The Talismans of Shannara

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Morgan Leah watched Wren disappear into night’s retreating darkness, his disappointment at not finding Par tempered by the satisfaction he felt in knowing that his efforts hadn’t been wasted. Imagine—finding Wren, of all people! It made him think that the world was a smaller place than it seemed, and that because it was, perhaps the children of Shannara and their allies had a chance against the Shadowen after all.

He turned back east then, looking off to the brightening skyline, to the silver-gray light spilling down through the tree-tops and mountain slopes in slowly widening pools. Daybreak was upon him. The cover of night that had protected him was already gone, and he was at risk beyond what he had planned. He glanced briefly at the shell of the toppled wagon and the black tangle of the fallen Shadowen and could not help thinking, I did it. I stood up against them all.

But where was he to go now? The Shadowen at Southwatch would be coming. They would have no trouble finding his tracks, and they would hunt him down and repay him for what he had done. He took a deep breath and looked about some more, as if in looking he might find the escape he needed. He could not go back to the bluff; that would be the first place they would look. They would find his trail and retrace his steps, hoping he was stupid enough to return to wherever he had been hiding.

He smiled faintly. He wasn’t that stupid, of course, but it wasn’t a bad idea to make them think he was.

He recrossed the narrows to where he had first come in and retraced his steps back through the trees and hills, not bothering to hide his tracks but messing them up as best he could to disguise how many of him there were, then turned and came back again, more cautious now because the Shadowen might have arrived in his absence. They had not, however,—the narrows and the flats beyond remained empty save for the dead. He moved back up the trail that had brought the wagon in, using the ruts to hide his bootprints, following the wheel marks for several miles through the hills before turning abruptly north into high grass where he edged carefully away into the rocks of a ridgeline. If he was lucky, they would not find where he had broken off and would be forced to scour the countryside blindly. That might give him the extra time he needed to get to where he had decided to go.

Of course, none of this meant anything if the Shadowen could track by smell. If they could hunt like animals, then he was in trouble whatever he did short of rolling in mud and applying stinkweed, and he was not prepared for that. What could these quasi-Elves do? He wished he knew more about them, wished he had taken time to ask Wren, but there was no help for it now. He would have to take his chances. He breathed in the morning air and thought how lucky he was to have the Sword of Leah’s magic to protect him, then realized that he had been given an answer to his question of whether the power would save or consume him. Of course, it didn’t mean that he was safe with it, that he could relax in its use, that he could even be assured things would turn out the same way next time. It only meant he had survived for now, but it was becoming increasingly clear that survival on any terms was the most he could hope for—that any of them could hope for—in their battle against the Shadowen.

One day it will be different, he told himself—but wondered if it was so.

The country before him tightened into a mass of hills, ridges, scrub-choked hollows, and dense forests backed up against the Runne. He was moving over rock, taking his time, working at stepping lightly where scuffed stones and bent twigs might give him away. He had reasoned it through like this. South lay the bluff where he had kept watch, and the Shadowen, if hunting him, would start there. West was the direction in which Wren had ridden, and they would surely hunt him there as well. North lay the cities of Callahorn—Tyrsis, Kern, and Varfleet—and that would be the next logical choice. The last place they would look was east in the country surrounding Southwatch, their fortress citadel, because it would not seem likely to them that someone who had just destroyed one of their patrols to rescue the Queen of the Elves would head for the very same place the patrol had been going.

Queen of the Elves, he mused, interrupting his thinking. Wren Elessedil. Little Wren. He shook his head. He had barely known her when she was growing up with Par and Coll at Shady Vale. It was hard to believe who she had become.

He grimaced. That was true, of course, he thought ruefully, of all of them, and he shrugged the matter aside.

The sun was above the horizon now, night’s shadows gone back into hiding, the swelter of summer’s heat rising up through the grasses and trees with a thickening of fetid air and dry earth. Morgan found a stream running down out of the rocks, followed it to a rapids where the water was clean, and drank. He had neither food nor water to sustain him, and he would have to obtain both if he was to survive for very long. He thought momentarily of Damson and Matty, and he hoped they did not choose this day to return from their search south. They would expect to find him on that bluff, but would likely find the Shadowen waiting instead. Not a pleasant thought. He would have to warn them, of course—but he would have to stay alive to do so.

He left the stream and worked his way to high ground. From the shelter of a stand of pine, he looked back across the hills south, searching for signs of pursuit. He stayed there a long time, scanning the countryside. Nothing showed itself. Finally he went on, moving east now toward the mountains and the river and Southwatch. He was above the citadel, deep enough within the concealing trees to keep from being seen but close enough so as not to lose contact. He made steady progress despite his wound, the pain a dull throbbing he had relegated to the back of his mind, working his way ahead with the practice and determination of an experienced woodsman, able to sense what was happening about him, to feel a part of the land. He listened to the sounds of the birds and animals, sensing what they were about, knowing that nothing was amiss.

The day edged on toward noon, and still there was no sign of any pursuit. He began to hope that perhaps he had avoided it completely. He found fruit and wild greens to chew on and more drinking water, and when he reached the wall of the Runne, he turned south again. He shifted the Sword of Leah to take the strain off his wound and thought on its history. So many years of dormancy, a relic of another time, its magic forgotten until his encounter with the Shadowen during the journey to Culhaven. Happenstance, and nothing more. Strange how things worked out. He pondered the effect that the Sword had had upon his life, of the ways it had worked both for and against him, and of the legacy of hope and despair it had bequeathed. He thought that it no longer mattered whether he approved of it or not, whether he believed his link with the magic was a good or bad thing, because in the final analysis it didn’t matter—the magic simply was. Quickening, he thought, had recognized the inevitability of it better than he, and she had given back the Sword whole because she knew that if the magic was to be his, it should be his complete and not diminished or failed. Quickening had understood how the game was played; her legacy to him had been to teach him the rules.

He stopped to rest when the heat of the day was at its peak, a scathing, burning glare that rose off the parched earth in a white-hot shimmer. He sat in the shade of an aging maple, broad-leaved boughs canopied above him like a tent, squirrels and birds moving through the sheltering branches in apparent disregard of his presence, bound up in their own pursuits. He stared out through the trees to the hills and grasslands south and east, the Sword of Leah propped blade down between his legs, his arms folded across its hilt and grips. He wondered if Wren was safe. He wondered where everybody was, all those who had started out with him on this adventure and been lost somewhere along the way. Some, of course, were dead. But what of the others? He scuffed at the earth with his boot heel and wished he could see things that were hidden from him, then thought that maybe it was better that he couldn’t.

Late afternoon brought the temperature back down to bearable, and he resumed walking. Shadows were lengthening again, easing away from the trees and rocks and gullies and ridges behind which they had been hiding. Southwatch came into view, its dark obelisk rising up out of the poisoned flats that bridged the mouth of the Mermidon with the Rainbow Lake. The lake itself was flat and silvery, a mirror of the sky and the land, and the colors of its bow were pale and washed out in the fading light. Cranes and herons swooped and glided above its surface, vague flashes of white against the gray haze of an approaching dusk.

He stopped to watch, and it probably saved his life.

The birds went suddenly still, and there was movement ahead in the trees, barely perceptible, but there nevertheless, distant and indistinct in the failing light. Morgan eased back into the brush, as silent as shadows falling, and froze. After a moment, Shadowen appeared, one, two, then four more, a patrol working its way soundlessly through the trees. They did not seem to be tracking, merely searching, and the idea that they might be using their sense of smell to hunt turned Morgan cold. They were several hundred yards away still and moving along the slope. Their path would take them below where he hid—but across the trail he had left. He^wanted to run, to fly out of there as swiftly as the wind, but he knew he could not, and forced himself to wait. The hunters were black-robed and hooded and did not wear the emblem of Seekers. There was no pretense here, and that meant they either did not feel threatened or did not care. Neither prospect was reassuring.

Morgan watched them ease through the trees like bits of coming night and disappear from view.

Instantly he was moving again, gliding forward quickly, anxious to put as much distance as possible between himself and the black-garbed hunters. Were they searching for him or for someone else—for anyone, perhaps, after what had been done to their patrol, worried that there were others in hiding? It didn’t matter, he decided quickly. It was enough that they were out there and that sooner or later they were likely to find him.

He revised his previous plan, thinking on his feet, not slowing for an instant. He would not stay on this side of the Mermidon. He would cross the river and wait on the far bank where he could watch the shoreline and the lake for Damson and Matty to return. It was unfortunate that he could not position himself to keep an eye on Southwatch as well, but it was too dangerous to stick around. Best to wait for Damson to report what the Skree had shown on her journey south. Let her try its magic out again if necessary then. That would have to do.

He was very close to Southwatch now and saw that he could not reach the Mermidon to try a crossing without coming down out of the concealment of the trees. That meant he must wait for darkness, and darkness was still several hours away. Too long to stay in one place, he knew. He crouched in the shadows and studied the land below, looking for a reason to reconsider his assessment. The trees thinned as they broke from the Runne, melting away south so that there was no cover on the plains that stretched east to the river. He ground his teeth in frustration. It was too risky to try. He would have to backtrack into the mountains and try to find a pass leading east or circle all the way back the way he had come. The latter was impossible, the former chancy.

But as he pondered the alternatives, he caught sight of new movement in the trees ahead. Again he froze, searching the shadows. He might have been mistaken, he told himself. There seemed to be nothing there.

Then the black-cloaked figure eased into the light momentarily before fading away again.

Shadowen.

He scooted back into the deep cover, his mind made up for him. He began to double back, working his way higher into the rocks. He would look for a pass through the Runne and take his chances with the river. If he failed to find a way through, he would retrace his steps under cover of darkness. He did not like the thought of being out there at night with the Shadowen still searching for him, but his choices were being stripped from him with alarming rapidity. He forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly as he slipped back through the trees, trying to stay calm. There were too many Shadowen hunting about for it to be anything but a deliberate search. Somehow they had found out where he was and were closing in. He felt his throat tighten. He had survived one battle this day, but he did not feel comfortable with the prospect of having to survive another.

Sunset was approaching, and the mountain forest was cloaked in a windless hush. He kept his movements methodical and noiseless, knowing that any small sound could give him away. He felt the weight of the Sword of Leah pressing into his back, and resisted the temptation to reach back for it. It was there if he needed it, he told himself—and he’d better hope the need didn’t arise.

He was crossing a ridgeline when he saw the shadow shift in the trees far ahead across a scrub-choked ravine. The shadow was there and gone again in an instant’s time, and he had the impression that he had sensed it more than seen it. But there was no mistaking what it was, and he went into a low crouch and wormed his way into the deep brush to his right, angling higher into the rocks. One of them, he concluded—only one. A solitary hunter. The sweat on his face and neck left his skin warm and sticky, and the muscles of his back were knotted so tight they hurt. He felt his wound throb with fresh pain and wished he had a drink of ale to soothe his parched throat. He found the way up blocked by a cliff wall, and he turned back reluctantly. He had the sense of being herded, and he was beginning to think that eventually he would find walls everywhere he looked.

He paused at the edge of a low precipice and looked back into the velvet-cloaked trees. Nothing moved, but something was there anyway, coming on with steady deliberation. Morgan considered lying in wait for it. But any sort of struggle would bring every Shadowen in the forest down on him. Better to go on; he could always fight later.

The trees ahead were thinning as the rocks broke through in ragged clusters and the slopes steepened into cliffs. He was as high as he could go without leaving the cover of the trees and still there was no pass to take him through the mountains.

He thought he could hear the sound of the river churning along its banks somewhere beyond the wall of rock, but it might have been his imagination. He found a stand of heavy spruce and took cover, listening to the forest about him. There was movement ahead and below now as well. The Shadowen were all about him. They must have found his trail. It was still light enough to track, and they were coming for him. They might not catch up to him before it grew too dark to follow his footprints, but he did not think it would matter if they were this close. They were more at home in the dark than he, and it would just be a matter of time before they snared him.

For the first time he let himself consider the possibility that he was not going to escape.

He reached back and drew out his Sword. The obsidian blade gleamed faintly in the dusky twilight and felt comfortable in his hand. He imagined he could feel its magic responding to him with whispered assurances that it would be there when he called for it. His talisman against the dark. He lowered his head and closed his eyes. All come to this? Another fight in an endless series of fights to stay alive? He was growing tired of it all. He couldn’t help thinking it. He was tired, and he was sick at heart.

Let it go!

He opened his eyes, rose, and glided ahead through the trees, south again toward the plains that led down to Southwatch, changing his mind about staying hidden. He felt better moving, as if movement was more natural, more protective in some way. He slipped down through the forest, picking his way cautiously, listening for those who sought to trap him. Shadows shifted about him, small changes in the light, little movements that kept his heart pumping. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted softly. The forest was a night river in slow, constant flux that shimmered and spun.

He glanced back repeatedly searching for the solitary hunter behind him and saw nothing. The Shadowen ahead were equally invisible, but he thought they might not know his whereabouts quite so surely as the other. He hoped they could not communicate by thought, but he would not have bet against it. There seemed to be few limitations to the magic they wielded. Ah, but that was wrongheaded thinking, he chided. There were always limitations. The trick was in finding out what they were.

He reached a clump of cedar backed up against a cliff and turned into it, dropping again into a crouch to listen. He remained as still as the stone behind him for long minutes and heard nothing. But the Shadowen were still out there, he knew. They were still searching, still scouring...

And then he saw them, two close at hand, easing through the trees less than a hundred yards below, black-cloaked shadows, advancing on his concealment. He felt his heart drop. If he moved now, they would see him. If he stayed where he was, they would find him. A great set of choices, he thought bitterly. He still held the Sword of Leah, and his hands tightened on the grip. He would have to stand and fight. He would have to, and he knew how it was likely to end.

He thought back to the Jut, Tyrsis, Eldwist, Culhaven, and all the other places he’d been trapped and brought to bay when trying to escape, and he thought in despair and anger, You would think that just once...

And then the hand closed over his mouth like an iron clamp, and he was yanked backward into the trees.