The Scions of Shannara

They went back through the storage chambers and out through the main cavern to the bluff. It was dark now, the last of the daylight faded into dusk. The outlaw chief stopped, stretched, and took a deep breath of evening air.

“Listen to me, lad,” he said quietly. “There’s one thing more. You have to stop brooding about what happened to that sword you carry. You can’t haul that burden around with you and expect to stay clearheaded; it’s much too heavy a load, even for a determined fellow like you. Lay it down. Leave it behind you. You’ve got enough heart in you to manage without it.”

He knows about this morning, Morgan realized at once. He knows and he’s telling me that it’s all right.

Padishar sighed. “Every bone in my body aches, but none of them aches nearly so bad as my heart. I hate what’s happened here. I hate what’s been done to us.” He looked squarely at Morgan. “That’s what I mean about useless baggage. You think about it.”

He turned and strode off into the dark. Morgan almost called him back. He even took a step after him, thinking that now he would tell him his suspicions about the traitor. It would have been easy to do so. It would have freed him of the frustration he felt at having to keep the matter to himself. It would have absolved him of the responsibility of being the only one who knew.

He wrestled with his indecision as he had wrestled with it all that day.

But once again he lost.



He slept after that, wrapping himself in his cloak and curling up on the ground within the shadow of the aspen. The earth had dried after the morning rain; the night was warm, and the air was filled with the smells of the forest. His sleep was dreamless and complete. Worries and indecisions slipped away like water shed from his skin. Banished were the wraiths of his lost magic and of the traitor, driven from his mind by the weariness that wrapped protectively about him and gave him peace. He drifted, suspended in the passing of time.

And then he came awake.

A hand clutched his shoulder, tightening. It happened so abruptly, so shockingly, that for a moment he thought he was being attacked. He thrashed himself clear of his cloak and bounded to his feet, wheeling about frantically in the dark.

He found himself face-to-face with Steff.

The Dwarf was crouched before him, wrapped in his blankets, his hair stiff and spikey, his scarred face pale and drawn and sweating despite the night’s comfortable feel. His dark eyes burned with fever, and there was something frightened and desperate in their look.

“Teel’s gone,” he whispered harshly.

Morgan took a deep, steadying breath. “Gone where?” he managed, one hand still fastened tightly about the handle of the dagger at his waist.

Steff shook his head, his breathing ragged in the night’s silence. “I don’t know. She left about an hour ago. I saw her. She thought I was sleeping, but . . .” He trailed off. “Something’s wrong, Morgan. Something.” He could barely speak. “Where is she? Where’s Teel?”

And instantly, Morgan Leah knew.





XXX



It was on that same night that Par Ohmsford went down into the Pit after the Sword of Shannara for the final time. Darkness had descended on the city of Tyrsis, a cloak of impenetrable black. The rain and mist had turned into fog so thick that the roofs and walls of buildings, the carts and stalls of the markets, even the stones of the streets disappeared into it as if they had melted away. Neither moon nor stars could be seen, and the lights of the city flickered like candles that might be snuffed out at any instant.

Damson Rhee led the Valemen from the garden shed into the haze, cloaked and hooded once more. The fog was suffocating; it was damp and heavy and it clung to clothing and skin alike in a fine sheen. The day had ended early, shoved into nightfall by the appearance of the fog as it rose out of the grasslands below the bluff and built upon itself like a tidal wave until it simply rolled over Tyrsis’ walls and buried her. The chill of the previous night bad been replaced by an equally unpleasant warmth that smelled of must and rot. All day the people of the city muttered in ill-disguised concern over the strangeness of the weather; when the last of the day’s thin, gray light began to fade, they barricaded themselves in their homes as if they were under siege.

Damson and the Valemen found themselves virtually alone in the silent, shrouded streets. When travelers passed by, once or twice only, their presence was but momentary, as if ghosts that had ventured forth from the netherworld only to be swallowed back up again. There were sounds, but they lacked both a source and a direction. Footsteps, the soft thudding of boots, rose into the silence from out of nowhere and disappeared the same way. Things moved about them, shapes and forms without definition that floated rather than walked and that came and went with the blink of an eye.