The Druid of Shannara

He forced himself to think. As long as he could think, he reasoned, he would not fall asleep. He retraced in his mind his conversation with the Grimpond, hearing again the spirit’s words, trying anew to decipher their meaning. The Grimpond had not named the Hall of Kings in describing where the Black Elfstone could be found. Had Walker simply jumped to the wrong conclusion? Had he been deliberately misled? Was there any truth in what he had been told?

Walker’s thoughts scattered in confusion, and his mind refused to respond to the demands he placed on it. He closed his eyes in despair, and it was with great difficulty that he forced them open again. His clothes were chill and damp with his own sweat, and his body shivered within them. His breathing was ragged, his vision blurred, and it was growing increasingly difficult to swallow. So many distractions—how could he think? He wanted simply to lie down and …

He panicked, feeling the urgency of his need threaten to swallow him up. He shifted his body, forcing his knees to scrape against the stone until they bled. A little more pain might help keep me awake, he thought. Yet he could barely feel it.

He forced his thoughts back to the Grimpond. He envisioned the wraith laughing at his plight, taking pleasure at it. He heard the taunting voice calling out to him. Anger gave him a measure of strength. There was something that he needed to recall, he thought desperately. There was something that the Grimpond had told him that he must remember.

Please, don’t let me fall asleep!

The Hall of Kings did not respond to the urgency of his plea; the statues remained silent, disinterested, and oblivious. The mountain waited.

I have to break free! he howled wordlessly.

And then he remembered the visions, or more specifically the first of the three that the Grimpond had shown him, the one in which he had stood on a cloud above the others of the little company that had gathered at the Hadeshorn in answer to the summons of the shade of Allanon, the one in which he had said that he would sooner cut off his hand than bring back the Druids and then lifted his arm to show that he had done exactly that.

He remembered the vision and recognized its truth.

He banished the reaction it provoked in horrified disbelief and let his head droop until it was resting on the cavern stone. He cried, feeling the tears run down his cheeks, the sides of his face, stinging his eyes as they mingled with his sweat. His body twisted with the agony of his choices.

No! No, he would not!

Yet he knew he must.

His crying turned to laughter, chilling in its madness as it rolled out of him into the emptiness of the tomb. He waited until it expended itself, the echoes fading into silence, then looked up again. His possibilities had exhausted themselves; his fate was sealed. If he did not break free now, he knew he never would.

And there was only one way to do so.

He hardened himself to the fact of it, walling himself away from his emotions, drawing from some final reserve the last of his strength. He cast about the cavern floor until he found what he needed. It was a rock that was approximately the size and shape of an axe-blade, jagged on one side, hard enough to have survived intact its fall from the chamber ceiling where it had been loosened by the battle four centuries earlier between Allanon and the serpent Valg. The rock lay twenty feet away, clearly beyond reach of any ordinary man. But not him. He summoned a fragment of the magic that remained to him, forcing himself to remain steady during its use. The rock inched forward, scraping as it moved, a slow scratching in the cavern’s silence. Walker grew light-headed from the strain, the fever burning through him, leaving him nauseated. Yet he kept the rock moving closer.

At last it was within reach of his free hand. He let the magic slip away, taking long moments to gather himself. Then he stretched out his arm to the rock, and his fingers closed tightly about it. Slowly he gathered it in, finding it impossibly heavy, so heavy in fact that he was not certain he could manage to lift it let alone …

He could not finish the thought. He could not dwell on what he was about to do. He dragged the rock over until it was next to him, braced himself firmly with his knees, took a deep breath, raised the rock overhead, hesitated for just an instant, then in a rush of fear and anguish brought it down. It smashed into the stone of his arm between elbow and wrist, hammering it with such force that it jarred his entire body. The resulting pain was so agonizing that it threatened to render him unconscious. He screamed as waves of it washed through him; he felt as if he were being torn apart from the inside out. He fell forward, gasping for breath, and the axe-blade rock dropped from his nerveless fingers.

Then he realized that something had changed.

He pushed himself upright and looked down at his arm. The blow had shattered the stone limb at the point of impact. His wrist and hand remained fastened to the Asphinx in the gloom of the hidden compartment of the cavern floor. But the rest of him was free.

He knelt in stunned disbelief for a long time, staring down at the ruin of his arm, at the gray-streaked flesh above the elbow and the jagged stone capping below. His arm felt leaden and stiff. The poison already within it continued to work its damage. There were jolts of pain all through him.