by Terry Brooks
He didn’t like where his thinking was taking him, so he abandoned it in favor of trying to decide what else he might do to help himself. The long knife he carried was all but useless against something the size of the dragon, so there was no point in relying on that. Of course, any weapon was all but useless against a beast as big as that one. A whole army was probably useless.
He might try using his magic.
It was a reach. He didn’t even know if his magic would work in the Forbidding. But he didn’t have anything else he could look to for help, and he had to do more than sit around waiting for the dragon to decide to eat him. His magic had worked with the moor cat they had encountered in the Slags, well enough that it had saved his life. It was conceivable that it might work here, as well.
But how should he try to use it?
He decided to find out first if it irritated the beast, because if it did, that was the end of the matter. He began by reaching out with his five senses, taking in everything he could discover about the creature, from the sound of its breathing to the baleful look in its sleepy eye. He scoured the monster from head to tail and back again, working at finding a connection, at trying to feel something of what the dragon felt. It was hard work, and in the end it yielded almost nothing.
Dragons, apparently, didn’t give much away.
There was nothing for it but to try using the magic in the only way that seemed feasible—as a tool of communication. He had no idea how dragons communicated. All he had learned so far was how they breathed and how they reacted when irritated. Perhaps if he started there, a way might reveal itself. What made his efforts so difficult was that the dragon wasn’t really interested in him at all; it was only interested in the darkwand. If it were the darkwand that was trying to communicate, he was certain that he would make better progress. But that wasn’t possible, of course, so he would have to settle for using his own voice and hope the dragon gave something back.
He began with an imitation of the dragon’s breathing, slow and heavy and raw. Enhancing his efforts with his magic, giving them life, it still took him a while to get it right. Eventually, he was sounding exactly like a miniature version of the larger thing. The dragon blinked—once, twice. When he began alternating the breathing with variations on the disgruntled hissing, the dragon lifted its head off its forefeet and looked at him. But it didn’t seem inclined to do anything more than stare. Still, Pen kept at it, hoping for something more.
Nothing happened. Eventually, the dragon lost interest, lowered its head to its forefeet and went back to watching the dancing glow of the runes.
Pen sank back, exhausted. He was getting nowhere. Worse, he was growing weak from the effort. He had not eaten or drunk anything since arriving and could not remember when he had done so before that. It had been more than a day. His throat was parched, and he was feeling light-headed. If he didn’t get away soon, he was going to pass out from lack of nourishment.
But what in the world was he supposed to do?
He spent several hours trying to figure that out. He used his small magic in every conceivable way to entice the dragon into communicating, but the beast simply ignored him. It lay there across the opening to his shelter, a great scaly lump that refused to move. With one eye fixed steadily on the darkwand and its intriguing runes, it dozed like a monstrous cat in front of a mouse hole, transfixed by the movement of the light. It barely stirred for the whole of the time it kept watch and then only to shift positions.
After a while, Pen dozed off. He wasn’t sure how long he slept, as the gray light that marked daytime in the Forbidding was virtually unchanging from dawn to dusk. But when he awoke, he came to a decision. Rather than experiment further with the magic, he would simply try to leave. He had no idea if the dragon would permit it. But anything was better than doing nothing.
Holding the darkwand in front of him so as not to disturb or obscure the play of the light across its runes, he stood and gathered his strength. He was so weak by then that it took him a few minutes to do so. When he felt sufficiently ready, he took a single step out from his shelter.
The dragon blinked slowly.
He took another step. And then another.
The dragon’s head came up, the horn-encrusted snout swung toward him, and a sharp hiss escaped through a pair of wide-flaring nostrils.
Pen stopped at once, held his ground, and waited. The dragon continued to watch him, head lifted, yellow eyes fixed. They stared at each other for long moments, each waiting to see what the other would do. Pen listened to the sound of the dragon’s breathing and smelled its fetid stench. He forced himself to ignore the urge to gag. Instead, he focused on his determination to keep going.
When he felt he had waited long enough, he took another step.
This time the dragon slowly extended one great spiked foreleg in the manner of a cat toying with a mouse that had become its favorite plaything. It took its time, reaching out slowly and leisurely until the foreleg was stretched directly across the path Pen had intended to take, blocking it.
Pen stared at the dragon in dismay, then slowly backed into the rocks once more.
He spent the rest of the day hoping for a miracle. If only the dragon would grow bored. If only it would grow hungry. If only it would leave for just a few minutes. Didn’t it have something else to do or somewhere else to go? Dragons must have lives like other creatures, habits and patterns of behavior that this one would be compelled to act on eventually. If he was just patient, if he could just wait it out, it would have to move on.
Daylight faded and night set in. It began to rain, a soft steady drizzle. Pen stuck his head far enough out of the shelter to catch a few drops in his open mouth, then used his cloak to gather a little more and sucked the water from the cloth. All the while, the dragon lay there, its scaly hide glistening, its eyes lidded, watching the darkwand and its glowing runes.
Eventually, Pen grew sleepy once more. He worried for a short while about what the staff would do when he closed his eyes, then dismissed the matter. Apparently, it would continue to glow, just as it must have done the previous night when the dragon was first attracted, just as it must have done while he was napping earlier. Otherwise, the dragon would have eaten him already. He wondered again how the staff could function independently of his thoughts when it had seemed before that it relied on them. He was missing something, wasn’t picking up on what should have been obvious if he wasn’t so hungry and exhausted. He wished he could think more clearly, that he could reason better.
He closed his eyes and dreamed about his home and his parents, about how things had been not two months earlier. He had been so anxious for an adventure, so willing for a change in his mundane existence. He had embraced the chance to go in search of the tanequil with Tagwen and the others. He had relished the excitement that would result.
He wished now that none of it had ever happened. He wished that things were back to the way they had been.
He fell asleep, and his wishes drifted away.
TWELVE
Dreams, bits and pieces of incomplete thoughts and unfinished stories, came and went with the swiftness of shadows and light in a cloud-swept forest. They were bright and bold and filled with promise, and Bek Ohmsford rode them like a bird across landscapes that stretched away forever. Sometimes he was in motion for the duration of the dream without ever touching the earth. Sometimes he felt the solid ground just long enough to be reassured that it was still there before winging away again. Nothing of what he saw was familiar to him. People came and went in the course of his travels, but he did not know who they were or why they were there. He had left his waking life behind; he had gone ahead of those he once knew.
It could have been a time of peace and contentment, but the dreams were interspersed with nightmares, and the nightmares were horrifying. Some were memories of things in his past, of creatures and events that he could never forget. Some were dark prophecies of what lay ahead if he could not turn aside in time. All were popu
lated with predators that pursued him relentlessly, hunters of a sort that lacked recognizable purpose or intent. They came at him in waves, and no matter where he fled or tried to hide, they meant to have him.
Dreams and nightmares. There was no recognizable connection between the one and the other, and he transitioned between light and dark visions with distressing unpredictability. He slept, but his sleep was not sound or restful. The strange mix left him plagued with anxiety over which would appear next and how he would deal with it. He sought to combat them by gaining a measure of control, but his efforts fragmented and failed. He sought to wake, swimming upward through the waters of his sleep toward the bright surface of waking, but the distance was too great. Each time he felt himself getting close, the nightmares would come and drag him down again.
He did not know how long the ordeal continued, but it was a considerable time. At times, he came close to crying out his frustration at being unable to break the chains that bound him to a sleep from which there seemed to be no waking. Perhaps he did cry out. He couldn’t be sure. But no one came to help. No one reached to take his hand and pull him clear. He struggled on alone, battling to keep the dark from overshadowing the light.
Then something changed. He did not know what it was or how it came to pass, but suddenly the dreams and the nightmares withdrew, fading like wind-blown dust. He was left wrapped in warm silence, in a quietude he had not experienced before. He found solace in his isolation. He was able to breathe normally, to ease down into a comforting sleep that allowed him to rest in the way he needed, deeply and peacefully.
For he had been injured, he knew. He had suffered damage of some sort, though he could not put a name to it. He slept because his body was trying to heal, but the injuries were severe enough that it was not certain yet that he could do so. He knew that without being able to say how. He knew it without being able to remember the specifics of what had happened to him. What he knew was he was fighting to survive and the battle had been going badly.
But the tide had turned and the storm had receded and his damaged body was healing. He dropped deep into a place in which a sense of calm prevailed and no dark things were allowed. He was so grateful for it that he wanted to cry in happiness and relief. The possibility that he had died occurred to him, but he dismissed it. His physical state did not feel like death, unless death was something very different than he had imagined. It felt like living, as if life had found him again.
Time passed, his sleep stretched away like a deep blue ocean, and the world about him began to take shape again. It assumed color and definition in the way a landscape is revealed by the lifting of a fog. As it did so, he found himself in the most beautiful gardens he had ever seen. The gardens were of varying sorts, different shapes and sizes and formations. Some were carefully cultivated beds, each given over to a flower and a theme. Some were hanging, vines and blankets of moss cascading off walls and trellises. Some were hillside and some meadow. There were flowering plants and bushes and grasses. Great ancient trees with broad leafy canopies shaded portions of the gardens while bright sunshine flooded the rest. The colors were vibrant and shimmering like the bands of a rainbow after a storm, blankets of one color and quilts of many. Amid the radiance rose the buzzing of bees as they pollinated flowers and the bright whistle and chirp of birds as they did all the things birds do. Wisps of cloud floated overhead, passing across the sun, casting strange, fleeting shadows on the earth.
It was a vision of paradise. Bek Ohmsford stood in the center of it and marveled. The gardens weren’t real; they couldn’t be. They were only dreamed. Yet in his sleep, he found them as real as the flesh of his own body.
“Welcome, Bek Ohmsford,” a soft voice whispered from behind him.
He turned and found an old man staring at him, an ancient wearing a white robe and carrying a long, bleached wooden staff. White hair tumbled from his head to his shoulders and from chin to chest. His face was deeply lined and careworn in a way that suggested that he had been waging a long, hard fight. But his blue eyes were the eyes of a child, bright and interested and filled with expectation.
“This is my home,” the old man said, a smile deepening the wrinkles of his face.
Bek looked around, confused. He was asleep; he was dreaming. But he felt as if he were awake. Was he?
“You have never been here,” the old man continued, as if reading his mind. “But we have met before, a long time ago. Do you remember?”
Bek nodded slowly, realization dawning. “You are the King of the Silver River.”
The old man nodded. “I am the last of my kind, the last of the Word’s children. I am keeper of these gardens, guardian of the Silver River, and watcher over the Races. I am also friend to the Ohmsfords. Do you remember when I helped you?”
Bek did. He had been only a boy, dispatched on a quest he had barely understood to a land no one had ever visited before. He was called Bek Rowe then, and he did not yet know of his Ohmsford heritage. While his companions slept, the King of the Silver River had come to him to give him glimpses of the truth about himself and his sister, who was then the Ilse Witch and not yet Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order. It was the beginning of a journey of discovery that would change the lives of brother and sister forever.
That had been a long time ago, in a different life.
“I have come to help you again,” the old man said. “I do so because I promised your son that I would, although I am late in keeping that promise.”
“Pen?” Bek asked in surprise.
“Penderrin, who has gone to find the Ard Rhys and bring her back to us. Penderrin, who is beyond our reach now.” The seamed face dipped momentarily into shadow. “Walk with me.”
Bek fell into step beside him, thinking again that what was happening wasn’t real, that it was only a dream come to him in his sleep, but knowing instinctively that it was important nevertheless. He was being given a vision, a fever dream. In this vision, he might be shown truths that would help him find his son.
“Why is Pen beyond our reach?” he asked, impatient with waiting for the other to speak.
The aged head lifted slightly, one hand gesturing in a quick, dismissive motion. “It only matters that he is. It only matters that he must be. I would have told you sooner. I would have come to you. I promised him I would, weeks ago, when I first appeared to him in the Black Oaks, while he was fleeing from the Druids. He relied on me to tell you, to warn you of the danger. But I could not risk it. Had I told you, you would have gone in search of him. You would have promised me not to, but you would have gone anyway. Had you found him and rescued him, everything that must happen in its own time would have failed to happen at all.”
Bek shook his head. “Are you saying you deliberately stopped me from helping Pen by not telling me what was happening to him?”
“I am saying that I stopped you from thinking you were helping him when in truth you would have been doing the opposite.”
“I don’t understand. Why are you telling me this now, since you chose not to before?”
The childlike eyes fixed on him. “Because now your help is needed. But it is needed in an entirely different way from before. And it will not be so easy to give.”
They walked on, not speaking. Bek, floating within his vision, dreaming through his sleep, was a disembodied presence with thoughts and emotions, but a lack of substance. It left him feeling oddly removed from what was happening, even while participating. He experienced a need to grasp on to something hard and strong, something real and true. But the words of the King of the Silver River were all he had.
“This is what has happened, Bek Ohmsford,” the old man said finally. “Druids within the order have conspired against the Ard Rhys. They found a way to banish her to a place from which she cannot return without help. Your son has gone to find her. He was asked to do so by me because I knew he was the only one who could make the journey and return. He did not think himself equal to the task, but I convinced him otherwise, and n
ow he has convinced himself. He has crossed a barrier that no other may cross to reach the Ard Rhys. When he finds her, he will bring her back through that barrier, and they must both face their destinies.”
He paused, looking over at Bek. The look seemed intended both to measure and to reassure. “Your son and your sister are inside the Forbidding.”
Bek turned sharply toward the old man, but the heavy staff struck the earth hard enough that he could feel the blow through his feet. “Don’t speak. Just listen. Shadea a’Ru and her minions believe they have orchestrated the imprisonment of the Ard Rhys through their own cleverness and skill, but they are mistaken. They have been tricked by one of the demons that dwell within the Forbidding. That demon is a warlock, a sorcerer of great power. Its goal was to exchange the Ard Rhys for another demon, bringing her into the Forbidding in order to free one of its own to come into this world. That exchange has taken place. The demon set free now seeks to destroy the Forbidding so that all those imprisoned since the time of Faerie will be freed. The demon must be stopped or the Four Lands are lost. You must stop it.”
Bek shook his head. The charge weighed on him like a set of chains. “How?”
The old man slowed and turned to face him. The childlike eyes were kind and reassuring. “I did not come to you to tell you of your son or warn you of your own danger before this because Penderrin alone was needed to cross into the Forbidding, and you would have stopped him. Penderrin knows that he must find and rescue his aunt. He has the means and the will to accomplish this. I think he will succeed. But he does not know that when the Ard Rhys was sent into the Forbidding, a demon was sent into our world. He only knows that he must use the talisman he has been given to rescue your sister and bring her out again. He believes that is the extent of what is required of him. This was my decision, too. Telling him the rest would have crushed him.”
