The Druid of Shannara

Chapter Fifteen

The Spikes and the lands surrounding were filled with tribes of Urdas and other species of Gnomes and Trolls. Since they were all constantly at war with one another, they kept their villages fortified. A lot of hard lessons had been learned over the years, and one of them was that a stockade needed more than one way out. Carisman’s bunch had dug tunnels beneath the village that opened through hidden trapdoors into the forests beyond. If the village were threatened by a prolonged siege or by an army of overwhelming numbers, the inhabitants still had a means of escape.

One of the entrances to the tunnels that lay inside the village was under the floor of the hut in which the five from Rampling Steep had been placed. Carisman showed them where it lay, buried a good foot beneath the earthen floor, sealed so tightly by weather and time that it took Horner Dees and Morgan working together to pull it free. It had clearly never seen use and perhaps been all but forgotten. In any case, it was a way out and the company was quick to seize upon it.

“I would feel better about this if we had a light,” Dees muttered as he stood looking down into the blackness.

“Here,” Walker Boh whispered impatiently, moving forward to take his place. He slipped down into the blackness where the walls of the tunnel shielded his actions and made a snapping motion with his fingers. Light blazed up about his hand, an aura of brightness that had no visible source. The Dark Uncle has at least a little of his magic left, Morgan thought.

“Carisman, is there more than one passage down here?” Walker’s voice sounded hollow. The tunesmith nodded. “Then stay close to me and tell me how we are to go.”

They dropped into the hole one by one, Carisman following Walker, Quickening and Morgan after them, Dees and Pe Ell last. It was black in the tunnel, even with Walker’s light, and the air was close and full of earth smells. The tunnel ran in a straight line, then branched in three directions. Carisman took them right. It branched again, and this time he took them left. They had gone far enough, Morgan thought, that they must be beyond the stockade walls. Still the tunnel continued. Tree roots penetrated its walls, tangling their arms and feet, slowing their progress. At times the roots grew so thick that they had to be severed to permit passage. Even when the passageway was completely clear, it was hard for Horner Dees to fit through. He grunted and huffed and pushed ahead determinedly. Other tunnels intersected and passed on. Dirt and silt from their movements began to choke the air, and it grew hard to breathe. Morgan buried his face in his tunic sleeve and would not allow himself to think about what would happen if the tunnel walls collapsed.

After what seemed an impossibly long time they slowed and then stopped altogether. “Yes, this is it,” Morgan heard Carisman say to Walker. He listened as the two struggled to free the trapdoor that sealed them in. They labored in wordless silence, grunting, digging, and shifting about in the cramped space. Morgan and the others crouched down in the blackness and waited.

It took them almost as long to loosen the trapdoor as it had to navigate the tunnel. When it finally fell back, fresh air rushed in and the six scrambled up into the night. They found themselves in a heavily wooded glen, the limbs of the trees grown so thick overhead that the sky was masked almost completely.

They stood wordlessly for a moment, breathing in the clean air, and then Dees pushed forward. “Which way to the Spikes?” he whispered anxiously to Carisman.

Carisman pointed and Dees started away, but Pe Ell reached out hurriedly and yanked him back. “Wait!” he warned. “There will be a watch!”

He gave the old Tracker a withering look, motioned them all down and melted into the trees. Morgan sank back against the trunk of a massive fir, and the others became vague shadows through the screen of its shaggy limbs. He closed his eyes wearily. It seemed days since he had rested properly. He thought about how good it would feel to sleep.

But a touch on his shoulder brought him awake again almost immediately. “Easy, Highlander,” Walker Boh whispered. The tall man slid down next to Morgan, dark eyes searching his own. “You tread on dangerous ground these days, Morgan Leah. You had better watch where you step.”

Morgan blinked. “What do you mean?”

Walker’s face inclined slightly, and Morgan could see the lines of tension and strain that creased it. “Pe Ell. Stay away from him. Don’t taunt him, don’t challenge him. Have as little to do with him as you can. If he chooses, he can strike you down faster than a snake in hiding.”

The words were spoken in a whisper that was harsh and chilling in its certainty, a brittle promise of death. Morgan swallowed what he was feeling and nodded. “Who is he, Walker? Do you know?”

The Dark Uncle glanced away and back again. “Sometimes I am able to sense things by touching. Sometimes I can learn another’s secrets by doing nothing more than brushing up against him. It happened that way when I took Carisman away from Pe Ell. He has killed. Many times. He has done so intentionally rather than in self-defense. He enjoys it. I expect he is an assassin.”

A pale hand reached up to hold a startled Morgan in place. “Listen, now. He conceals a weapon of immense power beneath his clothing. The weapon he carries is magic. It is what he uses to kill.”

“Magic?” Morgan’s voice quivered in surprise despite his effort to keep it steady. His mind raced. “Does Quickening know?”

“She chose him, Highlander. She chose us all. She told us we possessed magic. She told us our magic was needed. Of course, she knows.”

Morgan was aghast. “She deliberately brought an assassin? Is this how she plans to regain the Black Elfstone?”

Walker stared fixedly at him. “I think not,” he said finally. “But I can’t be sure.”

Morgan slumped back in disbelief. “Walker, what are we doing here? Why has she brought us?” Walker did not respond. “I don’t know for the life of me why I agreed to come. Or maybe I do. I am drawn to her, I admit; I am enchanted by her. But what sort of reason is that? I shouldn’t be here. I should be back in Tyrsis searching for Par and Coll.”

“We have had this discussion,” Walker reminded him gently.

“I know. But I keep questioning myself. Especially now. Pe Ell is an assassin; what do we have to do with such a man? Does Quickening think us all the same? Does she think we are all killers of other men? Is that the use to which we are to be put? I cannot believe it!”

“Morgan.” Walker spoke his name to calm him, then eased back against the tree until their heads were almost touching. Something in the way the Dark Uncle’s body was bent reminded Morgan for a moment of how broken he had been when they had found him amid the ruins of his cottage at Hearthstone. “There is more to this than what you know,” Walker whispered. “Or I, for that matter. I can sense things but not see them clearly. Quickening has a purpose beyond what she reveals. She is the daughter of the King of the Silver River—do not forget that. She has forbidden insight. She has magic that transcends any that we have ever seen. But she is vulnerable as well. She must walk a careful path in her quest. I think that we are here in part, at least, to see that she is able to keep to that path.”

Morgan thought it over a moment and nodded, listening to the stillness of the night about them, staring out through the boughs of the old fir at the shadowy figures beyond, picking out Quickening’s slim, ethereal form, a slender bit of movement that the night might swallow with no more than a slight shifting of the light.

Walker’s voice tightened. “I have been shown a vision of her—a vision as frightening as any I have ever experienced. The vision told me that she will die. I warned her of this before we left Hearthstone; I told her that perhaps I should not come. But she insisted. So I came.” He glanced over. “It is the same with all of us. We came because we knew we must. Don’t try to understand why that is, Morgan. Just accept it.”

Morgan sighed, lost in the tangle of his feelings and his needs, wishing for things that could never be, for a past that was lost and a future he could not determine. He thought of how far things had gone since the Ohmsfords had come to him in Leah, of how different they all now were.

Walker Boh rose, a rustle of movement in the silence. “Remember what I said, Highlander. Stay away from Pe Ell.”

He pushed through the curtain of branches without looking back. Morgan Leah stared after him.

Pe Ell was gone a long time. When he returned, he spoke only to Horner Dees. “It is safe now, old man,” he advised softly. “Lead on.”

They departed the glen wordlessly, following Carisman as he led them back toward the ridgeline, a silent procession of wraiths in the forest night. No one challenged them, and Morgan was certain that no one would. Pe Ell had seen to that.

It was still dark when they again caught sight of the Spikes. They climbed to the crest of the ridgeline and turned north. Dees moved them forward at a rapid pace, the pathway clear, the spine of the land bare and open to the light of moon and stars, empty save where the skeletal trees threw the spindly shadow of their trunks and branches crosswise against the earth like spiders’ webs. They followed the Spikes through the narrow end of the valley’s funnel and turned upward into the hills beyond. Daybreak was beginning to approach, a faint lightening of the skies east. Dees moved them faster still. No one had to bother asking why.

By the time the sun crested the mountains they were far enough into the hills that they could no longer see the valley at all. They found a stream of clear water and stopped to drink. Sweat ran down their faces and their breathing was labored.

“Look ahead,” Horner Dees said, pointing. A line of peaks jutted into the sky. “That’s the north edge of the Charnals, the last we have to cross. There’s a dozen passes that lead over and the Urdas can’t know which one we will take. It’s all rock up there, hard to track anything.”

“Hard for you, you mean,” Pe Ell suggested unkindly. “Not necessarily hard for them.”

“They won’t go out of their mountains.” Dees ignored him. “Once we’re across, we’ll be safe.”

They hauled themselves back to their feet and went on. The sun climbed into the cloudless sky, a brilliant ball of white fire that turned the earth beneath into a furnace. It was the hottest Morgan could remember it being since he had left Culhaven. The hills rose toward the mountains, and the trees began to give way to scrub and brush. Once Dees thought he saw something moving in the forestlands far behind them, and once they heard a wailing sound that Carisman claimed was Urda horns. But midday came and went, and there was no sign of pursuit.

Then clouds began to move in from the west, a large threatening bank of black thunderheads. Morgan slapped at the gnats that flew against his sweat-streaked face. There would be a storm soon.

They stopped again as midafternoon approached, exhausted from their flight and hungry now as well. There was little to eat, just some roots and wild vegetables and fresh water. Horner Dees went off to scout ahead, and Pe Ell decided to backtrack to a bluff that would let him study the land behind. Walker sat by himself. Carisman began speaking with Quickening again about his music, insistent upon her undivided attention. Morgan studied the tune-smith’s handsome features, his shock of blond hair, and his uninhibited gestures and was annoyed. Rather than show what he was feeling, the Highlander moved into the shade of a spindly pine and faced away.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the clouds pushed up against the mountains. The sky was a peculiar mix of sunshine and darkness. The heat was still oppressive, a suffocating blanket as it pressed down against the earth. Morgan buried his face in his hands and closed his eyes.

Both Horner Dees and Pe Ell were back quickly. The former advised that the passage that would take them across the last of the Charnals lay less than an hour ahead. The latter reported that the Urdas were after them in force.

“More than a hundred,” he announced, fixing them with those hard, unreadable eyes. “Right on our heels.”

They resumed their march at once, pressing ahead more quickly, a sense of urgency driving them now that had not been present before. No one had expected the Urdas to catch up with them this fast, certainly not before they were across the mountains. If they were forced to stand and fight here, they knew, they were finished.

They worked their way upward into the rocks, scrambling through huge fields of boulders and down narrow defiles, struggling to keep their footing on slides that threatened to send them careening away into jagged, bottomless fissures. The clouds scraped over the mountain peaks and filled the skies from horizon to horizon. Heavy drops of rain began to fall, spattering against the earth and their heated skin. Darkness settled over everything, an ominous black that echoed with the sound of thunder as it rolled across the empty, barren rock. Dusk was approaching, and Morgan was certain they would be caught in the mountains at nightfall, a decidedly unpleasant prospect. His entire body ached, but he forced himself to keep going. He glanced ahead to Carisman and saw that the tune’smith was in worse shape, stumbling and falling regularly, gasping for breath. Fighting back against his own exhaustion, he caught up with the other man, put an arm about him, and helped him to go on.

They had just gained the head of the pass that Dees had been shepherding them toward when they caught sight of the Urdas. The rugged, shaggy creatures appeared out of the rocks behind them, still more than a mile off, but charging ahead as if maddened, screaming and crying out, shaking their weapons with an unmistakable promise of what they would do with those they were pursuing when they finally caught up with them. The company, after no more than a moment’s hesitation, fled into the pass.

The pass was a knife cut that sliced upward through the cliffs, a narrow passageway filled with twists and turns. The company spread out, snaking its way forward. The rain began to fall in earnest now, turning from a slow spattering into a heavy downpour. The footing became slippery, and tiny streams began to flow down out of the rocks, cutting away at the earth beneath their feet. They passed from the shadow of the cliffs and found themselves on a barren slope that angled left into a high-walled defile that was as black as night. Wind blew across the slope in frenzied gusts that sent silt flying into their faces. Morgan let go of Carisman and brought his cloak across his head to protect himself.

It required a tremendous effort to gain the defile, the wind beating against them so hard that they could progress only a little at a time. As they reached the darkened opening, the Urdas reappeared, very close now, come that last mile all too quickly. Darts, lances, and the razor-sharp throwing implements whizzed through the air, falling uncomfortably close. Hurriedly the company charged into the passageway and the protection of its walls.

Here, the rain descended in torrents and the light was almost extinguished. Jagged rock edges jutted out from the floor and walls of the narrow corridor and cut and scraped them as they passed. Time slowed to a standstill in the howl of wind and the roll of the thunder, and it seemed as if they would never get free. Morgan moved ahead to be with Quickening, determined to see that she was protected.

When they finally worked their way clear of the defile, they found themselves standing on a ledge that ran along a seam midway down a towering cliff face that dropped away into a gorge through which the waters of the Rabb raged in a churning, white-foamed maelstrom. Dees took them onto the ledge without hesitation, shouting something back that was meant to be encouraging but was lost in the sound of the storm. The line spread out along the broken seam, Dees in the lead, Carisman, Quickening, Morgan, and Walker Boh following, and Pe Ell last. The rain fell in sheets, the wind tore at them, and the sound of the river’s rush was an impenetrable wall of sound.

When the foremost of the Urdas appeared at the mouth of the defile, no one saw. It wasn’t until their weapons began to shatter against the rocks about the fleeing company that anyone realized they were there. A dart nicked Pe Ell’s shoulder and spun him about, but he kept his footing and struggled on. The others began to advance more quickly, trying desperately to distance themselves from their pursuers, hastening along the ledge, booted feet slipping and sliding dangerously. Morgan glanced back and saw*Walker Boh turn and throw something into the storm. Instantly the air flared with silver light. Darts and lances that were hurled into the brightness fell harmlessly away. The Urdas, frightened by the Dark Uncle’s magic, fell back into the defile.

Ahead, the ledge broadened slightly and sloped downward. The far side of the mountains came into view, a sweeping stretch of forested hills that ran into the distance until it disappeared into a wall of clouds and rain. The Rabb churned below, cutting back on itself, rushing eastward through the rocks. The trail followed its bend, some fifty feet above its banks, the barren rock giving way to the beginnings of earth and scrub.

Morgan looked around one final time and saw that the Urdas were not following. Either Walker had frightened them off, or Horner Dees had been right about them not leaving their mountains.

He turned back.

In the next instant the entire cliff face was rocked with tremors as parts of it gave way under the relentless pounding of the wind and rain. The trail in front of him, an entire section of earth and rock, disappeared completely and took Quickening with it. She fell back against the slope, grasping. But there was nothing to hold on to, and she began to slide in a cloud of silt and gravel toward the river. Carisman, directly in front of her, almost went, too, but managed to throw himself forward far enough to clutch a tangle of roots from some mountain scrub and was saved.

Morgan was directly behind. He saw that Quickening could not save herself and that there was no one who could reach her. He didn’t hesitate. He jumped from the crumbling trail into the gap, hurtling down the mountainside after her, the trailing shouts of his companions disappearing almost instantly. He struck the waters of the Rabb with jarring force, went under, and came up again gasping in shock at the cold. He caught a flash of Quickening’s silver hair bobbing in a shower of white foam a few feet away, swam to her, seized her clothing, and drew her to him.

Then the current had them both, and they were swept away.