First King of Shannara (41 page)

The old man smiled sadly. “You could answer your own question if you chose, Elven King. No one must know because no one would believe. If your doubts of the sword's capabilities are so great, think of what the doubts of your people will be. Even Preia, perhaps. The power of the sword is truth. Who will believe that such a simple thing can prevail against the power of the Warlock Lord?”

Who, indeed? thought the king.

“You have said it yourself. A sword is a weapon of battle.” The smile turned to a weary sigh. “Let the Elves be content with that. Show them the sword you carry, the weapon that has been bequeathed to you, and say only that it will serve them well. They require no more.”

Jerle Shannara nodded wordlessly. No, he thought, they do not. Belief is best when uncomplicated by reason.

He wished, in that sad, desperate moment of self-doubt and fear, of silent acquiescence to a pact that he could neither embrace nor forsake, that belief could be made so simple for him.

 

XXVIII

 

B
y midafternoon of the following day, Jerle Shannara was nearing the Valley of Rhenn and the confrontation that fate had ordained for him. He had ridden out shortly after sunrise in the company of Preia, Bremen, and a handful of advisors and his army commanders, taking with him three companies of Elven Hunters, two afoot and one on horse. Four companies were already in place at the mouth of the valley, and two more would follow on the morrow. Left behind were the remaining members of the Elven High Council under the leadership of First Minister Vree Erreden, three companies of reserves, and the citizens of the city and the refugees come off the land in fear of the impending invasion. Left behind as well were the arguments and the debates over courses of action and political wisdom. Few choices and little time remained, and the use put to both would be determined in large part by the army that approached.

The Elven King said nothing to anyone of his conversation with the Druid. He chose to make no public announcement concerning the sword he had been given. He spoke of it to Preia alone, saying only that it was a weapon the Warlock Lord could not stand against. His stomach churned and his face heated as he spoke the words, for his own belief was fragile. He worried as a dog would its bone the concept of truth as a weapon of battle. He replayed his conversation with the old man over and over again as he rode east, lost in his own thoughts, so distanced by them that several times when Preia, riding next to him, spoke, he did not respond. He rode armored and battle-ready. The sword, strapped to his back, was so light in comparison with the chain mail and plate that it might have been forged of paper. He thought often on the feel of it as he traveled, its weight as ephemeral as the use to which it was intended to be put. He could not grasp it as possibility, could not settle on it as fact. He needed to be shown how it worked. He needed to know from experience its use. It was how his mind worked. He could not help himself. What he could see and feel—that was real. All else was little more than words.

He did not reveal his doubts to Bremen. He kept a smile on his face when the old man approached. He kept his confidence about him. He did it for himself, but also for his people. The army would draw its confidence from him. If the king seemed certain of himself, then they would be as well. He had always known that battles were won on as little as that, and he had always responded. This army, as this nation, was his to command—to use well or badly. What waited would test them all in ways they had never been tested before. Since this was so, he intended to do his part.

“You have said nothing for hours,” Preia observed at one point, waiting until he was looking at her before she spoke to make certain he heard.

“Haven't I?” he replied. He was almost surprised to find her there, so wrapped up was he in his internal debate. She rode a wiry white-flecked gray called Ashes, weapons strapped all about her. There had never been any question about her coming, of course. Their newly adopted sons had been left in the care of others. Like Jerle, Preia Starle was born for battle.

“Something is bothering you,” she declared, holding his gaze. “Why don't you tell me what it is?”

Why, indeed? He smiled in spite of himself. She knew him too well for him to pretend something different. Yet he could not speak of his doubt. He could not, because it was something he must resolve for himself. No one could help him with it. Not now, at least—not when he had not found solid ground himself on which to stand.

“I lack the words to explain,” he said finally. “I am still working it through. Be patient.”

“It might help if you tried the words on me.”

He nodded, looking past the beauty of her face and the intelligence mirrored in her clear ginger eyes to the warmth and caring that resided in her heart. He felt different about her these days. The distance he had always kept between them was gone. They were bound together so inextricably that he felt certain that whatever happened to one, happened to the other even though it were death itself.

“Give me a little time,” he told her gently. “Then we will talk.”

She reached for his hand and held it momentarily. “I love you,” she said.

So it was that the afternoon found them coming up on the Rhenn, and still he did not speak of what was troubling him and still she waited for him to do so. The day was bright and warm, the air sweet with the smell of still damp grasses and leaves, the forest about them lush with the infusion of the rains of the past few weeks. The clouds had moved on finally, but the ground remained soft, and the rutted trail swampy where the Elves had traveled east over its worn track. Reports had been coming in all day from where the bulk of the army had settled its defense at the head of the valley. The Northland army continued to approach, coming slowly across the Streleheim from both north and south, units arriving at varying rates of speed depending on size and mobility, foot and horse and pack. The army of the Warlock Lord was huge and growing. Already it filled the plains at the mouth of the valley for as far as the eye could see. The Elves were outnumbered by at least four to one and the odds would increase as more units arrived. The reports were delivered by messengers in flat, even tones, carefully kept devoid of emotion, but Jerle Shannara was trained to decipher what was hidden in the small nuances of pause and inflection, and he could detect the beginnings of fear.

He would have to do something to put a stop to it, he knew. He would have to do something quickly.

The realities of the situation were grim. Riders had been sent east to the Dwarves to beg their assistance, but the paths out were closed off by Northland patrols, and it would be days before a rider could work his way around them. In the meantime, the Elves were on their own. There was no one who would come to their aid. The Trolls were a subjugated people, their armies in thrall to the Warlock Lord. The Gnomes were disorganized in the best of times and had no love of the Elves in any event. Men had withdrawn into their separate city-states and lacked any sort of cohesive fighting force. The Dwarves were all that remained, if they survived. There was still no word on whether Raybur and his army had escaped the Northland invasion.

So there was good reason to be afraid, Jerle Shannara thought as they rode up from the forests at the west entrance to the Rhenn—Elven King, companions and advisors, and three companies of fighting men. There was good reason—but in this case reason must not be allowed to prevail.

What, he pondered, could he do to overcome it?

 

Bremen, riding some yards back with the boy Allanon amid the king's advisors and the commanders of the Elven army, was pondering the same question. But it was not the Elves' fear that troubled him—it was the king's. For even though Jerle Shannara would not admit to it, or even be cognizant of it for that matter, he was frightened. His fear was not obvious, even to him, but it was there nevertheless. It was a subtle, insidious stalker, lurking at the corners of his mind, awaiting its chance. Bremen had sensed it the day before, at the moment he had revealed the power of the sword—there, lodged just behind the king's eyes, back in the depths of his confusion and uncertainty, back where it would fester and grow and in the end prove his undoing. Despite the old man's efforts and the strength of his own conviction concerning the power of the talisman, the king did not believe. He wanted to, but he did not. He would try to find a way, of course, but there was no guarantee he would ever do so. It was something that Bremen had not considered in the course of all that had happened. Now he must do so. He must put the matter right.

He rode all that day watching the king, observing the silence in which he had wrapped himself, studying the hard set of his jaw and neck, unpersuaded by the smiles and the outward confidence displayed to others. The war taking place inside Jerle Shannara was unmistakable. He was struggling to accept what he had been told, but he was failing in his effort. He was brave and he was determined, so he would carry the sword into battle and face the Warlock Lord as he had been told he must. But when he did so his lack of belief would surface, his doubt would betray him, and he would die. The inevitability of it was appalling. Another, stronger voice than his own was needed. The old man found himself wishing that Tay Trefenwyd were still alive. Tay had been close enough to Jerle Shannara that he might have found a way to reach him, to convince him, to break down his misgivings and his doubts. Tay would have stood with the king against the Warlock Lord, just as Bremen intended to do, but it would have meant more with Tay. It might even have proved to be the difference.

But Tay was gone, so the voice and the strength that were needed must come from someone else.

There was Allanon to think about, too. From time to time the old man glanced at the boy. His young companion was still reticent, but he was no longer refusing to speak. Preia Starle was in part responsible for this. The boy was taken with her and listened to her advice. After a time, he began to open up. All of his family had been killed in the Northland raid, he had revealed. He had escaped because he had been elsewhere when the attack had commenced, and he had hidden as it swept by him. He had seen a great many atrocities committed, but he would not speak of the particulars. Bremen did not press him. It was enough that the boy had survived.

But there was still Galaphile's vision to consider, and that was a matter less easily dismissed. What did it mean—himself, standing with the boy at the edge of the Hadeshorn in the presence of Galaphile's shade, the bright, effervescent forms of the spirits of the dead swirling above the roiling waters, the air dark and filled with cries, and the boy's strange eyes fixed on him, staring? Staring at what? The Druid could not decide. And what was the boy doing there in the first place—there, in the Valley of Shale, at the waters of the Hadeshorn, at a summoning of the dead, where no human was allowed, where only he dared walk?

The vision haunted him. Oddly, he was afraid for Allanon. He was protective of him. He found himself drawn to the boy in a way he could not quite explain. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact of their aloneness. Neither had a family, a people, or a home. Neither really belonged anywhere. In each there was a separateness that was undeniable, and it was as much a state of mind as it was a fact of life and just as unalterable. That Bremen was a Druid set him apart in ways he could not change, even if he wished. But the boy was just as distanced—in part by the insight he clearly possessed into other people's thinking, a gift that few appreciated—and in part by an extraordinary perception that bordered on prescience. Those strange eyes mirrored his keen mind and intellect, but they hid his other gifts. He looked at you as if he could see right through you, and the look was not deceiving. Allanon's ability to reveal you was frightening.

What was Bremen to do with this boy? What was he to make of him? It was a day for dilemmas and unanswered questions, and the old man bore the burden of their nagging weight in stoic silence as he rode east. The resolution of both, he supposed, would come soon enough.

 

When they arrived at the Valley of Rhenn, Jerle Shannara left the others and with Preia rode out to survey the defenses and to let the Elven Hunters know that he had arrived. He was greeted warmly everywhere, and he smiled and waved and told his men that everything was going well and that they would have a surprise or two for the Northlanders before long.

Then he rode down through the valley to have a look at the enemy camp. He took a guide this time, for the valley floor was already dotted with traps, many of them new, and he did not want to stumble into one by mistake. Preia stayed with him, the queen as familiar a sight to the soldiers by now as the king. Neither of them spoke as they followed the guide's lead over grassy hillocks, down broad rises, across a stretch of burned-out flats, and up onto a promontory in the cliffs that warded the right flank to where he could see out across the whole of the valley. A small encampment of scouts and runners was in place, keeping watch. He greeted them, then walked to the bluff edge for a look.

Before him stretched the seething mass of the Northland army, a huge and sluggish morass of men, animals, wagons, and war machines cloaked in dust and heat. There was movement everywhere as stores and weapons were brought up and sorted and units jockeyed for position along the army's front. Siege machines were being assembled and hauled to one side. The army had settled itself about a mile from the valley's east end, out where it could see any attack being mounted against it, out where it had room to spread and grow. Jerle could feel the uneasiness of the men standing with him. He could sense in Preia's silence her cold appraisal of their chances. This army that had come to invade their homeland was a juggernaut that would not be turned away easily.

He took a long time to study it after that first glance. He looked at where the supplies and equipment and weapons were being placed. He counted the siege machines and the catapults. He sought out the standards of the companies assembled to fight him and made a rough count of cavalry and foot, both light and heavy. He watched the approach of several supply trains from out of both the north and south Streleheim. He considered his options carefully.

Then he remounted and rode back to the far end of the valley and called together his commanders and advisors for a council of war.

They gathered in a tent set well back from the front lines of the Elven defense, Home Guard set all about to insure privacy. Preia was there, of course, along with Bremen. Kier Joplin commanded the horse, and Rustin Apt and Cormorant Etrurian the foot soldiers. There were captains Prekkian and Trewithen, of the Black Watch and Home Guard, respectively. There was one-eyed Arn Banda, who commanded the archers. These were the heart of his command, the men on whom he most relied, the men he must convince if they were to have any chance against the army that would come against them.