The Heritage of Shannara (243 page)

Her hands tore apart the drawstrings, frantic, wild, digging, and then digging harder. The first of the Seekers reached her, and she kicked out with her boot and knocked him aside. Grasping the bag, she scrambled to her feet, weaponless as she faced the rest. She screamed in fury, giving up on the Stones, her hand closing over the leather pouch in a fist, swinging at the Seeker closest, deflecting the blade from her throat so that it sliced down the side of her arm, shredding her cloak and drawing blood. She spun and kicked, and another of her attackers flew aside. But there were too many, too many to face alone.

Then Faun was leaping into the fray, launching her tiny body at the closest attacker, spitting and tearing with her claws and teeth. The Seekers behind slowed, not certain what it was they faced, surprised by the Tree Squeak's sudden reappearance. Wren stumbled backward again and struggled to her feet.
Faun!
she tried to call out, but her throat constricted on
the cry. The Seeker Faun had attacked ripped out furiously, tearing the small body away from its face and throwing it to the ground.
“No!”
Wren howled, bringing up the arm that held the Elfstones. Faun struck the rocky earth and the Seeker brought down his boot. There was the sound of breaking bones and a high-pitched shriek.

And everything shattered inside Wren Elessedil, a whirlwind of fury and anguish and despair, and from out of its core rose the magic of the Elf-stones. It exploded inside her fist, disintegrating the leather pouch, ripping through the cracks of her fingers like water squeezed through sand. It caught the Seeker standing over Faun and consumed him. It raced on to the others who were trying to reach her and hammered into them. They went down as if formed of paper, as if cut and pasted together, then hung on strings in the air and left to withstand the force and violence of a windstorm. Some got past and reached her, hands groping, tearing for her. Some fastened on her and sought to bring her down. But Wren was beyond their power, beyond feeling, beyond anything but the Elven magic as it surged through her. She was given over to its need and nothing could bring her back until that need was satisfied. The magic swung back to catch those clinging to her and ripped them away, loose threads from her clothing. She turned to destroy them, and they burned like fall leaves in the magic's flames. She made no sound as she fought them, all her words forgotten, her face twisted in a death mask. The battle between the Elves and the Federation disappeared in a haze of red. She could no longer see anything beyond the ground over which she fought. Seekers came at her and died in the fiery wake of the Elfstone magic, and the smell of their ashes was all she knew.

Then suddenly she was alone again, the last of the Seekers racing for the trees, fleeing in terror, black robes shredded and smoking. She gathered up the fire and sent it racing after them and with it went the last of her strength. Her arm dropped, and the fire faded. She fell to her knees. The grass about her was charred black and stinking. There were ash piles everywhere amid the bodies of the Home Guard. She heard shouts from the slopes below, where Triss and the balance of the Home Guard had taken up their stations to face the Federation. Don't touch me, she said in response. Don't come near me. But she wasn't sure if she had spoken the words or not. The shouts grew, resounding now from all across the Valley of Rhenn. Something was happening. Something unexpected.

She dragged herself back to her feet and looked out through the fading, misty light.

Far east, beyond where the mouth of the valley opened onto the grasslands below, an army of men had appeared. They came out in a rush, brandishing their weapons and howling their battle cries. They were mostly afoot, armed with swords and bows. They did not join the Federation forces as she had first thought they might, but instead attacked the South-landers with unmatched fury and determination, driving into them like a rock into damp earth. The cries they gave were audible even where she
stood.
“Free-born! Free-born!”
They rolled across the madness like a fresh wind across a swamp. Then over the slopes of the valley where the Elves had stood and died and been driven backward came wave upon wave of massive armored bodies that seemed chiseled from stone. Rock Trolls, bearing eight-foot spears, maces, axes, and great iron-bound shields, marched in cadence out of the gloom and down into the ranks of the Federation.

Joined together as one, free-born and Rock Troll swept into the South-land army. For several minutes the Federation soldiers held their ground, still vastly outnumbering their attackers. But this fresh onslaught was too much for men who had been fighting since sunrise. The Southland soldiers fell back slowly at first, then more quickly, and finally turned and ran. The whole of the Valley of Rhenn emptied of Southland troops as the Federation attack fell apart. Elves joined in the pursuit, and the combined armies of free-born, Trolls, and Elves drove the Federation juggernaut back into the mist and gloom south, leaving in their wake fresh carnage and destruction, soaking the ground anew in blood.

Wren turned to find Faun. She heard Triss calling to her as he scrambled up the slope from behind, heard as well the sounds of the Home Guard who accompanied him. She did not respond. She jammed the Elf-stones into her tunic pocket as if they were riddled with plague and left them there, her hands still tingling with the magic's fire, her mind still loud with a strange buzzing. Faun lay crumpled amidst the piles of ashes, unmoving. There was blood all over. Wren knelt beside the Tree Squeak and lifted the shattered form in her hands.

She was still cradling the tiny creature when Triss and the Home Guard finally reached her. She did not look up. In a way she could not explain, she felt as if she were cradling the whole of the Elven nation.

T
he assault on Southwatch began with less than an hour remaining before dawn.

The approach was uneventful. Clouds continued to blanket the sky, shutting out the light of moon and stars, wrapping the earth below in a soft, thick blanket of gloom. Beneath the clouds, mist rose off the ground into the air and clung to trees and brush and grasses like wood smoke. The night was still and deep, empty of sound and movement, and nothing stirred on the parched and barren land that surrounded the keep.

Walker Boh led the way, easing them down out of the high country and onto the flats, taking them through the mist and shadows, using his Druid magic to cloak them in silence. They passed as phantoms through
the black, as invisible as thought and as smooth as flowing water. The Shad-owen were not abroad this night, or at least not where the five humans and the moor cat walked, and the land belonged only to them. Walker was thinking of his plan. He was thinking that they would never have enough time to reach Par, free him of his bonds, and descend into the cellar. The Sword of Shannara would be needed to break the wishsong's strange hold on him, and the Shadowen would be all over them the moment the Sword was used. What they needed was to bring Par out of his prison and down to the cellar before using the Sword. He was thinking of a way they might do that.

Coll Ohmsford was thinking, too. He was thinking that perhaps he was wrong in his belief that the Sword of Shannara could help his brother. It might be that the truth he sought to reveal would not free Par but drive him mad. For if the truth was that Par was a Shadowen, then it was of precious little use. Perhaps Allanon had intended the Sword for another purpose, he worried—one he had not yet recognized. Perhaps Par's condition was not something that the Sword could help.

A step behind and to one side, Morgan Leah was thinking that even with all the talismans they carried and magics they wielded, their chances of succeeding in this venture were slim. The odds had been great at Tyrsis when they had gone after Padishar Creel, but they were far greater here. They would not all survive this, he was thinking. He did not like the thought, but it was inescapable, a small whisper at the back of his mind. He wondered if it was possible that after surviving so much—the Pit, the Jut, Eldwist, and all the monsters that had inhabited each—he might end up dying here. It seemed ridiculous somehow. This was the end of their quest, the conclusion of a journey that had stripped them of everything but their determination to go on. That it should end with them dying was wrong. But he knew as well that it was possible.

Damson Rhee was thinking of her father and Par and wondering if she had traded one for the other in making her decision to let Par go on alone in search of Coll when his brother had unexpectedly reappeared among the living. She wondered if the cost of her choice would be both their lives, and she decided that if her dying was the price exacted for her choice, she would pay it only after seeing the Valeman one more time.

At her side Matty Roh was wondering how strong the magic was that the Druid had given her, if it was enough to withstand the black things they would face, if it would enable her to kill them. She believed it was. She wore about her an air of invincibility. She was where she was meant to be. Her life had been leading to this time and place and a resolution of many things. She looked forward to seeing what it would bring.

Ranging off in the dark, a lean black shadow padding through the damp predawn grasses, Rumor thought nothing, untroubled by human fears and rationalizations, driven by instincts and excited by the knowledge that they were at hunt.

They passed through the gloom and came in sight of the dark tower,
not pausing to consider, not even to look, but pressing on quickly so that it might be reached before fears and doubts froze them out. Southwatch rose out of the mist, faint and hazy, a dark wall against the clouds, looking as if it were something born of the night and in danger of passing back into it with the coming of dawn. It loomed immutable and fixed, the blackest dream that sleep had ever conjured, a thing of such evil that even the closeness of it was enough to poison the soul. They could feel its darkness as they approached, the measure of its purpose, the extent of its power. They could feel it breathing and watching and listening. They could sense its life.

Walker took them to its walls, to where the obsidian surface rose smooth and black out of the earth, and he placed his hands against the stone. It pulsed like a living thing, warm and damp and stretching upward as if seeking release. But how could this be so? The Dark Uncle pondered the nature of the tower again, then pressed on along its walls, anxious to find a way in. He reached out tendrils of his magic to seek the tower's dark inhabitants, but they were all busy within and not aware yet of his presence. He drew back quickly, not wanting to alert them, cautious as he continued on.

They came to an entry formed by an arched niche that sheltered a broad wedge of stone that was a door. Walker studied the entry, feeling along its borders and searching its seams. It could be breached, he decided, the locks released and the portal opened. But would the breach give them away too quickly? He looked back at the others, the two women, the Highlander, the Valeman, and the moor cat. They needed to reach Par without being discovered. They needed to gain at least that much time before having to fight.

He bent close to them. “Hold me upright. Do not let me go and do not move from this spot.”

Then he closed his eyes and went out from himself in spirit form to enter the keep.

Within the dark confines of his prison cell Par Ohmsford sat hunched over on his pallet, trying to hold himself together. He was desperate now, feeling as if another day within the tower would mark the end of him, as if another day spent wondering if the magic was changing him irreparably would unhinge him completely. He could feel the magic working through him all the time now, racing down his limbs, boiling through his blood, nipping and scratching at his skin like an itch that could never be satisfied. He hated what was happening to him. He hated who he was. He hated Rimmer Dall and the Shadowen and Southwatch and the black hole of his life to which he had been condemned. Hope no longer had meaning for him. He had lost his belief that the magic was a gift, that Allanon's shade had dispatched him into the world to serve some important purpose, that there were lines of distinction between good and evil, and that he was meant to survive what was happening to him.

He hugged his knees to his chest and cried. He was sick at heart and
filled with despair. He would never be free of this place. He would never see Coll or Damson or any of the others again—if any of them were even still alive. He looked through the bars of his narrow window and thought that the world beyond might have already become the nightmare that Allanon had shown him so long ago. He thought that perhaps it had always been like that and only his misperception of things had let him believe it was anything else.

He was careful not to fall asleep. He didn't dare sleep at all anymore because he couldn't stand the dreams that sleep brought. He could feel himself beginning to accept the dreams as fact, to believe that it must be true that he was a Shadowen. His sense of things was fragmented on waking, and he could not escape the feeling that he was no longer himself. Rimmer Dall was a dark figure promising help and offering something else. Rimmer Dall was the chance he dared not take—and the chance that he eventually must.