Straken (47 page)

“Do you remember when you asked me once if I had any of my father’s magic?” Pen asked her suddenly.

She glanced over at him, happy for the distraction. “I remember.”

“I told you I hadn’t. But that wasn’t entirely true. I hadn’t any of the wishsong’s magic. But I had another kind. It was such a small magic that I didn’t think it worth mentioning. It allowed me to sense what animals and plants and birds were thinking or why they were acting as they were. I didn’t think it was worth anything. I never even told my parents about it. Especially my mother, who is afraid of the Ohmsford magic.”

Grianne nodded. “I know. She is right to be afraid.”

He sighed. “Well, now I think maybe my magic does come from the wishsong. It changed when I took the limb from the tanequil and shaped it into the darkwand. It changed when I began to bond with the darkwand so that it responded to me. I found I could make it do things by humming and singing, in the way of the wishsong.”

“It came late to your father, too,” she said. “He was older than you before he discovered he had use of it. Walker let him see by giving him the Sword of Shannara and telling him he would have to use it. That bonding triggered a surfacing. Just as with you.”

“I sense it changing still. I think I am just beginning to understand what’s there.”

“There is a history of that in our family. It happened with Jair Ohmsford. Do you know the story? His sister had full use of the wishsong, the first of the Ohmsfords to have it. Jair, the brother, had a magic that gave the appearance of being wishsong magic, but was only illusion. Except that some years after their quest to destroy the Ildatch, he discovered that it had evolved and he had the same use of it as she had, even though it had started out as something else.”

She gave him a questioning look. “What’s bothering you?”

He ran his fingers through his shock of reddish hair, tangling it further. “I just thought that since it is my connection with the darkwand that allows us to cross through the Forbidding, maybe there is still a chance for Weka Dart to come with us. If my magic is still changing, if I don’t know what it will do yet, it might turn out that it can help.”

He looked over at her. “So maybe you should wait to tell him. Until we’re sure, I mean.”

She stared at him for a moment, surprised. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Pen,” she said finally.

He looked off in the direction the Ulk Bog had gone. “I just don’t think anyone should have to stay here if they don’t want to. I know he is a descendant of one of those consigned to the Forbidding. But that was a long time ago. Things can change. He doesn’t seem so bad to me.”

She smiled to herself. She liked the way he wanted to help Weka Dart, even without knowing anything about him. It spoke volumes about the kind of boy he was, and it made her feel still closer to him. She was glad he was like that. She hoped she would get a chance later to tell her brother so.

“He isn’t so bad,” she said finally.

She tried to tell herself that was so, that being imprisoned in the demon world did not necessarily indicate that the Ulk Bog was beyond
redemption. No one was beyond redemption, after all. Wasn’t she proof of that?

Then a scream, a mix of shriek and roar, blew past them like a windstorm, and Pen’s dragon dropped out of the sky and settled to the ground directly in front of them.

H
igh in the towers of Paranor, Trefen Morys turned another corner on another passageway, Bellizen at his heels, and looked for a way out. They had been running ever since they had helped Kermadec escape through the windows of the meeting chamber. Surrounded by Gnome Hunters, they had been lucky to get away themselves. They’d been able to climb up through the heating vents and crawl down the shaft to another room before the Gnomes could discover what they had done.

But the hunt had gone on, and their time and space were running out. The Gnomes knew they were trapped on the upper levels of the Keep, and had blocked all the passageways down. All that was left to the young Druids were the towers above, and even those were being closed off, one by one.

“In here!” he hissed at Bellizen, pulling her through an open door into a storage room filled with Druid cloaks and soft slippers.

The sounds of pursuit already drawing near, he shut the door quietly behind them. He slid the locking bolt into place and looked around wearily. It was just another in an endless series of rooms into which they had fled and tried to hide. This one had a connecting door that led to a second room, and after determining there was no other way out of the one they were in, he took Bellizen with him into the second and locked its door, as well.

The room was tiny, a chamber he had never seen before. It had no other door than the one they had come through. A single narrow window was set in the far wall. When he crossed to open it, he found himself peering out at the north wall and the woods beyond. They were five stories up, and the wall dropped straight down.

He looked at Bellizen, who stood waiting for his assessment. “They might not think to look here.”

But they already had. He could hear them at the door of the first
chamber, trying to break through. Eventually, they would. Then they would break through the second door.

He scanned the room from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, and then looked out through the window again to see if he had missed anything. But there was no help to be found anywhere.

They were trapped.

Bellizen read it in his eyes and nodded. He walked back to her. “I won’t let them take me,” he said. “I know what will happen if they do.”

She nodded, her pale, round face calm, her gaze clear and steady. “I won’t let them take me, either.”

“But they will take us,” he said. “There’s too many of them. We’ll be overwhelmed.”

She gave him a small smile. “Not if we don’t wait around for that to happen.”

She reached for his hands and led him over to the window. She looked out into the afternoon, and then stepped up onto the windowsill. “Come up with me, Trefen.”

He did so, deliberately keeping his eyes on her face, refusing to look down. He stood with her in the opening, holding her hands, feeling the cool wind blow over him in a soothing wash.

In the room beyond, the door began to splinter and break.

“It’s only a short jump,” she said. “It won’t take long.”

“I wish we could be here when our mistress returns,” he said. “I would like her to know how much she means to us.”

“Someone will tell her,” she replied. She glanced back at the door to their room. “Are you ready?”

“I think so,” he said.

He took a deep breath. They waited quietly, listening to the sounds without, to the breaking down of the door in the far chamber and then to the thudding of booted feet as the Gnomes rushed to the door that led into their room.

“It helps that you are with me,” he said softly.

Bellizen gave him a small smile.

Then a horn sounded, its wail deep and ominous, reverberating off the walls and through the rooms of the Keep. Shouts rose from below, and abruptly Paranor came alive in a new and terrible way.

Outside their door, the Gnomes turned and ran, abandoning their efforts. Trefen Morys and Bellizen stared at each other in disbelief,
and then they looked out the window where the sounds of activity were loudest.

Thousands of Rock Trolls were striding out of the trees, armored giants forming up battle lines at the gates to the fortress of the Druids.

G
rianne Ohmsford took a quick step back as the dragon settled into place on the flats, its wings folding against its huge, scaly body. Steam rose off its back in clouds, and she could feel the heat of it from fifty feet away. The dragon flexed and undulated from head to tail, the spikes that ridged its back shivering like great stalks of grass blown in a wind. It coughed once and then exhaled a huge gout of fire and smoke.

An eerie silence settled over the landscape, and it felt to her in that instant as if everything living had disappeared from the earth save the dragon, the boy, and herself.

Then the head swung toward her and the maw parted to reveal rows of blackened teeth. The stench of its breath sent her backwards another few steps. Its yellow eyes narrowed and fixed on her.

Except they weren’t fixed on her, she realized suddenly. They were fixed on Pen, who was standing next to her.

“It’s the darkwand,” he said quietly. “It’s fascinated by the glowing runes.”

He was right. The dragon had settled down into a comfortable crouch and was staring intently at the staff. The runes carved into its surface were pulsating with hypnotic consistency in the gray mistiness of the afternoon.

“It’s been following me ever since I arrived,” Pen said.

She blinked at him. “You’ve encountered it before?”

“Twice.” He looked chagrined. “The first time was after I had walked into the passes leading down from the heights where I came into the Forbidding. I fell asleep, and it was there when I awoke, staring at me. Or at the staff. I couldn’t get rid of it at first, but finally I did. I thought I was done with it, but yesterday it reappeared here on the flats while I was trying to reach you. It came to my rescue, actually.”

“Your rescue?” She couldn’t hide her disbelief.

“I was trying to find somewhere to spend the night and I wandered into a nest of Harpies. They wouldn’t let me out again. They were going to eat me. But the dragon reappeared and ate them, instead.”

He saw the look on her face and shook his head. “It doesn’t have any interest in me. It doesn’t care about me one way or the other. It’s the runes.” He glanced over at the dragon, which was watching them contentedly. “Something about watching the glow of the runes makes it happy. Or fascinates it. I don’t know, Aunt Grianne. I just know that I can’t get rid of it.”

“Well, you managed to do so twice now,” she pointed out.

“It was the wishsong magic,” he said. “It surfaced after my bonding with the darkwand, but it was the dragon’s appearance that gave me a reason to test it. I didn’t know if the magic would work, but I was desperate. So I tried it out. I used it to send images of the runes off into the distance, like a lure. The dragon went after them, and I escaped.”

He paused for a moment, frowning. “The second time it was too busy eating the Harpies to pay much attention to me. I just slipped away. But I guess it came looking for me.”

“I guess it did.” She looked at the monster, at its huge bulk and great, hooked claws and muscular body. She stared into its yellowed eyes and found them glazed and unfocused. A dragon mesmerized by bits of light—she would never have believed it. “Can you get rid of it now?”

“I don’t know. I can try.”

He began to hum softly, connecting with the wishsong, and as he did so the runes of the darkwand danced in response, growing brighter and more active as the music increased. Soon their glow was racing across the length of the staff in ever-changing and increasingly complex patterns. She glanced at the dragon. It was staring at
the staff, satisfaction and delight mirrored in its lidded eyes. It was sitting up straight, head bent forward, as still as if it had been carved from stone.

Then the runes began to cast their images into the air, a kaleidoscope of fire bits whirling this way and that. The images spun and wove together, leaving tiny trails of light in the wake of their passing. The dragon’s jaws widened, and its breath came in grunts and snorts. Claws dug into the earth, and its tail coiled and uncoiled rhythmically. The images danced toward it, closing on it like tiny fireflies, then leapt away into the sky, speeding off into the horizon, a long line of them, beckoning with their comet light.

But the dragon didn’t move. It sat watching them intently for a moment, then turned back to Pen and the staff once more.

Pen kept at it a few moments longer then gave up. “It’s not working,” he said, breaking off with a tired gasp. “I don’t understand. Before, it would have flown after the images. Now it’s only watching them.”

Grianne studied the dragon a moment. “It’s learned that flying after the images doesn’t do it any good. The images don’t last. It’s figured out that the source is the staff and that staying close to the staff is the best way to keep the images coming.” She shook her head. “It’s a brute, but it isn’t stupid.”