The Heritage of Shannara (104 page)

Horner Dees frowned. “Are you to use it against Belk then?”

“I don't know,” Morgan admitted. “I haven't been told anything except that it could be made whole again.” He slipped the broken blade back into its scabbard. “Promises,” he said and sighed.

“She seems like the kind who keeps hers,” the other observed after a moment's thought. “Magic to find magic. Magic to prevail over magic. Us against the Stone King.” He shook his head. “It's too complicated for me.

You just be sure you remember what I said about Pe Ell. You can't turn your back on him. And you mustn't go up against him either. You leave that to me.”

“You?” Morgan declared in surprise.

“That's right. Me. Or Walker Boh. One-armed or not, he's a match for Pe Ell or I've misjudged him completely. You concentrate on keeping the girl safe.” He paused. “Shouldn't be too hard, considering how you feel about each other.”

Morgan flushed in spite of himself. “It's mostly me that's feeling anything,” he muttered awkwardly.

“She's the prettiest thing I've ever seen,” the old man said, smiling at the other's discomfort. “I don't know what she is, human or elemental or what, but she can charm the boots right off you. She looks at you, that face softens, she speaks the way she does, and you'll do anything for her. I should know. I wasn't ever going to come back to this place and here I am. She's done it to all of us.”

Morgan nodded. “Even to Pe Ell. He's as much hers as the rest of us.”

But Dees shook his head. “I don't know, Highlander. You look careful next chance you get. He's hers, but he isn't. She walks a fine line with that one. He could turn quick as a cat. That's why I tell you to look after her. You remember what he is. He's not here to do us any favors. He's here for himself. Sooner or later, he'll revert to form.”

“I think so, too,” Morgan agreed.

Dees gave a satisfied smirk. “But it won't be so easy for him now, will it? Because we'll be watching.”

They packed up, tightened their cloaks against the weather, and stepped back out into the downpour. They continued to follow the shoreline as the afternoon lengthened, reaching the northernmost point of the peninsula without finding anything, and turned back again into the city. The rain finally ended, changing to a fine mist that hung like smoke against the gray sky and buildings. The air warmed. Shadows yawned and stretched in alleyways and nooks like waking spirits, and steam rose off the streets.

From somewhere underground the rumble of the Maw Grint sounded, a distant thunder that shook the earth.

“I'm beginning to think we're not ever going to find anything,” Horner Dees muttered at one point.

They followed the dark corridors of the streets and searched the brume that lay all about, the doorways and windows that gaped open like mouths in search of food, and the flat, glistening walkways and passages. Everywhere the city lay abandoned and dead, stripped of life and filled with hollow, empty sounds. It walled them away with its stone and its silence; it wrapped about them with such persistence that despite memory and reason it seemed that the world beyond must have fallen away and that Eldwist was all that remained.

They grew weary with the approach of evening; the sameness of their surroundings dulled their senses and wore against their resistance. They began
to stray a bit, to wander closer to the walkway's edge, to look upward more often at the stone heights that loomed all about, and to give themselves over to a dangerous and persistent wish that something—
anything
— would happen. Their boredom was acute, their sense of being unable to change or affect the things about them maddening. They had been in Eld-wist almost a week. How much longer would they be forced to remain?

Ahead, the street deadended. They rounded the corner of the building they were following and discovered that the street widened into a square. At the square's center was an odd depression with steps leading down on all sides to a basin from which a statue rose, a winged figure with streamers and ribbons trailing from its body. Almost without thinking, they turned into the square, beguiled by its look, so different from anything else they had seen.
A park,
they thought to themselves without speaking. What was it doing here?

They were halfway across the street when they heard the catch that secured the trapdoor beneath them release.

They had no chance of saving themselves. They were standing in the center of the door when it dropped, and they plunged into the void beneath. They fell a long way, struck the side of a chute, and began to slide head-downward. The chute was rough, its surface littered with loose rock that cut and bit into their faces and hands. They clawed frantically in an attempt to slow their descent, heedless of the pain. Boots and knees dug in; hands and fingers grasped. The slide broadened and its slope decreased. They quit rolling, flattened themselves in a spread-eagle position, and came to a grinding halt.

Morgan lifted his head gingerly and peered about. He lay facedown on a slab of rock that stretched so far away into the shadows on either side that he could not see its end. Loose rock lay upon the slide like a carpet, bits and pieces of it still tumbling away. There was a faint glimmer of light from somewhere above, a narrow shaft that sought in vain to penetrate the gloom, so thin that it barely reached to where Morgan lay. He forced himself to look down. Horner Dees lay some twenty feet below him on his right, sprawled on his back with his arms and legs thrown wide, unmoving. Farther down, like a giant, hungry mouth, was a chasm of impenetrable blackness.

Morgan swallowed against the dust in his throat. “Horner?” he whispered hoarsely.

“Here,” the other said, his voice a faint rasp.

“Are you all right?”

There was a grunt. “Nothing broken, I think.”

Morgan took a moment to look about. All he could see was the slide, the shaft of light above, and the chasm below. “Can you move?” he called down softly.

There was silence for a moment, then the sound of rocks clattering away into the dark. “No,” the reply came. “I'm too fat and old, Highlander. If I try to get up to you, I'll start sliding and won't be able to stop.”

Morgan heard the strain in his voice. And the fear. Dees was helpless, laying on that loose rock like a leaf on glass; even the slightest movement would send him spinning away into the void.

Me, too, if I make any attempt to help,
the Highlander thought darkly.

Yet he knew that he had to try.

He took a deep breath and brought his hand up slowly to his mouth. A shower of loose rock rattled away, but his body stayed in place on the slide. He brushed at the silt on his lips and closed his eyes, thinking. There was a rope in his backpack, a thin, strong coil, some fifty feet of it. His eyes opened again. Could he find a way to fasten it to something and haul himself up?

A familiar rumbling shook the earth, rising from below, shaking the carpet of rock about him so that small showers of it slid into the abyss. There was a thunderous huffing and a great, long sigh as if an enormous amount of air was being released.

Morgan Leah glanced down, cold to the bone. In the depths below, right beneath where they hung, the Maw Grint lay sleeping.

Morgan looked up again quickly. His breath came in short, frantic gasps, and he had to struggle to overcome an almost overpowering urge to claw his way out of there as fast as he could. The Maw Grint. That close. It was huge beyond belief; even his vague glimpse of it had been enough to tell him that. He couldn't begin to guess how much of it there was, where it began and ended, how far it stretched away.

He gripped at the rock until his hands hurt, fighting back against his fear and nausea. He had to get out of there! He had to find a way!

Almost without thinking about what he was doing, he reached beneath his stomach and began working free the broken remains of the Sword of Leah. It was a slow, agonizing process, for he was unable to lift up without fear of beginning his slide down again. And now, more than he had ever wanted anything, he did not want that.

“Don't try to move, Horner!” he called down softly, his voice dry and rough. “Stay where you are!”

There was no response. Morgan inched the Sword of Leah clear of its scabbard and out from under him, bringing it level with his face. The polished metal surface of the broken blade glittered brightly in the faint light. He pushed it above his head with one hand, then reached up with the other until he could grip it firmly with both. Turning the jagged end of the blade downward, he began to slide it into the rock. He felt it bite into the stone slab beneath.

Please!
he begged.

Jamming the Sword of Leah into the stone, he hauled himself up. The blade held, and he pulled his face level with its handle. Bits of rock fell away beneath him, tumbling and sliding into the void. The Maw Grint did not stir.

Morgan freed the Sword, reached upward to jam it into the rock again, gripped it with every ounce of strength he possessed, and pulled himself
level once more. He closed his eyes and lay next to it panting, then felt a rush of heat surge through his body.
The magic?
He opened his eyes quickly to see, searching the Sword's gleaming length. Nothing.

Holding himself in place with one hand, he used the other to dive into his pack and secure the length of rope and a grappling hook. A handful of cooking implements and a blanket worked free in the process and fell onto the chute. Ignoring them, the Highlander slipped the rope about his waist and shoulders and tied it in a harness.

“Horner!” he whispered.

The old Tracker looked up, and Morgan threw the rope to him. It fell across his body, and he seized it with both hands. He started to slip almost immediately, swinging over until he was beneath Morgan. Then the rope went taut, catching him. The shock to Morgan's body was staggering, an immense, wrenching weight that threatened to pull him down. But he had both hands fastened once more on the Sword of Leah, and the blade held firm.

“Climb to me!” he whispered down harshly.

Horner Dees began to do so, slowly, torturously, hand over hand up the rope and the slide. As he passed the cooking implements and blanket that had fallen from Morgan's pack, he kicked them free, and they tumbled farther down in a shower of rock.

This time the Maw Grint coughed and came awake.

It grunted, a huffing sound that reverberated against the stone walls. It lifted itself, its massive body thudding against the walls of the tunnel in which it slept, shaking the earth violently. It rolled and pitched and began to move. Morgan hung on to the pommel of his sword, and Dees clung to the slender rope, both gritting their teeth against the strain on muscle and bone. The Maw Grint shook itself, and Tracker and Highlander could hear a spraying sound and then a hiss of steam.

The Maw Grint slid away into the black and the sound of its passing faded. Morgan and Dees looked down cautiously.

An odd, greenish stain was working its way up the stone of the chute, just visible at the far edge of the shaft of light several dozen feet below Dees. It glistened darkly and steamed like a fire advancing through brush. They watched as it reached the blanket that had fallen from Morgan's pack. When it touched it, the rough wool turned instantly to stone.

Horner Dees began climbing again at once, a furious assault on the loose stone of the slide. When he was almost to Morgan, the Highlander stopped him, beckoned for slack on the rope, and began his own ascent, jamming the Sword blade down into the rock, pulling himself up, jamming and pulling, over and over again.

They went on that way for what seemed an endless span of time. Daylight beckoned them, drawing them like a beacon toward the surface of the city and safety. Sweat ran down Morgan's face and body until he was drenched in it. His breathing grew labored, and his entire body was wracked with pain. It grew so bad at one point that he thought he must quit. But he
could not. Below, the stain continued to advance, the poison given off by the Maw Grint's body solidifying everything in its path. The blanket went first, then the handful of cooking implements that hadn't fallen into the abyss. Soon there was nothing left save Morgan and Horner Dees.

And it was gaining steadily on them.

They struggled on, hauling themselves upward foot by foot. Morgan's mind closed down on his thoughts like an iron lid on a trunk of useless relics, and all of his efforts became concentrated on the climb. As he labored, he felt the heat spread through him once more, stronger this time, more insistent. He could feel it turning inside him like an auger, boring and twisting at the core of his being. It reached from head to heels and back again, from fingers to toes, through the muscles and bone and blood, until it was all he knew. At some point—he never knew exactly when—he looked at the Sword of Leah and saw it glowing as bright as day, the white fire of its magic burning through the shadows.
Still there,
he thought in furious determination.
Still mine!

Then suddenly there was a ladder, rungs lining the walls of the chute above him, rising up from the darkness of their prison toward the fading daylight and the city. The light, he saw, came from a narrow airshaft. He scrambled toward it, jamming, hauling, releasing, starting all over again. He heard Horner Dees calling to him from below, his hoarse voice almost a sob, and looked down long enough to see the poison of the Maw Grint inches from the old Tracker's boots. He reached down impulsively with one hand and calling on a strength he didn't know he possessed, hauled upward on the rope, pulling Dees clear. The other kicked and scrambled toward him, bearded face a mask of dust and sweat. Morgan's hand released the rope and closed over the bottommost rung of the ladder. Dees continued to climb, digging his boots into the loose stone. The light was failing quickly now, gone gray already, slipping rapidly into darkness. Below, the Maw Grint's muffled roar shook the earth.

Then they were both on the ladder, scrambling upward, feet and hands gripping, bodies pressing against the stone. Morgan jammed the Sword of Leah back into his belt, safely in place.
Still magic!