The Talismans of Shannara

Chapter Five

The sewers beneath Tyrsis were dank and chill in a twilight dark that seeped along gutters and down grates like spilled ink. Daylight had gone west, and the night hovered in shadows that lengthened from buildings and walls, a ghost come to life. Footsteps and voices faded homeward, and the weariness of day’s end was a sigh echoed by the hot summer wind as it settled into pockets of still, suffocating heat in the runnels of the city’s streets and byways, an airless blanket laid over the catacombs below.

Padishar Creel, Par Ohmsford, and the Mole groped their way slowly and steadily through those catacombs, three of the shadows that grew out of night’s coming, as silent as the dust stirred by the boots passing in the streets above. They breathed through their mouths, the sewer smells oppressive and rank within the twisting conduits, the city’s waste a sluggish flow at the edges of their feet. At times they climbed iron ladders and stone steps, at times they crawled through narrow tunnels, all the while working their way outward from the city’s center toward its walls and the bluff face, the watchtower where Damson Rhee was held prisoner, and the confrontation that waited.

“We will not return without her,” Padishar had declared. “Whatever proves necessary to free her, we will do. Once we have her, we will not give her up again.

“Mole,” he had whispered, kneeling before the strange little fellow. “You will guide us in and, if possible, out again. But you will not fight, do you understand? Keep yourself clear and safe. Because, Mole, once we have freed Damson”—there was no suggestion, Par noted, that they would not—“you alone will know how to see her safely away again. Agreed?” And the Mole had nodded solemnly.

“Par, yours is a harder task still,” the leader of the free-born had continued, turning next to the Valeman. “If we encounter the Shadowen, you must use your magic to keep them from us. The Highlander was able to do so with his sword when we were trapped in the Pit. This time it will be up to you. I lack any means to defend against these monsters. If we encounter them, lad, don’t hesitate.”

Par had already decided that use of the wishsong in this endeavor was a foregone conclusion, so he was quick to give Padishar his promise. What he could not promise—and what he did not tell the other—was that he was no longer certain he could control the magic. It had already proved unreliable, already shown that it could take on a life of its own, unleashing power that might well consume him. But such fears as recognition of this danger generated paled against his feelings for Damson Rhee. Buried by the struggle they had shared to escape the city and its hunters, and by the fact that he had felt her safe with him, his feelings had surfaced instantly with the report of her taking, and now they raged within him like a fire unchecked. He loved her. Perhaps he had loved her from the first, but certainly since she had held him together after Coll’s death. She was as much a part of him as anything separate could possibly be, and he could not stand the thought of losing her. He would give anything to see her safe again. He would give everything. If it meant risking the fury of a magic that could change him irrevocably, that could even destroy him, then so be it. If Rimmer Dall was right about who and what he was, then there was nothing he could do to save himself in any case. He would not shy from the dangers of the magic where Damson’s safety was at stake. He would do what he must.

So they had set out, each determined that Damson was worth losing everything, knowing the risk was such that everything could well be lost. Now the sewers stretched away in narrow, winding tunnels before them, the darkness closing fast about the little light that remained. Soon they would be forced to use torchlight to see, and that would be especially dangerous as they neared the city’s walls. For there the dark things would likely be at watch below ground as well as above, and torchlight would be seen coming from a long way off.

They hurried on, the Mole’s sharp eyes and steady senses choosing their way unerringly, sorting out which paths were safe, avoiding the ones that might impede them. As they went, they could hear the sounds of the city above drifting down in trickles and snatches, bits and pieces of a life as disconnected from their own as the living from the dead. Par’s thoughts drifted. It felt somehow as if they were entombed within the stone of the bluff on which Tyrsis had been built, specters at haunt just out of sight of the people they had once been. It seemed to the Valeman, on reflection, that he was indeed more ghost than human, that in his flight from the Shadowen and the other dangers encountered on this journey he had become transformed in a way that he did not entirely understand and as a result had been stripped of substance and left ethereal. He moved now in a shadow existence, increasingly bereft of friends and family, left trapped in a tangle of magics that were causing him to disintegrate. There should have been a way to save himself, he knew, but somehow he could not seem to discover what it was.

They reached a broad confluence of pipes and slowed behind the Mole’s cautious signal. Huddled close at the bottom of a well from which a stone stairway climbed, they held their last council.

“The stairway leads to a cellar within the inner wall,” whispered the Mole. His nose was damp and gleaming. “From there we must climb to a hall, follow it to an entryway that leads outside again, cross to another door, enter, and follow a second hall to a hidden passageway that will take us up through the watchtower to where Damson waits.”

He looked from Padishar to Par and back again, intent.

The big man nodded. “Federation guards?”

The Mole blinked. “Everywhere.”

“Shadowen?”

“In the tower, somewhere.”

Padishar gave Par a wry smile. “Somewhere. Very incisive.” He hunched his big shoulders. “All right. Remember what I said, the both of you. Remember what you are to do—and not to do.” He glanced at Par. “If I fall, you go on—if you can. If not, get to Firerim Reach and find help there. Promise me.”

Par nodded, thinking as he did that the promise was a lie, that he would never turn back, not until Damson was safe, no matter what.

Padishar reached back over his shoulder and tightened the straps that secured the broadsword to his back, then checked the long knives and short sword strapped about his waist. The handle of yet another long knife protruded from one boot. All were carefully sheathed and wrapped in cloth to keep the metal from rattling or reflecting light. Par wore only the Sword of Shannara. The Mole carried no weapons at all.

Padishar looked up again. “All right, then. Let’s go in.”

In single file they climbed the stairs, crouching low against the stone, easing their way toward the faint light that shone above. A grate came into view, bars of iron that cast a web of shadows down the steps and onto their bodies. There was silence above, an empty, hollow nothingness.

On reaching the grate, the Mole paused to listen, his head cocked in the manner of an animal at hunt—or at risk—then reached up and with surprising strength lifted the grate away almost soundlessly. Stepping from the well, he carried the grate overhead as the other two climbed swiftly free, then set it carefully back in place.

They stood in a cellar that was one in a series of interconnected rooms, all in a line that ran away to either side as far as the eye could see. Stores were stacked everywhere, crates of weapons, tools, clothes, and sundry goods, all carefully labeled and piled back against the thick stone walls on wooden pallets. Barrels were housed in an adjoining chamber, and barely visible through the gloom the rusting frames of old beds formed a maze of metal bones. High on the walls, just below the cellar ceiling and just above the ground without, a row of narrow, barred windows let in thin streamers of dusk’s fading light.

The Mole took them ahead through the maze of cellar rooms, past the stacks of stores, and around the tangle of crates to where a second set of stairs climbed to a heavy wooden door. They went up the stairs cautiously, and Par felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle with the possibility that unseen eyes watched their every move. He peered left and right, overhead and all about, but saw nothing.

At the door they stopped again while the Mole used a small metal implement to spring the lock. In seconds they were through, moving swiftly into the hallway beyond. They were inside the citadel’s inner wall now, the second line of defense to the city and the location of the barracks that housed most of the Federation garrison. The corridor was straight and narrow, and riddled with doors and windows that might give them away to anyone. But no one appeared in the moments it took them to reach the entry the Mole sought, and they were through another door almost before Par had time to take a steadying breath.

Now they stood in a shadowed alcove that looked out across the courtyard that lay between the inner and outer walls of the city. Federation soldiers stood watch at gates and on ramparts, dim shapes in the growing dark. Lights flickered from the windows of the sleeping quarters and guardhouses and off the battlements and gates. Booted feet scraped in the stillness. Voices rose in low murmurs. Somewhere, a whetstone was sharpening metal. Par felt his stomach tighten. The sounds of activity were all about.

They clung to the shadows of the alcove for long minutes, listening and watching, waiting before trying to go on. Par could hear Padishar’s breathing as the big man hunched next to him against the wall. His own breathing punctuated the rapid beating of his heart. Stirrings of the wishsong’s magic rose out of the depths of his chest, down deep where emotions have their beginnings, and he fought to keep it under control. He found himself thinking again about what would happen when he tried to use the magic. It was there, and he would use it—of that he was certain. But whether it would obey him was another matter entirely, and it occurred to him suddenly that if it should indeed overwhelm him and cause him to become the thing that Rimmer Dall had warned he must be, what was to prevent him from turning on his friends?

Damson, he decided. Damson and what she meant to him would keep the magic in hand.

Then the Mole was moving again, sliding away from the darkened entry along the roughened stone of the great wall. Padishar followed instantly, and Par found himself hurrying to keep up almost before he knew what he was doing. They inched swiftly through the blackness, shying when light from the torches brightened their path in soft pools, trying to blend into the stone, to think of themselves as invisible so that they would in fact become so. Federation soldiers continued to move all about, impossibly loud, uncomfortably close, and each moment it seemed certain to Par that they must be discovered.

But seconds later they were before another door, this one unlocked, and then through it to the light beyond...

A startled Federation soldier stood before them, pike held casually in his hands as he prepared to go out on watch. His mouth gaped open, and for a second he froze. His hesitation cost him his life. Padishar was on him instantly. One hand came up to cover his mouth. The blade of a long knife flashed in the other and then disappeared. Par saw the soldier’s eyes widen in surprise. He saw the pain and then the emptiness. The soldier slumped into Padishar’s arms like a rag doll. The pike fell away, and the quick hands of the Mole caught it before it could strike the floor. In a hall of stone and old wood lit by fire that flickered at the ends of pitch-coated torches fixed in the mortared walls, the intruders stood breathless and unmoving with the dead soldier clutched between them and listened to the silence.

Then Padishar lifted the body in his arms, carried it back into the shadows of a niche, and shoved it from view. Par watched it happen as if from a great distance, removed somehow from the event, as cold as the stone about him. He tried not to look. He could still hear the sound the soldier made when he died. He could still see the look in his eyes.

They went down the passageway swiftly, wary of other soldiers who might appear, listening for the silence to be disturbed. But they met no one else, and almost before Par realized it they were through a small, iron-bound door that was barely visible even from within the shadowed niche in which it was set.

The door closed behind them, and they stood in a blackness as complete as moonless night. Par could smell wood and dust and feel the roughness of boards beneath his feet. There was a moment’s pause as the Mole rummaged about. Then a flint struck—once, twice—and a candle’s thin flame cast its small glow. They were in a closet of some sort, barely six feet square, crammed with odd supplies and debris. The Mole moved things carefully aside, freeing a space at the back of the cubicle, and then pushed against the wall. A section of it that had been invisible to the naked eye came away in the form of a small door swinging inward.

Quickly they moved through. A narrow space opened between walls of stone and wood shoring, so low-ceilinged that Padishar was forced to crouch to avoid bumping his head. One big hand came up guardedly. Par saw blood on the hand and felt suddenly the nearness of his own death, as if it were something the dead soldier’s eyes had foretold.

The Mole slid past him and began to lead them down through the walls, edging past stone projections, iron nails, and jagged wood splinters. Cobwebs brushed at their faces and small rodents ran squeaking through the dark ahead. The candle’s flame was a dim glow against the black.

They began to climb, finding rungs hammered into the shoring and steps cut in the rock, a mix of ladders and ramps that wound up through the walls. They were in the tower now, working their way toward its apex and Damson’s prison. From time to time they would hear voices, muffled and faint. It grew steadily warmer and more airless, and Par began to sweat. Their passageway became smaller and more difficult to navigate, and Padishar was having trouble squeezing through.

Then abruptly the Mole stopped, frozen in place. The leader of the free-born and the Valeman went still as well, crouched in the near blackness, listening. There was only the silence to be heard, but Par sensed something nevertheless—the feel of something alive and moving, just through the walls, just on the other side. Within him, the magic of the wishsong stirred like a hungry cat, and its fire purred anxiously. Par closed his eyes and concentrated on muting its sound.

What he sensed beyond the wall was one of the Shadowen.

He felt his breath catch in his throat as an image formed in his mind of the black thing, a vision brought to life by his magic. It stole along a corridor within the tower, hooded and cloaked, fingers testing the air like tentacles in search of prey. Could it sense them as well? Did it know they were there? The magic rustled like a snake inside Par Ohmsford, coiling, tensing, gathering force. Par muffled it and would not let go. Too soon! It was too soon!

The air whispered in his ear as if it were alive. He gritted his teeth and held on.

Then the Shadowen was gone, fading like a momentary thought, dark and evil and full of hate. The wishsong’s magic cooled, easing down once again. Par felt some of the tautness let go, and the muscles in his chest and stomach relaxed. He was aware of Padishar looking at him, of the uneasiness mirrored on the other’s face. Padishar reached back to grip his shoulder questioningly. Par felt the iron in the other’s fingers, and stole some of its strength. He managed a quick, reassuring nod.

They continued on, climbing still, edging ahead through the gloom. Everywhere it was still, the small sounds of Federation voices and boots gone completely. The night was a blanket of silence in which every living thing seemed to have drifted off to sleep. Deceptive, Par thought as he labored on. Dangerous.

A moment later they stopped again, this time at a stretch of mortared stone wall framed by heavy timbers that buttressed one end of a floor overhead. The Mole handed the candle to Padishar and began to explore the stone with his fingers. Something clicked beneath his careful touch, and a section of the wall gave way. A seam of light appeared, faint and smoky.

The Mole turned back to Padishar. His voice was hushed. “They keep her one flight down through the second door somewhere.” He hesitated. “I could show you.”

“No,” Padishar said at once. “Wait here. Wait for us to come back.”

The Mole studied him a moment and then nodded reluctantly. “Second door,” he repeated.

With both hands braced against it, he pushed the portal in the wall all the way open. Padishar and Par Ohmsford stepped cautiously through.

They stood on a landing in a stairwell where the steps both climbed and descended. A door across from them was closed and barred, the metal thick with rust. Torches rested in iron brackets hammered into the stone, their glow tracing the line of the worn steps, their acrid smoke rising into the tower’s gloom.

Everything was silent.

Behind them, the hidden door swung closed again.

Par glanced at Padishar. The big man was looking about guardedly. There was renewed uneasiness in his eyes. He shook his head at something unseen.

They began the descent, backs against the wall, ears straining to catch any threatening sounds. The stairs curled in serpentine fashion along the wall, the patches of torchlight just barely meeting at the turns. A hint of night sky was visible now and again through the slits in the stone, high and beyond reach from where they passed. Par’s stomach was churning. He thought he heard something on the steps above, a small scraping of boots, a rustle of clothing. He blinked and wiped the sweat from his face. There was only silence.

They reached the next landing. There was a single door, unguarded, unlocked. They opened it and passed through easily. Par didn’t like it. If this was where Damson was being kept, there should have been guards. He glanced again at Padishar, but the big man was looking ahead, down a dimly lit corridor that ran to the promised second door. They moved to it swiftly, and as they did Par felt the magic of the wishsong again stir suddenly to life. He gasped at the swiftness of its coming, almost doubling over with the heat it generated, like a furnace door being opened.

Something was wrong.

He grasped Padishar’s arm. The big man turned, startled. Par jerked about, sensing movement behind, a dark presence... The Shadowen! They were—

And the door behind them flew open with a crash. Three black-cloaked Seekers surged through, Shadowen forms hunched and twisted within the concealing garb, weapons glinting in the torchlight. Padishar’s broadsword scraped free of its scabbard. Par reached back for the Sword of Shannara, then jerked his hands away as if from live coals. He would be burned if he touched it! Burned, he knew!

“Padishar!” he gasped.

The big man wheeled toward the door behind them, but it, too, swung wide, and two more of the black-cloaked monsters appeared. Both ends of the corridor were blocked now, and Par Ohmsford and Padishar Creel were trapped.

“The Mole!” Padishar swore, certain they had been betrayed.

But Par did not hear him. The Seekers rushed to seize them, and the magic of the wishsong exploded in the sound of his warning cry, filling the tower with fury. It enveloped him like a whirlwind, pressing him back against an astonished Padishar. He fought to contain it, but it overpowered him effortlessly. Then it broke away in shards of white-hot fire that flew at the Shadowen. The black figures threw up their arms, but the wishsong’s magic tore through them and they were turned to ash. Par screamed, unable to help himself, and the wishsong broke through the walls like a flood through a dam, shattering mortared seams and blowing holes through the stone. Padishar flinched away, then grabbed at Par in desperation and hauled him bodily through the second door, slamming it shut behind them.

Par dropped to his knees, the wishsong silent once more.

“I... I can’t breathe!” he gasped.

Padishar yanked him to his feet. “Par! Shades, lad! What’s happening to you? What’s wrong?”

Par shook his head in despair. The magic’s evolution continued unchecked within him. Substantive again, not imaginary. Brin’s magic, not Jair’s. A fire he could not control, smoldering, waiting...

His hands clasped the other’s arms and his breath returned, a cooling within that stilled the madness. “Find Damson!” he hissed. “Maybe she’s here, Padishar! Find her!”

There were shouts all about, the cries of Federation soldiers rushing along the ramparts and into the watchtower. Padishar grasped Par’s tunic and dragged the Valeman after him as he hurried along a hall studded with heavy wooden doors, all locked and barred.

“Damson!” the big man called frantically.

Behind them, beyond the door through which they had fled, Par thought he heard the whisper of Shadowen robes.

“They’re coming!” he warned, feeling the heat of the wishsong’s magic beginning to build again.

“Damson!” Padishar Creel howled.

There was a muffled reply from behind one of the doors. Releasing Par, the leader of the free-born rushed on, calling out his daughter’s name. The reply came again, and he skidded to a stop. The broadsword rose and fell, hacking at one of the doors. Shouts rose from a stairwell at the far end of the corridor. Padishar hammered at the door with several jarring strokes, then threw himself at what remained, his shoulder lowered. The door flew off its hinges and Padishar disappeared inside.

Par rushed to the opening and stopped. Padishar was back on his feet, bloodied and dazed, and Damson Rhee was hugging him, red hair dusty and tangled, her pale face smudged with dirt. Her eyes were all fire as they swept up to find the Valeman.

“Par,” she breathed softly, and rushed to hold him.

The hallway behind was filled with the sound of armed men. Par turned to meet the attack, but Padishar Creel was past him in an instant and into the corridor. There was a chilling clash of weapons.

“Par!” the big man called. “Take her and run!”

Without thinking, Par grabbed Damson’s arm and pulled her after him through the door. Padishar stood toe to toe with a knot of Federation soldiers. More appeared in the stairwell beyond. The leader of the free-born threw back the foremost by sheer strength alone and spun about in fury.

“Drat you, boy—run! Now! Remember our agreement!”

Then the soldiers were on him again, and he was fighting for his life. Two went down, then another, but there were more to take their place. Too many, Par thought. Too many to stand against. He felt his chest tighten. He must help his friend. But that would mean using the wishsong’s magic, the fire he could not control. It would mean seeing those men ripped to pieces. It would mean chancing that Padishar would be ripped to pieces as well.

And he had given the big man his promise.

“Padishar,” he heard Damson breathe in his ear and felt her start toward the big man.

Instantly he had hold of her and was dragging her back the way they had come, away from the fighting. He had made his choice. “Par!” she screamed in anger, but he shook his head no. They reached the closed door. Were there Shadowen behind it? Par could not hear them; he could not hear anything above the sounds of the battle behind him.

“We can’t leave him!” Damson was screaming.

He pulled her close. “We have to.” Before him, the wooden door loomed, hiding what lay behind, forbidding and silent. He braced himself, summoning the wishsong’s magic because this time there was no choice. The magic stirred, anxious.

Please, he thought, let me keep control of it just this once!

He flung open the door, ready to send the magic careening down the corridor beyond, white-hot and deadly. Silence greeted him. Moonlight flooded down through cracks in the shattered stone. Debris littered the floor. The passage was empty.

He cast a final look back at the embattled Padishar Creel, a solitary barrier against the flood of Federation soldiers seeking to break past. There was no hope for Padishar, he knew. It had been a trap from the beginning. And the trap was about to close.

Yet there was still time to save Damson.

As they had agreed they would, whatever the cost.

With Damson still clinging to his arm, he charged ahead into the empty corridor, leaving Padishar Creel behind.