Indomitable: The Epilogue to The Wishsong of Shannara (5 page)

On the fourth day, the weather turned stormy. At dawn, a dark wall of clouds rolled in from the west, and by midmorning it was raining heavily. By now they were through the Ravenshorn and riding southeast in the shadow of the mountains. The terrain was rocky and brush-clogged, and they were forced to dismount and walk their horses through the increasingly heavy downpour. Cloaked and hooded, they were effectively shut away from one another, each become a shadowy, faceless form hunched against the rain.

Locked away in the cold dampness of his water-soaked coverings, Jair found himself thinking incongruously that he had underestimated his chances of succeeding, that he was better prepared than he had thought earlier, that his magic would see him through. All he had to do was get inside Dun Fee Aran, wait for his chance, and destroy the Ildatch remnant. It wasn't like the last time, when the book of magic was a sentient being, able to protect itself. There weren't any Mord Wraiths to avoid. The Mwellrets were dangerous, but not in the same way as the walkers. He could do this. He could manage it.

He believed as much for about two hours, and then the doubts and fears returned, and his confidence evaporated. Slogging through the murk and mud, he saw himself walking a path to a cliff edge, taking a road that could only end one way.

His dark mood returned, and the weight of his inadequacies descended anew.

   

That night they made camp below Graymark on the banks of the Silver River, settled well back in the concealment of the hardwoods. They built a fire in the shelter of oaks grown so thick that their limbs blocked away all but small patches of the sky. Deadwood was plentiful, some of it dry enough to burn even after the downpour. Closer to Dun Fee Aran and the Mwellrets, they might have chosen not to risk it, but the most dangerous creatures abroad in these woods were of the four-legged variety. This far out in the wilderness, they were unlikely to encounter anything else.

Still, not long after they had cooked and eaten their dinner, they were startled by a clanking sound and the sharp bray of a pack animal. Then a voice called to them from the darkness, asking for permission to come in. Cogline gave it, grumbling under his breath as he did so, and their visitor walked into the firelight leading a mule on a rope halter. The man was tall and thin, cloaked head to foot in an old greatcoat that had seen hard use. The mule was a sturdy-looking animal bearing a wooden rack from which hung dozens of pots and pans and cooking implements. A peddler and his wares had stumbled on them.

The man tethered his mule and sat down at the fire, declining the cup of tea that was offered in favor of one filled with ale, which he gulped down gratefully. “Long, wet day,” he declared in a weary voice. “This helps put it right.”

They gave him what food was left over, still warm in the cooking pot, and watched him eat. “This is good,” he announced, nodding in Kimber's direction. “First hot meal in a while and likely to be the last. Don't see many campfires out this way. Don't see many people, for that matter. But I'm more than ready to share company this night. Hope you don't mind.”

“What are you doing way out here?” Jair asked him, taking advantage of the opening he had offered.

The peddler paused in mid-bite and gave him a wry smile. “I travel this way several times a year, servicing the places other peddlers won't. Might not look like it, but there are villages at the foot of the mountains that need what I sell. I pass through, do my business, and go home again, out by the Rabb. It's a lot of traveling, but I like it. I've only got me and my mule to worry about.”

He finished putting the suspended bite into his mouth, chewed it carefully, and then said, “What about you? What brings you to the east side of the Ravenshorn? Pardon me for saying so, but you don't look like you belong here.”

Jair exchanged a quick glance with Kimber. “Traveling up to Dun Fee Aran,” Cogline announced before they could stop him. “Got some business ourselves. With the rets.”

The peddler made a face. “I'd think twice about doing business with them.” His tone of voice made clear his disgust. “Dun Fee Aran's no place for you. Get someone else to do your business, someone a little less . . .”

He trailed off, looking from one face to the next, clearly unable to find the words that would express his concern that a boy, a girl, and an old man would even think of trying to do business with Mwellrets.

“It won't take long,” Jair said, trying to put a better face on the idea. “We just have to pick something up.”

The peddler nodded, his thin face drawn with more than the cold and the damp. “Well, you be careful. The Mwellrets aren't to be trusted. You know what they say about them. Look into their eyes, and you belong to them. They steal your soul. They aren't human and they aren't of a human disposition. I never go there. Never.”

He went back to eating his meal, and while he finished, no one spoke again. But when he put his plate aside and picked up his cup of ale again, Kimber filled it anew and said, “You've never had any dealings with them?”

“Once,” he answered softly. “An accident. They took everything I had and cast me out to die. But I knew the country, so I was able to make my way back home. Never went near them again, not at Dun Fee Aran and not on the road. They're monsters.”

He paused. “Let me tell you something about Dun Fee Aran, since you're going there. Haven't told this to anyone. Didn't have a reason and didn't think anyone would believe me, anyway. But you should know. I was inside those walls. They held me there while they decided what to do with me after taking my wares and mule. I saw things. Shades, drifting through the walls as if the stone were nothing more than air. I saw my mother, dead fifteen years. She beckoned to me, tried to lead me out of there. But I couldn't go with her because I couldn't pass through the walls like she could. It's true. I swear it. There was others, too. Things I don't want to talk about. They were there at Dun Fee Aran. The rets didn't seem to see them. Or maybe they didn't care.”

He shook his head. “You don't want to go inside those walls again once you've gotten out of them.”

His voice trailed off and he stared out into the darkness as if searching for more substantial manifestations of the memories he couldn't quite escape. Fear reflected in his eyes with a bright glitter that warned of the damage such memories could do. He did not seem a cowardly man, or a superstitious one, but in the night's liquid shadows he had clearly found demons other men would never even notice.

“Do you believe me?” he asked quietly.

Jair's mouth was dry and his throat tight in the momentary silence that followed. “I don't know,” he said.

The man nodded. “It would be wise if you did.”

   

At dawn, the peddler took his leave. They watched him lead his mule through the trees and turn north along the Silver River. Like one of the shades he claimed to have seen in the dungeons at Dun Fee Aran, he walked into the wall of early-morning mist and faded away.

They traveled all that day through country grown thick with scrub and old growth and layered in gray blankets of brume. The world was empty and still, a place in which dampness and gloom smothered all life and left the landscape a tangled wilderness. If not for the Silver River's slender thread, they might easily have lost their way. Even Cogline paused more than once to consider their path. The sky had disappeared into the horizon and the horizon into the earth, so that the land took on the look and feel of a cocoon. Or a coffin. It closed about them and refused to release its death grip. It embraced them with the chilly promise of a constancy that came only with an end to life. Its desolation was both depressing and scary and did nothing to help Jair's already eroded confidence. Bad enough that the peddler had chilled what little fire remained in his determination to continue on; now the land would suffocate the coals as well.

Cogline and Kimber said little to him as they walked, locked away with their own thoughts in the shadowy coverings of their cloaks and hoods, wraiths in the mist. They led their horses like weary warriors come home from war, bent over by exhaustion and memories, lost in dark places. It was a long, slow journey that day, and at times Jair was so certain of the futility of its purpose that he wanted to stop his companions and tell them that they should turn back. It was only the shame he felt at his own weakness that kept him from doing so. He could not expose that weakness, could not admit to it. Should he do so, he knew, he might as well die.

They slept by the river that night, finding a copse of fir that sheltered and concealed them, tethering the horses close by and setting a watch. There was no fire. They were too close to Dun Fee Aran for that. Dinner was eaten cold, ale was consumed to help ward against the chill, and they went to sleep sullen and conflicted.

They woke cold and stiff from the night and the steady drizzle. Within a mile of their camp they found clearer passage along the riverbank, remounted and rode on into the afternoon until, with night descending and an icy wind beginning to blow down out of the mountains, they came in sight of their goal.

It was not a welcome moment. Dun Fee Aran rose before them in a mass of walls and towers, wreathed in mist and shrouded by rain. Torchlight flickered off the rough surfaces of ironbound gates and through the narrow slits of barred windows as if trapped souls were struggling to breathe. Smoke rose in tendrils from the sputtering flames, giving the keep the look of a smoldering ruin. There was no sign of life, not even shadows cast by moving figures. Nor did any sounds emanate from within. It was as if the keep had been abandoned to the gloom and the peddler's ghosts.

The three travelers walked their horses back into the trees some distance away and dismounted. They stood close together as the night descended and the darkness deepened, watching and waiting for something to reveal itself. It was a futile effort.

Jair stared at the keep's forbidding bulk with certain knowledge of what waited within and felt his skin crawl.

“You can't go in there,” Kimber said to him suddenly, her voice thin and strained.

“I have to.”

“You don't have to do anything. Let this go. I can smell the evil in this place. I taste it on the air.” She took hold of his arm. “That peddler was right. Only ghosts belong here. Grandfather, tell him he doesn't have to go any farther with this.”

Jair looked at Cogline. The old man met his gaze, then turned away. He had decided to leave it up to the Valeman. It was the first time since they had met that he had taken a neutral stance on the matter of the Ildatch. It spoke volumes about his feelings, now that Dun Fee Aran lay before them.

Jair took a deep breath and looked back at Kimber. “I came a long way for nothing if I don't at least try.”

She looked out into the rain and darkness to where the Mwellret castle hunkered down in the shadow of the mountains and shook her head. “I don't care. I didn't know it would be like this. This place feels much worse than I thought it would. I told you before—I don't want anything to happen to you. This”—she gestured toward the fortress—“looks too difficult for anyone.”

“It looks abandoned.”

She gave him a withering look. “Don't be stupid. You don't believe that. You know what's in there. Why are you even pretending it might be something else?” Her lips compressed in a tight line. “Let's go back. Right now. Let someone else deal with the Ildatch, someone better able. Jair, it's too much!”

There was a desperation in her voice that threatened to drain him of what small resolve he had left. Something of the peddler's fear reflected now in her eyes, a hint of dark places and darker feelings. She was reacting to the visceral feel of Dun Fee Aran, to its hardness and impenetrability, to its ponderous bulk and immutability. She wasn't a coward, but she was intimidated. He couldn't blame her. He could barely bring himself to consider going inside. It was easier to consider simply walking away.

He looked around, as if he might be doing exactly that. “It's too late to go anywhere tonight. Let's make camp back in the trees, where there's some shelter. Let's eat something and get some sleep. We'll think about what to do. We'll decide in the morning.”

She seemed to accept that. Without pursuing the matter further, she led the way into the woods, beyond sight and sound of the fortress and its hidden inhabitants, beyond whatever might choose to go abroad. The rain continued to fall and the wind to blow, the unpleasant mix chasing away any possibility of even the smallest of comforts. They found a windbreak within a stand of fir, the best they could expect, tethered and unsaddled their horses, and settled in.

Their stores were low, and Jair surprised the girl and her grandfather by bringing out an aleskin he told them he had been saving for this moment. They would drink it now, a small indulgence to celebrate their safe arrival and to ward against bad feelings and worse weather. He poured liberally into their cups and watched them drink, being careful only to pretend to drink from his own.

His duplicity troubled him. But he was serving what he perceived to be a greater good, and in his mind that justified far worse.

They were asleep within minutes, stretched out on the forest earth. The medication he had stolen from Kimber and added to the ale had done its job. He unrolled their blankets, wrapped them tightly about, tucked them in under the sheltering fir boughs, and left them to sleep. He had watched Kimber administer the drug to her grandfather each night since they had set out from Hearthstone, his plans already made. If he had judged correctly the measure he had dropped into their ale, they would not wake before morning.

By then, he would be either returned or dead.

He strapped on his short sword, stuck a dagger in his boot, wrapped himself in his greatcoat, and set off to find out which it would be.