The Elfstones of Shannara (22 page)

 

XXII

 

D
awn broke misted and iron-gray across Arborlon, and the sky was filled with rolling black clouds. By the time Wil and Amberle had dressed and eaten, the rains had begun, a spattering of drops that turned quickly to a steady downpour, thrumming against the cottage roof and windows. Thunder rolled in the distance, long booming peals that shook the forestland.

“You will not be so easily found in this,” Allanon observed with satisfaction and took them out into the storm.

Wrapped in long, hooded traveling cloaks that covered woolen tunics and breeches and high leather boots, they trailed after the Druid as he led them through sheets of driving rain down wooded pathways that skirted the westernmost edge of the city along the broad bluff of the Carolan. Barely able to find their way through the dawn gloom, Valeman and Elven girl followed closely. Fragmented images of cottages, and fence lines, and gardens slipped into view and away again, appearing miragelike through the haze of the storm, then melting back into it once more. A sharp, chill wind blew rain into their faces through the folds of their cowls, and they bent their heads against its force. Boots sloshed wetly through puddles and gullies of surface water that formed before them as they passed along the rutted forest trail.

At the far side of the city, Allanon abruptly departed from the pathway and led them toward a solitary stable that sat back against a hillside to their left. Double wooden doors stood slightly ajar, and they stepped quickly inside out of the weather. Cracks in shuttered windows and ruined walls filled the interior of the structure with gray, hazy light. Rows of stalls and a high loft stood empty, layered in shadows and dust. The air had a stale, pungent smell. They paused momentarily to brush the water from their cloaks, then moved toward a solitary door at the rear of the stable. Almost immediately they were flanked by two heavily armed Elven Hunters, who appeared soundlessly from out of the gloom to either side. Allanon took no notice of them. He walked directly to the door without turning. Tapping softly, he placed one hand on the rusted iron handle and looked back at Amberle.

“Five minutes. That is all the time we can spare.”

He pushed the door open. Valeman and Elven girl stared in. A small tack room lay below. Crispin waited there and with him an Elven woman, cloaked and hooded. The woman slipped the hood to her shoulders, and Wil was startled to find that her face, though older, mirrored Amberle's. Allanon had kept his promise; it was the Elven girl's mother. Amberle went to her at once, held her, and kissed her. Crispin stepped from the room and closed the door softly behind him.

“You were not followed.” The Druid made it a statement of fact.

The Captain of the Home Guard shook his head. He was dressed as were the other Elven Hunters, clothed in gray and brown colored garments that were loose and comfortable and blended well with the forestland. Beneath a cloak draped across his shoulders, he wore a brace of long knives belted at his waist. Across his back were strapped an ash bow and short sword. Rain had dampened his light brown hair, giving him a decidedly boyish look, and only the hard brown eyes suggested the boy in him was long since gone. He nodded briefly to Wil in greeting, then stepped over to speak with the Elves. One turned and disappeared wordlessly back out into the rain, the other into the loft. They moved on cat's feet, silent, fluid.

The minutes slipped away. Wil stood silently beside Allanon, listening to the drumming of the rain against the stable roof, feeling the dampness of the air work through him. At last the Druid stepped back to the tack room door and tapped softly once more. A moment later it opened, and Amberle and her mother reappeared. Both had been crying. Allanon reached for the Elven girl's hand and held it in his own.

“It is time to go now. Crispin will see you safely out of Arborlon. Your mother will remain here with me until you are gone.” He paused. “Keep faith in yourself, Amberle. Be brave.”

Amberle nodded silently. Then she turned back to her mother and embraced her. As she did so, Allanon drew Wil aside.

“I wish you good fortune, Wil Ohmsford.” His voice was barely audible. “Remember that I depend on you most of all.”

He gripped Wil's hand and stepped back. Wil stared at him a moment, then turned as he felt Crispin's hand on his shoulder.

“Stay close,” the Elf advised, and started toward the double doors.

Valeman and Elven girl moved after him wordlessly. He stopped them as he reached the doors, whistling sharply to signal the other Elven Hunters. The call was answered almost immediately. Crispin slipped through the doors into the rain. Tightening their cloaks about them, Wil and Amberle followed.

They hastened quickly down the rise to the pathway, backtracked in the direction from which they had come for some fifty feet or so, then turned down a new trail that ran east toward the Carolan. In a matter of seconds, three Elven Hunters had fallen in behind them like shadows slipped from the forest. Wil glanced back once at the solitary barn, but it had faded already into the mist and the rain.

The trail narrowed sharply now, and the woods closed in about them. Slipping through dark, glistening trunks and sagging boughs heavy with rain, the six cloaked figures followed the rutted pathway as it began to slope downward. The path ended at a long, rambling flight of wooden stairs that wound down out of the Carolan through the tangle of the forest. Far below and barely visible through clouds of thinning mist lay the gray ribbon of the Rill Song. To the east, meadowland and forest mixed in patchwork fashion across the sweep of the land.

Crispin motioned them forward. It was a long and somewhat arduous descent, for the steps were rain-slicked and narrow, and the footing was uncertain. A guide rope, frayed and rough, hung loosely from posts fastened to the stairs, and Wil and Amberle gripped it cautiously as they went. Hundreds of steps later the stairway ended, and they started along a new pathway that disappeared into a short stretch of pine. Somewhere ahead they could hear the sullen rush of the river, rain-swollen and sluggish, its roar blending with the deep howl of the wind coming down off the heights.

When the forest broke in front of them several hundred yards further on, they found themselves at a heavily wooded cove that opened through a wall of great, drooping willows and cedar into the main channel of the Rill Song. Within the shelter of the cove, anchored beside a creaking, badly rotted dock, rode a solitary barge, its deck laden with canvas-covered crates and stores.

Crispin signaled for them to halt. The Elven Hunters behind him faded into the trees like ghosts. Crispin glanced about, then whistled sharply. A response sounded almost at once from aboard the barge, then another from the head of the cove. Nodding to Wil and Amberle to follow, the Captain of the Home Guard left the cover of the forest. Bent against the force of the wind, the three moved quickly onto the dock, boots thudding hollowly, then aboard the waiting barge. An Elven Hunter appeared suddenly from beneath the canvas, pulling back a section hastily, to reveal an opening between the stacked crates. Crispin motioned for the Valeman and the Elven girl to enter. They did so, and the canvas dropped silently behind them.

Inside, it was sheltered and dry. The darkness confused them at first, and they stood uncertainly, feeling the rocking of the boat beneath them. But a faint sliver of light filtered through where the canvas dropped to the deck, and slowly their eyes adjusted. They discovered that a space had been cleared to form a small cabin within the center of the crates. Foodstuffs and blankets lay neatly stacked against the far wall, and there were weapons bundled carefully in leather casings in one corner. Stripping their cloaks away, they stretched them out to dry next to the stores and sat down to wait.

Moments later they felt the barge lurch free of the old dock and begin to move with the current. Their journey to the Wilderun was under way.

 

They spent all of that day and the next concealed within their little cabin, forbidden by Crispin to make even the briefest appearance on deck. The rain continued to fall in a steady drizzle, and the land and the sky remained gray and shadowed. Occasional glances through the flaps of the canvas covering showed to them the land through which they traveled, a mix of forestland and rolling hills for the most part, although, at one point during their journey, a series of high bluffs and ragged cliff sides hemmed in the Rill Song for several hours as she churned her way sluggishly southward. Through it all, mist and rain masked everything in shimmering gray half-light and gave the impression of some vaguely remembered dream. The river, swollen with the rains, roiling with limbs and debris, rocked and buffeted the barge.

Sleep was impossible. They took what rest they could get, brief naps that left them disoriented when they awoke and always tired still. Muscles and joints ached and stiffened, and the constant rolling motion of the boat took away what little appetite they might have been able to muster.

Time seemed to drag endlessly. They spent it alone with each other, save for the few occasions when Crispin or one of the other Elven Hunters came in out of the weather. When the Elves ate or slept was anybody's guess, for it appeared that most of their time was spent navigating the river and keeping close watch over their passengers. There was always at least one Elf on guard directly outside the entry to their little cabin. They came to know the names after a time, some when one ducked into the cabin momentarily, some by conversations that took place without. A few they could put faces to, such as Dilph, the small, dark Elf with the friendly eyes and the iron grip, and Katsin, the big, rawboned Hunter who never spoke at all. Kian, Rin, Cormac, and Ped remained little more than voices, though they came to recognize Kian's quick, deep oaths of irritation and Ped's cheerful whistling. They saw more of Crispin than any of the others, for the Elven Captain made regular visits to inquire of their needs and to inform them of their progress. But he never stayed for more than a few minutes, always excusing himself politely but firmly, to return to the Elves under his command.

In the end, it was the talks with each other that made the confinement, the dreariness, and the loneliness of the journey bearable. The talks began out of mutual need, Wil thought, but cautiously and awkwardly, for they still regarded each other with a strong sense of uncertainty. The Valeman was never sure why the Elven girl chose to discard the shell into which she had withdrawn for much of their journey north from Havenstead, but her attitude seemed to undergo a surprising transformation. Before, she had been reluctant to discuss much of anything with Wil. Now she was eager to converse with him, drawing out by her questions stories of his early years in Shady Vale, the years when his parents had been alive, then later when he had lived with his grandfather and Flick. She wanted to know of his life with the Stors and the work that he would be doing when he left their village again and returned to the Southland as a Healer. Her interest in him was genuine and pervasive, and it whispered of need. Nor did they speak only of him. They spoke of her as well, of her childhood as the granddaughter of the King of the Elves, of growing up the only child of Eventine's lost son. She told Wil of the Elven way of life, of their strong belief in giving back to the land that nourished and sheltered them something of themselves, something of their lives. She exchanged with him ideas on the ways in which the races might better serve the needs of one another and of the land. Each argued gently and persuasively for understanding, compassion, and love, discovering as they did so, with some surprise, that their beliefs were very much the same, that their values were values shared.

Carefully, by cautious degrees, they bound themselves, each to the other. Deliberately, they avoided saying anything of the journey on which they had been sent, of the danger that threatened the Elven people and of their own responsibility for putting an end to that danger, or of the ancient and mysterious tree they called the Ellcrys. There would be time enough later for that; this time could be better used. It was an agreement arrived at not by words spoken, but by simple understanding. They would speak openly of the past and the future; they would say nothing of the present.

The talks gave them comfort. Without, the rains fell unceasingly, the gray haze of the storm washed the land, and the Rill Song rumbled in discontent on its passage south. Shut within their dark concealment, buffeted by winds and water, lacking sleep and appetite, they might easily have given way to apprehension and doubt. But the talks gave them comfort, born of feelings shared, of companionship, and of understanding. It gave them a sense of security in each other's presence, muting at least in part the unpleasant sensation that the whole of their world was passing away and that, with that passing, their lives would be forever changed. It gave them hope. Whatever was to befall them in the days to come, they would face together. Neither would be forced to stand alone.

Sometime during those gray, rain-filled hours, a strange thing happened to Wil Ohmsford. For the first time since that night in Storlock when he had agreed to travel to the Westland with Allanon, he found himself caring, deeply and compellingly, about what was to become of Amberle Elessedil.

 

It was late afternoon on the second day of their journey when they arrived at Drey Wood. The heavy rains had diminished to a slow drizzle, and the air had gone sharply chill with the approach of nightfall. Gray dusk shrouded the forestland. From out of the west, a new bank of threatening black clouds had begun to roll toward them.

Drey Wood was a stretch of dense forest covering a series of low rises which ran eastward from the left bank of the Rill Song to a line of high, craggy bluffs. Elms, black oaks, and shag-bark hickories towered over a choked tangle of scrub and deadwood, and the forest smelled of rot. A dozen yards inland from the riverbank, there was nothing but blackness, deep and impenetrable. Rain falling into the trees in a steady patter was the only sound that broke the stillness.