At a clearing ahead, the Wing Riders waited with their carrying baskets. The Home Guard climbed in, all but Triss, who had insisted he stay with Wren. The Rocs rose skyward and disappeared west. Wren crossed the clearing into the trees and brought out the Elfstones once again. When the Creepers appeared, shouldering their way furiously through the undergrowth, a jumble of jagged metal and spiky limbs, she sent the fire into them once more, burning everything across the clearing, obliterating all traces of the Home Guard escape while drawing the monsters on.
Then she was back within the trees, racing with Triss for the darkness that lay ahead. Stresa appeared suddenly, cutting across their path, taking the lead. He said nothing, did not even look back at them, his blocky form moving far more swiftly than seemed possible as he took them directly toward the gloom that marked the eastern edge of the swamp they called the Matted Brakes.
Wren glanced back once to make certain that the Creepers were still following, and then ran on. In moments, they were within the Brakes. Come after me, come after me, she repeated over and over in her mind, willing that it should be so. The plan she had devised to destroy the Creepers was simple. Attack them on the plains with enough men that they would think it was the vanguard of the Elven army or a significant part thereof, draw them into the trees and the Matted Brakes beyond, take them down a trail that Stresa had chosen and knew and they did not, lead them into a trap they could not escape—a trap where their strength and cunning would prove useless.
Like so many things, the answers to the present lay rooted in the past, and in this case in the songs of Par Ohmsford and the legends of their Shannara ancestors.
With Stresa leading and Triss keeping pace, she drew the Shadowen things deeper into the swamp, never letting them know that they no longer chased an army but only a girl, a man, and a creature from another world. She sent the fire of the Elfstones lancing into them, the earth over which they lumbered, the trees thick with vines and moss, and the fetid, green waters surrounding. She used it to confuse and anger them, to keep them off balance and intent on their chase. Once, she had been afraid to use the Elven magic. But that seemed a long time ago, as distant as the life she had known before her journey to Morrowindl and the discovery of her heritage. She had been freed of her fears when she had accepted her birthright as Queen of the Elves and brought her people out of Morrowindl. The magic now was an extension of herself, a part of the trust bequeathed to her by her grandmother, the fire come from the blood of her ancestors to shield her against whatever threatened. If she was strong, she believed, she could not be harmed.
The day brightened and eased toward noon. They ate and drank when they could, mostly when they paused in their flight, brief stops to listen and make certain of their pursuit. The Brakes thickened in a morass of tangled roots, trees whose branches hung down like corpses, still, depthless waters, and quicksand that would swallow you in an instant. Stresa chose their path carefully, finding the solid ground, moving steadily ahead. Twice the Creepers caught up with them unexpectedly, once on a flanking maneuver that almost trapped them, the second time in a rush that brought the iron-clad horrors barreling through the trees so quickly that they barely escaped being trampled. The swamp seemed to offer no deterrent; the Creepers crossed it as if it were all solid ground. Wren could not tell if any had been lost or had turned back. She hoped not. She hoped she had them all with her still, hunting. They were formed for that purpose and no other, and she prayed that their instinct for it would lead them on when more reasonable, less powerful creatures would turn back.
It was just after midday when they reached the lake.
They slowed as they came up to it, changing their movements so that they approached with as little noise as possible. Behind, the sounds of pursuit echoed through the cavernous trees, rough and heedless, closing rapidly. The lake was huge and stagnant green and as silent as a tomb. It stretched away into a cloud of mist that hung across it like a shroud. The near shoreline faded to either side into the mist. The far shoreline was hidden entirely. Vines and moss hung from the surrounding trees in curtains of lacy green, and roots tangled and twisted down into the waters like feeding snakes. Everywhere there was silence; no birds, no insects, no fish, not even the whisper of a breeze to disturb the hush. There was the sense of time having come to a standstill here, of life having frozen in place, of everything waiting expectantly.
Here, Wren thought, catching her breath involuntarily. Here is where it will end.
But there was no time to contemplate further. The Creepers were coming, rolling on through the swamp, slashing and hacking and crushing what would not give way. Stresa was already moving right, down the shoreline to a narrow strip of land formed of earth and roots that angled its way out into the center of the vast lake. Wren and Triss hurried after. They turned onto the bridge and began moving toward the wall of mist. Wren glanced skyward once, allowing herself to do so for the first time since they had begun running. But the sky was empty. Too soon yet. They hurried on, stepping lightly, silently, listening to the sound of the Creepers. She looked out across the lake, looking for the Things, but there was nothing to be seen but the flat, opaque surface of the frozen waters.
They were almost into the mist when the Creepers appeared from out of the trees, lurching to a stop, their iron-plated bodies trailing vines and branches and steaming with the heat. They flattened everything close to them as they pushed together at the lake’s edge. The Seekers were with them. Catching sight of Wren, they moved swiftly to follow after her.
“There,” Stresa hissed suddenly, head swinging left.
She looked and saw the ridge that lay within the waters—what appeared to be crusted rock grown thick with moss and lichen until you saw the twin jets of steam that rose from one end and realized you were looking at breathing holes. There were two of them, and beyond, almost lost in the haze, another. Still here, just as they had been in the time of Wil Ohmsford, monsters from the deep waters of the Matted Brakes, the Things.
Stresa was moving again, and she hurried after, trying to keep from rushing, trying to keep her passage as silent as that of a cloud across the sky. Do nothing to disturb them, she told herself. Let them sleep a little while more. The haze billowed about, but it was not thick enough to hide them from the creatures following. The Creepers were on the bridge as well, she saw, glancing hurriedly back.
But only two of them!
She stopped abruptly, hissing Stresa and Triss to a stop with her. Two were not enough! She needed them all! She wheeled back, brought out the Elfstones, and held them forth. “No!” she heard Stresa cry out harshly, hissing the word. But she sent the fire forth anyway, flying over the still swamp waters, lancing into the Creepers that hunched down upon the shores, scattering flames into them like arrows, burning and singeing. The Creepers reared back, tearing at the earth. She felt something in the lake stir. Not yet! The Creepers on the shore milled about, their black-cloaked tenders trying to calm them. One of the Seekers disappeared under a flurry of iron claws, screaming.
Ripples spread slowly across the mirrored green waters. Wren took a deep breath. Steady, steady.
Then she struck again, the Elven fire exploding into the Creepers, and this time they all came for her, thundering onto the bridge in a furious rush.
There was movement everywhere in the lake now, a slow shifting of the ridges, a gathering of dark shapes. She saw it out of the corner of her eye as she raced on behind Triss and Stresa—saw it on either side and then ahead and behind, too, and she realized the danger she was in. If the Things attacked now, none of them would escape. Monsters of the swamp, older than the Shadowen spawn and as implacable as time, these were what she had brought the Creepers to face. They had been there when Wil Ohmsford and Amberle Elessedil had passed through the Brakes more than three hundred years earlier in search of the Bloodfire. They had devoured two of the Elven Hunters sent to keep the Valeman and the Chosen safe. She hoped now they would devour the Creepers as well.
>
Ahead, there was an island, little more than a flat stretch of rock-encrusted earth dotted with scrub and a small stand of cypress. The bridge ran to it and then wound away again beyond. It stood alone in the haze, empty of life.
“Hurry!” she heard Stresa hiss.
She looked back again and saw the Creepers, all eight of them, clawing their way across the root-entangled strip of land that stretched away behind her. The Seekers ran after, some crying out, most struggling to keep from being crushed. The Creepers were out of control, seeing their prey so close at hand, sensing that they would have them in moments. They were closing quickly, heedless of the dangers about, confident of their strength and armor. The Elven magic might burn, but it could not destroy. Hunters, they thought only to hunt, never to hide, never to turn back. One slipped and fell, floundering momentarily in the stagnant lake waters before struggling back out again.
Come after me, she hissed soundlessly at them. Come see what I have planned for you.
Then she was on the island and turning back once more, the fire from the Elfstones already building in her hand. She went cold as she realized that she might have waited too long, that the closest of the Creepers was less than fifty yards away. She willed forth the magic quickly, and sent the fire not into the Creepers but into the lake about them, into the ridges with their breathing holes, into the Things.
The lake exploded in geysers that shot hundreds of feet into the air as dark shapes lifted skyward like whales breaching. On the bridge, the Creepers slowed, confused by what was happening, iron jaws clicking, claws scraping. The lake boiled and churned about them, and then the Things attacked. They swept out of the stagnant green, out of the depthless shadowed dark, and tore the Creepers from the bridge. The Creepers thrashed and flailed but could find no purchase in the waters and were dragged from sight. The Seekers went with them, screaming. It happened so fast that it was over almost before it had begun. It took only seconds, a vast roiling of the lake, a rising up of darkness, a thrashing of iron and flesh, and the Creepers were gone.
Save one—the one that had been closest to the island. That one came on, thundering across what remained of the narrow bridge, shaking the earth with the fury of its attack. Wren shifted the fire to meet it, but it came through the flames as if they were nothing more than gold and scarlet leaves. It was on the island an instant later, so huge that it blocked away the whole of the swamp behind where the last ripples were dying back into stillness across the empty surface. Triss cried out and leaped to Wren’s defense, sword drawn. Stresa was shouting wildly, and even Faun had appeared, working free of the backpack, screaming in fear.
Then a dark shape flashed down out of the haze, swifter than thought, and Spirit’s claws tore at the Creeper’s head and back and knocked the beast aside. The Creeper lurched to its feet and twisted away in rage. Spirit swept past, banked, swung around, and struck the Creeper a second time, knocking it farther back. Triss caught Wren about the waist, flung her over his shoulder and raced across the island and back onto the bridge. No! she wanted to warn him. The Things are still out there! But the breath had been knocked from her lungs, and she could only claw futilely at him. Faun skittered ahead with Stresa, the bunch of them strung out like mice on a rope.
In the lake’s deep shadows, there was new movement.
But Tiger Ty had not forgotten the task Wren had assigned him, and Spirit swept back a third time, ignoring the Creeper and coming for the bridge. Tracking them ever since they had come into the Brakes, Spirit was ready now to fly them to safety. Claws reached down to secure a grip on the causeway, and the great Roc clung there long enough for Triss to toss Wren like a sack of feathers to Tiger Ty and follow her up, for Faun to scurry after, and even for Stresa to be hauled aboard. Then Spirit rose again, just avoiding the monstrous jaws that rose from the swamp to sweep across the bridge in their wake, snapping at the empty air.
They ascended slowly, and Wren righted herself, secured her safety straps, and looked down. The last of the Creepers crouched upon the island, trapped on all sides by the horrors in the lake. Shadows dappled it like a sickness. It could not escape. It would die there in the swamp like the others. Wren stared fixedly at it and felt nothing.
Spirit broke clear of the mist and into the sunlight above, causing Wren to blink from the sudden brightness. The Matted Brakes and what lay hidden within the mist and, gloom receded below.
Like Morrowindl, relegated to the past …
Wren turned her face to the sun and did not look back.
XXXII
Twilight shadows lengthened into night, and the sky over Southwatch grew thick with clouds that screened away the stars and moon and promised showers before dawn. The day’s heat cooled, the dust and grime settling back to earth in motes that danced like fairies as the air lost some of its thickness. Improbably, the barest trace of a breeze wafted down out of the Runne. Silence fell across the land, as smooth as satin and as fragile as glass. Mist clung to the earth in long tendrils that snaked through gullies and across ridges and turned the poisoned grasslands surrounding the Shadowen keep into a vast white sea.
Foaming and swirling, the sea began to roil.
It was a time for phantoms, for ghosts that sailed on the wind like ships at sea, for things that could walk and leave no footprints with their passing. It was a time for the day’s hopes and expectations and fears and doubts to take shape and come forth, searching for a voice with which to speak, seeking redemption out of newfound belief. It was a time for reason to give way to what imagination alone would permit. It was a time for dreams.
Walker Boh summoned his and watched it come, swift and certain, a hawk sweeping down, and when it reached him he stretched to meet it, rising up out of his body as light as air, catching hold and lifting away. Voiceless, invisible, as one with the wraiths of the night, he went down out of the forests on the slopes of the Runne, speeding through the dark trunks and leafy boughs, through the silence and the black with the grim certainty of death’s coming. He held himself as still as ice in winter, easing out onto the blasted, empty flats beyond, crossing through the brume toward the waiting black obelisk. He went in the manner of the Druids, in the way Allanon had taught him, a spirit out of flesh. His memories twisted and tugged at him, those of Allanon and those of the man he had been. He remembered both at once, and saw himself again as the outcast who would not believe, who had, fought against the transition that the Druid magic had inevitably wrought. And again, too, Walker Boh saw himself as the Druid shade who had set in motion the events that would culminate in that transition by bestowing on Brin Ohmsford the blood trust that ultimately would find its purpose in him. It was strange to be more than one, and yet it was fitting, too. He had never been at peace with himself, and his dissatisfaction came in large part from feeling incomplete. Now he was fulfilled, one man made out of many, one formed of all. He was still learning to be what he had become, to be comfortable with what he was, but it began with feeling whole, and he thought he was that at least if nothing else.
The earth beneath was blackened and bare, stripped of life, burned away and scorched, empty and razed. The Shadowen had done that, but he did not understand yet the nature of their poison. Tonight, he thought, he might.
Southwatch loomed ahead, its black pinnacle towering over him, its knife-edged spire reaching for the sky. He could feel the life within it. He could feel its pulse. Southwatch was alive. There was magic in its walls, magic that had formed and now sustained and protected it. The magic was powerful, but reluctant. He could sense that. He could feel the strain of its effort to be free. Deep inside the black stone it crouched, an animal caged. Shadowen walked within and without, barely visible against the black, keeping watch. The magic fled from them.
A part of the mist, a part of the night, as silent as drifting ash, he came up to the walls. Oblivious, the Shadowen did not sense him passing close and moving on. He came to the gates of the keep and slid swiftly away. They were too well protected to
venture through, even as a spirit. He waited for one of the dark things to enter through a crack in the stone skin and followed. He felt the weight of the tower close about him as he did so, a palpable thing. He hugged himself against the evil that raged through the air, a mix of terrible anger and hatred and despair. Where, he wondered in surprise, did it come from?
He hesitated in his choice of directions, and then impulsively followed the magic toward its source. Just for a moment, just to have a look. The magic emanated from below, from deep within the earth beneath the keep, all darkness and blind fury. He slipped along the corridors of the fortress, careful not to brush against the walls, against anything of substance, for even in his spirit form he might be sensed. The wards were powerful here, greater than had been those of Uhl Belk at Eldwist, greater even than those of the Druids in the Hall of Kings. The magic was powerful beyond belief, a great crushing force that could destroy anything.
Anything, he corrected, but the bonds that secured it and made it serve the Shadowen.
He followed a stairwell down, winding and twisting through the black, hearing for the first time the sound of something grinding and huffing, the sound of something at labor. It had the feel of a dragon chained. It had the taste and smell of sweat. It strained and lifted like a bellows at work within a forge—and yet it was nothing so simple as that. It was from here that the magic took its life, he sensed. It was from here that it was given birth.
Then he reached wards that even a spirit could not pass undetected, and he was forced to turn aside. He was close to what lay trapped within the cellars of Southwatch, close to the source of the magic, to the secret the Shadowen kept so carefully hidden. But he could go no closer, and so the secret would have to keep.
He turned back up the stairway, speeding quickly through the gloom, a brief glimmer of thought and nothing more. He passed more of the Shadowen wraiths as he went, and one or two slowed before going on, but none discovered him. He went now in search of Par, knowing the Valeman was a prisoner, anxious to discover where he was being kept and whether he was still himself. For there was reason to believe he might not be. There was reason to believe that he had been subverted and was lost.