The Dark Legacy of Shannara Trilogy 3-Book Bundle

by Terry Brooks

  “That’s exactly what we need you for.” Farshaun gave him a look. “To help us keep our eyes wide open.”

  Skint grimaced. “Glad you understand. Now, when do we leave?”

  It was decided they would depart at first light, flying north toward their destination. Skint believed they could find their way as far as Taupo Rough without much trouble, but it might be a problem after that. They would have to find someone who knew where Stridegate could be found. Likely it was in the Charnal Mountains, and they were wide and deep. This was a journey that could take them weeks, and it didn’t seem to him they had weeks to spend.

  That prompted Railing to suggest they leave at once. Since time was precious, they couldn’t afford to waste it. But Farshaun suggested they would be better off waiting until daylight because they were traveling into strange country and would likely encounter dangerous situations on their way, even apart from Gnome raiders and sky pirates.

  A compromise was reached. They would travel now to the far shores of Rainbow Lake, where they would find shelter and anchor east of the city of Varfleet. After a good night’s sleep, perhaps the last they would get for some time to come, they would wake at sunrise and continue north to their destination.

  This wasn’t entirely satisfactory to Railing, given his desire to reach their destination in as little time as possible, but he understood the need for caution, too. So they crossed Rainbow Lake as the sun slipped west and by nightfall were moored in a secluded cove ten miles east of Varfleet and safely out of view. Farshaun had insisted earlier that Austrum and the other Rovers be informed of what they intended to do, and while the company ate its dinner the old man explained to his younger companions the general nature of their journey without getting too specific. He stayed away from what he knew about the Forbidding and the demons and stuck to the reason for their search—to discover the fate of Grianne Ohmsford. Mirai pitched in, picking up loose threads and adding information where she saw it would help. Austrum asked the most questions, but Mirai was there to provide the answers each time. Railing watched how attentive he was to her, how he listened without argument and was deferential and polite. A far cry from his brashness of earlier, the boy thought, vaguely irritated all over again.

  In the end, the Rovers agreed to sign on, young and bold enough to accept the risks for the promise of an extraordinary adventure, sure enough of their strength and resilience to reject the possibility of dying. Their elders had a darker view of the risks involved, but the young Rovers were all enthusiasm and confidence. Railing remembered feeling like that when he and Redden had set out with the Ard Rhys and her company for the Breakline. But all of that had been knocked out of him in the struggle to survive the horrors that had attacked them in the Fangs. All of that belonged to someone he had been and not who he was now.

  He went to sleep shortly afterward, more tired than he had realized. Mirai was still awake when he rolled into his blanket, talking with Austrum. They spoke in whispered voices, their heads inclined close. Railing wanted to interrupt them, to put a stop to it. He didn’t like what he was seeing, but he knew enough about Mirai to accept that she would do what she wanted no matter what he thought about it.

  He closed his eyes instead and slept.

  It was still dark when he woke again, the sky clear and bright with stars, the world a silent and wondrous nightscape. He lifted himself on one elbow and looked around. Someone had called his name, but everyone around him seemed to be sleeping. Dreading what he would find, he looked over to where he had last seen Mirai, but Austrum had gone and she was sleeping alone. He watched her for a moment, then threw off the blanket and got to his feet. He looked around the starlit darkness at the sleeping men and finally found the big Rover well off to one side near the pilot box. Then he heard his name again, and he scanned the decks of Quickening from bow to stern, in search of the source. Everyone was asleep—even the sentry sitting near the stern where it faced back toward the shoreline. They were anchored several hundred yards offshore, and when he walked from the port to the starboard railing he could find no trace of another vessel from which the voice might have come.

  Perplexed, he stood waiting for his name to be called again, listening intently to the silence, trying to convince himself he had not been mistaken.

  But instead of hearing his name, he saw a light appear on the shoreline—a tiny flash that came and went in a steady blinking. He watched as the light began to grow brighter, and finally he realized that it was moving toward him. He backed up a step and almost called out for Mirai. But by then the light was right on top of him, and he found his voice had disappeared in his sense of wonder and surprise.

  When the light abruptly disappeared, a young girl was standing before him. She was no more than ten or twelve years old, her hair white-blond and her eyes a stunning depthless blue. She smiled and stretched out her hand to him, and he surrendered his own.

  The light returned, enfolding them both, closing them away. Everything around them disappeared, and there were only the two of them standing face-to-face, joined by the meeting of their eyes and hands. Railing tried to ask who she was and what she was doing, but his voice had deserted him completely. She seemed to know that he was trying to speak, however, and even though she remained silent, she gave him a reassuring smile and a squeeze of her hand.

  Then the light flared once, bright enough that even the girl disappeared within it, her hand releasing his as she faded away, and when the light was gone and his vision had cleared sufficiently that he could see in the darkness again, he found himself alone.

  But he was no longer aboard Quickening. He was standing on the shore where he had first seen the light. He looked down at his feet to make certain of where he was and then out into the cove to where the airship was lying at anchor. His first thought was that he was dreaming, even though he knew deep down inside where truths are always revealed that he wasn’t, that this was actually happening in his waking life and it was real.

  “As real as the search you undertake for the Ilse Witch, Railing Ohmsford,” a voice whispered to him.

  He turned and found an old man standing behind him, a white-bearded ancient cloaked in robes that were worn and ragged, his tall, lean body stooped with age and perhaps the weight of something much greater, something that was reflected in his eyes as he studied the boy with an intense but not unfriendly gaze.

  “How do you know about Grianne Ohmsford?” Railing asked, finding that his voice was now returned to him.

  The old man made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, I know quite a lot about most things. It is my business to know.”

  Railing shook his head. “I have the strangest feeling I should know you.”

  “Or at least know of me.”

  “You have use of magic, don’t you? Are you a Faerie creature?”

  “I am. I was well known to others in your family. I have helped them now and then over the years by offering respite from weariness and stress and advice about how to continue. Sometimes they took both and sometimes they took only one and sometimes they did not take either. Once or twice, I gave them talismans. Like this one.”

  He held out his hand, his fingers closed about whatever lay within. Railing hesitated. “Take it,” the old man said. “Would you reject a gift from the King of the Silver River?”

  Railing stared in surprise, then quickly extended his hand. The old man dropped a ring into it. The ring had a very odd look to it. The band was formed of a series of gold strands that had been interwoven in an intricate, delicate design. There were perhaps a dozen threads in all. At the apex a single gemstone, milky white and opaque, had been fastened in place. Railing had never seen anything like it. He tested the strength of the woven strands to see how much give there was to the metal and found to his surprise that there was scarcely any. The metal felt hard and fixed.

  “Slip it on your finger,” the King of the Silver River suggested. “Go on, it will not harm you.”

  Railing did as he was told.
The ring fit perfectly, the metal suddenly soft and malleable, molding itself to his finger as if it were a living thing. The boy studied it a moment, admiring its look, and then tried pulling on it. It came off without difficulty and turned rigid and unyielding again.

  The old man nodded. “It belongs to you now until you choose to give it to another. Should another try it on while it is yours, it will not respond.”

  “What does it do?” Railing asked. He was still trying to get used to the idea that this was the legendary Faerie creature who had appeared to members of the Ohmsford family at various times over the centuries, always with a willingness to help when their lives seemed darkest and their need greatest.

  “It does what you need it to do when you cannot find your way.” The King of the Silver River smiled. “That’s what I have come to talk to you about. Finding your way.”

  “Can you help me find Grianne Ohmsford?” the boy asked excitedly. “Can you tell me where she is?”

  The old man shook his head. “I am not here for that. The ring can show you the way once you know what you are looking for. I am here to talk to you about what you should be looking for. I know the quest you undertake, and I know the reasons for it. I have listened to your conversations on both sides of the Rainbow Lake and seen the writings you have uncovered. I know your heart. I can feel your passion. But you travel down a road that may lead to your ruin.”

  Railing started to ask for an explanation, but the old man had already turned away. “Come sit with me while we talk. My bones are weary from tracking your efforts. I need to rest them.”

  They sat together on the trunk of a fallen tree, looking back across the water at Quickening and the star-filled skies that silhouetted her. For a long moment, the King of the Silver River did not speak.

  “This is going to be difficult for you to hear, Railing Ohmsford—and even more difficult for you to believe. Perhaps you won’t heed me. Perhaps you will dismiss me out of hand. But at least I will have spoken the words and you will have had a chance to assess their worth. And perhaps, if you allow yourself to do so, you will take them to heart and weigh them carefully. If not now, then at another time in the not-too-distant future, before it is too late.”

  “What is it?” the boy asked him. “What would you tell me?”

  “You search for Grianne Ohmsford, Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order. You believe that by finding her, you will find, as well, a way in which to bring your brother back to you. But you should understand that what you seek is not necessarily what you will find.”

  The old man folded his hands in his lap. “The Grianne Ohmsford you seek is lost to you. She has been gone for a hundred years, since she gave herself to the tanequil in exchange for the girl who became your grandmother. What’s been gone for so long cannot be brought back. Not as it once was. Not whole and complete again, perhaps not even alive. Understand, Railing. She is transformed. She became another creature entirely by choosing to live as an aeriad. She cannot take that back, and you cannot expect to find a way to make her.”

  “I can try,” Railing interrupted, upset by now with how the conversation was going. “Grianne switched places with Cinnaminson. Why can’t it happen that someone switches places with her?”

  The King of the Silver River nodded. “It would seem that such a thing would be possible. But the switch between Grianne and your grandmother happened only weeks after your grandmother gave herself to the tanequil. Only weeks, Railing. Not more than a hundred years. You can expect things to stay pretty much the same in weeks, but not after a century has passed.”

  “What are you saying, then? That I should just give up and go home and forget my brother? That there is nothing I can do for him?” Railing was so incensed by the idea that he was shouting. He caught himself, glancing out at the dark shape of Quickening, but there was no sign that anyone aboard had heard. He looked back at the old man. “I won’t do it. I won’t abandon Redden.”

  “Nor am I asking you to. Nor would I expect it of you.” The aged eyes seemed to look right into him. “But finding Grianne Ohmsford may not be the answer. It may end badly for everyone involved. It may not yield the result you hope to achieve.”

  “You can’t know that. You can’t know how it will end!”

  “I am a Faerie creature, and I have the use of magic and the gift of premonition. While I cannot know the answers to all things, I can sense if they will be good or bad for those involved. It is so here. My sense of it is very strong.”

  Railing took a deep breath to steady himself, not wanting to blurt out what he was thinking. “What are you telling me to do?”

  “Only this. Make your choice wisely. Do not become wedded to the idea that there is only one way.”

  “I already know that.”

  The King of the Silver River shook his head. “You only think you know. In the end you may discover you are a child playing with matches and in danger of burning everything around you to the ground. Think carefully. Do you really wish to continue on after what I have just said, or will you turn back and go into the Forbidding alone?”

  There was a long silence as the boy and the old man faced each other. In the distance, something splashed in the waters of the cove, and the dark shape of a bird of prey winged skyward with food for her young.

  “I cannot give this up,” Railing said.

  “You can give anything up just as you can take anything up. But once the choice is made, there are consequences. And you cannot change those consequences. You can only live with them.”

  The insistence in the old man’s words was daunting. Clearly, he believed what he was saying. Railing hesitated. Neither of them knew exactly what would happen if Railing persisted in his search for Grianne Ohmsford, but the King of the Silver River seemed certain that it would not be anything good. Yet even creatures of magic could be mistaken. Even they could be wrong. The history of the Ohmsford family had demonstrated that often enough.

  Railing was no fool; he knew he should consider carefully what he was being told. He had until at least sunrise to do so. And he had all the days of his journey after that, as well, didn’t he? He would not dismiss the old man’s warning out of hand. He would think on it for as long as there was reason to do so.

  “Will the ring guide me to wherever I choose to go?” he asked the other.

  The King of the Silver River shrugged. “Or out of wherever you’ve been, should that become necessary. But know this. Unlike some magic, it has a finite life. It will show the way each time you ask for it, but each time one strand of its woven threads will disappear until all are gone. Save the stone for when the threads are gone and your life is at such risk there is no other magic you can call upon. That time may come sooner than you think.”

  Railing took a deep breath. “I thank you for the ring and the advice. I will consider carefully everything you have told me.”

  “Will you?”

  The boy nodded uneasily. The old man seemed to see right through him. “How do I get back to the ship from here?”

  The King of the Silver River smiled. “Who is to say you ever left?”

  Then he disappeared, and the shoreline and the trees and any view of the airship anchored in the cove disappeared, as well, and Railing woke from what might have been only a dream still wrapped in his blanket and lying on wooden planking, and he was aboard Quickening once more, and all that remained was the silence and his memory of the Faerie creature’s words.

  It might have been a dream if not for the ring that nestled deep inside his pants pocket.

  Railing was awake for much of the rest of the night, mulling over what the King of the Silver River had told him. He was conflicted in every conceivable way, even as to whether what had happened was real.

  He wanted it to have been a dream—in spite of the ring’s presence—mostly because he didn’t want to believe that what he had been told had any value. Even accepting that there was a possibility things wouldn’t work out as he wished, that Grianne Ohmsford
was indeed beyond their reach and would never return, he did not want to abandon his search. Because if he did, if he gave up on trying to find Grianne, he would be forced to do what the old man had told him he ultimately must. He would be forced to go after Redden himself, into the Forbidding, a place much, much worse than the one he had barely escaped before, and with no idea of how to go about finding, let alone rescuing, his brother.

  Just thinking of it terrified him. Once he had been so sure of himself, so certain that he could just hop a flit, charge back into the Forbidding, and save his brother. No more. He was ashamed of his fear, but he could not dispel it. He might be brave enough flying a Sprint into the wilderness of the Shredder, but that was child’s play compared with what he would face inside the Forbidding. He’d had time to think about it, to understand better what it meant, and his fear was so overwhelming that he could not come to terms with it.

  As a result, he could not give up the idea of finding Grianne and persuading her to stand with him against the creatures of the Forbidding.

  It could happen. It must.

  He agonized until sunrise and then rose with the others, moving about the Quickening as if half dead, consumed by fears and doubts and confusion. He knew he should tell someone about what had happened to him during the night. He knew he should reveal what he had been told. But if he did so, the search was over. Skint, for certain, would turn back and try to persuade the others to do the same. Austrum and the other Rovers would give up, as well. Maybe even Mirai would abandon him, in spite of having said she wouldn’t.

  “Ready to set out?” Farshaun Req asked him as they sat around on the foredeck eating breakfast.

  All eyes turned toward him. He fingered the woven strands of the ring that he had kept concealed in his pocket.

  He was surprised at how quickly he responded. “Ready,” he said, and felt the world drop away inside.