Bearers of the Black Staff: Legends of Shannara (50 page)

He told her where to go and what to do. He made sure she under
stood. He sketched a quick map in the dirt, which showed her the route she must follow. “Go now,” he told her.

She shook her head, the first time she had questioned him. “I can stay and help …”

“You don’t have a weapon, and you don’t have fighting skills. You’ll only slow me down if I have to worry about protecting you. Here, take this.”

He handed her a Flange automatic, a twelve-shot handgun he had recovered from its hiding place about five years back and restored to working order. He showed her how to use it—how to release the safety, how to hold the weapon steady, how to fire it once or multiple times. “Just in case,” he told her.

She nodded once, and then she was off, sprinting away into the darkness.
Good girl
, he thought. She knew, but she wasn’t making a mistake by saying so, by staying to argue. He respected her for that. She was worth saving. Sider hadn’t made a mistake in asking his help.

He turned back to the darkness, listening for sounds of approaching Trolls. An attack was inevitable, but it might not come right away. He backed into the ruins a little farther, searching the walls and doorways for the right spot. He found it finally, a corner slot formed by adjoining walls beneath a deep overhang. They could only get at him from in front.

He braced himself against the walls once he was concealed in the shadows, reloaded the flechette, and propped the spray up next to him. Then he looped a cord around the firing pins of three of the flash-bangs and fastened them to his chest armor where they could be easily reached. He set two more of the explosive devices on a protruding stone on his left, then changed his mind and moved them to another on the right. His left arm wasn’t working well enough to do anything more than brace the stock of whatever weapon he was holding. When the attack came, he would have to move quickly.

He leaned back into the darkened corner and waited.
It was a good run
, he thought.
I don’t like that it’s ending, but you don’t always get much of a say in that sort of thing. You just take what’s given you.
He would miss seeing Sider again. But the girl would explain. What was her name? Prue, wasn’t it? It fit her.

Time stopped. The night went still, the darkness closed about, and his breath turned to frost on the cold air. He could almost make himself believe he was going to get out of this.

The attack came all at once and without warning. But he was ready, and he fired the Tyson into everything that moved until it was empty, jammed in a second clip and fired again. He was struck repeatedly by arrows and darts, but most failed to penetrate and nothing did any real damage until the Drouj came at him in waves. By then the flechette was empty and he was using the spray, riddling the bodies until they were stacked all around him, Trolls and Skaith Hounds alike.

There was a small lull, and he found himself laughing at the absurdity of it all. He was still laughing when they came at him a final time, too many for him to stop, and as they reached him he pulled the cord attached to the pins on the flash-bangs and everything disappeared in sound and fury.

M
ILES AWAY, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAINS
, the Gray Man was trekking west toward the pass at Declan Reach. It was night and he was traveling quickly. He was no longer tracking Arik Siq; his quarry’s destination already known, his course fixed. Matters had taken an unexpected turn here, too, and here, too, time was running out.

When he had left Arborlon in pursuit of the deceiver, he had begun tracking him under the assumption that he was escaping the city with the intention of going back through Aphalion Pass. If his purpose in coming into the valley in the first place was to gather information that would aid the Drouj in their planned invasion, he would be anxious to impart to his father what he had learned before his duplicity was discovered. In order to do that in the fastest way possible, he would take the shortest route out of the valley, and that meant going through Aphalion.

So Sider had set out in that direction, not bothering with trying to pick up the Troll’s footprints, choosing instead to sacrifice caution for
speed in order to reach the pass quickly. He did so, only to learn from the Elves on watch that no Trolls had passed that way in the past week. The Orullian brothers, in particular, were adamant that no one could have gotten past the watch they had set at both ends of the pass without someone finding out. Since no sightings or incidents had been reported, Arik Siq must have gone another way.

It was a disturbing discovery, and after doing his own reconnaissance of the terrain surrounding the pass, the Gray Man went back down the interior slopes of the mountains toward Arborlon, this time checking carefully for some indication of where the elusive Troll had gone.

He found it when he was almost all the way back to the Elven city and scouring the terrain above the forest where the boy Xac Wen had last seen the Troll going down the Carolan. The tracks he found were clearly made by a Troll, so the Gray Man was able to follow them easily enough. To his surprise, they led northwest upslope into the foothills for only several miles before turning directly west.

Shortly after that, in a dense forest formed by a mix of hardwoods and conifers grown so thick it was impossible to see much of anything once you were in their midst, he found something that caused him both confusion and concern. In a clearing ringed by spruce, he discovered tracks made by dozens of Trolls and a handful of four-footed beasts that had come down out of the high country west of Aphalion. Having joined up with Arik Siq, the entire bunch had set out west along the high slopes, carefully keeping to the shelter of the ridges and forests below the snow line.

At first, Sider couldn’t figure out what all the Trolls and their beasts were doing. The pattern of the tracks seemed to indicate that they knew Arik Siq was coming and had waited for him. There were no indications of a disturbance, nothing to show that his arrival was unexpected. But if the Trolls were Drouj, how had they managed to get into the valley without being seen? How had they managed to communicate the details of this meeting with Arik Siq without speaking to him directly?

Sider couldn’t be sure of the answer to the latter question, but he deduced an answer to the former pretty quickly. The beasts accompanying
the Drouj were Skaith Hounds, which explained almost everything. When he had brought Arik Siq into the valley, there were no defenses in the pass, nothing to prevent anyone living outside from entering. The assumption was that no one could find a way in because no one knew where the passes were. But they had all overlooked the obvious. Simply by returning, they had left a trail. Skaith Hounds could track a quarry anywhere, as Deladion Inch had told him earlier, and since Arik Siq was already planning to betray the valley’s secrets, he had simply arranged before leaving camp to have the hounds set on their trail as soon as they were safely out of sight.

Which meant that the Trolls who had gathered to meet with Taureq’s duplicitous son could have found Aphalion Pass easily and gotten safely inside the valley long before the first Elves arrived to set watch and build their defenses. They could have prearranged a meeting and waited for its time to roll around by hiding out somewhere high up in the rocks where they would be safe from discovery. How they had managed to decide when and where the meeting was to take place remained a mystery, but it seemed clear to the Gray Man that this was what had happened.

But now that they had joined up, where were they going? What was their purpose?

Sider thought he knew, and it sent a cold spike through his heart. There was only one logical answer. Knowing that the Elves had dispatched a heavily armed force to Aphalion Pass, which very likely would be keeping watch in both directions, Arik Siq had chosen to take a less difficult route out of the valley. The men of Glensk Wood would be working at Declan Reach. They were neither as well trained nor as experienced as the Elves. Declan Reach would offer the Trolls the path of least resistance.

If the Drouj had gone that way, time was precious. They already had the better part of a day’s lead on him, so Sider knew he had to hurry if he was to arrive in time not only to prevent their escape but also to save the men who otherwise would have the thankless task of trying to stop it by themselves. In truth, he did not think they were up to it. Even if they were not caught by surprise—which was something of a stretch, given the cunning of Arik Siq—they were not trained fighters.

He also knew there was a good chance that Panterra Qu would be among those working in the pass. He would be at risk along with all the others, but unlike all the others his life had special value.

It was a harsh way to look at things, but Sider Ament could not afford to think of it in any other terms. The boy was the one he had been searching for, the one who would best serve to carry the black staff after him. Panterra Qu might not realize it now, might not accept that it was so, but that didn’t change the fact of it. Given time, Sider would be able to persuade him that committing to serve after him and learning how the staff and its magic could help the people of the valley survive was his destiny. He might resist it at first, but in the end he would come to understand that it was the right thing to do.

But any possibility of that happening would be lost if the boy was killed in an attack on the workers at Declan Reach. There was no way to get word to them in time, no possibility of warning them if he didn’t do it himself.

A long shot, at best, he admitted. He might already be too late. He might have squandered his chances by assuming that his quarry had gone through Aphalion.

But he couldn’t afford to think that way, and so he didn’t.

He simply pressed ahead all the harder, his determination sheathed in iron.

P
ANTERRA QU WAS SLEEPING
, rolled up in his blanket, assailed by troubling dreams that ate away at his rest like termites did wood. The dreams were all of Prue, alone among the Trolls, helpless and afraid, fighting to stay calm in the face of catastrophe. She was a prisoner, then an escapee, then a prisoner once more, and so it went, on and on. Her struggles were all the same—desperate, hopeless attempts at finding freedom when she knew no one was coming to save her. He tried to tell her it wasn’t so; Sider Ament was coming, and failing that Pan himself would come. He tried to tell her, but he could not speak the words, his voice frozen. He gestured wildly, frantically, attempting to draw her attention, to make her understand he was there for her, but she did not
see him. She looked everywhere but where he was, unaware of his presence. He was mad with the need to let her know she was not forgotten or abandoned. But he could read in her face the fear and despair that was slowly, steadily overwhelming her.

As he watched, she began to disappear. It felt as if she were right next to him when it happened. He wanted to scream in warning or snatch her away to safety, but he couldn’t move or speak.

Suddenly he couldn’t even breathe.

He jerked awake, knowing instantly that something was wrong, his dreams banished in an instant. He stood, stared into the darkness around him, and listened. Nothing. He glanced down. Andelin and Russa were asleep nearby. Parke and Teer were on guard farther up the pass, close to where it opened out onto the rugged slopes of the outside world. The others were sleeping on the valley side of the defensive barriers on which they had all been working for the better part of a week. Overhead, the sky was filled with stars, but he could discern a faint wash of silver light to the east. Dawn was breaking.

Everything seemed all right.

But something felt wrong anyway.

He walked the length of the pass to its far end and spoke with Parke and Teer. There was nothing out of sorts happening there. The world beyond the pass was dark and silent. He shook his head in confusion and moved back down the split to where Andelin and Russa were still sleeping, stopping at the last minute to pick up his bow and arrows, and from there walked on to the defensive barriers. Ladders were propped against the stone and timber walls at a narrows where the pass sloped downward in his direction and leveled out behind where the other men slept. The choice of terrain gave the defenders an advantage in the event of an assault, putting them above their attackers who must come at them over uneven ground. Most of the work was already done. By the end of tomorrow, the wall would be finished and manned by a permanent company of Trackers and others. Trow Ravenlock had already designated those he wished to serve in that capacity. He had done the best he could in making his choices, but the men of Glensk Wood were poorly trained for service as soldiers and fighters.

Shouldering his bow and arrows, Panterra climbed one of the lad
ders to the top of the wall and stepped over onto the narrow walkway that ran its length. He looked down on the sleeping men. Nothing out of place here, either. He stood where he was, searching for even a brief twinge of the feeling that had brought him awake, trying to make sense of it. If Prue were there, she would know. He did not. His instincts weren’t as sure as hers.