First King of Shannara (43 page)

Then Bremen appeared, come out of the dark like an avenging wraith, hands thrust forward, bathed in Druid fire. The fire lanced from his fingertips in a frantic burst and slammed into the monster as it reached for the king, enveloping it, consuming it, turning it into a writhing torch. The beast reared back, shrieked in fury, turned, and raced away into the night, flames trailing after. Bremen did not wait to see what became of it. He reached down for the king, Elves of the Home Guard reappearing to assist him, and hauled Jerle Shannara to his feet.

“The sword . . .” the king began brokenly, shaking his head in despair.

But Bremen stopped him with a hard look, saying, “Later, when there is time and privacy, Elven King. You are alive, you fought well, and the attack succeeded. That is enough for one night's work. Now come, hurry away, before other creatures find us.”

They fled once more into the night, the king, the Druid, and a handful of Home Guard. Smoke and ash chased after them, and farther off, lighting the whole of the horizon like beacons, the fires from the supply wagons and the siege machines burned on. Preia Stark returned out of the dark, breathless, harried, eyes revealing both anger and fear. She shouldered her way under Jerle Shannara's left arm and bolstered him as he walked. The king did not resist. His eyes met her own and looked away. His mouth was set.

The fear that smoldered in the dark corners of his consciousness had burst forth in flames this night—fear that somehow the sword with which he had been entrusted was not right for him and would not respond when needed. It had emerged to challenge him, and he had failed to meet that challenge. If not for Bremen, he would be dead. A thing of lesser magic would have finished him, a thing of far less power than the Warlock Lord. Doubt riddled his resolve. All he had believed possible just hours earlier was lost. The magic of the sword was wrong for him. The magic would not answer to his call. It needed someone else, someone more attuned to its use. He was not that man. He was not.

He could hear the words echo in the pounding of his heart, cold and certain. He tried to close his mind and his ears to the sound, but found he could not. In hopeless despair, he ran on.

 

XXIX

 

W
ith Bremen gone west to bear the Druid sword to the Elves, Kinson Ravenlock and Mareth turned east along the Silver River in search of the Dwarves. They traveled that first day through the hill country that buttressed the river's north bank, winding their way steadily closer to the forests of the Mar. Mist clung to the hills with dogged persistence, then began to burn away as the sun rose higher in the midday sky. By early afternoon, the travelers had reached the Mar and started in. Here the land flattened and smoothed. Sunlight pierced the leafy canopy and dappled the earthen carpet. They had enough food and water for that day only, and they divided it carefully when they paused for their lunch, reserving enough for dinner in the event that no better choice presented itself.

The Anar was bright with the green of the trees and the blue of the river, with shafts of sunlight from the mostly cloudless sky, and with birdsong and the chittering of small creatures darting through the undergrowth. But the trail was trampled and strewn with the leavings of the Northland army, and no human life revealed itself anywhere. Now and again the faint scent of charred wood and old ashes wafted on the wind, and moments of silence would descend—a quiet so intense it caused the man and the woman to look about guardedly. They passed small cottages and outbuildings, some still standing, some burned out, but all vacant. No Dwarves appeared. No one passed them on the trail.

“We shouldn't be surprised,” Mareth observed at one point when Kinson had remarked on the subject. “The Warlock Lord has only just withdrawn from the Eastland. The Dwarves must still be in hiding.”

It seemed a logical conclusion, but it bothered Kinson nevertheless to pass through country so improbably deserted. The absence of even the most transient peddler was disturbing to him. It suggested that there was no reason for anyone to be here anymore, as if life no longer had a purpose in these forests. It gave him pause to think that an entire people could vanish as if they had never been. He had no frame of reference for an eradication of this magnitude. What if the Dwarves had been annihilated? What if they had simply ceased to exist? The Four Lands would never recover from such a loss. They would never be the same.

As they walked, content to stay silent, mulling over their separate thoughts, the Borderman and the Druid apprentice did not speak to each other much. Mareth walked with her head up and her eyes forward, and her gaze seemed directed to something beyond what either of them could see. Kinson found himself wondering if she was pondering the possibility of her heritage in light of what she had learned from Bremen. That she was not his daughter, after thinking for so long that she must be, would be shock enough for anyone. That she was perhaps the daughter of one of the dark things that served the Warlock Lord was worse. Kinson did not know how
he
would react to such a revelation. He did not think he would accept it easily. It did not matter, he thought, that Bremen insisted it could have no bearing on the sort of person Mareth was. There was more than logic at issue here. Mareth was well-reasoned and intelligent, but the vicissitudes of her childhood and the complexities of her adult life had rendered her vulnerable to an undermining of the few beliefs she had managed to hold on to.

From time to time he considered speaking to her of this. He considered telling her she was the person she had always believed herself to be, he could see the goodness in her, he had witnessed the force of it firsthand, and she could never be betrayed by so tenuous a heritage as her blood. But he could not think of a way to frame the words so as not to make them appear condescending, and he was afraid to risk that happening. She seemed content simply to have him there, and in spite of his rude remarks when Bremen had suggested she come with him, he was secretly happy that she had. He had grown comfortable with her, with the history they shared, with their talks, with the way in which each knew what the other was thinking, and in the closeness he felt toward her in dozens of small ways he could not easily define. The latter came from such small things as the sound of her voice, the way she looked at him, and the sense of companionship that transcended simply the sharing of the journey. It was enough, he decided in the end, that he was there if she should decide she needed to talk. She knew that her father's identity and origins made no difference to him. She knew that none of it mattered.

They reached Culhaven at sunset, the light fading, the air cooling, the smell of death harsh and pungent amid the shadows. The home city of the Dwarves had been burned to the ground, and the land ravaged. Nothing remained but scorched earth, rubble, a few burned timbers, and scattered bones. Many of the dead had been left to lie where they had fallen. They were indistinguishable from one another by now, but the smallness of the bones revealed that some had been children. The Borderman and the apprentice Druid came out of the trees into the clearing where the city had stood, paused in sad appraisal, and then began to walk slowly through the carnage. The attack was weeks old, the fires long burned away, the land already regenerating from beneath the ruins, small green shoots poking up out of the ash. But Culhaven was empty of human life, and across the whole of its blackened sprawl the silence hung in curtains of indifference.

At the center of the city they found a vast pit into which hundreds of Dwarves had been thrown and their bodies burned.

“Why didn't they run?” Mareth asked softly. “Why did they stay? They must have known. They must have been warned.”

Kinson stayed silent. She knew the answer as well as he did. Hope could play you false. He looked off into the distance, across the broad expanse of the ruins. Where were the Dwarves who were still alive? That was the question that needed answering now.

They moved on through the destruction, their pace quickening, for there was nothing left to see that they had not already seen in abundance. The light was fading, and they wanted to be well beyond the ruins when they set their camp for the night. They would find no food or water here. They would find no shelter. There was nothing to keep them. They walked on, following the river to where it wound sluggishly out of the deep woods east. Perhaps things would be better farther on, Kinson thought hopefully. Perhaps farther on there would be life.

Something scurried through the rubble to one side, causing the Borderman to start. Rats. He had not seen them before, but of course they were there. Other scavengers as well, he supposed. He felt a chill pass through him, triggered by a memory of a time in his boyhood when he had fallen asleep in a cavern he was exploring and had awakened to find rats crawling over him. Death had seemed oddly close in those brief, horrifying moments.

“Kinson!” hissed Mareth suddenly and stopped.

A cloaked figure was standing before them, unmoving. A man, it appeared—there was enough of him revealed to determine this much at least. Where he had come from was a mystery. He had simply materialized, as if conjured from the air itself, but he must have been in hiding, waiting for them. He stood close to the riverbank on which they walked, shadowed by the night and the remains of a stone wall. He did not threaten them; he simply stood there, waiting for them to approach.

Kinson and Mareth exchanged a quick glance. The man's face was concealed in the shadows of his hood and his arms and legs in the folds of his cloak. They could tell nothing of who he was, nothing of his identity.

“Hello,” Mareth ventured softly. She held the staff Bremen had given her like a shield before her.

There was no reply, no movement.

“Who are you?” she pressed.

“Mareth,” the other called to her in a slow, whispery voice.

Kinson stiffened. The voice had the feel of rat's feet and the presence of death. He was back in that cave again, a boy once more. The voice scraped against his nerve endings like metal on stone.

“Do you know me?” Mareth asked in surprise. The voice did not seem to trouble her.

“I do,” said the other. “We all do, those of us who are your family. We have waited for you, Mareth. We have waited a long time.”

Kinson could hear the catch in her voice. “What are you talking about?” she asked quickly. “Who are you?”

“Perhaps I am the one you have been searching for. Perhaps I am he. Would you think harshly of me if I were? Would you be angry if I told you I was . . .”

“No!” she cried out sharply.

“Your father?”

The hood tilted back, and the face within revealed itself. It was a hard, strong face, and the similarities to Bremen's were more than token, though the man before them was younger. But the resemblance to Mareth was unmistakable. He let the young woman look on him momentarily, let her study him well. He seemed oblivious of Kinson.

He smiled faintly. “You see yourself in me, don't you, child? You see how alike we are? Is it so hard to accept? Am I so repulsive to you?”

“Something is wrong here,” Kinson warned softly.

But Mareth didn't seem to hear him. Her eyes were fixed on the man who said he was her father, on the dark-cloaked stranger who had appeared so unexpectedly before them. How? How had he known where to look?

“You are one of them!” Mareth snapped coldly at the stranger. “One of those who serve the Warlock Lord!”

The strong features did not recoil. “I serve who I choose, just as you do. But your service to the Druids was prompted by your search for me, was it not? I can read it in your eyes, child. You have no real ties to the Druids. Who are they to you? I am your father. I am your flesh and blood, and your ties to me are clear. Oh, I understand your misgivings. I am not a Druid. I am pledged to another cause, one that you have opposed. All your life, you have heard that I am evil. But how bad am I, do you think? Are the stories all true? Or are they perhaps shaded by those who tell them to serve a purpose of their own? How much of what you know can you believe?”

Mareth shook her head slowly. “Enough, I think.”

The stranger smiled. “Then perhaps I should not be your father.”

Kinson watched her hesitate. “Are you?”

“I don't know. I don't know if I want to be. I would not wish your hatred if I were. I would wish your understanding and your tolerance. I would wish for you to listen to all that I would tell you of my life and of how it affects you. I would wish for an opportunity to explain why the cause I serve is neither evil nor destructive, but premised on truths that would liberate us all.” The stranger paused. “Remember that your mother loved me. Could her love have been so misguided? Could her trust in me have been so badly misplaced?”

Kinson felt something shift imperceptibly—a current of air, a hint of smoke, a ripple in the river's flow—something he could not see, but could only feel. The short hairs on the back of his neck stiffened. Who was this stranger? Where had he come from? If he was Mareth's father, how had he found them here? How did he know who she was?

“Mareth!” he warned again.

“What if the Druids have been wrong in all that they have done?” the stranger asked suddenly. “What if everything you have believed is premised on lies and half truths and misrepresentations that go all the way back to the beginning of time?”

“That isn't possible,” Mareth answered at once.

“What if you are betrayed by those you have trusted?” the stranger pressed.

“Mareth, no!” hissed Kinson in fury. But instantly the stranger's eyes settled on him, and suddenly Kinson Ravenlock could neither move nor speak. He was frozen in place, as much so as if he had been turned to stone.

The stranger's eyes shifted back to Mareth. “Look at me, child. Look closely.” To Kinson's horror, Mareth did. Her face had assumed a vacant, faraway look, as if she were seeing something entirely different from what was before her. “You are one of us,” the stranger intoned gently, the words soft and coaxing. “You belong with us. You have our power. You have our passion. You have all that is ours save one thing only. You lack our cause. You must embrace it, Mareth. You must accept that we are right in what we seek Strength and long life through use of the magic. You have felt it flowing through you. You have wondered how it can be made your own. I will show you how. I will teach you. You need not shun what is part of you. You need not be afraid. The secret is in giving heed to what it asks of you, of not trying to restrain it, of not fleeing from its need. Do you understand me?”

Mareth nodded vaguely. Kinson saw an imperceptible change in the features of the stranger before them. No longer was he quite so human. No longer did he resemble either Bremen or Mareth. He was, instead, becoming something else.

Slowly, painfully, the Borderman strained against the invisible chains that bound his muscles. Carefully, he eased his hand along his thigh to where his long knife was sheathed.

“Father?” Mareth called out suddenly. “Father, why did you abandon me?”

There was along silence in the deepening night. Kinson's hand closed about the handle of his knife. His muscles screamed with pain, and his mind felt drugged. This was a trap of the same sort as the one the Warlock Lord had set for them at Paranor! Had the stranger been waiting for them, or just for whoever happened through? Had he known that Mareth, in particular, would come? Had he hoped it might be Bremen? His fingers tightened on the knife.

The stranger's hand lifted free of the cloak and beckoned to the young woman. The hand was gnarled, and the fingers were clawed. But Mareth did not seem to see. She took a small step forward.

“Yes, child, come to me,” the stranger urged, his eyes gone as red as blood, fangs showing behind a smile as wicked as a snake's strike. “Let me explain everything to you. Take my hands, your father's hands, and I will tell you what you are meant to know. Then you will understand. You will see that I am right in what I tell you. You will know the truth.”