The Talismans of Shannara

Chapter Thirty-Two

Twilight shadows lengthened into night, and the sky over Southwatch grew thick with clouds that screened away the stars and moon and promised showers before dawn. The day’s heat cooled, the dust and grime settling back to earth in motes that danced like fairies as the air lost some of its thickness. Improbably, the barest trace of a breeze wafted down out of the Runne. Silence fell across the land, as smooth as satin and as fragile as glass. Mist clung to the earth in long tendrils that snaked through gullies and across ridges and turned the poisoned grasslands surrounding the Shadowen keep into a vast white sea.

Foaming and swirling, the sea began to roil. It was a time for phantoms, for ghosts that sailed on the wind like ships at sea, for things that could walk and leave no footprints with their passing. It was a time for the day’s hopes and expectations and fears and doubts to take shape and come forth, searching for a voice with which to speak, seeking redemption out of newfound belief. It was a time for reason to give way to what imagination alone would permit. It was a time for dreams.

Walker Boh summoned his and watched it come, swift and certain, a hawk sweeping down, and when it reached him he stretched to meet it, rising up out of his body as light as air, catching hold and lifting away. Voiceless, invisible, as one with the wraiths of the night, he went down out of the forests on the slopes of the Runne, speeding through the dark trunks and leafy boughs, through the silence and the black with the grim certainty of death’s coming. He held himself as still as ice in winter, easing out onto the blasted, empty flats beyond, crossing through the brume toward the waiting black obelisk. He went in the manner of the Druids, in the way Allanon had taught him, a spirit out of flesh. His memories twisted and tugged at him, those of Allanon and those of the man he had been. He remembered both at once, and saw himself again as the outcast who would not believe, who had fought against the transition that the Druid magic had inevitably wrought. And again, too, Walker Boh saw himself as the Druid shade who had set in motion the events that would culminate in that transition by bestowing on Brin Ohmsford the blood trust that ultimately would find its purpose in him. It was strange to be more than one, and yet it was fitting, too. He had never been at peace with himself, and his dissatisfaction came in large part from feeling incomplete. Now he was fulfilled, one man made out of many, one formed of all. He was still learning to be what he had become, to be comfortable with what he was, but it began with feeling whole, and he thought he was that at least if nothing else.

The earth beneath was blackened and bare, stripped of life, burned away and scorched, empty and razed. The Shadowen had done that, but he did not understand yet the nature of their poison. Tonight, he thought, he might.

Southwatch loomed ahead, its black pinnacle towering over him, its knife-edged spire reaching for the sky. He could feel the life within it. He could feel its pulse. Southwatch was alive. There was magic in its walls, magic that had formed and now sustained and protected it. The magic was powerful, but reluctant. He could sense that. He could feel the strain of its effort to be free. Deep inside the black stone it crouched, an animal caged. Shadowen walked within and without, barely visible against the black, keeping watch. The magic fled from them.

A part of the mist, a part of the night, as silent as drifting ash, he came up to the walls. Oblivious, the Shadowen did not sense him passing close and moving on. He came to the gates of the keep and slid swiftly away. They were too well protected to venture through, even as a spirit. He waited for one of the dark things to enter through a crack in the stone skin and followed. He felt the weight of the tower close about him as he did so, a palpable thing. He hugged himself against the evil that raged through the air, a mix of terrible anger and hatred and despair. Where, he wondered in surprise, did it come from?

He hesitated in his choice of directions, and then impulsively followed the magic toward its source. Just for a moment, just to have a look. The magic emanated from below, from deep within the earth beneath the keep, all darkness and blind fury. He slipped along the corridors of the fortress, careful not to brush against the walls, against anything of substance, for even in his spirit form he might be sensed. The wards were powerful here, greater than had been those of Uhl Belk at Eldwist, greater even than those of the Druids in the Hall of Kings. The magic was powerful beyond belief, a great crushing force that could destroy anything.

Anything, he corrected, but the bonds that secured it and made it serve the Shadowen.

He followed a stairwell down, winding and twisting through the black, hearing for the first time the sound of something grinding and huffing, the sound of something at labor. It had the feel of a dragon chained. It had the taste and smell of sweat. It strained and lifted like a bellows at work within a forge—and yet it was nothing so simple as that. It was from here that the magic took its life, he sensed. It was from here that it was given birth.

Then he reached wards that even a spirit could not pass undetected, and he was forced to turn aside. He was close to what lay trapped within the cellars of Southwatch, close to the source of the magic, to the secret the Shadowen kept so carefully hidden. But he could go no closer, and so the secret would have to keep.

He turned back up the stairway, speeding quickly through the gloom, a brief glimmer of thought and nothing more. He passed more of the Shadowen wraiths as he went, and one or two slowed before going on, but none discovered him. He went now in search of Par, knowing the Valeman was a prisoner, anxious to discover where he was being kept and whether he was still himself. For there was reason to believe he might not be. There was reason to believe that he had been subverted and was lost.

Walker Boh’s heart was as stone as he considered the possibility. The signs were there that it was happening. It had begun with the changing of Par’s magic, the evolution of the wishsong into something more than what it had been when he had begun his journey to the Hadeshorn and Allanon. It had continued with the breaking down of his confidence in its use, the sense that somehow the magic was getting away from him. It would terminate here, in the Shadowen keep, if Par embraced their cause, if he accepted that he was one of them.

As he was, Walker Boh thought darkly.

And yet wasn’t.

Games within games. He knew some of their rules, but not yet all.

He ascended the stairwells of the keep in steady search of the Valeman, seeking down the dark corridors and into the darker rooms, swiftly and silently. He remembered how Par had convinced him to come to the Hadeshorn to speak with the shade of Allanon. He remembered how Par had believed. The magic is a gift. The dreams are real. Well, yes and no. It was so. And not. Like so many things, the truth lay somewhere in between.

Old memories triggered new, and he saw himself as Allanon leading Cogline down the corridors of Paranor when the Druid’s Keep was still locked in the mists between worlds, banished by the magic to the nether reaches. He felt Cogline’s mix of fear and determination, and in those emotions found mirrored anew the conflict within himself. Cogline had understood that conflict. He had tried to help Walker learn to balance the weight of it. Human and Druid—the parts that formed him would struggle with each other forever, the demands and needs of each at constant war. It would never change. It was the bargain he had struck with himself when he had agreed to accept the blood trust. The last of the old Druids or the first of the new—which was he? Both, he thought. And thought, too, that maybe this was the way it had been for Allanon and Bremen and Galaphile and all the others.

He rose high within the dark tower, and suddenly there was the barest whisper of a familiar presence. It emanated from down the corridor he faced at the head of the stairwell, a gossamer thread. He went toward it, cautious because there was a second presence as well, and this one familiar, too. He smelled Rimmer Dall as he would a swamp, vast and depthless. The leader of the Shadowen filled the air with his dark magic, the scent of it a toxic perfume. Just beneath its veil and barely recognizable, Par’s own magic crouched, suppressed and raging.

Walker coasted to the door behind which they faced each other, paused without where he would not be sensed, and bent to listen.

“It would help,” Rimmer Dall said softly, “if you were not so frightened of the word.”

Shadowen.

“What you are will not be changed by what you are called. Or even by what you call yourself. It is your fear of accepting the truth about yourself that threatens you.”

Shadowen.

Par Ohmsford heard the whisper in his mind, a repetition that would not cease, that haunted him now both on waking and in sleep. And Rimmer Dall was right—he could not escape his fear of it, his growing certainty that he was the very thing he had been fighting against from the beginning, the enemy that the shade of Allanon had sent the children of Shannara to destroy.

He rose from the edge of his bed and walked to the window to stare out into the night. The sky was clouded and the land was misted and still, a ragged shadowed playground for the phantoms of his mind. He was coming apart, he knew. He could feel it happening. His thoughts were scattered and incoherent, his reasoning cluttered with roadblocks, and his concentration fragmented to the point of uselessness. Each day it grew worse, the darkness that surrounded him filling him up like a bowl that now threatened to overflow. He could not seem to escape it. His nights were haunted by dreams of confrontations with himself as a Shadowen, and his days were ragged and weary and empty of hope. He was wracked with despair. He was slipping steadily into madness.

All the while Rimmer Dall continued to come to him, to speak with him, to offer his help. He knew how bad it was, he assured the Valeman. He understood the demands of the magic. Time and again he had warned Par that he must confront who and what he was and take the steps necessary to protect himself. If he failed to do so—and failed now to do so immediately—he would be lost.

The dark-cloaked figure moved to stand beside him, and for an instant Par wanted to seek comfort within the other’s shadowy strength. The urge was so strong that he had to bite his lip to keep himself from doing so.

“Listen to me, Par,” the whispery voice urged, low and persuasive. “Those creatures within the Pit in Tyrsis were like you once. They had use of the magic—not as you do, for their magic was of a lesser sort, but like you in that it was real. They denied who and what they were. We tried to reach them—or as many of them as we could find. We urged them to accept that they were Shadowen and to embrace the help that we could offer. They refused.”

A hand settled lightly on Par’s shoulder, and he flinched from it. The hand did not move. “The Federation found them all, one by one, and took them to Tyrsis and put them into the Pit, caging them like animals. It destroyed them. Trapped in the darkness, deprived of hope and reason, they became victims quickly. The magic consumed them and made them the monsters you found. Now they live a terrible existence. We who are Shadowen can walk among them, for we can understand them. But they can never be free again, and the Federation will leave them there until they die.”

No, Par thought. No, I do not believe you. I do not.

But he wasn’t sure, just as he wasn’t sure about much of anything now. Too much had happened for him to be sure. He knew he was being eaten up by magic, but he did not know whose it was. He had determined that he would stall until he could find out, but he had made no progress. He was as imprisoned as the creatures in the Pit, and though Rimmer Dall had offered him help repeatedly, he could not accept that the First Seeker’s help was what he needed.

Demons wheeled before his eyes, sharp-eyed monsters that teased and laughed and danced away. They followed him everywhere. They lived within him like parasites. The magic fostered them. The magic gave them life.

Down in the depths of Southwatch, the thrumming continued, steady and inexorable.

He wheeled away from the window and the big man’s touch. He wanted to bury his face in his hands. He wanted to cry or scream. But he had resolved to show nothing and he was determined to keep that promise. So much had happened to him, he thought. So much that he wished had not. Some of it was beginning to fade, dim memories lost in a haze of confusion. Some of it lingered like the acrid taste of metal on his tongue. It felt as if everything inside was roiling about like windswept clouds, shaping and reshaping and never showing anything for more than an instant.

“You must allow me to help you,” Rimmer Dall whispered, and there was an urgency to his voice that Par could not ignore. “Don’t let this happen, Par. Give yourself a chance. Please. You must. You have gone on as long as you can alone. The magic is too great a burden. You cannot continue to carry it by yourself.”

The big hands settled on his shoulders once more, holding him firm, filling him with strength.

And Par felt all his resolve crumble in that instant, cracking and falling away like shards of shattered glass. He was so tired. He wanted someone to help. Anyone. He could not go on. The demons whispered insidiously. Their eyes gleamed with anticipation. He brushed at them futilely, and they only laughed. He gritted his teeth at them in fury. He felt the magic build within him and with an effort he forced it back.

“Let me help you, Par,” Rimmer Dall pleaded, holding him. “It won’t take a moment for me to do so. Remember? Let me come into you just long enough to see where the magic threatens. Let me help you find the protection you need.”

Enough of Allanon. Enough of the Druids and their warnings. Enough of everything. Where are those who said they would help me now that I need them? All gone, all lost. Even Coll. I am so tired.

“If you wish,” Rimmer Dall whispered, “you can come into me first. It is not difficult. You can lift out of yourself quite easily if you try. I can show you how, Par. Just look at me. Turn around and look at me.”

The Sword of Shannara lost. Wren and Walker and Morgan disappeared. Where is Damson? Why am I always alone?

There were tears in his eyes, blinding him.

“Look at me, Par.”

He turned slowly and started to look up.

But in that instant a shadow passed between them, swift as light, come and gone in the blink of an eye, and in its wake Par Ohmsford thrust out violently.

No!

Fire exploded between them, generated by the friction of their contact, sparking and flying out into the shadows. Rimmer Dall wheeled away, the features of his rawboned face knotted in rage. His black robes billowed out and his gloved hand lifted in a blaze of red fury. Par, still unsure about what had happened, gasped and fell back, throwing up his own protection, feeling the blue fire of the wishsong’s magic rise to shield him. In an instant, he was sheathed in light, and now it was Rimmer Dall’s turn to draw back.

They faced each other in the gloom, the fires of their magics gathered at the tips of their fingers, eyes mirroring anger and fear.

“Stay away from me!” Par hissed.

Rimmer Dall remained unmoving before him for an instant more, huge and black and unyielding. Then he drew back his fire, lowered his gloved hand, and stalked from the room without a word.

Par Ohmsford let the fire of his magic die as well. He stood staring into the shadows that surrounded him, wondering at what he had done.

All about him, his demons danced in seeming glee.

“How LONG is he going to stay like that?” Matty Roh finally asked.

Morgan Leah shook his head. Walker Boh hadn’t moved for more than an hour. He was in some sort of trance, a self-induced half sleep. He sat wrapped in his dark cloak, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and barely discernible. He had told them to keep watch and wait for his return. He hadn’t told them where he was going. In truth, it didn’t appear that he had gone anywhere, but Morgan knew better than to question the Dark Uncle.

They were gathered in a stand of spruce high within the forests bordering the cliffs of the Runne—Morgan, Matty, Damson Rhee, Coll Ohmsford, and Walker Boh. In the darkness beyond where they waited, Rumor’s eyes gleamed watchfully. The night was deep and still, the sky a blanket of clouds from horizon to horizon, the air fresh with the smell of a north wind out of the trees. Five days had passed since Walker had found Morgan and saved him from the encircling Shadowen. He had tricked the dark things by cloaking one of them in Morgan’s image and letting the others tear it to pieces. It had satisfied the Shadowen that the intruder they were tracking was destroyed, and they had drifted back into Southwatch. Yesterday the Valeman and his rescuers had reappeared, crossing the Rainbow Lake in a small skiff. Walker and Morgan had intercepted them at the mouth of the Mermidon and brought them here.

“What do you think he is doing?” Matty persisted, her voice anxious and uneasy.

“I don’t know,” Morgan confessed.

He leaned forward for a closer look but moved quickly back again when he heard Rumor growl. He looked at Matty and shrugged. The other two sat silent, faceless in the gloom. They were better rested and fed than they had been in a while, but they were all emotionally drained and physically worn from the long struggle to stay alive. What kept them going was their common determination to find Par Ohmsford and the sense they got from Walker Boh that their journey from the Hadeshorn was coming to a close.

“He’s looking for Par,” Damson said suddenly, her voice a low whisper in the silence.

He was, of course. He was following the secondary trail of the Skree to Southwatch to see if the Valeman was a prisoner there. Coll had always been certain his brother was in Shadowen hands, and so were the rest of them by now. But Walker was searching for something more, Morgan sensed. He would not talk about it yet, had been careful to keep it to himself, in fact. He knew something he wasn’t telling them, but then that was the way it was with the Druids, and that was what Walker was now. A Druid. Morgan breathed deeply and relaxed, staring off into the dark. How strange. Walker Boh had become the very thing he had once abhorred. Who would have believed it? Well, they had all come from different worlds than this one, he thought philosophically. They had all lived different lives.

He was staring right at Walker when the other’s eyes opened, and it startled him so he jumped. The pale face lifted within the cloak’s hood, ghostly white, and the lean body shivered.

“He is alive,” the Dark Uncle whispered, coming back to himself as they stared at him. “Rimmer Dall and the Shadowen have him imprisoned.”

He rose tentatively, hugging himself as if cold. The others rose with him, exchanging uncertain glances. Rumor moved in from the dark.

“What did you see?” Coll asked anxiously. “Did you have a vision?”

Walker Boh shook his head. He reached down absently to stroke Rumor’s broad head as the cat nuzzled up against him. “No, Coll. I used a Druid trick and went out of my body in spirit form to enter the Shadowen keep. They could not sense me so easily that way. I found Par locked within the tower. Rimmer Dall was with him. The First Seeker was trying to persuade Par to let him take control of the wishsong’s magic. He says that Par is a Shadowen like himself.”

“He has told Par that before,” Damson said quietly.

“It is a lie,” Coll insisted.

But Walker Boh shook his head. “Perhaps not. There is some truth to what he says. I can sense it in the words. But the truth is an elusive thing here. There is more of it than is being told. Par is confused and angry and frightened. He is on the verge of accepting what the First Seeker tells him. He was close to letting the other have his way.”

“No,” Damson whispered, white-faced.

Walker breathed the night air and sighed. “No, indeed. But time is running out for Par. His strength is fading. I risked a small intrusion to disrupt the acceptance and for now it will not happen. But we have to get to him quickly. The secret to destroying the Shadowen lies with Par. It always has. Rimmer Dall ignores everything in his efforts to win Par over. He knows of my return, of Wren’s return, of our escapes from other Shadowen. He knows we draw steadily closer to him. The Shadowen are threatened, but he concentrates only on Par. Par is the key. If we can free him of his fear of the wishsong, we may have all the pieces to the puzzle. Allanon sent us to find the talismans and we have done so. He sent us to bring back the Elves and Paranor and we have done that as well. We have everything we require to defeat the Shadowen; we just need to discover how to use it. The answer lies down there.”

He looked off into the valley, down through the trees to where the dark obelisk of Southwatch rose against the horizon.

“The Sword of Shannara will free Par,” Coll promised, stepping forward determinedly. “I know it will.”

Walker didn’t seem to hear him. “There is one thing more. The Shadowen keep something locked within the cellars of the keep, something living, chained by magic and held against its will. I don’t know what it is, but I sense that it is powerful and that we have to find a way to set it free if we are to win this fight. Whatever it is, the Shadowen guard it with their lives. The wards protecting it are very strong.”

He looked back at them again. “The Shadowen are Elven-born and use Elven magic out of the time of faerie. Their strengths and weaknesses all derive from that. Par may be one of them in some sense because he is of Elven blood. I can’t be sure. But I think the question of what he will become has not yet been settled.”

“He would never turn against us,” Damson whispered, and looked away.

“What do we do, Walker?” Coll asked quietly. He held the Sword of Shannara in both hands, and his blocky face was set like a piece of granite.

“We go down after him, Valeman,” the other answered. “We go after him now, before it is too late.”

“Not all of us,” Morgan interjected hastily, and glanced at the women.

Walker looked at him. “They are resolved to go, Highlander.”

Morgan refused to back off. He didn’t want Damson and Matty going down into the Shadowen den. The men all possessed magic of one sort or another to protect themselves. The women had nothing. It seemed a mistake.

“You’re not leaving me,” Damson interjected quickly, and he saw Matty nod in agreement.

“It’s too dangerous,” he heard himself object. “We can’t protect you. You have to stay here.”

They glared at him, and he faced them down. For a moment no one spoke, the three of them standing toe to toe in the darkness, daring one another to say something more.

Then Walker lifted one hand and brought Damson and Matty before him and in the same motion moved Morgan and Coll back. He was taller than Morgan remembered, and broader as well, as if he had grown and put on weight. It wasn’t possible, of course, but it seemed that way. It appeared as if he were more than one man. He filled the space between them, huge and forbidding, and the night about them was hushed suddenly with expectation.

“I cannot give you magic with which to fight,” he told the women softly, “but I can give you magic with which to shield yourselves from the Shadowen attack. Stand quiet now. Don’t move.”

He reached out then and swept the air about them with his hand. The air filled with a brightness that seemed to spread and fall like dust, burning and fading away as it touched them. He brought his hand up one side and down the other, glazing them with the brightness from head to foot, leaving them momentarily shimmering and then cloaked once more in blackness.

“If you are resolved to go,” he said, “this will help keep you safe.”

He brought them all back about him, gathering them in like small children to a father’s embrace. He looked suddenly tired and lost, but he looked determined as well. “We will do what we must and what we can,” he told them. “Everything we have fought for, every road we have traveled, every life given up along the way, has been for this. I was told so by Allanon after the return of Paranor, after my own transformation, after Cogline had given up his life for me. The end of the Shadowen or the end of us happens here. No one has to go who doesn’t choose to. But everyone is needed.”

“We’re going,” Damson said quickly. “All of us.”

The others, even Morgan Leah, nodded in agreement.

“Five, then.” Walker smiled faintly. “We go to Par first to set him free, to give him back the use of his magic. If we succeed in that, we go down into the cellars. We leave now, so that we can enter Southwatch at dawn.” He paused as if searching for something more to say. “Look out for yourselves. Stay close to me.”

In the darkness of the grove, the five faced one another and gave voiceless acquiescence to the pact. They would try to finish what so many had begun so long ago, and while they might have wished it otherwise, they were all that were left to do so.

Silent shadows, the three men, the two women, and the moor cat slipped out from the trees and down the mountainside ahead of the coming light.