Straken

by Terry Brooks

  He turned and began walking again, his steps careful and measured. Bek stayed at his side, waiting impatiently to hear more. All around them, breezes rippled the petals of the flowers and gave the impression that they walked upon the surface of a multihued sea.

  “The talisman Pen carries is called a darkwand,” the old man said. “Penderrin has already used it to cross into the Forbidding. Once he finds the Ard Rhys, he will use it to cross back again.” He paused. “But there is one thing more he must do. What has been done must be undone—not in part, but in whole. In order for matters to be put right, everything that the combined magic of the demons and the Druids has brought to pass must be put back. Therefore, not only must the Ard Rhys be returned to this world, but the demon must be put back inside the Forbidding. The darkwand possesses the magic to do this, but only Pen has the power to wield it. He must find the demon and use the darkwand against it.”

  He looked at Bek. “You are the one who must see that he has the chance to do so.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  The old man looked away again. “Two things. First, you must find a way to protect your son when he crosses back through the Forbidding with the Ard Rhys. They must return to exactly the same place they went in—her sleeping chamber at Paranor.”

  “Where Shadea and the others will be waiting,” Bek finished.

  The old man nodded. “Second, you must find the demon. It will not look like a demon. It will look like something else. It is a changeling and takes the shapes of other creatures. This one is particularly dangerous. It absorbs its victims and becomes them. You must find out which disguise it has assumed and unmask it.”

  Bek looked down at his feet. He couldn’t see them. He didn’t seem to have feet, even though he could feel himself walking.

  “The darkwand will reveal the demon,” the old man said. “The talisman will respond to its presence. It will tell you who or what the demon is. If you get close enough.”

  The scent of tuberoses filled Bek’s nostrils, sweet and heady. He shook off the distraction. “The wishsong told me that Pen was at Taupo Rough in the Upper Anar.”

  “The wishsong did not lie. But now he is inside the Forbidding.”

  “So I must go back to Paranor to find my son?”

  The King of the Silver River turned to face him. “The path that leads to your son does not begin at Paranor. It begins at Taupo Rough, with Penderrin’s companions. The Dwarf, the Rock Troll, and the Elven girl will provide you with keys to the doors that you must open to reach him.”

  He paused. “It is not within the Forbidding that Penderrin faces his greatest danger; it is here. The Druids will know where he has gone and be waiting for him when he returns. If they reach him before you do, they will kill him.”

  “Nothing will happen to my son while I am alive,” Bek said at once.

  He felt a subtle shift in his surroundings as he made that vow, a shimmering in the air, a ripple in the blankets and clusters of flowers, a whispering of breezes, and he knew he had committed himself in a way that could not be undone.

  The old man nodded. “Do you feel the weight of your words, Bek Ohmsford? They have sealed your fate.”

  He stepped aside, an effortless movement that belonged to a much younger man. His ancient face lifted and changed. He was something else now, an old man no longer, another creature entirely, not human, not of this world. Bek backed away involuntarily, hands coming up to ward off the thing that stood before him.

  The King of the Silver River had become a monster.

  “See the future, human!” the monster rasped, teeth showing, eyes bright with hate. “Look upon it! When the Forbidding falls, your world becomes mine!”

  Then the gardens withered before Bek’s eyes, the flowers dying, their colors fading and their stalks wilting. The great shade trees lost their leaves, and their branches took on the look of bones blackened by fire. The grasses dried and cracked, and all sights and sounds of life disappeared. Overhead, the sky lost its brightness, its depthless blue becoming as gray as ashes, misted and empty.

  Bek knew at once he was being given a glimpse of what his world would become if the demon set loose by the unthinking rebel Druids was successful in bringing down the Forbidding and setting free its denizens. When that happened, his world would become the world of the Forbidding. It would be the end of everything that mattered.

  Do not fail.

  The words echoed softly in the rapidly diminishing sweep of daylight, and Bek turned swiftly to seek the King of the Silver River, to protest that he would not, to give fresh voice to his promise to do as he had been asked, but found he was alone.

  He woke with a gasp, jerked from his sleep by a sense of impending horror, his body racked by pain and fever and his mind roiling with wild, uncontrollable emotions that careened through him like tiny razors, jagged edges cutting. He tried to speak and could not. He tried to see, to discover where he was, but his surroundings were blurred and indistinct. He felt a slight rolling motion beneath him and heard the creak and groan of wood and metal fastenings, of lashings and the wind’s steady rush. He was aboard a ship, but he couldn’t understand how he had gotten there.

  Penderrin is inside the Forbidding!

  It was his first thought, and the realization all but stopped his heart. Pen, in that monstrous prison, where so much of what was evil in the world had been banished. That the King of the Silver River would send his son to such a place was impossible for him to understand. How could a mere boy have any chance at all of surviving? How could he hope to find his aunt and bring her back again when everything he encountered would be looking to kill him?

  But it is not inside the Forbidding that Penderrin faces his greatest danger.

  “Bek, can you hear me?”

  He took a deep, steadying breath and blinked against the haze that clouded his vision. A face swam into view, young and with skin ghostly pale, framed with a helmet of close-cropped black hair. A slender hand reached out to touch his cheek. “Can you hear me?”

  He nodded, his mouth too dry to allow him to speak. Seeing his difficulty, she raised his head from the bedding on which he lay, brought a cup of water to his lips, and allowed him to sip.

  Intense dark eyes peered into his. “Do you remember me?” she asked. “I’m Bellizen. I’m Trefen Morys’s friend.”

  He nodded weakly, remembering nothing. “Where am I?”

  “Aboard Swift Sure. You have been very sick, Bek. You were badly hurt. A knife wound deep in your side and an arrow through your shoulder. You have been delirious for two days, fighting off a fever. I think it has broken finally.”

  It all came back to him in a rush. His escape from Paranor with Rue, helped by the young Druid Trefen Morys, the battle to reach Swift Sure with the Gnome Hunters attacking from every quarter in an effort to stop them, his collapse moments after finally managing to reach the rope ladder, and then—nothing. This girl had been aboard the airship waiting for them. He remembered looking up into her face as they placed him on the deck and she bent to tend his wounds.

  “You helped me,” he said.

  “Healing is my Druid skill,” she replied, giving him a quick, reassuring smile. “Rue sails the airship, Trefen lends her a hand where it is needed, and I care for you. We each have our task. Mine seemed the harder for a time; I was afraid I was going to lose you.”

  He thought back to the dreams and nightmares of his sleep, already growing distant and vague in his memory. He thought back to the fever dream, to his vision of the King of the Silver River. He had turned the corner into recovery then, he believed. He had been near death, but the dream had brought him back to life. He shivered at the memory of what the dream had shown him, the images of a desiccated, demon-invaded world still fresh in his mind.

  Bellizen gave him another few sips of water from the cup and then laid him back down again. “You still need to rest.”

  She started to rise, but he reached out for her arm. “Is everyone e
lse all right?”

  She turned back. “Rue was hurt, too, though not as badly as you. Several arrow wounds, but they were quick to begin healing once I cleaned them and applied the necessary salves. She moves slowly still, but she is able to sail the airship. Yours was the wound we were most worried about. I did not think we could save you unless we went to Storlock for help from the Healers, but Rue said that was the first place the Druids would look for you. I have some skill with infection and fevers. I worked the front on the Prekkendorran for a year in my early training. We decided not to chance going to Storlock.”

  She stopped, her face turning somber. “I am talking too much. You need to rest. I will tell Rue you are awake.”

  “Wait,” he said again. He swallowed against the tightness in his throat, against the urgency he was feeling at needing to act on his dream. “How long have I been like this?”

  “A little more than three days.”

  Three days. A lifetime. “Where are we?”

  “Above the Streleheim, flying north along the western exposure of the Anar Mountains.” She hesitated. “We stopped last night so that I could collect plants to treat your wound. And to allow you a chance to sleep on solid ground for one night. But Rue said we had to go on this morning, that we could not afford to delay longer. The Druids would be after us, and we needed to find your son before they did. That’s where we are flying.”

  “To Taupo Rough?”

  “To Taupo Rough. You told us just before you lost consciousness that this was where the scrye waters showed him to be.”

  But where he no longer was, Bek thought. Still, it was where they must begin their search for his companions, whose help the King of the Silver River had said they would need. Keys that would open doors to reach him—what did that mean?

  “Rest now,” Bellizen said, touching his arm as she rose.

  He exhaled slowly and lay back, and she was gone before he could say anything more. He lay in the ensuing silence and stared up at the beams of his cabin, at the underside of the decking, at the windows through which the heavy streamers of daylight shone. It was all so familiar. But he had the feeling that the familiar was rapidly vanishing, and that what lay ahead would be as strange and new as the idea of Penderrin and Grianne inside the Forbidding.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, to rest them, and immediately fell asleep.

  THIRTEEN

  When Bek Ohmsford woke, he was alone. He lay in his bed staring up at the same patch of the decking’s underside that he had been looking at when he fell asleep—crossbeams, rough planking, wooden dowels, and iron nails all fitted into place. He felt the sway of the airship and knew she was still flying. Outside, the light was pale and washed of color. It was twilight, he guessed. Or the gray of a new dawn. He wondered how much time had passed. He wondered how far they had come.

  For a while he lay without moving, allowing himself to come fully awake, taking time to test the limits of his strength. He found bound about his waist the compress that protected the knife wound, as well as the bandage to his shoulder. Both wounds ached, but no more than he might have expected them to. He moved his arms and legs without difficulty and even managed to lift himself up on one elbow, although the effort caused a sharp twinge in his injured side.

  He lay back, feeling appreciably better than he had when he had first regained consciousness. Still, he accepted that he was not yet at full strength. He reached for the cup of water that Bellizen had left at his bedside and drank deeply. The water was sweet and cool, and it helped clear his head of sleep. He thought he might be able to get out of bed and up on deck if he took his time. But he would have to try standing and he would have to dress. It would not be easy.

  He was working his way into a sitting position when the door to his cabin opened and Rue appeared.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped, rushing over and pushing him down again. Her face reflected a mix of concern and irritation, but it softened almost at once as she leaned down and kissed him. “Wait a bit. You’re not ready yet.”

  “I feel better,” he said.

  “Apparently. But how you think you feel doesn’t necessarily reflect how you really are.” She sat down beside him. “Didn’t Bellizen tell you how worried we were? You lied to me about that knife wound. It was much worse than you said.”

  “I just wanted to get out of there. I wasn’t thinking about the wound.”

  “We almost lost you, Bek.”

  He smiled. “You can’t lose me as easy as that.”

  “I hope not.” She ran the tip of one finger across his cheek. “Losing you would be too much for me.”

  She kissed him again, and he kissed her back, holding her close, even though it hurt both his side and shoulder to do so. When she pulled away, she brushed back her short-cropped hair and shook her head in despair. “You risk too much, Bek Ohmsford. You take too many chances.”

  “I must have learned that from you,” he answered, laughing. “Let’s be honest for a moment. Who in the world ever took more chances than you?”

  She nodded, conceding the point. “But you feel better, do you?” She held her hand against his forehead for a moment. “Your fever has broken; you’re much cooler. Earlier, you were burning up. And delirious. Thrashing and talking about things none of us could understand. You were dreaming. Or having nightmares. Do you remember any of it?”

  “I remember what matters,” he said quietly.

  Then he told her of his vision and of the words of the King of the Silver River. He was surprised to see her cry when she learned that Pen was inside the Forbidding. But immediately afterward she was angry and quick to blame Grianne. “If not for her, none of this would be happening.” Their lives were caught up in hers, snared in her Druid machinations and political maneuverings, held prisoner by her web of intrigues and subterfuges. She might not be the Ilse Witch any longer, but as Ard Rhys she inspired the same hostility and enmity. Anyone connected with her, whether by blood or by alliance, suffered as a result. None of them would ever be free of her entanglements.

  Bek tried to reason with her, but there was no doing so while her son was in such terrible danger and her anger so great because of it, so he quickly gave it up, instead turning the discussion a different way.

  “You did the right thing by keeping us flying toward Taupo Rough. If the King of the Silver River is to be believed, our chance for helping Pen lies in first finding his companions.”

  She frowned at him. “Are we to believe him, Bek? Are we to believe any of those who harbor secrets? We know better than to trust the Druids. Should we trust a creature like the King of the Silver River any farther?”

  Bek shrugged. “I think we have to. Pen trusted him.”

  “Which put our son inside the Forbidding. You make my point.”

  “But maybe we have to extend our trust a little farther in order to get him out again. After all, what other choice do we have? We haven’t another way of reaching Pen.”

  “I hate this!” she snapped. “I hate that everything we do is dictated by these secret keepers, Faerie and Druid alike. Everything that has happened is their doing. We are just their pawns!”

  He nodded. “I know what we are. But we are thinking pawns, and in the end we will make our own decisions. For now, we have to follow the path we have been put upon and hope that it leads us to where we want to go. That path takes us first to Taupo Rough.”

  She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “All right. Taupo Rough.” She looked out the window at the graying light. “Dusk comes. You’ve been asleep for more than a day, but we traveled on while you slept. We should reach the village before dawn. You should go back to sleep while you can. Or would you like something to eat first?”

  He chose to eat, and she sat with him while he did. He was heartened to find that her anger gradually lessened and her mood lightened, and he did not argue with her when she told him to go back to sleep afterward. She kissed him and told him she loved him, and he told
her that he loved her, too. It was as much as they needed to say. It was enough to leave things at that.

  He slept then, surprised to discover that sleep came again so quickly and easily. He was still sleeping when Rue reappeared to tell him that they were almost at their destination. She helped him sit up and then stand, and when he found he was strong enough to do more, she helped him dress and walked him up on deck. It was night still, but the first tinges of dawn were visible east along the crest of the mountains. The land they sailed through was stark and barren, a vast sweeping plain to the west that climbed into foothills east, which in turn rose to the jagged majesty of the Charnals. Small clumps of trees, tiny silver-web streams, and small lakes that reflected the moonlight brightened an otherwise rocky terrain. Bek knew that country. He had explored it with Rue once upon a time. But few expeditions went that way, and he had not been there in years.

  Trefen Morys was at the helm and nodded to him as he climbed into the pilot box. “Good to see you looking well again,” he said.

  Bellizen came over from the port railing and joined them, her pale oval face shining with moonlight. “Are we close, Rue?”

  Rue Meridian nodded, then said to Bek, “Tell them everything you told me. They need to hear it from you.”

  Bek did so, his words floating away from him as he spoke them in the soft rush of the wind, the night air swift and cool, the world vast and dark about their little circle. He covered everything, making certain to include the words of the King of the Silver River that suggested the Ard Rhys was alive and that Pen could reach her.

  When he was finished, Bellizen spoke first. “It sounds so impossible. A boy is the only one who can bring the Ard Rhys back? A boy with no magic, no special skills?” She looked quickly at Rue. “I do not doubt his determination, but I do question the reason for the choosing of him.”

  “No more than I,” Rue said. “But Bek keeps nothing from us; the secrets for which we seek answers belong to the King of the Silver River. If we wish to discover those answers, we will have to discover them another way. Pen might know some of them. The Ard Rhys might know the rest.”