Wards of Faerie

28

For the remainder of that day and all of the next, Drust Chazhul and his Federation army did not attempt any further assaults against Paranor. They held on to the Outer Wall and the landing platform and its airships, and stationed sentries on the walls and towers and on the perimeter of the surrounding forest so that no one could come or go without being seen. They built watch fires in the courtyards to keep the Inner Wall and towers illuminated, and whenever the Druids used magic to put the fires out they quickly reignited them. No attempt was made to communicate with the defenders, and it was soon clear any communication would have to come from those trapped within the Keep.

From behind the Inner Wall, Aphenglow and her companions listened to the sounds of construction. Attempts were made to catch a glimpse of what was being built, but even from the highest vantage points in the Keep’s many towers they could see nothing.

“Siege machines,” Bombax declared, dismissing the matter.

But Aphenglow wasn’t so sure. Drust Chazhul had to realize by now that direct attacks against the Keep were doomed to failure. Siege machines were just more of the same, so why would the Prime Minister and his army of commanders bother? Something else was happening, but she couldn’t decide what it was. Even Cymrian, who was usually so quick to decipher such puzzles, could not come up with an answer.

They considered again further attempts to protect the most valuable talismans and artifacts hidden within the Keep, including the Black Elfstone, but again decided against it. They bandied about the idea of attempting to get word to one of the Border Cities or to Arborlon in an effort to summon help. But a journey of that sort would have to be made on foot, and it would require a three-day slog just to get clear of the Dragon’s Teeth. From there, it would be another two days either to Tyrsis or Arborlon unless they could borrow or steal an airship or a horse. With so many sentries and patrols, the chances of being seen were good, and that would generate a pursuit. Worst of all, even if someone managed the journey successfully, there was nothing to say that help of any kind would be given.

If word could be gotten to the Ard Rhys and the other Druids, help was assured. But no one knew exactly where the members of the expedition were or how to reach them.

So in the end, the defenders decided to outlast their attackers and trust to the strength of the wards. No one wanted to abandon the Keep, in any case; not even the Trolls were in favor of leaving. Better to stand their ground and fight, Bombax repeatedly insisted, than flee and show their backsides to the likes of Drust Chazhul.

Again, Aphenglow wasn’t so sure.

On the second morning of the siege, she went into the depths of the Keep to find Woostra. She had gone to see him right after the initial assault had failed to inform him of what had happened. He had greeted the news with his usual calm indifference, declaring he was unsurprised and uninterested in anything involving the Federation. The Keep would protect herself and by doing so, protect them. He had more important matters to occupy his time.

Aphenglow, wondering what could be more important than an army of soldiers trying to break down Paranor’s gates, nevertheless had departed without further discussion.

But now she found herself increasingly uneasy about what might be happening outside the walls. They were seemingly safe and had proclaimed themselves so—well, Bombax had, at any rate, always so confident and self-assured. But everyone was edgy and disgruntled at being trapped in their own fortress and troubled by the size and determination of the enemy that had penned them in.

Aphen felt the need to explore the matter further.

In large part, this was because the Keep was speaking to her again.

It had begun to do so almost immediately after the last Federation assault had been broken. The voice spoke in whispers and sighs, in fragments of sentences and odd words, the language archaic and barely recognizable. Aphen, who knew at least parts of all the old Elven languages, nevertheless struggled with this one. The voice was plaintive and hushed, and in its tone she discovered more than what she could decipher from its words. Worry, a sense of urgency that lacked a source but was clearly important, and a harsh demand for action all came through clearly. It was a summons, and she understood in a way she could not explain that it was directed to her and her alone.

So she went back to Woostra, hoping he could explain what was happening, that his vast knowledge of the Keep and its secrets might give her the answers.

She found him in almost exactly the same place and position as he had been two days earlier, bent over his books, scribbling furiously.

“Aphenglow,” he greeted without looking up.

“Can you give me a moment?” she asked, seating herself at one end of a bench otherwise crammed with books and papers.

He lay down the pen and faced her. “I was wondering how long it would take you. You’re here about the voice, aren’t you?”

She stared. “Can you hear it, too? Do you hear it the same way you hear our footsteps and know whose it is?”

The wrinkles of his aged face deepened when he smiled. “It belongs to the Keep. I hear it, but I had to learn to listen for it. It doesn’t speak to me, as it does to you. But then you have always had a special connection to the Keep, haven’t you?”

She nodded.

“Can you understand what it says to you?”

She hesitated. “Sometimes. Not the words so much as the tone. I can feel it in my heart. Like now. It wants me to do something. It seems anxious, even desperate, for me to understand what that something is.”

The old man shook his head. “I don’t know that this has ever happened before, Aphen. The Keep sometimes responds to our needs, but I have been reading the Druid Histories and cannot find mention of it speaking to a Druid.”

“Then why is it doing so now?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been hearing the voice for years; I knew it was there. But it was only very recently I understood to whom it was speaking. I thought at first it was the Ard Rhys. But after she was in the Druid Sleep, it still whispered. Then, when you went to Arborlon, the voice stopped and I realized it must have been speaking to you. When you returned and it started up again, I was certain.”

“There’s no record of this ever happening before? Not even to Allanon or Grianne Ohmsford?”

“None. I have been reading through the Histories these past few days trying to discover if anything’s been written down about this. It struck me that this most recent effort to communicate is a warning. Something crucial is happening. I am speculating now, but I think the Keep is trying to tell you what that something is.”

She leaned forward eagerly. “Why would it do that?”

He hesitated, cocking an eyebrow at her. “I think it feels threatened in some way. I think it’s trying to protect itself. I think it wants you to help.”

She cocked an eyebrow back at him. “It seems to me the Keep’s done a pretty fair job of protecting itself.”

“Appearances can be deceiving. What has protected the Keep so far is magic conjured up and set in place by Grianne Ohmsford before Khyber Elessedil succeeded her as Ard Rhys. The magic Grianne created was powerful and effective, but it was not an original part of the Keep. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

She shook her head.

“There is a second, older magic that wards Paranor, one that dwells beneath the Keep’s main tower, deep underground. This magic was created when Paranor was brought into the world to serve as a home for the Druids, and its purpose is much darker. Do you know of it?”

“I’ve heard rumors,” Aphenglow said. “Tell me more. What does it do?”

“It can do a couple of things. It can be used to ward the Keep against intruders, even in the absence of its Druids. Walker Boh used it that way when he flew the Jerle Shannara to Parkasia. Once set in place, the magic will protect Paranor until any of the resident Druids return to release it from its task and reopen the Keep. Simple enough.”

He paused. “It can also serve a much darker purpose. It can be used to destroy every living thing it finds within Paranor’s walls and then to seal the Keep and hide it away. Poof! Everyone dead and the Keep disappeared. That has happened only once, when Allanon knew his life was ending and no Druids would be left to succeed him. Mord Wraiths had occupied the Keep and were destroying it, so he summoned the old magic. When it had finished with the Mord Wraiths, Paranor disappeared from the world of men.”

Aphenglow stared at him, appalled. “What are you saying? That you think the Druids are going to be wiped out a second time? That the Keep is asking to be closed away again?”

Woostra sighed wearily. “Pay attention, Aphenglow. The reason for the Keep’s insistence on communicating with you—in my opinion, mind you—is that it feels it is in danger. Perhaps Grianne Ohmsford’s wards are not sufficient to protect it. Perhaps it feels threatened by the Federation; perhaps something else is going on. Whatever the case, there are choices to be made, and I have just told you what they are. But I can’t tell you what you need to do. To find that out, you must go down inside the well that houses the old magic.”

“I don’t understand,” she insisted. “Why would going there help me?”

“Because you need to get close enough …” He trailed off sharply. “You really don’t know, do you? I thought you did. Don’t you understand? The voice comes from there.”

She shook her head. “What are you talking about? I thought it came from the Keep.”

“If you had listened more closely and tracked it to its source, you would have realized by now it doesn’t come from the Keep—it comes from within the pit!”

He held up one hand to stop her from interrupting. “Don’t ask me if I am sure of this because I most assuredly am. I discovered it for myself just the other day—the closer you get to the pit, the easier it is to understand the voice. Although I still can’t understand it the way you can. It is the old magic speaking, but you are the one it speaks to. If Paranor and the Druids are doomed, you are the one who needs to find out. If it’s simply a matter of setting the old wards in place, you need to find that out, too. But nothing can be determined without going to the source and hoping that proximity will provide you with the answers you require.”

He turned back to his books. “There, I’ve said everything I have to say on the matter. It’s up to you now. Maybe my speculations are entirely wrong. But I don’t think so.”

Aphenglow looked down at her hands where they rested in her lap. “But why has it chosen me?”

“Good question.” Woostra did not bother to look up. “You should ask it when you get close enough to do so.”

For long moments, Aphenglow sat there debating what the old man had told her. Then she stood and went out the door.

She really had no choice. If she wanted to test Woostra’s theory, she needed to enter the Keep’s main tower and descend from its lower levels into the huge pit that opened all the way down into the black center of the earth. She didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to be there even for the barest few seconds. She had gone into the pit only once, when she was newly come to Paranor and still exploring its boundaries, and she still regretted having done so. The cold and dark had a visceral feel, and she could sense the presence of something old and dangerous and inhuman. Magic, she had thought even then, dark and cunning, but she could not put a name to it.

When she had asked the Ard Rhys, Khyber had told her she was not to go down there again. What lived there was ancient and immutable and should be left to slumber undisturbed until the end of time.

She had not pressed the matter further, just happy to know she needn’t go back. Now she wished she had insisted on knowing more. Perhaps some of what was happening now might have been avoided.

The main tower was a huge structure settled at the north end of the Keep, thick and massive in its look, but deceptive, as well. Nowhere was it evident that it tunneled into the earth much farther than it rose above it, and nowhere did the Outer Walls reveal the nature of the unpleasantness trapped within.

Only when she opened the huge ironbound door that led into the depths of the tower and began her descent was she reminded of what was concealed from the world outside. Stone stairs wound downward into endless darkness amid smells and tastes so unpleasant and sounds so insidious they made her cringe. She shuddered in spite of herself, trying in vain to close off the assault on her senses, to push back against the physically intimidating presence the tower’s walls exuded. Her entire being screamed at her to turn and flee back from where she had come, to warn her that to continue meant an encounter so terrible she could not expect to survive it.

Yet she did not turn back. Driven by her fear of what was at stake, compelled by the knowledge that only she could discover the truth behind the Keep’s insistent whispering, she kept going. The descent was not easily made, but her Druid training and her strong sense of responsibility buttressed her efforts. She had not told anyone what she was going to do. Woostra would know, of course, but if anything happened to her it was difficult to tell how much time might pass before he noticed she was missing.

She heard the whisper of the voice almost immediately—the familiar susurration of words and phrases that almost made sense and to which she could almost put meaning. In her heart, she knew she had done the right thing by coming. The voice reflected a sense of relief; she was expected and she had not disappointed. She was where she should be, the voice was saying. She was where she was needed.

Dampness formed on her exposed skin, cloying and chill. The air was stale and thick with age and closeness. Nothing born of the pit, nothing that resided within its stone vault, ever saw anything of the outside world. Here, things did not change. What was so a thousand years ago was still so today. Imprisoned by stone and time, this tunnel into the earth’s center was an encapsulated environment, its components immutable.

She hated everything about it, but did not reveal her feelings by voice or gesture, believing it wiser—however irrational—to keep her distaste hidden.

The voice was growing clearer, the words beginning to form images that wormed their way through her subconscious to where she could glimpse them in her mind’s eye. Even so, she wasn’t sure at first what she was seeing. The images were in a context she did not recognize. She slowed her descent and then stopped altogether on one of the tiny platforms that marked her downward progression, pressing back against the stone of the tower wall and closing her eyes tightly.

Something creeps and climbs …

Something green and lacking in substance but filled with dark intent and raw hunger …

Something skitters through the darkness, figures hunched over and crawling like rats …

Something feral waits …

Something huge and violent bursts from darkness into light amid splashes of red and screaming so terrible and futile and endless …

She blinked rapidly in shock, reopening her eyes and staring out into the gloom of the tower and then into the deeper darkness of the pit. She could hear a wicked hissing, and she knew there was something alive down there. And just as she had known six years earlier, she knew at once what it was.

The magic that lived in the pit.

The magic that had dwelled there since Paranor was constructed. The magic she had come to find.

What was she to do? She wanted to turn and run. But she began to descend once more, moving to the next platform, deeper into the gloom. She was almost completely wrapped in darkness now, but she was afraid to use her magic to provide additional light, afraid it might attract the thing below. Afraid it might rise to seek her out. She never once doubted it was possible. She would listen to its voice and study the images the voice conjured, but she could not stand her ground if it came for her.

She knew she could not do that.

Aphenglow.

She heard her name spoken clearly and distinctly, but nothing more. It was so unexpected that for a moment she thought she was mistaken. She waited. The whispering began again, slow and insidious and menacing, solitary words spoken out of context, fragments of sentences stripped of relevance, and with them came the attendant images, newly formed and decidedly different, but every bit as terrible. She tried again to make sense of them, and failed.

She reached the next platform and halted once more, again leaning back against the tower wall, closing her eyes. Understanding would come to her, she felt. Some small knowledge, some recognition. The voice was trying to communicate but hadn’t found a way yet. Ancient language was all it knew. Images formed of words that didn’t quite connect or reveal were all it could manage.

Tell me, she whispered in her mind. Try.

The voice continued to whisper, scary hisses that suggested angry snakes, but its meaning remained obscure. She listened carefully, but she could not decipher it.

Tell me what you want.

She went down another level, tried again to understand, failed, and went down still another level. Now she was so deep she could hear the voice breathing and see the strange greenish glow of the resident magic. She was so frightened her hands were shaking. She could sense its power, and she felt dwarfed by it. She must not wake it. She must not. Its voice came to her from out of dreams and sleep, from a subconscious that transcended both. She did not know what this meant, but understood it should be left alone.

Yet she couldn’t do that. She needed it to speak to her. She needed to know what was happening.

Leave, Aphenglow.

The words stopped her where she was. She waited for the voice to say something further, but it stayed silent.

She turned toward the wall of the pit and placed her hands flat against its cold, damp surface, absorbing its rough feel, reaching for something more. What did the magic intend to do if she left? Which choice would it make for Paranor?

Don’t seal the Keep. She spoke to it in her mind, begging it to heed her. Please, don’t. This is our home.

The voice responded in rapid bursts, a flood of words, garbled and raw sounding:

… tunnels … boring machines … walls … compromised … matter … of time … cleansing …

Then, a shriek:

Get out! All of you! Now! Leave them to me!

The words exploded inside her mind, disjointed and wild, and she jerked away from the wall in response to their blackness and rage, averting her face, cringing in fear.

In the pit beneath her, the greenish mist heaved upward as if trying to break free, and the hissing it emitted was slow and fierce and penetrated to her core.

But she understood now what the voice was trying to tell her. She knew what was going to happen.

Take them! she screamed in response, the words white-hot coals in her mind. But spare the Keep!

In spite of her damaged leg, heedless of the pain it caused her, she flew up the stone stairs, back out of the darkness and into the light.