Legends II (Shadows, Gods, and Demons)

by Robert Silverberg (Ed. )

  “Thank you,” he said. “You saved my life.”

  “You called,” she said dully. “I came.”

  He said, “What’s wrong?”

  She looked at him, then. “I could have been yours,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes. “I thought you would love me. Perhaps. One day.”

  “Well,” he said, “Maybe we could find out. We could take a walk tomorrow together, maybe. Not a long one, I’m afraid, I’m a bit of a mess physically.”

  She shook her head.

  The strangest thing, Shadow thought, was that she did not look human any longer: She now looked like what she was, a wild thing, a forest thing. Her tail twitched on the bed, under her coat. She was very beautiful, and, he realized, he wanted her, very badly.

  “The hardest thing about being ahulder ,” said Jennie, “even ahulder very far from home, is that, if you don’t want to be lonely, you have to love a man.”

  “So love me. Stay with me,” said Shadow. “Please.”

  “You,” she said, sadly and finally, “are not a man.”

  She stood up.

  “Still,” she said, “everything’s changing. Maybe I can go home again now. After a thousand years I don’t even know if I remember anynorsk. ”

  She took his hands in her small hands, that could bend iron bars, that could crush rocks to sand, and she squeezed his fingers very gently. And she was gone.

  He stayed another day in that hotel, and then he caught the bus to Thurso, and the train from Thurso to Inverness.

  He dozed on the train, although he did not dream.

  When he woke, there was a man on the seat next to him. A hatchet-faced man, reading a paperback book. He closed the book when he saw that Shadow was awake. Shadow looked down at the cover: Jean Cocteau’sThe Difficulty of Being.

  “Good book?” asked Shadow.

  “Yeah, all right,” said Smith. “It’s all essays. They’re meant to be personal, but you feel that every time he looks up innocently and says ‘This is me,’ it’s some kind of double bluff. I likedBelle et la Bête , though. I felt closer to him watching that than through any of these essays.”

  “It’s all on the cover,” said Shadow.

  “How d’you mean?”

  “The difficulty of being Jean Cocteau.”

  Smith scratched his nose.

  “Here,” he said. He passed Shadow a copy of theScotsman . “Page nine.”

  On the bottom of page nine was a small story: Retired doctor kills himself. Gaskell’s body had been found in his car, parked in a picnic spot on the coast road. He had swallowed quite a cocktail of painkillers, washed down with most of a bottle of Lagavulin.

  “Mr. Alice hates being lied to,” said Smith. “Especially by the hired help.”

  “Is there anything in there about the fire?” asked Shadow.

  “What fire?”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if there wasn’t a terrible run of luck for the great and the good over the next couple of months, though. Car crashes. Train crash. Maybe a plane’ll go down. Grieving widows and orphans and boyfriends. Very sad.”

  Shadow nodded.

  “You know,” said Smith, “Mr. Alice is very concerned about your health. He worries. I worry, too.”

  “Yeah?” said Shadow.

  “Absolutely. I mean, if something happens to you while you’re in the country. Maybe you look the wrong way crossing the road. Flash a wad of cash in the wrong pub. I dunno. The point is, if you got hurt, then whatsername, Grendel’s mum might take it the wrong way.”

  “So?”

  “So we think you should leave the U.K. Be safer for everyone, wouldn’t it?”

  Shadow said nothing for a while. The train began to slow.

  “Okay,” said Shadow.

  “This is my stop,” said Smith. “I’m getting out here. We’ll arrange the ticket, first class of course, to anywhere you’re heading. One-way ticket. You just have to tell me where you want to go.”

  Shadow rubbed the bruise on his cheek. There was something about the pain that was almost comforting.

  The train came to a complete stop. It was a small station, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There was a large black car parked by the station, in the thin sunshine. The windows were tinted, and Shadow could not see in.

  Mr. Smith pushed down the train window, reached outside to open the carriage door, and stepped out onto the platform. He looked back in at Shadow through the open window. “Well?”

  “I think,” said Shadow, “that I’ll spend a couple of weeks looking around the U.K. And you’ll just have to pray that I look the right way when I cross your roads.”

  “And then?”

  Shadow knew it, then. Perhaps he had known it all along.

  “Chicago,” he said to Smith, as the train gave a jerk, and began to move away from the station. He felt older, as he said it. But he could not put it off forever.

  And then he said, so quietly that only he could have heard it, “I guess I’m going home.”

  Soon afterward it began to rain: huge, pelting drops that rattled against the windows and blurred the world into grays and greens. Deep rumbles of thunder accompanied Shadow on his journey south: the storm grumbled, the wind howled, and the lightning made huge shadows across the sky, and in their company Shadow slowly began to feel less alone.

  SHANNARA

  TERRY BROOKS

  THESWORD OFSHANNARA(1977)

  THEELFSTONES OFSHANNARA(1982)

  THEWISHSONG OFSHANNARA(1985)

  THE HERITAGE OF SHANNARA:

  THESCIONS OFSHANNARA(1990)

  THEDRUID OFSHANNARA(1991)

  THEELFQUEEN OFSHANNARA(1992)

  THETALISMANS OFSHANNARA(1993)

  FIRSTKING OFSHANNARA(1996)

  THE VOYAGE OF THEJERLE SHANNARA :

  ILSEWITCH(2000)

  ANTRAX(2001)

  MORGAWR(2002)

  HIGH DRUID OF SHANNARA:

  JARKARUUS(2003)

  TANEQUIL(forthcoming)

  The time of the Shannara follows in the wake of an apocalypse that has destroyed the old world and very nearly annihilated its people as well. A thousand years of savagery and barbarism have concluded at the start of the series with the emergence of a new civilization in which magic has replaced science as the dominant source of power. A Druid Council comprised of the most talented of the new races—Men, Dwarves, Trolls, Gnomes, and Elves, names taken from the old legends—has begun the arduous task of rebuilding the world and putting an end to the racial warfare that has consumed the survivors of the so-called Great Wars since their conclusion.

  But the wars continue, albeit in a different form. Magic, like science, is often mercurial, can be used for good or evil, and can have a positive or negative effect on those who come in contact with it. InThe Sword of Shannara , a Druid subverted by his craving for magic’s power manipulated Trolls and Gnomes in his effort to gain mastery over the other races. He failed because of Shea Ohmsford, the last of an Elven family with the Shannara surname. Shea, with the help of his brother and a small band of companions, was able to wield the fabled Sword of Shannara to destroy the Dark Lord.

  Subsequently, inThe Elfstones of Shannara , his grandson Wil was faced with another sort of challenge, one that required the use of a magic contained in a set of Elfstones. But use of the Stones altered Wil’s genetic makeup, so that his own children were born with magic in their blood. As a result, in the third book of the series,The Wishsong of Shannara , Brin and her brother Jair were recruited by the Druid Allanon to seek out and destroy the Ildatch, the book of dark magic that had subverted the Warlock Lord and was now doing the same with the Mord Wraiths.

  The story that follows takes place several years after the conclusion ofThe Wishsong and again features Jair Ohmsford, who must come to terms with his obsession with the past and his use of magic that his sister has warned him not to trust.

  INDOMITABLE

  TERRY BROOKS


  The past is always with us.

  Even though he was only just of an age to be considered a man, Jair Ohmsford had understood the meaning of the phrase since he was a boy. It meant that he would be shaped and reshaped by the events of his life, so that everything that happened would be in some way a consequence of what had gone before. It meant that the people he came to know would influence his conduct and his beliefs. It meant that his experiences of the past would impact his decisions of the future.

  It meant that life was like a chain and the links that forged it could not be severed.

  For Jair, the strongest of those links was to Garet Jax. That link, unlike any other, was a repository for memories he treasured so dearly that he protected them like glass ornaments, to be taken down from the shelf on which they were kept, polished, and then put away again with great care.

  In the summer of the second year following his return from Graymark, he was still heavily under the influence of those memories. He woke often in the middle of the night from dreams of Garet Jax locked in battle with the Jachyra, heard echoes of the other’s voice in conversations with his friends and neighbors, and caught sudden glimpses of the Weapons Master in the faces of strangers. He was not distressed by these occurrences; he was thrilled by them. They were an affirmation that he was keeping alive the past he cared so much about.

  On the day the girl rode into Shady Vale, he was working at the family inn, helping the manager and his wife as a favor to his parents. He was standing on the porch, surveying the siding he had replaced after a windstorm had blown a branch through the wall. Something about the way she sat her horse caught his attention, drawing it away from his handiwork. He shaded his eyes against the glare of the sun as it reflected off a metal roof when she turned out of the trees. She sat ramrod straight astride a huge black stallion with a white blaze on its forehead, her dark hair falling in a cascade of curls to her waist, thick and shining. She wasn’t big, but she gave an immediate impression of possessing confidence that went beyond the need for physical strength.

  She caught sight of him at the same time he saw her and turned the big black in his direction. She rode up to him and stopped, a mischievous smile appearing on her round, perky face as she brushed back loose strands of hair. “Cat got your tongue, Jair Ohmsford?”

  “Kimber Boh,” he said, not quite sure that it really was. “I don’t believe it.”

  She swung down, dropped the reins in a manner that suggested this was all the black required, and walked over to give him a long, sustained hug. “You look all grown up,” she said, and ruffled his curly blond hair to show she wasn’t impressed.

  He might have said the same about her. The feel of her body against his as she hugged him was a clear indication that she was beyond childhood. But it was difficult to accept. He still remembered the slender, tiny girl she had been two years ago when he had met her for the first time in the ruins of the Croagh in the aftermath of his battle to save Brin.

  He shook his head. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  She stepped back. “I knew you right away.” She looked around. “I always wanted to see where you lived. Is Brin here?”

  She wasn’t. Brin was living in the Highlands with Rone Leah, whom she had married in the spring. They were already expecting their first child; if it was a boy, they would name it Jair.

  He shook his head. “No. She lives in Leah now. Why didn’t you send word you were coming?”

  “I didn’t know myself until a little over a week ago.” She glanced at the inn. “The ride has made me tired and thirsty. Why don’t we go inside while we talk?”

  They retreated to the cool interior of the inn and took a table at a window where the slant of the roof kept the sun off. The innkeeper brought over a pitcher of ale and two mugs, giving Jair a sly wink as he walked away.

  “Does he give you a wink for every pretty girl you bring into this establishment?” Kimber asked when the innkeeper was out of earshot. “Are you a regular here?”

  He blushed. “My parents own the inn. Kimber, what are you doing here?”

  She considered the question. “I’m not entirely sure. I came to find you and to persuade you to come with me. But now that I’m here, I don’t know that I have the words to do it. In fact, I might just not even try. I might just stay here and visit until you send me away. What would you say to that?”

  He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I guess I would say you were welcome to stay as long as you like. Is that what you want?”

  She sipped at her ale and shook her head. “What I want doesn’t matter. Maybe what you want doesn’t matter either.” She looked out the window into the sunshine. “Grandfather sent me. He said to tell you that what we thought we had finished two years ago isn’t quite finished after all. There appears to be a loose thread that needs snipping off.”

  “A loose thread?”

  She looked back at him. “Remember when your sister burned the book of the Ildatch at Graymark?”

  He nodded. “I’m not likely to forget.”

  “Grandfather says she missed a page.”

  They ate dinner at his home, a dinner that he prepared himself, which included soup made of fresh garden vegetables, bread, and a plate of cheeses and dried fruits stored for his use by his parents, who were south on a journey to places where their special healing talents were needed. They sat at the dinner table and watched the darkness descend in a slow curtain of shadows that draped the countryside like black silk. The sky stayed clear and the stars came out, brilliant and glittering against the firmament.

  “He wouldn’t tell you why he needs me?” Jair asked for what must have been the fifth or sixth time.

  She shook her head patiently. “He just said you were the one to bring, not your sister, not your parents, not Rone Leah. Just you.”

  “And he didn’t say anything about the Elfstones either? You’re sure about that?”

  She looked at him, a hint of irritation in her blue eyes. “Do you know that this is one of the best meals I have ever eaten? It really is. This soup is wonderful, and I want to know how to make it. But for now, I am content just to eat it. Why don’t you stop asking questions and enjoy it, too?”

  He responded with a rueful grimace and sipped at the soup, staying quiet for a few mouthfuls while he mulled things over. He was having difficulty accepting what she was telling him, let alone agreeing to what she was asking. Two years earlier, the Ohmsford siblings had taken separate paths to reach the hiding place of the Ildatch, the book of dark magic that had spawned first the Warlock Lord and his Skull Bearers in the time of Shea and Flick Ohmsford and then the Mord Wraiths in their own time. The magic contained in the book was so powerful that the book had taken on a life of its own, become a spirit able to subvert and ultimately re-form beings of flesh and blood into monstrous undead creatures. It had done so repeatedly and would have kept on doing so had Brin and he not succeeded in destroying it.

  Of course, it had almost destroyed Brin first. Possessed of the magic of the wishsong, of the power to create or destroy through use of music and words, Brin was a formidable opponent, but an attractive ally, as well. Perhaps she would have become the latter instead of the former had Jair not reached her in time to prevent it. But it was for that very purpose that the King of the Silver River had sent him to find her after she had left with Allanon, and so he had known in advance what was expected of him. His own magic was of a lesser kind, an ability to appear to change things without actually being able to do so, but in this one instance it had proved sufficient to do what was needed.

  Which was why he was somewhat confused by Kimber’s grandfather’s insistence on summoning him now. Whatever the nature of the danger presented by the threat of an Ildatch reborn, he was the least well-equipped member of the family to deal with it. He was also doubtful of the man making the selection, having seen enough of the wild-eyed and unpredictable Cogline to know that he wasn’t always rowing with all his oars in the water. Kimb
er might have confidence in him, but that didn’t mean Jair should.

  An even bigger concern was the old man’s assertion that somehow the Ildatch hadn’t been completely destroyed when Brin had gone to such lengths to make certain that it was. She had used her magic to burn it to ashes, the whole tome, each and every page. So how could it have survived in any form? How could Brin have been mistaken about something so crucial?

  He knew that he wasn’t going to find out unless he went with Kimber to see the old man and hear him out, but it was a long journey to Hearthstone, which lay deep in the Eastland, a draining commitment of time and energy. Especially if it turned out that the old man was mistaken.

  So he asked his questions, hoping to learn something helpful, waiting for a revelation. But soon he had asked the old ones more times than was necessary and had run out of new ones.

  “I know you think Grandfather is not altogether coherent about some things,” Kimber said. “You know as much even from the short amount of time you spent with him two years ago, so I don’t have to pretend. I know he can be difficult and unsteady. But I also know that he sees things other men don’t, that he has resources denied to them. I can read a trail and track it, but he can read signs on the air itself. He can make things out of compounds and powders that no one else has known how to make since the destruction of the Old World. He’s more than he seems.”

  “So you believe that I should go, that there’s a chance he might be right about the Ildatch?” Jair leaned forward again, his meal forgotten. “Tell me the truth, Kimber.”

  “I think you would be wise to pay attention to what he has to say.” Her face was calm, but her eyes troubled. “I have my own doubts about Grandfather, but I saw the way he was when he told me to come find you. It wasn’t something done on a whim. It was done after a great deal of thought. He would have come himself, but I wouldn’t let him. He is too old and frail. Since I wouldn’t let him make the journey, I had to make it myself. I guess that says something about how I view the matter.”