The First King of Shannara

Tay nodded. He was determined as well. He glanced at Vree Erreden, at Preia Starle, at the Elven Hunters who stood behind her, and finally once again at Jerle. He gave his friend a crooked smile.

Then he took a deep breath and stepped forward into the dark mouth of the fissure.





Chapter Sixteen


The fissure widened immediately into a corridor broad enough for the Elves to stand two abreast. Steps wound downward into darkness so complete that not even Tay Trefenwyd’s keen vision could penetrate to what lay beyond. He moved forward several yards, feeling his way along the wall, and encountered a metal plate. When he touched it, light appeared across its flat surface, pale yellow and cool. He stared at the plate in surprise; here was a magic he had never encountered. The light revealed another plate, just at the edge of the darkness farther on.

He walked over to it, placed his hand on it, and it, too, brightened.

Amazing, he thought. He could hear the footsteps of the others coming up behind him. He wondered what they must be thinking.

But no one spoke, and he did not look back at them. Instead, he continued on, touching the metal plates, lighting their way through the darkened corridor.

Their descent took a long time. Tay could not measure it, the whole of his concentration given over to the casting of his Druid magic before him to ferret out hidden traps. The metal plates that gave off light revealed a sophistication he had not expected. Faerie magic was not well known, for most of the lore had been lost with time’s passage, but Tay had always assumed that magic to be grounded more in nature and less in technology. Yet the plates suggested he was mistaken, and that made him uneasy. Take nothing for granted here, he warned himself. Riding the air currents, skimming through the seams in the rock, bouncing across the dust motes that were stirred with their passing, his Druid magic hunted. With swift precision, he sorted and defined the secrets of the world through which they passed. He found no trace of human life, though the warning above the door had suggested it should be otherwise. He found no trace of another’s passing, not in years, perhaps centuries. But, in spite of this, he experienced a sharp feeling of being watched, of his measure being taken, of something waiting farther on, patient and inexorable in its purpose.

The stairway ended at a massive iron door. No locks bound it.

No magic warded it. Above its rusted, pitted frame, the words CHEW MAGNA were carved in stone — but those words only and nothing else of what had been written on the wall above the fissure into which they had entered. The others of the little company crowded close. On hands and knees, Preia Starle examined the ground before the doors, then rose and shook her head. No one had passed this way in a very long time.

Tay probed the doors and the spaces between. Nothing revealed itself. He stepped forward then, seized the great iron handles, and pulled down.

The handles gave easily, the latches released, and the doors swung inward as if perfectly balanced. Misty light poured through the opening, streaming down in a surreal shimmer, as if filtered through a pane of rain-streaked glass.

A massive fortress stood before them, its stone blocks so ancient the edges were worn smooth and its surface so cracked it seemed as if spiderwebs had covered it over. It was a wondrous construction, a balancing of towers atop battlements, an interlinking of parapets that cantilevered forward and back at every turn, and a spiraling of catwalks that suggested the intricacy of tapestry threads woven on a loom. The castle rose high and then higher, until its farthest reaches were barely discernible. Mountains ringed the castle, opening to the sky through a ceiling of clouds and mist. Trees and scrub grew thick along the rock wall at the higher elevations, branches and vines drooping inward toward the castle spires, letting daylight slip through in a ragged seam. It was from here that the light took its odd cast, spilling down through the filter of the leafy canopy and swirling haze to coat the fortress stone in its watery illumination.

Tay moved through the doors and into a vast courtyard that spread to either side and toward the central structure of the keep.

He discovered now that he had passed through the castle’s outer walls, which abutted the peaks themselves. He stared back at the walls in astonishment, realizing that with the passing of time, the mountains had shifted, closing and tightening about the ancient fortress until its walls had begun to crack and crumble. Inch by inch, the mountains were reclaiming the ground on which the fortress had been built. One day they would close about it for good.