by Terry Brooks
Saying nothing, he walked quickly to where Vree Erreden knelt. The locat grasped him immediately, sensing rather than seeing him, drawing him close. “The Black Elfstone,” he hissed through teeth clenched against some inner pain, “lies there!”
His hand, shaking, pointed at the garden.
Preia touched Tay’s arm gently so that he would look at her. Her ginger eyes were wary, guarded. “He went down the moment you left the stairs. Something attacked him. What’s happening?”
Tay shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
He reached for Vree Erreden’s hands and took them in his own. The locat flinched, then went still again. Tay summoned his magic, called up a healing balm, and sent it flowing into the other’s slender arms and body. Vree Erreden sighed and went still, his head drooping.
Preia looked at Tay, one eyebrow cocked. “Just hold him for a moment,” he said to her.
Then he rose again to stand with Jerle. “What do you suppose this garden is doing here?” he asked softly.
His friend shook his head. “Nothing good, if that’s where the Black Elfstone lies. I wouldn’t walk in there if I were you.”
Tay nodded. “But I cannot reach the Elfstone if I don’t.”
“I wonder if you can reach it even if you do. You said yourself that the vision warned that something wards the Stone. Perhaps it is this garden. Or something that lives within it.”
They stood close, staring into the tangle of vines and limbs, trying to detect something of the danger they sensed waiting. A soft wind seemed to ruffle the shiny leaves momentarily, but nothing else moved. Tay stretched out his arm and sent a feeler of Druid magic to probe the garden’s interior. The feeler snaked its way inward, searching carefully. But there was only more of what he could already see—the slender trees and vines with their shiny leaves and the earth from which they grew.
Yet he could feel life there, life beyond what the plants suggested, a presence strong and ancient and deadly.
“Walk with me,” he said to Jerle finally.
They left the company and began a slow, cautious exploration of the garden’s perimeter. The walkway was broad and unobstructed, so they were able to keep a wary eye in all directions as they proceeded. The garden ran for several hundred feet down one side, another hundred across, then several hundred back again. On each side, it looked the same—flowers along its border, trees and vines within. There were no paths. There were no indications of other life. There was no sign of the Black Elfstone.
When they were back where they started, Tay walked over to Vree Erreden once more. The locat was conscious again and crouched next to Preia. His eyes were open, and he was staring fixedly at the garden, although it seemed to Tay that he was looking at something else entirely.
Tay knelt beside him. “Are you certain the Black Elfstone is here?” he asked quietly.
The locat nodded. “Somewhere in that maze,” he whispered, his voice rough and thick with fear. His eyes shifted suddenly to Tay. “But you must not go in there! You will not come out again, Tay Trefenwyd! What wards the Elfstone, what lives in this place, waits for you!”
One hand came up to knot before his pain-etched face. “Listen to me! You cannot stand against it!”
Tay rose and walked over to Jerle Shannara. “I want you to do something,” he said. He was careful to make certain Vree Erreden could not hear. “Call the other Hunters over. Leave Preia with the locat.”
Jerle studied him a moment, then beckoned the remaining Elven Hunters to his side. When they were gathered about, he looked questioningly at Tay.
“I want you to take hold of my arms,” he told them. “Two on each side. Take hold, and no matter what I say or do, you are to keep hold. Do not release me. Do not react to anything I say. Do not even look at me if you can help it. Can you do that?”
The Elven Hunters looked at one another and nodded. “What are you going to do?” Jerle demanded.
“Use Druid magic to find what lies within the garden,” Tay answered. “I will be all right if you remember to do as I said.”
“I’ll remember,” his friend answered. “We all will. But I don’t like this much.”
Tay smiled, his heart pounding. “I don’t like it much either.”
He closed his eyes then and washed the others of the company from his consciousness. Gathering his magic to him, he went down inside himself. There, deep within the core of his being, he formed of the magic an image of himself, a thing of spirit and not substance, and dispatched it forth in a long, slow exhale of his breath.
He emerged from his corporeal body an invisible wraith, a bit of ether against the pale gray light of the ancient fortress. He slipped past Jerle Shannara and the Elven Hunters, past Preia Starle and Vree Erreden, toward the thick, green tangle of the silent garden. As he went, he came to sense more clearly the magic buried there. Old, wily, and established, it rooted deeper than the trees and vines that concealed it. It was the entity to which the lines of power that warded this fortress were attached. They grew from it as gossamer threads, entwining stone and iron, reaching from outer walls to tallest spires, from deepest cellars to highest battlements. They stretched across the chasm of the mountains where they breached against the sky, a vast concentration of thought and feeling and strength. He came up against their webbing and eased his way carefully past, sliding by without touching to continue on.
Then he was within the garden, wending his way through its maze, into the lush mustiness of earth and the sweet tang of leaves and vines. Everywhere, the garden was the same, deep and secret and enveloping. He sailed weightless and substanceless on a current of air, avoiding the lines of power that stretched everywhere, doing nothing to trigger a disturbance that might alert whatever watched to his presence.
He had penetrated so far into the garden that he thought he must be close to passing all the way through when he encountered an unexpected tightening of the lines of power at a place where the light seemed to diminish and the shadows to encroach once more. Here, the slender trees and vines disappeared. Here, darkness held sway. Bare earth lay revealed in a space where nothing grew and the diffuse light was absorbed as if water soaked into a sponge. Something unseen throbbed with the vibrancy and consistency of a beating heart, layered in protective magic, wrapped in blanketing power.
Tay Trefenwyd eased close, peering into the suffocating shadows, stealing past the warding lines. Within his guise, he stilled himself, and even the beating of his pulse, the whisper of his breath, and the shudder of his heart slowed to silence. He withdrew all but the smallest part of himself and became one with the darkness.
Then he saw it. Resting on an ancient metal frame into which runes had been scrolled and strange creatures wrought was a gem as black as ink, so impenetrable that no bight reflected from its smooth surface. Opaque, depthless, radiating power that was beyond anything Tay Trefenwyd had imagined possible, the Black Elfstone waited.
For him.
Oh, Shades! For him!
A moth drawn to a flame, he reached for it—impulsive, unthinking, unable to resist. He reached for it with the desperation and need of a drowning man, and this time Jerle Shannara was not there to stop him. An image only, a wraith without substance, he gave no thought to what he did. In that moment, reason was lost to him and his need was all that mattered.
That he was a ghost and nothing more was what saved him. The moment his hand closed about the Elfstone, he was known. He could feel the lines of power shimmer in response to his presence, feel them vibrate and whine in warning. He tried to draw back, to flee what was coming, but there was no escape. The watcher he had not been able to identify, the thing that lived within the ruins of the Chew Magna, took sudden, hideous shape. The earth trembled in response to its waking, and the vines that grew throughout the garden, limp and flaccid a moment earlier, thrust upward—become the coils of death of which Galaphile’s shade had warned. They whipped through the spaces between the slender trees like snakes, searching. Magic dr
ove them, fed them, gave life to them, and Tay Trefenwyd, even in his spirit form, knew them for what they were instantly. They fastened on his arms and legs, about his body and head, dozens strong, come from everywhere. They fastened, and then they began to squeeze. Tay could feel the pressure. He should not have, been able to do so—he had made himself a spirit. But the garden’s magic had the power to ferret him out even in this elusive form. Magic to hold magic—magic to destroy even a Druid. Tay felt himself being ripped apart. He heard himself scream in response—the pain a reality within his psyche. Gathering himself within the core of his shattered form, bringing the small part that mattered into a particle no larger than a dust mote, he hurtled out through a gap in the writhing mass of vines and into the light
Then abruptly he was back inside his body, twisting and screaming, arching as if electrified, struggling so hard to break free that it was all Jerle Shannara and the Elven Hunters could do to hold him. He gasped, shuddered, and collapsed finally into their arms, spent. He was drenched in sweat, and his clothes were ripped from his efforts to rid himself of their hands. Before him, the garden undulated with life, an ocean of deadly intent, a quagmire that nothing caught within could hope to escape.
Yet he had done so.
His eyes closed and tightened into slits. “Shades!” he whispered, fighting down his memory of the tenacious vines as they crawled over him, tightening.
“Tay!” Jerle’s voice was harsh, desperate. The big man held him, arms wrapped about his body. He trembled violently. “Tay, do you hear me?”
Tay Trefenwyd gripped his friend in response and his eyes snapped open. He was all right now, he told himself. He was safe, unharmed. He took a long, slow, steadying breath. He was returned to the living, and of the horror of the Black Elfstone’s dark magic he had discovered all that he needed to know.
He told the others of the company what he had learned. He gathered them close, all of them, for there was no reason they should not all know, and told them what had occurred. He did not lie, but he kept from them the darkest of the truths he had uncovered. He tried not to show how frightened he was, though his fear worked through him anew as he recounted the experience, a river vast and wide and deep. He kept his voice calm and steady and his story brief. When he was finished, he told them he needed to think awhile about what they should do next.
They left him alone save for Vree Erreden. The locat came away with him unbidden, and as soon as they were out of hearing of the others, he took Tay’s arm.
“You said nothing of the watcher. You did not name it, yet you must know its identity.” The thin, strong fingers tightened. “I sensed it waiting for you—you, in particular, as if you were special to it. Tell me what it is, Tay Trefenwyd.”
They moved onto the spiral staircase and sat together in the echoing silence of the fortress depths. Before them, the garden had gone still again, a garden once more, and nothing else. It was as if nothing had happened.
Tay glanced at the locat and then looked away. “If I tell you, it must remain between us. No one else is to know.”
Vree Erreden nodded. “Is it the Warlock Lord?” he whispered.
Tay shook his head. “What rules here is older than that. What lives in the garden is what once lived in this castle. It is a compendium of lives, a joining of faerie creatures, Elves mostly, that centuries ago were just as you and I. But they coveted the power of the Black Elfstone. They coveted it, and their need was so desperate that they could not resist. They used the Stone, all of them, together perhaps, or separately, and they were destroyed. I can’t tell how, but their story was made known to me. I could feel their horror and their madness. They are transformed, become the substance of this garden, a collective conscience, a collaborative power, their magic sustaining what remains of the fortress, gathered here, where all that is left of them has taken root in the form of these trees and vines.”
“They were human?” the locat asked in horror.
“Once. No more. They lost what was human when they summoned the power of the Elfstone.” Tay fixed him with a haunted gaze. “Bremen warned me of the danger. He told me that whatever happened, whatever the cause, I must not use the Black Elfstone. He must know what it would cost me if I did.”
Vree Erreden’s thin face lowered into shadow. His eyes blinked rapidly. “I could feel what lives here waiting for you—I told you that. But why does it wait? Does it seek its own kind, creatures of power, beings who have use of the magic in some form? Or does it ward against them? What drives it? It passed me by, I think, because my magic lacks definition and strength. My magic is instinct and vision, and it has no use for that. But, Shades, I could feel the darkness of it!”
He turned back to Tay. “You have a Druid’s power, and such power is infinitely more compelling. There can be no question that it either fears or covets your magic.”
Tay’s mind raced. “It protects the Black Elfstone because the Elfstone is the source of its power. And of its life. I threatened it by coming into the garden and disturbing the lines of power it has established. Does it know me as a Druid, though? I wonder.”
“It knows you as an enemy, certainly. It must, since it tried to destroy you. It knows you are not subverted.” The locat exhaled, a long, ragged breath. “It will be waiting for you to try again, Tay. If you go back into that garden, you will be devoured.”
They stared at each other wordlessly. It knows you as an enemy, Tay thought, repeating Vree Erreden’s words. It knows you are not subverted. He was reminded of something suddenly, but he could not think what. He wrestled with it for a moment before remembering. It was Bremen, changing his appearance, his form, his very thinking, so that he could penetrate the stronghold of the Warlock Lord. It was Bremen, altering himself so that he became one with the monsters that dwelled within.
Could he do that here?
His breath caught in his throat, and he turned away, unwilling to let Vree Erreden see what was in his eyes. He could not believe what he was thinking. He could not imagine he was giving the idea even the smallest consideration. It was insane!
But what other choice was left to him? There was no other way—he knew that already. He looked at the others sitting grouped at the edge of the deadly garden. They had come a long way to find the Black Elfstone, and none of them would turn back now. It was pointless to think otherwise. The stakes were too great, the price too high, for them to fail. They would die first.
Oh, but there must be another way! His mind tightened with the pressure of iron bands drawn taut. How could he make himself do it? What chance did he have? This time, should he fail, there would be no escape. He would be consumed . . .
Devoured.
He rose, needing to stand if he was to face this decision, needing to move away from his fear. He stepped down from the stairway, leaving the perplexed locat staring after him. He walked away from the others as well—from Jerle and Preia and the Hunters—to collect himself and take measure of his strength. A tall, gangly figure, he felt as worn and bent as the stone about him, and no less vulnerable to time. He knew himself for what he was—a Druid first, last, and always, but one of only a handful, one of an order that was in all probability moving toward extinction. The world was changing, and some things must pass. It might be so with them, with Bremen, Risca, and himself.
But they should not pass in quiet complacency, he thought angrily. They should not pass as ghosts, fading into mist with the coming of the new day, inconsequential things and only half-believed.
We should not be less than what we are.
Empowered by his words and armored in the strength of his convictions, he summoned up the last of his courage and called to Jerle Shannara.
XVII
There is a way to reach the Black Elfstone,” Tay said quietly to Jerle Shannara. “But only I can do it, and I have to do it alone.”
They stood apart from the others, Tay’s crooked smile belying the knot that tightened his throat. The day was beginning to fade toward
nightfall, the sun already gone west beyond the rim of the mountains surrounding them. He did not want to be caught down here in the dark.
Jerle studied him wordlessly for a moment “You require some use of the Druid magic, I gather?”
“I do.”
The shrewd eyes fixed him. “A disguise?”
“Yes. Of a sort.” Tay paused. “I would rather not explain the specifics. I would rather you simply trusted me. I need to be left alone, no matter what happens. No one must come near me until I say it is permitted. This will be hard, because you will want to do otherwise.”
“This will be dangerous.” Jerle made it a statement of fact.
Tay nodded. “I must go into the garden. If I do not come out, you are to take the company and return to Arborlon. Wait, hear me out,” he said, cutting short the other’s protest. “If I am killed, there is no one else who stands a chance. You have a brave heart, Jerle, but no magic, and you cannot overcome what lives in the garden without magic. You must go back to Arborlon and wait for Bremen. He will be able to help. We have found the Black Elfstone, so it only remains to discover a way to retrieve it. If I cannot, he must.”
Jerle Shannara put his hands on his hips and looked away in disgust “I am not much good at standing around while someone else risks his life—especially when it is you.”
Tay folded his arms across his chest and looked down at his feet. “I understand. I would feel the same way if our positions were reversed. Waiting is hard. But I have to ask it of you. I will need your strength later, when mine is gone. One thing more. When I come out again, when you see me, even if you are not sure it is me, speak my name.”
“Tay Trefenwyd,” the other repeated dutifully.
They stared at each other, thinking back on the years they had been friends, measuring what was being asked against their private expectations of themselves.
“All right,” Jerle said finally. “Go. Do what you must.”