When he finally woke, the light had gone silver, and the day was fading rapidly into dusk. He lay blinking sleepily for a moment, then realized that Damson had not returned. She had been gone almost ten hours. He rose quickly, worried now, thinking that she should have been back long ago. It was possible that she had come in and gone out again, but not likely. She would have woken him. He would have woken himself. He frowned darkly, uneasily, twisted his body from side to side to ease the kinks, and wondered what to do.
Hungry, in spite of his concern, he decided to eat something, and finished off the last of the cheese and bread. There was a little ale in the stoppered skin, but it tasted stale and warm.
Where was Damson?
Par Ohmsford had known the risks from the beginning, the dangers that Damson Rhee faced every time she left him and went out into the city. If the Mole was captured, they would make him talk. If the safe holes were compromised, she might be, too. If Padishar was taken, there were no secrets left. He knew the risks; he had told himself he had accepted them. But faced for the first time since escaping from the sewers that the worst had happened, he found he was not prepared after all. He found that he was terrified.
Damson. If anything had happened to her...
A scuffing sound caught his attention, and he left the thought unfinished. He started, then wheeled about, searching for the source of the noise. It was behind him, at the top of the stairs, at the door leading to the street.
Someone was playing with the lock.
At first he thought it must be Damson, forced for some reason to try to enter through the back. But Damson did not have a key. And the sound he was hearing was of a key scraping in the lock. The fumbling continued, ending in a sharp snick as the lock released.
Par reached down for the Sword of Shannara and strapped it quickly across his back. Whoever was up there, it was not Damson. He snatched up the backpack, thinking to hide any trace of his being there. But his bootprints were everywhere, the bed was mussed, and small crumbs of food littered the table. Besides, there was no time. The intruder had lifted the lock from its hasp and was opening the door.
Daylight flooded through the opening, an oblique shaft of wan gray. Par backed hastily from the room into the tunnels. He left the torch. He no longer needed it to find his way. The morning’s explorations had left him with a clear vision of which way to go, even in the near dark. Boots thudded softly on the wooden steps, too heavy and rough to be Damson’s.
He went down the tunnel in a noiseless crouch. Whoever had entered would know he had been there, but would not know how long ago. They would wait for him to return, thinking to catch him unprepared. Or Damson. But he could wait for Damson somewhere close to the entrance to the old mill and warn her before she entered. Damson would never come through the back entrance with the lock sprung. His thoughts raced through his mind in rapid succession, propelling him on through the darkness, silent and swift. All he had to do was escape detection, to get back through the cellar and out the door to the street.
He could no longer hear footsteps. Good. The intruder had stopped to view the room, was wondering who had been there, how many of them there had been, and why they had come. More time for Par to get away, a better chance for him to escape.
But when he reached the cellar, he moved too quickly toward the stairs leading up and stumbled into an empty wooden crate, tripped, and fell. The rotting wood cracked and splintered beneath him, the sound reverberating sharply through the silence.
As he pulled himself back to his feet, furious, breathless, he could hear the sound of footsteps coming toward him.
He broke for the stairs, no longer bothering to hide his flight The footsteps gave chase. Not Shadowen, he thought—they would be silent in their coming. Federation, then. But only one. Why just one?
He gained the stairs and scrambled up The trapdoor was a faint silhouette above. He wondered suddenly if others might be waiting above, if he was being driven into a trap. Should he stand his ground and face the one rather than allow himself to be herded toward the others? But it was all speculation, and besides there wasn’t time left to decide. He was already at the trapdoor.
He shoved upward against it. The trapdoor did not move.
Shafts of fading daylight found their way through gaps in the heavy wooden boards and danced off his sweat-streaked face, momentarily blinding him. Lowering his head, he shoved upward a second time. The door was solidly in place. He squinted past the light, trying to see what had happened.
Something large and bulky was sitting atop the front edge of the trapdoor.
In desperation, he threw himself against the barrier, but it refused to budge. He backed down the steps, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. His heart was beating so loudly in his ears he could barely manage to hear the muffled voice that called his name.
“Par? Par Ohmsford?”
A man, someone he knew it seemed, but he wasn’t sure. The voice was familiar and strange all at once. The speaker was still back in the tunnels, lost in the darkness. The gristmill cellar stretched low and tight to the dark opening, dust motes dancing on the air in the gloom, a haze that turned everything to shadow. Par looked at the trapdoor once more, then back again at the cellar.
He was trapped.
The line of his mouth tightened. Sweat was running down his body in the wake of his exertion and fear, and his skin was crawling.
Who was back there?
Who was it who would know his name?
He thought again of Damson, wondering where she was, what had become of her, whether she was safe. If she had been taken, then he was the only one left she could depend upon. He could not let himself be captured because then there would be no one to help her. Or him. Damson. He saw her flaming red hair, the quirk of her mouth as she smiled at him, and the brightness of her green eyes. He could hear her voice, her laughter. He could feel her touching him. He remembered how she had worked to save his life, to keep him from the madness that had claimed him when Coll had died.
The feelings he experienced in that instant were overwhelming, so intense he almost cried them out.
Anger and determination replaced his fear. He reached back and started to draw free the Sword of Shannara, then let it slip back into its sheath. The Sword was meant for other things. He would use his magic, use it even though it frightened him now, an old friend who had turned unexpectedly strange and unfamiliar. The magic was unreliable, quixotic, and dangerous.
And of questionable use, he realized suddenly, if what he faced was human.
His thoughts scattered, leaving him bereft of hope. He reached back a second time and pulled free the Sword. It was his only weapon after all.
A shadow appeared at the mouth of the tunnel, breath hissing softly in the sudden silence, a cloaked form, dark and featureless in the failing light. A man, it looked, taller than Par and broader as well.
The man stepped clear of the dark and straightened. He started forward and then abruptly stopped, seeing Par crouched on the cellar stairs, weapon in hand. The long knife in his own hand glinted dully. For an instant they faced each other without moving, each trying to identify the other.
Then the intruder’s hands reached up slowly and slid back the hood of his dusty black cloak.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Triss straightened, his movements leaden and stiff. They stared wordlessly at one another, the Captain of the Home Guard, Wren, and Garth, faceless in Morrowindl’s vog-shrouded night. They stood like statues about the crumpled form of Dal, as if sentinels set at watch, frozen in time. They were all that remained of the company of nine who had set out from beneath Killeshan’s shadow to bear Arborlon and the Elves from their volcanic grave to life anew within the forests of the Westland. Three, Wren emphasized through her anguish, for Gavilan was lost to them as surely as her own innocence.