Bearers of the Black Staff: Legends of Shannara (30 page)

For the first time since he had returned, he thought about having to tell her parents what he had done. How could he do that? What could he tell them? Anything he said, unless it was a lie, would be devastating.

He sat staring out at nothing, lost in thought, wrapped in his remorse and dismay.

“I’m sorry I told you to go,” Phryne said suddenly, her voice not much more than a whisper.

He glanced down at her, startled. “What?”

“I shouldn’t have been so insistent. This is my fault; I know that. I wish I could take it back.”

“About Prue?” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Mostly, it’s mine. I left her.”

“But you wouldn’t have had to do that if you hadn’t gone to look at that fire, and you wouldn’t have gone to look at that fire if I hadn’t insisted.”

Panterra edged over so that they were almost touching. He leaned down. “I made the choice to go, Phryne. I didn’t have to do so. I didn’t have to take Prue with me, either. So you don’t need to blame yourself, or apologize to me.”

“I feel like I do. I feel like I need to apologize to everyone.”

He smiled in spite of himself. “I feel like I need to crawl into a hole.”

She was silent a moment, retreating into herself. “I won’t be satisfied until we get her back, Pan. I’m going to tell my father everything and insist that he do something.”

“Well, I hope he listens to you. I hope he believes what you tell him.”

There was another pause. “I’ll find a way to make him believe.”

“I expect you will.”

She was silent for a long time then, and he was about to find a place to sleep—or at least try to—when she said, “Would you lie down next to me? Just close enough that I can feel you?”

She didn’t explain, and he didn’t feel that he should ask her to. He just did as she asked, sliding close as he lay down facing her back. Using her blanket, she reached back with the trailing edge and covered them both. She didn’t say anything more, but soon he could hear the regular rhythm of her breathing and feel the heat of her body.

He went to sleep not long after that.

W
HEN HE WOKE
, both Phryne and her blanket were gone, and he was lying on the bare ground, the chill of early morning stiffening his joints. He rose and stretched, finding the others grouped around a small collection of foodstuffs produced from someone’s stores, eating quietly. He joined them without comment. He was pleased to see that the Elves were sharing what they had with Arik Sarn. The Troll’s impassive face revealed nothing of what he was thinking, but he gave a quick nod as the boy sat down next to him.

Phryne Amarantyne never even glanced his way.

They set out again shortly afterward, but not until Sider had satisfied himself that no one was tracking them or trying to spy on where they were going. Even so, he took them on a circuitous route that wound through clusters of rock and deep ravines as they ascended the mountains, effectively hiding them from view almost all the way up to the entrance to Aphalion Pass. Once there, he paused them again, taking time to study the plains below. Only then did he allow them to enter the pass and make their way back into the valley.

They were all relieved to discover that the dragon they had encountered on their way out was nowhere to be seen.

“A creature mutated from the old days, before the Great Wars,” Sider opined when Panterra asked him about its origins. “Or, if you prefer something more magical, a creature that has survived from the time of Faerie, a mythical beast that was sleeping until we brought it awake again. Hard to tell without getting close enough to examine it. Difficult to tell even then.”

No one was going to suggest attempting anything like that, even if they somehow found the dragon again, so solving the mystery of its origin would have to wait.

“How did you find us?” Panterra pressed as they descended out of the pass, not having thought to question the unexpectedness of it until then.

“Magic,” the Gray Man deadpanned. Then he shrugged. “Or maybe something more like luck. I returned after chasing after that beast we fought, thinking to find you and see what success you’d had with the people of Glensk Wood. I spoke with Aislinne Kray and learned of your danger. She suggested I do something about it, since she felt I had caused the problem. So I went to Arborlon and discovered that you had gone up into the pass with the Orullians and Oparion Amarantyne’s daughter. I guessed at the rest when I found all of you missing and your tracks leading off into the wasteland. One thing led to another.”

“How do you know Aislinne?” The words were out before he could think better of them.

The Gray Man looked away. “I know her from a long time ago.”

There was more to it than that, Pan sensed, a great deal more, but he knew better than to ask. Whatever their relationship might be, or might have once been, Aislinne wielded considerable influence over Sider Ament if she could tell him to do something and the Gray Man would do it.

“She kept us safe when Skeal Eile would have seen us dead,” he ventured after a moment. Then he told the other about the assassination attempt and their escape from the village.

Sider Ament listened but said nothing, the subject apparently closed. Panterra knew enough to leave it there.

They walked on through the morning, and by midday they had
reached the outskirts of the city of Arborlon, come into view of its heights and the ramp leading up. Once within the city, the little company went straight to the King’s home, quickly picking up an escort of Home Guard that had apparently been told to watch for them. Heads turned at the sight of Arik Sarn, but the presence of Lizards was not all that unusual in Arborlon, and so the gazes did not linger.

“Many Elves,” the Troll said quietly at one point. “Thousands?”

“Thousands and more,” Pan answered. “More Elves than Men in the valley. More than any of the other Races.”

The Troll nodded, looking uneasy. “Dislike Trolls?”

Pan shook his head. “They like them well enough. But the Trolls choose to live apart.”

Arik Sarn looked away. “Trolls always live apart.”

Their escort grew larger, walling them away from those who crowded close enough to shout questions or to have a cautious look. That the Princess was among the newcomers must have raised a few eyebrows, but no one tried to speak with her, not even those in the Home Guard escort.

They reached the palace and were taken into one of the reception rooms, a chamber situated well back in the complex, windowless and dark until the smokeless lights were ignited and dominated by a large table and some twenty seats arranged around it. The walls were draped with tapestries portraying Elven legends and flags embroidered with the personal insignias of the Kings and Queens. Light seeped through skylights glassed over and screened with fabric, and paneled walls and flooring gleamed with fresh polish. Panterra felt out of place, ragged and unwashed, but he took a chair with the others to wait.

The Home Guard left them, save two, who took up positions outside the double doors leading in. Sider made a point of asking Arik Sarn to remain in their company.

Only moments passed before Oparion Amarantyne appeared, storming through the doors and slamming them shut behind him. He moved to the head of the table and stood glaring at the assembled. But when he met Sider Ament’s gaze, he saw something in the latter’s eyes that caused him to tamp down his anger.

He shifted his gaze to his daughter. “I am going to assume that
things were not exactly as you described them to me earlier, Phryne. I would appreciate an explanation for that and a full accounting of what has transpired.” His gaze shifted again as he took a seat. “My Elves, young Panterra, the Lizard visitor sitting outside the doors of this room, and the Gray Man. An odd company. And a story behind its making, I imagine. Sider Ament. Perhaps you should be the one to start?”

The Gray Man did so, telling the King everything. Pan saw Phryne wince once or twice at what she was hearing, and he would have winced, as well, if he hadn’t been so busy trying to think of what he could add that might make a difference in the King’s thinking. But Sider was thorough, and left nothing unsaid. The King did not interrupt, sitting back in his chair and taking in the story with rapt attention.

“There is no mistake about the protective barriers?” the King asked when the Gray Man had finished. “The walls are down? All of them?”

“All of them. The passes are open.”

The King looked dismayed. “And now we are threatened by a Lizard army. Excuse me. By a
Troll
army. So then. Today is the first appearance of the quarter moon in the cycle leading to full. We have perhaps twenty days in which to act. Not a lot of time.”

“Time enough,” Sider replied quietly. He looked around the room. “I’m done talking. Does anyone care to add anything?”

The Orullians and Phryne all started speaking at once, then sorted themselves out and took turns. Phryne took full responsibility for everything, blaming herself for what had happened to Prue. She begged her father in full view of all assembled for a chance to make it right. The brothers spoke at length about the threat from the Troll army and Taureq Siq, arguing for an immediate mobilization of Elven Hunters to defend the passes. Pan wanted to speak, to say that they had to do something about Prue, that they had to save her. But such a demand would have sounded selfish and redundant in light of what had already been said, so he kept quiet.

Instead, he watched the faces of the others. He noticed the surreptitious looks that passed between Sider Ament and the King, glances that were furtive and expressionless and seemed to escape the others.

He noticed that Sider, when not appearing to pay attention to the speakers, was watching him. Closely.

“Enough,” the King said finally, as the brothers Orullian repeated their argument for mobilization for what must have been the third or fourth time. “I think you’ve said all that needs saying and I have heard enough to give thought to what is needed.

“Phryne, clean up and wait on me. Tasha and Tenerife, take the Troll to your home and keep watch on him until I decide what needs doing. Eat, drink, and bathe yourselves. Better take Panterra Qu, as well. Go.”

He gestured them up from their seats and ushered them out the doors into the hallway beyond, where Arik Sarn was sitting and the Home Guard were waiting to escort them out. No one said anything. They barely looked at one another. There was a shared feeling of uncertainty and dismay as they departed the building and emerged outside once more.

Panterra noticed that Sider Ament did not come with them.

O
PARION AMARANTYNE WAITED
until the others were gone, and then he took the Gray Man out of the reception chamber and down the halls of the palace to the small library that served as his private reception room. It was not entirely unexpected. The looks they had exchanged earlier had told Sider that the King would speak to him alone when the others were finished. They were not friends in the common sense, but had grown up in their valley world at the same time and were of a like age. They had been boys when Sider had become bearer of the last black staff and Oparion had been made King. The deaths of a mentor and a father had brought them together under awkward and difficult circumstances, which they had managed to surmount. An unconventional friendship had developed, one founded for the most part on mutual respect and a willingness to meet halfway. That friendship had lasted now for more than twenty years.

Even so, the Gray Man could not be certain what stance Oparion would take in this business.

When they reached the King’s reception chamber, they took seats by a cold fireplace across from each other, sitting close in a wash of gray light that filtered through cracks in draped windows.

“I will tell you up front that I find this tale more than a little incredible,” the King began. “But not so incredible that I don’t believe it. Perhaps it is rather that I find it overwhelming. Five hundred years of safekeeping and now the protective walls are down. Without warning. Without apparent reason.”