by Terry Brooks
But when the evening deepened, there came a knock upon the door and a white-robed Stor beckoned for her to follow. She went without argument. She knew without asking that Allanon had called.
She found him within his room at the end of the hallway, Rone Leah seated beside him at a small table on which an oil lamp burned to cast away the night’s shadow. Wordlessly, the Druid beckoned to a third chair, and the Valegirl moved to occupy it. The Stor who had brought her waited until she was seated, then turned and glided from the room, closing the door softly behind him as he left.
The three companions faced one another in silence. Allanon shifted in his chair, dark face hard and fixed, eyes lost in worlds that the Valegirl and the highlander could not see. He looked old this night, Brin thought and wondered that it could be so. No one had known Allanon to age, save for her father, and that had come about just before the Druid disappeared from the Four Lands twenty years earlier. Yet now she saw it, too. He had aged beyond what he had looked when first he had come to the Vale to seek her out. His long, dark hair was grayer in its tone, his lean face more lined and time-ravaged, his look more bent and rough. Time was working against the Druid, even as it worked against them all.
The black eyes swept up to meet her own. “I would tell you now of Bremen,” he rumbled softly, and the gnarled hands folded before him.
“Long ago, in the time of the Councils of the Druids at Paranor, in the time between the Wars of the Races, it was Bremen who saw the truth about the coming of the magic. Brona, who was to become the Warlock Lord, had unlocked the secrets years before and fallen prey to their power. Consumed by what he had hoped to master, the rebel Druid became a slave. After the First War of the Races, the Council believed him destroyed, yet Bremen saw that it was not so. Brona lived, preserved by the magic, driven by its force and its need. The sciences of the old world were gone, lost in the holocaust of the Great Wars. In their place was reborn the magic of a world older still, a world in which only faerie creatures had existed. It was this magic, Bremen saw, that would preserve or destroy the new world of men.
“Thus Bremen defied the Council as Brona had before him—yet with greater care for what he was about—and began to learn for himself the secrets of the power that the rebel Druid had unlocked. Prepared for the Warlock Lord’s eventual return, he saved himself when all the other Druids were destroyed. It became his mission, the sole and fixed purpose of his life, to regain the power that the evil one had let loose, to recapture it and seal it away where it could not again be tampered with. No easy task—yet a task to which he pledged himself. The Druids had unlocked the magic; now, as the last of those Druids, it was left to him to lock it away once more.”
Allanon paused. “He chose to do this through the creation of the Sword of Shannara, a weapon of ancient Elven magic that could destroy the Warlock Lord and the Bearers of the Skull that served him. In the darkest hour of the Second War of the Races, with the whole of the Four Lands threatened by the armies of the evil one, Bremen forged, from magic and from the skills he had acquired and the knowledge he had gained, the fabled Sword. He gave it to the Elven King Jerle Shannara. With that Sword, the King would face in battle the rebel Druid and see him destroyed.
“As you know, however, Jerle Shannara failed. Unable fully to master the power of the Sword, he let the Warlock Lord escape. Though the battle was won and the armies of the evil one driven forth, still Brona lived. Years would pass before he could return, but return he would. Bremen knew that he would not be there to face Brona again. Yet his pledge had been given, and Bremen would never forsake a promise.”
The Druid’s voice had slipped down to a whisper, and there was a look of intense pain within the black, impenetrable eyes. “He did three things, then. He chose me to be his son, the flesh and blood offspring of the Druid line who would walk upon the Four Lands until the time of the Dark Lord’s return. He gave added life to himself first and to me later through the sleep that preserves so that, for as long as might be necessary, a Druid would stand as protector of mankind against the Warlock Lord. And finally, he did one thing more. When the time of his passing was at hand and he could not make himself let go, he used the magic in one last, terrible evocation. He bound his spirit to this world in which his body could not stay, so that he could reach beyond life’s end to see fulfillment of the pledge that he had made.”
Gnarled hands tightened into fists. “He bound himself, spirit out of flesh, to me! He used the magic to achieve that binding, father to son, his spirit exiled in a world of dark where past and future joined, where summons could be had when the need was there. That was what he chose for himself, a lost and hopeless being, never to be freed until it was done, until both had passed . . .”
He stopped suddenly, as if his words had brought him farther than he wished to go. In that instant, Brin caught sight of what had been hidden from her before—a quick, elusive glimpse of the secret that the Druid had withheld from her in the Valley of Shale when Bremen had risen from the Hadeshorn and spoken of what was to be, and which gave substance to the whisperings of her premonition.
“I thought it done once,” Allanon went on, brushing past the sudden pause. “I thought it done when Shea Ohmsford destroyed the Warlock Lord—when the Valeman unlocked the secret of the Sword of Shannara and made himself its master. But I was wrong. The dark magic did not die with the Warlock Lord. Nor was it locked away again as Bremen had foresworn it must be. It survived, kept safe within the pages of the Ildatch, secreted away within the bowels of the Maelmord to await new discoverers. And, finally, the discoverers came.”
“And became the Mord Wraiths,” Rone Leah finished.
“Made slaves to the dark magic as had been the Warlock Lord and the Skull Bearers in old days. Thinking to be master, they became only slaves.”
But what is the secret that you hide? Brin whispered in her mind, still waiting to hear it told. Speak now of that!
“Then Bremen cannot be freed from his exile within the Hadeshorn until the book of the Ildatch is destroyed—and the magic with it?” Rone was too caught up in the history of the tale to see what Brin saw.
“He is pledged to that destruction, Prince of Leah,” Allanon whispered.
And you. And you. Brin’s mind raced.
“All of the dark magic gone from the land?” Rone shook his head wonderingly. “It does not seem possible. Not after so many years of its being—of wars fought because of it, of lives expended.”
The Druid looked away. “That age ends, highlander. That age must pass.”
There was a long silence then, a hushed stillness that filled the night shadows about the flame of the oil lamp and crowded close about the three who huddled there. Wrapped by it, they thought their separate thoughts, eyes slipping past one another’s faces to shield what whispered within. Strangers joined in common cause but without understanding, thought Brin. We strive for a common good, yet the bond is curiously weak . . .
“Can we succeed in this, Allanon?” Rone Leah asked suddenly. His wind-burned face turned toward the Druid. “Have we strength enough to destroy this book and its dark magic?”
The Druid did not answer for a moment. His eyes flickered with hidden knowledge, elusive and quick. Then he said quietly, “Brin Ohmsford has the strength. She is our hope.”
Brin looked at him and shook her head slowly. Her smile twisted with irony. “Hope and no hope. Savior and destroyer. Remember the words, Allanon? Your father spoke them of me.”
Allanon said nothing. He simply sat there, dark eyes staring into her own.
“What else did he tell you, Allanon?” she asked him quietly. “What else?”
There was a long pause. “That I shall not see him again in this world.”
The silence deepened. She was close now to the secret the Druid kept hidden, she realized. Rone Leah stirred uneasily in his chair, eyes shifting to find those of the Valegirl. There was uncertainty in those eyes, Brin saw. Rone did not want to know any more. She looke
d away. It was she who was the hope, and she who must know.
“Was there more?” she said.
Slowly Allanon straightened, dark robes wrapping close about him, and on his worn and haggard face, a small smile appeared. “There is an Ohmsford obsession with knowing the truth of all that is,” he replied. “Not a one of you has ever been content with less.”
“What did Bremen say?” she pressed.
The smile died away. “He said, Brin Ohmsford, that when I go from the Four Lands this time, I shall not come again.”
Valegirl and highlander stared at him in shocked disbelief. As certain as the cycle of the seasons was the return of Allanon to the Four Lands when the danger of the dark magic threatened the races. There had never been a time in memory when he had not come.
“I don’t believe you, Druid!” Rone insisted heatedly, unable to think of anything else to say, a trace of outrage in his voice.
Allanon shook his head slowly. “The age passes, Prince of Leah. I must pass with it.”
Brin swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “When . . . when will you . . .?”
“When I must, Brin,” the Druid finished gently. “When it is time.”
Then he rose, a tall and weathered form as black as night and as steady as its coming. The great, gnarled hands reached out across the table. Without fully understanding why, the Valegirl and the highlander reached to clasp them in their own, joining for just an instant the three as one.
The Druid’s nod was brief and somehow final. “Tomorrow we ride east into the Anar—east until our journey is done. Go now and sleep. Be at peace.”
The great hands released their own and dropped away. “Go,” he said softly.
With a quick, uncertain glance at each other, Brin and Rone stood up and walked from the room. All the way out, they could feel the dark gaze following after.
They walked in silence down the hallway beyond. The sound of voices, distant and fragmented, wafted through the shadows of the empty hall and drifted disembodied from some unseen place. The air was thick with the smell of herbs and medicines, and they breathed in the aromas, distracted from their thoughts. When they reached the doors to their sleeping rooms, they stopped and stood together, not touching or looking at each other, sharing without speaking the impact of what they had been told.
It cannot be true, Brin thought, stunned. It cannot.
Rone turned to face her then, and his hands reached down to take hers. For the first time since their departure from Hadeshorn and the Valley of Shale, she felt close to him again.
“What he told us, Brin . . . what he said about not returning . . .” The highlander shook his head. “That was the reason we went to Paranor and he sealed away the Keep. He knew he would not be coming back . . .”
“Rone,” she said quickly and put her finger to his lips.
“I know. It’s just that I cannot believe it.”
“No.”
For a long moment they stared at each other. “I am afraid, Brin,” he said finally, his voice a whisper.
She nodded without speaking, then wrapped her arms about him and held him close. Then she stepped back again, kissed him lightly on the mouth and disappeared into her room.
Slowly, wearily Allanon turned from the closed door and seated himself once more at the small table. Eyes shifting from the flame of the oil lamp, he stared fixedly into the shadows beyond, his thoughts drifting. Once he would not have felt the need to reveal the secrets that were his. He would have disdained to do so. He was the keeper of the trust, after all; he was the last of the Druids and the power that had once been theirs belonged now to him. He had no need to confide in others.
It had been so with Shea Ohmsford. Much of the truth had been kept from Shea, left hidden for the little Valeman to discover on his own. It had been so as well with Brin’s father, when the Druid had taken him in quest of the Bloodfire. Yet Allanon’s resolve for secrecy, for deliberate and iron-willed refusal to tell to any—even those closest—all that he knew, had somehow weakened through the years gone past. Perhaps it was the aging, come upon him at last, or the inexorable passing of time that weighed so heavily upon him. Perhaps it was simply the need to share what he carried with some other living soul.
Perhaps.
He rose again from the table, another of night’s shadows floating beyond the reach of the light. A sudden breath of air, and the oil lamp went dark.
He had told so much more to the Valegirl and the highlander than to any of the others.
And still he had not told them all.
XXIV
Dawn broke over the Eastland and the forests of the Anar, and the journey of the three who had come from Shady Vale resumed. Supplied with fresh provisions by the Healers of Storlock, they rode east out of the village into the woodlands beyond. Few saw them depart. A handful of white-robed Stors, sad-faced and voiceless, gathered at the stables behind the Center to lift their arms in farewell. Within minutes, the three had disappeared into the trees, gone as silently and as enigmatically as they had come.
It was the kind of autumn day fond memories conjure up of a milder season’s passing when winter snows lie deep about. It was warm and sun-filled, with the colors of the forest trees radiant and sprinkled with soft beams of light and the morning smells sweet and pleasant. Dark and chill as the days gone by had been in the wake of the passing of the late-year storms, this day was light and comforting with its dazzling blue skies and sunshine.
The promise of the day was lost, however, to Brin Ohmsford and Rone Leah. Haunted by Allanon’s dark revelation and by a tense expectation of what lay ahead, neither could share much of the warmth that the day had to offer. Separate and withdrawn, each within a dark covering of private emotions and secretive thoughts, Valegirl and highlander rode forward in determined silence through the dappled shadows of the great, dark trees, feeling only the cold that lay buried within themselves.
“Our path hereafter will be a treacherous one,” Allanon had told them as they gathered that morning before the stables where their horses had been tended, his voice low and strangely gentle. “All across the Eastland and through the forests of the Anar, the Wraiths will be watching for us. They know that we come; Paranor removed all question of that. They know as well that they must stop us before we reach the Maelmord. Gnomes will seek us, and where they do not, others who obey the walkers will. No path east into the Ravenshorn will be safe for us.”
His hands had come up then to rest upon their shoulders, drawing them close. “Still, we are but three and not so easily found. The Wraiths and their Gnome eyes will look two ways for our approach—north above the Rabb River and south out of Culhaven. Safe and unobstructed but for themselves, these are the approaches a wise man would choose. We will choose neither, therefore. Instead, we will pass where it is most dangerous—not only to us, but to them as well. We will pass directly east into the central Anar—through the Wolfsktaag, Darklin Reach, and Olden Moor. Older magics than theirs dwell within those regions—magics that they will be hesitant to challenge. The Wolfsktaag are forbidden to the Gnomes, and they will not enter, even though the Wraiths command it. There are things there more dangerous than the Gnomes we seek to avoid, but most lie dormant. If we are quick and cautious, we should pass through unharmed. Darklin Reach and the Moor are the haunts of other magics yet, but there perhaps we shall find some more friendly to our cause than to theirs . . .”
They rode through the western fringe of the central Anar up into the high ground that formed the doorstep to the rugged, forested humps of the Wolfsktaag. As they traveled, they searched past sunlight and warmth and the brilliant autumn colors for the dark things that lay hidden there. By midday, they had reached the Pass of Jade and begun a long, circuitous climb along its southern slope, where trees and scrub hid them from view as they walked their horses in the deep shadow. Midafternoon found them well east of the pass, wending their way upward toward the high peaks. Timber and rock stretched dark and silent about
them as the daylight began to wane. By nightfall, they were deep within the mountains. In the trees through which they passed, the shadows slipped now like living things. All the while they searched, yet found no sign of other life and felt themselves to be alone.
It was curious and somehow frightening that they could be so alone, Brin thought as the dusk settled into the mountains and the day came to an end. She should sense at least a touch of life other than their own, yet it was as if these peaks and forests had been stripped. There were no birds within these trees, no insects, no living creatures of any kind. There was only the silence, deep and pervasive—the silence, itself become a living thing in the absence of all other life.
Allanon brought them to a halt in the shelter of a grove of rough and splintering hickory to set their camp. When provisions were sorted, the horses tended, and the camp at ready, the Druid called them to him, ordered that no fire be lighted, and stalked off into the trees with a quick word of farewell. Valegirl and highlander stared after him wordlessly until he was out of sight, then sat down to consume a cold meal of bread, cheese, and dried fruit. They ate in darkness, not speaking, watching the shadows about them for the life that never seemed to come. Overhead, the night sky brightened with a great scattering of stars.
“Where do you think he has gone this night?” Rone Leah wondered after a time. He spoke almost as if he were asking himself the question. Brin shook her head and said nothing, and the highlander glanced away again. “Just like a shadow, isn’t he? Shifts with every change of sun and moon, appears, and then he’s gone again—always for reasons all his own. He wouldn’t share those reasons with us, of course. Not with mere humans like us.” He sighed and set aside his plate. “Except that I guess we’re not mere humans anymore, are we?”
Brin toyed with the bit of bread and cheese that remained on her own plate. “No,” she answered softly.
