Shannara - Wishsong of Shannara Part 40

It thrust itself clear with a lunge, dead eyes fixed.

Now the second creature was joined by the first. Warily, they began closing on the moor cat. Whisper dropped back guardedly, keeping himself in front of Brin, his thick fur bristling until he looked twice his normal size. Crouched down on all fours, the black things feinted with quick rushes, moving fluidly from side to side with an ease that belied their bulky appearance.

Carefully, they worked to find an opening in the big cat's defenses. Whisper held his ground, refusing to be drawn out. Then both creatures came at him at once, teeth and claws ripping angry furrows through fur and flesh. Whisper was thrown back against the chains of the bridge railing, his powerful body nearly pinned there by the ferocious charge. But he fought his way clear with a surge, slas.h.i.+ng savagely at the black things, screaming his hatred of them.

The circling began once more. Panting heavily, his sleek gray coat streaked with blood, Whisper slipped back into his defensive crouch. The attackers had forced him against the bridge railing, away from Brin. They ignored the Valegirl now, their lifeless eyes fixed on the cat. Brin saw what they intended. They would come at Whisper again, and this time the chains would notbreak the force of their rush. The moor cat would be thrown back over the edge and fall to his death.

The moor cat also seemed to realize what was happening. He lunged and feinted, trying to skirt the edges of the circle, trying to regain the center of the bridge. But the monsters maneuvered quickly to cut him off, keeping him trapped against the railing.

Brin Ohmsford's chest knotted with fear. Whisper could not win this fight. These creatures were too much for him. He had shredded both with wounds that should have crippled them, yet they did not seem affected by the injuries. Their flesh hung in tatters, yet they did not bleed. They were enormously strong and quick-stronger and quicker than anything born of this world. They had obviously been created by the dark magic, not by nature's hands.

"Whisper," she breathed, her voice cracked and dry.

She must save him. There was no one else to do so. She had the wishsong and the strength of its magic. She could use it to destroy these creatures, to obliterate them as surely as...

The trees intertwined in the Runne Mountains...

The minds of the thieves from west of Spanning Ridge...

The Gnome...shattered...

Tears ran down her cheeks. She could not! Something interposed itself between her will and its execution, held her back from her intended purpose, and froze her resolve with indecision.

She must help him, but she could not!

"Whisper!" she screamed.

The black things jerked erect, half-turning. Abruptly Whisper lunged in a feint that froze them in their tracks, then whirled sharply to his right, gathered himself and vaulted them both with a tremendous leap. Landing at a dead run, the moor cat raced for the center of the bridge and Brin. The black things were after him instantly, hissing in fury, tearing at his flanks in an effort to bring him down.

A dozen feet in front of Brin, they succeeded. All three tumbled to the causeway in a raging tangle of teeth and claws. For a few desperate seconds, Whisper held them both. Then one gained his back and the second tore free. It hurtled past the struggling cat toward Brin. The Valegirl threw herself to one side, sprawling down upon the bridge. Whisper screamed. With the last of his strength, he threw himself into the girl's a.s.sailant, the second creature still clinging to his back like some monstrous spider. The force of his lunge carried all three into the chains of the bridge railing. Iron links snapped like deadwood, and the black things hissed gleefully as Whisper began to slide from the bridge into the chasm.

Brin came to her knees, a cry of rage and determination wrenched from her throat. The restraints that bound her fell away, the indecision and uncertainty were shattered, and her purpose freed. She sang, hard and quick, and the sound of the wishsong filled the heights and depths of the cavern rock. The song was darker than any she had sung before, a new and terrible sound, filled with fury that surpa.s.sed all she had believed herself capable of knowing. It exploded into the black things like an iron ram. They surged upward at its impact and their lifeless eyes snapped back. Limbs clawing, black mouths wide and soundless, they were flung away from Whisper, back away from the safety of the bridge, and into s.p.a.ce. Convulsing tike blown leaves, they fell into the abyss and were gone.

It was done in an instant. Brin went silent, her dusky, worn face flushed and vibrant.

Again she felt that sudden, strange sense of twisted glee-but stronger this time, much stronger. It burned through her like fire. She could barely control her excitement. She had destroyed theblack things almost without trying.

And she had enjoyed it!

She realized then that the barrier that had interposed itself between her will and its execution had been one of her own making-a restraint she had put there to protect against what had just happened. Now it was gone, and she did not think it could be put back again. She had sensed that she was losing control of the magic. She had not understood why, only, that it was happening. Each use had seemed to bring her a little further away from herself. She had tried to resist what was being done to her, but her efforts to forbear use of the magic had been thwarted at every turn-almost as if some perverse fate had willed that she must use the magic. By using it this time, she had embraced it fully, and she no longer felt that she could struggle against it. She would be what she must.

Slowly, gingerly, Whisper padded over to where she knelt, pus.h.i.+ng his dark muzzle against her face. Her arms came up to wrap about the big cat gently, and tears ran down her cheeks.

Jair Ohmsford's voice died away in a ragged gasp, and the light of the vision crystal died with it. The face of his sister was gone. A deep silence filled the sudden gloom, and the faces of the men gathered there were white and drawn.

"Those were Mutens," Slanter whispered finally.

"What?" Edain Elessedil, seated next to him, looked startled.

"The black things-that's what they're called-Mutens. The dark magic made them. They guard the sewers below Graymark..." The Gnome trailed off, glancing quickly at Jair.

"Then she is here," the Valeman breathed, his mouth dry and his hands tightening. about the crystal.

Slanter nodded. "Yes, boy, she's here. And closer to the pit than we."

Garet Jax rose swiftly, a lean, black shadow. The others scrambled up with him. "It seems we have no time left us and no choice but to go in now." Even in the half-light, his eyes were like fire. He reached out to them, palms upward. "Give me your hands."

One by one, they stretched forward their hands, joining with his. "By this we make our pledge," he told them, a hard and brittle edge to his voice. "The Valeman shall reach the basin at Heaven's Well as he has sworn he would. We are as one in this, whatever happens. As one, to the end. Swear it."

There was a hushed silence. "As one," Helt repeated in his deep, gentle voice. "As one,"

the others echoed.

The hands fell away, and Garet Jax turned to Slanter. "Take us in," he said.

40.

They went up through the mountain pa.s.sageways to the cellars that lay below Graymark like the Wraiths they shunned. With the aid of torches they found stored in a niche at the tunnel entrance, they crept through the gloom and the silence to the bowels of the fortress keep. Slanter led them, his rough yellow face bent close to the light, his black eyes bright with fear. He went quickly and purposefully, and only the eyes betrayed what he might wish hidden of himself. But Jair saw it, recognized it, and found that it mirrored what lurked now within himself.

He, too, was afraid. The antic.i.p.ation that had earlier given him such strength of purpose was gone. Fear had replaced it, wild and barely controlled, racing through him and turning his skin to ice. Strange, fragmented thoughts filled his mind as he worked his way ahead with the others through the tunnel rock, his nostrils thick with the smell of musted air and his own sweat-thoughts of his home in the Vale, of his family scattered across the lands, of friends and familiar things left behind and perhaps lost, of the shadow things that hunted him, of Allanon and Brin, and of what they had come to this dark place and time to do. All jumbled and ran together like colors mixed in water, and there was no sense to be made of any of them. It was the fear that made his thoughts scatter so, and he tightened his mind and his resolve against it.

The pa.s.sageways wound upward for a long time, crossing and recrossing, a puzzle maze that seemed to lack beginning or end. Yet Slanter did not pause, but led them steadily on until at last they came in sight of a broad, ironbound doorway fastened to the rock. They came up to it and stopped, as silent as the tunnels through which they had come. Jair crouched down with the others as Slanter put one ear to the door and listened. In the stillness of his mind, he could hear the beat of his body's pulse.

Slanter rose and nodded once. Carefully, he lifted the latch that held the door closed, fixed his hands on the iron handle and pulled. The door swung open with a low groan. A stairway rose before them, disappearing beyond the circle of their torchlight into blackness. They began to climb, with Slanter leading them once more. A step at a time, slow and cautious, they made their way up the stairwell. Gloom and silence deepened and wrapped them close about. The stairwell ended, opening upward through a stone block floor. The soft sc.r.a.pe of someone's boot on the stairs echoed harshly through the darkness above, disappearing far away into the silence. Jair swallowed against what he was feeling. It was as if there was nothing up there but the dark.

Then they were clear of the stairs and within the gloom. Voiceless, they stood close about the opening and peered into the gloom, torches held forth. The light could not penetrate to walls or ceiling, but there was a clear sense of a chamber so huge that they were dwarfed by it. They could discern at the edges of their torchlight the shadowed outline of crates and barrels. The wood was dry and rotting, its iron bindings rusted. Cobwebs lay over everything, and the floor was thick with dust.

But in the carpet of the dust, splayed footprints marked the pa.s.sing of something that was clearly not human. It had not been all that long since whatever it was had ventured down into the lower levels of Graymark, Jair thought chillingly.

Slanter beckoned them ahead. The members of the little company moved into the gloom, groping their way forward from the open stairwell, the dust stirring beneath their boots and rising in soft clouds to mix with the light of their torches in a hazy glare. Mounds of stores and discarded provisions appeared and were left behind. Still the chamber ran on.

Then suddenly the entire floor rose half a dozen steps to a new level and stretched awayfrom there into darkness. They went up the stairs in a knot, walked ahead twenty yards or so, and pa.s.sed into a monstrous, arched corridor. Iron doors, barred and sealed, appeared on either side as they pushed forward. Blackened torch stubs sat within their iron racks, chains lay in piles against the walls, and multilegged insects scurried from the light to the seclusion of the gloom. A stench hindered breathing and choked the senses, emanating in waves from the cellar stone.

The corridor ended at yet another stairway, this one curling upward like a snake coiled.

Slanter paused, then began to climb. The others followed. Twice the stairway wound back upon itself, then opened into another corridor. They followed this new pa.s.sageway several dozen yards to where it branched in two directions. Slanter took them right. The pa.s.sageway ended a short distance further on at a closed iron door. The Gnome tested the latch, tugged futilely, and shook his head. There was concern on his face as he turned to the others. Clearly he had hoped to find it open.

Garet Jax pointed back down the corridor, the unasked question in his eyes. Could they backtrack and go the other way? Slanter shook his head slowly, the answer in his eyes. The Gnome did not know.

They hesitated a moment longer, eyes locked. Then Slanter pushed past, motioning for the others to follow. He led them back down the pa.s.sageway to where it divided. This time he took them left. The second corridor wound farther than the first, pa.s.sing stairwells, niches cloaked in shadow, and numerous doors, all closed and barred. Several times the Gnome paused, undecided, then continued on. The minutes slipped away, and Jair began to grow increasingly uneasy.

Then at last the pa.s.sageway ended, this time at a pair of ma.s.sive iron doors so huge that Slanter was forced to reach upward to seize the handles. They gave with surprising ease, and the door on the right swung silently in. The members of the little company peered through guardedly.

Another chamber lay beyond, huge and cluttered with stores. But the gloom dissipated somewhat here, chased by a thin, gray light that slipped downward through tiny slits in the walls that were cut close against the chamber's high ceiling.

Slanter gestured toward the slits, then to the far wall of the chamber where a second pair of iron doors stood closed. The others understood. They were within Graymark's outer walls.

With Slanter in the lead, they pa.s.sed cautiously into the room. No dust lay upon these floors; no cobwebs draped its crates and barrels. The stench still hung upon the air, stifling and rank, but it now seemed carried as much from without as held by the closure of the walls. Jair wrinkled his nose in distaste. The smell might well kill them before the dark things found them out. It was as bad as...

Something sc.r.a.ped softly in the shadows to one side. Garet Jax whirled, daggers in both hands, crying out in warning to the others.

Too late. Something huge, black, and winged seemed to explode out of the shadows. It rose against the half-light, its leathered body spreading outward like some monstrous bat. Teeth and claws gleamed, a flash of ivory, and a fierce shriek broke from its throat. It was on them so quickly that there was no time to defend against it. It flew at them in a rush, swept past the leaders, and came at Helt. It caromed into the giant Borderman, winged limbs flailing, and its shriek turned to a frightening hiss. Helt staggered back with a howl, then got both hands on the black thing, and thrust it from him violently, flinging it across the room into a pile of stores.

Garet Jax leaped forward, and the daggers flew from his hands, pinning the thing to the wooden crates.Slanter had reached the far end of the room and wrenched wide one of the iron doors.

"Get out!" he howled.

They raced swiftly from the chamber, one after the other, until all were clear. Slanter shoved the open door closed with a grunt and threw the iron bolts into their fastenings. Shaking, he collapsed back against the door.

"What was that?" Foraker gasped, his black-bearded face s.h.i.+ny with sweat and his heavy brows knit fiercely.

The Gnome shook his head. "I don't know. Something the walkers made of the dark magic-some sentinel, perhaps."

Helt was down on one knee, his face buried in his hands. Blood seeped through his fingers in small trickles of scarlet.

"Helt!" Jair whispered and started forward. "Helt, you're hurt..."

The Borderman lifted his head slowly. Angry slashes crisscrossed his face. One eye was swollen and already beginning to close. He dabbed at the wounds with his tunic sleeve and motioned the Valeman back. "No, they're just scratches. Nothing bad."

But he was wincing with pain. He came to his feet with an effort, bracing himself against the wall. There was an uneasy look in his eyes.

Slanter had moved away from the door and was glancing about furtively. They were at the center of a narrow corridor that ran to a pair of closed doors at one end and to a stairway Opening to daylight at the other.

"This way!" he beckoned, moving quickly toward the light. "Hurry-before something else finds us!"

They started after him, all save Helt, who was still leaning against the pa.s.sage wall. Jair glanced back and slowed. "Helt?" he called.

"Hurry on, Jair." The big man was still dabbing blood from his face. Then he pushed himself off the wall and started after. "Go on, now. Stay close to the others."

Jair did as he was asked, conscious that the Borderman was following and conscious, too, that Helt was having difficulty doing so. There was something very wrong with him.

They reached the end of the corridor and went up the stairs in a rush. The eerie stillness of the fortress was broken by the sound of other feet and voices, jumbled, distant and indistinct. The shriek of the winged thing had given warning that there were intruders within the keep. Jair's mind raced wildly as he bounded up the long stairway with the others. He must remember that he had the wishsong for protection-that he could use it effectively only if he remembered to keep his head...

Something hissed past his face, and he stumbled and went down. An arrow shattered on the stairway wall. Helt was next to him at once, pulling him up again. Arrows flew all about them as Gnome Hunters appeared in the corridor below and on parapets above. The companions were within Graymark's walls, but their enemies knew it now and were converging. Scrambling to the top of the stairs, Jair wheeled right after the others along a line of battlements that overlooked a broad inner courtyard and a maze of towers and fortifications. Gnomes appeared from everywhere, weapons in hand, yelling wildly. A handful lay crumpled on the battlements ahead, brought down by Garet Jax as the black-clad Weapons Master cleared the way forward. The six darted along She battlements to a tower stairwell where Slanter brought them to a halt.

"The drop-gate-there!" He pointed across the courtyard to an iron-barred portcullis that stood raised over an arched entry leading through a ma.s.sive, stone block wall. "Quickest way forus to reach the Croagh!" His yellow face grimaced as he fought for breath. "Gnomes will realize what we're about in a moment. When they do, they'll bring down the gate to trap us. But if we can get there first, we can use the gate to cut them off instead!"

Garet Jax nodded, oddly calm in the midst of the moment's fury. "Where is the wheelhouse and winch?"

Slanter pointed again. "Beneath the gates-this side. We'll have to jam the wheel!"

Shouts and cries broke from all about them. In the courtyard below the Gnomes began to come together.

Garet Jax straightened. "Quick, then-before they are too many for us."

The little company raced down the tower stairwell, Slanter leading. At the lower end, they crossed through an anteway, dark and closed, to a single door that opened into the courtyard. All across the yard, Gnome Hunters turned to face them.

"Shades!" Slanter gasped.

They broke for the gate in a rush.

Brin Ohmsford climbed slowly to her feet, one hand resting lightly on Whisper's ma.s.sive head. The cavern was still again, empty of life. She stood for a moment at the center of the stone bridge and looked across the chasm to where daylight brightened the tall, arched alcove leading out. She rubbed Whisper's head gently, conscious of the welts and angry furrows left from his terrible battle with the black things, feeling the hurt that he had suffered.

"No more," she whispered softly.

Then she turned forward. She left the bridge quickly, without looking back, and began to cross the cavern floor toward the alcove. Whisper went with her, padding silently behind, saucer blue eyes gleaming. Without turning, she knew that he was there. Cautiously, she scanned the creviced rock for signs of the black things or other horrors wrought by the dark magic, but there were none. Only she and the cat remained.

Minutes later she reached the alcove with its high, smooth walls sculpted from the stone and carved with the intricate designs she had seen earlier. She paid them little heed, moving at once to the opening and to the daylight beyond. She had only one objective now.

The opening pa.s.sed away behind her and she stood once more in sunlight. It was midafternoon, the sun gone westward toward the treeline, its brightness dimmed by mist and clouds that floated shroudlike across the whole of the sky above. She was on a ledge overlooking a deep valley surrounded by a cl.u.s.ter of barren, ragged peaks. There was an odd, dreamlike tone to the setting of mountains, clouds, and mist. The whole of the valley was bathed in a s.h.i.+mmering, leaden cast. She looked slowly about and then upward behind her. There, balanced upon the rock above, was a solitary, dismal fortress. Graymark. Winding down from its heights and from far above that, beyond where she could see, was the stone stairway of the Croagh. It wound past her ledge, touched briefly, then spiraled down into the valley.

It was upon the valley that her gaze at last came to rest. A deep, shadowed bowl, it fell away from the light until its lower depths were lost in misted gloom. The Croagh wound down into this darkness, into a ma.s.s of trees, vines, scrub, and choking brush, grown so thick that the light could not penetrate. This forest was a twisted and knotted wilderness and it seemed to have neither beginning nor end, but to be contained in its rampant growth only by the rock walls of the peaks.

Brin stared. It was from here that the hissing sound came, the one that she had heardearlier in the sewers. It was like a breathing. She squinted against the glare of the gray half-light.

Had she seen...?

In the bowl of the valley, the forest moved.

"You are alive!" she said softly and hardened herself against what that realization made her feel.

She stepped far out onto the ledge, to the very edge where the stem of the Croagh joined to it. Crude stairs had been cut into the rock, and she stared down their length to where they disappeared at a bend in the stone. Then she looked past again to the valley below.

"Maelmord, I am come to you," she whispered.

Then she turned back to Whisper. She knelt beside him and rubbed his ears tenderly. Her smile was sad and gentle. "You must go no further with me, Whisper. Even though your mistress sent you to keep me safe, you must go no further. You must stay here and wait for her to come to you. Do you understand?"

The cat's luminous eyes blinked and he rubbed against her. "Protect my way back again, if you would protect me at all," she told him. "Perhaps it will not be as the Grimpond has foretold-that I shall die here. Perhaps I will come back again. Keep the way safe for me, Whisper.

Keep your mistress and my friends safe. Do not let them follow. Wait, and when I have done what I must, I will come back to you if I am able. I promise you that I will."

Then she sang to the cat, using the wishsong not to persuade or to deceive this time, but to explain. In images that would carry to the moor cat's mind, she let him feel what she wished and made him understand what it was that she must do. When she was done, she leaned forward and hugged the big cat close for a moment, nestling her face in the coa.r.s.e fur and feeling the warmth of the beast seep through her, taking from that warmth a measure of new strength.

She rose and stepped back. Slowly Whisper sank down on his haunches and forepaws until he was stretched outfacing her. She nodded and smiled. He was taking up guard of her path down. He would do as she wished.

"Good-bye, Whisper," she told him and stepped upon the Croagh.

The stench that had risen from the chasm behind her rose anew from the steamy depths of the valley below. She ignored it, gazing out momentarily over the cliffs to where the light of the sun brightened above the horizon. She thought of Allanon then and wondered if he could see her-if perhaps he might in some way be with her.

Then she took a deep breath to steady herself and started down.

41.