The Scions of Shannara

Chapter Five

Par and Coll Ohmsford did not get much sleep that night. They stayed awake long after the old man was gone, talking and sometimes arguing, worrying without always saying as much, eyes constantly scanning the darkness against the promise that things, Shadowen or otherwise, were likely to be hunting them. Even after that, when there was nothing left to say, when they had rolled themselves wearily into their blankets and closed their eyes against their fears, they did not sleep well. They rolled and tossed in their slumber, waking themselves and each other with distressing regularity until dawn.

They rose then, dragged themselves from the warmth of their coverings, washed in the chilling waters of the lake, and promptly began talking and arguing all over again. They continued through breakfast, which was just as well because once again there wasn’t much to eat and it took their minds off their stomachs. The talk, and more often now the arguments, centered around the old man who claimed to be Cogline and the dreams that might or might not have been sent and if sent might or might not have been sent by Allanon, but included such peripheral topics as Shadowen, Federation Seekers, the stranger who had rescued them in Varfleet, and whether there was sense to the world anymore or not. They had established their positions on these subjects fairly well by this time, positions that, for the most part, weren’t within a week’s walk of each other. That being the case, they were reduced to communicating with each other across vast stretches of intractability.

Before their day was even an hour old, they were already thoroughly fed up with each other.

“You cannot deny that the possibility exists that the old man really is Cogline!” Par insisted for what must have been the hundredth time as they carried the canvas tarp down to the skiff for stowing.

Coll managed a quick shrug. “I’m not denying it.”

“And if he really is Cogline, then you cannot deny the possibility that everything he told us is the truth!”

“I’m not denying that either.”

“What about the woodswoman? What was she if not a Shadowen, a night thing with magic stronger than our own?”

“Your own.”

Par fumed. “Sorry. My own. The point is, she was a Shadowen! She had to be! That makes at least part of what the old man told us the truth, no matter how you view it!”

“Wait a minute.” Coll dropped his end of the tarp and stood there with his hands on his hips, regarding his brother with studied dismay. “You do this all the time when we argue. You make these ridiculous leaps in logic and act as if they make perfect sense. How does it follow that, if that woman was a Shadowen, the old man was telling the truth?”

“Well, because if...”

“I won’t even question your assumption that she was a Shadowen,” Coll interrupted pointedly. “Even though we haven’t the faintest idea what a Shadowen is. Even though she might just as easily have been something else altogether.”

“Something else? What sort of...?”

“Like a companion to the old man, for instance. Like a decoy to give his tale validity.”

Par was incensed. “That’s ridiculous! What would be the purpose of that?”

Coll pursed his lips thoughtfully. “To persuade you to go with him to the Hadeshorn, naturally. To bring you back into Callahorn. Think about it. Maybe the old man is interested in the magic, too—just like the Federation.”

Par shook his head vehemently. “I don’t believe it.”

“That’s because you never like to believe anything that you haven’t thought of first,” Coll declared pointedly, picking up his end of the tarp again. “You decide something and that’s the end of it. Well, this time you had better not make your decision too quickly. There are other possibilities to consider, and I’ve just given you one of them.”

They walked down to the shoreline in silence and deposited the tarp in the bottom of the skiff. The sun was barely above the eastern horizon, and already the day was beginning to feel warm. The Rainbow Lake was smooth, the air windless and filled with the scent of wild-flowers and long grass.

Coll turned. “You know, it’s not that I mind you being decisive about things. It’s just that you then assume I ought simply to agree. I shouldn’t argue, I should acquiesce. Well, I am not going to do that. If you want to strike out for Callahorn and the Dragon’s Teeth—fine, you go right ahead. But quit acting as if I ought to jump at the chance to go along.”

Par didn’t say anything back right away. Instead, he thought about what it had been like for them growing up. Par was the older by two years and while physically smaller than Coll, he had always been the leader. He had the magic, after all, and that had always set him apart. It was true, he was decisive; it had been necessary to be decisive when faced with the temptation to use the magic to solve every situation. He had not been as even-tempered as he should have; he wasn’t any better now. Coll had always been the more controlled of the two—slower to anger, thoughtful and deliberate, a born peacemaker in the neighborhood fights and squabbles because no one else had the physical and emotional presence. Or was as well liked, he added—because Coll was always that, the sort of fellow that everyone takes to instantly. He spent his time looking after everyone, smoothing over hard feelings, restoring injured pride. Par was always charging around, oblivious to such things, busy searching for new places to explore, new challenges to engage, new ideas to develop. He was visionary, but he lacked Coll’s sensitivity. He foresaw so clearly life’s possibilities, but Coll was the one who understood best its sacrifices.

There had been a good many times when they had covered for each other’s mistakes. But Par had the magic to fall back on and covering up for Coll had seldom cost him anything. It hadn’t been like that for Coll. Covering up for Par had sometimes cost him a great deal. Yet Par was his brother, whom he loved, and he never complained. Sometimes, thinking back on those days, Par was ashamed of how much he had let his brother do for him.

He brushed the memories aside. Coll was looking at him, waiting for his response. Par shifted his feet impatiently and thought about what that response ought to be. Then he said simply, “All right. What do you think we should do?”

“Shades, I don’t know what we should do!” Coll said at once. “I just know that there are a lot of unanswered questions, and I don’t think we should commit ourselves to anything until we’ve had a chance to answer some of them!”

Par nodded stoically. “Before the time of the new moon, you mean.”

“That’s better than three weeks away and you know it!”

Par’s jaw tightened. “That’s not as much time as you make it seem! How are we supposed to answer all the questions we have before then?”

Coll stared at him. “You are impossible, you know that?”

He turned and walked back from the shoreline to where the blankets and cooking gear were stacked and began carrying them down to the skiff. He didn’t look at Par. Par stood where he was and watched his brother in silence. He was remembering how Coll had pulled him half-drowned from the Rappahalladran when he had fallen in the rapids on a camping trip. He had gone under and Coll had been forced to dive down for him. He became sick afterward and Coll had carried him home on his back, shaking with fever and half-delirious. Col was always looking out for him, it seemed. Why was that, he wondered suddenly, when he was the one with the magic?

Coll finished packing the skiff, and Par walked over to him. “I’m sorry,” he said and waited.

Coll looked down at him solemnly a moment, then grinned. “No, you’re not. You’re just saying that.”

Par grinned back in spite of himself. “I am not!”

“Yes, you are. You just want to put me off my guard so you can start in again with your confounded decision-making once we’re out in the middle of that lake where I can’t walk away from you!” His brother was laughing openly now.

Par did his best to look mortified. “Okay, it’s true. I’m not sorry.”

“I knew it!” Coll was triumphant.

“But you’re wrong about the reason for the apology. It has nothing to do with getting you out in the middle of the lake. I’m just trying to shed the burden of guilt I’ve always felt at being the older brother.”

“Don’t worry!” Coll was doubled over. “You’ve always been a terrible older brother!”

Par shoved him, Coll shoved back, and for the moment their differences were forgotten. They laughed, took a final look about the campsite and pushed the skiff out onto the lake, clambering aboard as it reached deeper water. Coll took up the oars without asking and began to row.

They followed the shoreline west, listening contentedly as the distant sounds of birds rose out of the trees and rushes, letting the day grow pleasantly warm about them. They didn’t talk for a while, satisfied with the renewed feeling of closeness they had found on setting out, anxious to avoid arguing again right away.

Nevertheless, Par found himself rehashing matters in his mind—much the same as he was certain Coll was doing. His brother was right about one thing—there were a lot of unanswered questions. Reflecting on the events of the previous evening, Par found himself wishing he had thought to ask the old man for a bit more information. Did the old man know, for instance, who the stranger was who had rescued them in Varfleet? The old man had known about their trouble there and must have had some idea how they escaped. The old man had managed to track them, first to Varfleet, then down the Mermidon, and he had frightened off the woodswoman—Shadowen or whatever—without much effort. He had some form of power at his command, possibly Druid magic, possibly old world science—but he had never said what it was or what it did. Exactly what was his relationship with Allanon? Or was that simply a claim without any basis in fact? And why was it that he had given up on Par so easily when Par had said he must think over the matter of going off to the Hadeshorn for a meeting with Allanon? Shouldn’t he have worked harder at persuading Par to go?

But the most disturbing question was one that Par could not bring himself to discuss with Coll at all—because it concerned Coll himself. The dreams had told Par that he was needed and that his cousin Wren and his uncle Walker Boh were needed as well. The old man had said the same—that Par, Wren, and Walker had been called.

Why was there no mention of Coll?

It was a question for which he had no answer at all. He had thought at first that it was because he had the magic and Coll didn’t, that the summons had something to do with the wishsong. But then why was Wren needed? Wren had no magic either. Walker Boh was different, of course, since it had always been rumored that he knew something of magic that none of the others did. But not Wren. And not Coll. Yet Wren had been specifically named and Coll hadn’t.

It was this more than anything that made him question what he should do. He wanted to know the reason for the dreams; if the old man was right about Allanon, Par Wanted to know what the Druid had to say. But he did not want to know any of it if it meant separating from Coll. Coll was more than his brother; he was his closest friend, his most trusted companion, practically his other self. Par did not intend to become involved in something where both were not wanted. He simply wasn’t going to do it.

Yet the old man had not forbidden Coll to come. Nor had the dreams. Neither had warned against it.

They had simply ignored him.

Why would that be?

The morning lengthened, and a wind came up. The brothers rigged a sail and mast using the canvas tarp and one of the oars, and soon they were speeding across the Rainbow Lake, the waters slapping and foaming about them. Several times they almost went over, but they stayed alert to sudden shifts in the wind and used their body weight to avoid capsizing. They set a southwest course and by early afternoon had reached the mouth of the Rappahalladran.

There they beached the skiff in a small cove, covered it with rushes and boughs, left everything within but the blankets and cooking gear, and began hiking upriver toward the Duln forests. It soon became expedient to cut across country to save time, and they left the river, moving up into the Highlands of Leah. They hadn’t spoken about where they were going since the previous evening, when the tacit understanding had been that they would debate the matter later. They hadn’t, of course. Neither had brought the subject up again, Coll because they were moving in the direction he wanted to go anyway, and Par because he had decided that Coll was right that some thinking needed to be done before any trip back north into Callahorn was undertaken. Shady Vale was as good a place as any to complete that thinking.

Oddly enough, though they hadn’t talked about the dreams or the old man or any of the rest of it since early that morning, they had begun separately to rethink their respective positions and to move closer together—each inwardly conceding that maybe the other made some sense after all.

By the time they began discussing matters again, they were no longer arguing. It was midafternoon, the summer day hot and sticky now, the sun a blinding white sphere before them as they walked, forcing them to shield their eyes protectively. The country was a mass of rolling hills, a carpet of grasses and wildflowers dotted with stands of broad-leafed trees and patches of scrub and rock. The mists that blanketed the Highlands year-round had retreated to the higher elevations in the face of the sun’s brightness and clung to the tips of the ridgelines and bluffs like scattered strips of linen.

“I think that woodswoman was genuinely afraid of the old man,” Par was saying as they climbed a long, gradual slope into a stand of ash. “I don’t think she was pretending. No one’s that good an actor.”

Coll nodded. “I think you’re right. I just said all that earlier about the two of them being in league to make you think. I can’t help wondering, though, if the old man is telling us everything he knows. What I mostly remember about Allanon in the stories is that he was decidedly circumspect in his dealings with the Ohmsfords.”

“He never told them everything, that’s true.”

“So maybe the old man is the same way.”

They crested the hill, moved into the shade of the ash trees, dropped their rolled up blankets wearily and stood looking out at the Highlands. Both were sweating freely, their tunics damp against their backs.

“We won’t make Shady Vale tonight,” Par said, settling to the ground against one of the trees.

“No, it doesn’t look like it.” Coll joined him, stretching until his bones cracked.

“I was thinking.”

“Good for you.”

“I was thinking about where we might spend the night. It would be nice to sleep in a bed for a change.”

Coll laughed. “You won’t get any argument out of me. Got any idea where we can find a bed out here in the middle of nowhere?”

Par turned slowly and looked at him. “Matter-of-fact, I do. Morgan’s hunting lodge is just a few miles south. I bet we could borrow it for the night.”

Coll frowned thoughtfully. “Yes, I bet we could.”

Morgan Leah was the eldest son in a family whose ancestors had once been Kings of Leah. But the monarchy had been overthrown almost two hundred years ago when the Federation had expanded northward and simply consumed the Highlands in a single bite. There had been no Leah Kings since, and the family had survived as gentlemen farmers and craftsmen over the years. The current head of the family, Kyle Leah, was a landholder living south of the city who bred beef cattle. Morgan, his oldest son, Par and Coll’s closest friend, bred mostly mischief.

“You don’t think Morgan will be around, do you?” Coll asked, grinning at the possibility.

Par grinned back. The hunting lodge was really a family possession, but Morgan was the one who used it the most. The last time the Ohmsford brothers had come into the Highlands they had stayed for a week at the lodge as Morgan’s guests. They had camped, hunted and fished, but mostly they had spent their time recounting tales of Morgan’s ongoing efforts to cause distress to the members of the Federation government-in-residence at Leah. Morgan Leah had the quickest mind and the fastest pair of hands in the Southland, and he harbored an abiding dislike for the army that occupied his land. Unlike Shady Vale, Leah was a major city and required watching. The Federation, after abolishing the monarchy, had installed a provisional governor and cabinet and stationed a garrison of soldiers to insure order. Morgan regarded that as a personal challenge. He took every opportunity that presented itself, and a few that didn’t, to make life miserable for the officials that now lodged comfortably and without regard for proper right of ownership in his ancestral home. It was never a contest. Morgan was a positive genius at disruption and much too sharp to allow the Federation officials to suspect he was the thorn in their collective sides that they could not even find, let alone remove. On the last go around, Morgan had trapped the governor and vice-governor in a private bathing court with a herd of carefully muddied pigs and jammed all the locks on the doors. It was a very small court and a whole lot of pigs. It took two hours to free them all, and Morgan insisted solemnly that by then it was hard to tell who was who.

The brothers regained their feet, hoisted their packs in place, and set off once more. The afternoon slipped away as the sun followed its path westward, but the air stayed quiet and the heat grew even more oppressive. The land at this elevation at midsummer was so arid that the grass crackled where they walked, the once-green blades dried to a brownish gray crust. Dust curled up in small puffs beneath their boots, and their mouths grew dry.

It was nearing sunset by the time they caught sight of the hunting lodge, a stone-and-timber building set back in a grouping of pines on a rise that overlooked the country west. Hot and sweating, they dumped their gear by the front door and went directly to the bathing springs nestled in the trees a hundred yards back. When they reached the springs, a cluster of clear blue pools that filled from beneath and emptied out into a sluggish little stream, they began stripping off their clothes immediately, heedless of anything but their by now overwhelming need to sink down into the inviting water.

Which was why they didn’t see the mud creature until it was almost on top of them.

It rose up from the bushes next to them, vaguely manlike, encrusted in mud and roaring with a ferocity that shattered the stillness like glass. Coll gave a howl, sprang backward, lost his balance and rumbled headfirst into the springs. Par jerked away, tripped and rolled, and the creature was on top of him.

“Ahhhh! A tasty Valeman!” the creature rasped in a voice that was suddenly very familiar.

“Shades, Morgan!” Par twisted and turned and shoved the other away. “You scared me to death, confound it!”

Coll pulled himself out of the springs, still wearing boots and pants halfway off, and said calmly, “I thought it was only the Federation you intended to drive out of Leah, not your friends.” He heaved himself up and brushed the water from his eyes.

Morgan Leah was laughing merrily from within his mud cocoon. “I apologize, I really do. But it was an opportunity no man could resist. Surely you can understand that!”

Par tried to wipe the mud from his clothes and finally gave up, stripping bare and carrying everything into the springs with him. He gave a sigh of relief, then glanced back at Morgan. “What in the world are you doing anyway?”

“Oh, the mud? Good for your skin.” Morgan walked to the springs and lowered himself into the water gingerly. “There are mud baths about a mile back. I found them the other day quite by accident. Never knew they were here. I can tell you honestly that there is nothing like mud on your body on a hot day to cool you down. Better even than the springs. So I rolled about quite piglike, then hiked back here to wash off. That was when I heard you coming and decided to give you a proper Highlands greeting.”

He ducked down beneath the water; when he surfaced, the mud monster had been replaced by a lean, sinewy youth approximately their own age with skin so sun-browned it was almost the color of chocolate, shoulder-length reddish hair, and clear gray eyes that looked out of a face that was at once both clever and guileless. “Behold!” he exclaimed and grinned.

“Marvelous,” Par replied tonelessly.

“Oh, come now! Not every trick can be earth-shattering. Which reminds me.” Morgan bent forward questioningly. He spent much of his time wearing an expression that suggested he was secretly amused about something, and he showed it to them now. “Aren’t you two supposed to be up in Callahorn somewhere dazzling the natives? Wasn’t that the last I heard of your plans? What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” Coll shot back.

“Me? Oh, just another little misunderstanding involving the governor—or more accurately, I’m afraid, the governor’s wife. They don’t suspect me, of course—they never do. Still, it seemed a good time for a vacation.” Morgan’s grin widened. “But come on now, I asked you first. What’s going on?”

He was not to be put off and there had never been any unshared secrets among the three in any case, so Par, with considerable help from Coll, told him what had happened to them since that night in Varfleet when Rimmer Dall and the Federation Seekers had come looking for them. He told him of the dreams that might have been sent by Allanon, of their encounter with the frightening woodswoman who might have been one of the Shadowen, and of the old man who had saved them and might have been Cogline.

“There are a good number of “might have beens” in that story,” the Highlander observed archly when they were finished. “Are you certain you’re not making this all up? It would be a fine joke at my expense.”

“I just wish we were,” Coll replied ruefully.

“Anyway, we thought we’d spend the night here in a bed, then go on to the Vale tomorrow,” Par explained.

Morgan trailed one finger through the water in front of him and shook his head. “I don’t think I’d do that if I were you.”

Par and Coll looked at each other.

“If the Federation wanted you badly enough to send Rimmer Dall all the way to Varfleet,” Morgan continued, his eyes coming up suddenly to meet their own, “then don’t you think it likely they might send him to Shady Vale as well?”

There was a long silence before Par finally said, “I admit, I hadn’t thought of that.”

Morgan stroked over to the edge of the springs, heaved himself out, and began wiping the water from his body. “Well, thinking has never been your strong point, my boy. Good thing you’ve got me for a friend. Let’s walk back up to the lodge and I’ll fix you something to eat—something besides fish for a change—and we’ll talk about it.”

They dried, washed out their clothes and returned to the lodge where Morgan set about preparing dinner. He cooked a wonderful stew filled with meat, carrots, potatoes, onions, and broth, and served it with hot bread and cold ale. They sat out under the pines at a table and benches and consumed the better part of their food and drink, the day finally beginning to cool as night approached and an evening breeze rustled down out of the hills. Morgan brought out pears and cheese for dessert, and they nibbled contentedly as the sky turned red, then deep purple and finally darkened and filled with stars.

“I love the Highlands,” Morgan said after they had been silent for a time. They were seated on the stone steps of the lodge now. “I could learn to love the city as well, I expect, but not while it belongs to the Federation. I sometimes find myself wondering what it would have been like to live in the old home, before they took it from us. That was a long time ago, of course—six generations ago. No one remembers what it was like anymore. My father won’t even talk about it. But here—well, this is still ours, this land. The Federation hasn’t been able to take that away yet. There’s just too much of it. Maybe that’s why I love it so much—because it’s the last thing my family has left from the old days.”

“Besides the sword,” Par reminded.

“Do you still carry that battered old relic?” Coll asked. “I keep thinking you will discard it in favor of something newer and better made.”

Morgan glanced over. “Do you remember the stories that said the Sword of Leah was once magic?”

“Allanon himself was supposed to have made it so,” Par confirmed.

“Yes, in the time of Rone Leah.” Morgan furrowed his brow. “Sometimes I think it still is magic. Not as it once was, not as a weapon that could withstand Mord Wraiths and such, but in a different way. The scabbard has been replaced half-a-dozen times over the years, the hilt once or twice at least, and both are worn again. But the blade—ah, that blade! It is still as sharp and true as ever, almost as if it cannot age. Doesn’t that require magic of a sort?”

The brothers nodded solemnly. “Magic sometimes changes in the way it works,” Par said. “It grows and evolves. Perhaps that has happened with the Sword of Leah.” He was thinking as he said it how the old man had told him he did not understand the magic at all and wondered if that were true.

“Well, truth is, no one wants the weapon in any case, not anymore.” Morgan stretched like a cat and sighed. “No one wants anything that belongs to the old days, it seems. The reminders are too painful, I think. My father didn’t say a word when I asked for the blade. He just gave it to me.”

Coll reached over and gave the other a friendly shove. “Well, your father ought to be more careful to whom he hands out his weapons.”

Morgan managed to look put upon. “Am I the one being asked to join the Movement?” he demanded. They laughed. “By the way. You mentioned the stranger gave you a ring. Mind if I take a look?”

Par reached into his tunic, fished out the ring with the hawk insigne and passed it over. Morgan took it and examined it carefully, then shrugged and handed it back. “I don’t recognize it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I hear there are a dozen outlaw bands within the Movement and they all change their markings regularly to confuse the Federation.”

He took a long drink from his ale glass and leaned back again. “Sometimes I think I ought to go north and join them—quit wasting time here playing games with those fools who live in my house and govern my land and don’t even know the history.” He shook his head sadly and for a moment looked old.

Then he brightened. “But now about you.” He swung his legs around and sat forward. “You can’t risk going back until you’re certain it’s safe. So you’ll stay here for a day or so and let me go ahead. I’ll make certain the Federation hasn’t gotten there before you. Fair enough?”

“More than fair,” Par said at once. “Thanks, Morgan. But you have to promise to be careful.”

“Careful? Of those Federation fools? Ha!” The Highlander grinned ear to ear. “I could step up and spit in their collective eye and it would still take them days to work it out! I haven’t anything to fear from them!”

Par wasn’t laughing. “Not in Leah, perhaps. But there may be Seekers in Shady Vale.”

Morgan quit grinning. “Your point is well taken. I’ll be careful.”

He drained the last of his ale and stood up. “Time for bed. I’ll want to leave early.”

Par and Coll stood up with him. Coll said, “What was it exactly that you did to the governor’s wife?”

Morgan shrugged. “Oh, that? Nothing much. Someone said she didn’t care for the Highlands air, that it made her queasy. So I sent her a perfume to sweeten her sense of smell. It was contained in a small vial of very delicate glass. I had it placed in her bed, a surprise for her. She accidentally broke it when she lay on it.”

His eyes twinkled. “Unfortunately, I somehow got the perfume mixed up with skunk oil.”

The three of them looked at each other in the darkness and grinned like fools.

The Ohmsfords slept well that night, wrapped in the comfort and warmth of real beds with clean blankets and pillows. They could easily have slept until noon, but Morgan had them awake at dawn as he prepared to set out for Shady Vale. He brought out the Sword of Leah and showed it to them, its hilt and scabbard badly worn, but its blade as bright and new as the Highlander had claimed. Grinning in satisfaction at the looks on their faces, he strapped the weapon across one shoulder, stuck a long knife in the top of one boot, a hunting knife in his belt and strapped an ash bow to his back.

He winked. “Never hurts to be prepared.”

They saw him out the door and down the hill west for a short distance where he bade them goodbye. They were still sleepy eyed and their own goodbyes were mixed with yawns.

“Go on back to bed,” Morgan advised. “Sleep as long as you like. Relax and don’t worry. I’ll be back in a couple of days.” He waved as he moved off, a tall, lean figure silhouetted against the still-dark horizon, brimming with his usual self-confidence.

“Be careful!” Par called after him.

Morgan laughed. “Be careful yourself!”

The brothers took the Highlander’s advice and went back to bed, slept until afternoon, then wasted the remainder of the day just lying about. They did better the second day, rising early, bathing in the springs, exploring the countryside in a futile effort to find the mud baths, cleaning out the hunting lodge, and preparing and eating a dinner of wild fowl and rice. They talked a long time that night about the old man and the dreams, the magic and the Seekers, and what they should do with their immediate future. They did not argue, but they did not reach any decisions either.

The third day turned cloudy and by nightfall it was raining. They sat before the fire they had built in the great stone hearth and practiced the storytelling for a long time, working on some of the more obscure tales, trying to make the images of Par’s song and the words of Coll’s story mesh. There was no sign of Morgan Leah. In spite of their unspoken mutual resolve not to do so, they began to worry.

On the fourth day, Morgan returned. It was late afternoon when he appeared, and the brothers were seated on the floor in front of the fire repairing the bindings on one of the dinner table chairs when the door opened suddenly and he was there. It had been raining steadily all day, and the Highlander was soaked through, dripping water everywhere as he lowered his backpack and weapons to the floor and shoved the door closed behind him.

“Bad news,” he said at once. His rust-colored hair was plastered against his head, and the bones of his chiseled features glistened with rainwater. He seemed heedless of his condition as he crossed the room to confront them.

Par and Coll rose slowly from where they had been working. “You can’t go back to the Vale,” Morgan said quietly. “There are Federation soldiers everywhere. I can’t be certain if there are Seekers as well, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The village is under “Federation Protection”—that’s the euphemism they use for armed occupation. They’re definitely waiting for you. I asked a few questions and found out right away; no one’s making any secret of it. Your parents are under house arrest. I think they’re okay, but I couldn’t risk trying to talk to them. I’m sorry. There would have been too many questions.”

He took a deep breath. “Someone wants you very badly, my friends.”

Par and Coll looked at each other, and there was no attempt by either to disguise the fear. “What are we going to do?” Par asked softly.

“I’ve been thinking about that the whole way back,” Morgan said. He reached over and put a hand on his friend’s slim shoulder. “So I’ll tell you what we’re going to do—and I do mean “we” because I figure I’m in this thing with you now.”

His hand tightened. “We’re going east to look for Walker Boh.”