Straken

Twenty–Six

On the wide night–shadowed plains of the Pashanon, Grianne Ohmsford stared in shock as the approaching figure came into the light and its features were revealed.

It was a boy.

At first, she thought she must be mistaken, even though she had been told the boy would come for her, even though she had been looking for him all this time. It was the unexpectedness of his appearance that gave her pause, the way he simply materialized out of the receding night, the ease with which he had found her in the middle of nowhere. But it was more than that. She had just left a killing field, a slaughterhouse of the Forbidding’s creatures turned to stone. She thought the figure must be something come out of that madness. She thought she was seeing a ghost.

« Shades,” she whispered, and stopped walking altogether.

At her side, Weka Dart growled. «What is it, Straken? Who is this creature?»

The boy approached as if there were no hurry, as if he had all the time in the world. He looked haggard and beaten down. He looked to her, she thought suddenly, as she must look to him. His clothing was ragged and his face dirty and careworn. He walked in a way that suggested his journey had been long and hard, and indeed, if he had come from her world, from the world of the Four Lands, it must have been. Though he was clearly young, everything about him was dark and weathered.

Except for the odd staff he carried, which was made of a wood that was polished and smooth and glowed red with bits of fire.

He walked right up to her and stopped. «Hello, Aunt Grianne.»

It was Penderrin. Of all the boys she might have imagined, he was the last. She couldn’t say why, but he was. Maybe it was because he was Bek’s son, and it would never have occurred to her that Pen would come for her rather than Bek. Maybe it was just her certainty that if a boy was indeed coming, he would be extraordinary, and Pen was not. He was just an average boy. He lacked his father’s magic, he lacked his mother’s experience. She had met him only a couple of times, and while he was goodhearted and interested in her, he had never seemed special.

Yet there he was, come to her from a place no one else could have come, there when no one else was.

« Penderrin,” she whispered.

She stepped forward, placed her hands on his shoulders, and looked into his eyes to make sure. Then she hugged him to her, holding on to him with a mix of disbelief and gratitude. He was the one, just the fact of his being there was confirmation of what the shade of the Warlock Lord had foretold. She felt his arms come around her as well, and he hugged her back. In that instant, they were bonded in a way that could only have happened under the circumstances of that improbable meeting. Whatever befell her, she would never feel the same way about him again.

She released him and stepped back. «How did you find me? How did you get here?»

He smiled faintly. «It might take a while to explain that.» He held up the glowing staff. «This is what brought me and what will take us both back, once we return to the place I came in at. The runes carved in its surface glow brighter when it gets nearer to you. I just followed their lead.»

She shook her head in disbelief. «I had no idea it could be you. I was told that a boy would come for me, but I never thought it would be Bek’s son.» She gave him another hug. There were tears in her eyes, and she wiped them away quickly. «I am so grateful to you.»

Weka Dart was standing off to one side, a mix of emotions mirrored in his feral features, suspicion fighting with curiosity and hope. She glanced at him, and then turned Pen about to face him. «This is Weka Dart, Pen. He is an Ulk Bog, a creature of the Forbidding. He calls this the world of the Jarka Ruus—the banished ones. What you should know is that he is my friend. He, alone, of all the creatures I have encountered, has tried to help me. Without him, I would be …»

She trailed off. «I don’t know where I would be,” she finished quietly.

Weka Dart beamed. «I am honored to have served the Straken Queen,” he announced, and bowed deeply. He looked up again quickly. «If you are her savior, then perhaps you will be mine, as well. I wish to continue to protect Grianne of the kind heart and powerful magic. I have pledged myself to do so for as long as she needs me. Can you help me? Are you a Straken, too?»

« No,” Grianne said quickly. «Pen is family. He is not a Straken, Weka Dart. He comes only to take me home again.»

« And take me, too?» the Ulk Bog pressed.

« What do you mean?» Pen asked, and then looked at Grianne. «What is he talking about?»

« Leave it alone for now. I have to know more about what you are doing here. I don’t understand why you’ve come instead of your father. Is he all right? He hasn’t been harmed, has he?»

She listened then as he told her everything that had happened since Tagwen had appeared in Patch Run to seek his father’s help. He told her of the little company that had come together in Emberen to start the quest for the tanequil. She learned of the death of Ahren Elessedil and of the dark creatures that had been enlisted by Shadea to hunt Pen down. He told her of the fate of theSkatelow and the Rovers who crewed her and of star–crossed Cinnaminson’s transformation into one of the aeriads. He told her of brave Kermadec and his Rock Trolls. He told her of the tanequil, of its dual nature and of the shaping of the darkwand. By listening, she came to understand how desperate the struggle had been to reach her and how much had been sacrificed so that Pen could find a way to bring her back into the Four Lands.

« I would have thought my father a better choice for this, too,” he finished. «But the King of the Silver River said that I was the one who was needed. I guess it was because my magic allowed me to communicate with the tanequil. Perhaps my father’s couldn’t do that. I don’t know. I only know that I had to come looking for you, that it was important that I try, even if I really didn’t think I could succeed.»

Grianne smiled in spite of herself. «Perhaps the King of the Silver River saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself, Penderrin Ohmsford, because here you are, whether you believed it could happen or not.»

He smiled back. «I’m glad I found you, Aunt Grianne.»

Weka Dart was dancing around again, looking agitated, his craggy features twisting and knotting. «We should leave this place,” he whined anxiously. He glanced back in the direction of the Asphinx colony and the stone statues. «It is dangerous to remain here.»

Grianne nodded. «He is right, Pen. We can continue talking while we travel. We must go as quickly as possible to the doorway out of the Forbidding. Time slips away.»

They began retracing Pens steps, walking west toward the receding darkness, the dim gray brightening of the dawn at their backs. The vast sweep of the Pashanon stretched away before them, its stunted, broken landscape empty of movement. Far distant still to the north, the Dragon Line lifted in stark relief against the horizon. The sky remained clouded and the air hazy as the daylight brightened only marginally the world of the Jarka Ruus.

« I am very sorry to hear about Ahren Elessedil,” she said to Pen after a time. «He was the best of my Druids, the one I could always depend upon. It proved to be so here, at the end, too. But I will miss him.»

In truth, she felt as if her heart would break. Only losing Bek could hurt worse. Ahren had been with her since the formation of the Third Druid Order, the linchpin she had relied upon time and time again. He had committed to her during their return to the Four Lands from Parkasia, and she had come to respect him deeply. She looked off into the distance, took a deep breath, and exhaled wearily.

« I am sorry about your father and mother, too,” she continued, glancing over at him. «It isn’t fair that they should have been brought into this. It isn’t fair that any of you should have—Tagwen, Kermadec, the Rover girl, any who tried to help. I won’t forget. I will try to make things right again, as much as I can.»

« It was their choice,” Pen said. «Just as it was mine. We all wanted to help.»

She shook her head dismissively. «Shadea,” she said softly. «I should have done what Kermadec told me to do a long time ago, I should have rid myself of her. I should have rid myself of them all. Pyson Wence, Terek Molt, Iridia. Even Traunt Rowan. I am the most disappointed in him. I never thought he would turn against me, no matter how bad things got. I let my judgment be clouded. A bad thing for an Ard Rhys to do.»

She was silent for a moment. «How many of my Druids stand with Shadea and those others, Pen?» she asked. «Do you know?»

He shook his head. «Some, I guess. She is Ard Rhys now. The Druids all answer to her. But I don’t know how loyal they are.» He paused. «When I was a prisoner, she was away in Arishaig. She has an alliance with the Prime Minister.»

« Sen Dunsidan,” she whispered. «Another viper. I would expect him to be involved somehow. Shadea would not act without some sort of outside support, and Sen Dunsidan has always hated me.»

With reason,she thought. As the Ilse Witch, she had made his life nightmarish. But he had allied himself with the Morgawr and tried to have her killed. So she had reason to hate him, too. Yet she had forgiven him his maliciousness and thought he had done the same. Clearly, she had shown poor judgment there, as well.

« Are there any I can count upon within the order to support me?»

Pen shook his head. «I don’t know of any. No one came to help me but Khyber.»

She dropped the matter, and they walked in silence for a time. It was wrong of her to ask such things of Pen. He had no way of knowing the answers. Since her disappearance, his time had been spent in flight. The machinations of those at Paranor and elsewhere would not have been his concern, his concern would have been in trying to stay alive. Her answers to questions of that kind would have to wait until she was back in the Four Lands. Then it would be up to her to find them quickly.

Weka Dart was back to skittering about, crisscrossing the land ahead, dashing first this way and then that, chattering to himself, anxious to get where they were going. But she had a feeling about that. Something Pen had said when the Ulk Bog had mentioned him as being savior not only to her but also to him nagged at her.

« Weka Dart!» she called.

He came racing over, eyes bright with excitement. «I am here, Straken Queen.»

« No sign of further pursuit?» she asked. «No sign of Tael Riverine or his creatures?»

The Ulk Bog grinned wickedly. «He won’t have learned of Hobstull’s new employment as a resting post for birds quite yet,” he said. «It will take time for word to reach him. Too much time for him to do anything about it. We will be well away and out of his reach by then.»

« Run on ahead a distance and see if the land is clear that way. I want to turn north soon toward the mountains.»

He glanced in that direction. «Nothing lies there. What is the point of wasting my time … ?»

« Don’t argue, little man!» she snapped. «Remember your promise to serve and protect.»

He was gone without another word, a dark spot rapidly disappearing into the haze. She felt bad about snapping at him, but he responded better when she did, and she needed to talk with Pen alone.

« A word, Pen,” she said to him when Weka Dart was safely away. «I made a promise to the Ulk Bog in return for his help in getting free of the Straken Lord’s prisons. I’ll explain about that later. My promise was that I would do what I could to get him out of the Forbidding and into the Four Lands. He wants to come with us.»

Pen gave her an anxious look. «I thought that was what he meant. But I don’t think we can do it. The darkwand will take only you and me out of the Forbidding. It will not allow anyone else to go with us. The King of the Silver River told me so.»

She had suspected as much. Creatures consigned to the Forbidding by Faerie magic could not be set free without a disruption of the wall that separated the two worlds. The darkwand was not created for that purpose. It was created for putting things back the way they were meant to be.

« I’ll have to tell him,” she said quietly, already wondering how she was going to do that. «I can’t let him think he still has a chance of getting out when I know he doesn’t.»

They walked on, the boy keeping pace with her, his head lowered, his staff serving as a walking stick, its runes glowing softly in the dusky light.

Her thoughts stayed with Weka Dart. He was so convinced that she could do anything, that her Straken powers were omnipotent. He had already made up his mind that she would be able to break him free of the Forbidding and bring him back into the Four Lands. She had warned him not to expect too much, but after the encounter with the Graumth, he had ceased believing there was anything to worry about.

Now she was going to have to disappoint him in the way she had disappointed so many others—by not being able to do enough, by being less able than he needed her to be. She felt shackled by her inability, by her weakness, by her humanity. It was almost better not to have any power than to have a lot. Having a lot always created expectations, and somewhere along the way those expectations would not be met because that was the way the world worked.

« Do you remember when you asked me once if I had any of my father’s magic?» Pen asked her suddenly.

She glanced over at him, happy for the distraction. «I remember.»

« I told you I hadn’t. But that wasn’t entirely true. I hadn’t any of the wishsong’s magic. But I had another kind. It was such a small magic that I didn’t think it worth mentioning. It allowed me to sense what animals and plants and birds were thinking or why they were acting as they were. I didn’t think it was worth anything. I never even told my parents about it. Especially my mother, who is afraid of the Ohmsford magic.»

Grianne nodded. «I know. She is right to be afraid.»

He sighed. «Well, now I think maybe my magic does come from the wishsong. It changed when I took the limb from the tanequil and shaped it into the darkwand. It changed when I began to bond with the darkwand so that it responded to me. I found I could make it do things by humming and singing, in the way of the wishsong.»

« It came late to your father, too,” she said. «He was older than you before he discovered he had use of it. Walker let him see by giving him the Sword of Shannara and telling him he would have to use it. That bonding triggered a surfacing. Just as with you.»

« I sense it changing still. I think I am just beginning to understand what’s there.»

« There is a history of that in our family. It happened with Jair Ohmsford. Do you know the story? His sister had full use of the wishsong, the first of the Ohmsfords to have it. Jair, the brother, had a magic that gave the appearance of being wishsong magic, but was only illusion. Except that some years after their quest to destroy the Ildatch, he discovered that it had evolved and he had the same use of it as she had, even though it had started out as something else.»

She gave him a questioning look. «What’s bothering you?»

He ran his fingers through his shock of reddish hair, tangling it further. «I just thought that since it is my connection with the darkwand that allows us to cross through the Forbidding, maybe there is still a chance for Weka Dart to come with us. If my magic is still changing, if I don’t know what it will do yet, it might turn out that it can help.»

He looked over at her. «So maybe you should wait to tell him. Until we’re sure, I mean.»

She stared at him for a moment, surprised. «I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Pen,” she said finally.

He looked off in the direction the Ulk Bog had gone. «I just don’t think anyone should have to stay here if they don’t want to. I know he is a descendant of one of those consigned to the Forbidding. But that was a long time ago. Things can change. He doesn’t seem so bad to me.»

She smiled to herself. She liked the way he wanted to help Weka Dart, even without knowing anything about him. It spoke volumes about the kind of boy he was, and it made her feel still closer to him. She was glad he was like that. She hoped she would get a chance later to tell her brother so.

« He isn’t so bad,” she said finally.

She tried to tell herself that was so, that being imprisoned in the demon world did not necessarily indicate that the Ulk Bog was beyond redemption. No one was beyond redemption, after all. Wasn’t she proof of that?

Then a scream, a mix of shriek and roar, blew past them like a windstorm, and Pen’s dragon dropped out of the sky and settled to the ground directly in front of them.

High in the towers of Paranor, Trefen Morys turned another corner on another passageway, Bellizen at his heels, and looked for a way out. They had been running ever since they had helped Kermadec escape through the windows of the meeting chamber. Surrounded by Gnome Hunters, they had been lucky to get away themselves. They’d been able to climb up through the heating vents and crawl down the shaft to another room before the Gnomes could discover what they had done.

But the hunt had gone on, and their time and space were running out. The Gnomes knew they were trapped on the upper levels of the Keep, and had blocked all the passageways down. All that was left to the young Druids were the towers above, and even those were being closed off, one by one.

« In here!» he hissed at Bellizen, pulling her through an open door into a storage room filled with Druid cloaks and soft slippers.

The sounds of pursuit already drawing near, he shut the door quietly behind them. He slid the locking bolt into place and looked around wearily. It was just another in an endless series of rooms into which they had fled and tried to hide. This one had a connecting door that led to a second room, and after determining there was no other way out of the one they were in, he took Bellizen with him into the second and locked its door, as well.

The room was tiny, a chamber he had never seen before. It had no other door than the one they had come through. A single narrow window was set in the far wall. When he crossed to open it, he found himself peering out at the north wall and the woods beyond. They were five stories up, and the wall dropped straight down.

He looked at Bellizen, who stood waiting for his assessment. «They might not think to look here.»

But they already had. He could hear them at the door of the first chamber, trying to break through. Eventually, they would. Then they would break through the second door.

He scanned the room from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, and then looked out through the window again to see if he had missed anything. But there was no help to be found anywhere.

They were trapped. Bellizen read it in his eyes and nodded. He walked back to her. «I won’t let them take me,” he said. «I know what will happen if they do.» She nodded, her pale, round face calm, her gaze clear and steady. «I won’t let them take me, either.» «But they will take us,” he said. «There’s too many of them. We’ll be overwhelmed.» She gave him a small smile. «Not if we don’t wait around for that to happen.» She reached for his hands and led him over to the window. She looked out into the afternoon, and then stepped up onto the windowsill. «Come up with me, Trefen.» He did so, deliberately keeping his eyes on her face, refusing to look down. He stood with her in the opening, holding her hands, feeling the cool wind blow over him in a soothing wash. In the room beyond, the door began to splinter and break. «It’s only a short jump,” she said. «It won’t take long.» «I wish we could be here when our mistress returns,” he said. «I would like her to know how much she means to us.» «Someone will tell her,” she replied. She glanced back at the door to their room. «Are you ready?» «I think so,” he said. He took a deep breath. They waited quietly, listening to the sounds without, to the breaking down of the door in the far chamber and then to the thudding of booted feet as the Gnomes rushed to the door that led into their room. «It helps that you are with me,” he said softly.

Bellizen gave him a small smile. Then a horn sounded, its wail deep and ominous, reverberating off the walls and through the rooms of the Keep. Shouts rose from below, and abruptly Paranor came alive in a new and terrible way.

Outside their door, the Gnomes turned and ran, abandoning their efforts. Trefen Morys and Bellizen stared at each other in disbelief, and then they looked out the window where the sounds of activity were loudest.

Thousands of Rock Trolls were striding out of the trees, armored giants forming up battle lines at the gates to the fortress of the Druids.