The Scions of Shannara

“Rumor!” he whispered in disbelief.

The moor cat edged carefully past him to face Coll. The huge cat growled, a low, dangerous warning cough that seemed to breakthrough the mist and fill the darkness with shards of sound. “Coll?” Par called out to his brother and started forward, but the moor cat quickly blocked his way, shoving him back. The shadows were moving closer, taking on form now, becoming lumbering things, bodies covered with scales and hair, faces that showed demon eyes and jaws split wide in hunger. Rumor spat at them and lunged, bringing them up short to hiss back at him.

Then he whirled with claws and teeth bared and tore Coll to pieces.

Coll—what had appeared to be Coll—turned into a thing of indescribable horror, bloodied and shredded, then shimmered and disappeared—another deception. Par cried out in anguish and fury. Tricked! Ignoring the pain and the sudden nausea, he sent the magic of the wishsong hurtling at the Werebeasts, daggers and arrows of fury, images of things that could rend and tear. The Werebeasts shimmered and the magic passed harmlessly by.

Reforming, the Werebeasts attacked.

Rumor caught the closest a dozen paces off, hammering it away with a single breathtaking swipe of one great paw. Another lunged, but the cat caught it as well and sent it spinning. Others were appearing now from the shadows and mist behind those already creeping forward. Too many, thought Par frantically! He was too weak to stand, the poison from the Werebeasts’ touch seeping through him rapidly now, threatening to drop him into that familiar black abyss that had begun to open within.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, firm and instantly comforting, reassuring him and at the same time holding him in place, and he heard a voice call sharply, “Rumor!”

The moor cat edged back, never turning to look, responding to the sound of the voice alone. Par lifted his face. Walker Boh was beside him, wrapped in black robes and mist, his narrow, chiseled face set in a look that turned Par cold, his skin so white it might have been drawn in chalk.

“Keep still, Par,” he said.

He moved forward to face the Werebeasts. There were more than a dozen now, crouched down at the edge of the rise, drifting in and out of the mist and night. They hesitated at Walker Boh’s approach, almost as if they knew him. Par’s uncle came directly down to them, stopping when he was less than a dozen yards from the nearest.

“Leave,” he said simply and pointed off into the night. The Werebeasts held their ground. Walker came forward another step, and this time his voice was so hard that it seemed to shiver the air. “Leave!”

One of them lunged at him, a monstrous thing, jaws snapping as it reached for the black-robed figure. Walker Boh’s hand shot out, dust scattering into the beast. Fire erupted into the night with an explosion that rocked the bottomland, and the Werebeast simply disappeared.

Walker’s extended hand swept the circle of those that remained, threatening. An instant later, the Werebeasts had faded back into the night and were gone.

Walker turned and came back up the rise, kneeling next to Par. “This is my fault,” he said quietly.

Par struggled to speak and felt his strength give out. He was sick. Consciousness slipped away. For the third time in less than two days, he tumbled into the abyss. He remembered thinking as he fell that this time he was not sure he would be able to climb out again.





XII



Par Ohmsford drifted through a landscape of dreams.

He was both within himself and without as he journeyed, a participant and a viewer. There was constant motion, sometimes as charged as a voyage across a stormy sea, sometimes as gentle as the summer wind through the trees. He spoke to himself alternately in the dark silence of his mind and from within a mirrored self-image. His voice was a disembodied whisper and a thunderous shout. Colors appeared and faded to black and white. Sounds came and departed. He was all things on his journey, and he was none.

The dreams were his reality.

He dreamed in the beginning that he was falling, tumbling downward into a pit as black as night and as endless as the cycle of the seasons. There were pain and fear in him; he could not find himself. Sometimes there were voices, calling to him in warning, in comfort, or in horror. He convulsed within himself. He knew somehow that if he did not stop falling, he would be forever lost.

He did stop finally. He slowed and leveled, and his convulsions ceased. He was in a field of wildflowers as wondrous as a rainbow. Birds and butterflies scattered at his approach, filling the air with new brightness, and the smells of the field were soft and fragrant. There was no sound. He tried to speak so that there might be, but found himself voiceless. Nor did he have touch. He could feel nothing of himself, nothing of the world about him. There was warmth, soothing and extended, but that was all.