The Elf Queen of Shannara (24 page)

Cogline leaned back against the castle wall, looking momentarily as if he might disappear into it. “Then make your escape, Walker,” he said quietly. “Not by running from your fate, but by embracing it. You have insisted from the beginning that you would not allow yourself to be manipulated by the Druids. Do you suppose that I feel any different? We are both victims of circumstances set in motion three hundred years ago, and we would neither of us be so if we had the choice. But we don't. And it does no good to rail against what has been done to us. So, Walker, do something to turn things to your advantage. Do as you are fated, become what you must, and then act in whatever ways you perceive to be right.”

Walker's smile was ironic. “So you would have me transform myself. How do I do that, Cogline? You have yet to tell me.”

“Begin with the Druid Histories. All of the secrets of the magic are said to be contained within.” The old man's hand gripped his arm impulsively. “Go up into the Keep and take the Histories from their vault, one by one, and see for yourself what they can teach. The answers you need must lie therein. It is a place to start, at least.”

“Yes,” Walker agreed, inwardly mulling over the possibility that Cogline was right, that he might gain what he sought not by pushing his fate away but by turning it to his own use. “Yes, it is a start.”

He rose then, and Cogline with him. Walker faced the old man in silence for a moment, then reached out with his good arm and gently embraced him. “I am sorry for what has been done to you,” he whispered. “I meant what I said back at Hearthstone before Rimmer Dull came—that I was wrong to blame you for any of what has happened, that I am grateful for all you have done to help me. We shall find a way to get free, Cogline. I promise.”

Then he stepped back, and Cogline's answering smile was a momentary ray of sunlight breaking through the gloom.

 

So Walker Boh went up into the Keep, following the lead of Cogline and Rumor, three specters at haunt in a twilight world. The castle of the Druids was dark and heavy, shimmering like an image reflected in a pool of water adrift with shadows. The stone of the walls and floors and towers was cold and empty of life, and the hallways wound about like tunnels beneath the earth, dark and dank. There were bones scattered here and there along the carpeted, tapestried halls, the remains of those Gnomes who had died when Allanon had invoked the magic that sent the Keep out of the Four Lands three hundred years earlier. Piles of dust marked the end of the Mord Wraiths trapped there, and all that remained of what they had been was a whisper of a memory sealed away by the walls.

Passageways came and went, stairways that ran straight and curved about, a warren of corridors burrowing back into the stone. The silence was pervasive, thick and deep as leaves in late autumn in the forest, rooted in the castle walls and inexorable. They did not challenge it, wordless as they passed through its curtain, focusing instead on what lay ahead, on the path they followed to the paths that waited. Doors and empty chambers came and went about them, stark and uninviting within their trappings of gloom. Windows opened into grayness, a peculiar haze that shaded everything beyond so that the Keep was an island. Walker searched for something of the forestland that ringed the empty hill on which Paranor had stood, but the trees had disappeared; or he had, he amended—come out of the Four Lands into nothingness. Color had been drained from the carpets and tapestries and paintings, from the stone itself, and even from the sky. There was only the gloom, a kind of gray that defied any brightening, that was empty and dead.

Yet there was one thing more. There was the magic that held Paranor sealed away. It was present at every turn, at once invisible and suddenly revealed, a kind of swirling, greenish mist. It hovered in the shadows and along the edges of their vision, wicked and certain, the hiss of its being a whisper of killing need. It could not touch them, for they were protected by other magic and were at one with the Keep itself. But it could watch. It could tease and taunt and threaten. It could wait with the promise of what would happen when their protection was gone.

It was odd that it should be such an obvious presence; Walker Boh felt it immediately. It was as if the magic were a living thing, a guard dog set at prowl through the Keep, searching out intruders and hunting them down so that they might be destroyed. Its presence reminded him of the Rake in Eldwist, a Creeper that scoured its master's grounds and swept them clean of life. The magic lacked the substance of the Rake, but its feel was the same. It was an enemy, Walker sensed, that would eventually have to be faced.

Within the Druid library, behind the bookcases where the vault was concealed, they found the Histories, banks of massive, leather-bound books set within the walls of the Keep, the magic that had once hidden them from mortal eyes faded with the passing of the Keep from the world of men. Walker studied the books for a time, deliberating, then chose one at random, seated himself, and began to read. Cogline and Rumor kept him company, silent and unobtrusive. Time passed, but the light did not change. There was no day or night in Paranor. There was no past or future. There was only the here and now.

Walker did not know how long he read. He did not grow tired and did not find himself in need of sleep. He did not eat or drink, being neither hungry nor thirsty. Cogline told him at one point that in the world into which Paranor had been dispatched, mortal needs had no meaning. They were ghosts as much as they were two men and a moor cat. Walker did not question. There was no need.

He read for hours or days or even weeks; he did not know. He read at first without comprehending, simply seeing the words flow in front of his eyes, a narrative that was as distant and removed as the life he had known before the dreams of Allanon. He read of the Druids and their studies, of the world they had tried to make after the cataclysm of the Great Wars, of the First Council at Paranor, and of the coming together of the Races out of the holocaust. What should it mean to him? he wondered. What difference did any of it make now?

He finished one book and went on to another, then another, working his way steadily through the volumes, constantly searching for something that would tell him what he needed to know. There were recitations of spells and conjurings, of magics that could aid in small ways, of healings by touch and thought, of the succor of living things, and of the work that was needed to make the land whole again. He read them, and they told him nothing. How was he supposed to transform himself from what he was into what he was expected to be? Where did it say what he was supposed to do? The pages turned, the words ran on, and the answers stayed hidden.

He did not finish in one sitting, even though he was free of the distractions of his mortal needs and did not sleep or eat or drink. He left to walk about periodically, to think of other things, and to let his mind clear itself of all that the Histories related. Sometimes Cogline went with him, his shadow; sometimes it was Rumor. They might have been back at Hearthstone, walking its trails, keeping each other company, living in the seclusion of the valley once more. But Hearthstone was gone, destroyed by the Shadowen, and Paranor was dark and empty of life, and no amount of wishing could change what had gone before. There was no returning to the past, Walker thought to himself more than once. Everything that had once been was lost.

After a time, he began to despair. He had almost finished reading the Druid Histories and still he had discovered nothing. He had learned everything of who and what the Druids were, of their teachings and their beliefs, and of how they had lived and what they had sought to accomplish, and none of it told him anything about how they acquired their skills. There was no indication of where Allanon had come from, how he had learned to be a Druid or who had taught him, or what the subject matter of his teachings had been. The books were devoid of any reference to the conjuring that had sealed away the Keep or what it might require to reverse the spell.

“I cannot fathom it, Cogline,” Walker Boh admitted finally, frustrated beyond hope as the last of the volumes sat open on his lap before him. “I have read everything, and none of it has helped. Is it possible that there are volumes missing? Is there something more to be tried?”

But Cogline shook his head. The answers, if they existed in written form, would be found here. There were no other books, no other sources of reference. Everything was contained in the Histories. All of the Druid studies began and ended there.

Walker went out alone then for a time, stalking the halls in anger, feeling betrayed and cheated, a victim of Druid whim and conceit. He thought bitterly of all that had been done to him because of who he was, of all that he had been forced to endure. His home had been destroyed. He had lost an arm and barely escaped with his life. He had been lied to and tricked repeatedly. He had been made to feel responsible for the fate of an entire world. Self-pity washed through him, and then his mouth tightened in admonishment. Enough, he chided himself. He was alive, wasn't he? Others had not been so fortunate. He was still haunted by Quickening's face; he could not forget how she had looked when he had let her fall.
Remember me,
she had pleaded with Morgan Leah—but she had been speaking to him as well.
Remember
me—as if anyone who had known her could ever forget.

Absently he turned down a corridor that led toward the center of the Keep and the entrance to the black well that had given birth to the magic that sealed away Paranor. His mind was still on Quickening, and he recalled once again the vision the Grimpond had shown him of her fate. Bitterness welled up within him. The vision had been right, of course. The Grimpond's visions were always right. First the loss of his arm, then the loss of Quickening, then . . .

He stopped suddenly, startled into immobility, a statue staring blankly into space at the center of the cavernous passageway.
He had forgotten. There was a third vision.
He took a steadying breath, picturing it in his mind. He stood within an empty, lifeless castle fortress, stalked by a death he could not escape, pursued relentlessly . . .

He exhaled sharply.
This castle?
He closed his eyes, trying to remember. Yes, it might have been Paranor.

He felt his pulse quicken. In the vision, he felt a need to run, but could not. He stood frozen as Death approached. A dark-robed figure stood behind him, holding him fast, preventing his escape.

Allanon.

He felt the silence grow oppressive. What had become of this third vision? he wondered. When was it supposed to happen? Was it meant to happen here?

And suddenly he knew. The certainty of it shocked him, but he did not doubt. The vision would come to pass, just as the others had, and it would come to pass here. Paranor was the castle, and the death that stalked him was the dark magic called forth to seal the Keep. Allanon did indeed stand behind him, holding him fast—not physically, but in ways stronger still.

But there was more, some part of things that he had not yet divined. It was not foreordained that he should die. That was the obvious meaning of the Grimpond's vision, what the Grimpond wanted Walker to think. The visions were always deceptive. The images were cleverly revealed, lending themselves to more than one interpretation. Like pieces to a puzzle, you had to play with them to discover how they fit.

Walker's eyes prowled the dark shadows that lay all about, hunting. What if he could find a way to turn the Grimpond's cleverness to his own use? What if this time he could decipher the vindictive spirit's foretelling in advance of its happening? And suppose—he hardly dared let himself hope—deciphering the vision could provide him with the key to understanding his fate within the Druid's Keep?

A fire began to build within him—a burning determination. He did not have the answers he needed yet, but he had something just as good. He had a way to discover what they were.

He thought back to his entry into Paranor, to his meeting with Cogline and Rumor. The missing pieces were there, somewhere. He retraced his reading of the Druid Histories, seeing again the words on the pages, feeling anew the weight of the books, the texture of the bindings. Something was there, something he had missed. He closed his eyes, picturing himself, following all that had happened, relating it to himself in his mind, a sequence of events. He searched it, standing solitary in that hall, wrapped in shadows and silence, feeling the edges of his confusion begin to draw away, hearing sounds that were new and welcome begin to whisper to him. He went down inside himself, reaching for the darker places where the secrets hid themselves. His magic rose to greet him. He could see anything if he searched hard and long enough, he told himself. He dropped away into the stillest, calmest part of himself, letting everything fall away.

What had he overlooked?

Whosoever shall have the cause and the right shall wield it to its proper end.

His eyes snapped open. His hand came up slowly along his body, groping. His fingers found what they were seeking, carefully tucked within his clothing, and they closed tightly about it.

The Black Elfstone.

Clutching the talisman protectively, his mind awash with new possibilities, he hurried away.

 

 

 

XV

 

W
ren Ohmsford crouched wordlessly with her companions in the darkness of the tunnels beneath the Keel while the Owl worked in silence somewhere ahead, striking flint against stone to produce a spark that would ignite the pitch-coated torch he balanced on his knees. The magic that had illuminated the tunnel when Wren had come into the city was gone now, disappeared with Arborlon and the Elves into the Loden. Triss had been the last to enter, carrying Ellenroh from the bridge, and he had closed the door tightly behind, shutting them away from the madness that raged without, but trapping them as well with the heat and the stench of Killeshan's fire.

A spark caught in the darkness ahead, and a dark orange flame flared to life, casting shadows everywhere. Heads turned to where the Owl was already starting away.

“Be quick,” he whispered back to them, his voice rough and urgent. “It won't take long for the dark things to find that door.”

They crept swiftly after him, Eowen, Dal, Gavilan, Wren, Garth, Triss carrying Ellenroh, and Cort trailing. Beyond, burrowing down into the earth with the tenacity of moles, the howls and shrieks of the demons tracked them. Sweat beaded on Wren's skin, the heat of the tunnels intense and stifling. She brushed at her eyes, blinked away the stinging moisture, and worked to keep pace. Her thoughts strayed as she labored, and she remembered Ellenroh, standing at the center of the bridgehead, invoking the Loden, calling forth the light that would sweep up all of Arborlon and carry it down into the gleaming depths of the Stone. She could see the city disappear, vanishing as if it never were—buildings, people, animals, trees, grass, everything. Now Arborlon was their responsibility, theirs to protect, cradled within a magic that was only as strong as the nine men and women to whom it had been entrusted.

She pushed past trailing roots and spider's webs, and the enormity of the task settled on her like a weight. She was only one, she knew, and not the strongest. Yet she could not escape the feeling that the responsibility was inevitably hers alone, an extension of Allanon's charge, the reason for which she had come in search of the Elves.

She shook the feeling aside, crowding up against Gavilan in her haste to keep moving.

Then abruptly the earth shuddered.

The line stopped, and heads lowered protectively as silt broke free of the tunnel roof in a shower. The ground shook again, the tremors building steadily, rocking the earth as if some giant had seized the island in both hands and was struggling to lift it free.

“What's happening?” Wren heard Gavilan demand. She dropped to her knees to keep from being thrown off balance, feeling Garth's steadying hand settle on her shoulder.

“Keep moving!” the Owl snapped. “Hurry!”

They ran now, crouched low against a pall of loose dirt that hung roiling in the air. The tremors continued, a rumbling from beneath, the sound rising and falling, a quaking that tossed them against the tunnel walls and left them struggling to remain upright. The seconds sped away, fleeing as quickly as they did, it seemed, from the horror following. A part of the tunnel collapsed behind them, showering them with dirt. They could hear a cracking of stone, a splitting apart of the lava rock, as if the earth's crust were giving way. There was a heavy thud as a great boulder dropped through a crevice and struck the tunnel floor.

“Owl, get us out of here!” Gavilan called out frantically.

Then they were climbing free again, scrambling from the tunnel through an opening in the earth, clawing their way into the weak morning light. Behind them, the tunnel collapsed completely, falling away in a rush of air, silt exploding through the opening they had fled. The tremors continued to roll across Morrowindl's heights, ripping its surface, causing the rock to grate and crumble. Wren hauled herself to her feet with the others and stood in the shelter of a copse of dying acacia, looking back at where they had been.

The Keel was swarming with demons, their black bodies everywhere as they sought to scale the hated barrier. The magic was gone, but the tremors that had replaced it proved an even more formidable obstacle. Demons flew from the heights, screaming as they fell, shaken free like leaves from an autumn tree in a windstorm. The Keel cracked and split as the mountainside shuddered beneath it, chunks of stone tumbling away, the whole of it threatening to collapse. Fires spurted out of the earth from within, the crater from which Arborlon had been scooped by the magic become a cauldron of heat and flames. Steam hissed and spurted in geysers. High on Killeshan's slopes, the crust of the mountain's skin had ruptured and begun to leak molten rock.

“Killeshan comes awake,” Eowen said softly, causing them all to turn. “The disappearance of Arborlon shifted the balance of things on Morrowindl; a void was created in the magic. The disruption reaches all the way to the core of the island. The volcano is no longer dormant, no longer stable. The fires within will burn more fiercely, and the gases and heat will build, until they can no longer be contained.”

“How long?” the Owl snapped.

Eowen shook her head. “Hours here on the high slopes, days farther down.” Her eyes were bright. “It is the beginning of the end.”

There was an instant of uncertain silence.

“For the demons, perhaps, but not for us.” It was Ellenroh Elessedil who spoke, back on her feet again, recovered from the strain of invoking the Loden's magic. She freed herself from Triss's steadying grip and walked through them, drawing them after in her wake until she turned to face them. She looked calm and assured and unafraid. “No hesitation now,” she admonished. “We go quickly, quietly, down to the shores of the Blue Divide and off the island, back to where we belong. Keep together, keep your eyes sharp. Owl, take us out of here.”

Aurin Striate turned away at once, and the others went with him. There were no questions asked—Ellenroh Elessedil's presence was that strong. Wren glanced back once to see her grandmother come up beside Eowen, who seemed to have lapsed into a trance, put her arms about the seer, and lead her gently away. Behind them, the glare of the volcano's fire turned the Keel and the demons the color of blood. It seemed as if everything had disappeared in a wash of red.

Shadows against the hazy light, the company crept down off the slopes of Killeshan through the rugged mix of lava rock, deadwood, and scrub. All of the sounds were behind them now where the demons converged on an enemy that they were just beginning to discover was no longer there. Ahead there was only the steady rush of the Rowen as its gray waters churned toward the sea. The tremors chased after, shudders that rippled along the stretches of lava rock and shook the trees and brush; but their impact diminished the farther the company went. Vog clouded the air before them, turning the brightness of early-morning haze and the shape of the land indistinct. Wren's breathing steadied, and her body cooled. She no longer felt trapped as she had in the tunnel, and the intensity of the heat had lessened. She began to relax, to feel herself merge with the land, her senses reaching out like invisible feelers to search out what was hidden.

Even so, she failed to detect the demons that lay in wait for them before the attack. There were more than a dozen, smallish and gnarled, crooked like deadwood, rising up with a rending of brush and sticks to seize at them. Eowen went down, and the Owl disappeared in a flurry of limbs. The others rallied, striking out at their attackers with whatever came to hand, bunching together about Eowen protectively. The Elven Hunters fought with grim ferocity, dispatching the demons as if they were nothing more than shadows. The fight was over almost before it began. One of the black things escaped; the rest lay still upon the ground.

The Owl reappeared from behind a ridge, one sleeve shredded, his thin face clawed. He beckoned them wordlessly, turning away from the path they had been following, taking them swiftly down from the summit of a rise to a narrow gully that wound ahead into the fog. They watched closely now, alert for further attacks, reminded that the demons would be everywhere, that not all of them would have gone to the Keel. The sky overhead turned a peculiar yellow as the sun ascended the sky yet struggled unsuccessfully to penetrate the vog. Wren crept ahead with long knives in both hands, her eyes sweeping the shadows cautiously for any sign of movement.

They were nearing the Rowen when Aurin Striate brought them to a sudden halt. He dropped into a crouch, motioning them down with him, then turned, gestured for them to remain where they were, and disappeared ahead into the haze. He was gone for less than five minutes before reappearing. He shook his head in warning and motioned them left. Keeping low, they slipped along a line of rocks to where a ridge hid them from the Rowen. From there they worked their way parallel to the river for more than a mile, then resurfaced cautiously atop a rise. Wren peered out at the sluggish gray surface of the river, empty and broad before her as it stretched away into the distance.

Nothing moved.

The Owl rejoined them, his leathery face furrowed. “The shallows are filled with things we don't want anything to do with. We'll cross here instead. It's too broad and too wide to swim. We'll have to ferry over. We'll build a raft big enough to hold on to—that will have to do.”

He took the Elven Hunters with him to gather wood, leaving Gavilan and Garth with the women. Ellenroh came over to Wren and gave her a brief hug and a reassuring smile. All was well, she was saying, but there were worry lines etched in her brow. She moved quietly away.

“Feel the earth with your hands, Wren,” Eowen whispered suddenly, crouching next to her. Wren reached down and let the tremors rise into her body. “The magic comes apart all about us—everything the Elves sought to build. The fabric of our arrogance and our fear begins to unravel.” The rust-colored hair tumbled wildly about the distant green eyes, and Eowen had the look of someone awakening from a nightmare. “She will have to tell you sometime, Wren. She will have to let you know.”

Then she was gone as well, moving over to join the queen. Wren was not sure exactly what she had been talking about, but assumed she was referring to Ellenroh, and that, as the Rover girl already knew, there were secrets still unrevealed.

The vog swirled about, screening off the Rowen, snaking through the cracks and crevices of the land, changing the shape of everything as it passed. Cort and Dal returned hauling lengths of deadwood, then disappeared again. The Owl passed through the gloom heading toward the river, stick-thin and bent as if at hunt. Everything moved as if not quite there, a shading of some half-forgotten memory that could trick you into believing things that never were.

A sudden convulsion rocked the earth underfoot, causing Wren to gasp in spite of herself and to reach down hurriedly to regain her balance. The waters of the Rowen seemed to surge sharply, gathering force in a wave that crashed against the shoreline and rolled on into the distance.

Garth touched her shoulder.
The island shakes itself apart.

She nodded, thinking back to Eowen's declaration that the impending cataclysm was the result of a disruption in the magic. She had thought the seer was referring solely to Ellenroh's use of the Loden, but now it occurred to her that the seer meant something more. The implication of what she had just told Wren was that the disruption of the magic was broader than simply the taking away of Arborlon, that at some time in the past the Elves had sought to do something more and failed and that what was happening now was a direct result.

She stored the information away carefully for a time when she could make use of it.

Garth moved down to help the Elven Hunters, who were beginning to lash together the logs for the raft. Gavilan was speaking in low tones with Ellenroh, and there was a restless anger reflected in his eyes. Wren watched him carefully for a moment, measuring what she saw now against what she had seen before, the hard-edged tension and the careless disregard, two images in sharp contrast. She found Gavilan intriguing, a complex mix of possibilities and enticements. She liked him; she wanted him close. But there was something hidden in him that bothered her, something she had yet to define.

“Just a few more minutes,” the Owl advised, passing by her like a shadow and fading back into the mist.

She started to climb to her feet, and something small and quick darted from the undergrowth and threw itself on her. She tumbled back, flailing desperately, then realized in shock that the thing clinging to her was Faun. She laughed in spite of herself and hugged the Tree Squeak close.

“Faun,” she cooed, nuzzling the odd little creature. “I thought something terrible had happened to you. But you're all right, aren't you? Yes, little one, you're just fine.”

She was aware of Ellenroh and Gavilan looking over, puzzlement registered on their faces, and she quickly climbed to her feet again, waving to them reassuringly, smiling in spite of herself.

“Hrrwwwll. Have you forgotten your promise?”

She turned abruptly to find Stresa staring up at her from the edge of the gloom, quills all on end.

She knelt hurriedly. “So you are all right as well, Mr. Splinterscat. I was worried for you both. I couldn't come out to see if you were safe, but I hoped you were. Did you find each other after I left?”

“Yes, Wren of the Elves,” the Splinterscat replied, his words cool and measured. “Pffttt. The Squeak came scampering back at dawn, fur all wild and ragged, chittering about you. It found me down by the river where I was waiting. So, now—your promise. You remember your promise, don't you?”

Wren nodded solemnly. “I remember, Stresa. When I left the city, I was to take you with me to the Westland. I will keep that promise. Did you worry I would not?”

“Hssst, pfftt!” The Splinterscat flattened its quills. “I hoped you were someone whose word meant something. Not like—” He cut himself short.