The Wishsong of Shannara (34 page)

The wishsong wavered and broke as the face drew near.

The face was Brin’s!

Then a furtive rustling sound from across the darkened cell turned Jair’s stomach to ice. Instantly, he went still and the strange vision faded. Jair’s hands closed about the vision crystal, desperately drawing it down within his tattered clothing, knowing even then that it was already too late.

“Ssee, little friend, you have found a way to help me,” a cold, familiar reptilian voice hissed.

And the cloaked form of the Mwellret Stythys advanced through the open cell door.

On the shore’s edge at the lake of the Grimpond, there was a long, endless moment of silence, broken only by the soft lapping of the gray waters as they washed against the rocks. The shade and the Valegirl faced each other in the gloom of mist and shadow like voiceless ghosts called forth from another world and time.

“Look upon me!” the shade commanded.

Brin kept her gaze steady. The face the Grimpond wore was her own, drawn, haggard, and ravaged with grief, and where her own dark eyes would have been, twin slits of crimson light burned like coals. Her smile taunted her from the shade’s lips, teasing with insidious purpose, the laughter low and evil.

“Do you know me?” came the whisper. “Speak my name.”

Brin swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “You are the Grimpond.”

The laughter swelled. “I am you, Brin of the Vale people, Brin of the houses of Ohmsford and Shannara. I am you! I am the telling of your life, and in my words you shall find your destiny. Seek, then, what you will.”

The hissing of the Grimpond’s voice died into a sudden roiling of the waters over which it hung suspended. A fine, thin spray exploded geyserlike into the misted air and showered down upon the Valegirl. It was as cold as death’s forbidden touch.

The Grimpond’s crimson eyes narrowed. “Would you know, child of the light, of the darkness that is the Ildatch?”

Wordlessly, Brin nodded. The Grimpond laughed mirthlessly and glided closer. “All that is and all that was of the dark magic traces to the book, bound by threads that close you and yours tight about. Wars of Races, wars of Man—faerie demons, all one hand. Like rhymes of the voice, all are one. The humankind come to the dark magic, seeking power that they cannot hope to make theirs—seeking then death. They creep to the hiding place of the book, drawn by the lure, by the need. One time to the face of death, one time to the pit of night. Each time they find what they seek and are lost to it, changed from moral self to spirit. Bearers and Wraiths, all are one. And the evil is one with them.”

The voice faded. Brin’s mind raced, thinking through the meaning of what she had been told. One time to the face of death  . . . Skull Mountain. Past and present were one, Skull Bearer and Mord Wraith—that was the Grimpond’s meaning. They were born of the same evil. And somehow, in some way, all of it was bound together in a single source.

“The dark magic made them all,” she said quickly. “Warlock Lord and Skull Bearers in the time of my great-grandfather; Mord Wraiths now. That is your meaning, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” the voice hissed softly, teasingly. “One of one? Where lies the Warlock Lord now, Valegirl? Who now gives voice to the magic and sends the Mord Wraiths forth?”

Brin stared at the apparition wordlessly. Was it saying that the Warlock Lord had come back again? But no, that was impossible  . . .

“That voice is dark when it speaks to humankind,” the Grimpond intoned in a singsong hiss. “That voice is born of the magic, born of the lore. It is found in different ways—by some in printed word, by some  . . . in song!”

Brin went cold. “I am not of their kind!” she snapped. “I do not use the dark magic!”

The Grimpond laughed. “Nor does any, Valegirl. The magic uses them. There is the key of all that you seek. There is all you need know.”

Brin struggled to understand. “Speak more,” she urged.

“More? More of what?” The shade’s misted form shimmered darkly. “Would you have me tell you of the eyes—eyes that follow you, eyes that seek you out at every turn?” The Valegirl stiffened. “Love sees you in those eyes when they are the eyes that command the crystal. But dark intent sees you likewise when the eyes are sightless and born of your own birthright. Do you see? Are your own eyes open? Not so the eyes of the Druid when he lived, dark shadow of his time. They were closed to the greatest part of the truth, closed to what was apparent, had he thought it through. He did not see the truth, poor Allanon. He saw only the Warlock Lord come again; he saw only what was as what is—not as what could be. Deceived, poor Allanon. Even in death, he walked where the dark magic willed that he should—and when he came to his end, he was seen a fool.”

Brin’s mind spun. “The walkers—they knew he was coming, didn’t they? They knew he could come into the Wolfsktaag. That was why the Jachyra was there.”

Laughter swelled and echoed in the silence of the mist. “Truth wins out! But once only, perhaps. Trust not what the Grimpond says. Shall I speak more? Shall I tell you of your journey to the Maelmord with the clown Prince of Leah and his lost magic? Oh, so desperate he is to have that magic, so much in need of what will destroy him. You suspect it will destroy him, don’t you, Valegirl? Let him have it, then, so that he might have his wish and become one with all who shared that wish before and passed into death. His is the strong arm that leads you to a similar fate. Ah, shall I tell you of how you, too, shall come to die?”

Brin’s dusky face tightened. “Tell me what you will, shade. But I will listen only to the truth.”

“So? Am I to judge what is true and what is not, where we speak of what is yet to be?” The Grimpond’s voice was low and taunting. “The book of your life lies open before me, though there are pages yet to write. What shall be written shall be written by you, not by words that I may speak. You are the last of three, each to live in the shadow of the others, each to seek to be free of that shadow, each to grow apart therefrom and then to reach back to the ones who went before. Yet your reach is darkest on the land.”

Brin hesitated uncertainly. Shea Ohmsford must be the first, her father the second, she the third. Each had sought to be free of the legacy of the Elven house of Shannara from which all were descended. But what did that last part mean?

“Ah, your death awaits you in the land of the walkers,” the Grimpond hissed softly. “Within the pit of dark, within the breast of the magic you seek to destroy, there shall you find your death. It is foreordained, Valegirl, for you carry its seeds within your own body.”

The Valegirl’s hand came up impatiently. “Then tell me how to reach it, Grimpond. Give me a way into the Maelmord that will shield me from the eyes of the walkers. Let me go to my death quickly, if you see it so.”

The Grimpond laughed darkly. “Clever girl, you would seek to have me tell you forthright what you have truly come here to discover. I know what brings you hence, child of the Elfkind. You can hide nothing from me, for I have lived since all that was and will live for all that is to be. It is my choice to do so, to stay within this old world and not to be at peace in another. I have made playthings of those of flesh and blood who are my sole companions now, and none have ever broken past the guard I place upon myself. Would you know the truth of what you ask, Valegirl? Beg it from me, then.”

Anger welled up within her at the Grimpond’s boastful words, and she stepped to the very edge of the gray lake waters. Spray hissed warningly from out of the mist, but she ignored it.

“I was warned that you would play this game with me,” she said, her own voice dangerous now. “I have come far and have endured much grief. I have no wish to be teased now by you. Do not press me, shade. Speak only the truth. How am I to reach the pit of the Maelmord without the walkers seeing where I come?”

The Grimpond’s eyes narrowed sharply, flickering deep red as the silence between the two lengthened. “Find your own way, Brin of the Vale people,” the Grimpond hissed.

Rage exploded inside Brin, but by sheer force of will she held it in check. Wordlessly, she nodded in acquiescence, then stepped back and seated herself upon the shore, her cloak pulled close about her.

“You wait to no purpose,” the shade sneered.

But Brin did not move. She composed herself carefully, breathing in the damp air of the lake and drawing her thoughts close about her. The Grimpond stayed suspended above the waters of the lake, unmoving, its eyes turned toward her. Brin let those eyes draw her close. A serene look came over her dusky face, and the long black hair fanned back. It does not yet see what I will do! She smiled inwardly, and the thought was gone an instant after it had come.

Then softly, she began to sing. The wishsong rose into the midday with sweet and gentle words from the lips of the girl seated upon the lakeshore, to fill the air about her. Quickly, it reached out and bound the misted form of the Grimpond, weaving and twisting with its magic. So startled was the shade that it did not stir from its resting spot, but hung suspended within the web of the magic as it slowly drew tighter. Then, for the barest second, the Grimpond seemed to sense what was happening to it. Beneath its gathered robes, the lake waters boiled and hissed. But the wishsong swiftly swept all about the imprisoned form, wrapping it away as if it had become a chrysalis.

Now the Valegirl’s voice came quicker and with more certain intent. The shrouding of the first song, the gentle, womblike wrapping that had bound the Grimpond without his seeing, was gone. A prisoner now, as surely as the fly caught within the spider’s web, the shade was to be dealt with as its captor chose. Yet the Valegirl used neither force of arms nor strength of mind against this being, for she had seen that such would be useless. Memories were the weapons she called to her aid now—memories of what had once been, of what had been lost and could never be regained. All came back once more within the wishsong’s music. There was the touch of a human hand, warm and kind. There was the smell and taste of sweetness and light and the sensation of love and joy, of life and death. There were all these and others, lost to the Grimpond in its present form, barely remembered from the life long since gone.

With a cry of anguish, the Grimpond sought to evade the old sensations, shimmering and roiling in a cloud of mist. Yet it could not escape the magic of the song; slowly, the sensations caught it up and held it, and it was given over to their memories. Brin could feel the shade’s emotions come again to life, and within the memories exhumed, the Grimpond’s tears flowed. She sang steadily. When the shade was hers completely, she hardened herself against her own pain and drew back what she had given.

“No!” the apparition howled in dismay. “Give them back, Valegirl! Give them back to me!”

“Tell me what I would know,” she sang, the threads of the questions weaving through her song. “Tell me!”

With frightening suddenness, the Grimpond’s words came pouring out as if released with the anguish that tore its forgotten soul. “Graymark bridges the Maelmord where it lies within the Ravenshorn—Graymark, the castle of the Wraiths. There lies the way that is sought, a maze of sewers that runs from its halls and chambers deep beneath the rock on which it stands, to empty into a basin far below. Enter through the sewers, and the eyes of the walkers will not see!”

“The Sword of Leah,” Brin pressed harshly. “Where can it be found? Tell me!”

Anguish wrenched the Grimpond through and through as she touched him in taunting strokes with the feel of what had been lost. “Spider Gnomes!” the shade cried desperately. “The blade lies within their camp, snatched from the waters of the Chard Rush, gathered in by the nets and snares they keep fastened to its banks!”

Abruptly, Brin drew back the magic of the wishsong, filled with the memories and the sensations of the old life. She drew it clear in a swift, painless rush, freeing the imprisoned shade from the trappings that had bound it. The echoes of the song lingered in the stillness that hung across the empty lake, dying into a single haunting note that rang in the midday air. It was a note of forgetfulness—a sweet, ghostly cry that left the Grimpond as it had been.

There was a long, terrible silence then. Slowly Brin rose to her feet and stared full into the face that was the mirror of her own. Something deep within her howled in dismay as she saw the look that came upon that face. It was as if she had done this to herself!

And the Grimpond realized now what had been done. “You have tricked from me the truth, dark child!” the shade wailed bitterly. “I sense that you have done so. Ah, black you are! Black!”

The shade’s voice broke, and the gray waters boiled and steamed. Brin stood frozen at the edge of the lake, afraid to turn away or to speak. Inside, she was empty and cold.

Then the Grimpond lifted its robed arm. “One last game then, Valegirl—something back from me to you! Let this be
my
gift! Look into the mist, here beside me where it forms—look closely now! See you this!”

Brin knew then that she should flee, but somehow she could not. The mist seemed to gather before her, swirling and spreading in a sheet of gray that lightened and smoothed. A slow, shimmering motion rippled across its surface like still water disturbed, and an image formed—a figure, crouched low within a darkened cell, his movements furtive  . . .

Jair snatched back the vision crystal, thrusting it deep within his tunic, praying that the shadows and the gloom hid from the Mwellret what it was that he did. Perhaps he had been quick enough. Perhaps  . . .

“Ssaw the magicss, Elfling,” the harsh voice rasped, dashing his hopes. “Ssenssed all along that the magicss were yourss. Sshare them with, me, little friend. Sshow what you have.”

Jair shook his head slowly, fear mirrored in his blue eyes. “Stay away from me Stythys. Stay back from me.”

The Mwellret laughed—a low, guttural laugh that echoed in the emptiness of the cell and the long corridors beyond. The creature swelled suddenly within the dark robes, rising up against the dim light like a monstrous shadow.