First King of Shannara (15 page)

It was midnight when the High Council adjourned, Tay stood outside the Assembly and clasped hands with Jerle Shannara in silent congratulation. The king brushed past them with a smile and was gone. Overhead, the sky was pinpricked with stars, and the air about them was sweet and warm. Success was a heady intoxicant. Things had gone the way Tay had hoped, and he wished impulsively that he could get word of it to Bremen. Jerle was talking nonstop, flushed with excitement, anticipating the journey west, a new adventure to be undertaken, an escape from the boring routine of his court life in Arborlon.

In that moment of high jubilation, it felt to them both as if all things were possible and nothing could go wrong.

 

X

 

W
hen the others had gone and they were all that were left, Tay and Jerle walked up together from the Assembly to the palace. They took their time, still caught up in the euphoria of their success before the High Council, neither of them ready for sleep. The night was still, the city about them at peace, the world a place of dreams and rest. Torches flickered in doorways and at the intersections of roads, beacons against the onslaught of shadows made deeper by the fading of the moon south below the horizon. Buildings loomed out of the darkness like great beasts curled up in sleep. The trees of the forest lined the walkways and surrounded the Elven homes, sentinels standing shoulder to shoulder, motionless in the dark. It gave Tay, as his gaze wandered idly across the open spaces and through the shadows, an odd sense of comfort, as if he were being watched over and protected. Jerle talked on, working his way from subject to subject in eager consideration of the events that lay ahead, arms gesturing, laugh booming out. Tay let him go, swept along in his wake, detached enough that he could listen and still let his thoughts wander, thinking of how his past had come around to his present, of how perhaps what had been left behind could be reclaimed again.

“We will need horses to cross the Sarandanon,” Jerle was musing. “But we can travel faster through the forest leading up to the valley, and then again once we are into the Breakline, if we are afoot. We'll have to pack differently for each portion of the journey, carry different provisions.”

Tay nodded without answering. No answer was required.

“A dozen of us at the minimum, but perhaps two would be better. If we're forced to stand and fight, we can't be caught shorthanded.” His friend laughed. “I don't know what I'm worried about. What would dare come against the two of us!”

Tay shrugged, looking down the walk to where the lights of the palace had come into view through the trees. “I am hopeful that we won't have to find out.”

“Well, we'll be cautious, you can be sure. Leave quietly, stick to the cover of the trees, stay away from dangerous places. But . . .” He stopped and brought lay about to face him. “Make no mistake—the Warlock Lord and his creatures will be hunting us. They know that even if Bremen did not escape the Druid's Keep, a handful of his followers did. Quite possibly they suspect he penetrated their Northland safehold. They know we will be looking for the Black Elfstone.”

Tay thought it over. “Expect the worst. That way we won't be surprised. Is that it?”

Jerle Shannara nodded, suddenly solemn. “That's it.”

They started back up the path. “I'm not sleepy,” the big man complained. He stopped again. “Where can we go for a glass of ale? One, to celebrate.”

Tay shrugged. “The palace?”

“Not the palace! I hate the palace! All those parents and children rummaging about, family everywhere. No, not there. Your house?”

“My parents are asleep. Besides, I feel as much a stranger there as you do at the palace. How about the Home Guard barracks?”

Jerle beamed. “Done! A glass or two, then bed. We have much to talk about, Tay.”

They walked on, glancing together at the palace as they passed. The downstairs was dark and the grounds quiet. There was no sign of movement anywhere. From an upstairs room, a single light burned behind a curtained window, a candle lit in a child's room to give promise of another morning.

From somewhere distant, a night bird cried out in a series of shrill calls that echoed forlornly before dying back into the silence.

Jerle slowed and stopped, bringing lay up short with him. He stared at the palace.

“What is it?” Tay asked after a moment.

“I don't see any guards.”

Tay looked. “Any guards where? I thought you weren't supposed to see them.”

Jerle shook his head. “You aren't. But I am.”

Tay stared with him, seeing nothing against the black of the buildings or across the tree-canopied sweep of the grounds. No shapes even vaguely human. He searched for movement and did not find any. Elven Hunters were trained to fade away. Home Guard were better still. But he should still be able to find them as easily as Jerle.

He used his magic then, a small sending that raked the whole of the palace enclosure from end to end, fingers of disclosure that picked at everything. There was movement now, discovered in his search, swift and furtive and alien.

“Something is wrong,” he said at once.

Jerle Shannara started forward wordlessly, heading for the palace entry, picking up speed as he went. Tay went with him, a strange sense of dread welling up inside. He tried to give it definition, to place its source, but it slipped away from him, elusive and defiant Tay searched the shadows to either side, finding everything suddenly black and secretive. His hands tested the air, the tips of his fingers releasing his Druid magic in a widening net. He felt the net close on something that twisted and squirmed and then darted away.

“Gnomes!” he exclaimed.

Jerle broke into a run, reaching down to his belt and yanking out his short sword, the blade gleaming faintly against the dark as it slipped free. Jerle Shannara never went anywhere without his weapons. Tay hurried to keep up. Neither of them spoke, falling in beside each other as they neared the front doors, glancing left and right warily, ready for anything.

The doors stood open. No light shone from within. From the walkway, it had been impossible to tell this. Jerle did not slow. He went through the doors in a crouch, sword held ready. Tay followed.

The hall stretched away before them like a cavernous tunnel. There were bodies everywhere, strewn about like sacks of old clothing, bloodied and still. Elven Hunters, slain to a man, but a scattering of Gnome Hunters as well. The floor was slick with their blood. Jerle motioned Tay to one side while he went to the other, and together they worked their way down the hail to the main rooms. The rooms were quiet and empty of life. The companions backtracked, moving swiftly toward the stairs leading up. Jerle did not speak, even now. He did not ask Tay if he wanted a weapon. He did not try to tell him what to do. He did not need to. Tay was a Druid and knew.

They went up the stairs like ghosts, listening to the silence, waiting for a betraying sound. There was none. They reached the upstairs landing and looked down the darkened corridors beyond. More guards lay dead. Tay was astonished. There had been no outcry of any kind! How could these men, these trained Elven Hunters, have died without sounding an alarm?

The hall branched both ways, burrowing into the darkness and angling off into the wings of the palace where the royal family slept within their bedrooms. Jerle glanced at Tay, eyes bright and hard, motioned him right, and went left himself. Tay glanced after his friend, crouched against the gloom like a moor cat, then turned swiftly away.

He moved ahead, hands clenched into fists, the magic called up and gathered within his palms like a hard pulse, waiting to be released. Fear mingled with horror. There were sounds now, small voices, sobs and little cries that went still almost as quickly as they came, and he raced toward them, heedless. Shadows moved in the hallway before him as he turned the corner to the back wing. Blades glinted wickedly, and gnarled forms came at him. Gnomes. He stopped thinking and simply reacted. His right hand lifted and opened, and the magic exploded into his attackers, picking them up and throwing them against the walls so hard that he could hear their bones snap. He went through them as if they were not there, past open doorways where the occupants lay sprawled in death—mothers, fathers, and children alike—to where the doors still stood closed and there might yet be hope.

A new clutch of attackers burst from hiding as he rushed past, flinging themselves onto him and bearing him to the floor. Weapons rose and fell with desperate purpose, edges sharp and deadly. But he was a Druid, and his defenses were already in place. The blades slid off him as if come up against armor, and his hands fastened on the wiry bodies and threw them away. He was strong, even without his magic, and with his magic to aid him the Gnomes were no match. He was back on his feet almost immediately, his fire sweeping about him in a deadly arc, cutting apart those few still standing. New cries rose, and he went on, horrorstricken at what he knew was happening. An attack, a deadly strike against the whole of the Elven royal family. He knew immediately that it was the same band of Gnome Hunters he had encountered and bypassed on the plains below the Streleheim, that they were neither scouts nor foragers but assassins, and that somewhere close by was the Skull Bearer who led them.

He passed door after door of slain Ballindarrochs, large and small alike, killed in their sleep or immediately on waking. Once past the Home Guard, there was nothing to stop the Gnomes from completing their deadly mission. Tay hissed in frustration. Magic had been used in this. Nothing less would have gained the assassins entry without warning being given. Rage boiled through him. He reached another door and found the Gnomes within killing a man and woman they had backed against their bedroom wall. Tay threw his magic into the attackers and burned them alive. Cries rose up now as if in response, the warning he had wished for finally given, coming not from his wing, but from the other, where Jerle Shannara would be fighting as well.

He left the man and woman slumped against the wall and went on, unable to help them. There were only a few doors left. One, he realized suddenly, despairingly, was where Courtann Ballindarroch slept.

He went to that one first, desperate now, losing hope that he would be in time for anyone. He went past a closed door on his left and an open one on his right. Through the open door, a pair of Gnomes appeared, bloodied weapons raised, yellow eyes glinting, surprise revealed on their cunning faces. He gestured at them and they vanished in an explosion of fire, dead before they knew what was happening. Tay could feel his strength diminished by the expenditure of power. He had not been tested like this before, and he must be cautious. Bremen had warned him more than once that use of the magic was finite. He must hoard what remained for when it was truly needed.

He saw now that the door to the king's bedroom was open as well, cracked slightly from where it had been forced.

Tay did not hesitate. He rushed to the door and flung it open with a crash, leaping inside. There were no lights in the room, but broad windows set along the far wall let in a dull glimmer from the street lamps below. Shadows rose up against the hangings and drapes, distorted and grotesque. Courtann Ballindarroch had been flung against a wall to one side. He lay revealed in the half-light, his face and chest bloodied, one arm bent horribly awry, his eyes open and blinking rapidly. The Skull Bearer stood a dozen steps away, bent within the fold of its leathery wings, hooded and caped. It had taken hold of the queen, lifting her away from the tattered covers of the bed. Her body was broken and lifeless, her eyes staring. The creature flung her away as Tay appeared, a careless gesture, and wheeled to face the Druid, hissing in challenge. Gnomes attacked as well, coming out of the shadows, but Tay swatted them aside like gnats and turned the full force of his power on their leader. The Skull Bearer was caught unprepared, expecting perhaps another guard, another helpless victim. Tay's magic exploded into the monster in a burst of fire that burned half its face away. The Skull Bearer shrieked in rage and pain, clawing futilely at its skin, then threw itself at Tay. Its speed was astonishing, and now it was Tay who was surprised. The Skull Bearer slammed into him before he could brace himself, thrust him aside, and was out the door and gone.

Tay struggled to his feet, hesitated only a moment as he glanced at Courtann Ballindarroch, then gave chase.

He went back down the darkened hallway, avoiding the bodies of the dead and the slick of their blood, senses straining to pick up the presence of other attackers. Ahead, the Skull Bearer was a vague shadow lumbering through the gloom. Shouts had risen from outside, and there was a thudding of boots and a clash of weapons as Home Guard flooded the grounds, arrived from their barracks in response to the alarm. Tay's pulse pounded in his ears as he ran. He threw off his cloak so that he could move more easily. At the bend in the hall, the Skull Bearer turned instinctively toward the opposite wing, avoiding the knot of Elven Hunters who rushed up the stairway. Tay called down to his countrymen as he raced past, summoning their help.

He called as well for Jerle Shannara.

The Skull Bearer glanced back, disfigured features a sodden, red mess in a sudden glimmer of torchlight, Tay called out to it in challenge, taunting it, rage and spite giving an edge to his voice. But the winged hunter did not slow, turning now onto a narrow set of stairs that led to a roof walk. The monster was faster than Tay and pulling steadily away from him. Tay swore in fury.

Then abruptly a solitary figure materialized at the far end of the hall, come from the gloom beyond, a lithe, tigerish form that dodged with ease through the bodies of the dead and turned up the stairs in pursuit of the Skull Bearer.

It was Jerle.

Tay charged ahead, forcing himself to run faster, his breath a ragged, harsh sound in his ears. He reached the stairs moments behind his friend and followed him up. He stumbled and fell in the pitch black of the stairwell, scrambled up determinedly, and went on.

On the parapets of the walk, he found Jerle locked in battle with the Skull Bearer. It should have been a mismatch, the winged hunter far more powerful than the Elf, but Jerle Shannara seemed possessed. He was fighting as if it made no difference to him whether he lived or died so long as his adversary did not escape. They surged back and forth across the walk, up against the balustrades, twisting and turning from darkness into light. Jerle had his arms locked about the monster's wings so that it could not fly. The Skull Bearer tore at the Elf with its claws, but Jerle was behind it, and it could not reach him.