The High Druid's Blade: The Defenders of Shannara (21 page)

Of course, there was always the danger they would stumble on a wandering Chrysallin Leah, but even that might work to his advantage. The boy would want to keep his sister safe. He would know he could not do that in Leah. So he would take her to Paranor and the Druids. Things would proceed from there as he had planned.

Meanwhile, he could put his time to better use. There were other pieces to his plan that needed setting in place.

He finished putting everything away, walked to the door, and peered out into the hallway. No one was visible. They couldn’t have gotten there this fast anyway, he chided himself. Why was he worrying about it? He went out into the passageway, started for the main stairs, and paused. Just in case, maybe he should avoid the main entrance.

He turned about and went the other way.

When he reached the back stairs, he started down.

Several blocks away, Chrysallin Leah was dreaming. She had fallen asleep finally, exhausted from her struggle to remain awake, but had succumbed at last to the horror that waited. The gray-haired Elven woman was back, pursuing her through woods that were deep and dark and monster-haunted. She was everywhere Chrysallin looked, and it made no difference where the girl went or what she tried to do to escape. Her tormentor was always there, close at hand.

Other things hunted her, as well, their bodies shapeless and their faces blank and empty of expression. They crept through the shadows and out of dark holes. They dropped down from trees and walked out of walls of mist. They did not speak, but their intentions were clear. Even absent a show of teeth and claws, she knew they meant to hurt her. And she was already in so much pain, her body torn and ripped, her insides bruised and bleeding. No part of her had been left untouched when the Elven woman and her voiceless henchmen had tortured her earlier, and she remembered every last thing they had done to her.

So she darted here and there, turned this way and that, dodged the creatures that came at her, each time just barely avoiding them. But their pursuit was relentless, and she could not get clear. The chase went on and on, and her frantic, useless efforts drove her half mad …

Wake up!

Hands were on her, shaking her, holding her fast. She tried to cry out, but fingers sealed her mouth and would not let her.

“Chrysallin!” a voice hissed. Her eyes flew open, the dream forgotten, and Grehling’s face was right next to hers. “We have to go!”

She was hopelessly confused, still wrapped within the remnants of her dream. Where was she? The boy—she knew him, could almost speak his name—who was he? She tried to sit up, but her body screamed with pain, and she lay down again at once.

“Chrysallin, look at me!” he snapped, taking hold of her shoulders. “The witch is after us! Mischa! She’s sent something to find us. It’s right outside the door!”

She went cold all over at the mention of Mischa, and recognition came flooding back in a series of images and memories. Ignoring the pain, she struggled up, his strong hands helping her to her feet. A faint wash of light penetrated the curtains covering the front window, and she caught a glimpse of something big and black moving past, just outside the building wall.

The creatures in the dreams!
They’ve found me!

Panic surged through her, and she backed away hurriedly, looking around for an escape. She saw Leofur Rai then, standing not six feet away, facing the door, a sleek metallic weapon cradled in her arms, pointed forward. Chrysallin had never seen anything like it. It was encased in black metal with a stock and barrel, and she could see Leofur’s finger resting on a trigger near the joinder of the two.

The young woman glanced over and gestured with her head. “Get out of here, both of you! Go down the trapdoor in the floor behind you. Go now!”

Grehling was hustling her backward, away from whatever was waiting just outside the front door. She heard a scratching sound and saw the door handle lever downward and catch on the lock.

“Quickly!” Leofur hissed. “There’s no—”

In the next instant the door burst inward, torn from its hinges as a huge black shape appeared in the opening. Leofur’s weapon discharged a fireball that shot across the space separating her from the intruder and exploded into it with such force that it was thrown backward through the doorway and into the street.

By then Grehling was shoving Chrysallin through the trapdoor and down the ladder to the passageway below, practically leaping after her. A moment later Leofur reappeared, clambering down to join them, pulling and bolting the trapdoor behind her.

She pulled out a smokeless torch from a niche in the wall and lit it. “This way,” she said without preamble, starting down the passageway, smoke curling from the barrel of the strange weapon.

“Did you kill it?” Chrysallin heard Grehling ask breathlessly as he rushed her along through the near darkness

“Didn’t do much of anything to it. Confused it, maybe.” She didn’t look around, didn’t slow. “Keep going.”

The corridor ahead branched, and she turned left. The passageway twisted and turned with sets of stairs and ladders leading upward all along the way.

“What is that thing you used on it?” the boy persisted. “I’ve never seen one before.”

“There aren’t many,” Leofur shot back over her shoulder. Her eyes were dark with anger and frustration. “They’re still experimental, a part of the Federation’s weapons development program. Handheld flash rips.”

“How did you get one?”

She glanced back at him. “Contacts in my business. A bargain, a trade. What difference does it make? It wasn’t enough to stop that thing back there, was it? What have you gotten me into, Grehling?”

Not him,
Chrysallin thought,
not him. What have I gotten us into? I’m the one responsible.

Behind them, they heard a prolonged ripping of metal and wood. The trapdoor was open.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry!
She screamed it in silence, screamed it to no one and everyone.
So sorry!

She was coming apart again, the momentary sense of balance she had achieved when the creature had broken down the door and she had begun her flight thrown off kilter. The nightmares were back, the face of the gray-haired Elven woman right in front of her eyes, the pain and anguish surging through her in waves. She could feel herself moving, but was losing all sense of what she was about.

“Up here!” Leofur hissed at them as they reached a set of wooden steps cut into the earth.

They scrambled up to another trapdoor, which the young woman threw open, leading them through in a rush. When they were free of the tunnels, she dropped the door back into place once more and sealed it with locking bolts. They were standing in a warehouse, the space cavernous and dark. Crates were stacked against the walls and piled up in the center of the room. Windows set high on the walls let in what little light the room allowed.

With Leofur still leading the way, they rushed across the space, skirting the stacks of boxes and crates, to where a small door opened near the rear of the building and led back out onto the streets. They emerged panting for breath, their strength sapped, but their fear of what tracked them providing fresh resolve.

Leofur wheeled on the other two, the weapon held ready, the barrel still smoking. “We have to go to the airfield, Grehling. I don’t care what’s waiting there. That thing found us once; it will find us again.” She thrust the flash rip at him. “If this won’t stop it, I don’t know what will. We have to get out of the city!”

Grehling nodded. “All right. We’ll find a way. Chrysallin! You have to stay on your feet. You can’t fall! Can you do it?”

There was nothing she could say. She didn’t think she could make it to the next corner, let alone to the airfield. Her mind wandered momentarily, and she wondered where she was and where Paxon was and why she was hurting so badly. She wondered if the terrifying Elven woman was anywhere close. Or Mischa.

Mischa!

Suddenly she was looking right at her, standing not ten feet away.

Chrysallin screamed.

T
WENTY
-
ONE

P
AXON
AND
S
TARKS
HAD
JUST
FINISHED
THE
CL
IMB
TO
the second floor of Dark House and were rounding the corner to begin their ascent to the third when Arcannen appeared above them coming down. They saw one another at the same time and all three immediately stopped where they were.

“I want my sister, Arcannen!” Paxon shouted up to him.

The sorcerer seemed nonplussed. Then he smiled. “We all want the same thing, boy,” he called down. “All three of us. I don’t have her. I don’t know where she is. Like you, I’m looking for her.”

“You’re not trying to tell us you didn’t take her, are you?” Starks demanded.

Arcannen shook his head. “I took her. I brought her here. I intended to bargain her back to the boy in exchange for his sword and his services. I admit that. But she escaped me. I don’t know how she did it, but she did.”

“You want us to believe she’s not here?” Paxon snapped angrily.

“I don’t much care what you believe. I have no purpose in lying. You’ll search Dark House in any event, but you won’t find her. Not if you look until next year’s turn to summer. She’s gone, and that’s the truth, like it or not.”

Starks gave him a look. “I might better be willing to believe you if I could have a quick look into your mind. A touch or two would be enough, and I can know for certain if you are speaking the truth. Do you object to waiting where you are until I can come up and do this?”

“Now, there is a request almost no one else in the Four Lands would dare to make of me, Druid. Actually, I do object. Strenuously. I don’t like others laying hands on me if they aren’t meant to offer pleasure. Take my word or leave it. That’s all you are entitled to.”

Starks shook his head slowly. “You’ve stolen the girl away twice now. You have violated her rights and broken the laws of numerous lands. I think you have forsaken any entitlements. You are probably entitled to common justice, but nothing more.”

Arcannen’s face darkened. “You will never be my judge. Not you or any of your kind. And not that callow boy you bring with you on this fool’s errand. Back down those stairs immediately or be prepared to be judged yourself.”

Paxon started past Starks, drawing out the Sword of Leah. “I’ve had enough of you …”

But Starks grabbed him and threw both of them down on the stairs, just as a rush of fire burned through the air not a foot above their heads, trailing heat and smoke and hammering into the wall on the landing below. For a moment, they lay where they were, the air about them obscured by smoke and ash, and then Starks was on his feet, pulling the Highlander up with him.

“Kindly don’t do that again!” he snapped.

They rushed up the stairs to the second floor, but Arcannen was already gone. They cast about hurriedly for some indication of where he had gone, then Starks sprinted for the other end of the hallway and the front stairs. He reached them just in time to see Arcannen’s black robes flying out behind him as he leapt over the railing on the landing below all the way to the first floor and sprinted down the hall beneath them.

They gave chase, every bit as fleet of foot as their quarry, but cautious of what they might be running into. They flew down the stairs and then charged along the corridor the sorcerer had taken, barely avoiding a surprised guard coming the other way, bowling him over without stopping. They went through a doorway into an empty and darkened kitchen, catching sight of a door closing at the other end of the room.

“He’s got a bolt-hole somewhere!” Starks shouted as they ran. “He’s trying to reach it!”

He would find it, lock the way in, and go out the other end, Paxon realized. Anything to slow them down. Anything to lose them. But they couldn’t allow it. No matter if what he had told them was true or not, they had to catch him before he had a chance to get to Chrysallin.

Ahead a door slammed and locks snapped into place. They rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a small, ironbound oak door.

“Step back,” Starks said.

With both arms raised, he summoned a roiling ball of blue fire, broke it in half with his bare hands, and sent each part slamming into one of the hinges. The hinges melted in seconds, and the door sagged open. Starks wrenched it aside, and they charged into the room beyond. It was small and empty, a space for cleaning supplies. A window hung open at the far end, leading to the outside world. Starks hurried over, took a cautious look, and started to climb through, Paxon on his heels.

“Watch out!” the Druid shouted suddenly, throwing himself backward.

An explosion of fire erupted from without, filling the opening, engulfing Starks as he tumbled back into the room in a smoking heap. For an instant he was afire, and then a sharp gesture with one hand extinguished the flames and he was left singed and gasping for breath. Paxon rushed to help him to his feet, but the other pushed him away.

“That’s what happens when you get careless,” he said.

He tried it again, more cautiously this time, and there was no response. By the time the two were outside Dark House, standing in a side street, Arcannen was gone.

“Rat stink!” the Druid said softly. “He can’t have gotten far. But which way did he go?”

They were searching the darkness when they heard the scream—shrill, terrified, and close at hand.

“Chrys!” Paxon exclaimed at once. “That’s Chrysallin!”

At the same moment Starks pointed. “There he goes! Arcannen! Through those buildings!”

Paxon caught a glimpse of Arcannen as he fled down an alleyway a block over in the other direction from the scream.

Starks seized his arms. “Go after your sister. I’ll chase Arcannen. But watch yourself, Paxon. Remember your training!”

Then he was rushing away, racing to catch up to the sorcerer. Paxon shouted after him, warning him to be careful. He hesitated, almost persuaded that he should go with him.

But then he heard his sister scream again, and he turned the other way and began to run.

Chrysallin Leah tore away from Grehling’s hands and moved back against the wall of the building in horror, pressing her hands against her mouth to keep from screaming. All she could think about was Mischa’s head sitting on a bedside table, eyes vacant and staring. Even knowing she was alive, even remembering how Grehling had punched her, she couldn’t seem to forget. Yet here she was, come out of nowhere and not with any good intentions in mind. Not with any promise of offering her a chance to escape the gray-haired Elven woman. She could tell that much just from the expression on the other’s face, even if she ignored everything else she knew.

For just an instant everyone was frozen in place. Then Leofur swung the barrel of her weapon about, pointing it at Mischa. But the old woman held her ground defiantly.

“Still the same foolish girl you always were, I see,” she hissed.

Then she made a quick gesture, and almost immediately Leofur’s eyes went blank, her face slackened, and her expression turned empty. She lowered the flash rip absently. Chrysallin was cringing in terror, images flashing before her eyes of a return to her prison and a reappearance of the Elven woman, of terrible things being done to her, of endless pain and suffering.

Suddenly Grehling was standing in front of her, facing Mischa. “Get away from her,” he shouted angrily.

“I’ve been looking for you, boy,” the old woman hissed at him. “I’ve something special in mind for you.”

Something in Chrysallin snapped. “Don’t touch him!” she screamed at the old woman.

The girl rushed past the boy, finding strength she didn’t know she had, and threw herself on the old woman, bearing her to the ground. Thrashing and screaming, they rolled about, locked together. Grehling stood transfixed, took a hesitant step toward them, then raced over to Leofur and shook her hard. “Wake up, Leofur! Wake up!”

And she did, her eyes snapping open in shock. She stared about, clearly confused.

“Help me!” the boy shouted at her, pointing to Chrysallin and Mischa, fighting on the ground.

Together, they rushed to pull the two apart, not stopping to think about what might happen afterward. The instant they separated the two, Mischa began screaming as if demented, trying to scramble to her feet, dark words pouring out of her twisted mouth. Leofur kicked her down again and stepped on her throat, pinning her in place. Grehling pulled Chrysallin to her feet, dragging her away from the other two.

“Leave her!” Grehling screamed at Leofur. “We have to get out of here!”

But Leofur had other plans. One fist cocked, she hit the old woman with such a powerful blow that Mischa went limp instantly.

In the next instant the door through which they had escaped from the tunnels burst open, and the black thing that had been tracking them surged through. All three cried out in shock, but it was Leofur who brought up the flash rip and fired into the creature once more, this time knocking it down the walkway into the shadows.

“Run!” she screamed.

They did so instantly, although Chrysallin’s efforts at running were hopeless, and the best they could manage was a fast walk with Grehling supporting her once more. Behind them, Mischa was already stirring and the creature was struggling back into view.

There was no hope for them, Chrysallin realized. No hope at all. They couldn’t run fast enough, they had nowhere to hide, and the weapon Leofur carried—while helpful—would not keep the creature down. She fought to control the fear and despair that swept over her, listening as Grehling asked Leofur, “How many more times can you use that thing?”

“It carried six charges,” she replied. “Two are gone. Got any ideas?”

“Not the airfield. It’s too far!”

“City Watch? There’s a station somewhere close.”

“I know it. We’ll go there. Straight ahead!”

They picked up their pace, down the empty city streets and through the darkness, fear nipping at their heels.

Behind them, Mischa hobbled into view, her face bruised and bloodied, already in pursuit. But as she did so, she was casting anxious glances over her shoulder.

A terrifying struggle was taking place just behind her.

Paxon Leah was at its center. Having separated from Starks, he had raced in the direction of his sister’s scream and arrived just in time to see Chrys and two others—one of whom looked like Grehling—disappear around a corner. An old woman had just scrambled to her feet and was limping after them, but she glanced back and saw him rushing toward her. Slowing momentarily, she gestured at something behind her, called out a few quick words, then continued on.

In the next instant a huge black creature came out of the shadows and lunged toward him.

Even without knowing exactly what was going on, he recognized the danger. This creature, whatever it was, didn’t look like anything he had ever seen. It looked like something born of a nightmare.

He reacted instantly, bringing up his sword, calling on its magic, shielding himself as the beast smashed into the shield it formed to protect him. The creature struck with such force that Paxon was knocked backward several steps. But the blow had no effect on the creature, which righted itself and came at Paxon again, this time trying to sidestep the sword and get around whatever magic it was using. Paxon feinted and parried, stepped quickly one way and then another, outmaneuvering his attacker through footwork and anticipation, trying to reach it with his sword. But the creature was canny enough to avoid his efforts, dodging and weaving each sweep of the blade, studying Paxon’s defenses as it did so, looking for a weakness.

After several tries, it found one. It dropped flat and with one long arm swept Paxon’s feet out from under him. He dropped backward, just managing to keep his protection intact as the creature swarmed on top of him, first blocking its efforts and then, with a surge of energy, throwing it backward and off.

Dropping the shield, he rolled to his knees and stood as the black thing launched a fresh assault. But this time, he centered the magic in the sword itself, turning the sharp edge into the creature as it tore at him. The blade was as sharp as a razor’s edge, and abetted by the magic it sliced off both clawed hands as the attacker closed in.

Paxon stepped away, stunned by what he had done. The creature looked at its severed wrists, but it made no sound. Its face was impossible to read. No blood came from the wounds. It stood there, seemingly bewildered. Then, slowly, impossibly, the wounds began to close, and the blunt, ragged ends to re-form. New hands appeared, growing out of the wounds left where the old hands had been cut off, and they were shaped exactly the same.

The creature waited until it was completely whole again, then slowly approached Paxon once more. For the first time, Paxon was uncertain. He wished Starks were with him. The Druid would know what to do about something like this—something that clearly involved use of magic. But Starks was gone, and he was alone. He would have to figure this out himself because if he didn’t …

There wasn’t time to finish the thought because the creature was on him once more, this time trying to knock the sword from his hands. Quicker than thought the clawed hands got past his shield and tore at his wrists. He only barely managed to hang on, using the sword to hack at the creature’s head. The blade slipped sideways, partially blocked by a sudden arm swing against the flat side, but the edge bit deep into the creature’s shoulder and lodged there.

Frantically, Paxon fought to free it. The creature was ripping at him, and only the thinnest of shields was keeping it from tearing him apart. He felt himself beginning to panic as they surged back and forth, and he knew if he gave in to it he was finished. He screamed at the creature as a way of focusing the magic, as a means of strengthening his determination. He put everything he had into the effort, fighting harder to yank the blade loose.

But the Sword of Leah was wedged tightly in place in the creature’s body, and no amount of effort would free it.