The Wishsong of Shannara

by Terry Brooks

  Barely able to suppress the excitement that coursed through him, he sang to the gift of the King of the Silver River and called forth the magic. The brilliant light sprang up, flooding the cavern with its glow. Brin Ohmsford’s face appeared within it, dark, beautiful, and worn, rising up before them in the gloom of the Caves of Night like some wraith come forth from another world. Grayness surrounded the Valegirl, gloom all too reminiscent of their own, close and stifling. Wherever she was as she looked past them to her own future, it was no less hostile a place than their own.

  Cautiously, they rejoined one another, gathering about the light of the crystal. Joining hands as children might on a walk through some dark place, they began to move forward through the maze of Procks. Jair led, the light of the vision crystal sustained by his voice, scattering the shadows before them. Helt followed a step behind, sharp eyes scanning the cavern floor for where the Procks lay hidden. Behind them, the others followed.

  They passed from that cavern into another, but this new cavern was smaller and the proper choice of passage less difficult to discern. Jair’s song lifted, clear, strong, and filled with certainty. He knew now that they were going to escape these Caves, and it was because of Brin. He wanted to cry out in thanks to her image as it floated before him. How strange that she should come like this to save them!

  Closing his ears to the sounds of the Procks as they grated stone on stone, closing his mind to everything but the light and the vision of his sister’s face as it hung suspended before him, he gave himself over to the wishsong’s magic and passed on through the darkness.

  XXXVIII

  It took the remainder of the night for Brin and her rescuers to work their way clear of Olden Moor. They would not have done so even then without Whisper to guide them, but the big moor cat was at home in the bottomland, and neither the mist nor the shapeless, mired earth gave him pause. Choosing their pathway with instincts that the moor could not deceive, he led them south toward the dark wall of the Ravenshorn.

  “We would have lost you to the moor without Whisper,” Kimber explained to the Valegirl after they had found her again and begun their march south. “It was Whisper who tracked you through the mist. He is not misled by appearances, and nothing of the moor can fool him. Still, it was fortunate that we reached you when we did, Brin. You must stay close to us after this.”

  Brin accepted the well-intentioned rebuke without comment. There was no point in discussing the matter further. Her decision to leave them before they reached the Maelmord was already made. It merely remained for her to find the right opportunity to do so. Her reasons were simple. The task entrusted to her by Allanon was to penetrate the forest barrier that protected the Ildatch and to see to it that the book of dark magic was destroyed. She would do this by pitting the magic of the wishsong against the magic of the Maelmord. Once she had wondered if such a thing were even possible. Now she wondered not if such a thing were possible, but if such a thing would prove cataclysmic. The power of the magics unleashed would be awesome—a match not of white magic against dark as she had once envisioned, but a match of magics equally dark in tone and effect. The Maelmord was created to destroy. But the wishsong, too, could destroy, and now Brin knew that not only would the potential for such destruction always be there, but that she could not be assured of being able to control it. She might vow to do so. She might swear her strongest oath. But she could never be certain that she could keep that oath—not anymore, unless she forbore all use of the wishsong. She could accept the risk to herself; she had done that long ago when she had decided to come on this quest. But she could not accept the risk to those who traveled with her.

  She must leave them. Whatever fate she was to suffer when she entered the Maelmord, her companions must not be there to share it with her. You go to your death, Brin of Shannara, the Grimpond had warned. You carry within you the seeds of that destruction. Perhaps that was so. Perhaps those seeds were carried in the magic of the wishsong. But one thing was certain. The others of the little company had risked themselves enough for her already. She would not have them do so again.

  She thought about it all night as she trudged on wearily through the bottomland, remembering what she had felt in the times she had used the wishsong’s magic. The hours slipped past, and the Werebeasts did not come to haunt them again that night. But in the mind of the Valegirl, there were demons of another sort.

  By dawn the little company was clear of Olden Moor and found itself in the foothills bordering the southern mountains of the Ravenshorn. Wearied from their long march up from Hearthstone and the events of the night past and wary of traveling farther in daylight when they might easily be seen, the five took refuge in a small copse of pine in a lea between two ridgelines and fell asleep.

  They resumed their journey with the return of nightfall, traveling east now, following the high wall of the mountains where it brushed up against the moor. Trailers of mist wound through the trees of the forested lower slopes, a spider’s web across the pathway as the travelers passed silently by. The mountain peaks of the Ravenshorn were huge and stark, barren rock lifting out of the forestland to etch sharply against the sky. It was an empty, still night, and the whole of the land about seemed stripped of life. Shadows lay across the cliffs, forests, and the moor’s deep mists. In their pooling darkness nothing moved.

  They rested at midnight, an uneasy pause where they found themselves listening to the silence as they rubbed aching muscles and tightened boot straps. It was then that Cogline chose to talk about his magic.

  “Magic it is, too,” he whispered cautiously to Brin and Rone, almost as if he feared that someone might be listening. “Magic of a different sort than that wielded by the walkers, though—born not of their time nor the time when Elves and faerie folk had the power, but of the time between!”

  He bent forward, eyes sharp and accusing. “Thought I knew nothing of the old world, didn’t you, girl?” he asked Brin. “Well, I have the teachings of the old world, too—passed down to me by my ancestors. Not Druids, no. But teachers, girl—teachers! Theirs was the lore of the world that existed when the Great Wars caused such destruction to mankind!”

  “Grandfather,” Kimber Boh cautioned gently. “Just explain it to them.”

  “Humphh!” Cogline grunted testily. “Explain it, she says! What is it that you think I do, girl?” His forehead furrowed. “Earth power! That’s the magic I wield! Not the magic of words and spells—no, not that magic! Power born of the elements that comprise the ground on which we walk, outlanders. That is the earth power. Bits and pieces of ores and powders and mixings that can be seen by the eye and felt by the hand. Chemics, they were once called. Developed by skills of a different sort than the simple ones we use now in the Four Lands. Most of the knowledge was lost with the old world. But a little—just a little—was saved. And it is mine to use.”

  “This is what you carry in those pouches?” Rone asked. “This is what you used to make those fires explode?”

  “Ha-ha!” Cogline laughed softly. “They do that and much more, Southlander. Fires can be exploded, earth turned to mud, air to choking dust, flesh to stone! I have potions for all and dozens more. Mix and match, a bit of this and a bit of that!” He laughed again. “I’ll show the walkers power they haven’t seen before!”

  Rone shook his head doubtfully. “Spider Gnomes are one thing; the Mord Wraiths are something else again. A finger points at you and you are reduced to ash. The sword I carry, infused with the Druid magic, is the only protection against those black things.”

  “Bah!” Cogline spit. “You’d best look to me for your protection—you and the girl!”

  Rone began to phrase a sharp retort, then thought better of it and simply shrugged. “If we come up against the walkers, we shall both need to offer Brin whatever protection we can.”

  He glanced at the Valegirl for confirmation, and she smiled agreeably. It cost her nothing to do so. She already knew that neither of them would be with her, in any
case.

  She pondered for a time what Cogline had told them. It troubled her that any part of the old skills should have survived the holocaust of the Great Wars. She did not like to think it possible that such awesome power could come again into the world. It was bad enough that the magic of the world of faerie had been reborn through the misguided efforts of that handful of rebel Druids in the Councils of Paranor. But to be faced with the prospect that the knowledge of power and energy might again be pursued was even more unsettling. Almost all of the learning that had gone into that knowledge had been lost with the destruction of the old world. What little had survived, the Druids had locked away again. Yet here was this old man, half-crazed and as wild as the wilderness in which he lived, in possession of at least a portion of that learning—a special kind of magic that he had resolved was now his own.

  She shook her head. Perhaps it was inevitable that all learning, whether born of good or bad intention, whether used to give life or to take life away, must come to light at some point in time. Perhaps it was true both of skill and of magic—one born of the world of men, the other of the world of faerie. Perhaps both must surface periodically in the stream of time, then disappear again, then surface once more, and so on forever.

  But a return now of the knowledge of energy and power, when the last of the Druids was gone . . . ?

  Still, Cogline was an old man and his knowledge was limited. When he died, perhaps the knowledge would die with him and be lost again—for a time, at least.

  And so, too, perhaps it would be with her magic.

  They walked east for the remainder of the night, picking their way through the thinning forestland. Ahead, the wall of the Ravenshorn began to curve back toward them, turning north into the wilderness of the deep Anar. It rose up from out of the night, a towering, dark band of shadow. Olden Moor dropped away behind them, and only the thin green line of the foothills separated them from the mountain heights. A deeper silence seemed to settle over the land. It was in the crook of the mountains where they turned north, Brin knew, that Graymark and the Maelmord lay concealed.

  And there I must find a way to be free of the others, she thought. There, I must go on alone.

  The first trailers of sunrise began to slip into view beyond the mountain wall. Slowly the skies lightened, turning from deep blue to gray, from gray to silver, and from silver to rose and gold. Shadows fled away into the receding night, and the broad sweep of the land began to etch itself out of the dark. The trees grew visible first, leaves, crooked limbs, and roughened trunks drawn and colored by the light; then rocks, scrub, and barren earth, from foothills to bottomland, took form. For a time, the shadow of the mountains lingered, a wall against the light, lost in darkness not yet faded. But finally that, too, gave way to the sunrise, and the light spilled down over the rim of the peaks to reveal the awesome face of the Ravenshorn.

  It was a stark and ugly face—a face that had been ravaged by time and the elements and by the poison of the dark magic sown within it. Where the mountains curved north into the wilderness, the rock had been bleached and worn—as if the life in it had been peeled away like skin to leave only bone. It rose up against the skyline, thousands of feet above them, a wall of cliffs and ragged defiles burdened with the weight of ages gone and horrors endured. On the hard, gray emptiness, nothing moved.

  Brin lifted her face momentarily as the wind brushed past. Her nose wrinkled in distaste. An unpleasant smell rose up from somewhere ahead.

  “Graymark’s sewers.” Cogline spit, ferret eyes darting. “We’re close now.”

  Kimber slipped ahead of them to where Whisper sniffed tentatively at the odorous morning air. Bending close to the great cat, she spoke softly in his ear—just a word—and the beast nuzzled her face gently.

  She turned back to them. “Quickly now, before it gets any lighter—Whisper will show us the way.”

  They hurried forward through the new light and receding shadow, following the moor cat as he guided them along the twist of the foothills to where the Ravenshorn bent north. Trees and scrub fell away completely, grasses turned sparse and wintry, and the earth gave way to crushed stone and shelf rock. The smell grew steadily worse, a rank and fetid odor that smothered even the freshness of the new day’s birthing. Brin found herself choking for breath. How much worse would it be once they had found their way into the sewers?

  Then the hills dropped away sharply before them into a deep valley that was lost in the shadow of the mountain wall. There, sullen and still, lay a dark lake of stagnant water, fed by a stream that seeped down through the rocks from a broad, blackened hole.

  Whisper padded to a halt, Kimber at his side. “There.” She pointed. “The sewers.”

  Brin’s eyes strayed upward along the ragged line of the peaks, upward thousands of feet to where the mountain wall cut its jagged edge against the golden dawn sky. There, still hidden from view, lay Graymark, the Maelmord, and the Ildatch.

  She swallowed against the smell of the sewers. There, too, lay the fate that was to be hers. Her smile was hard. She must go to meet it.

  At the entrance to the sewers, Cogline unveiled a bit more of his magic. From a sealed packet buried in one of the pouches he wore strapped to his waist, he produced an ointment that, when rubbed into the nostrils, deadened the stench of the sewers’ poisonous discharge. A small magic, he claimed. Though the smell could not be obliterated entirely, it nevertheless could be made tolerable. Fashioning short-handled brands from pieces of deadwood, he dipped the ends into the contents of a second pouch and they emerged covered with a silver substance that glowed like oil lamps when introduced into the cavern’s darkness—even in the absence of any fire.

  “Just a little more of my magic, outlanders.” He chuckled as they stared wonderingly at the flameless torches. “Chemicals, remember? Something the walkers don’t know anything about. And I’ve a few more surprises. You’ll see.”

  Rone frowned doubtfully and shook his head. Brin said nothing, but decided quickly that she would be just as happy if the opportunity to test those surprises never arose.

  Torches in hand, the little company moved out of the dawn light into the tunnel darkness of the sewers. The passageways were wide and deep, the liquid poison discharged from the halls of Graymark and the Maelmord flowing down a worn, rutted channel that cut through the tunnel floor. To either side of where the sewage flowed, there were stone walkways that offered footing broad enough for the company to pass upon. Whisper led the way, luminous eyes blinking in sleepy reflection against the light of the torches, splayed feet padding soundlessly on the stone. Cogline followed with Kimber, and Brin and Rone brought up the rear.

  They walked for a long time. Brin lost track of how long a time it was, her concentration divided between picking her way through the half-light and thinking of her promise to find a way to go down into the Maelmord without the others. The sewer wound upward through the mountain rock, twisting and turning like a coiled snake. The stench permeating the passage was almost unbearable, even with the aid of the repellant that Cogline had provided to ease their breathing difficulties. From time to time, sudden drafts of cold air blew down from above them, clearing the smell of the sewage—wind from the peaks into which they climbed. But the drafts of fresh air were few and brief, and the smells of the sewers were always quick to return.

  The morning slipped away, the hours lost in the endless spiral of their ascent. Once they came upon a massive iron grate that had been dropped across the passageway to prevent anything larger than a rat from entering. Rone reached for his sword, but a sharp word from Cogline brought him up short. A gleeful cackle breaking from his lips, the old man motioned them back, then produced yet another pouch— this one containing an odd, blackish powder laced with something that looked to be soot. Dabbing the powder on the bars of the grate where they joined the rock, he touched the treated spots quickly with the flameless torch and the powder flared a brilliant white. When the light died away, the bars had been eaten
completely through. At a stiff nudge, the entire grate collapsed onto the cavern floor. The company went on.

  No one spoke as they climbed. Instead, they listened for the sound of the enemy that waited somewhere above—the walkers and the things that served them. They heard nothing of these, but there were other sounds that echoed through the empty passageways—sounds that came from far above and were not immediately identifiable. There were clunks and thuds, as if heavy bodies had fallen, scrapes and scratchings, a low howling, as if a hard wind slipped down through the tunnels from the mountain peaks, and a hissing, as if steam escaped some fissure in the earth. These distant sounds filled and thus magnified the otherwise utter silence of the sewers. Brin found herself searching for a pattern to the sounds, but there was none—except, perhaps, for the hissing which lifted and fell with a peculiar regularity. It reminded Brin, unpleasantly, of the Grimpond’s rise from the lake and the mist.

  I must find a way to go on alone, she thought one time more. I must do so soon.

  Tunnels came and went, and the climb wore on. The air within the sewers had grown steadily warmer with the passing of the day, and beneath their cloaks and tunics the members of the little company were sweating freely. A kind of peculiar mist had begun to filter down through the corridors, clinging and grimy, filled with the sewers’ smell. They brushed at it distastefully, but it drifted after them, closed about them, and would not be moved away. It grew thicker as the climb progressed, and soon they were having difficulty seeing farther than a dozen feet ahead.

  Then abruptly the mist and gloom cleared before them, and they stood upon a shelf of rock that overlooked an immense chasm. Down into the mountain’s core the chasm dropped, disappearing into utter blackness. The members of the little company glanced uneasily at one another. To their right, the passageway curved upward into the rock, following the trench that carried the sewage from the Mord Wraith citadel. To their left, the passageway ran downward a short distance to a slender stone bridge barely a yard in width that arched across the chasm to a darkened tunnel that bore into the far cliff face.