She knows I can't hurt her, he thought in despair. She knows I haven't anything that can stop her.
She seemed unhurt as she advanced on him. There was blood on her clothing, but not much. There was no expression to be seen behind the mask, nothing in her eyes or on her mouth, just an emptiness that was as chilling as ice. Morgan edged away from her, searching the cavern floor for any kind of weapon at all. He caught sight of the iron bar and desperately snatched it up.
Teel seemed unworried. There was a shimmer of movement all about her body, a darkness that seemed to lift slightly and settle back again—as if the thing that lived within her was readying itself.
Morgan backed away, maneuvering toward the crevice. Could he somehow manage to lure this thing close enough to the drop to shove it over? Would that kill it? He didn't know. He knew only that he was the only one left to stop it, to prevent it from betraying the entire Jut, all those men, to the Federation. If he failed, they would die.
But I'm not strong enough—not without the magic!
He was only a few feet from the crevice edge. Teel closed the gap that separated them, moving swiftly. He swung at her with the iron bar, but she caught the bar in her hand, broke his grip on it, and flung it away.
Then she was on him, her hands at his throat, choking off his air, strangling him. He couldn't breathe. He fought to break free, but she was far too strong. His eyes squeezed shut against the pain, and there was a coppery taste in his mouth.
A huge weight dropped across him.
“Teel, don't!” he heard someone cry—a disembodied voice choked with pain and fatigue.
Steff !
The hands loosened marginally, and his eyes cleared enough so that he could see Steff atop Teel, arms locked about her, hauling back. There was blood streaking his face. A gaping wound had been opened at the top of his head.
Morgan's right hand groped at his belt and found the handle of the Sword of Leah.
Teel ripped free of Steff, turned and pulled him about. There was a fury in her eyes, in the way the cords of her throat went taut, that even the mask could not conceal. Yanking Steff 's dagger from its sheath, she buried it deep in his chest. Steff toppled backward, gasping.
Teel turned back then to finish Morgan, half-raised over him, and he thrust the broken blade of his sword into her stomach.
Back she reared, screaming so that Morgan arched away from her in spite of himself. But he kept his hands fastened on the handle of the sword. Then something strange began to happen. The Sword of Leah grew warm and flared with light. He could feel it stir and come to life.
The magic! Oh, Shades—it was the magic!
Power surged through the blade, linking them together, flowing into Teel. Crimson fire exploded through her. Her hands tore at the blade, at her body, at her face, and the mask came free. Morgan Leah would never forget what lay beneath, a countenance born of the blackest pits of the netherworld, ravaged and twisted and alive with demons that he had only imagined might exist. Teel seemed to disappear entirely, and there was only the Shadowen behind the face, a thing of blackness and no substance, an emptiness that blocked and swallowed the light.
Invisible hands fought to thrust Morgan away, to strip him of his weapon and of his soul.
“Leah! Leah!” He sounded the battle cry of his ancestors, of the Kings and Princes of his land for a thousand years, and that single word became the talisman to which he clung.
The Shadowen's scream became a shriek. Then it collapsed, the darkness that sustained it crumbling and fading away. Teel returned, a frail, limp bundle, empty of life and being. She fell forward atop him, dead.
It took several minutes for Morgan to find the strength to push Teel away. He lay there in the wetness of his own sweat and blood, listening to the sudden silence, exhausted, pinned to the cavern floor by the dead girl's weight. His only thought was that he had survived.
Then slowly his pulse quickened. It was the magic that had saved him. It was the magic of the Sword of Leah. Shades, it wasn't gone after all! At least some part of it still lived, and if part of it lived then there was a chance that it could be completely restored, that the blade could be made whole again, the magic preserved, the power …
His ruminations scattered uncontrollably in their frantic passing and disappeared. He gulped air into his lungs, mustered his strength, and pushed Teel's body aside. She was surprisingly light. He looked down at her as he rolled onto his hands and knees. She was all shrunken in, as if something had dissolved her bones. Her face was still twisted and scarred, but the demons he had seen there were gone.
Then he heard Steff gasp. Unable to rise, he crawled to his friend. Steff lay on his back, the dagger still protruding from his chest. Morgan started to remove it, then slowly drew back. He knew at a glance that it was too late to make any difference. Gently, he touched his friend's shoulder.
Steff 's eyes blinked open and shifted to find him. “Teel?” he asked softly.
“She's dead,” Morgan whispered back.
The Dwarf 's scarred face tightened with pain, then relaxed. He coughed blood. “I'm sorry, Morgan. Sorry … I was blind, so this had to happen.”
“It wasn't only you.”
“I should have seen … the truth. Should have recognized it. I just … didn't want to, I guess.”
“Steff, you saved our lives. If you hadn't awakened me …”
“Listen to me. Listen, Highlander. You are my closest friend. I want you … to do something.” He coughed again, then tried to steady his voice. “I want you to go back to Culhaven and make certain … that Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt are all right.” His eyes squeezed shut and opened again. “You understand me, Morgan? They will be in danger because Teel …”
“I understand,” Morgan cut him short.
“They are all I have left,” Steff whispered, reaching out to fasten his hand on Morgan's arm. “Promise me.”
Morgan nodded wordlessly, then said, “I promise.”
Steff sighed, and the words he spoke were little more than a whisper. “I loved her, Morgan.”
Then his hand slid away, and he died.
Everything that happened after that was something of a blur to Morgan Leah. He stayed at Steff 's side for a time, so dazed that he could think of doing nothing else. Then he remembered Padishar Creel. He forced himself to his feet and went over to check on the big man. Padishar was still alive, but unconscious, his left arm broken from warding off the blows struck by the iron bar, his head bleeding from a deep gash. Morgan wrapped the head injury to stop the blood loss, but left the arm alone. There was no time to set it now.
The machinery that operated the bridge was smashed and there was no way that he could repair it. If the Federation was sending an attack force into the tunnels tonight—and Morgan had to assume they were—then the bridge could not be raised to prevent their advance. It was only a few hours until dawn. That meant that Federation soldiers were probably already on their way. Even without Teel to guide them, they would have little trouble following the tunnel to the Jut.
He found himself wondering what had become of Chandos and the men he was supposed to bring with him. They should have arrived by now.
He decided he couldn't risk waiting for them. He had to get out of there. He would have to carry Padishar since his efforts to waken him had failed. Steff would have to be left behind.
It took several minutes to decide what was needed. First he salvaged the Sword of Leah, slipping it carefully back into its makeshift sheath. Then he carried Teel and afterward Steff to the edge of the crevice and dropped them over. He wasn't sure it was something he could do until after it was done. It left him feeling sick and empty inside.
He was incredibly tired by then, so weak that he did not think he could make it back through the tunnels by himself, let alone carrying Padishar. But somehow he managed to get the other across his shoulders and, with one of the torches to guide him, he started out.
He walked for what seemed like hour
s, seeing nothing, hearing only the sound of his own boots as they scraped across the stone. Where was Chandos, he asked himself over and over again. Why hadn't he come? He stumbled and fell so many times that he lost count, tripped up by the tun-nel's rock and by his own weariness. His knees and hands were torn and bloodied, and his body began to grow numb. He found himself thinking of curious things, of his boyhood and his family, of the adventures he had shared growing up with Par and Coll, of the steady, reliable Steff and the Dwarves of Culhaven. He cried some of the time, thinking of what had become of them all, of how much of the past had been lost. He talked to Padishar when he felt himself on the verge of collapse, but Padishar slept on.
He walked, it seemed, forever.
Yet when Chandos finally did appear, accompanied by a swarm of outlaws and Axhind and his Trolls, Morgan was no longer walking at all. He had collapsed in the tunnel, exhausted.
He was carried with Padishar the rest of the way, and he tried to explain what had happened. He was never certain exactly what he said. He knew that he rambled, sometimes incoherently. He remembered Chandos saying something about a new Federation assault, that the assault had prevented him coming as quickly as he had wanted. He remembered the strength of the other's gnarled hand as it held his own.
It was still dark when they regained the bluff, and the Jut was indeed under attack. Another diversion, perhaps, to draw attention away from the soldiers sneaking through the tunnels, but one that required dealing with nevertheless. Arrows and spears flew from below, and the siege towers had been hauled forward. Numerous attempts at scaling the heights had already been repelled. Preparations for making an escape, however, were complete. The wounded were set to move out, those that could walk risen to their feet, those that couldn't placed on litters. Morgan went with the latter group as they were carried back into the caves to where the tunnels began. Chandos appeared, his fierce, black-bearded face hovering close to Morgan as he spoke.
“All is well, Highlander,” Morgan would remember the other man saying, his voice a faint buzz. “There's Federation soldiers in the hidden tunnel already, but the rope bridges have been cut. That will slow them a bit— long enough for us to be safely away. We'll be going into these other tunnels. There's a way out through them as well, you see, one that only Padishar knows. It's rougher going, a good number of twists and turns and a few tricky choices to be made. But Padishar knows what to do. Never leaves anything to chance. He's awake again, bringing the rest of them down, making sure everyone's out. He's a tough one, old Padishar. But no tougher than you. You saved his life, you did. You got him out of there just in time. Rest now, while you can. You won't have long.”
Morgan closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. He slept poorly, brought awake time and again by the jostling of the litter on which he lay and by the sounds of the men who were crowded about him, whispering and crying out in pain. Darkness cloaked the tunnels, a hazy black that even torchlight could not cut through entirely. Faces and bodies passed in and out of view, but his lasting impression was of impenetrable night.
Once or twice, he thought he heard fighting, the clash of weapons, the grunts of men. But there was no sense of urgency in those about him, no indication that anything threatened, and he decided after a time that he must be dreaming.
He forced himself awake finally, not wishing to sleep any longer, afraid to sleep when he was not certain what was happening. Nothing around him appeared to have changed. It seemed that he could not have been asleep for more than a few moments.
He tried lifting his head, and pain stabbed down the back of his neck. He lay back again, thinking suddenly of Steff and Teel and of the thinness of the line that separated life and death.
Padishar Creel came up beside him. He was heavily bandaged about the head, and his arm was splinted and strapped to his side. “So, lad,” he greeted quietly.
Morgan nodded, closed his eyes and opened them again.
“We're getting out now,” the other said. “All of us, thanks to you. And to Steff. Chandos told me the story. He had great courage, that one.” The rough face looked away. “Well, the Jut's lost but that's a small price to pay for our lives.”
Morgan found that he didn't want to talk about the price of lives. “Help me up, Padishar,” he said quietly. “I want to walk out of here.”
The outlaw chief smiled. “Don't we all, lad,” he whispered.
He reached out his good hand and pulled Morgan to his feet.
32
It was a nightmarish world where Par and Coll Ohmsford walked. The silence was intense and endless, a cloak of emptiness that stretched further than time itself. There were no sounds, no cries of birds or buzzings of insects, no small skitterings or scrapes, not even the rustle of the wind through the trees to give evidence of life. The trees rose skyward like statues of stone carved by some ancient civilization and left in mute testament to the futility of man's works. They had a gray and wintry look to them, and even the leaves that should have softened and colored their bones bore the look of a scarecrow's rags. Scrub brush and saw grass rubbed up against their trunks like stray children, and bramble bushes twisted together in a desperate effort to protect against life's sorrows.
The mist was there as well, of course. The mist was there first, last, and always, a deep and pervasive sea of gray that shut everything vibrant away. It hung limp in the air, unmoving as it smothered trees and brush, rocks and earth, and life of any kind or sort, a screen that blocked away the sun's light and warmth. There was an inconsistency to it, for in some places it was thin and watery and merely gave a fuzzy appearance to what it sought to cloak, while in others it was as impenetrable as ink. It brushed at the skin with a cold, damp insistence that whispered of dead things.
Par and Coll moved slowly, cautiously through their waking dream, fighting back against the feeling that they had become disembodied. Their eyes darted from shadow to shadow, searching for movement, finding only stillness. The world they had entered seemed lifeless, as if the Shadowen they knew to be hidden there were not in fact there at all but were simply a lie of the dream that their senses could not reveal.
They moved quickly to the rubble of the Bridge of Sendic so that they could follow its broken trail to the vault. Their footsteps were soundless in the tall grasses and the damp, yielding earth. At times their boots disappeared entirely in the carpet of mist. Par glanced back to the door they had come through. It was nowhere to be seen.
In seconds, the cliff face itself, the whole of what remained of the palace of the Kings of Tyrsis, had vanished as well.
As if it had never been, Par thought darkly.
He felt cold and empty inside, but hot where sweat made the skin beneath his clothing feel prickly and damp. The emotions that churned inside would not be sorted out or dispersed; they screamed with voices that were garbled and confused, each desperate to be heard, each mindless. He could feel his heart pounding within his chest, his pulse racing in response, and he sensed the imminency of his own death with every step he took. He wished again that he could summon for just a moment the magic, even in its most rudimentary form, so that he could be reassured that he possessed some measure of power to defend himself. But use of the magic would alert whatever lived within the Pit, and he wanted to believe that as yet that had not happened.
Coll brushed his arm, pointing to where the earth had opened before them in a wicked-looking crack that disappeared into blackness. They would have to go around. Par nodded, leading the way. Coll's presence was reassuring to him, as if the simple fact of his being there might somehow deter the evil that threatened. Coll—his large, blocky form like a rock at Par's back, his rough face so determined that it seemed his strength of will alone would see them through. Par was glad beyond anything words could express that his brother had come. It was a selfish reaction, he knew, but an honest one. Coll's courage in this business was to a large extent the source of his own.
They skirted the pitfall and worked their way back to the
tumbled remains of the bridge. Everything about them was unchanged, silent and unmoving, empty of life.
But then something shimmered darkly in the mists ahead, a squarish shape that lifted out of the rubble.
Par took a deep steadying breath. It was the vault.
They moved toward it hurriedly, Par in the lead, Coll just a step behind. Stone-block walls came sharply into focus, losing the surreal haziness in which the mists had cloaked them. Brush grew up against its sides, vines looped over its sloped roof, and moss colored its foundation in shadings of rust and dark green. The vault was larger than Par had imagined, a good fifty feet across and as much as twenty feet high at its peak. It had the look and feel of a crypt.
The Valemen reached its nearest wall and edged their way cautiously around the corner to the front. They found writing carved there in the pitted stone, an ancient scroll ravaged by time and weather, many of its words nearly erased. They stopped, breathless, and read:
Herein lies the heart and soul of the nations. Their right to be free men,
Their desire to live in peace,
Their courage to seek out truth.
Herein lies the Sword of Shannara.
Just beyond, a massive stone door stood ajar. The brothers glanced at each other wordlessly, then started forward. When they reached the door, they peered inside. There was a wall that formed a corridor leading left; the corridor disappeared into darkness.
Par frowned. He hadn't expected the vault to be a complex structure; he had thought it would be nothing more than a single chamber with the Sword of Shannara at its center. This suggested something else.
He looked at Coll. His brother was clearly upset, peering about anxiously, studying first the entry, then the dark tangle of the forest surrounding them. Coll reached out and pulled on the door. It moved easily at his touch.
He bent close. “This looks like a trap,” he whispered so softly that Par could barely hear him.
Par was thinking the same thing. A door to a vault that was three hundred years old and had been subjected to the climate of the Pit should not give way so readily. It would be a simple matter for someone to shut it again once he was inside.