Straken (46 page)

O
n the wide night-shadowed plains of the Pashanon, Grianne Ohmsford stared in shock as the approaching figure came into the light and its features were revealed.

It was a boy.

At first, she thought she must be mistaken, even though she had been told the boy would come for her, even though she had been looking for him all this time. It was the unexpectedness of his appearance that gave her pause, the way he simply materialized out of the receding night, the ease with which he had found her in the middle of nowhere. But it was more than that. She had just left a killing field, a slaughterhouse of the Forbidding’s creatures turned to stone. She thought the figure must be something come out of that madness. She thought she was seeing a ghost.

“Shades,” she whispered, and stopped walking altogether.

At her side, Weka Dart growled. “What is it, Straken? Who is this creature?”

The boy approached as if there were no hurry, as if he had all the time in the world. He looked haggard and beaten down. He looked to her, she thought suddenly, as she must look to him. His clothing was ragged and his face dirty and careworn. He walked in a way that suggested his journey had been long and hard, and indeed, if he had come from her world, from the world of the Four Lands, it must have
been. Though he was clearly young, everything about him was dark and weathered.

Except for the odd staff he carried, which was made of a wood that was polished and smooth and glowed red with bits of fire.

He walked right up to her and stopped. “Hello, Aunt Grianne.”

It was Penderrin. Of all the boys she might have imagined, he was the last. She couldn’t say why, but he was. Maybe it was because he was Bek’s son, and it would never have occurred to her that Pen would come for her rather than Bek. Maybe it was just her certainty that if a boy was indeed coming, he would be extraordinary, and Pen was not. He was just an average boy. He lacked his father’s magic; he lacked his mother’s experience. She had met him only a couple of times, and while he was goodhearted and interested in her, he had never seemed special.

Yet there he was, come to her from a place no one else could have come, there when no one else was.

“Penderrin,” she whispered.

She stepped forward, placed her hands on his shoulders, and looked into his eyes to make sure. Then she hugged him to her, holding on to him with a mix of disbelief and gratitude. He was the one; just the fact of his being there was confirmation of what the shade of the Warlock Lord had foretold. She felt his arms come around her as well, and he hugged her back. In that instant, they were bonded in a way that could only have happened under the circumstances of that improbable meeting. Whatever befell her, she would never feel the same way about him again.

She released him and stepped back. “How did you find me? How did you get here?”

He smiled faintly. “It might take a while to explain that.” He held up the glowing staff. “This is what brought me and what will take us both back, once we return to the place I came in at. The runes carved in its surface glow brighter when it gets nearer to you. I just followed their lead.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “I had no idea it could be you. I was told that a boy would come for me, but I never thought it would be Bek’s son.” She gave him another hug. There were tears in her eyes, and she wiped them away quickly. “I am so grateful to you.”

Weka Dart was standing off to one side, a mix of emotions mirrored in his feral features, suspicion fighting with curiosity and hope. She glanced at him, and then turned Pen about to face him. “This is Weka Dart, Pen. He is an Ulk Bog, a creature of the Forbidding. He calls this the world of the Jarka Ruus—the banished ones. What you should know is that he is my friend. He, alone, of all the creatures I have encountered, has tried to help me. Without him, I would be …”

She trailed off. “I don’t know where I would be,” she finished quietly.

Weka Dart beamed. “I am honored to have served the Straken Queen,” he announced, and bowed deeply. He looked up again quickly. “If you are her savior, then perhaps you will be mine, as well. I wish to continue to protect Grianne of the kind heart and powerful magic. I have pledged myself to do so for as long as she needs me. Can you help me? Are you a Straken, too?”

“No,” Grianne said quickly. “Pen is family. He is not a Straken, Weka Dart. He comes only to take me home again.”

“And take me, too?” the Ulk Bog pressed.

“What do you mean?” Pen asked, and then looked at Grianne. “What is he talking about?”

“Leave it alone for now. I have to know more about what you are doing here. I don’t understand why you’ve come instead of your father. Is he all right? He hasn’t been harmed, has he?”

She listened then as he told her everything that had happened since Tagwen had appeared in Patch Run to seek his father’s help. He told her of the little company that had come together in Emberen to start the quest for the tanequil. She learned of the death of Ahren Elessedil and of the dark creatures that had been enlisted by Shadea to hunt Pen down. He told her of the fate of the
Skatelow
and the Rovers who crewed her and of star-crossed Cinnaminson’s transformation into one of the aeriads. He told her of brave Kermadec and his Rock Trolls. He told her of the tanequil, of its dual nature and of the shaping of the darkwand. By listening, she came to understand how desperate the struggle had been to reach her and how much had been sacrificed so that Pen could find a way to bring her back into the Four Lands.

“I would have thought my father a better choice for this, too,”
he finished. “But the King of the Silver River said that I was the one who was needed. I guess it was because my magic allowed me to communicate with the tanequil. Perhaps my father’s couldn’t do that. I don’t know. I only know that I had to come looking for you, that it was important that I try, even if I really didn’t think I could succeed.”

Grianne smiled in spite of herself. “Perhaps the King of the Silver River saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself, Penderrin Ohmsford, because here you are, whether you believed it could happen or not.”

He smiled back. “I’m glad I found you, Aunt Grianne.”

Weka Dart was dancing around again, looking agitated, his craggy features twisting and knotting. “We should leave this place,” he whined anxiously. He glanced back in the direction of the Asphinx colony and the stone statues. “It is dangerous to remain here.”

Grianne nodded. “He is right, Pen. We can continue talking while we travel. We must go as quickly as possible to the doorway out of the Forbidding. Time slips away.”

They began retracing Pen’s steps, walking west toward the receding darkness, the dim gray brightening of the dawn at their backs. The vast sweep of the Pashanon stretched away before them, its stunted, broken landscape empty of movement. Far distant still to the north, the Dragon Line lifted in stark relief against the horizon. The sky remained clouded and the air hazy as the daylight brightened only marginally the world of the Jarka Ruus.

“I am very sorry to hear about Ahren Elessedil,” she said to Pen after a time. “He was the best of my Druids, the one I could always depend upon. It proved to be so here, at the end, too. But I will miss him.”

In truth, she felt as if her heart would break. Only losing Bek could hurt worse. Ahren had been with her since the formation of the Third Druid Order, the linchpin she had relied upon time and time again. He had committed to her during their return to the Four Lands from Parkasia, and she had come to respect him deeply. She looked off into the distance, took a deep breath, and exhaled wearily.

“I am sorry about your father and mother, too,” she continued,
glancing over at him. “It isn’t fair that they should have been brought into this. It isn’t fair that any of you should have—Tagwen, Kermadec, the Rover girl, any who tried to help. I won’t forget. I will try to make things right again, as much as I can.”

“It was their choice,” Pen said. “Just as it was mine. We all wanted to help.”

She shook her head dismissively. “Shadea,” she said softly. “I should have done what Kermadec told me to do a long time ago; I should have rid myself of her. I should have rid myself of them all. Pyson Wence, Terek Molt, Iridia. Even Traunt Rowan. I am the most disappointed in him. I never thought he would turn against me, no matter how bad things got. I let my judgment be clouded. A bad thing for an Ard Rhys to do.”

She was silent for a moment. “How many of my Druids stand with Shadea and those others, Pen?” she asked. “Do you know?”

He shook his head. “Some, I guess. She is Ard Rhys now. The Druids all answer to her. But I don’t know how loyal they are.” He paused. “When I was a prisoner, she was away in Arishaig. She has an alliance with the Prime Minister.”

“Sen Dunsidan,” she whispered. “Another viper. I would expect him to be involved somehow. Shadea would not act without some sort of outside support, and Sen Dunsidan has always hated me.”

With reason
, she thought. As the Ilse Witch, she had made his life nightmarish. But he had allied himself with the Morgawr and tried to have her killed. So she had reason to hate him, too. Yet she had forgiven him his maliciousness and thought he had done the same. Clearly, she had shown poor judgment there, as well.

“Are there any I can count upon within the order to support me?”

Pen shook his head. “I don’t know of any. No one came to help me but Khyber.”

She dropped the matter, and they walked in silence for a time. It was wrong of her to ask such things of Pen. He had no way of knowing the answers. Since her disappearance, his time had been spent in flight. The machinations of those at Paranor and elsewhere would not have been his concern; his concern would have been in trying to stay alive. Her answers to questions of that kind would have to wait
until she was back in the Four Lands. Then it would be up to her to find them quickly.

Weka Dart was back to skittering about, crisscrossing the land ahead, dashing first this way and then that, chattering to himself, anxious to get where they were going. But she had a feeling about that. Something Pen had said when the Ulk Bog had mentioned him as being savior not only to her but also to him nagged at her.

“Weka Dart!” she called.

He came racing over, eyes bright with excitement. “I am here, Straken Queen.”

“No sign of further pursuit?” she asked. “No sign of Tael Riverine or his creatures?”

The Ulk Bog grinned wickedly. “He won’t have learned of Hobstull’s new employment as a resting post for birds quite yet,” he said. “It will take time for word to reach him. Too much time for him to do anything about it. We will be well away and out of his reach by then.”

“Run on ahead a distance and see if the land is clear that way. I want to turn north soon toward the mountains.”

He glanced in that direction. “Nothing lies there. What is the point of wasting my time …?”

“Don’t argue, little man!” she snapped. “Remember your promise to serve and protect.”

He was gone without another word, a dark spot rapidly disappearing into the haze. She felt bad about snapping at him, but he responded better when she did, and she needed to talk with Pen alone.

“A word, Pen,” she said to him when Weka Dart was safely away. “I made a promise to the Ulk Bog in return for his help in getting free of the Straken Lord’s prisons. I’ll explain about that later. My promise was that I would do what I could to get him out of the Forbidding and into the Four Lands. He wants to come with us.”

Pen gave her an anxious look. “I thought that was what he meant. But I don’t think we can do it. The darkwand will take only you and me out of the Forbidding. It will not allow anyone else to go with us. The King of the Silver River told me so.”

She had suspected as much. Creatures consigned to the Forbidding by Faerie magic could not be set free without a disruption of the
wall that separated the two worlds. The darkwand was not created for that purpose. It was created for putting things back the way they were meant to be.

“I’ll have to tell him,” she said quietly, already wondering how she was going to do that. “I can’t let him think he still has a chance of getting out when I know he doesn’t.”

They walked on, the boy keeping pace with her, his head lowered, his staff serving as a walking stick, its runes glowing softly in the dusky light.

Her thoughts stayed with Weka Dart. He was so convinced that she could do anything, that her Straken powers were omnipotent. He had already made up his mind that she would be able to break him free of the Forbidding and bring him back into the Four Lands. She had warned him not to expect too much, but after the encounter with the Graumth, he had ceased believing there was anything to worry about.

Now she was going to have to disappoint him in the way she had disappointed so many others—by not being able to do enough, by being less able than he needed her to be. She felt shackled by her inability, by her weakness, by her humanity. It was almost better not to have any power than to have a lot. Having a lot always created expectations, and somewhere along the way those expectations would not be met because that was the way the world worked.