The Heritage of Shannara (159 page)

Ahead, she heard her grandmother sob.

Frantic now, forgetting everything else, she scrambled forward through the tall grass, the others crawling hurriedly after her. She passed Gavilan, who was still trying to figure out what was going on, and caught up with Triss as the Captain of the Home Guard reached the queen.

Ellenroh was half lying, half bent over the Owl, cradling him in the crook of one arm as she wiped his sweating face. The Owl's scarecrow frame looked as if all the sticks had been removed and nothing remained but the clothing that draped them. His eyes were open and staring, and his mouth worked desperately to swallow.

Dozens of the Darter's poisonous needles stood out from his body. He had taken the full brunt of the plant's attack.

“Aurin,” the queen whispered, and his eyes swung urgently to find her. “It's all right. We're all here.”

Her own eyes lifted to meet Wren's, and they stared at each other in helpless disbelief.

“Owl.” Wren spoke softly, her hand reaching out to touch his face.

Aurin Striate's breath quickened sharply. “I can't … feel a thing,” he gasped.

Then his breathing stopped altogether, and he was dead.

Wren didn't sleep at all that night. She wasn't sure any of them did, but she kept apart from the others so she had no real way of knowing. She sat alone with Faun curled in her lap at the base of a shaggy cedar, its trunk overgrown with moss and vines, and stared out into the swamp. They were less than a hundred yards from where the attack had occurred, huddled down against the vog and the night, encircled by the sounds of things they could not see, too devastated by what had happened to worry about going farther until morning.

She kept seeing the Owl's face as he lay dying.

It was just a fluke, she knew, just bad luck. It was nothing they could have foreseen and there was nothing they could have done to prevent it. She had come across only one other Darter until now, one other on the whole of Morrowindl she had traveled through. What were the chances that she should find another here? What were the odds that of all of them it should end up striking down Aurin Striate?

The improbability of it haunted her.

Would things have turned out differently if Stresa had been there watching out for them?

There was no solid ground in which to bury the Owl, nothing but marshland where the beasts that lived in Eden's Murk would dig him up for food, so they found a patch of quicksand and sank him to where he could never be touched.

They ate dinner then, what they could manage to eat, talking quietly about nothing, not even able to contemplate yet what losing the Owl meant. They ate, drank more than a little ale, and dispersed into the dark. The Elven Hunters set a watch, Triss until midnight, Dal until dawn, and the silence settled down.

Just a fluke, she repeated dismally.

She had so many fond memories of the Owl, even though she had known him only a short time, and she clung to them as a shield against her grief. The Owl had been kind to her. He had been honest, too—as honest as he could be without betraying the queen's trust. What he could share of himself, he did. He had told her that very morning that he had been able to survive outside of Arborlon's walls all these years because he had accepted the inevitability of his death and by doing so had made himself strong against his fear of it. It was a necessary way to be, he had told her. If you are always frightened for yourself you can't act, and then life loses its purpose. You just have to tell yourself that, when you get right down to it, you don't matter all that much.

But the Owl had mattered more than most. Alone with her thoughts, the others either asleep or pretending to be, she allowed herself to acknowledge exactly how much he had mattered. She remembered how Ellenroh had cried in her arms when Aurin Striate was gone, like a little girl again, unashamed of her grief, mourning someone who had been much more than a faithful retainer of the throne, more than a lifetime companion, and
more than just a friend. She had not realized the depth of feeling that her grandmother bore for the Owl, and it made her cry in turn. Gavilan, for once, was at a complete loss for words, taking Ellenroh's hands and holding them without speaking, impulsively hugging Wren when she most needed it, doing nothing more than just being there. Garth and the Elven Hunters were stone faced, but their eyes reflected what lay behind their masks. They would all miss Aurin Striate.

How much they would miss him would become evident at first light, and its measure extended far beyond any emotional loss. For the Owl was the only one among them who knew anything about surviving the dangers of Morrowindl outside the walls of Arborlon. Without him, they had no one to serve as guide. They would have to rely on their own instincts and training if they were to save themselves and all those confined within the Loden. That meant finding a way to get free of Eden's Murk, descending the Blackledge, passing through the In Ju, and reaching the beaches in time to meet up with Tiger Ty. They would have to do all that without any of them knowing the way they should travel or the dangers they should watch out for.

The more Wren thought about it, the more impossible it seemed. Except for Garth and herself, none of the others had any real experience in wilderness survival—and this was strange country for the Rovers as well, a land they had passed through only once and then with help, a land filled with pitfalls and hazards they had never encountered before. How much help would any of them be to the others? What chance did they have without the Owl?

Her brooding left her hollow and bitter. So much depended on whether they lived or died, and now it was all threatened because of a fluke.

Garth slept closest to her, a dark shadow against the earth, as still as death in slumber. He puzzled her these days—had done so ever since they had arrived on Morrowindl. It wasn't something she could easily define, but it was there nevertheless. Garth, always enigmatic, had become increasingly remote, gradually withdrawing in his relationship with her—almost as if he felt that she didn't need him any more, that his tenure as teacher and hers as student were finished. It wasn't in any specific thing he had done or way he had behaved; it was more a general attitude, evinced in a pulling back of himself in little, unobtrusive ways. He was still there for her in all the ways that counted, protective as always, watching out and counseling. Yet at the same time he was moving away, giving her a space and a solitude she had never experienced before and found somewhat disconcerting. She was strong enough to be on her own, she knew; she had been so for several years now. It was simply that she hadn't thought that where Garth was concerned she would ever find a need to say good-bye.

Perhaps the loss of the Owl called attention to it more dramatically than would have otherwise been the case. She didn't know. It was hard to think clearly just now, and yet she knew she must. Emotions would only distract and confuse, and in the end they might even kill. Until they were
clear of Morrowindl and safely back in the Westland, there could be little time wasted on longings and needs, on what-ifs and what-might-have-beens, or on what once was and could never be again.

She felt her throat tighten and the tears spring to her eyes. Even with Faun sleeping in her lap, Garth a whisper away, her grandmother found again, and her identity known, she felt impossibly alone.

Sometime after midnight, when Triss had given over the watch to Dal, Gavilan came to sit with her. He didn't speak, just wrapped the blanket he had carried over around her and positioned himself at her side. She felt the warmth of his body through the damp and the chill of the swamp night, and it gave her comfort. After a time, she leaned against him, needing to be touched. He took her in his arms then, cradled her to his chest, and held her until morning.

At first light, they resumed their trek through Eden's Murk. Garth led now, the most experienced survivalist among them. It was Wren who suggested that he lead and Ellenroh who quickly approved. No one was Garth's equal as a Tracker, and it would take a Tracker's skill to get them free of the swamp.

But even Garth could not unravel the mystery of Eden's Murk. Vog hung over everything, shutting out the sky, wrapping everything close about so that nothing was visible beyond a distance of fifty feet. The light was gray and weak, diffused by the mist, reflected by the dampness, and scattered so that it seemed to come from everywhere. There was nothing from which to take direction, not even the lichen and moss that grew in the swamp, which seemed clustered like fugitives against the coming of night, as confused and lost as those of the company who sought their aid. Garth set a course and stayed with it, but Wren could tell that the signs he needed were not to be found. They traveled without knowing what direction they were taking, without being able to chart their progress. Garth kept his thoughts to himself, but Wren could read the truth in his eyes.

Travel was steady, but slow, in part because the swamp was all but impassable and in part because Ellenroh Elessedil was ill. The queen had caught a fever during the night, and it had spread through her with such rapidity that she had gone from headaches and dizziness to chills and coughing in a matter of hours. By midday, when the company stopped for a quick meal, her strength was failing badly. She could still walk, but not without help. Triss and Dal shared the task of supporting her, arms wrapped securely about her waist to hold her up as they traveled. Eowen and Wren both checked her for injuries, thinking that perhaps she had been scratched by the spikes of the Darter and poisoned. But they found nothing. There was no ready explanation for the queen's sickness, and while they administered to her as best they could, neither had a clue as to what remedy might help.

“I feel foolish,” she confided to Wren at one point, her wan features bathed in a sheen of sweat. They sat together on a log, eating a little of the
cheese and bread that was their meal, wrapped in their great cloaks. “I was fine when I went to sleep, then woke sometime during the night feeling … odd.” She laughed dryly. “I do not know any other way to describe it. I just didn't feel right.”

“You will be better again after another night's sleep,” Wren assured her. “We are all worn down.”

But Ellenroh was beyond simple weariness, and her condition worsened as the day wore on. By nightfall, she had fallen so often that the Elven Hunters were simply carrying her. The company had spent the afternoon wallowing about in a chilly bottomland, a pocket of cold that had strayed somehow into the broad stretch of the swamp's volcanic heat and become trapped there, sending down roots into the mire, turning water and air to ice. Ellenroh, already on the verge of exhaustion, was weakened further. What little strength remained to her seemed to seep quickly away. When they stopped finally for the night, she was unconscious.

Wren watched Eowen bathe her crumpled face as Gavilan and the Elven Hunters set camp. Garth was at her elbow, his dark face impassive but his eyes clouded with doubt. When she met his gaze squarely, he gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. His fingers gestured.
I cannot read the signs. I cannot even find them.

The admission was a bitter one. Garth was a proud man and he did not accept defeat easily. She looked into his eyes and touched him briefly in response.
You will find a way,
she signed.

They ate again, mostly because it was necessary, huddled together on a small patch of damp earth that was dryer than anything about it. Ellenroh slept, wrapped in two blankets, shaking with cold and fever, mumbling from time to time, and tossing within her dreams. Wren marveled at her grandmother's strength of will. Not once while she had struggled with her illness had she relaxed her hold on the Ruhk Staff. She clutched it to her still, as if she might with her own body protect the city and people the Loden's magic enclosed. Gavilan had offered more than once to relieve her of the task of carrying the staff, but she had steadfastly refused to give it up. It was a burden she had resolved to shoulder, and she would not be persuaded to lay it down. Wren thought of what it must have cost her grandmother to become so strong—the loss of her parents, her husband, her daughter, her friends—almost everyone close to her. Her whole life had been turned about with the coming of the demons and the walling away of the city of Arborlon. All that she remembered as a child of Morrowindl was gone. Nothing remained of the promise she must have once felt for the future save the possibility that the Elves and their city might, through her resolve and trust, be reborn into a better world.

A world of Federation oppression and Shadowen fear, a world in which, like Morrowindl, use of magic had somehow gone awry.

Wren's smile was slow, bitter, and ironic.

She was struck suddenly by the similarities between the two, the island and the mainland, Morrowindl and the Four Lands—different, yet afflicted
with the same sort of madness. Both worlds were plagued with creatures that fed on destruction; both were beset with a sickness that turned the earth and the things that lived upon it foul. What was Morrowindl if not the Four Lands in an advanced state of decay? She wondered suddenly if the two were somehow connected, if the demons and the Shadowen might have some common origin. She wondered again at the secrets that the Elves were keeping from her of what had happened on Morrowindl years ago.

And again she asked herself,
What am I doing here? Why did Allanon send me to bring the Elves back into the Four Lands? What is it that they can do that will make a difference, and how will any of us ever discover what that something is?

She finished eating and sat for a time with her grandmother, studying the other's face in the fading light, trying to find in the ravaged features some new trace of her mother, of the vision she had claimed from that now long-ago, distant dream when her mother had pleaded,
Remember me. Remember me.
Such a fragile thing, her memory, and it was all that she had of either parent, all that remained of her childhood. As she sat there with her grandmother's head cradled in her lap, she contemplated asking Garth to tell her something more of what had been, though she no longer had any real expectation that there was anything else to be told, knowing only that she was empty and alone and in need of something to cling to. But Garth stood watch, too far away to summon without disturbing the others and too distanced from her to be of any real comfort, and she turned instead to the familiar touch of the Elfstones within their leather pouch, running the tips of her fingers over their hard, smooth surfaces, rolling the Stones idly beneath the fabric of her tunic. They were her mother's legacy to her and her grandmother's trust, and despite her misgivings as to their purpose in her life she could not give them up. Not here, not now, not until she was free of the nightmare into which she had so willingly journeyed.