by Terry Brooks
Tay looked ahead again. Elven riders streamed out abreast of them in a ragged line, racing toward the sunset, past the abandoned outpost buildings and into the grasslands beyond. Tay tried to count their numbers, tried to determine if Jerle in particular was all right, but the landscape was clouded by dust and cloaked in a damp shimmer of late-afternoon heat, and he quickly gave up and concentrated all of his efforts on not falling off the horse.
The Elves joined up again not far beyond the outpost and began to pace their horses against the demands of their flight. Miraculously, all had escaped, most uninjured. Jerle Shannara was barely scratched. Tay discovered that he had been struck on the shoulder by a slinger’s stone and sustained a deep bruise. The numbness was already fading, replaced by a dull pain. Nothing broken, he decided, and pushed the matter aside. The Gnomes on horseback chased after them, swinging west across the grasslands when they realized that their quarry had broken through the trap in the cornfields. But they had already ridden their horses a long way to get this far, and they did not know the country as the Elves did. Taking the lead once more, Jerle Shannara chose the path most advantageous to his company. This was his homeland, and he knew it well. Where the land dipped suddenly, he could find the high passage. Where sinkholes or bogs threatened, he was forewarned to swing wide. Where rivers flowed swift and broad, he could point to the shallows. The chase wore on, but the Gnomes fell steadily farther behind, and by nightfall they were no longer visible against the darkening horizon.
Even so, and after they had slowed their horses to a walk to guard against injury in the dimness of the clouded night sky, they went on for a time, unwilling to risk a chance discovery. Jerle took them north along a creek bed, hiding their passing while changing their direction. The darkness cloaked them, a welcome friend. The heat of the day seeped away and the air cooled. A thin rain fell for a time, then passed on. They rode in silence, save for the splashing of the horses in the shallow water and, when they left the stream, the muffled thud of their hooves in the soft earth.
When he could do so safely, Tay bent close to Preia’s ear and whispered, “What happened to you?”
She glanced back at him, her eyes startlingly bright amid the crosshatched damage to her face. “A trap.” Her voice was a low, angry hiss. “Kipp had gone on ahead to secure the horses at the first outpost. I was scouting against discovery by the Gnome Hunters we had determined were in the area. But they were waiting for us. I was lucky. Kipp wasn’t.”
“We found Kipp, Jerle and I,” he said softly.
She nodded, no response. He wanted to tell her what he had done and why, but he could not bring himself to speak the words.
“How did they know?” he pressed.
He could feel her shrug. “They didn’t. They guessed. The outposts are no secret. The Gnomes knew we would come searching for the Black Elfstone. They simply waited for us. They are waiting at all of the outposts, I imagine.” She paused. “If they had known our plans exactly, if they had known how to find us, they would have gotten me as well as Kipp. But I found them just before they found me.”
“You had to fight to get away, though. We found your bow.”
She shook her head. “I was afraid you would. It could not be helped.”
“We thought . . .”
“I dropped it fleeing them,” she cut him off before he could say what they had thought. “Then I went after Kipp. That was where the fighting took place. At the outpost, just after they seized him. But there were too many for me. I had to leave him.”
The words were edged with bitterness. It had cost her to tell him this. “We had to leave him as well,” he admitted.
She did not turn. “Alive?”
He shook his head slowly.
He felt her sigh. “I could not get back to warn you. There were too many Gnomes between us. I had to go on ahead to try to secure the horses. I knew that without horses, we were finished. I thought, too, that I could draw some of them off.” Her laugh was small and hollow. “Wishful thinking, I’m afraid. Anyway, I was able to steal a horse from under their noses last night while they slept, ride it south to an outpost beyond the valley that I knew they would not have discovered, secure these horses we ride now, herd them back again, and hide until you appeared.”
Tay stared at her, astonished. “How in the world did you manage all that in one day?”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard.” There was a long pause, with only the soft thud of the horses’ hooves. “Not as hard as what you had to do.” She looked back at him once more, her smile sad and uncertain. “You did well, Tay.”
He forced himself to smile back. “You did better.”
“I wouldn’t want to lose you,” she said suddenly, and turned away.
He sat silent behind her, unable to offer a reply.
They rode on through the night and made camp just before dawn in a shallow ravine grown thick with slender-boughed ash and white birch. They slept only a few hours, rose, ate, and went on. The rain had returned, a steady drizzle, and with it a mist that clouded the whole of the land in roiling gray. The mist and the rain hid them, and so they pressed on through that day and the next and deep into the second day’s night, hidden from those who searched for them. Tay rode point with Preia Starle, using his magic to scan the heavy gloom, worried not so much that they might be discovered by Gnome Hunters as that they might accidentally stumble across them. They walked their horses most of the time, anxious to save their strength for when it would be needed and to guard against missteps in the rain-soaked earth.
Tay and Preia did not talk, concentrating on keeping watch, he with his magic, she with her eyes. But they pressed close against each other in the rain, and for Tay, that was enough. He allowed himself to imagine they meant more to each other than they did. It was a pointless exercise, but it made him feel for a short time as if he had found a place for himself in the world beyond Paranor. He thought that if he tried hard enough, perhaps he could find a way to belong again, even without Preia. He knew that she could not accompany him, but perhaps she could help him find a path. He held her loosely about the waist, shielding her from the weather with his taller frame, feeling the heat of her body seep into his. He wondered at how he had gotten to where he was in life. He wondered at the choices he had made and whether, if made over again, they might be different.
They slept near dawn of the third day, finding shelter this time in a grove of towering hardwoods set back within a blind draw at the edge of the Kensrowe. They had traveled far north of where they had come into the valley, and were now close to its west end. Ahead lay the dark stretch of the Innisbore and the pass through Baen Draw that would take them to the Breakline. Tay had found no trace of Gnomes that day. He was beginning to believe they had outdistanced their pursuers and would lose them for good in the tangle of the mountains ahead.
Tay rose early and found Jerle Shannara already awake, standing at the edge of the camp looking out into the new day. It was gloomy and dark once more, the weather unchanged.
The big man turned at his approach. “Tay. Too short a night, wasn’t it?”
Tay shrugged. “I slept well enough.”
“Not like you’re used to sleeping, though. Not like you did at Paranor with the Druids, in a bed, in a dry room, with hot food waiting when you rose.”
Tay moved up beside him, avoiding his gaze. “It doesn’t matter. The Druids are all dead. Paranor is gone. That part of my life is over.”
His friend’s blue eyes studied him shrewdly. “Something bothers you. I know you too well to miss it. You’ve been distracted these past few days. Is it Retten Kipp? Is it what you had to do to release him from his pain?”
“No,” Tay answered truthfully. “It is more complicated than that.”
Jerle waited a moment. “Am I to guess or would you rather I simply left the matter alone?”
Tay hesitated, not certain he wanted to give any answer at all. “It has to do with coming back to something after being
away for too long,” he replied finally, choosing his words with care. “I was gone from the Westland for fifteen years. Now I am back, but I don’t seem to belong anymore. I don’t know where I should be or how I should act or what I should do. If it were not for this search, I would be completely lost.”
“Maybe the search is enough for now,” his friend suggested gently. “Maybe the rest will come with time.”
Tay shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think I am changed and cannot change back again. Those years at Paranor shaped me in ways I did not begin to understand until now. I feel caught between who I was and who I am. I don’t feel like I am either one or the other.”
“But you have just come home, Tay. You cannot expect everything to feel the same at first. Of course it feels strange.”
Tay looked at his friend. “I think maybe I shall have to go away again, Jerle, when this is over.”
Jerle Shannara pushed back his blond hair from his eyes, the mist’s dampness glistening on his face. “I would be very sorry to see that happen.” He paused. “But I would understand, Tay. And we will still be friends forever.”
He put his hand on Tay’s shoulder and kept it there. Tay smiled in response. “We will always be friends,” he agreed.
They rode west once more into the damp haze. The rain quickened and turned heavier as the day wore on. They made their way across the last quarter of the Sarandanon, riders cloaked in the gloom, all but invisible even to each other. It was as if the world from which they had come and into which they were going had melted away. It was as if nothing remained but the small bit of earth across which they rode, materializing ahead, disappearing behind, never there for longer than the few moments it took to pass by.
They came to Baen Draw, the entrance through the Kensrowe to the Breakline, at dusk, came upon it as the light was failing completely. There they found the Gnome Hunters once more, and again the Gnomes were ahead of them. A large contingent had settled into the draw, blocking it against all passage. It was a different group from those who had attacked them in the east valley; these Hunters had been settled here for a long time. Preia Starle scouted ahead and found their camp. The camp, she reported, was old and established. The sentry lines stretched across the mouth of the draw, and there was no way to get past unseen. Avoiding the draw would do the job, but would add three days to the journey, and the Elves could not afford the delay. They would have to find a way to go through here.
After some consideration, they settled on a plan that relied mostly on surprise. They waited until midnight, then mounted up and rode directly for the pass. Hooded and cloaked, shrouded by night and the weather, they were barely visible to each other, let alone to the Gnome sentries watching for them. They rode without hurry, seemingly at ease, giving the impression that they belonged where they were. When they were near enough to the mouth of the pass to be challenged, Tay, who spoke any number of languages learned from his time at Paranor, called out to the Gnomes in their own tongue, behaving as if they were expected. Reinforcements, he advised casually, and the Elves rode closer.
By the time the Gnomes thought to act on their uncertainty, the Elves were on top of them, putting heels to their horses, and surging ahead into the draw. They rode directly through the camp, scattering fires and Gnomes in all directions, howling as if they were a hundred instead of a handful. The surprise was complete. The Gnomes rolled out of their bedding and gave chase, but by then the Elves were safely away.
But then their luck ran out. As a precaution against just such a breakdown, the Gnomes had established a second line at the far end of the draw, and these Hunters heard the warning cries of their comrades and were waiting as the Elves rode into them. Spears, arrows, and slingers’ stones flew at the Elves as they raced toward the end of the pass. There was no time to slow, to rethink their strategy, to do anything but bend low and hope they would break free. Jerle Shannara charged right into the thickest knot of attackers, fearless and unyielding. Weapons swung toward him and a hail of missiles sought to bring him down. But he was charmed, as always, and somehow he kept astride his horse and his horse stayed upright. Together they careered into the Gnomes, and Tay Trefenwyd watched bodies spin away like pieces of deadwood. Then Jerle Shannara was clear.
Tay and Preia escaped as well, the Tracker girl’s sturdy pony barreling past the crush of attackers along the left bank of the draw, then leaping a trip line that was meant to bring it down. Shouts of hunters and hunted alike mingled with the screams of horses. Riders shot past, disembodied shapes charging back and forth in the gloom. In desperation Tay used his magic to throw a screen around the remaining Elves in an effort to hide them from the Gnomes.
But when they reassembled several miles beyond the draw, six among them were missing. Now their number was reduced to eight, and the hundreds of Gnome Hunters that were scattered throughout the Sarandanon would converge on the pass and track them into the Breakline.
They would track them until they were found.
XV
By nightfall of the following day, the Elves were deep within the mountains. They had ridden on through the previous night after escaping the Gnome Hunters at Baen Draw, working their way up into the rugged foothills that fronted the Breakline, pressing on until the dawn light began to creep out of the east and spill down into the bowl of the Sarandanon. They had rested then for a few hours, risen, eaten, and gone on. The rains had ceased, but the skies remained clouded and gray, and mist hung across the hills in a thick blanket. There was a dampness in the air that carried the smell of earth and rotting wood. As they climbed higher, the hills turned barren and rocky, and the smell dissipated. Now the air was cool and sharp and clear, and the mist began to break apart.
Noon came, and they left the hills behind and wound their way up into the mountains. Jerle Shannara had already told the company that they would ride until dark, anxious to put distance between themselves and their pursuers, determined that before they stopped they would be on terrain that would not leave a trail that could be easily followed. No one argued the point. They rode obediently through the gloom and silence, watching as the mist cleared and the mountains rose before them. The Breakline was a wall of jagged rock, of peaks that soared skyward until they disappeared into the clouds, of cliffs that fell away in sheer drops of thousands of feet, of massive outcroppings and ragged splits formed by pressure in the earth from a time when the world was still forming. The mountains lifted to the heavens as if trying to climb free of the world, an outstretching of the arms of giants frozen by time. As far north and south as the Elves could see, the Breakline was visible against the sky, a barrier forbidding passage, a fortress against encroachment.
The Elves stared at the mountains in silence, and in the face of such permanence felt an unmistakable sense of their own mortality.
By nightfall, they had passed beyond the lower peaks and could no longer look back on either the foothills that had brought them up or the more distant valley of the Sarandanon. They camped in a grove of spruce cradled in a narrow valley tucked between barren peaks on which snow glistened in a thin, white mantle. There was fresh water and grass for the horses, and wood for a fire.
As soon as they were settled and had eaten, Preia Starle departed to backtrack their trail to determine if a pursuit had been mounted. While they waited for her return, Tay conferred with Jerle and Vree Erreden about the vision that had revealed the location of the Black Elfstone. Once more, he recounted its specifics, taking care to describe everything related to him by Bremen. Jerle Shannara listened carefully, his strong face intense, his gaze fixed and unwavering. Vree Erreden, on the other hand, seemed almost disinterested, his eyes straying frequently, looking off into the night in search of something beyond what Tay’s words could offer.
“I have never been to this part of the Westland,” he remarked when Tay had finished. “I know nothing of its geography. If I am to divine the hiding place we seek, I must first get closer to it”
“How helpfu
l,” Jerle ventured irritably. He had been watching the locat’s eyes stray as well and was clearly displeased with his attitude. “Is that the best you can do?”
Vree Erreden shrugged.
Jerle was incensed. “Perhaps you could do better if you had paid closer attention to what Tay was saying!”
The locat looked at him, squinting myopically. A slow fire kindled in his eyes. “Let me tell you something. When Tay Trefenwyd came to me to ask my help, I read his mind. I can do that sometimes. I saw Bremen’s vision, the one Tay just described, and my memory of it is quite clear. That vision is real, my friend, if it were not, I would not be here. It is real, and the place it shows is real, and of that much I am certain. Even so, I cannot find it without more than what I know right now!”
“Jerle, you have traveled this country often,” Tay broke in quickly, anxious to avoid a confrontation. “Is there nothing of what I have described that is at all familiar?”
His friend shook his head, a disgruntled look settling over his broad features. “Most of my travel has been confined to the passes—to Halys Cut and Worl Run, and what lies beyond. This particular formation of mountains—the twin peaks split like two fingers, in particular—sounds like it could be any of a dozen pairs I have seen.”
“But you’re not sure which?”
“What does it sound like to you?” his friend snapped.
“Which way do you think we should go, then?” Tay pressed. He could not understand the other’s uncharacteristic display of temper.
Jerle climbed to his feet. “How would I know? Ask ‘my friend’ the locat here to give you his best guess!”
“One minute,” Vree Erreden said quickly, and rose as well. He stood facing Jerle, small and slight in the other man’s shadow, but unintimidated. “Would you be willing to try something? I might be able to help you remember if you’ve seen this particular formation.”