The Black Irix

* * *

More than a year had passed since his return from the Skull Kingdom, and Shea Ohmsford was finally beginning to sleep through the night. For a long time, that had been unthinkable. Nightmares of what had been–and what might have been–plagued him like demon–spawn, startling him awake and rendering him sleepless afterward. The hauntings drained him, and for a time he believed he was in danger of dying. He lost weight, color, and spirit. He lacked not only the energy to do his regular work at the inn, but the will to do much of anything else.

Then Flick, his always–brother and forever–best–friend, took the unusual step of visiting a woodswoman who specialized in potions and spells to cure maladies and who, it was said, could divine the future. Her name was Audrana Coos, and she was neither young nor old, but somewhere between, and she was a recluse and an object of constant derision by all but those who had gone to her for help. Flick, never given to anything that wasn’t practical and solidly based in demonstrable fact–and who would never have gone to such a person before the quest for the Sword of Shannara–made a leap of faith. Or perhaps, more accurately, a leap of desperation. And he went to see her.

There, deep in the Duln, miles from his home, he sat at a table with this odd–looking woman with her hair braided in colored lengths, her face smooth as a child’s and painted with brilliant rainbow stripes, and her arms encased in gold and silver bracelets from which tiny bells dangled, watching closely as she read the waters of a scrying bowl and determined the merit of his cause.

“He is very ill,” she announced solemnly, her voice unexpectedly deep and scratchy. “He agonizes over what he might have done … and what he did. He is damaged by the closeness he experienced to the Dark Lord, and he festers with the poisons released in him due to his contact with the Skull Bearers. Long has his sickness waited for its chance, and now it breaks free of its fastenings and seeps through him. His life slips away.”

She paused, as if considering her own words, and then began rifling through shelves of tiny bottles, leather sacks laced tight with drawstrings, and packets whose contents were hidden from Flick, her slender hands closing at last on a small brown bottle that she handed to him.

“You must give him this,” she told him. “Do so in secret; do not let him see you do it. If he sees you, he may resist. Give it all to him in a single serving. Mix it with a drink he enjoys and make certain he drinks it down. All of it. Do it immediately upon your return.”

Flick studied the bottle doubtfully. “Will it cure him of his dreams and wasting sickness? Will he come back to the way he used to be?”

Audrana Coos put a finger to her lips. “Speak not of other possibilities, Valeman. Do not even think of them. Do not doubt what I tell you. Just do as I say.”

Flick nodded and got to his feet. “I thank you for your help. For trying to help my brother.”

He began searching for coins to pay her, but she waved him away. “I will not accept pay for giving aid to one who stood against the Warlock Lord. I will not profit from one who can be said to have saved the Four Lands and all those who dwell within.”

She paused, cocking her head to one side and looking down again into the scrye waters, which had suddenly begun to ripple anew. “A moment. There is something more.”

Flick peered down into the waters, but could see nothing.

“Be warned,” the seer whispered. “Not long after today your brother will journey to a faraway place on a quest of great importance. You will not wish it. You will not approve. But you cannot stop him, and you should not try.”

“This can’t be true,” Flick declared, shaking his head for emphasis. “Shea has said repeatedly that he will never go on another quest.”

“Even so.”

“He has said he will never put himself in danger like that again, and he is staying in the Vale with me and Father!”

“Nevertheless.”

Flick dismissed the reading out of hand. He rose, thanked Audrana Coos once more, and with the potion tucked into his pocket set out for home.

When he got there, late in the day, he considered his choices. Even though he had possession of the potion, he was not entirely convinced of its value. What was to say it would not prove harmful to his brother in spite of what he had been told? Maybe he had been deceived. Maybe the claims of effectiveness were exaggerated.

But he could not persuade himself that it was better to do nothing than to try something. There was about Audrana Coos a reassurance that he could not easily dismiss. There was a confidence and perhaps even a promise in her words that dispelled his doubts and persuaded him to proceed with his plan.

So he waited until a worn and ravaged Shea was finished with his afternoon nap, walked his brother downstairs from their rooms, an arm about his waist to steady him, and sat with him on the inn’s covered porch, watching the sun sink slowly behind the trees. Flick was animated and engaging on that afternoon as he related an imaginary tale of things he had never done, covering up the truth about where he actually had been. He worked hard to capture his brother’s full attention while encouraging him to drink down the tankard of ale he had given him, remembering what Audrana Coos had told him–that all of the contents of the bottle must be consumed.

And in the end, it was. Shea, almost asleep by then, head drooping, eyes heavy, drank the last of his ale, and Flick caught the tankard just before it dropped from his brother’s hand.

Then he carried Shea to his room, tucked him into his bed, and went down to dinner alone. He ate in the dining room at a corner table, keeping to himself–his father was working in the kitchen that night–as he considered what he had just done and prayed to whatever fates determined such things that he had not made a mistake.

In the morning, when Shea woke and came down to breakfast, he looked much better. He was smiling and lively; he appeared to have begun his recovery.

“So you don’t feel sick anymore?” Flick asked happily.

His brother shook his head and grinned. “No. I can’t understand it. I feel like I used to. Much, much better.”

Flick said nothing then about what he had done. He watched his brother closely for almost two weeks, constantly looking for signs of a regression into the sickness, worrying that the potion’s effectiveness might not last. But at the end of that time, when Shea was still healthy and in all respects back to himself, Flick had to admit that the medicine Audrana Coos had given him had indeed worked.

It was then that he admitted the truth to Shea about what he had done, not wanting to keep anything from the brother to whom he told everything. He did so hesitantly, not certain what Shea’s reaction might be and anxious to be forgiven for his deception.

But Shea simply clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Well done, Flick. No wonder I love you so much.”

Emboldened, Flick then told him what the seer had said about Shea going on another quest–one that Flick would not countenance, but one his brother would undertake anyway.

Shea laughed. “I’m not going on any more quests, Flick. I’m all done with that sort of thing. I’m staying right here in the Vale with you.”

And Flick smiled and hugged his brother, and put the matter out of his mind.