First King of Shannara (37 page)

Tumbling into the dark, he was back on his feet in an instant and racing ahead. It was pitch dark within the castle corridors, the torches all extinguished, but he knew Stedden Keep and did not require light to find his way. He heard the pursuit that came after him, and when he had gone the length of the first corridor, he turned long enough to fire the passageway from end to end. It was enough to slow them, no more. But that was all he needed.

Moments later, he was through a massive, iron-plated door that he slammed shut and barred against further pursuit. They would not catch him now. Not this night. But he had come too close to discount the possibility that next time he might not be so lucky.

He brushed away the blood that ran into his eyes, feeling the sting of the gash in his forehead. He was not badly hurt. Time enough to deal with it later. Raybur and the others would be waiting somewhere back in the tunnels. Risca knew the Dwarf King too well to think he would abandon him. Friends didn't do that.

He swallowed against the dryness in his throat.

What then, he wondered bleakly, of Tay Trefenwyd and the Elves?

 

Night lay over Arborlon, a soft, warm blanket of darkness. No rain fell here as it did farther east. Jerle Shannara stood at a front window of the summerhouse and waited for dawn. He had not slept at all that night, beset by doubts whose roots he could trace to the loss of Tay Trefenwyd, haunted by the possibility of what might have been and what must now surely be. He was on the summit of a climb that had begun some weeks earlier and would culminate with the arrival of morning, and he could not shake the despair he felt at knowing that circumstance and fortune had determined his fate in ways he could never have foreseen and could not now change.

“Come to me, love,” Preia Starle called to him from the darkened hall, standing with her arms wrapped protectively about her body.

“I was thinking,” he replied distantly.

She walked over to him and put her arms about his waist, holding him against her. “You think too much lately.”

It was true, he supposed. It hadn't been that way before, not when Tay had been alive, not before the coming of the Warlock Lord and the misery he had visited on the Elves. He had been freer then, unfettered by responsibilities or obligations of any real significance, his life and his future his own, all the possibilities in the world his to choose from. How quickly it had all changed.

He lifted one great hand and placed it over hers. “I still do not want to be king.”

But king he would be at first light. He would be crowned at sunrise in the tradition of Elven Kings since the time of faerie. It was decided now, determined by the events that had begun with the assassination of Courtann Ballindarroch and culminated in the death of his last son. For weeks the Elves had held out hope that the king's heir would return from his ill-advised search for his father's murderers. But Alyten was a brash, foolish boy, and should never have gone looking for the trouble he found. The Northlanders were waiting for him, hoping he would seek them out. They let him stumble on them, drew him on, ambushed him, and killed him. Those with him who survived, a small number only, had brought him home. He was the last grown heir to the throne of the Ballindarroch family, and Jerle Shannara's last hope that the Elven people would not turn instead to him.

They did so immediately, of course. Many had never wanted Alyten as ruler in the first place. The Northlanders threatened anew, claiming the whole of the Streleheim, closing off all contact with other lands and their peoples. An invasion of the Westland would come soon—of that there was little doubt. It wanted only the return of the Warlock Lord, who had gone east to attack the Dwarves. Elven Hunters sent as scouts had been able to determine that much. Still the High Council would not act, awaiting Alyten's return, awaiting a formal declaration that he would be king. Now Alyten was gone, and there remained only the two grandchildren, too small to rule, too young even to appreciate the enormity of what they faced. Should a regent serve in their stead? Should they rule with the help of advisors? The feeling was immediate and strong that neither solution was sufficient to forestall the disaster that threatened, and that Jerle Shannara, as the king's first cousin and the most experienced fighter and strategist in the Westland, was the only hope.

Even so, the debate on this matter might have gone on indefinitely if not for the urgency of the circumstances and the determination of Preia Starle. She had come to Jerle almost at once after Alyten's body had been returned, when the debate was so fierce that it threatened to divide the Elven people irreparably.

“You cannot let that happen,” she had told him. It was night, another slow, sleepy eve when the day's heat still lingered thick and pasty at the corners of the mouth and eyes. “You are the best hope of the Elven people, and you know it. We have to fight if we are to survive, Jerle. The Northlanders will give us no choice. When the time comes, who else but you will lead us? If you are to lead, then do so as king.”

“My right to be king will be questioned forever!” he had snapped, tired of the discussion, sick at heart of the need for it.

“Do you love me?” she had asked suddenly.

“You know that I do.”

“And I love you as well. So heed me now. Make me your wife. Make me your life's partner and helpmate, your closest confidante and forever friend. I am these things to you already, so the step that you must take is a small one. Bond with me in the eyes of the Elven people. Tell the High Council that you want to be king, that you and I will adopt those two small boys who have lost their family and make them our sons. They have no one else. Why should they not have us? It will stop the talk. It will end the objections. It will give the boys the chance to succeed you as king when they are grown. It will bind up the wounds caused by the deaths of all the other Ballindarrochs and let the Elven people get on with the business of surviving!”

So it had come to pass. The strength of her insistence had swayed him when nothing else could. He would wonder at it afterward, at the simplicity of the solution, at Preia Starle's remarkable resolve. He would have married her anyway, he told himself. He did love her and want her as his wife. She was his closest friend, his confidante, his lover. The Elves preferred a king with heirs and the Ballindarroch family had been well liked, so there was support for the adoption of the two boys. The acclaim for Jerle to be crowned king was overwhelming.

Wrapped in Preia's embrace, he looked out into the night, remembering. How far he had come in so little time.

“Do you want children of your own, Preia?” he asked her suddenly.

There was silence as she mulled the matter over—or at least her answer. He did not try to see her face.

“I want my life with you,” she said finally. “For the moment, it is difficult to think of anything else. When the Elves are safe again, when the Warlock Lord is destroyed . . .” She paused, giving him a long, steady look. “Are you asking me if blood ties make a difference in my commitment to the boys we have agreed to take as our own? They do not. If we have no other children, the boys will do. They will be ours as if born to us. Are you satisfied?”

He nodded without speaking, thinking of how their relationship had evolved, how dramatically it had changed with Tay's death. He had pondered for a long time her admission that she might have loved his friend, that she might even have gone with him if he had asked. It did not bother him as much as perhaps it should. He had loved Tay himself, and now that he was dead it was hard to begrudge him anything.

“You will sit on the High Council,” he told her quietly. “Vree Erreden will sit as well. When I am able to do so, I will make him First Minister. Do you approve?”

She nodded. “You have come a long way from your old opinion of the locat, haven't you?”

He shrugged. “I will ask that the Elven army be mobilized for a march east—no, I will insist on it.” His shoulders bunched with his determination. “I will do what Tay would have done. I will see that the Dwarves are not abandoned. I will see that the Black Elfstone reaches Bremen. If I fail as king, then it will not be because I lacked courage or commitment.”

It was a brash, uncompromising declaration, a buttress against the doubts and uncertainties that still lurked at the edges of his confidence. Preia would know. He could not afford hesitation. The line between success and failure, between life and death, would be a thin one.

Preia pressed herself against him. “You will do what you must, what you know is right. You will be king, and there will be no regrets. You will lead your people and keep them safe. It is your destiny, Jerle. It is your fate. Vree has seen it in his visions. You must see that it is true.”

He took a long moment before answering. “I see mostly that I lack another choice and so must accept this one. And I think always of Tay.”

They stood without speaking for a long time. Then Preia led him through the darkness of the summerhouse to their bed and held him until morning.

 

XXV

 

A
nxious to make up for the time they sensed they had already lost, the bearers of Urprox Screl's newly forged sword purchased horses and rode north through the Southland toward the border country and the Silver River. They traveled steadily, stopping only for food and rest, and they did not say much to one another. Memories of the forging of the sword dominated their thoughts, the images so vivid that days later it seemed as if the event had happened only moments ago. That the effects of the magic invoked had transcended the forging itself was undeniable. In some way, perhaps differently for each, the creation of the talisman had transformed them. They were newly born, the forging having reshaped them as surely as it had cast the blade itself, and they were left to puzzle out what form they had taken.

It was given to Kinson Ravenlock to bear the sword on their journey back. Bremen entrusted it to him as soon as they had departed the city, compelled to do so by a need that the Druid could not quite manage to hide from his friend. It was almost as if he could not bear the weight of the weapon, could not tolerate the feel of it. It was a strange, disturbing moment, but Kinson took the sword without a word and strapped it across his back. Its weight was nothing to him, though its importance to the future of the Races was impossible to ignore. But, not having witnessed for himself the visions at the Hadeshorn, Kinson was not burdened by a Druid's insight into what that future might be, and so the sword did not have the same power over him. He bore it as he would any weapon, and while his mind retraced endlessly the moments of its creation, it was not the past with which he was concerned, but the present.

At night, sometimes, he would take the blade out and examine it. He would not have done so if Mareth had not asked it of him on the first night out, her curiosity stronger than her trepidation, her own ruminations on what had transpired at the forge fueling her need to look closer at what they had made. Bremen had not objected, though he had risen and walked off into the dark, so Kinson had seen no reason not to accede to Mareth's request. Together, they had held the blade up to the firelight and examined it. It was a wondrous piece of work, perfectly balanced, smooth and sleek and gleaming, so light it could be wielded by a single hand in spite of its size and length. The Eilt Druin had been fused into the handle where the crossguard was set, the flame from the clenched hand rising along the blade as if to burn to its tip. No flaw appeared on the polished surface, a virtual impossibility in a normal forging, but facilitated in this instance by the nature of Cogline's formula and the use of Bremen's magic.

It occurred to Kinson after several days of bearing the sword that part of his lack of awe for the blade's worth lay in the fact that Bremen did not seem to know yet what the talisman was supposed to do. Certainly, it was meant to destroy the Warlock Lord—but how? The nature of the magic with which it was imbued remained a mystery, even to the Druid. It was intended for an Elven warrior—that much the vision of Galaphile had revealed. But what was the warrior to do with the blade? Was he to wield it as he would an ordinary weapon? Given the nature of the Warlock Lord's power, that did not seem likely. There must be a magic to it that Brona could not withstand, that could overcome all of the rebel Druid's defenses and destroy him. But what could that magic be? There was some magic in the Eilt Druin, it was said, but Bremen had never been able to discover what that magic was, and whatever it was, it did not appear to have been used even once in the long span of his lifetime.

Bremen admitted this to both the Borderman and the girl, and he did so not reluctantly but with a mix of puzzlement and curiosity. The mystery of the sword's magic was not an obstacle for the Druid, but a challenge that he confronted with the same determination he had evinced in his search for the blade's maker. After all, it was not reasonable to believe that the forging alone was sufficient to imbue the sword with the magic it required. Even the fusing of the Eilt Druin did not seem enough. Something further was needed, and he must discover what it was. He took reassurance, he confided to Kinson at one point, in the fact that they had come as far and accomplished as much as they had. Because of that, he believed everything they sought was within reach.

It was a dubious premise to Kinson's way of thinking, but Bremen had accomplished a good many things in their time together through sheer strength of belief, so there was no reason to start questioning him now. If the sword had magic that could destroy the Warlock Lord, Bremen would discover what that magic was. If a confrontation was fated, Bremen would find a way to make the result favor their cause.

So they traveled out of the deep Southland and back into the Battlemound, heading for the Silver River. Their destination, the old man advised his companions, was the Hadeshorn. There he would pay yet another visit to the spirits of the dead and attempt to ascertain what they must do next. Along the way, they would try to determine what had become of the Dwarves. The weather was hot and sultry as they rode, and they were forced to stop frequently to rest themselves and their mounts. Time crawled with weary reluctance. They saw nothing of the conflict they knew was taking place farther north, encountered no signs of a Northland presence, and heard no mention from those they passed of anything untoward. Yet there was a persistent, unsettling suspicion among the three that they had somehow strayed too far from where they had begun their journey and that on their return they would find too many chances irretrievably lost.

Late in the afternoon of their first day of travel through the Battlemound, Bremen called a halt while several hours of light yet remained and took them out of the flats and into the Black Oaks. Once again, they had been navigating a precarious passage between the two quagmires, keeping just clear of the dangers of each. Now he forsook caution and steered them directly into the forbidden forest. Kinson was alarmed, but held his tongue. Bremen would have a good reason for making this detour.

They rode just into the fringe, barely a hundred feet, the sun-bleached lowlands still visible through breaks in the trees, the darker regions of the forest still ahead of them, then dismounted. Leaving Mareth to hold the horses, the Druid took Kinson into a stand of ironwood, examined the trees thoughtfully for a time, then found a branch that suited him and ordered Kinson to cut it. The Borderman obliged without comment, using his broadsword to hack through the toughened wood. Bremen had him lop off the ancillary branches and twigs, then took the rough-cut length of wood in his gnarled hands and nodded his approval. They retraced their steps to the horses, remounted, and rode out of the forest once more. Kinson and Mareth exchanged puzzled glances, but kept silent.

They camped a little farther on in a vale that was not much more than a depression amid the trees. There Bremen had Kinson further shave the ironwood branch to form a staff. Kinson worked at the task for the better part of two hours while the other two prepared dinner and saw to the animals. When he had done as much with the wood as he could, when he had smoothed down the bumps and knots where the smaller branches had been cut away, Bremen took it from him once again. The company of three was seated about a small fire, the day faded to a few faint streaks of brightness west, the night creeping in on the heels of lengthening shadows and darkening skies. They were settled close against the trees of the Black Oaks, well back from the flats. A stream ran out of the forest several yards away, churning determinedly across a series of rocks and twisting away again into the shadows. The night was still and empty-feeling, free of intrusive sounds, of movement, of the presence of watching eyes.

Bremen rose and stood before the fire with the ironwood staff held upright before him, one end butted firmly against the earth, the other pointed skyward, both hands fastened to the midsection. The staff was six feet in length, cut so at his instruction, still raw from the shaving Kinson had labored to complete.

“Stay seated until I am finished,” he ordered mysteriously.

He closed his eyes and went very still. After a moment, his hands began to glow with white light. Slowly the light spread out along the length of the staff, traveling in both directions. When the staff was completely enveloped, the light began to pulse. Kinson and Mareth watched in silence, mindful of Bremen's admonition. The light infused itself into the wood, turning it oddly transparent. It snaked up and down in strange patterns, moving slowly at first, then more rapidly. All the while Bremen stayed as still as stone, eyes closed, brows knit in concentration.

Then the light died away, returning to the Druid's hands before fading. Bremen's eyes opened. He took a long, slow breath and held up the staff. The wood had turned as black as ink, and its surface was smooth and polished. Something of the light that had sealed it reflected in its deep sheen, just a spark that winked and disappeared before moving on to another spot, as elusive as the glint of a cat's eye.

Bremen smiled and handed the staff to Mareth. “This is for you.”

She took it from him and held it, marveling at its feel. “It is warm yet.”

“And will stay so.” Bremen reseated himself, a hint of weariness creeping into his lined face. “The magic that infuses it will not be dislodged, but will reside within for as long as the staff is whole.”

“And what is the purpose of this magic? Why are you giving the staff to me?”

The old man leaned forward slightly, the light changing the pattern in the wrinkles that etched his face. “The staff is meant to help you, Mareth. You have searched long and hard for a way to control your magic, to prevent it from running amok, perhaps even from consuming you. I have given much thought to what could be done. I think the staff is the answer. It is designed to act as a conduit. Plant one end firmly against the ground, and it will carry off the excess of any magic you wish to employ.”

He paused, searching her dark eyes. “You understand what this means, don't you? It means that I believe you will have to use the magic again now that we are traveling north. Any other expectation would be unrealistic. The Warlock Lord will be looking for us, and there will come a time when you will have to protect yourself and perhaps others as well. I may not be there to help you. Your magic is too essential for you not to be able to rely on it. I am hopeful that the staff will allow you to employ it without fear.”

She nodded slowly. “Even if the magic is innate?”

“Even so. It will take time for you to learn to use the staff properly. I wish I could promise you that time, but I cannot. You must remember the staff's purpose, and if you are required to defend yourself, order your thoughts with the staff in mind.”

She cocked one eyebrow at him, then said, “Do not act recklessly. Do not call up the magic without first thinking of the staff. Do not employ the magic without setting the staff and opening a channel within to carry the excess out.”

He smiled. “You are quick, Mareth. If I were your father, I would be proud indeed.”

She smiled back. “I think of you as my father in any case. Not as I once did, but in a good way.”

“I am flattered. Now, take the staff as your own and do not forget its use. Once to the Silver River, we are back in enemy country, and the battle with the Warlock Lord begins anew.”

They slept well that night and set out again at dawn. They rode slowly, resting their horses often in the midsummer heat, working their way steadily north. To their right, the Battlemound shimmered in the sun, barren and stark, empty of movement. To their left, the Black Oaks were a dark wall, as still as the flats, tall and forbidding. Again they rode mostly in silence, Kinson carrying the sword, Mareth the staff, and Bremen the weight of their future.

By nightfall, they had skirted the quagmire of the Mist Marsh and reached the Silver River. Anxious to gain the heights that lay just beyond so that he could view the Rabb Plains and the whole of the country north before the morrow, Bremen made the choice to cross. They found a shallows, the river low from days of little rainfall and high heat, and with the sun setting wearily beyond the flat glimmer of the Rainbow Lake west, they rode up through a series of hills and onto a bluff. There, back within a thick band of trees, they dismounted, tethered the horses, and proceeded on foot. By now the daylight had faded to a silvery gray and the shadows of nightfall had begun to lengthen. The air, still thick with heat, had taken on a smoky quality and tasted of dust and parched grass. Night birds flew through the darkness in search of food, flashes of movement that appeared and were gone in an instant's time. All about them, insects buzzed hungrily.

They reached the edge of the bluff, the sunlight streaking the flats with red fire, and stopped.

Below them lay the whole of the Northland army. It was camped several miles farther north, well out on the plains so that the details of its battle pennants were obscured, but too vast and dark to be mistaken for anything other than what it was. Cooking fires were already lit, small flickers of light that dotted the grasslands like fireflies. Horses and wagons circled sluggishly, wheels and traces creaking, riders and drivers shouting roughly as they wrestled provisions and weapons into place. Tents billowed in the hot breeze amid the army's protective mass. One, an impenetrable black, its ribs all edges and spines, stood alone at the exact center of the camp, a broad stretch of open ground encircling it like a moat. The Druid, the Borderman, and the girl stared down at it in silence.

“What is the Northland army doing here?” Kinson asked finally.

Bremen shook his head. “I'm not certain. It must have come out of the Anar, where we saw it last, so perhaps now it moves west . . .”

His voice died away, leaving the rest unsaid. If the army of the Warlock Lord was withdrawing from the Eastland, then the battle with the Dwarves was finished and would now in all likelihood be earned to the Elves. But what had become of Raybur and his army? What had become of Risca?