The Elfstones of Shannara

Chapter Twenty–Three

It was midnight when Crispin took the barge ashore again. Immediately below Drey Wood, the Rill Song swung westward on its twisting journey to the Innisbore. When the Elves finally guided the barge into a narrow, heavily wooded inlet that broke south from the main channel, they found themselves at the northernmost edge of the Matted Brakes, miles from where they had intended to leave the river. The rains had diminished once more to a soft drizzle that hung in the chill air like fine mist. Heavy clouds obscured moon and stars, and the night was so black that even Elven ryes could see no further than a dozen paces. The wind had died away into stillness, and a deep haze had settled over the whole of the land.

The Elven Hunters grounded the barge on a low sand bar at the head of the inlet, pulled her nearly clear of the river and made her fast. Moving safely and quietly, they scouted the land about them for several hundred yards in all directions, determined that nothing threatened them, then reported back to Crispin. The Elf Captain decided that it would be pointless to attempt further travel until morning. Wil and Amberle were told to remain in their cabin. Wrapped in warm blankets to ward off the cold, free for the first time in two days from the river’s discomforting pitch and roll, they fell asleep at once. The Elves ringed the barge and its sleeping passengers, standing watch in shifts. Crispin posted himself beside the cabin entry and settled in for the night.

At dawn, the little company rose, packed what provisions and weapons they could carry, then freed the barge from its moorings and let the river carry it away. It disappeared swiftly, twisting in the pull of the current. As soon as it was gone, they struck out across the Matted Brakes.

The Brakes were lowlands choked with scrub and brush and dotted with stagnant lakes, bramble runs, and sink holes. They split apart the vast Westland forests from the banks of the Rill Song to the wall of the Rock Spur, a maze of wilderness through which few travelers dared to journey Those who did risked losing themselves hopelessly in a tangle of thicket and clustered bogs shrouded in mist and darkness. Worse, they risked an encounter with any number of unpleasant denizens of the Brakes, creatures that were vicious, cunning, and indiscriminate in their choice of prey. Not much of anything lived within these lowlands, but what did live there understood well that all creatures were either hunter or hunted and that only the former could survive.

«If there were another alternative, we would not come this way,” Crispin advised Wil, dropping back momentarily to share his thoughts with the Valeman. «If all had gone as planned, we would have taken horses from the outpost south along the western edge of the Brakes to the Mermidon, then ridden west into the Rock Spur. But Drey Wood has changed all that. Now we have to be concerned as much with what may follow as with what may lie ahead. The one virture to the lowlands is that they will hide any trace of our passing.»

Wil shook his head doubtfully. «A thing like the Reaper won’t give up easily ”

«No, it will keep hunting us,” the Elf agreed. «But it won’t catch us like that a second time. It was waiting for us at Drey Wood because it knew we were coming I don’t know how it knew, but it did.» He glanced at the Valeman, but Wil said nothing. «In any case, it won’t know where we are now. If it expects to find us again, it will have to track us. That might have been done easily enough if we had stayed within the forestland, but it will be very difficult here. It will have to determine first where we left the River; that alone could take days. Then it will have to follow us into the Brakes. But the Brakes swallow you up without a trace; this marsh hides tracks ten seconds after you’ve made them. And we’ve got Katsin, who was born in this country and has crossed the Brakes before. The Demon, however powerful it may be, is in strange country. It will have to hunt by instinct alone. That gives us a very definite edge.»

Wil Ohmsford did not agree. Allanon had thought that the Demons would not track him when he fled Paranor. But they did. The Valeman had thought they would not find him again once Amberle and he were carried to the far shores of the Rainbow Lake by the King of the Silver River. But again they did. Why should it be any different this time? The Demons were creatures of another age; their powers were the powers of another age. Allanon had said that himself. He had said as well that the one who led them was a sorcerer. Would it be so difficult for them to track a handful of Elven Hunters, a young girl, and a Valeman?

Still, there was nothing to be done about it, the Valeman knew. If the Reaper could track them in the Brakes, it would track them anywhere. Crispin had made the right decision. The Elven Hunters possessed considerable skill; perhaps that would be enough to see them safely through.

The Valeman was far more concerned about another unpleasant possibility, and since their encounter with the Reaper at Drey Wood he had been able to think of little else. The Reaper had known that they were coming to that Elven outpost. It had to have known, because it had lain in wait for them. Crispin was right about that. But there was only one way it could have known — it must have been told by the spy concealed within the Elven camp, the spy whom Allanon had worked so carefully to deceive. And if the Demons, knew of their plan to travel south to the Elven outpost at Drey Wood, then how much more about this journey did they know? It was altogether possible, the Valeman realized, that they knew everything.

It was a chilling possibility, one that he would have preferred not to consider further, but which seemed more and more plausible as he weighed the facts. Allanon had been certain that there was a spy within the Elven camp. Somehow the spy had managed to overhear their conversation in Eventine’s study. He could not conceive of how that could have been accomplished, but he was certain that it had. Drey Wood had been mentioned; that would account for the Reaper. But the Wilderun had also been mentioned. That meant that the Demons knew exactly where they were going after Drey Wood; and if the Demons knew that, then regardless of the route the little company chose to follow or the deceptions they chose to employ to elude would–be pursuers, chances were excellent that when the company arrived at the Wilderun there would be Demons waiting for them.

The thought lingered with Wil Ohmsford all that day as the little company slogged through the marshy tangle of the Brakes. Thorny brush and saw grass cut them at every passing, mist turned their clothing damp and chill, and mud and foul–smelling water seeped through their boots and filled their nostrils with its stench. They walked separate and apart from each other, speaking little, eyes peering guardedly through rain and swirling haze as the land passed away about them in a changeless wash of gray. By nightfall, they were exhausted. They made their camp in a sparse outcropping of brush that grew up against a low rise. There was too much risk in a fire, so they wrapped themselves, in blankets that were damp with the lowland’s chill and ate their food cold.

The Elven Hunters finished quickly and prepared to stand watch in shifts. Wil had just completed his own small meal of dried meat and fruit, washed down with a little water, when Amberle came over and huddled down beside him, her child’s face peering out at him from within the folds of the blanket she had pulled up about her head. Stray locks of chestnut hair fell loosely over her eyes.

«How are you holding up?» he inquired.

«I’m fine.» She had the look of a lost waif. «I need to talk.»

«I’m listening.»

«I have been thinking about something all day.» He nodded wordlessly.

«The Reaper was waiting for us at Drey Wood,” she said quietly. She hesitated. «You realize what that means?»

He said nothing. He knew what was coming next. It was as if she had read his mind.

«That means that it knew we were coming.» She spoke the words he was thinking. «How could that have happened?»

He shook his head. «It just did.»

That was the wrong answer, and he knew it. Her face flushed.

«Just as the Demons found us at Havenstead? Just as they found Allanon at Paranor? Just as they seem to find us everywhere we go?» Her voice stayed low, but there was anger in it now. «What kind of a fool do you think I am, Wil?»

It was the first time that she had ever used his given name, and it startled him so that for a moment he simply stared at her. There was hurt and suspicion in her eyes, and he saw that he must either tell her what Allanon had directed him to keep secret or lie to her. It was an easy decision to make. He told her about the spy. When he had finished, she shook her head reprovingly.

«You should have told me before now.»

«Allanon asked me not to,” he tried to explain. «He thought that you already had enough to worry about.»

«The Druid does not know me as well as he thinks. Anyway, you should have told me.»

He no longer felt like arguing the point. He nodded in agreement.

«I know. I just didn’t.»

They were silent for a moment. One of the Elves on Watch appeared, wraithlike, out of the mist, then disappeared into it again. Amberle stared after him, then glanced over at Wil. Her voice floated out of the folds of her hood, her face masked in shadow.

«I’m not angry. Really, I’m not.»

He smiled faintly. «Good. This marsh is dismal enough as it is.»

«I would have been angry if you had not told me the truth just now.»

«That was why I told you.»

She let the matter drop. «If this spy overheard what was said in my grandfather’s study that night before we left Arborlon, then the Demons know where we are going, don’t they?»

«I imagine so,” he replied.

«That means they know about Safehold as well; they know everything the Ellcrys told the Chosen, because Allanon repeated it to us. They have as much chance of finding the Bloodfire as we do.»

«Maybe not.»

«Maybe not?»

«We have the Elfstones,” he pointed out, wondering as he did so if it made any difference that they did. After all, he did not really know if he could use the Stones again. The thought depressed him.

«Who could have gotten close enough to hear what we were saying?» She frowned and looked at him.

He shook his head wordlessly. He had been wondering that, too.

«I hope that my grandfather is all right,” she murmured after a minute.

«I would guess that he is better off than we are.» Wil sighed. «At least he has someplace warm to sleep.»

He hunched his knees up to his chest, trying to find an extra bit of warmth. Amberle moved with him, shivering with the cold. He let her settle close against him, bundled in her coverings.

«I wish this were finished,” she whispered distantly, almost as if she were saying it to herself.

The Valeman grimaced. «I wish it had never begun.»

She turned her head to look at him. «As long as we are wishing, I wish you would be honest with me after this. No more secrets.»

«No more secrets,” he promised.

They were quiet after that. A few moments later, Amberle’s head slipped down against his shoulder and she was asleep. The Valeman did not disturb her. He left her that way and stared, out into the dark, thinking of better times.

For the next two days, the little company trudged through the gloom of the Matted Brakes. It rained most of the time, a steady drizzle interspersed with heavy showers that drenched further an already sodden earth and left the travelers cold and miserable. Mist hung overhead and swirled thick across ridge tops and still, marshy lakes. The sun remained screened by banks of stormclouds, and only a faint lightening of the sky for several hours near midday gave any indication of its passing. At night, there was only the impenetrable dark.

Travel was slow and arduous. In single file, they worked their way across the tangle of the Brakes, through bramble thickets that sword blades could barely hack apart, past bogs that bubbled wetly and sucked from sight everything that came within their grasp, and around lakes of green slime axed evil smells. Deadwood littered the ground, mingling with pools of surface water and twisting roots. The vegetation had a gray cast to it that muted its green and left the whole of the land looking sick and wintry. What lived within the Brakes stayed hidden, though faint sounds skittered and lurched in the stillness, and shadows slipped like wraiths through the rain and the gloom.

Then, shortly before noon on the third day, they arrived at a massive body of stagnant water, choked with roots and deadwood that protruded like the earth’s broken bones from amid a covering of lily pads rippling gently with the rainfall. The shores of the lake were massed thick with bramble runs and scrub as far as the eye could see. Mist rolled across the surface of the water in a deep haze, and there was no sign of the far shore.

It was apparent immediately that any attempt at circling the lake would require several hours of backtracking to escape the heavy brush. There was only one other alternative open to them, and they took it. Katsin led them, as he had for most of their journey through the Brakes, with the other four Elven Hunters split in pairs so that two walked before Wil and Amberle and two followed. Cutting through the scrub that blocked their passage, they stepped onto a narrow bridge of earth and roots that jutted out from the shoreline and disappeared into the mist. If they were lucky, the bridge would span to the far shore.

They proceeded cautiously, picking their way along the uneven course, carefully staying back from the mire that lay to either side. The mist closed about them almost at once, and the land behind faded into it.. The minutes slipped away. Rain blew sharply into their faces, caught on a sudden gust of wind. Then the mist cleared unexpectedly, and they saw that their bridge dropped away into the lake not a dozen yards ahead. Beyond lay a huge mound of earth encrusted with rock and vegetation. The far shore of the lake was nowhere to be seen. They had reached a dead end.

Crispin started forward for a closer look at what lay beyond the mound of earth, but Katsin’s hand came up sharply in warning. He glanced back quickly at the others of the little company, placing a finger to his lips. Then he pointed to the mound; his hand moving to a long ridge that curved downward into the lake. At its tip, steam rose in small jets from two ragged holes that protruded from just above the water line.

Breathing holes!

Wordlessly, Crispin motioned them back. Whatever it was that lay sleeping out there, he had no intention of disturbing it.

But he was too late. The creature had sensed them. Its bulk heaved up suddenly out of the lake, showering them with stagnant water. It huffed loudly as yellow eyes snapped open from beneath the covering of lily pads and vines. Writhing feelers flared from its mud–covered body, and abroad, flat snout swung toward them, jaws gaping wide in hunger. It hung suspended above the lake for an instant, then sank quietly beneath the water and was gone.

Wil Ohmsford had only a glimpse of the monstrous thing. Then he was fleeing through the mist behind Ped and Cormac, pulling Amberle with him, struggling to keep his footing on the rutted path. He heard Katsin, Dilph and Crispin coming up quickly behind him and risked a quick glance back to see if the creature had followed them. In the same moment that he looked back, his foot caught and he went down, dragging Amberle with him.

The fall saved both their lives. Out of the mist rose the creature, massive jaws sweeping across the narrow bridge before them like a fisherman’s net. Cries of terror sounded from Ped and Cormac as the thing caught them up and pulled them into the lake. The huge bulk settled downward into the water and disappeared.

Wil froze in horror, staring fixedly into the mist where the monstrous thing had gone. Then Crispin leaped forward, catching Amberle up over his shoulder and sprinting for the safety of the shore. Katsin snatched up Wil before the Valeman could think to act on his own and followed. Dilph raced after them, short sword drawn. In seconds, they were stumbling back through the wall of scrub and bramble. Far back from the water’s edge, they collapsed in the muddied earth, their breathing heavy in the stillness as they listened for the sounds of any pursuit. There were none. The creature was gone.

But now they were only five.