by Terry Brooks
“You were a reaper’s wind,” she said to him, and he could read the wonder in her eyes. “You were death itself.”
Her words made him uncomfortable. “And what of you? A magic wielder all along. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“My magic is small and of limited use. Mostly, I use it for healing. It would never have been sufficient to overcome Kronswiff.”
“It worked against his Het.”
Her eyes lowered. “I was afraid for you. I had to act. I’m sorry for my deception. I should have said something.”
Yet she hadn’t. Again, that twinge of suspicion tugged at him. “We should see to your people,” he reminded her.
She led him through the door to where dozens of them had been held prisoner, waiting to sate the dracul’s thirst. They clustered in small groups, cringing when he appeared, afraid he was another demon to be faced, another threat. But Lyriana was quick to reassure them they were safe now, that this black-clad man was a friend and their rescuer.
As she said these things, chasing the fear from their eyes, he noticed something strange. All of those who occupied the antechamber were suffering from grievous wounds. Their flesh was blackened and raw. Pieces of their faces and bodies were missing. Some walked with the aid of crutches and staffs. Some were cloaked entirely, and he could smell the sickness that had claimed them.
“What’s happened to these people?” he whispered when she turned back to him, unable to keep the anger and disgust from his voice. “What has the warlock done to them?”
He saw at once that he had said the wrong thing. Her face tightened, then collapsed. Tears came to her eyes.
“Kronswiff did not cause this,” she said. “He took advantage of them because they were already this way.”
He stared at her. “I don’t understand. How could they already be like this?”
She took a deep breath and exhaled sharply. “They are lepers, Garet Jax. They suffer from a disease that ravages their bodies. They are people who have been shunned by the world and have come to Tajarin to be with their own kind. They take refuge in a place to which no others have any wish to come. There were left alone until Kronswiff found them and decided to feed on men and women who could not stop him from doing so.”
Lepers. Just the word was enough to send a shiver through him. Victims of a flesh-eating disease out of the Old World that had disappeared for a time, but resurfaced as these things often do. He had heard of it—heard of colonies formed of those unfortunates who had contracted it and were forced to flee from the larger world to places like this one so they could live out their days in relative peace.
Though that had not happened here, because a creature who cared nothing for what they had become and only for the purposes they might serve had preyed upon them. Incapacitated by their illness, they could not fight back. They could only hide and hope they would not be found.
He looked around the room, his eyes shifting from face to face. Only a few managed to meet his gaze. Most turned away at once, hiding themselves as best they could, anxious that no one should ever look on them again. He understood this. His own revulsion was uncomfortably revealing. He could not help himself, even knowing it was wrong.
“I promised I would pay you for your services,” she said, turning away. “Come with me.”
She led him from the room into a maze of hallways beyond, producing the crystal once more to light their way. They proceeded through the darkness, following various corridors past closed doors and shuttered windows. They climbed a set of stairs until they were several stories higher and then walked from there until they arrived at a tiny bedroom. “This one is mine,” she told him as they entered.
Still holding the crystal to provide them with light, she crossed to an ancient cupboard and brought out a leather pouch. Then she came back again and handed it to him. When he opened it, he saw it was filled with gold coins.
“Is this payment enough?” she asked him.
“I don’t want any money.” He hesitated, searching for the words. “What I want is for you—”
“No!” she interrupted quickly. “Don’t ask it of me. I can’t do what you want.” She took a deep breath. “It isn’t only that I care for these people. I am one of them.”
He felt all the air drain from him, her words leaving him emptied out. Had he heard her right? One of them? A leper? No, he told himself quickly, he must be mistaken. There was nothing wrong with her. He could see there was nothing wrong just by looking at her.
But then he remembered how she had flinched when he reached for her that first night, how she had told him not to touch her. He remembered how she had been so careful to keep herself covered up while they traveled, always making sure to keep some distance between them.
He felt his heart sink.
“I came to Tajarin to help my parents and my brother, all of whom had the disease. While I lived among them, I contracted it, too. But I don’t regret it. I did what I felt was right. When Kronswiff and his Het appeared, I went in search of you—a man whose reputation reached even so remote a place as Tajarin—because I was mostly sound still, mostly able, and the only one who had any use of magic. I was the one on whom the marks of sickness were least visible and who could use magic to help heal myself should I get worse. But it doesn’t change the truth of my condition.”
She pulled open her cloak and lifted her blouse. Large sections of her torso were blotchy and raw where the disease had settled in. Her eyes lifted to meet his. “I am too sick already to leave.”
She dropped her blouse and closed her cloak. “I hid my condition from you so that you would come. I was afraid you wouldn’t, if you knew. I kept my use of magic secret, as well. When the crossbow bolt was fired at me, I used magic to deflect the blow. I used it again to help you against Kronswiff. I had not intended to do so, but I felt I had to. No one else could have killed him, if you had failed.”
Her voice gathered strength. “Kronswiff had learned of a leprous people living on the Tiderace, a population possessed of gold and silver kept concealed within the walls of their remote city. He came to rob us and to feed on us. It did not bother him that we were lepers. He was immune to our disease and hungry for our bodies and wealth. He took both. There was no one to stop him; no one cares about lepers. What did it matter what became of us? We were already the walking dead. We were at his mercy, and he had none to spare us.”
“You could still come with me,” he said. “Back down to the Southland. Your people are safe now. The Het won’t return if there is no one to pay for their services. There are Healers at Storlock who could help you. There are medicines …”
He spoke the words in a rush, as much to convince himself as to persuade her. He couldn’t leave her. He wouldn’t. Not when there might be a chance, however slim, that she could be saved.
But she shook her head. “No, Weapons Master. I have to stay here. This is where I belong. Take the gold and go and know you did something important by helping us. We had no one, and we were being destroyed. Even lepers have a right to the life that is given them, no matter their condition, no matter their fate. Others would have passed us by. You were not one of those, and we will never forget you.”
She paused. “I will never forget you.”
Her eyes held him, and what he felt for her was so strong—even knowing how sick she was—that he could barely stand it. He had never felt like this about anyone before, and he was stricken at the thought of simply walking away.
She pointed to the doorway. “Go left down the hall, then take the stairs. From there, go straight through to the door at the end. It will lead you outside. You can find your way from there.”
He nodded, knowing there was no other choice. He couldn’t stay here. He didn’t belong here. His life was outside these walls, but hers was not.
“Lyriana.”
He spoke her name once and stepped close, bending his face to hers. This time she didn’t move away, didn’t flinch, didn’t tell him not to touch he
r. Instead she lifted her mouth to accept his kiss and kissed him back.
He left her there and went down the hallway, out through the door into the streets of the city and over its walls to the world beyond. It had been a long time since he had cried, and he didn’t cry now.
He understood better now why he had been drawn to her, what it was that had attracted him so. He had sensed the connection between them, but had not understood it. Now he did. He was as damaged as she was, and just as lost. He was fated to die of a cause not of his making as surely as she was; it was only a question of when. But while she had achieved peace of mind, his own remained a slippery and elusive thing. Lyriana had shown him how he must be if he were ever to find his way, and it had generated in him something that approached love.
Perhaps, in its own fashion, that’s what it actually was.
The courage she evidenced in accepting what was to happen to her was the true measure of her strength. He would learn from that. He would find grace as she had. But he could not help wishing he had been able to do so with her beside him. He had wanted his kiss to express how much he wished it.
So much so that even the risk of contracting leprosy by placing his mouth on hers had not been enough to dissuade him from doing it.
For the first two days of travel back to Tombara, he was miserable. He could not stop thinking about her. He could not stop his aching. Then, on the third day, the pain began to ease as his thoughts drifted to other things. He was the Weapons Master first and always, and the time he had envisioned for himself and Lyriana—even in the best of circumstances—would never have lasted. It would have required him to change, and it was too late for that. His path in life was already determined, and he knew he was fated to follow it to its end.
In Tombara he found the commission waiting that would take him to Varfleet. And by then, Lyriana and Tajarin were already fading into the dark well of his past.
Paladins of Shannara: The Black Irix is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey eBook Original
Copyright © 2013 by Terry Brooks
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States of America by Del Rey, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DEL REY and the Del Rey colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Cover design by David G. Stevenson
Cover illustration: © Stephen Youll
eISBN: 978-0-345-53682-2
www.delreybooks.com
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Contents
Master - Table of Contents
Paladins of Shannara: The Black Irix
Title Page
Copyright
First Page
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
More than a year had passed since his return from the Skull Kingdom, and Shea Ohmsford was finally beginning to sleep through the night. For a long time, that had been unthinkable. Nightmares of what had been—and what might have been—plagued him like demon-spawn, startling him awake and rendering him sleepless afterward. The hauntings drained him, and for a time he believed he was in danger of dying. He lost weight, color, and spirit. He lacked not only the energy to do his regular work at the inn, but the will to do much of anything else.
Then Flick, his always-brother and forever-best-friend, took the unusual step of visiting a woodswoman who specialized in potions and spells to cure maladies and who, it was said, could divine the future. Her name was Audrana Coos, and she was neither young nor old, but somewhere between, and she was a recluse and an object of constant derision by all but those who had gone to her for help. Flick, never given to anything that wasn’t practical and solidly based in demonstrable fact—and who would never have gone to such a person before the quest for the Sword of Shannara—made a leap of faith. Or perhaps, more accurately, a leap of desperation. And he went to see her.
There, deep in the Duln, miles from his home, he sat at a table with this odd-looking woman with her hair braided in colored lengths, her face smooth as a child’s and painted with brilliant rainbow stripes, and her arms encased in gold and silver bracelets from which tiny bells dangled, watching closely as she read the waters of a scrying bowl and determined the merit of his cause.
“He is very ill,” she announced solemnly, her voice unexpectedly deep and scratchy. “He agonizes over what he might have done … and what he did. He is damaged by the closeness he experienced to the Dark Lord, and he festers with the poisons released in him due to his contact with the Skull Bearers. Long has his sickness waited for its chance, and now it breaks free of its fastenings and seeps through him. His life slips away.”
She paused, as if considering her own words, and then began rifling through shelves of tiny bottles, leather sacks laced tight with drawstrings, and packets whose contents were hidden from Flick, her slender hands closing at last on a small brown bottle that she handed to him.
“You must give him this,” she told him. “Do so in secret; do not let him see you do it. If he sees you, he may resist. Give it all to him in a single serving. Mix it with a drink he enjoys and make certain he drinks it down. All of it. Do it immediately upon your return.”
Flick studied the bottle doubtfully. “Will it cure him of his dreams and wasting sickness? Will he come back to the way he used to be?”
Audrana Coos put a finger to her lips. “Speak not of other possibilities, Valeman. Do not even think of them. Do not doubt what I tell you. Just do as I say.”
Flick nodded and got to his feet. “I thank you for your help. For trying to help my brother.”
He began searching for coins to pay her, but she waved him away. “I will not accept pay for giving aid to one who stood against the Warlock Lord. I will not profit from one who can be said to have saved the Four Lands and all those who dwell within.”
She paused, cocking her head to one side and looking down again into the scrye waters, which had suddenly begun to ripple anew. “A moment. There is something more.”
Flick peered down into the waters, but could see nothing.
“Be warned,” the seer whispered. “Not long after today your brother will journey to a faraway place on a quest of great importance. You will not wish it. You will not approve. But you cannot stop him, and you should not try.”
“This can’t be true,” Flick declared, shaking his head for emphasis. “Shea has said repeatedly that he will never go on another quest.”
“Even so.”
“He has said he will never put himself in danger like that again, and he is staying in the Vale with me and Father!”
“Nevertheless.”
Flick dismissed the reading out of hand. He rose, thanked Audrana Coos once more, and with the potion tucked into his pocket set out for home.
When he got there, late in the day, he considered his choices. Even though he had possession of the potion, he was not entirely convinced of its value. What was to say it would not prove harmful to his brother in spite of what he had been told? Maybe he had been deceived. Maybe the claims of effectiveness were exaggerated.
But he could not persuade himself that it was better to do nothing than to try something. There was about Audrana Coos a reassurance that he could not easily dismiss. There was a confidence and perhaps even a promise in her words that dispelled his doubts and persuaded him to proceed with his plan.
So he waited until a worn and ravaged Shea was finished with his afternoon nap, walked his brother downstairs from their rooms, an arm about his waist to steady him, and sat with him on the inn’s covered porch, watching the sun sink slowly behind the trees. Flick was animated and engaging on that afternoon as he related an imaginary tale of things he had never done, covering up the truth about where he actually had been. He worked hard to capture his brother’s full attention while encouraging him to drink down the tankard of ale he
had given him, remembering what Audrana Coos had told him—that all of the contents of the bottle must be consumed.
And in the end, it was. Shea, almost asleep by then, head drooping, eyes heavy, drank the last of his ale, and Flick caught the tankard just before it dropped from his brother’s hand.
Then he carried Shea to his room, tucked him into his bed, and went down to dinner alone. He ate in the dining room at a corner table, keeping to himself—his father was working in the kitchen that night—as he considered what he had just done and prayed to whatever fates determined such things that he had not made a mistake.
In the morning, when Shea woke and came down to breakfast, he looked much better. He was smiling and lively; he appeared to have begun his recovery.
“So you don’t feel sick anymore?” Flick asked happily.
His brother shook his head and grinned. “No. I can’t understand it. I feel like I used to. Much, much better.”
Flick said nothing then about what he had done. He watched his brother closely for almost two weeks, constantly looking for signs of a regression into the sickness, worrying that the potion’s effectiveness might not last. But at the end of that time, when Shea was still healthy and in all respects back to himself, Flick had to admit that the medicine Audrana Coos had given him had indeed worked.
It was then that he admitted the truth to Shea about what he had done, not wanting to keep anything from the brother to whom he told everything. He did so hesitantly, not certain what Shea’s reaction might be and anxious to be forgiven for his deception.
But Shea simply clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Well done, Flick. No wonder I love you so much.”
Emboldened, Flick then told him what the seer had said about Shea going on another quest—one that Flick would not countenance, but one his brother would undertake anyway.
Shea laughed. “I’m not going on any more quests, Flick. I’m all done with that sort of thing. I’m staying right here in the Vale with you.”