First King of Shannara (6 page)

“You look well, Tay,” the old man replied, giving the other a quick smile in return. “Life at Paranor agrees with you.”

“Seeing you again agrees with me more,” the other declared.

“When are we leaving?”

“Leaving?”

“Bremen, don't be coy. Leaving for wherever it is you are going. Risca and I are decided. Even if you hadn't called us to meet with you, we would have caught up with you on your way out. We have had enough of Athabasca and the Council.”

“You were not there to witness their performance,” Risca sneered, shouldering into the light. “A travesty. They gave your request the same consideration they would an invitation to become a victim of the plague! There was no debate allowed or reasoning undertaken! Athabasca presented your request in such a manner that there was no doubt where he stood. Others backed him up, sycophants all. Tay and I did our best to condemn his machinations, but we were shouted down. I have had enough of their politics, enough of their shortsightedness. If you say the Warlock Lord exists, then he exists. If you say he is coming to Paranor, then come he will. But I will not be here to greet him. Let those others stand in my place. Shades, how can they be such fools?”

Risca was all brawn and heat, and Bremen smiled in spite of himself. “So you gave a good account of yourselves on my behalf?”

“We were small whispers in a windstorm,” Tay laughed. His arms lifted and fell helplessly within his dark robes. “Risca is right. Politics rule at Paranor. They have since Athabasca became First Druid. You should have held that position, Bremen, not him.”

“You could have been First Druid, if you had wanted to be,” Risca pointed out irritably. “You should have insisted.”

“No,” said Bremen, “I would not have done the job well, my friends. I was never one for administration and management. I was meant to seek out and recover what was lost, and I could not do that from the high tower. Athabasca was a better choice than I.”

“Hogwash!” snapped Risca. “He has never been a good choice for anything. He resents you even now. He knows that his office was yours for the asking, and he has never forgiven you for that. Nor that you could walk away from it. Your freedom threatens his reliance on order and obedience. He would have us all placed carefully on a shelf and taken down when it suits his purpose. He would dictate our lives as if we were children. You escaped his reach by leaving Paranor, and he will not forgive you that.”

Bremen shrugged. “Ancient history. I regret only that he would not pay greater heed to my warning. I think the Keep in real danger. The Warlock Lord comes this way, Risca. He will not step around Paranor and the Druids. He will grind them beneath his army's boots.”

“What are we to do?” Tay pressed, glancing about as if afraid someone might be listening. “We have continued practicing our magic, Bremen. Each of us, Risca and I, in our own way, employing our own disciplines. We knew you would come back for us someday. We knew the magic would be needed.”

Bremen nodded, pleased. He had relied on these two above all the others to pursue their conjuring skills. They were not as learned or practiced as he, but they were able enough. Risca was the weapons master, skilled in the war arts, in the study of arms. Tay Trefenwyd was a student of the elements, of the forces that created and destroyed, of the balance of earth, air, fire, and water in the evolution of life. Each was an adept, just as he, capable of summoning magic when called upon to protect and defend. The practice of magic was forbidden within the walls of Paranor, except under strict supervision. Conjuring was undertaken almost exclusively on a basis of need. Experimentation was discouraged and often punished if discovered. The Druids lived in the shadow of their own history and the dark memory of Brona and his followers. They had been rendered moribund by guilt and indecision. They could not seem to understand that their ill-conceived course of action threatened to swallow them whole.

“You were right in your assumptions,” he told them. “I relied on you not to abandon the magic. And I do want you to come with me. I will need your skills and your strength in the days ahead. Tell me, are there any others we can call upon? Others, who have accepted the need for magic's use?”

Tay and Risca exchanged a brief glance. “None,” said the latter. “You must make do with us.”

“You shall do fine,” Bremen advised, his aged face crinkling with the smile he forced upon himself. Only these two to join Kinson and himself! Only these two against so many! He sighed. Well, he should have expected as much, he supposed. “I am sorry I must ask this of you,” he said, and genuinely meant it.

Risca snorted. “I should feel slighted if you did not. I am bored to tears of Paranor and her old men. No one cares for the practice of my craft. No one follows in my footsteps. I am an anachronism to all. Tay feels as I do. We would have left long ago if we had not agreed to wait for you.”

Tay nodded. “It is no cause for sadness to find you in need of traveling companions, Bremen. We are quite ready.”

Bremen took each by the hand and thanked him. “Gather what you would carry with you and meet me by the front gates tomorrow morning. I will tell you of our journey then. Tonight, I will sleep without in the forest with my companion, Kinson Ravenlock. He has accompanied me these two years past and proven invaluable. He is a Tracker and a scout, a Borderman of great courage and resolve.”

“If he travels with you, he needs no other recommendation,” said Tay. “We will leave now. Caerid Lock waits for you somewhere on the stairs below. He asks that you descend until you come upon him.” Tay paused meaningfully. “Caerid would be a good man to have with us, Bremen.”

The old man nodded. “I know. I will ask him to come. Rest well. I will see you both at sunrise.”

The Dwarf and the Elf slipped through the passageway door and closed it softly behind them, leaving Bremen alone on the landing. He stood there for a moment, thinking of what he must do next. Silence surrounded him, deep and pervasive within the fortress walls. Time slipped away. He did not require much of it, but he would have to be quick in any case.

And he would need Caerid Lock's cooperation.

He hurried down the stairway, intent on his plan, mulling over the details in his mind. The musty smell of the close passage assailed his nostrils, causing his nose to wrinkle. Elsewhere, in the main corridors and stairways of the Keep, the air would be clean and warm, earned up from the fire pit that heated the castle throughout the year. Dampers and vents controlled the airflow, but none of these were present in hidden passages like this one.

He found the Captain of the Druid Guard two landings farther down, standing alone in the shadows. He came forward at Bremen's approach, his worn face impassive.

“I thought you might visit more comfortably with your friends alone,” he said.

“Thank you,” Bremen replied, touched at the other's consideration. “But we would have you be one of us, Caerid. We leave at sunrise. Will you come?”

Caerid smiled faintly. “I thought that might be your plan. Risca and Tay are eager enough to depart Paranor—that's no secret.” He shook his head slowly. “But as for me, Bremen, my duty lies here. Especially if what you believe is true. Someone must protect the Druids of Paranor, even from themselves. I am best suited. The Guard is mine, all handpicked, all trained under my command. It would not do for me to abandon them now.”

Bremen nodded. “I suppose not. Still, it would be good to have you with us.”

Caerid almost smiled. “It would be good to come. But the choice is made.”

“Then keep careful watch within these walls, Caerid Lock.” Bremen fixed him with his gaze. “Be certain of the men you lead. Are there Trolls among them? Are there any who might betray you?”

The Captain of the Druid Guard shook his head firmly. “None. All will stand with me to the death. Even the Trolls. I would bet my life on it, Bremen.”

Bremen smiled gently. “And so you do.” He glanced about momentarily as if seeking someone. “He will come, Caerid—the Warlock Lord with his winged minions and mortal followers and perhaps creatures summoned out of some dark pit. He will descend on Paranor and attempt to crush you. You must watch your back, my friend.”

The seasoned veteran nodded. “He'll find us ready.” He held the other's gaze. “It's time to take you back down to the gates. Would you like to take some food with you?”

Bremen nodded. “I would.” Then he hesitated. “I almost forgot. Would it be possible for me to have one final word with Kahle Rese? I am afraid we left each other under rather strained circumstances, and I would like to correct that before I go away. Could you give me just a few minutes more, Caerid? I will come right back.”

The Elf considered the request silently for a moment, then nodded. “Very well. But hurry, please. I have already stretched Athabasca's instructions to their limit.”

Bremen smiled disarmingly and went back up the stairs once more. He hated lying to Caerid Lock, but there was no reasonable alternative open to him. The Captain of the Druid Guard would never have been able to sanction what he was about to do under any circumstances, friend or no. Bremen ascended two levels, passed through a doorway into a secondary passage, quickly followed it to its end, then went through yet another door to a second set of stairs, this one more narrow and steep than the first. He went quietly and with great care. He could not afford to be discovered now. What he was about to do was forbidden. If he was observed, Athabasca might well cast him into the deepest dungeon and leave him there for all time.

At the head of the narrow stairs he stopped before a massive wooden door secured by locks made fast with chains as thick as his aged wrists. He touched the locks carefully, one after the other, and with small snicks they fell open. He released the chains from their securing rings, pushed at the door, and watched with a mix of relief and trepidation as it swung slowly away.

He stepped through then and found himself on a platform high up within the Druid's Keep. Below, the walls fell away into a black pit that was said to core all the way to the center of the earth. No one had ever descended to its bottom and returned. No one had ever been able to cast a light deep enough to see what was down there. The Druid Well, it was called. It was a place into which the discards of time and fate had been cast—of magic and science, of the living and the dead, of mortal and immortal. It had been there since the time of faerie. Like the Hadeshorn in the Valley of Shale, it was one of the few doorways that connected the worlds of life and afterlife. There were tales of how it had been used over the years and of the terrible things it had swallowed. Bremen had no interest in the tales. What mattered was that he had determined long ago that the pit as a shaft that channeled magic from realms no living soul had ever visited, and within the blackness that cloaked its secrets lay power that no creature would dare to challenge.

Standing at its edge, he lifted his arms and began to chant. His voice was soft and steady, his conjuring studied and deliberate. He did not look down, even when he heard the stirrings and the sighs from within the depths. He moved his hands slightly, weaving out the symbols that commanded obedience. He spoke the words without hesitation, for even the slightest waver could bring the spell to an end and doom his effort.

When he was finished, he reached into his robes and withdrew a pinch of greenish powder, which he cast into the void. The powder sparkled with wicked intent as it fluttered on the air currents, seeming to grow in size, to multiply until the few grains had turned to thousands. Momentarily, they hung suspended, shining in the near black, and then they winked out and were gone.

Bremen stepped back quickly, breathing hard, feeling his courage fail as he leaned against the cold stone of the tower wall. He had not the strength that he once had. He had not the resolve. He closed his eyes and waited for the stirrings and the sighs to fade back into silence. Use of the magic required such effort! He wished he were young again. He wished he had a young man's body and determination. But he was old and failing, and it was pointless to wish for the impossible. He must make do with the body and determination he had.

Something scraped on the stone walls below him—a rasp of claws perhaps, or of scales.

Climbing to see if the spell caster was still there!

Collecting himself, Bremen stumbled back through the door and pushed it closed tightly behind him. His heart still beat wildly, and his face was coated in a sheen of sweat.
Leave this place,
a harsh voice whispered from somewhere beyond the door, from far down in the pit.
Leave it now!

Hands shaking, Bremen resecured the locks and chains. Then he scurried back down the narrow stairs and through the empty passageways of the Keep to rejoin Caerid Lock.

 

IV

 

B
remen and Kinson Ravenlock spent the night in the forest some distance back from Paranor and the Druids. They found a grove of spruce that provided reasonable concealment, wary even here of the winged hunters that prowled the night skies. They ate their dinner cold, a little bread, cheese, and spring apples washed down with ale, and talked over the day's events. Bremen revealed the results of his attempts to address the Druid Council and reported his conversations with those he had spoken to within the Keep. Kinson confined himself to sober nods and muttered grunts of disappointment and had the presence of mind and good manners not to tell the older man, when advised of his failure to convince Athabasca, that he had told him so.

They slept then, worn from the long trek down out of the Streleheim and the many nights spent sleepless before. They took turns keeping watch, not trusting even the close presence of the Druids to keep them safe. Neither really believed he would be safe anywhere for some time to come. The Warlock Lord moved where he wished these days, and his hunters were his eyes in every corner of the Four Lands. Bremen, standing watch first, thought he sensed something at one point, a presence that nudged at his warning instincts from somewhere close at hand. It was midnight, he was nearing the end of his duty and beginning to think of sleep, and he almost missed it. But nothing showed itself, and the prickly feeling that ran the length of his spine faded almost as quickly as it had come.

Bremen's sleep was deep and dreamless, but he was awake before sunrise and thinking of what he must do next in his efforts to combat the threat of the Warlock Lord when Kinson appeared out of the shadows on cat's feet and knelt next to him.

“There is a girl here to see you,” he said.

Bremen nodded wordlessly and rose to a sitting position. The night was fading into paler shades of gray, and the sky east was faintly silver along the edge of the horizon. The forest about them felt empty and abandoned, a vast dark labyrinth of shaggy boughs and canopied limbs that enclosed and sealed like a tomb.

“Who is she?” the old man asked.

Kinson shook his head. “She didn't give her name. She appears to be one of the Druids. She wears their robe and insignia.”

“Well, well,” Bremen mused, rising now to his feet. His muscles ached and his joints felt stiff and unwieldy.

“She offered to wait, but I knew you would be awake already.”

Bremen yawned. “I grow too predictable for my own good. A girl, you say? Not many women, let alone girls, serve with the Druids.”

“I didn't think they did either. In any case, she seems to offer no threat, and she is quite intent on speaking with you.”

Kinson sounded indifferent to the outcome of the matter, meaning that he thought it was probably a waste of time. Bremen straightened his rumpled robes. They could do with a washing. For that matter, so could he. “Did you see anything of the winged hunters on your watch?”

Kinson shook his head. “But I felt their presence. They prowl these forests, make no mistake. Will you speak with her?”

Bremen looked at him. “The girl? Of course. Where is she?”

Kinson led him from the shelter of the spruce to a small clearing less than fifty feet away. The girl stood there, a dark and silent presence. She wasn't very big, rather short and slightly built, wrapped in her robes, the hood pulled up to conceal her face. She didn't move as he came into view, but stood there waiting for him to approach first.

Bremen slowed. It interested him that she had found them so easily. They had deliberately camped well back in the trees to make it difficult for anyone to discover them while they slept. Yet this girl had done so—at night and without the benefit of any light but that of stars and moon where it penetrated the heavy canopy of limbs. She was either a very good Tracker or she had the use of magic.

“Let me speak with her alone,” he told Kinson.

He crossed the clearing to where she stood, limping slightly as his joints attempted to unlimber. She lowered the hood now so that he could see her. She was very young, but not a girl as Kinson had thought. She had close-cut black hair and enormous dark eyes. Her features were delicate and her face smooth and guileless. She was indeed dressed in Druid robes, and she wore the raised hand and burning torch of the Eilt Druin sewn on her breast.

“My name is Mareth,” she told him as he came up to her, and she held out her hand.

Bremen took it in his own. Her hand was small, but her grip was strong and the skin of her palm hardened by work. “Mareth,” he greeted.

She took back her hand. Her gaze was steady and held his own, her voice low and compelling. “I am a Druid apprentice, not yet accepted into the order, but allowed to study in the Keep. I came here ten months ago as a Healer. I came from several years of study in the Silver River country, then two years in Storlock. I began my study of healing when I was thirteen. My family lives in the Southland, below Leah.”

Bremen nodded. If she had been allowed to study healing at Storlock, she must have talent. “What do you wish of me, Mareth?” he asked her gently.

The dark eyes blinked. “I want to come with you.”

He smiled faintly. “You don't even know where I'm going.”

She nodded. “It doesn't matter. I know what cause you serve. I know that you take the Druids Risca and Tay Trefenwyd with you. I want to be part of your company. Wait. Before you say anything, hear me out. I will leave Paranor whether you take me with you or not. I am in disfavor here, with Athabasca in particular. The reason I am in disfavor is that I choose to pursue the study of magic when it has been forbidden me. I am to be a Healer only, it has been decided. I am to use the skills and learning the Council feels appropriate.”

For a woman,
Bremen thought she might add, the phrase hidden in the words she spoke.

“I have learned all that they have to teach me,” she continued. “They will not admit this, but it is so. I need a new teacher. I need you. You know more about the magic than anyone. You understand its nuances and demands, the complications of employing it, the difficulties of assimilating it into your life. No one else has your experience. I would like to study with you.”

He shook his head slowly. “Mareth, where I go, no one who is not experienced should venture.”

“It will be dangerous?” she asked.

“Even for me. Certainly for Risca and Tay, who at least know something of the magic's use. But especially for you.”

“No,” she said quietly, clearly ready for this argument. “It will not be as dangerous for me as you think. There is something about me that I haven't told you yet. Something that no one knows here at Paranor, although I think Athabasca suspects. I am not entirely unskilled. I have use of magic beyond that which I would master from study. I have magic born to me.”

Bremen stared. “Innate magic?”

“You do not believe me,” she said at once.

In truth, he did not. Innate magic was unheard of. Magic was acquired through study and practice, not inherited. At least, not in these times. It had been different in the time of faerie, of course, when magic was as much a part of a creature's inherited character as the makeup of his blood and tissue. But no one in the Four Lands for as long as anyone could remember had been born with magic.

No one human.

He continued to stare at her.

“The difficulty with my magic, you see,” she continued, “is that I cannot always control it. It comes and goes in spurts of emotion, in the rise and fall of my temperature, in the fits and starts of my thinking, and with a dozen other vicissitudes I cannot entirely manage. I can command it to me, but then sometimes it does what it will.”

She hesitated, and for the first time her gaze fell momentarily before lifting again to meet his own. When she spoke, he thought he detected a hint of desperation in her low voice. “I must be wary of everything I do. I am constantly hiding bits and pieces of myself, keeping careful watch over my behavior, my reactions, even my most innocent habits.” She compressed her lips. “I cannot continue to live like this. I came to Paranor for help. I have not found it. Now I am turning to you.”

She paused and then added, “Please.”

There was a poignancy in that single word that surprised him. For just a moment she lost her composure, the iron-willed, hardened appearance she had perfected in order to protect herself. He didn't know yet if he believed her; he thought that maybe he did. But he was certain that her need, whatever its nature, was very real.

“I will bring something useful to your company if you take me with you,” she said quietly. “I will be a faithful ally. I will do what is required of me. If you should be forced to stand against the Warlock Lord or his minions, I will stand with you.” She leaned forward in a barely perceptible motion, little more than an inclining of her dark head. “My magic,” she confided in a small voice, “is very powerful.”

He reached for her hand and held it between his own. “If you will agree to wait until after sunrise, I will give this matter some thought,” he told her. “I will have to confer with the others, with Tay and Risca when they arrive.”

She nodded and looked past him. “And your big friend?”

“Yes, with Kinson also.”

“But he has no skill with magic, does he? Like the rest of you?”

“No, but he is skilled in other ways. You can sense that about him, can you? That he is without the use of magic?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me. Did you use magic to find us here in this concealment?”

She shook her head. “No. It was instinct. I could sense you. I have always been able to do that.” She stared at him, catching the look in his eye. “Is that a form of magic, Bremen?”

“It is. Not a magic you can identify as easily as some, but magic nonetheless. Innate magic, I might add—absent acquired skill.”

“I have no acquired skill,” she said quietly, folding her arms into her robes as if she were suddenly cold.

He studied her for a moment, thinking. “Sit there, Mareth,” he said finally, pointing to a spot behind her. “Wait with me for the others.”

She did as she was asked. Moving to a patch of grass that had grown up where the trees did not shut out the sun, she folded her legs beneath her and seated herself in the huddle of her robes, a small dark statue. Bremen watched her for a moment, then moved back across the clearing to where Kinson waited.

“What did she want?” the Borderman asked, turning away with him to walk to the edge of the trees.

“She has asked to come with us,” Bremen answered.

Kinson arched one eyebrow speculatively. “Why would she want to do that?”

Bremen stopped and faced him. “She hasn't told me yet.” He glanced over to where she was seated. “She gave me reasons enough to consider her request, but she is keeping something from me still.”

“So you will refuse her?”

Bremen smiled. “We will wait for the others and talk it over.”

The wait was a short one. The sun rose out of the hills and crested the forest rim minutes later, spilling light down into the shadowed recesses, chasing back the last of the gloom. Color returned to the land, shades of green, brown, and gold amid the fading dark, and birds came awake to sing their welcome to a new day. Mist clung tenaciously to the darker alcoves of the brightening woods, and through a low curtain that yet masked the walls of Paranor walked Risca and Tay Trefenwyd. Both had abandoned their Druid robes in favor of traveling clothes. Both wore backpacks slung loosely across their broad shoulders. The Elf was armed with a longbow and a slender hunting knife. The Dwarf carried a short, two-handed broadsword, had a battle-axe cinched at his waist, and bore a cudgel as thick as his forearm.

They came directly to Bremen and Kinson without seeing Mareth. As they reached him, she rose once more and stood waiting.

Tay saw her first, glancing back at the unexpected movement caught from the corner of one eye. “Mareth,” he said quietly.

Risca looked with him and grunted.

“She asks to travel with us,” Bremen announced, forgoing any preliminaries. “She claims she might be useful to us.”

Risca grunted again, shifting his bulk away from the girl. “She is a child,” he muttered.

“She is out of favor with Athabasca for trying to study magic,” Tay said, turning to look at her. The smile on his Elven face broadened. “She shows promise. I like her determination. Athabasca doesn't frighten her one bit.”

Bremen looked at him. “Can she be trusted?”

Tay laughed. “What a strange question. Trusted with what? Trusted to do what? There's some who say no one's to be trusted but you and me, and I can only speak for me.” He paused and cocked his head toward Kinson. “Good morning, Borderman. I am Tay Trefenwyd.”

The Elf shook hands with Kinson; then Risca made his greeting as well. Bremen apologized for forgetting introductions. The Borderman said he was used to it and shrugged meaningfully.

“Well, then, the girl.” Tay brought the conversation back around to where it had started. “I like her, but Risca is right. She is very young. I don't know if I want to spend my time looking after her.”

Bremen pursed his thin lips. “She doesn't seem to think you will have to. She claims to have use of magic.”

Risca snorted this time. “She is an apprentice. She has been at Paranor for less than three seasons. How could she know anything?”

Bremen glanced at Kinson and saw that the Borderman had figured it out. “Not likely, is it?” he said to Risca. “Well, give me your vote. Does she come with us or not?”

“No,” said Risca at once.

Kinson shrugged and shook his head in agreement.

“Tay?” Bremen asked the Elf.

Tay Trefenwyd sighed reluctantly. “No.”

Bremen took a long moment to consider their response, then nodded. “Well, even though you vote against her, I think she should come.” They stared at him. His weathered face creased with a sudden smile. “You should see yourselves! All right then, let me explain. For one thing, there is something intriguing about her request that I failed to mention. She wishes to study with me, to learn about the magic. She is willing to accept almost any conditions in order to do so. She is quite desperate about it. She did not beg or plead, but the desperation is mirrored in her eyes.”