First King of Shannara (25 page)

Tay knelt beside him. “Are you certain the Black Elfstone is here?” he asked quietly.

The locat nodded. “Somewhere in that maze,” he whispered, his voice rough and thick with fear. His eyes shifted suddenly to Tay. “But you must not go in there! You will not come out again, Tay Trefenwyd! What wards the Elfstone, what lives in this place, waits for you!”

One hand came up to knot before his pain-etched face. “Listen to me! You cannot stand against it!”

Tay rose and walked over to Jerle Shannara. “I want you to do something,” he said. He was careful to make certain Vree Erreden could not hear. “Call the other Hunters over. Leave Preia with the locat.”

Jerle studied him a moment, then beckoned the remaining Elven Hunters to his side. When they were gathered about, he looked questioningly at Tay.

“I want you to take hold of my arms,” he told them. “Two on each side. Take hold, and no matter what I say or do, you are to keep hold. Do not release me. Do not react to anything I say. Do not even look at me if you can help it. Can you do that?”

The Elven Hunters looked at one another and nodded. “What are you going to do?” Jerle demanded.

“Use Druid magic to find what lies within the garden,” Tay answered. “I will be all right if you remember to do as I said.”

“I'll remember,” his friend answered. “We all will. But I don't like this much.”

Tay smiled, his heart pounding. “I don't like it much either.”

He closed his eyes then and washed the others of the company from his consciousness. Gathering his magic to him, he went down inside himself. There, deep within the core of his being, he formed of the magic an image of himself, a thing of spirit and not substance, and dispatched it forth in a long, slow exhale of his breath.

He emerged from his corporeal body an invisible wraith, a bit of ether against the pale gray light of the ancient fortress. He slipped past Jerle Shannara and the Elven Hunters, past Preia Starle and Vree Erreden, toward the thick, green tangle of the silent garden. As he went, he came to sense more clearly the magic buried there. Old, wily, and established, it rooted deeper than the trees and vines that concealed it. It was the entity to which the lines of power that warded this fortress were attached. They grew from it as gossamer threads, entwining stone and iron, reaching from outer walls to tallest spires, from deepest cellars to highest battlements. They stretched across the chasm of the mountains where they breached against the sky, a vast concentration of thought and feeling and strength. He came up against their webbing and eased his way carefully past, sliding by without touching to continue on.

Then he was within the garden, wending his way through its maze, into the lush mustiness of earth and the sweet tang of leaves and vines. Everywhere, the garden was the same, deep and secret and enveloping. He sailed weightless and substanceless on a current of air, avoiding the lines of power that stretched everywhere, doing nothing to trigger a disturbance that might alert whatever watched to his presence.

He had penetrated so far into the garden that he thought he must be close to passing all the way through when he encountered an unexpected tightening of the lines of power at a place where the light seemed to diminish and the shadows to encroach once more. Here, the slender trees and vines disappeared. Here, darkness held sway. Bare earth lay revealed in a space where nothing grew and the diffuse light was absorbed as if water soaked into a sponge. Something unseen throbbed with the vibrancy and consistency of a beating heart, layered in protective magic, wrapped in blanketing power.

Tay Trefenwyd eased close, peering into the suffocating shadows, stealing past the warding lines. Within his guise, he stilled himself, and even the beating of his pulse, the whisper of his breath, and the shudder of his heart slowed to silence. He withdrew all but the smallest part of himself and became one with the darkness.

Then he saw it. Resting on an ancient metal frame into which runes had been scrolled and strange creatures wrought was a gem as black as ink, so impenetrable that no bight reflected from its smooth surface. Opaque, depthless, radiating power that was beyond anything Tay Trefenwyd had imagined possible, the Black Elfstone waited.

For him.

Oh, Shades! For him!

A moth drawn to a flame, he reached for it—impulsive, unthinking, unable to resist. He reached for it with the desperation and need of a drowning man, and this time Jerle Shannara was not there to stop him. An image only, a wraith without substance, he gave no thought to what he did. In that moment, reason was lost to him and his need was all that mattered.

That he was a ghost and nothing more was what saved him. The moment his hand closed about the Elfstone, he was known. He could feel the lines of power shimmer in response to his presence, feel them vibrate and whine in warning. He tried to draw back, to flee what was coming, but there was no escape. The watcher he had not been able to identify, the thing that lived within the ruins of the Chew Magna, took sudden, hideous shape. The earth trembled in response to its waking, and the vines that grew throughout the garden, limp and flaccid a moment earlier, thrust upward—become the coils of death of which Galaphile's shade had warned. They whipped through the spaces between the slender trees like snakes, searching. Magic drove them, fed them, gave life to them, and Tay Trefenwyd, even in his spirit form, knew them for what they were instantly. They fastened on his arms and legs, about his body and head, dozens strong, come from everywhere. They fastened, and then they began to squeeze. Tay could feel the pressure. He should not have, been able to do so—he had made himself a spirit. But the garden's magic had the power to ferret him out even in this elusive form. Magic to hold magic—magic to destroy even a Druid. Tay felt himself being ripped apart. He heard himself scream in response—the pain a reality within his psyche. Gathering himself within the core of his shattered form, bringing the small part that mattered into a particle no larger than a dust mote, he hurtled out through a gap in the writhing mass of vines and into the light

Then abruptly he was back inside his body, twisting and screaming, arching as if electrified, struggling so hard to break free that it was all Jerle Shannara and the Elven Hunters could do to hold him. He gasped, shuddered, and collapsed finally into their arms, spent. He was drenched in sweat, and his clothes were ripped from his efforts to rid himself of their hands. Before him, the garden undulated with life, an ocean of deadly intent, a quagmire that nothing caught within could hope to escape.

Yet he had done so.

His eyes closed and tightened into slits. “Shades!” he whispered, fighting down his memory of the tenacious vines as they crawled over him, tightening.

“Tay!” Jerle's voice was harsh, desperate. The big man held him, arms wrapped about his body. He trembled violently. “Tay, do you hear me?”

Tay Trefenwyd gripped his friend in response and his eyes snapped open. He was all right now, he told himself. He was safe, unharmed. He took a long, slow, steadying breath. He was returned to the living, and of the horror of the Black Elfstone's dark magic he had discovered all that he needed to know.

 

He told the others of the company what he had learned. He gathered them close, all of them, for there was no reason they should not all know, and told them what had occurred. He did not lie, but he kept from them the darkest of the truths he had uncovered. He tried not to show how frightened he was, though his fear worked through him anew as he recounted the experience, a river vast and wide and deep. He kept his voice calm and steady and his story brief. When he was finished, he told them he needed to think awhile about what they should do next.

They left him alone save for Vree Erreden. The locat came away with him unbidden, and as soon as they were out of hearing of the others, he took Tay's arm.

“You said nothing of the watcher. You did not name it, yet you must know its identity.” The thin, strong fingers tightened. “I sensed it waiting for you—you, in particular, as if you were special to it. Tell me what it is, Tay Trefenwyd.”

They moved onto the spiral staircase and sat together in the echoing silence of the fortress depths. Before them, the garden had gone still again, a garden once more, and nothing else. It was as if nothing had happened.

Tay glanced at the locat and then looked away. “If I tell you, it must remain between us. No one else is to know.”

Vree Erreden nodded. “Is it the Warlock Lord?” he whispered.

Tay shook his head. “What rules here is older than that. What lives in the garden is what once lived in this castle. It is a compendium of lives, a joining of faerie creatures, Elves mostly, that centuries ago were just as you and I. But they coveted the power of the Black Elfstone. They coveted it, and their need was so desperate that they could not resist. They used the Stone, all of them, together perhaps, or separately, and they were destroyed. I can't tell how, but their story was made known to me. I could feel their horror and their madness. They are transformed, become the substance of this garden, a collective conscience, a collaborative power, their magic sustaining what remains of the fortress, gathered here, where all that is left of them has taken root in the form of these trees and vines.”

“They were human?” the locat asked in horror.

“Once. No more. They lost what was human when they summoned the power of the Elfstone.” Tay fixed him with a haunted gaze. “Bremen warned me of the danger. He told me that whatever happened, whatever the cause, I must not use the Black Elfstone. He must know what it would cost me if I did.”

Vree Erreden's thin face lowered into shadow. His eyes blinked rapidly. “I could feel what lives here waiting for you—I told you that. But
why
does it wait? Does it seek its own kind, creatures of power, beings who have use of the magic in some form? Or does it ward against them? What drives it? It passed me by, I think, because my magic lacks definition and strength. My magic is instinct and vision, and it has no use for that. But, Shades, I could feel the darkness of it!”

He turned back to Tay. “You have a Druid's power, and such power is infinitely more compelling. There can be no question that it either fears or covets your magic.”

Tay's mind raced. “It protects the Black Elfstone because the Elfstone is the source of its power. And of its life. I threatened it by coming into the garden and disturbing the lines of power it has established. Does it know me as a Druid, though? I wonder.”

“It knows you as an enemy, certainly. It must, since it tried to destroy you. It knows you are not subverted.” The locat exhaled, a long, ragged breath. “It will be waiting for you to try again, Tay. If you go back into that garden, you will be devoured.”

They stared at each other wordlessly.
It knows you as an enemy,
Tay thought, repeating Vree Erreden's words.
It knows you are not subverted.
He was reminded of something suddenly, but he could not think what. He wrestled with it for a moment before remembering. It was Bremen, changing his appearance, his form, his very thinking, so that he could penetrate the stronghold of the Warlock Lord. It was Bremen, altering himself so that he became one with the monsters that dwelled within.

Could he do that here?

His breath caught in his throat, and he turned away, unwilling to let Vree Erreden see what was in his eyes. He could not believe what he was thinking. He could not imagine he was giving the idea even the smallest consideration. It was insane!

But what other choice was left to him? There was no other way—he knew that already. He looked at the others sitting grouped at the edge of the deadly garden. They had come a long way to find the Black Elfstone, and none of them would turn back now. It was pointless to think otherwise. The stakes were too great, the price too high, for them to fail. They would die first.

Oh, but there must be another way! His mind tightened with the pressure of iron bands drawn taut. How could he make himself do it? What chance did he have? This time, should he fail, there would be no escape. He would be consumed . . .

Devoured.

He rose, needing to stand if he was to face this decision, needing to move away from his fear. He stepped down from the stairway, leaving the perplexed locat staring after him. He walked away from the others as well—from Jerle and Preia and the Hunters—to collect himself and take measure of his strength. A tall, gangly figure, he felt as worn and bent as the stone about him, and no less vulnerable to time. He knew himself for what he was—a Druid first, last, and always, but one of only a handful, one of an order that was in all probability moving toward extinction. The world was changing, and some things must pass. It might be so with them, with Bremen, Risca, and himself.

But they should not pass in quiet complacency, he thought angrily. They should not pass as ghosts, fading into mist with the coming of the new day, inconsequential things and only half-believed.

We should not be less than what we are.

Empowered by his words and armored in the strength of his convictions, he summoned up the last of his courage and called to Jerle Shannara.

 

XVII

 

T
here is a way to reach the Black Elfstone,” Tay said quietly to Jerle Shannara. “But only I can do it, and I have to do it alone.”

They stood apart from the others, Tay's crooked smile belying the knot that tightened his throat. The day was beginning to fade toward nightfall, the sun already gone west beyond the rim of the mountains surrounding them. He did not want to be caught down here in the dark.

Jerle studied him wordlessly for a moment “You require some use of the Druid magic, I gather?”

“I do.”

The shrewd eyes fixed him. “A disguise?”

“Yes. Of a sort.” Tay paused. “I would rather not explain the specifics. I would rather you simply trusted me. I need to be left alone, no matter what happens. No one must come near me until I say it is permitted. This will be hard, because you will want to do otherwise.”

“This will be dangerous.” Jerle made it a statement of fact.

Tay nodded. “I must go into the garden. If I do not come out, you are to take the company and return to Arborlon. Wait, hear me out,” he said, cutting short the other's protest. “If I am killed, there is no one else who stands a chance. You have a brave heart, Jerle, but no magic, and you cannot overcome what lives in the garden without magic. You must go back to Arborlon and wait for Bremen. He will be able to help. We have found the Black Elfstone, so it only remains to discover a way to retrieve it. If I cannot, he must.”

Jerle Shannara put his hands on his hips and looked away in disgust “I am not much good at standing around while someone else risks his life—especially when it is you.”

Tay folded his arms across his chest and looked down at his feet. “I understand. I would feel the same way if our positions were reversed. Waiting is hard. But I have to ask it of you. I will need your strength later, when mine is gone. One thing more. When I come out again, when you see me, even if you are not sure it is me, speak my name.”

“Tay Trefenwyd,” the other repeated dutifully.

They stared at each other, thinking back on the years they had been friends, measuring what was being asked against their private expectations of themselves.

“All right,” Jerle said finally. “Go. Do what you must.”

At Tay's request, he took the other members of the company to stand with him at the bottom of the spiral staircase, well back from the edge of the garden. Tay glanced at them only once, locking eyes momentarily with Preia Starle before turning away. He had distanced himself from his feelings for her since coming into the Chew Magna, knowing he could not afford the distraction. He did so anew now, focusing on his life as a Druid, on the years given over to the study of his special talents, on the disciplines and skills he had mastered. He pictured Bremen: the lean, creased face; the strange, commanding eyes; the sense of purpose stamped everywhere. He repeated the charge the old man had given him, the charge he had accepted in coming here.

He faced the garden then, the deadly tangle of vines, the shadowed recesses, the invisible life force that waited somewhere deep within. He stilled himself, slowed his heartbeat and his pulse, quieted his thoughts, and enveloped himself in a blanket of calm. He reached out for the elements that fueled his magic—for air, water, fire, and earth, for the tools of his trade. He summoned what he could find of them, searched them out and retrieved them, and surrounded himself in their heady mix. He breathed them in, infused himself with their feel, and slowly began to change.

He worked carefully to achieve the result he desired, taking small steps as he invoked his Druid magic, altering himself without haste. He stripped away his own identity layer by layer, removing his features, changing his look. He scrubbed himself clean so that nothing of his physical identity remained. Then he went down inside his body to change what was there as well. He locked away feelings and beliefs, emotions and thoughts, codes of conduct and values of life— everything that marked him for who and what he was. He gathered them up and hid them where they could not be found, where nothing would release them save Jerle Shannara speaking his name.

Then he began to rebuild himself. He drew from the life of the garden to accomplish this. He drew from the creatures that had once been human but were no longer so. He found the essence of what they were, the core of what the Black Elfstone's magic had made of them, and he let it blossom within himself. He became as they were, as dark and lost, as ravaged and barren, a replica of their madness and their evil. He became like them, save for the fact that he retained the basic substance of his form so that he might walk among them. He was one step removed from their fate, so close there was no difference beyond the taking of that step.

The Elves watching could see him change. They could see his tall, slightly stooped form shrink and curl. They could see his gangly arms and legs turn gnarled and bent. They could feel the foulness creep over him and into him until there was nothing else. They could smell the decay. They could taste the ruin. He was anathema to anything good, to anything human, and even Jerle Shannara, steeled as he was to face what his friend was about to do, shrank from him.

Madness buzzed within Tay Trefenwyd's head, full-blown and obsessive. He reeked of the crippling effects of the garden's dark magic, of the ruin brought to those who infused it with their lives, who had made it their home. For an instant Tay thought he understood the magic, how it had derived from misguided use of the Black Elfstone, but the proximity of his understanding threatened the last vestige of his sanity, the small kernel of what held him to his purpose, and he was forced to back away.

He went into the garden now, a fellow to the creatures it had absorbed. He went boldly, for no other approach made sense. He went as one of them, still tending to the duties they had abandoned on changing form, still inhabiting the world they had left behind. He slid between the slender trees and brushed up against the flaccid vines, a serpent come to a serpent's refuge. He was as poisonous as they, and nothing of what they had become was any worse than what reflected in him. He slipped into the shadowed depths, seeking their comfort, easing sinuously into their embrace, soulless.

The garden and the creatures that fed it reacted as he had hoped. They welcomed him. They embraced him as one of their own, recognizable and familiar. He immersed himself in their foulness, in their decay, letting the tendrils of their collective thought worm into his mind so that they might see his intent. He was their keeper, they saw. He was a tender of the garden. He was come to bring them something, a change that would inspire new growth, that would satisfy some unspoken need. He was come to give them release.

He went deep into the garden, so deep that he lost himself completely in what he had become. All else faded and would not be remembered if he did not come out. He twisted down into a knot that squeezed away his life in small, scarlet drops. He was all madness and itch, a ravaged specter without a trace of his former identity. He was lost to everything he had been.

But he was driven, too, by the unalterable and compelling sense of purpose to which he had given himself over. He had come for the Black Elfstone, and he was determined, even in his madness, that he would have it. With single-mindedness and inexorable need, he approached it. The lines of power brushed against him and slid away. The vines shuddered, but with appreciation rather than rage. The life of the garden let him bend to the Elfstone, let him take it in his hands, let him lift it to his breast He had come to care for the Stone, they saw. He had come to draw new magic from it, magic they would share, that would feed and satisfy anew their hunger.

For this was the guise that Tay Trefenwyd had assumed. The creatures that composed the garden could no longer invoke the power that had subverted them, could no longer feed upon it, but were locked in what it had made of them, trapped within the vines and trees and flowers of this rectangular patch of earth, deep within the fortress that had once been their home, rooted in place forever. They guarded the stone as they would a lock to their shackles, waiting for the time when a key would be brought to release them. Tay was the bearer of that key. Tay was the chance and the hope and the promise their madness allowed.

So he went, step by step, back through the garden, bearing in his hands—or what passed for hands—the Black Elfstone. Lines of power trailed after him, the webbing of the garden's power, played out to give him room, its tendrils releasing so that he might proceed. They snapped softly with his passing, and he could feel the garden shudder with the pain. But the pain fed back into him, the feeling delicious. Pain gave promise of agony, agony of transformation. Dark intent rode his footsteps, riddled his heart, and spurred him on through the shadows. A new power worked on his ravaged form, a tentative probe, like the touching of silken fingers against skin. It was the dormant magic of the Black Elfstone stirring to life, anxious for a new release, waking to give promise of what might be. It caressed Tay Trefenwyd as a lover. It stroked his ruined form and filled him with joy. He could have its power for his own, it whispered. He could command it as he wished, and it would give him anything.

He broke from the shadows of the garden into the light, free of the vines, of the voices, of the touch of those that dwelled there. He was a terrible, wasted thing, not in any way human, but something so dark and vile as to be unrecognizable. He slouched and oozed his way onto the stone of the walkway, the Black Elfstone clutched to him, the lines of power trailing invisibly behind, strings that only he could see, threads that could pull him back in an instant's time. Ahead, the Elves who had come with him into the Chew Magna watched in horror. On seeing him emerge, they drew their weapons with a cry and braced themselves to meet his attack He looked at them and did not know who they were. He looked at them and did not care.

Then Jerle Shannara held up his hand to stay the weapons of his companions. He came forward alone, unaided, staring fixedly at the apparition before him. When he was within only a few yards, he stopped and whispered in the stillness, his voice ragged and harsh and filled with despair. “Tay Trefenwyd?”

The sound of his name being spoken by Jerle Shannara gave Tay back his life. The Druid magic, held in check within the deepest, most impenetrable core of his being, surged through him, exploded out of him. It freed him from the trappings of the guise he had assumed, brought him out from the darkness that had enveloped him, from the quagmire into which he had sunk. It burned away the shell of the creature he had made himself. It burned away the madness that had consumed him. It rebuilt him in an instant's time, his features and identity restored, his reason and beliefs given back.

Then it severed the lines of power that trailed after him, giving him sole possession of the Black Elfstone.

The garden went berserk. Vines and trees surged out of the earth with such force that they threatened to tear loose from their roots. They lunged for the Black Elfstone and Tay Trefenwyd, first to recover, then to destroy. But Tay was shielded by his Druid fire, the magic set in place at the moment of his release, preordered to protect him from the garden's rage. Vines hammered down at him, wound about him, and tried to drag him back into the shadowy depths. But the fire held them at bay, burned them to ash, and kept the Druid safe.

Jerle Shannara and the rest of the company rushed forward, swords and knives slicing at the waving mass of vines.
No!
thought Tay as he struggled to slow them.
No, stay clear!
He had told them not to come near him, had warned Jerle expressly that they must not! But the Elves were unable to help themselves, seeing him returned and bearing the prized Elfstone, believing he was in need. So they charged bravely, recklessly ahead, weapons drawn, heedless of the magnitude of the danger they faced.

Too late they realized their mistake. The garden turned on them as swiftly as thought. It caught the closest Elven Hunter before he could leap clear, bore him away from his fellows, and ripped him to shreds. Frantically Tay extended the protection of the Druid fire to his beleaguered friends, allowing his own shield to weaken.

Then he broke for the safety of the stairs, yelling at the others to follow after him. They did so, all but one—another of the Hunters, too slow to react, caught from behind as he turned and dragged to his doom.

Tay reached the stairs and bolted up their broad sweep. He could feel the collapse of the lines of power all about him. He could feel the ebbing of the garden's magic. Stealing the Black Elfstone had caused irretrievable damage deep within the life force of the Chew Magna, and the fabric of its skin was rent beyond repair. Beneath his feet, he could feel the earth begin to shudder.

“What is it? What's happening?” Jerle cried out, coming abreast of him.

“The fortress is collapsing!” Tay shouted. “We must get out!”

They sprinted into the corridors of the keep, through the tangle of halls, down the shadowed, empty passageways, and back toward the fissure that had admitted them. A strange and unsettling mix of elation and discomfort roiled through Tay's breast. He was free, his gambit a success, and his blood raced with the thought. But the measure of its cost had not yet been taken. He did not feel right; something had been done to him in the garden, something he could not yet identify. He looked down at himself, as if thinking to find some piece missing. But he was whole, he saw, unharmed. The damage was inside.

Cracks appeared along the ancient walls of the fortress, splitting and widening before them. Stone blocks shook violently and crumbled. Tay had destroyed the power of the Chew Magna, the carefully constructed magic that sustained the garden and the keep more fragile than he had realized. The Chew Magna was coming down. Its time in the world, extended for so long, was at an end.

Preia Starle bolted past him and sprinted ahead, shouting back over her shoulder. She was resuming her place as scout for the company once more. She flew across the shuddering stone, slender limbs and cinnamon hair flying. Tay peered after her, unable to see her as clearly as he should. His vision was blurred, and he was having trouble breathing. He gulped mouthfuls of air, and still it was not enough.