He might, but not likely.
It always came down to the same thing. You could only rely on yourself. It didn’t matter about skills or experience or promises or good intentions or anything else when it came to placing your faith in another person—even someone you were close to, someone who had raised and nurtured and mentored you. You were always the first, best choice for making sure matters turned out the way you wanted. It wasn’t always possible for you to handle everything personally, but it was always possible for you to choose which things you would.
In this case, he had made a poor choice leaving Chrysallin Leah in the witch’s hands rather than keeping her close to him in Dark House.
Water under the bridge now. He would have to hope that either she was recovered so she could be treated further, or she would manage to find her way to Paranor and the Druids.
He leaned back in his chair, the lists and charts momentarily forgotten. He supposed his worldview was different from that of most, but he believed it the only realistic one. Strength was the measure of success, both physically and intellectually. Showing weakness led to failure, and any deviation from your goals only demonstrated your lack of commitment. The world did not give you anything for free; it did not provide help to those who did not look for opportunities and take advantage of them. Moral codes merely held you back; they placed unnecessary restrictions on your options and locked you in place. A willingness to ignore convention and rules was necessary if you were to achieve anything.
He knew how others viewed him. But how others viewed him was not his concern. None of those people would do anything for him. What they wished was to see him driven into the ground, a beaten man. They were jealous of his power and his achievements, and they hated him for his ability to do what they were afraid to do.
They called him wicked and evil; they labeled him a monster. It made them feel better to act as if he were a poison they must avoid at all costs. But strength did not come from belittling others and hiding away behind pretense and subterfuge. It did not come by doing what others thought admirable and consistent with their beliefs. It came from bold, determined action, from a willingness to ignore everything but the goal desired. It came from resilience and commitment.
His connection to and use of magic allowed for most of this. He could overcome almost anything simply by calling on what he had mastered over the years in the black arts. He had developed an affinity for using magic, an emotional and psychological bond that infused him with deep satisfaction when he summoned it, and while it might be argued that his attachment bordered on addiction, he felt the trade-off well worth it. Others might shy away, but they would never have what he did, would never attain what he had.
Thus, in this present situation, he was attempting something that no one had ever succeeded in doing, not just through careful planning and an understanding of how best to exploit weakness that others would not even recognize, but through fluid adaptation to changes and reversals such as the one involving the girl. He was attempting to bring down the Druid order.
Ambitious, yes. Impossible, no. It could be done, and he was in the process of doing it. If nothing further occurred to disrupt his already somewhat entangled plans, he would accomplish it within the month. And once he had done so, the benefits would be enormous. With the active support of his spy inside the order and the services he intended to exact from the recalcitrant and unreliable Fashton Caeil, he would become, overnight, the most powerful magic user in the Four Lands. He would be nicely positioned to see either the total destruction of the order or its rebuilding under his leadership.
He had barely completed that thought when one of the men he had sent out earlier appeared in the doorway, out of breath and redfaced.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.
“That Highlander is back. With one of the Druids. I just saw them land at the airfield. They’re on their way here. I ran all the way, just ahead of them, to tell you.”
Arcannen nodded, staying calm. “Go back downstairs and get something to eat. Stay there.”
When the man was gone, Arcannen considered his options. He wanted the Highlander and his sword, but the presence of a Druid complicated things sufficiently that he didn’t think engaging them at this point would be a good idea. Since he no longer had the sister, he had nothing with which to bargain. He could pretend he did, but it would be better to wait until he had the girl back in hand.
He picked up the charts and shoved them into a deep drawer, closed and locked it, and put the key in his pocket. If he hurried, he could get out of Dark House before they arrived. This is where they would come, searching for him, but if he wasn’t here they would be at a loss as to what to do. There were plenty of places he could go to ground until they lost interest or word reached him that Chrysallin was recovered.
Of course, there was always the danger they would stumble on a wandering Chrysallin Leah, but even that might work to his advantage. The boy would want to keep his sister safe. He would know he could not do that in Leah. So he would take her to Paranor and the Druids. Things would proceed from there as he had planned.
Meanwhile, he could put his time to better use. There were other pieces to his plan that needed setting in place.
He finished putting everything away, walked to the door, and peered out into the hallway. No one was visible. They couldn’t have gotten there this fast anyway, he chided himself. Why was he worrying about it? He went out into the passageway, started for the main stairs, and paused. Just in case, maybe he should avoid the main entrance.
He turned about and went the other way.
When he reached the back stairs, he started down.
Several blocks away, Chrysallin Leah was dreaming. She had fallen asleep again finally, exhausted from her struggle to remain awake, but had succumbed at last to the horror that waited. The gray-haired Elven woman was back, pursuing her through woods that were deep and dark and monster-haunted. She was everywhere Chrysallin looked, and it made no difference where the girl went or what she tried to do to escape. Her tormentor was always there, close at hand.
Other things hunted her, as well, their bodies shapeless and their faces blank and empty of expression. They crept through the shadows and out of dark holes. They dropped down from trees and walked out of walls of mist. They did not speak, but their intentions were clear. Even absent a show of teeth and claws, she knew they meant to hurt her. And she was already in so much pain, her body torn and ripped, her insides bruised and bleeding. No part of her had been left untouched when the Elven woman and her voiceless henchmen had tortured her earlier, and she remembered every last thing they had done to her.
So she darted here and there, turned this way and that, dodged the creatures that came at her, each time just barely avoiding them. But their pursuit was relentless, and she could not get clear. The chase went on and on, and her frantic, useless efforts drove her half mad …
Wake up!
Hands were on her, shaking her, holding her fast. She tried to cry out, but fingers sealed her mouth and would not let her.
“Chrysallin!” a voice hissed. Her eyes flew open, and Grehling’s face was right next to hers. “We have to go!”
She was hopelessly confused, still wrapped within the remnants of her dream. Where was she? The boy—she knew him, could almost speak his name—who was he? She tried to sit up, but her body screamed with pain, and she lay down again at once.
“Chrysallin, look at me!” he snapped, taking hold of her shoulders. “The witch is after us! Mischa! She’s sent something to find us. It’s right outside the door!”
She went cold all over at the mention of Mischa, and recognition came flooding back in a series of images and memories. Ignoring the pain, she struggled up, his strong hands helping her to her feet. A faint wash of light penetrated the curtains covering the front window, and she caught a glimpse of something big and black moving past, just outside the building wall.
The creatures in the dreams! They�
��ve found me!
Panic surged through her, and she backed away hurriedly, looking around for an escape. She saw Leofur Rai then, standing not six feet away, facing the door, a sleek metallic weapon cradled in her arms, pointed forward. Chrysallin had never seen anything like it. It was encased in black metal with a stock and barrel, and she could see Leofur’s finger resting on a trigger near the joinder of the two.
The young woman glanced over and gestured with her head. “Get out of here, both of you! Go down the trapdoor in the floor behind you. Go now!”
Grehling was hustling her backward, away from whatever was waiting just outside the front door. She heard a scratching sound and saw the door handle lever downward and catch on the lock.
“Quickly!” Leofur hissed. “There’s no—”
In the next instant the door burst inward, torn from its hinges as a huge black shape appeared in the opening. Leofur’s weapon discharged a fireball that shot across the space separating her from the intruder and exploded into it with such force that it was thrown backward through the doorway and into the street.
By then Grehling was shoving Chrysallin through the trapdoor and down the ladder to the passageway below, practically leaping after her. A moment later Leofur reappeared, clambering down to join them, pulling and bolting the trapdoor behind her.
She pulled out a smokeless torch from a niche in the wall and lit it. “This way,” she said without preamble, starting down the passageway, smoke curling from the barrel of the strange weapon.
“Did you kill it?” Chrysallin heard Grehling ask breathlessly as he rushed her along through the near darkness.
“Didn’t do much of anything to it. Confused it, maybe.” She didn’t look around, didn’t slow. “Keep going.”
The corridor ahead branched, and she turned left. The passageway twisted and turned with sets of stairs and ladders leading upward all along the way.
“What is that thing you used on it?” the boy persisted. “I’ve never seen one before.”
“There aren’t many,” Leofur shot back over her shoulder. Her eyes were dark with anger and frustration. “They’re still experimental, a part of the Federation’s weapons development program. Handheld flash rips.”
“How did you get one?”
She glanced back at him. “Contacts in my business. A bargain, a trade. What difference does it make? It wasn’t enough to stop that thing back there, was it? What have you gotten me into, Grehling?”
Not him, Chrysallin thought, not him. What have I gotten us into? I’m the one responsible.
Behind them, they heard a prolonged ripping of metal and wood. The trapdoor was open.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry! She screamed it in silence, screamed it to no one and everyone. So sorry!
She was coming apart again, the momentary sense of balance she had achieved when the creature had broken down the door and she had begun her flight thrown off kilter. The nightmares were back, the face of the gray-haired Elven woman right in front of her eyes, the pain and anguish surging through her in waves. She could feel herself moving, but was losing all sense of what she was about.
“Up here!” Leofur hissed at them as they reached a set of wooden steps cut into the earth.
They scrambled up to another trapdoor, which the young woman threw open, leading them through in a rush. When they were free of the tunnels, she dropped the door back into place once more and sealed it with locking bolts. They were standing in a warehouse, the space cavernous and dark. Crates were stacked against the walls and piled up in the center of the room. Windows set high up near the eaves let in what little light the room allowed.
With Leofur still leading the way, they rushed across the space, skirting the stacks of boxes and crates, to where a small door opened near the rear of the building and led back out onto the streets. They emerged panting for breath, their strength sapped, but their fear of what tracked them providing fresh resolve.
Leofur wheeled on the other two, the weapon held ready, the barrel still smoking. “We have to go to the airfield, Grehling. I don’t care what’s waiting there. That thing found us once; it will find us again.” She thrust the flash rip at him. “If this won’t stop it, I don’t know what will. We have to get out of the city!”
Grehling nodded. “All right. We’ll find a way. Chrysallin! You have to stay on your feet. You can’t fall! Can you do it?”
There was nothing she could say. She didn’t think she could make it to the next corner, let alone to the airfield. Her mind wandered momentarily, and she wondered where she was and where Paxon was and why she was hurting so badly. She wondered if the terrifying Elven woman was anywhere close. Or Mischa.
Mischa!
Suddenly she was looking right at her, standing not ten feet away.
Chrysallin screamed.
TWENTY-ONE
PAXON AND STARKS HAD JUST FINISHED THE CLIMB TO THE second floor of Dark House and were rounding the corner to begin their ascent to the third when Arcannen appeared above them coming down. They saw one another at the same time and all three immediately stopped where they were.
“I want my sister, Arcannen!” Paxon shouted up to him.
The sorcerer seemed nonplussed. Then he smiled. “We all want the same thing, boy,” he called down. “All three of us. I don’t have her. I don’t know where she is. Like you, I’m looking for her.”
“You’re not trying to tell us you didn’t take her, are you?” Starks demanded.
Arcannen shook his head. “I took her. I brought her here. I intended to bargain her back to the boy in exchange for his sword and his services. I admit that. But she escaped me. I don’t know how she did it, but she did.”
“You want us to believe she’s not here?” Paxon snapped angrily.
“I don’t much care what you believe. I have no purpose in lying. You’ll search Dark House in any event, but you won’t find her. Not if you look until next year’s turn to summer. She’s gone, and that’s the truth, like it or not.”
Starks gave him a look. “I might better be willing to believe you if I could have a quick look into your mind. A touch or two would be enough, and I can know for certain if you are speaking the truth. Do you object to waiting where you are until I can come up and do this?”
“Now, there is a request almost no one else in the Four Lands would dare to make of me, Druid. Actually, I do object. Strenuously. I don’t like others laying hands on me if they aren’t meant to offer pleasure. Take my word or leave it. That’s all you are entitled to.”
Starks shook his head slowly. “You’ve stolen the girl away twice now. You have violated her rights and broken the laws of numerous lands. I think you have forsaken any entitlements. You are probably entitled to common justice, but nothing more.”
Arcannen’s face darkened. “You will never be my judge. Not you or any of your kind. And not that callow boy you bring with you on this fool’s errand. Back down those stairs immediately or be prepared to be judged yourself.”
Paxon started past Starks, drawing out the Sword of Leah. “I’ve had enough of you—”
But Starks grabbed him and threw both of them down on the stairs, just as a rush of fire burned through the air not a foot above their heads, trailing heat and smoke and exploding into the wall on the landing below. For a moment, they lay where they were, the air about them obscured by smoke and ash, and then Starks was on his feet, pulling the Highlander up with him.
“Kindly don’t do that again!” he snapped.
They rushed up the stairs to the third floor, but Arcannen was already gone. They cast about hurriedly for some indication of where he had gone, then Starks sprinted for the other end of the hallway and the front stairs. He reached them just in time to see Arcannen’s black robes flying out behind him as he leapt over the railing on the landing below all the way to the first floor and sprinted down the hall beneath them.
They gave chase, every bit as fleet of foot as their quarry, but cautious of what they might be runni
ng into. They flew down the stairs and then charged along the corridor the sorcerer had taken, barely avoiding a surprised guard coming the other way, bowling him over without stopping. They went through a doorway into an empty and darkened kitchen, catching sight of a door closing at the other end of the room.
“He’s got a bolt-hole somewhere!” Starks shouted as they ran. “He’s trying to reach it!”
He would find it, lock the way in, and go out the other end, Paxon realized. Anything to slow them down. Anything to lose them. But they couldn’t allow it. No matter if what he had told them was true or not, they had to catch him before he had a chance to get to Chrysallin.
Ahead a door slammed and locks snapped into place. They rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a small, ironbound oak door.
“Step back,” Starks said.
With both arms raised, he summoned a roiling ball of blue fire, broke it in half with his bare hands, and sent each part slamming into one of the hinges. The hinges melted in seconds, and the door sagged open. Starks wrenched it aside, and they charged into the room beyond. It was small and empty, a space for cleaning supplies. A window hung open at the far end, leading to the outside world. Starks hurried over, took a cautious look, and started to climb through, Paxon on his heels.
“Watch out!” the Druid shouted suddenly, throwing himself backward.
An explosion of fire erupted from without, filling the opening, engulfing Starks as he tumbled back into the room in a smoking heap. For an instant he was afire, and then a sharp gesture with one hand extinguished the flames and he was left singed and gasping for breath. Paxon rushed to help him to his feet, but the other pushed him away.
“That’s what happens when you get careless,” he said.
High Druid's Blade : The Defenders of Shannara (9780345540713) Page 23