Morgawr

29

She had been hiding in the darkest place she could find, but in the blackness that surrounded her were the things that hunted her. She did not know what they were, but she knew she must not look at them too closely. They were dangerous, and if they caught even the smallest glimpse of her eyes, they would fall on her like wolves. So she stayed perfectly still and did not look at them, hoping they would go away.

But they refused to leave, and she found herself trapped with no chance to escape. She was six years old, and in her mind she saw the things in the darkness as black-cloaked monsters. They had pursued her for a long time, tracking her with such persistence that she knew they would never stop. She thought that if she could manage to get past them and find her way home to her parents and brother, she would be safe again. But they would not let her go.

She could remember her home clearly. She could see its rooms and halls in her mind. It hadn’t been very large, but it had felt warm and safe. Her parents had loved and cared for her, and her little brother had depended on her to look after him. But she had failed them all. She had run away from them, fled her home because the black things were coming for her and she knew that if she stayed, she would die. Her flight was swift and mindless, and it took her away from everything she knew—here, to this place of empty blackness where she knew nothing.

Now and again, she would hear her brother calling to her from a long way off. She recognized Bek’s voice, even though it was a grown-up’s voice and she knew he was only two years old and should not be able to speak more than a few words. Sometimes, he sang to her, songs of childhood and home. She wanted to call out to him, to tell him where she was, but she was afraid. If she spoke even one word, made even a single sound, the things in the darkness would know where she was and come for her.

She had no sense of time or place. She had no sense of the world beyond where she hid. Everything real was gone, and only her memories remained. She clung to them like threads of gold, shining bright and precious in the dark.

Once, Bek managed to find her, breaking through the darkness with tears that washed away her hunters. A path opened for her, created out of his need, a need so strong that not even the black things could withstand it. She took the path out of her hiding place and found him again, his heart breaking as he watched his little dog lying injured beside him. She told him she was back, that she would not leave him again, and she used her magic to heal his puppy. But the black things were still waiting for her, and when she felt his need for her begin to wane and the path it had opened begin to close, she was forced to flee back into her hiding place. Without his need to sustain her with its healing power, she could not stay.

So she hid once more. The path she had taken to him was closed and gone, and she did not know what she could do to open it again. Bek must open it, she believed. He had done so once; he must do so again. But Bek was only a baby, and he didn’t understand what had happened to her. He didn’t realize why she was hiding and how dangerous the black things were. He didn’t know that she was trapped and that he was the only one who could free her.

“But when you told me you forgave me for leaving you, I felt everything begin to change,” she told him. “When you told me how much you needed me, how by not coming back to you I was leaving you again, I felt the darkness begin to recede and the black things—the truths I couldn’t bear to face—begin to fade. I heard you singing, and I felt the magic break through and wrap me like a soft blanket. I thought that if you could forgive me, after how I had failed you, then I could face what I had done beyond that, all of it, every bad thing.”

They were sitting in the darkness where this had all begun, tucked away in a corner of Redden Alt Mer’s Captain’s quarters, whispering so as not to wake the sleeping Quentin Leah. Shadows draped their faces and masked some of what their eyes would have otherwise revealed, but Bek knew what his sister was thinking. She was thinking he had known what he was doing when he found a way to reach her through the magic of the wishsong. Yet it was mostly chance that he had done so. Or perhaps perseverance, if he was to be charitable about it. He had thought it would take forgiveness to bring her awake. He had been wrong. It had taken her sensing the depth of his need.

“I just wanted to give you a chance to be yourself again,” he said. “I didn’t want you to stay locked away inside, whatever the consequences of coming out might be.”

“They won’t be good ones, Bek,” she told him, reaching over to touch his cheek. “They might be very bad.” She was quiet for a moment, staring at him. “I can’t believe I’ve really found you again.”

“I can’t believe it either. But then I can’t believe hardly anything of what’s happened. Especially to me. I’m not so different from you. Everything I thought true about myself was a lie, too.”

She smiled, but there was a hint of bitterness and reproach. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. You’re nothing like me, save that you didn’t know you were an Ohmsford. You haven’t done the things that I’ve done. You haven’t lived my life. Be grateful for that. You can look back on your life and not regret it. I will never be able to do that. I’ll regret my life for as long as I live. I’ll want to change it every day, and I won’t be able to do that. All of the things I’ve done as the Ilse Witch will be with me forever.”

She gave him a long, hard look. “I love you, and I know you love me, too. That gives me hope, Bek. That gives me the strength I need to try to make something good come out of all the bad.”

“Do you remember everything that happened now?” he asked her. “Everything you did while you were the Ilse Witch?”

She nodded. “Everything.”

“The Sword of Shannara showed it to you?”

“Every last act. All of the things I did because I wanted revenge on Walker. All of the wrongs I committed because I thought I was entitled to do whatever was necessary to get what I sought.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that, but not sorry that I got you back.”

She pushed her long dark hair out of her pale face, revealing the pain in her eyes. “There wasn’t any hope for me unless I discovered the truth about myself. About you and our parents. About everything that happened to us all those years ago. About the Morgawr, especially. I couldn’t be anyone other than who the Morgawr had made me to be—and who I had made myself to be—until that happened. I hate knowing it, but it’s freeing, too. I don’t have to hide anymore.”

“There are some things you don’t know yet,” he said. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to decide where to start. “The people we’re traveling with, the survivors of Walker’s company, all have reason to hate you. They don’t, not all of them anyway, but they have suffered losses because of you. I guess you need to know about those losses, about the harm you’ve caused. I don’t think there’s any way to avoid it.”

She nodded, her expression one of regret mixed with determination. “Tell me then, Bek. Tell me all of it.”

He did so, leaving nothing out. It took him some time to do so, and while he was speaking, he became aware of someone else entering the room, easing over next to him, and sitting close. He knew without looking who it was, and he watched Grianne’s eyes shift to find those of the newcomer. He kept talking nevertheless, afraid that if he looked away, he would not be able to continue. He related his story of the journey to Parkasia, of finding the ruins and Antrax, confronting her, escaping into the mountains and being captured, breaking free of Black Moclips and the rets, coming down into the bowels of Castledown to find that Walker had already tricked her into invoking the cleansing magic of the Sword of Shannara, taking her back into the mountains, and finding their way at last to what remained of the company of the Jerle Shannara.

When he had finished, he looked over his shoulder to find Rue. She was staring at Grianne. The look on her face was indecipherable. But the tone of her voice when she spoke to his sister was unmistakable.

“The Morgawr has come searching for you,” she said. “His ships are anchored offshore. In the morning, he will search these ruins. If he finds us, he will try to kill us. What are you going to do about it?”

“Rue Meridian.” His sister spoke the other’s name as if to make its owner real. “Are you one of those who have not forgiven me?”

Little Red’s eyes were fierce as they held Grianne’s. One hand came up to rest possessively on Bek’s shoulder. “I have forgiven you.”

But Bek did not miss the bitterness in her voice or the challenge that lay behind it. Forgiveness is earned, not granted, it said. I forgive you, but what does it matter? You still must demonstrate that my forgiveness is warranted.

He glanced at his sister and saw sadness and regret mirrored on her smooth, pale face. Her eyes shifted to where Rue’s hand rested on his shoulder, and the last physical vestiges of the girl of six that she had been for all those days and nights of her catatonia vanished. Her face went hard and expressionless, the mask she had perfected to keep the demons of her life at bay when she was the Ilse Witch.

She looked back at her brother for just a moment. “I told you,” she said to him, “that the consequences of my waking would not all be good ones.” She smiled with cold certainty. “Some will be very bad.”

There was a long pause as the two women attempted to stare each other down, each laying claim to something that the other wanted and could never have. A part of a past gone by. A part of a future yet to be. Time and events would determine how much of either they could share, but there was a need for compromise and neither had ever been very good at that.

“Maybe you should meet the others of the company, as well,” Bek said quietly.

Beginnings in this situation, he thought, might prove tougher than endings.

At dawn, they stood together in the shelter of a tower’s crumbling turret, Bek and Grianne and Rue, perched on its highest floor so that they could look out across the ruins to where the Morgawr’s airships were beginning to stir. By now, Grianne had met all of the ship’s company and been received with a degree of acceptance that Bek had not expected. If he was honest about it, Rue had proven to be the most hostile of the company. The two women were locked in some sort of contest that had something to do with him, but about which he understood little. Unable to deflect their mutual disdain, he had settled for keeping them civil.

Across the broad green sweep of the grasslands, the airships of the Morgawr were visible in the clear pale light of a sunrise that heralded an impossibly beautiful day. Bek saw the sticklike figures of the walking dead, standing at their stations, awaiting the commands that would set them in motion. He saw the first of the Mwellrets, cloaked and hooded against the light, emerging from belowdecks, climbing through the hatchways. Most important of all, he saw the Morgawr, standing at the forward railing of Black Moclips, his gaze, searching, directed toward the ruins where they hid.

“You were right,” Grianne said softly, her slight body rigid within her robes. “He knows we’re here.”

The others of the company were settled in below, hiding within the hull and pontoons of the Jerle Shannara, waiting to see what would happen. Alt Mer knew of Bek’s fears, but he could do nothing about them. The Jerle Shannara could not fly if they did not put up her masts and sails, and the noise alone of doing so would give them away. Even if the Morgawr tried to search the ruins, there was reason to think he would not find them, that the magic of the spirit dweller would refuse him entry and lead him back outside without his even realizing it, just as it had done to Walker. But that was a huge gamble; if it failed, they were trapped and outnumbered. Escape would be impossible unless they could overcome their enemies through means that at this point were a mystery.

Bek did not feel good about their chances. He did not believe that the Morgawr would be fooled by the magic of the spirit creature. Everything suggested otherwise. The warlock had tracked them this far without being able to see them and with no visible trail to follow. He seemed to know that they were hiding in the ruins. If he could determine all that, he would be quick enough to realize what the spirit dweller was doing to him when he tried to penetrate the ruins and would probably have a way to counteract it.

If that happened, they would have to face him.

He glanced at Grianne. She had never answered Rue’s question about what she intended to do to stop the Morgawr. In fact, his sister had said almost nothing past greeting those to whom she was introduced. She had not asked them if they had forgiven her, as she had asked Rue. She had not apologized for what she had done to them and to those they had lost. All of the softness and vulnerability that she had evidenced on waking from her sleep was gone. She had reverted to the personality of the Ilse Witch, cold and distant and devoid of emotion, keeping her thoughts to herself, the people she encountered at bay.

It worried Bek, but he understood it, too. She was protecting herself in the only way she could, by closing off the emotions that would otherwise destroy her. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel anything or that she no longer believed that she must account for the wrongs she had committed. But if she gave them too much consideration, if she gave her past too great a hold over her present, she would be unable to function. She had survived for many years through strength of will and rigid control. She had kept her emotions hidden. Last night, she had discovered that she could not let go of those defenses too quickly. She was still his sister, but she could not turn away from being the Ilse Witch either.

She was walking a fine line between sanity and madness, between staying out in the light of the real world and fleeing back into the hiding place she had only just managed to escape.

“We have to decide what we’re going to do if he comes into the ruins and finds us,” Bek said quietly.

“He is only one man,” Rue said. “None of the others have his magic to protect them. The rets can be killed. I’ve killed them myself.”

She sounded so fierce when she said it that Bek turned to look at her in spite of himself. But when he saw the look on her face he could not bring himself to say anything back.

Grianne had no such problem. “What you say is true, but the Morgawr is more powerful than any of you or even all of you put together. He is not a man; he is not even human. He is a creature who has kept himself alive a thousand years through use of dark magic. He knows a hundred ways to kill with barely a thought.”

“He taught you all of them, I expect,” Rue said without looking at her.

The words had no visible effect on Grianne, though Bek flinched. “What can we do to stop him?” he asked, looking to avoid the confrontation he could feel building.

“Nothing,” his sister answered. She turned now to face them both. “This isn’t your fight. It never was. Rue was right in asking me what I intended to do about the Morgawr. He is my responsibility. I am the one who must face him.”

“You can’t do that,” Bek said at once. “Not alone.”

“Alone is best. Distractions will only jeopardize my chances of defeating him. Anyone whom I care about is a distraction he will take advantage of. Alone, I can do what is necessary. The Morgawr is powerful, but I am his match. I always have been.”

Bek shook his head angrily. “Once, maybe. But you were the Ilse Witch then.”

“I am the Ilse Witch still, Bek.” She gave him a quick, sad smile. “You just don’t see me that way.”

“She’s right about this,” Rue interrupted before he could offer further argument. “She has magic honed on the warlock’s grinding stone. She knows how to use it against him.”

“But I have the same magic!” Bek snapped, hissing in anger as he sought to keep his voice down. “What about Ahren Elessedil? He has the power of the Elfstones. Shouldn’t we use our magics together? Wouldn’t that be more effective than you facing the Morgawr alone? Why are you being so stubborn about this?”

“You are inexperienced at using the wishsong, Bek. Ahren is inexperienced at using the Elfstones. The Morgawr would kill you both before you could find a way to stop him.”

She walked over to stand beside Rue Meridian, a deliberate act he could not mistake, and turned back to face him. “Everything that has happened to me is the Morgawr’s doing. Everything I lost, I lost because of him. Everything I became, I became because of him. Everything I did, I did because of him. I made the choices, but he dictated the circumstances under which those choices were made. I make no excuses for myself, but I am owed something for what was done. No one can give that back to me. I have to take it back. I have to reclaim it. I can only do that by facing him.”

Bek was incensed. “You don’t have to prove anything!”

“Don’t I, Bek?”

He was silent, aware of how untenable his argument was and how implacable his sister’s thinking. She might not have anything to prove to him, but she did to a lot of others. Most important of all, she had something to prove to herself.

“I won’t be whole again until I settle this,” she said. “It won’t stop if we escape. I know the Morgawr. He will keep coming until he finds a way to destroy me. If I want this matter ended, I have to end it here.”

Bek shook his head in disgust. “What are we supposed to do while you go out there and sacrifice yourself? Hope for the best?”

“Take advantage of the confusion. Even if I am killed, the Morgawr will not emerge unscathed. He will be weakened and his followers will be in disarray. You can choose to face them or escape while they lick their wounds. Either is fine. Talk about it with the others and decide among you.”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “You have done everything you could for me, Bek. You have no reason to feel regret. I am doing this because I must.”

She turned to Rue Meridian. “I like it that you are not afraid of anyone, even me. I like it that you love my brother so much.”

“Don’t do this,” Bek pleaded.

“Take care of him,” his sister said to Rue, and without another word or even a single glance back she walked away.

Ordering the rest of the fleet to remain anchored offshore, safely away from any attempts at sabotage, the Morgawr flew Black Moclips over the silver-tipped surface of the Blue Divide to the grassy flats of Mephitic. He landed his vessel and tied her off, leaving Aden Kett and his walking dead on board with a handful of guards to watch over them. Then, tossing a rope ladder over the railing of the starboard pontoon, he took Cree Bega and a dozen of his Mwellrets down off the ship and toward the castle.

They crossed the grasslands openly and deliberately, making no effort to hide their approach. If the survivors of the Jerle Shannara were hiding within the walls of the ruins, the Morgawr wanted them to see him coming. He wanted them to have time to think about it before he reached them, to let their anticipation build, and with it their fear. The Ilse Witch might not be frightened, but her companions would be. They would know by now how he feasted on the souls of the living. They would know how the Federation crew he had captured aboard Black Moclips had reacted while it was happening and what they looked like afterwards. At least one of them was likely to break down and reveal the presence of the others. That would save him time and effort. It would allow him to conserve his energy for dealing with the witch.

He told Cree Bega what he wanted. The Mwellrets were to follow his lead. They were not to talk. When they found their quarry, they were to leave the Ilse Witch to him. The others were theirs to do with as they wished. It would be best if they could kill them swiftly or render them unconscious so that they could be carried outside and disposed of.

Above all, they were to remember that there was something else living in the ruins, a spirit creature possessed of magic and capable of generating tremendous power. If it was aroused or attacked, it could prove extremely dangerous. Nothing was to be tampered with once they were inside, because the creature considered the castle its own and would fight to protect it. It cared nothing for the Jerle Shannara and her crew, however. They were not a part of its realm, and it would not protect them.

He said all this without being entirely sure it was true. It was possible that he was wrong and that the castle’s inhabitant would attack for reasons the Morgawr could not even guess at. But no good purpose was served in telling that to the Mwellrets. All of them were expendable, even Cree Bega. What mattered was that he himself survive, and he had no reason to think that he wouldn’t. His magic could protect him from anything. It always had.

His plan, then, was simple. He would find the witch and kill her, retrieve the books of magic from the airship, and escape. If he could achieve the former and not the latter, it would be enough. With the Druid dead, his little witch was the only one left who might cause him problems later. The books of magic were important, but he could give them up if he had to.

He began thinking about what it meant to have the last of the Druids gone. Paranor would lie uninhabited and vulnerable—protected by magic, yes, but accessible nevertheless to someone like himself who knew how to counteract that magic. It was Walker who had kept him at bay all these years. Now, perhaps, what had belonged to the Druids could be his.

The Morgawr permitted himself a smile. The wheel had come full circle on the Druids. Their time was over. His time was not. He need only dispose of one small girl. Ilse Witch or not, she was still only that.

Ahead, the broken-down walls and parapets of the ancient castle reared against the sunrise, stark and bare. His anticipation of what was waiting within compelled him to walk more swiftly to reach them.