair,” she said quietly.
“And your parents.”
“But Jair most of all,” she insisted, as if searching for a reason for this. Then she shook her head. “No, it’s not that. It’s something else, something besides what’s happened with Allanon and missing home and family and … That’s too easy, Rone. I can feel it, deep down within me. Something that …”
She trailed off, her dark eyes uncertain. She looked away. “I wish I had Jair here with me now—just for a few moments. I think he would know what was wrong. We’re so close that way …” She caught herself, then laughed softly. “Isn’t that silly? Wishing for something like that when it would probably mean nothing?”
“I miss him, too.” The highlander tried a quick smile. “At leas
t he might take our minds off our own problems. He’d be out tracking Mord Wraiths or something.”
He stopped, realizing what he had said, then shrugged away his discomfort. “Anyway, there’s probably nothing wrong—not really. If there was, Allanon would sense it, wouldn’t he? After all, he seems to sense everything else.”
Brin was a long time responding. “I wonder if that is still so,” she said finally. “I wonder if he still can.”
They were silent then, neither looking back at the other as they stared fixedly into the dark and pondered their separate thoughts. As the minutes slipped away, the stillness of the mountain night seemed to press in about them, anxious to wrap them in the blanket of its stark, empty solitude. It seemed more certain with the passing of each moment that some sound must break the spell, the distant cry of a living creature, the small shifting of forest wood or mountain rock, or the rustle of leaf or insect’s buzz. But nothing did. There was only the quiet.
“I feel as if we are drifting,” Brin said suddenly.
Rone Leah shook his head. “We travel a fixed course, Brin. There is no drifting in that.”
She looked over at him. “I wish I had listened to you and had never come.”
The highlander stared at her in shock. The beautiful, dusky face stayed turned toward his own. In the girl’s black eyes there was a mix of weariness and doubt that bordered too closely on fear. For just an instant he had the unpleasant sensation that the girl who sat across from him was not Brin Ohmsford.
“I will protect you,” he said softly, urgently. “I promise.”
She smiled then, a faint, uneven smile that flickered and was gone. Gently her hands reached out to touch his own. “I believe that,” she whispered in reply.
But somewhere deep inside, she found herself wondering if he really could.