Straken

Twenty–Two

No matter how often she scowled at him, he just wouldn’t stop talking about it. «Such power, Straken Queen! Such incredible power! No one can match you—no one who is or ever was! I sensed you were special, I did, Grianne of the trees! When I first saw you from my hiding place and knew you for who you were, I knew, too,what you were! It was in your eyes and the way you carried yourself. It was in your voice when you first spoke to me. You awoke in a prison, sent by your enemies to be destroyed, and still you showed no fear!That is evidence of real power!»

She let him go on mostly because she didn’t know how to shut him up. Weka Dart was a bundle of pent–up energy, bouncing off the cavern walls and skittering across the uneven floor, darting this way and that, rushing ahead and then wheeling back, a wild thing in search of an outlet. She didn’t think he could help himself, that was just the way he was, a creature of ungovernable whims and uncontrollable urges. He had been like that on the journey to the Forbidding’s version of the Hadeshorn, so his hyperactivity was not a surprise.

In any case, she was too tired to do much more than put one foot in front of the other and press on.

« How much farther?» she asked at one point.

« Not far, not far,” he said, clashing back to take her hand, which she yanked away irritably. «The tunnels open onto the Pashanon just ahead, and then we will be back outside in the fresh air and light!»

It was all relative, she supposed, picturing the world that waited with its greasy air and its dingy skies.

She would not know true fresh air and light again ever if she did not get back into her own world. She found herself thinking again of the boy who was coming to find her, the salvation she had been promised by the Warlock Lord. He seemed such an impossibility that she could not make herself accept that he was real. But if he wasn’t, she was trapped there forever. So she kept alive a faint hope that somehow he would appear, whether that appearance was reflected accurately in the words of the promise or in some less easily discernible way. She just knew it had better happen soon because she was beginning to fail.

She took a moment to measure the truth of that statement and found it accurate. It was happening in subtle ways—ways she did not think she could reverse while trapped within the Forbidding. Her physical strength was eroded, the result of poor food and drink, a lack of sleep, and the debilitating struggles she had waged with Tael Riverine. But her emotional and psychological strengths had been drained, as well, and those in a more direct and damaging way. She had been forced to use the magic several times, and each time she had felt something change inside her. It was bad enough that she was forced to use it at all—worse still that she was forced to use it in such horrifying ways. Assimilating with the Furies had torn apart her psyche. Resisting the power of the conjure collar had all but broken her spirit.

But her confrontation with the Graumth had reduced her to a new level of despair, one so fraught with bad feelings that she was literally afraid of calling up the magic again. It was the way the wishsong had responded. She should have been thankful she still had command of it after all she had been through. She should have welcomed its appearance. But the strength of its response had terrified her. It had been not only greater than she had expected, but also virtually uncontrollable. It hadn’t just surfaced on being summoned, ready to do her bidding. It had exploded out of her, so wild and destructive that she couldn’t hold it back. She had lived with the wishsong for more than thirty years, and she had known before coming into the Forbidding what to expect from it. But that was changed. The magic had taken on a new feel, becoming something she didn’t recognize. It was a strange creature living inside her, threatening her in ways that made her afraid for the first time in years.

What she feared most was that it had evolved because of where she was and that the unforeseen evolution was changing her into something that belonged more to the Forbidding than to her world.

Yet what could she do to stop it?

Weka Dart had probably done as much for her as he could. Debilitated or not, she was the one with the magic. If they were backed into a corner, she was the one who could keep them alive. She would have to put aside her concerns about using the magic. The hunt for them would continue, and it would not end until she was free of the Forbidding or she was dead.

They continued working cautiously through the tunnels below Kraal Reach, and it wasn’t long until there was a brightening of the darkness ahead of them. Within minutes, they had reached a fissure in the mountain rock, one that opened into the clouded mistiness of the Pashanon.

They stood in silence for a moment, staring out onto a broad wetlands pocked by dozens of stagnant pools and vast stands of heavy grasses and thick scrub. The waters of the ponds nearest were covered in greenish slime and smelled of decay. Insects buzzed and chirped from every quarter, swarms of gnats and flies hovered above the surface of the ponds, and snakes slid soundlessly through the shadows.

The wetlands spread away for miles in all directions.

Grianne shook her head in dismay. «How do we get through this?»

Weka Dart looked over at her, eyes bright and teeth showing. «Follow me, Grianne of the wondrous magic, and I will show you.»

Without pausing, he started out through the swamp. She followed with no small amount of misgiving, not certain she should trust his judgment, yet unwilling to be left behind. But the Ulk Bog seemed to know what he was doing. Even though the hazy light was pale and deceptive, he chose their path without hesitating. Now and then he would change course in midstride, turning another way. More than once he reversed himself entirely, muttering about obstacles that hadn’t been there before, that didn’t belong, that had appeared merely to vex him. When a snake crossed his path he simply reached down, snatched it up, and tossed it aside. He didn’t seem afraid of them. He didn’t seem to mind the clouds of insects either. He lapped at them with his tongue, hissed at them to clear his nostrils.

Disgusted by her surroundings, Grianne settled for putting her arm and the sleeve of her tunic across her mouth and nose and lowering her head as far as she could without losing sight of the Ulk Bog. The odor of death permeated the air; she could feel the decay worming its way into her breathing passages. She used a little of the wishsong’s magic to keep it all at bay—not enough to give them away to anyone following, but enough to give her a measure of distance from the foulness. She cast quick glances all about as they went, searching for movement that might signal a pursuit. But nothing of that sort showed itself, and she began to wonder if perhaps chase had not yet been given. It seemed unlikely that the dead Goblins hadn’t been discovered in a changing of the guard, but it was possible. It was possible, as well, that even if they had been discovered, the search for her was still being conducted inside the walls of Kraal Reach and hadn’t yet extended to the Pashanon.

Of course, when it did, she would be tracked down pretty fast if she was still out in the open.

« Is there somewhere we can go to hide?» she asked Weka Dart at one point, hurrying to catch up with him as he slipped eel–like through the swamp.

He gave her an irritated glance, feral features screwed up with concentration, breathing quick and heavy. «A place to hide? Why would we hide, Straken Queen? If we are going to your world, we should go there at once.»

She took a quick breath. She had forgotten that she had not told him of the boy, of the need for the boy to find her before she could go anywhere. «We might not be able to do that,” she said.

He wheeled on her, his face contorted with fury. «What do you mean,We might not be able to do that? What are you saying, Grianne of the broken promises?»

She would not tolerate his insolence or his rebelliousness, not then and not with what was at stake. She snatched his tunic front and yanked him close.

« Don’t question me, little Ulk Bog!» she hissed. «1 didn’t make you a promise about how this would happen. Or even that it would happen. I told you there was a chance I couldn’t do anything to help either of us!»

He hissed back at her, then dropped his head and sulked. «I didn’t mean anything by it. You just upset me. You frightened me. 1 thought you had a plan.»

She released him. «I do, but it relies on help from my own world. Someone is coming to find me, someone who can get through the Forbidding without help from Tael Riverine. We have to wait until he appears. I don’t know when that will be. But if it doesn’t happen before we reach the Dragon Line, then we might have to hide for a while. Do you understand?»

He nodded sullenly. «I understand.»

« Then think about where we might go to do that and stop being so suspicious!»

She kicked at him, and he started off again, skittering away through the grasses. There was no point in telling him everything. Certainly not that she was waiting for a mysterious boy, for something of which she could barely conceive, for a miracle. She hated having told him she would try to get him out of the Forbidding. She would not have done so if there had been any other way of securing his help. She had no idea if there was a way to free him. Or even if such freedom was a good idea. In fact, it probably wasn’t. But she would have said or done anything to escape Tael Riverine and thwart his plan to make her the bearer of his spawn. She shuddered at the thought of that, determined that she would die before she would let herself be taken by him again.

They slogged on through the fading daylight, nightfall tracking them west until, sweeping slowly across the flats, it began to overtake them. They crossed out of the swamp and found dry ground beyond, a wintry plain in which the grasses were as dry as old bones, crackling beneath their feet as they stepped through them. Ahead the land stretched away, bleak and empty, crisscrossed by deep ravines and dotted by hummocks.

After a time, Weka Dart dropped back to walk beside her.

« I didn’t mean what I said before.» He looked at her with his sharp, restless eyes, and then glanced away quickly. «I know you keep your promises. I know you haven’t lied to me. If anyone has lied …» He shook his head. «I can’t help myself, you know. I have lied about everything all my life because that is how Ulk Bogs are. That is how we live. That is how we stay alive. We lie to keep others from gaining an advantage over us.»

***

« I don’t think lying does as much for you as you think,” she replied. «Do you know what they say about lies? They say that lies have a way of coming back to haunt you.»

He shrugged. «I just want you to know that I will change when you take me to your country. I won’t lie anymore. Or, at least, I will try hard not to lie. I will be a good companion for you, Grianne of the kind eyes. I will help you do your work, whatever your work is. You will see that I am always there to do your bidding. Here, I would do the bidding of a Straken to stay alive. I would do it because I would have no choice. But it will not be like that with you. I will do your bidding because I want to. Because I respect you.

She sighed wearily. «You don’t know me well enough to promise that, Weka Dart. I am not what you think. I have dark secrets in my life. 1 have a history that is every bit as bad as that of Tael Riverine. I might not be like the demon now, but I was once, not so long ago.» She paused. «I might still be like him in some ways.»

But the Ulk Bog shook his head stubbornly. «No, you are not like him. You could never be like him.»

But I was like him,she thought, the weight of the admission infusing her with a sadness she could barely stand.I could be like him again.

Ahead, the flats turned rocky and were eroded by gullies and pocked by wormholes, the grasses and scrub disappearing entirely, the whole of the landscape changing abruptly to something Grianne hadn’t seen before. Weka Dart, who was walking next to her but paying little attention to the land into which they were walking, suddenly caught sight of where they were going and drew up short, putting out his arm urgently.

« Wait, stay where you are!» he snapped.

He scanned the rocky flats, searching for something, then hissed sharply. «This wasn’t here before!» he exclaimed. «This is new! They’ve migrated from somewhere else and set up their colony here! How long, I wonder? Very recent. Very.»

She looked down at him. «What are you talking about?»

He gave her one of his frightening grins, the ones that showed all his needle–sharp teeth. «Asphinx! This flat is riddled with them.»

« The snakes?»

His head cocked. «Do you know about them?»

She did. Asphinx had been exiled to the Forbidding with the other dark things of Faerie. Except for one that had been sealed in a crevice by the Stone King, Uhl Belk, in the caverns of the Hall of Kings to guard the Black Elfstone. Walker Boh, before he became a Druid, had been bitten while searching for the talisman, and his arm had turned to stone. The story was a part of Bek’s histories of the Shannara kin, a story she remembered as crucial to what happened to Walker later in his transformation into Allanon’s heir.

She glanced back at the flats. «How many are out there?»

He shrugged. «Thousands. Want to have a look?»

« No, I don’t want to have a look. Can we get around them?»

He gestured left. «This way. Stay off the rocks and you won’t have to deal with them. But watch your step anyway. If one bites you, you will make a nice statue for the birds to perch on.»

They walked carefully around the colony, staying on the grassy fringe and keeping well back from where the rocks began. It took them a long time to get all the way to the other side, and by then darkness had settled in so thoroughly that it was difficult to see more than a dozen feet.

Weka Dart took a quick visual survey of their surroundings and nodded. «We’ll camp over there, in that stand of wincies.» He gestured toward a small grove of needled trees that looked like diseased pines. «Wincies give us some protection. Snakes don’t like their scent, and flying things can’t get through the screen of their branches without first landing, which they won’t do at night. A good place for us to get some rest.»

Grianne glanced back the way they had come, toward Kraal Reach. «Do you think they have begun to track us yet?»

« Oh, yes.» Weka Dart sounded indifferent. «The Straken Lord will have found his guards and your discarded collar. He will have determined which way you have gone. He will have sent Hobstull and his minions to bring you back.» His dark eyes glittered in the fading light. «His magic is very powerful, Grianne Ohmsford. Very powerful. But not so powerful as yours.»

She knelt in front of the Ulk Bog. «Listen to me. I know you want me to take you out of the Forbidding, and I have promised I will try. But if Hobstull and whatever dark things he commands catch up to us, I want you to leave me to deal with them. I want you to find someplace to hide—and don’t let them see you. Don’t give yourself away.» She paused. «They don’t know about you yet, do they?»

He snorted. «Of course they know about me. Tael Riverine will have determined my presence as easily as he will have recognized your absence. Running and hiding will do me no good. I settled my fate by coming to you in the dungeons of Kraal Reach, Straken Queen. That is why it is so important that you take me with you. If I remain in the world of the Jarka Ruus, I am dead. Now, come.»

She ignored the sinking feeling in her stomach and followed him to the trees he called wincies. They were tall, spidery hardwoods with long, thin, whiplike branches that interlaced and, at some points, knotted together. With Weka Dart leading, they slipped into their midst, ducking more than once to get through, wending their way into the center of the grove. The Ulk Bog made a quick check of their surroundings and determined them safe.

« Now you should sleep while I keep watch,” he told her. «We must set out early, and you will need your strength. Go ahead. Sleep.»

Too tired to argue, she lay down obediently. She closed her eyes, thinking to do little more than nap. Her mind was awash in doubts and fears, in worries of what they would have to do to stay alive another day. Images of her imprisonment and of the creatures that had threatened her paraded like specters. She felt the magic of the conjure collar even as she slept, ripping her apart, draining her strength, and filling her with pain.

She would never sleep again, she thought, and was asleep in seconds.

Her waking thoughts followed her into her sleep and became her dreams, dark and menacing. The Straken Lord tracked her down shadowy corridors, close behind but just out of sight. He carried in one hand the conjure collar with which he would bind her to him, its fastenings glittering like teeth. Other creatures from the Forbidding appeared in front of her, creatures of all sizes and shapes, their features not entirely distinct, but their intentions clear. Winged monsters clung to the ceiling overhead, with claws that gripped like iron, threatening to drop on top of her if she dared to slow. She ran from all of them, blindly and helplessly, with no destination in mind and no end in sight.

She came awake to the sound of howling wolves, and a terrified gasp escaped her lips.

« Hssstt!» Weka Dart whispered in her ear. He was crouched next to her in the darkness, a vague shape barely distinguishable from the night. «Demonwolves! They’ve found us!»

She tried to scramble to her feet, but he forced her down again, hissing, «No, no, don’t move! Stay still! They don’t know exactly where we are and we don’t want to tell them. Let them come to us!»

She panicked. «But they’ll—”

« They’ll go the way I want them to go, Straken Queen. They’ll go the way of dead things!»

She forced herself to remain calm while trying to sort through what he was talking about. He didn’t seem panicked. He didn’t even seem particularly worried. He stared past her east, toward Kraal Reach and the sound of the howling as it drew steadily louder, drawing nearer.

She realized suddenly that she was cold. She glanced down and saw that she was missing her cloak.

Weka Dart glanced over quickly. «They have your scent well and good. But they won’t have you, Grianne of the wincie woods!»

The howls were very close, coming fast, and there were other sounds as well, shouts and cries of other creatures as they urged the demonwolves on. The pursuit was heated, a sense of expectancy reverberating in the wildness of its sounds.

Then suddenly, with a swiftness that turned her stomach to ice, everything changed. The howls turned to screams and growls filled with rage. The shouts and cries turned to shrieks filled with terror. The pitch rose and the rawness sharpened, and the night was alive with a cacophony that transcended anything Grianne Ohmsford had ever heard. Her pursuers were under attack themselves and fighting for their lives.

At her side, Weka Dart laughed aloud. «They’ve found what they were searching for, but not what they expected, Straken Queen! Listen to them! Too bad they weren’t paying better attention to what they were doing! I think maybe they’ve encountered something with teeth sharper than their own!»

She stared at him, and then she remembered.The Asphinx!

Her pursuers had stumbled right into the center of the colony, and the snakes were striking at them. She listened anew to the sounds of the struggle, and the sounds told her everything. «You put my cloak out there in the middle of the snakes!» she exclaimed. «You knew!»

His grin was frightening. «I suspected. They came more quickly than I had thought they would. Your cloak was a lure to draw them away from us. The night is dark and visibility poor. Too bad for them.»

The sounds were dying out, the growls and screams and shrieks turned to whimpers and moans, to gasps that carried even to where she crouched in the trees next to the Ulk Bog. She tried not to listen, but could not help herself. It was destruction of a sort with which she was familiar and from which she could not turn away.

Then everything went still, save for a single lengthy, ragged sob. And then even that was gone.

Weka Dart bent close. «Isn’t the silence beautiful?» he whispered.

When it was light enough to do so, the dawn a faint tinge of pale gray brightness set low against the horizon to the east, they walked back to where the Asphinx colony waited. What Grianne Ohmsford saw left her stunned. Statues filled the flats, sculpted creatures posed in desperate positions of battle and flight. There were demonwolves and Goblins, dozens of each, their bodies and necks twisted, their limbs lifted and crooked, and their mouths open in soundless cries.

In their midst stood Hobstull, his lean body rigid, his narrow face taut, hands closed into fists in recognition of what was happening to him.

All had been turned to stone. Not a one had escaped.

« It happens so quickly when you are bitten repeatedly,” Weka Dart ventured. «No waiting around for the inevitable. No false hope that you might somehow find a cure. You haven’t got more than a minute before it’s over. Better that way.»

He walked to the edge of the field, picked up one end of a thin line, and reeled in Grianne’s cloak, which had been tossed into the center of the killing field. Shaking it out carefully to make certain no snakes had hidden in its folds, he detached the line and handed the cloak back to her. «There, good as ever.»

She took the cloak and stared at him, seeing him in an entirely new light, one that gave her pause.

« I prefer Hobstull as a statue,” he declared, his smile wicked and challenging. «Don’t you?» He dusted off his hands and looked east. «Time to be on our way. The light is good enough for travel. If others are coming, we don’t want to be here to greet them.»

He walked away, and Grianne followed. As she did so, she glanced back a final time, reminded suddenly of her past. The Ilse Witch had used snakes to dispose of her enemies. That had been a long time ago, and she was no longer that person. Or didn’t want to be. But she had felt herself reverting in her battles with the Straken Lord and the Furies. She had felt the magic turning her dark and hard again. It wasn’t so difficult to imagine that, whether she wished it or not, she might be changing into something she had thought safely left behind.

She mulled the possibility as they walked, wondering what she could do to prevent it. It was like trying to hold water in your fingers, you could capture the wetness, but the water itself slipped away. She was that water, and she was running swiftly through the cracks in her determination.

They walked several miles, far enough that she could no longer see the statues and the flats, far enough that she had begun to turn her thoughts again to their destination. She could already see the dark rise of the Dragon Line ahead of them.

Then Weka Dart slowed. «Someone is coming,” he said.

She peered into the distance. At first, she didn’t see anything. The haze and the gloom obscured everything, blending the features of the landscape together. But finally she saw movement. A solitary figure was coming toward them, cloaked and spectral against the still–dark horizon. She tried to make out its features and failed. She could tell only one thing about it.

It was carrying a staff that glowed like fire.