First King of Shannara (17 page)

Damp, chilled, and lost in thought, Tay sat by himself when the meal was finished and stared out into the gloom. Hoping to find something he had missed, he replayed in his mind the vision of the Black Elfstone that Bremen had been shown at the Hadeshorn. The details of the vision were familiar by now, smoothed out like wrinkled paper so that they might be reexamined and considered at leisure. Bremen had given him the description of the talisman's hiding place just as it had been revealed by the shade of Galaphile, so that all that remained was to find it again in real life. There were several ways that might happen. The Trackers Preia Starle and Retten Kipp might discover the Black Elfstone through an accumulation of physical evidence in the course of their scouting. Tay might discover it as an elementalist, finding the breaks in the lines of power caused by the talisman's magic. And Vree Erreden might discover it by employing his special skill as a locat, tracing the Elfstone as he would any other lost object, through prescient thought and intuition.

Tay looked over at the locat, who was already asleep. Most of the others were sleeping as well by now, or in the process of drifting off. Even Jerle Shannara was stretched out, rolled into his blanket. A single Elven Hunter kept watch at one end of the camp, walking the perimeter, drifting through the gloom, just another of night's shadows. Tay watched him for a moment, thinking of other things, then looked again at Vree Erreden. The locat had spied out Bremen' s vision when he had taken hold of his hands on that first visit. He was certain of it now, though he hadn't realized it at the time. It was what had decided the locat on coming, that momentary glimpse of a place lost in time, of a magic that had survived a world now gone, of what once was known and might now be revealed again. The theft was a clever piece of work, and Tay admired the other man's audacity in committing it. It was not everyone who would dare to pick the lock on a Druid's mind.

He rose after a while, still not sleepy, and walked out to stand where the guard patrolled. The Elven Hunter noted him, but made no move to approach, continuing his rounds as before. Tay looked out into the sodden trees, his eyes adjusting to the light, seeing strange shapes and forms in the rain, even in the absence of moon and stars. He watched a deer pass, small and delicate in the concealment of the gloom, eyes watchful, ears pricked. He saw night birds speed swiftly from branch to branch, hunters in search of food, finding it now and again, diving with shocking quickness to the forest floor and then lifting away, small creatures clutched tightly by claws and beaks. He saw in these victims an image of the Elven people if the Warlock Lord prevailed. He imagined how helpless they would be when Brona began his hunt. Already there was a sense of being sought out, of being considered prey. While he did not like to contemplate it, he did not think the feeling would diminish any time soon.

He was still considering what this meant when Preia Starle appeared out of nowhere at his elbow. He gasped in spite of himself, then forced himself to recover as he saw the smile twitch at the corners of her mouth. She had been gone all day, leaving early with Retten Kipp to scout the land ahead. No one had known when either of them would be back, Trackers having the freedom to do whatever they felt they must and to keep to their own schedule. She winked as she saw the shock leave his face, replaced by chagrin. Saying nothing, she took his arm and led him back off the perimeter and into the camp. She was wearing loose-fitting forest clothing, with gloves and soft boots, and all of it was soaked through. Rain plastered her curly, short-cropped, cinnamon hair to her head and ran down her face. She didn't seem to notice.

She sat him down some yards away from where the other members of the company were sleeping, choosing a dry spot beneath an oak where the thickness of the grass offered some comfort. She removed the brace of long knives, the short sword, and the ash bow she carried, looking altogether too fragile and young to be bearing such weapons, and sat next to him.

“Can't sleep, Tay?” she asked quietly, squeezing his arm.

He folded his long legs before him and shook his head. “Where have you been?”

“Here and there.” She brushed the rain from her face and smiled. “You didn't see me, did you?”

He gave her a rueful look. “What do you think? Do you enjoy shortening people's lives by scaring them so? If I wasn't able to sleep before, how will I ever be able to sleep now?”

She suppressed a laugh. “I expect you will manage. You are a Druid after all, and Druids can manage anything. Take heart from Jerle. He sleeps like a baby all the time. He refuses to stay awake, even when I would have it otherwise.”

She blinked, realizing what she had implied, and looked quickly away. After a moment, she said, “Kipp has gone on ahead to the Sarandanon to make certain that the horses and supplies are ready. I came back to tell you about the Gnome Hunters.”

He looked sharply at her, waiting. “Two large parties,” she continued, “both north of us. There might be more. There are a lot of tracks. I don't think they know about us. Yet. But we need to be careful.”

“Can you tell what they are doing here?”

She shook her head. “Hunting, I would guess. The pattern of their tracks suggests as much. They are keeping close to the Kensrowe, north of the grasslands. But they may not stay there, especially if they learn about us.”

He was silent for a moment, thinking it through. He could feel her waiting him out, studying his face in the gloom. Amid the sleepers, a snore turned into a cough, and a bundled form shifted. Rain fell in a slow patter, a soft backdrop against the black.

“Did you see any of the Skull Bearers?” he asked finally.

She shook her head once more. “No.”

“Strange tracks of any kind?”

“No.”

He nodded, hoping that was indicative of something. Perhaps the Warlock Lord had left his monsters at home. Perhaps Gnome Hunters were all they faced.

She shifted beside him, rising to her knees. “Give Jerle my report, Tay. I have to go back out.”

“Now?”

“Now is better than later if you want to keep the wolf from the door.” She grinned. “Do you remember that saying? You used it all the time when you were talking about going to Paranor and becoming a Druid. It was your way of saying you would protect us, the poor, homebound friends you were leaving behind.”

“I remember.” He took her arm. “Are you hungry?”

“I've eaten already.”

“Why not stay until dawn?”

“No”

“Don't you want to give your report to Jerle yourself?”

She studied him a moment, reflecting on something. “What I want is for you to give it for me. Will you do that?”

The tone of her voice had changed. She was not open to a discussion on this. He nodded wordlessly and took his hand away.

She rose, strapped the knives and sword back in place, took up the bow, and gave him a quick smile. “You think about what you just asked of me, Tay,” she said.

She slipped back into the gloom, and a moment later she was gone. Tay sat where he was for a time, considering what she had said, then climbed to his feet to wake Jerle.

 

Rain fell all the following day, a steady downpour. The company continued on through the forest, keeping watch for Gnomes, staying alert to everything. The hours passed slowly, sunrise easing toward sunset, the whole of the day marked by graying half-light filtered through banks of clouds and water-laden boughs. Travel was slow and monotonous. They came upon no one in the woods. In the sodden gloom, nothing moved.

Night came and went, and neither Preia Starle nor Retten Kipp returned. By dawn of the third day, the company was nearing the Sarandanon. The rain had stopped and the skies had begun to clear. Sunlight peeked through gaps in the departing clouds, narrow shafts of light come out of the bright blue. The air warmed, and the earth began to steam and bake.

In a clearing bright with sunlight on spring wildflowers, they came upon Preia Starle's ash bow, broken and muddied. There was no other sign of the Elf girl.

But the boot prints of Gnome Hunters were everywhere.

 

XII

 

D
aylight was fading and darkness edging out of the Anar as the last of the Warlock Lord's vast army spilled from the Jannisson Pass onto the grasslands of the northern Rabb. It had taken all day for the army to come down out of the Streleheim, for the Jannisson was narrow and winding and the army encumbered by a train of pack animals, baggage, and wagons that stretched for nearly two miles when set end to end. The fighting men moved at varying rates, the cavalry swift and eager astride their horses, the light infantry, bowmen, and slingers slower, and the heavily armored foot soldiers slower still. But none of the army's various components was as plodding or trouble-plagued as the pack train, which lumbered through the pass with an agonizing lack of progress, stopped every few minutes by broken wheels and axels, by the constant need for an untangling of traces and the watering of animals, and by collisions, mix-ups, and traffic jams of all sorts.

It gave Risca, watching from the concealment of the Dragon's Teeth half a mile to the south, a grim sense of satisfaction. Anything to slow the dark ones, he kept thinking. Anything to delay their hateful progress south toward his homeland.

Trolls made up the greater part of the army, stolid, thick-skinned, and virtually featureless, looking more like beasts than like men. The largest and most fierce were the Rock Trolls, averaging well over six feet in height and weighing several hundred pounds. They formed the core of the army, and their disciplined, precision-executed march testified to their efficiency in battle. Other Trolls were there mostly to fill the gaps. Gnomes dominated the cavalry and light infantry, the small, wiry fighters a tribal race like the Trolls though less skilled and more poorly trained. They served in the army of the Warlock Lord for two reasons. First and foremost, they were terrified of magic, and the Warlock Lord's magic exceeded anything they had believed possible. Second and only slightly less compelling, they knew what had happened when the larger, fiercer, and better armed Trolls had tried to resist, and they had quickly decided to jump to the winning side before the decision was made for them.

Then there were the creatures that had no name, beings brought over from the netherworld, things come out of the black pits to which they had been consigned in centuries past, freed now through the Warlock Lord's magic. In daylight, they stayed cloaked and hooded, indistinct shapes in the shifting, swirling dust of the march, outcasts by breeding and common consent. But as the twilight descended and the shadows lengthened, they began to shed their concealments and reveal themselves—terrible, misshapen monsters that all avoided. Among them were the Skull Bearers, the winged hunters that served as Brona's right arm. Men themselves once, the Skull Bearers were Druids who had tested the magic too frequently and deeply and been subverted. These last took flight now, lifting off into the dying light to begin casting about for prey to feed their hunger.

And in the center of all, set squarely amid the hordes that swept it inexorably onward like a raft on storm-tossed waters, was the huge, black, silk-covered litter that bore the Warlock Lord himself. Thirty Trolls carried it forward through the army's ranks, its coverings impenetrable in the brightest light, its iron stays studded with barbs and razors, its pennants emblazoned with white skulls. Risca watched the creatures about it bow and scrape, conscious that while they could not see him, their Lord and Master could easily see them.

Now, with night descending and the entire army down out of the Northland and poised to march south to invade the Anar and conquer the Dwarves, Risca sat back wearily within his rocky crevice and let the shadows envelop him. Bremen had been right, of course—right about everything. Brona had survived the First War of the Races and stayed hidden all these years merely to gain strength so that he might strike once again. Now he was returned, this time as the Warlock Lord, and the Trolls and Gnomes belonged to him, subjugated and made servants in his cause. If the Druids were destroyed as Bremen had foreseen they would be—and Risca now believed it so—there was no one left to intervene on behalf of the free Races, no one left to wield the magic. One by one, they would fall—Dwarves, Elves, and Men. One by one, the Four Lands would be subjugated. It would happen quickly. No one yet believed it was possible, and by the time anyone did, it would be too late. Risca had seen now for himself the size of the Warlock Lord's army. A juggernaut, unstoppable, monstrous. Only by uniting could the free Races hope to prevail. But it would take time for them to decide to do this if left to their own devices. Politics would slow any decision making. Self-interest would generate an ill-advised caution. The free Races would debate and consider and be made slaves before they realized what had happened to them.

Bremen had foreseen it all, and now it was left to the handful who had believed him to find a way to prevent the inevitable from happening.

Risca reached into his pack, pulled out a piece of day-old bread he had bought at the edge of the border settlements, and began to chew absently on it. He had left Bremen and the others of the little company three days earlier at the mouth of the Hadeshorn. He had come east out of Callahorn to carry word to the Dwarves of the Warlock Lord's approach, to warn them of the danger, and to persuade them that they must make a stand against the Northland army. But by the time he had reached the western edge of the Rabb, he had decided that his task would be made considerably easier if he could report that he had seen the approaching army with his own eyes. Then he could offer an estimate of its size and strength and thereby be more persuasive in his appeal. So he had turned north and used a second day to reach the Jannisson. There, on this third day, he had crouched in hiding in the foothills of the Dragon's Teeth, and watched the army of the Warlock Lord come down out of the Streleheim; it had grown larger and larger until it seemed there would be no end to it. He had counted units and commands, animals and wagons, tribal pennants and standards of battle until he had its measure. It might as well have been the whole Troll nation come to call. It was the largest army he had ever seen. The Dwarves could never stand alone against it. They could slow it, delay it perhaps, but they could not stop it. Even if the Elves came to stand with them, they would still be badly outnumbered. And they had no magic of the sort wielded by Brona and the Skull Bearers and the netherworld creatures. They had no talismans. They had only Bremen, Tay Trefenwyd, and himself, the last of the Druids.

Risca shook his head, chewing and swallowing. The odds were too great. He needed to find a way to even them up.

He finished his bread and drank deeply from the aleskin he carried strapped across his shoulder. Then he rose and moved back to the precipice, where he could look down on the encamped army. Fires had been lit by now, the descent of night's darkness nearly complete, and the plains were bright with clusters of flame and the air thick with smoke. The army sprawled for almost a mile, bustling with activity, alive with sound and movement. Food was being prepared and bedding unrolled. Repairs were being undertaken and plans laid. Risca stared down from his perch, disheartened and angry. If strength of will and rage alone could have stopped this madness, his would have been sufficient. He caught a glimpse of a pair of Skull Bearers as they circled the inky skies beyond the aura of the firelight, searching for spies, and he hunched down into the concealing rocks, becoming one with the mountains, another colorless piece of the rough terrain. His eyes wandered the length and breadth of the campsite, but kept returning to the black silken litter in which the Warlock Lord reposed. It had been lowered to the ground now, set deep within the army's midst, surrounded by Trolls and other creatures less human, a small island of silence within the teeming mass of activity. No fires were lit close to it. No creatures approached from the light. Blackness pooled about it like a lake, leaving it solitary and marked as inviolate.

Risca's face hardened. The trouble begins and ends with the monster who occupies that tent, he was thinking. The Warlock Lord is the head of the beast that threatens us all. Cut off the head, and the beast dies.

Kill the Warlock Lord, and the danger ends.

Kill the Warlock Lord . . .

It was a wild, reckless, impulsive thought, and he did not allow himself to pursue it. He shoved it aside and forced himself to consider his responsibilities. Bremen was depending on him. He must bring word of this army to the Dwarves so that they could prepare for the invasion of their homeland. He must persuade the Dwarves to engage an army many times its size in a battle they could not hope to win. He must convince Raybur and the Elders of the Dwarf Council that a means would be found to destroy the Warlock Lord and that the Dwarves must buy with their lives the time that was needed to accomplish this. It was a tall order and would require a great sacrifice. It would be up to him to lead them, the warrior Druid who could stand against any creature the Warlock Lord might employ.

For Risca had been born to battle. It was all he knew. He grew to manhood in the Ravenshorn, the son of parents who had lived their entire lives in the Eastland wilderness. His father was a scout and his mother a trapper. There had been eight brothers and sisters on his father's side and seven on his mother's. Most of them lived within a few miles of one another still, and Risca had been raised by all at one time or another. Over the years of his boyhood, he saw as much of his aunts and uncles and cousins as he did his parents. There was a sharing of responsibility for raising the young in his family. The Dwarves of this part of the world were constantly at war with the Gnome tribes, and everyone was always at risk. But Risca was equal to the challenge. He was taught to fight and hunt at an early age, and he discovered that he was good at it—better than good, in fact. He could sense things the others could not. He could spy out what was hidden from them. He was quick and agile and strong beyond his years. He understood the art of survival. He stayed alive when others did not.

At twelve, he was attacked by a Koden and killed the beast. He was thirteen when one of a company of twenty that was ambushed by Gnomes. He alone escaped. When his mother was killed setting lines, he was only fifteen, but he tracked down those responsible and dispatched them single-handedly. When his father died in a hunting accident, he carried his body deep into the heart of Gnome country and buried it there so that his spirit could continue the fight against their enemies. Half of his brothers and sisters were dead by then, lost to battle or sickness. He lived in a violent, unforgiving world, and his life was hard and uncertain. But Risca survived, and it was whispered when they thought he could not hear, for he was superstitious where fate was concerned, that the blade had not been forged that could kill him.

When he was twenty he came down out of the Ravenshorn to Culhaven and entered into the service of Raybur, newly crowned King of the Dwarves and a much admired warrior himself. But Raybur kept him in Culhaven only a short time before sending him to Paranor and the Druids. Raybur recognized Risca's special talents and believed the Dwarf people would be best served if the young man with the warrior's heart and the hunter's skills was trained by the Druids. He, too, like Courtann Ballindarroch of the Elves, knew of Bremen and admired him. So a note was addressed to the old man, asking that he consider giving young Risca special consideration as a student. Thus bearing the note, Risca traveled to Paranor and the Druid's Keep and stayed, becoming a staunch follower of Bremen and a believer in the ways of the magic.

His eyes stayed fixed on the black silken tent in the enemy camp below as he thought of the ways in which the magic now served him. His was the strongest after Bremen's—stronger these days perhaps, given his youth and stamina and the other's age. That was what he firmly believed, though he knew Tay Trefenwyd would certainly argue the matter. Like Tay, Risca had studied assiduously the lessons taught by Bremen, working at them even after the old man was banished, testing himself over and over again. He studied and trained virtually alone, for no others among the Druids, even Tay Trefenwyd, considered themselves warriors or sought to master the battle arts as he did. For Risca, the magic had but a single useful purpose—to protect himself and his friends and to destroy his enemies. The other uses of magic were of no interest to him—healing, divining, prescience, empathics, mastery of the sciences, elementalism, history, and conjuring. He was a fighter, and strength of arms was his passion.

The memories came and faded, and his thoughts returned to the matter at hand. What should he do? He could not abandon his responsibilities, but he could not ignore who he was either. Below, the silken folds of the tent seemed to ripple in the faint dance of the firelight. One blow was all it would take. How easily their problems would be solved if he could deliver it!

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was not afraid of Brona. He was aware of how dangerous the other was, how powerful, but he was not afraid. He possessed considerable magic himself, and if he employed it in a direct strike, he did not think that anyone or anything could withstand it.

He closed his eyes. Why was he even considering this? If he failed, there would be no one to give warning to the Dwarves! He would have given his life for nothing!

But if he were to succeed . . .

He eased back into the rocks, slipped off his travel cloak, and began to strip away his weapons. He supposed his mind had been made up from the moment the idea had entered his head. Kill the Warlock Lord and put an end to this madness. He was the best suited of any of them to make the attempt. This was the ideal time, when the Northland army was still close to home and Brona believed himself safe from attack. Even if he died, too, it would be worth it. Risca was willing to make that sacrifice. A warrior was always prepared to make that sacrifice.