The Talismans of Shannara

Chapter Nine

Morgan spent the rest of the day in the kitchen with an old woman who came in to do the cooking but devoted most of her time to sipping ale from a metal flask and stealing food from the pots. The old woman barely gave him a glance and then only long enough to mutter something undecipherable about strange men, so he was left pretty much to himself. He took a bath in an old tub in one of the back rooms (because he wanted to and not because Matty Roh had suggested it, he told himself), carrying steaming water in buckets heated over the fire until he had enough to submerse himself. He languished in the tub for some time, letting more than just the dirt and grit soak away, staying long after the water had cooled.

After the Whistledown had opened for business he left the kitchen and went out into the main room to have a look around. He stood at the serving counter and watched the citizens of Varfleet come and go. The crowd was a well-dressed one, men and women both, and it was immediately clear that the Whistledown was not a workingman’s tavern. Several of the tables were occupied by Federation officers, some with their wives or consorts. Talk and laughter was restrained, and no one was particularly boisterous. Once or twice soldiers from Federation patrols paused long enough for a quick glance inside, but then passed on. A strapping fellow with curly dark hair drew ale from the casks, and a serving girl carried trays of the foaming brew to the tables.

Matty Roh worked, too, although it was not immediately apparent to Morgan what her job was. At times she swept the floor, at times she cleared tables, and occasionally she simply went about straightening things up. He watched her for some time before he was able to figure out that what she was really doing was listening in on the conversations of the tavern patrons. She was always busy and never seemed to stand about or to be in any one place for more than a moment, a very unobtrusive presence. Morgan couldn’t tell if anyone knew she was a girl or not, but in any case they paid almost no attention to her.

After a time she came up to the counter carrying a tray full of empty glasses and stood next to him. As she reached back for a fresh cleaning rag she said, “You’re too obvious standing here. Go back into the kitchen.” And then she turned back to the crowd.

Irritated, he nevertheless did as he was told.

At midnight the Whistledown closed. Morgan helped clean up, and then the old cook and the counterman said good-night and went out the back door. Matty Roh blew out the lamps in the front room, checked the locks on the doors, and came back into the kitchen. Morgan was waiting at the little table for her, and she came over and sat down across from him.

“So what did you learn tonight?” he asked, half joking. “Anything useful?”

She gave him a cool stare. “I’ve decided to trust you,” she announced.

His smile faded. “Thanks.”

“Because if you’re not who you say you are, then you are the worst Federation spy I’ve ever seen.”

He folded his arms defensively. “Forget the thanks. I take it back.”

“There is a rumor,” she said, “that the Federation have captured Padishar at Tyrsis.” Morgan went still. The cobalt eyes stayed fastened on him. “It had something to do with a prison break. I overheard a Federation commander talking about it. They claim to have him.”

Morgan thought about it a moment. “Padishar’s hard to trap. Maybe a rumor is all it is.”

She nodded. “Maybe. It wasn’t so long ago that they claimed to have killed him at the Jut. They said the Movement was finished.” She paused. “In any case, we’ll learn the truth at Fire-rim Reach.”

“We’re going?” Morgan asked quickly.

“We’re going.” She rose. “Help me pack some food. I’ll get us some blankets. We’ll slip away before it gets light, ft will be better if we aren’t seen leaving.”

He stood up with her and moved over to the pantry. “What about the tavern?” he asked. “Doesn’t someone have to look after it?”

“The tavern will stay closed until I return.”

He glanced up from stuffing a loaf of bread into a sack. “You lied to me, didn’t you? You are the owner.”

She met his gaze and held it. “Try not to be so stupid, Highlander. I didn’t lie to you. I’m the manager, not the owner. The owner is Padishar Creel.”

They finished putting together supplies and sleeping gear, strapped everything across their backs, and went out the back door into the night. The air was warm and filled with the smells of the city as they hurried down empty streets and alleyways, keeping close watch for Federation patrols. The girl was as silent as a ghost, a knife-lean figure cutting smoothly through the building shadows. Morgan noticed that she wore the sword she’d kept hidden beneath the counter, the narrow blade strapped across her back beneath her other gear. He wondered, rather unkindly, if she’d brought her broom. At least her odd shoes were gone, replaced by more serviceable boots.

They passed from the city into the land beyond and marched north to the Mermidon where they crossed at a shallows and turned east. They followed the line of the Dragon’s Teeth, and by daybreak they were traveling north again across the Rabb. They walked steadily until sunset, pausing long enough at midday to eat and to wait out the worst of the afternoon heat. The plains were dusty and dry and empty of life, and the journey was uneventful. The girl spoke little, and Morgan was content to leave things that way.

At sunset they made camp close against the Dragon’s Teeth beside a tributary of the Rabb, settling themselves in a grove of ash that climbed into the rocks like soldiers on the march. They ate their evening meal as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, its hazy mix of red and gold melting across the plains and sky. When they were finished, they sat watching the dusk deepen and the river’s waters turn silver in the light of the moon and stars.

“Padishar told me you saved his life,” the girl said after a time.

She hadn’t spoken a word all through dinner. Morgan looked over, surprised by the suddenness of the declaration. She was watching him, her strange blue eyes depthless.

“I saved my own in the bargain,” he replied, “so it wasn’t an entirely selfless act.”

She folded her arms. “He said to keep watch for you and to take good care of you. He said I’d know you when I saw you.”

Her expression never changed. Morgan grinned in spite of himself. “Well, he makes mistakes like everyone else.” He waited for a response and, when there was none, said, a bit huffy, “You may not believe this but I can take pretty good care of myself.”

She looked away, shifting to a more comfortable position. Her eyes gleamed in the starlight. “What is it like where you come from?”

He hesitated, confused. “What do you mean?”

“The Highlands, what are they like?”

He thought for a moment she was teasing him, then decided she wasn’t. He took a deep breath and stretched out, remembering. “It is the most beautiful country in the Four Lands,” he said, and proceeded to describe it in detail—the hills with their carpets of blue, lavender, and yellow grasses and flowers, the streams that turned frosty at dawn and blood-red at dusk, the mist that came and went with the changing seasons, the forests and the meadows, the sense of peace and timelessness. The Highlands were his passion, the more so since his departure weeks earlier. It reminded him again how much home meant to him, even a home that was really no longer his now that the Federation occupied it—though in truth, he thought, it was still more his than theirs because he kept the feel of it with him in his mind and its history was in his blood and that would never be true for them.

She was silent for a time when he finished, then said, “I like how you describe your home. I like how you feel about it. If I lived there, I think I would feel the same.”

“You would,” he assured her, studying the profile of her face as she stared out across the Rabb, distracted. “But I guess everyone feels that way about their home.”

“I don’t,” she said.

He straightened up again. “Why not?”

Her forehead furrowed. It produced only a slight marring of her smooth features but gave her an entirely different look, one at once both introspective and distant. “I suppose it’s because I have no good memories of home. I was born on a small farm south of Varfleet, one of several families that occupied a valley. I lived there with my parents and my brothers and one sister. I was the youngest. We raised milk cows and grain. In summer, the fields would be as gold as the sun. In fall, the earth would be all black after it was plowed.” She shrugged. “I don’t remember much other than that. Just the sickness. It seems a long time ago, but I guess it wasn’t. The land went bad first, then the stock, and finally my family. Everything began to die. Everyone. My sister first, then my mother, my brothers, and my father. It was the same with the people who lived on the other farms. It happened all at once. Everyone was dead in a few months. One of the women on the other farms found me and took me to Varfleet to live with her. We were the last. I was six years old.”

She made it all sound as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. There was no emotion in her voice. She finished and looked away. “I think there might be some rain on the way,” she said.

They slept until dawn, ate a breakfast of bread, fruit, and cheese, and began their trek north again. The skies were clouding when they woke, and a short time after they crossed the Rabb it began to rain. Thunderheads built up, and lightning streaked the blackness. When the rain began to come down in torrents, they took shelter in the lee of an old maple set back against a rocky rise. Brushing water from their faces and clothes, they settled back to wait out the storm. The air cooled slightly, and the plains shimmered with the damp.

Shoulder to shoulder, they sat with their backs against the maple, staring out into the haze, listening to the sound of the rain.

“How did you meet Padishar?” Morgan asked her after they had been quiet for a time.

She brought her knees up and wrapped her arms about them. Water beaded on her skin and glistened in her black hair. “I apprenticed to Hirehone when I was old enough to work. He taught me to forge iron and to fight. After a while I was better than he was at both. So he brought me into the Movement, and that’s how I met Padishar.”

Memories of Hirehone crowded Morgan’s mind. He let them linger a moment and then banished them. “How long have you been looking after the Whistledown?”

“A couple of years. It offers an opportunity to learn things that can help the free-born. It’s a place to be for now.”

He glanced over. “But not where you want to end up, is that what you’re saying?”

She gave him a flicker of a smile. “It’s not for me.”

“What is?”

“I don’t know yet. Do you?”

He thought about it. “I guess I don’t. I haven’t let myself think beyond what’s been happening these past few weeks. I’ve been running so fast I haven’t had time to stop and think.”

She leaned back. “I haven’t been running. I’ve been standing in place, waiting for something to happen.”

He shifted to face her. “I was like that before I came north. I spent all of my time thinking of ways to make life miserable for the Federation occupiers—all those officers and soldiers living in the home that had belonged to my family, pretending it was theirs. I thought I was doing something, but I was really just standing in place.”

She gave him a curious glance. “So now you’re running instead. Is that any better?”

He smiled and shrugged. “At least I’m seeing more of the country.”

The rains slowed, the skies began to clear, and they resumed their journey. Morgan found himself sneaking glances at Matty Roh, studying the expression on her face, the lines of her body, and the way she moved. He thought her intriguing, suggestive of so much more than what she allowed to show. On the surface she was cool and purposeful, a carefully fixed mask that hid stronger and deeper emotions beneath. He believed, for reasons he could not explain, that she was capable of almost anything.

It was nearing midday when she turned him into the rocks and they began to follow a trail that ran upward into the hills fronting the Dragon’s Teeth. They entered a screen of trees that hid the mountains ahead and the plains behind, and when they emerged they were at the foot of the peaks. The trail disappeared with the trees, and they were soon climbing more rugged slopes, picking their way over the rocks as best they could. Morgan found himself wondering, rather uncharitably, if Matty Roh knew where she was going. After a while they reached a pass and followed it through a split in the rocks into a deep defile. The cliff walls closed about until there was only a narrow ribbon of clouded blue sky visible overhead. Birds took flight from their craggy perches and disappeared into the sun. Wind whistled in sudden gusts down the canyon’s length, a shrill and empty sound.

When they stopped for a drink from the water skin, Morgan glanced at the girl to see how she was holding up. There was a sheen of sweat on her smooth face, but she was breathing easily. She caught him looking, and he turned quickly away.

Somewhere deep in the split Matty Roh took them into a cluster of massive boulders that appeared to be part of an old slide. Behind the concealing rocks they found a passageway that tunneled into the cliff wall. They entered and began to climb a spiraling corridor that opened out again onto a ledge about halfway up. Morgan peered down cautiously. It was a straight drop. A narrow trail angled upward from where they stood, the cut invisible from below, and they followed the pathway to the summit of the cliff and along the rim to another split, this one barely more than a crack in the rocks, so narrow that only one person at a time could pass through.

Matty Roh stopped at the opening. “They’ll come for us in a moment,” she announced, slipping the water skin from her shoulder and passing it to him so that he could drink.

He declined the offering. If she didn’t need a drink, neither did he. “How will they know we’re here?” he asked.

That flicker of a smile came and went. “They’ve been watching us for the past hour. Didn’t you see them?”

He hadn’t, of course, and she knew it, so he just shrugged his indifference and let the matter drop.

Shortly afterward a pair of figures emerged from the shadows of the split, bearded, hard-faced men with longbows and knives. They greeted Matty Roh and Morgan perfunctorily, then beckoned for them to follow. Single file, they entered the split and passed along a trail that wound upward into a jumble of rocks that shut away any view of what lay ahead. Morgan climbed dutifully, unable to avoid noticing that Matty Roh continued to look as if she were out for a midday stroll.

Finally they reached a plateau that stretched away north, south, and west and offered the most breathtaking views of the Dragon’s Teeth and the lands beyond that Morgan had ever seen. Sunset was approaching, and the skies were turning a brilliant crimson through the screen of mist that clung to the mountain peaks. Hence the name Firerim Reach, thought Morgan. East, the plateau backed up against a ridge grown thick with spruce and cedar. It was here that the outlaws were encamped, their roofed shelters crowded into the trees, their cooking fires smoldering in stone-lined pits. There were no walled fortifications as there had been at the Jut, for the plateau dropped away into a mass of jagged fissures and deep canyons, its sheer walls unscalable by one man let alone any sort of sizable force. At least, that was the way it appeared from where Morgan stood, and he assumed it was the same on all sides of the quarter-mile or so stretch of plain. The only way in appeared to be the way they had come. Still, the Highlander knew Padishar Creel well enough to bet there was at least one other.

He turned as a familiar burly figure lumbered up to meet them, black-bearded and ferocious-looking with his missing eye and ear and his scarred face. Chandos embraced Matty Roh warmly, nearly swallowing her up in his embrace, and then reached out for Morgan.

“Highlander,” he greeted, taking Morgan’s hand in his own and crushing it. “It’s good to have you back with us.”

“It’s good to be back.” Morgan extracted his hand painfully. “How are you, Chandos?”

The big man shook his head. “Well enough, given everything that’s happened.” There was an angry, frustrated look in his dark eyes. His jaw tightened. “Come with me where we can talk.”

He took Morgan and Matty Roh from the rim of the cliffs across the bluff. The guards who had brought them in disappeared back the way they had come. Chandos moved deliberately away from the encampment and the other outlaws. Morgan glanced questioningly at Matty Roh, but the girl’s face was unreadable.

When they were safely out of earshot, she said immediately to Chandos, “They have him, don’t they?”

“Padishar?” Chandos nodded. “They took him two nights earlier at Tyrsis.” He turned and faced Morgan. “The Valeman was with him, the smaller one, the one Padishar liked so well—Par Ohmsford. Apparently the two of them went into the Federation prisons to rescue Damson Rhee. They got her out, but Padishar was captured in the attempt. Damson’s here now. She arrived yesterday with the news.”

“What happened to Par?” Morgan asked, wondering at the same time why there had been no mention of Coll.

“Damson said he went off in search of his brother—something about the Shadowen.” Chandos brushed the question aside. “What matters at the moment is Padishar.” His scarred face furrowed. “I haven’t told the others yet.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if I should or not. We’re supposed to meet with Axhind and his Trolls at the Jannisson at the end of the week. Five days. If we don’t have Padishar with us, I don’t think they’ll join up. I think they’ll just turn around and go right back the way they came. Five thousand strong!” His face flushed, and he took a steadying breath. “We need them if we’re to have any kind of chance against the Federation. Especially after losing the Jut.”

He looked at them hopefully. “I was never much at making plans. So if you’ve any ideas at all...”

Matty Roh shook her head. “If the Federation has Padishar, he won’t stay alive very long.”

Chandos scowled. “Maybe longer than he’d like, if the Seekers get their hands on him.”

Morgan recalled the Pit and its inhabitants momentarily and quickly forced the thought away. Something about all this didn’t make sense. Padishar had gone looking for Par and Coll weeks ago. Why had it taken him so long to find them? Why had the Ohmsford brothers remained in Tyrsis all that time? And when Par and Padishar had gone into the prisons to rescue Damson Rhee, where was Coll? Did the Shadowen have Coll as well?

It seemed to Morgan that there was an awful lot unaccounted for.

“I want to speak with Damson Rhee,” he announced abruptly. He had wondered about her at the beginning, and suddenly he was beginning to wonder about her all over again.

Chandos shrugged. “She’s sleeping. Walked all night to get here.”

Images of Teel danced in Morgan’s head, whispering insidiously. “Then let’s wake her.”

Chandos gave him a hard stare. “All right, Highlander. If you think it’s important. But it will be your doing, not mine.”

They crossed to the encampment and passed through the cooking fires and the free-born at work about them. The sun had dropped further in the west, and it was nearing dinnertime. There was food in the cooking kettles, and the smells wafted on the summer air. Morgan scarcely noticed, his mind at work on other matters. Shadows crept out of the trees, lengthening as dusk approached. Morgan was thinking about Par and Coll, still in Tyrsis after all this time. They had escaped the Pit weeks ago. Why had they stayed there? he kept wondering. Why for so long?

As the questions pressed in about him, he kept seeing Teel’s face—and the Shadowen that had hidden beneath.

They reached a small hut set well back in the trees, and Chandos stopped. “She’s in there. You wake her if you want. Come have dinner with me when you’re finished, the both of you.”

Morgan nodded. He turned to Matty Roh. “Do you want to come with me?”

She gave him an appraising look. “No. I think you should do this on your own.”

It seemed for a moment as if she might say more, but then she turned and walked off into the trees after Chandos. She knew something she wasn’t telling, Morgan decided. He watched her go, thinking once again that Matty Roh was a good deal more complex than what she revealed.

He looked back at the hut, momentarily undecided as to how he should go about bracing Damson Rhee. Suspicions and fears shouldn’t be allowed to get in the way of common sense. But he couldn’t shake the image of Teel as a Shadowen. It could easily be the same with this girl. The trick was in finding out.

He reached back over his shoulder to make certain that the Sword of Leah would slide free easily, took a deep breath, then walked up to the door and knocked. It opened almost immediately, and a girl with flaming red hair and emerald eyes stood looking out at him. She was flushed, as if she had just awakened, and her dark clothing was disheveled. She was tall, though not as tall as Matty, and very pretty.

“I’m Morgan Leah,” he said.

She blinked, then nodded. “Par’s friend, the Highlander. Yes, hello. I’m Damson Rhee. I’m sorry, I’ve been sleeping. What time is it?” She peered up at the sky through the trees. “Almost dusk, isn’t it? I’ve slept too long.”

She stepped back as if to go inside, then stopped and turned to face him again. “You’ve heard about Padishar, I suppose. Did you just get here?”

He nodded, watching her face. “I wanted to hear what happened from you.”

“All right.” She did not seem surprised. She glanced over her shoulder, then came out into the light. “Let’s talk out here. I’m tired of being shut away. Tired of being inside where there’s no light. How much did Chandos tell you?”

She moved away from the hut into the trees, a very determined stride, and he was swept along in her wake. “He told me that Padishar had been taken by the Federation when he and Par came to rescue you. He said Par had left you to go find Coll—that it had something to do with the Shadowen.”

“Everything has something to do with the Shadowen, doesn’t it?” she whispered, her head lowering wearily.

She walked over to one end of a crumbling log and sat down.

Morgan hesitated, still guarded, then sat with her. She turned slightly so that she was facing him. “I have a very long story to tell you, Morgan Leah,” she advised.

She began with finding Par and Coll after they had escaped the Pit in Tyrsis. She told of how they had decided to go back down into the Shadowen breeding ground one final time, how they had enlisted the help of the Mole and found their way through the tunnels beneath the city to the old palace. From there the brothers had gone off together in search of the Sword of Shannara. Par had come back alone, carrying with him what he believed to be the talisman, half-mad with grief and horror because he had killed his brother. She had nursed him for weeks in the Mole’s underground home, slowly bringing him back to himself, carefully bringing him out of his dark nightmare. From there they had fled from safe house to safe house, the Sword of Shannara in tow, hiding from the Seekers and the Federation, looking for a way to escape the city. Finally Padishar had found them, but in the process of yet another escape from the Federation, Damson herself had been taken. Padishar and Par had come back to rescue her, and that in turn had led to Padishar’s capture. Fleeing the city completely, because at last there was a way to do so and there was nothing they could do for Padishar without help, they had come north through the Kennon.

She touched his arm impulsively. “And what we saw, Morgan Leah, from high in the pass, far off in the distance beyond the Federation watch fires, but as clear as I see you, was Paranor. It is back, Highlander, returned out of the past. Par was certain of it. He said it meant that Walker Boh had succeeded!”

Then, growing subdued again, she described their journey back out of the pass and their fateful encounter with Coll—or the thing Coll had become, wrapped in that strange, shimmering cloak, hunched and twisted as if his bones had been rearranged. In the struggle that followed the power of the Sword of Shannara had somehow been invoked, revealing what Par now thought to be the truth about the brother he believed dead.

“He went after Coll, of course,” she finished. “What else could he do? I did not want him to go, not without me—but I did not have the right to stop him.” She searched Morgan’s eyes. “I am not as certain as he that it is Coll he tracks, but I realize that he must find out one way or the other if he is ever to be at peace.”

Morgan nodded. He was thinking that Damson Rhee had given up an awful lot of herself to help Par Ohmsford, that she had risked more than he would have expected anyone to risk besides himself and Coll. He was thinking as well that the story she had told him had a feeling of truth to it, that it seemed right in the balance of things. The doubts he had brought with him coming in began to fade away. Certainly Par’s persistence in going after the Sword of Shannara was in character, as was this new search to find his brother. The problem now was that Par was more alone than ever, and Morgan was reminded once again of his failure to watch out for his friend.

He realized Damson was studying him, a hard, probing look, and without warning his suspicions flared anew. Damson Rhee—was she the friend that Par believed or the enemy he sought so desperately to escape. Certainly she could have been the reason he’d had so many narrow escapes, the reason the Shadowen had almost trapped him so many times. But then, too, wasn’t she also the reason he had escaped?

“You’re not certain of me, are you?” she asked quietly.

“No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”

She nodded. “I don’t know what I can do to convince you, Morgan. I don’t know that I even want to try. I have to spend whatever energy is left me finding a way to free Padishar. Then I will go in search of Par.”

He looked away into the trees, thinking of the dark suspicions that the Shadowen bred in all of them, wishing it could be otherwise. “When I was at the Jut with Padishar,” he said, “I was forced to kill a girl who was really a Shadowen.” He looked back at her. “Her name was Teel. My friend Steff was in love with her, and it cost him his life.”

He told her then of Teel’s betrayals and the eventual confrontation deep within the catacombs of the mountains behind the Jut where he had killed the Shadowen who had been Teel and saved Padishar Creel’s life.

“What frightens me,” he said, “is that you could be another Teel and Par could end up like Steff.”

She did not respond, her gaze distant and lost. She might have been looking right through him. There were tears in her eyes.

He reached back suddenly and drew out the Sword of Leah. Damson watched him without moving, her green eyes fixing on the gleaming blade as he placed it point downward in the earth between them, his hands fastened on the pommel.

“Put your hands on the flat of the blade, Damson,” he said softly.

She looked at him without answering, and for a long time she did not move. He waited, listening to the distant sounds of the free-born as they gathered for dinner, listening to the silence closer at hand. The light was fading rapidly now, and there were shadows all about. He felt oddly removed from everything about him, as if he were frozen in time with Damson Rhee.

Not this girl, he found himself praying. Not again.

At last she reached out and touched the Sword of Leah, her palms tight against the metal. Then she deliberately closed her fingers about the edge. Morgan watched in horror as the blade cut deep into her flesh, and her blood began to trickle down its length.

“A Shadowen couldn’t do that, could it?” she whispered.

He reached down quickly and pried her fingers away. “No,” he said. “Not without triggering the magic.” He lay the talisman aside, tore strips of cloth from his cloak, and began to bind her hands. “You didn’t have to do that,” he reproached her.

Her smile was faint and wistful. “Didn’t I? Would you have been sure of me otherwise, Morgan Leah? I don’t think so. And if you’re not sure of me, how can we be of help to each other? There has to be trust between us.” She fixed him with her gentle eyes. “Is there now?”

He nodded quickly. “Yes. I’m sorry, Damson.”

Her bound hands reached up to clasp his own. “Let me tell you something.” The tears were back in her eyes. “You said that your friend Steff was in love with Teel? Well, Highlander, I am in love with Par Ohmsford.”

He saw it all then, the reason she had stayed with Par, had given herself so completely to him, following him even into the Pit, watching over him, protecting him. It was what he would have done—had tried to do—for Quickening. Damson Rhee had made a commitment that only death would release.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, thinking how inadequate it sounded.

Her hands tightened on his and did not let go. They faced each other in the dusk without speaking for a long time. As he held her hands, Morgan was reminded of Quickening, of the way she had felt, of the feelings she had invoked in him. He found that he missed her desperately and would have given anything to have her back again.

“Enough testing,” Damson whispered. “Let’s talk instead. I’ll tell you everything that’s happened to me. You do the same about yourself. Par and Padishar need us. Maybe together we can come up with a way to help.”

She squeezed his hands as if there were no pain in her own and gave him an encouraging smile. He bent to retrieve the Sword of Leah, then started back with her through the trees toward the glow of the cooking fires. His mind was spinning, working through what she had told him, sorting out impressions from facts, trying to glean something useful. Damson was right. The Valeman and the leader of the free-born needed them. Morgan was determined not to let either down.

But what could he do?

The smell of food from the cooking fire reached out to him enticingly. For the first time since he had arrived, he was hungry—

Par and Padishar.

Padishar first, he thought.

Chandos had said five days.

If the Seekers didn’t reach him first...

It came to him in a rush, the picture so clear in his mind he almost cried out. He reached over impulsively and put his arm around Damson’s shoulders.

“I think I know how to free Padishar,” he said.