The Scions of Shannara

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was nearing twilight by the time Walker Boh reached his destination. He had been journeying northward from Hearthstone since midmorning, traveling at a comfortable pace, not hurrying, allowing himself adequate time to think through what he was about to do. The skies had been clear and filled with sunshine when he had set out, but as the day lengthened toward evening clouds began to drift in from the west and the air turned misty and gray. The land through which he traveled was rugged, a series of twisting ridges and drops that broke apart the symmetry of the forests and left the trees leaning and bent like spikes driven randomly into the earth. Deadwood and outcroppings of rock blocked the trail repeatedly and mist hung shroudlike in the trees, trapped there, it seemed, unmoving.

Walker stopped. He stared downward between two massive, jagged ridgelines into a narrow valley which cradled a tiny lake. The lake was barely visible, screened away by pine trees and a thick gathering of mist that clung tenaciously above its surface, swirling sluggishly, listlessly, haphazardly in the nearly windless expanse.

The lake was the home of the Grimpond.

Walker did not pause long, starting down into the valley almost immediately. The mist closed quickly about him as he went, filling his mouth with its metallic taste, clouding his vision of what lay ahead. He ignored the sensations that attacked him—the pressing closeness, the imagined whispers, the discomfiting deadness—and kept his concentration focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The air grew quickly cool, a damp layer of gauze against his skin that smelled of things decayed. The pines rose up about him, their numbers increasing until there was nowhere they did not stand watch. Silence cloaked the valley and there was only the soft scrape of his boots against the stone.

He could feel the eyes of the Grimpond watching.

It had been a long time.

Cogline had warned him early about the Grimpond. The Grimpond was the shade that lived in the lake below, a shade older than the world of the Four Lands itself. It claimed to predate the Great Wars. It boasted that it had been alive in the age of faerie. As with all shades, it had the ability to divine secrets hidden from the living. There was magic at its command. But it was a bitter and spiteful creature, trapped in this world for all eternity for reasons no one knew. It could not die and it hated the substanceless, empty existence it was forced to endure. It vented itself on the humans who came to speak with it, teasing them with riddles of the truths they sought to uncover, taunting them with their mortality, showing them more of what they would keep hidden than what they would reveal.

Brin Ohmsford had come to the Grimpond three hundred years earlier to find a way into the Maelmord so that she might confront the Ildatch. The shade toyed with her until she used the wishsong to ensnare it by trickery, forcing it to reveal what she wished to discover. The shade had never forgotten that; it was the only time a human had bested it. Walker had heard the story any number of times while growing up. It was only after he came north to Hearthstone to live, forsaking the Ohmsford name and legacy, that he discovered that the Grimpond was waiting for him. Brin Ohmsford might be dead and gone, but the Grimpond was alive forever and it had determined that someone must be made to pay for its humiliation. If not the one directly responsible, why then another of that one’s bloodline would do nicely.

Cogline advised him to stay clear. The Grimpond would see him destroyed if it was given the opportunity. His parents had been given the same advice and had heeded it. But Walker Boh had reached a point in his life where he was through making excuses for who and what he was. He had come to the Wilderun to escape his legacy; he did not intend to spend the rest of his life wondering if there was something out there that could undo him. Best to deal with the shade at once. He went looking for the Grimpond. Because the shade never appeared to more than one person at a time, Cogline was forced to remain behind. When the confrontation came, it was memorable. It lasted for almost six hours. During that time, the Grimpond assailed Walker Boh with every imaginable trick and ploy at its disposal, divulging real and imagined secrets of his present and his future, showering him with rhetoric designed to drive him into madness, revealing to him visions of himself and those he loved that were venomous and destructive. Walker Boh withstood it all. When the shade exhausted itself, it cursed Walker as he would not have believed possible and disappeared back into the mist.

Walker returned to Hearthstone, feeling that the matter of the past was settled. He let the Grimpond alone and the Grimpond—though it could be argued that he had no choice since he was bound to the waters of the lake—did the same to him.

Until today, Walker Boh had not been back.

He sighed. It would be more difficult this time, since this time he wanted something from the shade. He could pretend otherwise. He could keep to himself the truth of why he had come—to learn from the Grimpond the whereabouts of the mysterious Black Elfstone. He could talk about this and that, or assume some role that would confuse the creature, since it loved games and the playing of them. But it was unlikely to make any difference.

Somehow the Grimpond always divined the reason you were there.

Walker Boh felt the mist brush against him with the softness of tiny fingers, clinging insistently. This was not going to be pleasant.

He continued ahead as daylight failed and darkness closed about. Shadows, where they could find purchase in the graying haze, lengthened in shimmering parody of their makers. Walker wrapped his cloak closer to his body, thinking through the words he would say to the Grimpond, the arguments he would put forth, the games he would play if forced to do so. He recounted in his mind the events of his life that the shade was likely to play upon—most of them drawn from his youth when he was discomfited by his differences and beset by his insecurities.

‘Dark Uncle’ they had called him even then—the playmates of Par and Coll, their parents, and even people of the village of Shady Vale that didn’t know him. Dark for the color of his life and being, this pale, withdrawn young man who could sometimes read minds, who could divine things that would happen and even cause them to be so, who could understand so much of what was hidden from others. Par and Coll’s strange uncle, without parents of his own, without a family that was really his, without a history that he cared to share. Even the Ohmsford name didn’t seem to fit him. He was always the “Dark Uncle’, somehow older than everyone else, not in years but in knowledge. It wasn’t knowledge that he had learned; it was knowledge he had been born with.

His father had tried to explain. It was the legacy of the wishsong’s magic that caused it. It manifested itself this way. But it wouldn’t last; it never did. It was just a stage he must pass through because of who he was. But Par and Coll did not have to pass through it, Walker would argue in reply. No, only you and I, only the children of Brin Ohmsford, because we hold the trust, his father would whisper. We are the chosen of Allanon...

He swept the memories from his mind angrily, the bitterness welling up anew. The “chosen of Allanon’ had his father said? The “cursed of Allanon’ was more like it.

The trees gave way before him abruptly, startling him with the suddenness of their disappearance. He stood at the edge of the lake, its rocky shores wending into the mist on either side, its waters lapping gently, endlessly in the silence. Walker Boh straightened. His mind tightened and closed down upon itself as if made of iron, his concentration focused, his thoughts cleared.

A solitary statue, he waited.

There was movement in the fog, but it emanated from more than one place. Walker tried to fix on it, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. From somewhere far away, above the haze that hung across the lake, beyond the rock walls of the ridgelines enfolding the narrow valley, a voice whispered in some empty heaven.

Dark Uncle.

Walker heard the words, tauntingly close and at the same time nowhere he would ever be, not from inside his head or from any other place discernible, but there nevertheless. He did not respond to them. He continued to wait.

Then the scattered movements that had disturbed the mist moments earlier focused themselves on a single point, coming together in a colorless outline that stood upon the water and began to advance. It took surer form as it came, growing in size, becoming larger than the human shape it purported to represent, rising up as if it might crush anything that stood in its way. Walker did not move. The ethereal shape became a shadow, and the shadow became a person...

Walker Boh watched expressionlessly as the Grimpond stood before him, suspended in the mist, its face lifting out of shadow to reveal who it had chosen to become.

“Have you come to accept my charge, Walker Boh?” it asked.

Walker was startled in spite of his resolve. The dark, brooding countenance of Allanon stared down at him.

The warehouse was hushed, its cavernous enclosure blanketed by stillness from floor to ceiling as six pairs of eyes fastened intently on Padishar Creel.

He had just announced that they were going back down into the Pit.

“We’ll be doing it differently this time,” he told them, his raw-boned face fierce with determination, as if that alone might persuade them to his cause. “No sneaking about through the park with rope ladders this go around. There’s an entry into the Pit from the lower levels of the Gatehouse. That’s how we’ll do it. We’ll go right into the Gatehouse, down into the Pit and back out again—and no one the wiser.”

Par risked a quick glance at the others. Coll, Morgan, Damson, the outlaws Stasas and Drutt—there was a mix of disbelief and awe etched on their faces. What the outlaw chief was proposing was outrageous; that he might succeed, even more so. No one tried to interrupt. They wanted to hear how he was going to do it.

“The Gatehouse watch changes shift twice each day—once at sunrise, once at sunset. Two shifts, six men each. A relief comes in for each shift once a week, but on different days. Today is one of those days. A relief for the day shift comes in just after sunset. I know; I made it a point to find out.”

His features creased with the familiar wolfish smile. “Today a special detail will arrive a couple of hours before the shift change because there’s to be an inspection of the Gatehouse quarters this evening at the change, and the Commander of the Gatehouse wants everything spotless. The day watch will be happy enough to let the detail past to do its work, figuring it’s no skin off their noses.” He paused. “That detail, of course, will be us.”

He leaned forward, his eyes intense. “Once inside, we’ll dispatch the night watch. If we’re quiet enough about it, the day watch won’t even know what’s happening. They’ll continue with their rounds, doing part of our job for us—keeping everyone outside. We’ll bolt the door from within as a precaution in any case. Then we’ll go down through the Gatehouse stairs to the lower levels and out into the Pit. It should still be light enough to find what we’re looking for fairly quickly. Once we have it, we’ll go back up the stairs and out the same way we came in.”

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Drutt said, his voice gravelly, “We’ll be recognized, Padishar. Bound to be some of the same soldiers there as when we was taken.”

Padishar shook his head. “There was a shift change three days ago. That was the shift that was on duty when we were seized.”

“What about that commander?”

“Gone until the beginning of the work week. Just a duty officer.”

“We’d need Federation uniforms.”

“We have them. I brought them in yesterday.”

Drutt and Stasas exchanged glances. “Been thinking about this for a time, have you?” the latter asked.

The outlaw chief laughed softly. “Since the moment we walked out of those cells.”

Morgan, who had been seated on a bench next to Par, stood up. “If anything goes wrong and they discover what we’re about, they’ll be all over the Gatehouse. We’ll be trapped, Padishar.”

The big man shook his head. “No, we won’t. We’ll carry in grappling hooks and ropes with our cleaning equipment. If we can’t go back the way we came, we’ll climb out of the Pit using those. The Federation will be concentrating on getting at us through the Gatehouse entry. It won’t even occur to them that we don’t intend to come back that way.”

The questions died away. There was a long silence as the six sifted through their doubts and fears and waited for something inside to reassure them that the plan would work. Par found himself thinking that there were an awful lot of things that could go wrong.

“Well, what’s it to be?” Padishar’s patience gave out. “Time’s something we don’t have to spare. We all know that there’s risks involved, but that’s the nature of the business. I want a decision. Do we try it or not? Who says we do? Who’s with me?”

Par listened to the silence lengthen. Coll and Morgan were statues on the bench to either side of him. Stasas and Drutt, who it seemed might speak first, now had their eyes fixed firmly on the floor. Damson was looking at Padishar, who in turn was looking at her. Par realized all at once that no one was going to say anything, that they were all waiting on him.

He surprised himself. He didn’t even have to think about it. He simply said, “I’ll go.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Coll whispered urgently in his ear. Stasas and Drutt had Padishar’s momentary attention, declaring that they, too, would go. “Par, this was our chance to get out!”

Par leaned close to him. “He’s doing this for me, don’t you see? I’m the one who wants to find the Sword! I can’t let Padishar take all the risks! I have to go!”

Coll shook his head helplessly. Morgan, with a wink at Par over Coll’s shoulder, cast his vote in favour of going as well. Coll just raised his hand wordlessly and nodded.

That left Damson. Padishar had his sharp gaze fixed on her, waiting. It suddenly occurred to Par that Padishar needn’t have asked who wanted to go with him; he simply could have ordered it. Padishar had told him earlier that he didn’t believe it was any of them—but he might have it in his mind to make sure.

“I will wait for you in the park,” Damson Rhee said, and everyone stared at her. She did not seem to notice. “I would have to disguise myself as a man in order to go in with you. That is one more risk you would be taking—and to what end? There is nothing I can offer by being with you. If there is trouble, I will be of better use to you on the outside.”

Padishar’s smile was immediately disarming. “Your thinking is correct as usual, Damson. You will wait in the park.”

It seemed to Par that he was a little too quick to agree.

Geysers exploded and died from the flat, gray surface of the lake, and the spray felt like bits of ice where it landed on Walker Boh’s skin.

“Tell me why you come here, Dark Uncle?” Allanon’s shade whispered.

Walker felt the chill burn away as his determination caught fire. “I need tell you nothing,” he replied. “You are not Allanon. You are only the Grimpond.”

Allanon’s visage shimmered and faded in the half-light, replaced by Walker’s own. The Grimpond emitted a hollow laugh. “I am you, Walker Boh. Nothing more and nothing less. Do you recognize yourself?”

His face went through a flurry of transformations—Walker as a child, as a boy, as a youth, as a man. The images came and went so quickly that Walker could barely register them. It was somehow terrifying to watch the phases of his life pass by so quickly. He forced himself to remain calm.

“Will you speak with me, Grimpond?” he asked.

“Will you speak with yourself?” came the reply.

Walker took a deep breath. “I will. But for what purpose should I do so? There is nothing to talk about with myself. I already know all that I have to say.”

“Ah, as do I, Walker. As do I.”

The Grimpond shrank until it was the same size as Walker. It kept his face, taunting him with it, letting it reveal flashes of age that would one day claim it, giving it a beaten cast as if to demonstrate the futility of his life.

“I know why you have come to me,” the Grimpond said suddenly. “I know the private-most thoughts of your mind, the little secrets you would keep even from yourself. There need be no games between us. Walker Boh. You are surely my equal in the playing of them, and I have no wish to do battle with you again. You have come to ask where you must go to find the Black Elfstone. Fair enough. I will tell you.”

Immediately, Walker mistrusted the shade. The Grimpond never volunteered anything without twisting it. He nodded in response, but said nothing.

“How sad you seem, Walker,” soothed the shade. “No jubilation at my submission, no elation that you will have what you want? Is it so difficult then to admit that you have dispensed with pride and self-resolution, that you have forsaken your lofty principles, that you have been won over after all to the Druid cause?”

Walker stiffened in spite of himself. “You misread matters, Grimpond. Nothing has been decided.”

“Oh, yes, Dark Uncle! Everything has been decided! Make no mistake. Your life weaves out before my eyes as a thread straight and undeviating, the years a finite number, their course determined. You are caught in the snare of the Druid’s words. His legacy to Brin Ohmsford becomes your own, whether you would have it so or not. You have been shaped!”

“Tell me, then, of the Black Elfstone,” Walker tried.

“All in good time. Patience, now.”

The words died away into the stillness, the Grimpond shifting within its covering of mist. Daylight had faded into darkness, the gray turned black, the moon and stars shut away by the valley’s thick haze. Yet there was light where Walker stood, a phosphorescence given off by the waters beneath the air on which the Grimpond floated, a dull and shallow glow that played wickedly through the night.

“So much effort given over to escaping the Druids,” the Grimpond said softly. “What foolishness.” Walker’s face dissipated and was replaced by his father’s. His father spoke. “Remember, Walker, that we are the bearers of Allanon’s trust. He gave it to Brin Ohmsford as he lay dying, to be passed from one generation to the next, to be handed down until it was needed, sometime far, far in the distant future...”

His father’s visage leered at him. “Perhaps now?”

Images flared to life above him, born on the air as if tapestries threaded on a frame, woven in the fabric of the mist. One after another they appeared, brilliant with color, filled with the texture and depth of real life.

Walker took a step back, startled. He saw himself in the images, anger and defiance in his face, his feet positioned on clouds above the cringing forms of Par and Wren and the others of the little company who had gathered at the Hadeshorn to meet with the shade of Allanon. Thunder rolled out of a darkness that welled away into the skies overhead, and lightning flared in jagged streaks. Walker’s voice was a hiss amid the rumble and the flash, the words his own, spoken as if out of his memory. I would sooner cut off my hand than see the Druids come again! And then he lifted his arm to reveal that his hand, indeed, was gone.

The vision faded, then sharpened anew. He saw himself again, this time on a high, empty ridgeline that looked out across forever. The whole world spread away below him, the nations and their Races, the creatures of land and water, the lives of everyone and everything that were. Wind whipped at his black robes and whistled ferociously in his ears. There was a girl with him. She was woman and child both, a magical being, a creature of impossible beauty. She stunned him with the intensity of her gaze, depthless black eyes from which he could not turn away. Her long, silver hair flowed from her head in a shimmering mass. She reached for him, needing his balance to keep her footing on the treacherous rock—and he thrust her violently away. She fell, tumbling into the abyss below, soundless as she shrank from sight, silver hair fading into a ribbon of brightness and then into nothing at all.

Again, the vision faded, then returned. He saw himself a third time, now in a castle fortress that was empty of life and gray with disuse. Death stalked him relentlessly, creeping through walls and along corridors, cold fingers probing for signs of his life. He felt the need to run from it, knew that he must if he were to survive—and yet he couldn’t. He stood immobile, letting Death approach him, reach for him, close about him. As his life ended, the cold filled him, and he saw that a dark, robed shape stood behind him, holding him fast, preventing him from fleeing. The shape bore the face of Allanon.

The visions disappeared, the colors faded, and the gray mist returned, shifting sluggishly in the lake’s phosphorescent glow. The Grimpond brought its robed arms downward slowly, and the lake hissed and spit with dissatisfaction. Walker Boh flinched from the spray that cascaded down upon him.

“What say you, Dark Uncle?” the Grimpond whispered. It bore Walker’s pale face once more.

“That you play games still,” Walker said quietly. “That you show lies and half-truths designed to taunt me. That you have shown me nothing of the Black Elf stone.”

“Have I not?” The Grimpond shimmered darkly. “Is it all a game, do you think? Lies and half-truths only?” The laugh was mirthless. “You must think what you will, Walker Boh. But I see a future that is hidden from you, and it would be foolish to believe I would show you none of it. Remember, Walker. I am you, the telling of who and what you are—just as I am for all who come to speak with me.”

Walker shook his head. “No, Grimpond, you can never be me. You can never be anyone but who you are—a shade without identity, without being, exiled to this patch of water for all eternity. Nothing you do, no game you play, can ever change that.”

The Grimpond sent spray hissing skyward, anger in its voice. “Then go from me, Dark Uncle! Take with you what you came for and go!” The visage of Walker disappeared and was replaced by a death’s head. “You think my fate has nothing to do with you? Beware! There is more of me in you than you would care to know!”

Robes flared wide, throwing shards of dull light into the mist. “Hear me, Walker! Hear me! You wish to know of the Black Elfstone? Then, listen! Darkness hides it, a black that light can never penetrate, where eyes turn a man to stone and voices turn him mad! Beyond, where only the dead lie, is a pocket carved with runes, the signs of time’s passing. Within that pocket lies the Stone!”

The death’s head disappeared into nothingness, and only the robes remained, hanging empty against the mist. “I have given you what you wish, Dark Uncle,” the shade whispered, its voice filled with loathing. “I have done so because the gift will destroy you. Die, and you will end your cursed line, the last of it! How I long to see that happen! Go, now! Leave me! I bid you swift journey to your doom!”

The Grimpond faded into the mist and was gone. The light it had brought with it dissipated as well. Darkness cloaked the whole of the lake and the shore surrounding it, and Walker was left momentarily sightless. He stood where he was, waiting for his vision to clear, feeling the chill touch of the mist as it brushed against his skin. The Grimpond’s laughter echoed in the silence of his mind.

Dark Uncle came the harsh whisper.

He cast himself in stone against it. He sheathed himself in iron.

When his vision returned, and he could make out the vague shape of the trees behind him, he turned from the lake with his cloak wrapped close about him and walked away.