He reached back over his shoulder to make certain that the Sword of Leah would slide free easily, took a deep breath, then walked up to the door and knocked. It opened almost immediately, and a girl with flaming red hair and emerald eyes stood looking out at him. She was flushed, as if she had just awakened, and her dark clothing was disheveled. She was tall, though not as tall as Matty, and very pretty.
“I’m Morgan Leah,” he said.
She blinked, then nodded. “Par’s friend, the Highlander. Yes, hello. I’m Damson Rhee. I’m sorry, I’ve been sleeping. What time is it?” She peered up at the sky through the trees. “Almost dusk, isn’t it? I’ve slept too long.”
She stepped back as if to go inside, then stopped and turned to face him again. “You’ve heard about Padishar, I suppose. Did you just get here?”
He nodded, watching her face. “I wanted to hear what happened from you.”
“All right.” She did not seem surprised. She glanced over her shoulder, then came out into the light. “Let’s talk out here. I’m tired of being shut away. Tired of being inside where there’s no light. How much did Chandos tell you?”
She moved away from the hut into the trees, a very determined stride, and he was swept along in her wake. “He told me that Padishar had been taken by the Federation when he and Par came to rescue you. He said Par had left you to go find Coll—that it had something to do with the Shadowen.”
“Everything has something to do with the Shadowen, doesn’t it?” she whispered, her head lowering wearily.
She walked over to one end of a crumbling log and sat down.
Morgan hesitated, still guarded, then sat with her. She turned slightly so that she was facing him. “I have a very long story to tell you, Morgan Leah,” she advised.
She began with finding Par and Coll after they had escaped the Pit in Tyrsis. She told of how they had decided to go back down into the Shadowen breeding ground one final time, how they had enlisted the help of the Mole and found their way through the tunnels beneath the city to the old palace. From there the brothers had gone off together in search of the Sword of Shannara. Par had come back alone, carrying with him what he believed to be the talisman, half-mad with grief and horror because he had killed his brother. She had nursed him for weeks in the Mole’s underground home, slowly bringing him back to himself, carefully bringing him out of his dark nightmare. From there they had fled from safe house to safe house, the Sword of Shannara in tow, hiding from the Seekers and the Federation, looking for a way to escape the city. Finally Padishar had found them, but in the process of yet another escape from the Federation, Damson herself had been taken. Padishar and Par had come back to rescue her, and that in turn had led to Padishar’s capture. Fleeing the city completely, because at last there was a way to do so and there was nothing they could do for Padishar without help, they had come north through the Kennon.
She touched his arm impulsively. “And what we saw, Morgan Leah, from high in the pass, far off in the distance beyond the Federation watch fires, but as clear as I see you, was Paranor. It is back, Highlander, returned out of the past. Par was certain of it. He said it meant that Walker Boh had succeeded!”
Then, growing subdued again, she described their journey back out of the pass and their fateful encounter with Coll—or the thing Coll had become, wrapped in that strange, shimmering cloak, hunched and twisted as if his bones had been rearranged. In the struggle that followed the power of the Sword of Shannara had somehow been invoked, revealing what Par now thought to be the truth about the brother he believed dead.
“He went after Coll, of course,” she finished. “What else could he do? I did not want him to go, not without me—but I did not have the right to stop him.” She searched Morgan’s eyes. “I am not as certain as he that it is Coll he tracks, but I realize that he must find out one way or the other if he is ever to be at peace.”
Morgan nodded. He was thinking that Damson Rhee had given up an awful lot of herself to help Par Ohmsford, that she had risked more than he would have expected anyone to risk besides himself and Coll. He was thinking as well that the story she had told him had a feeling of truth to it, that it seemed right in the balance of things. The doubts he had brought with him coming in began to fade away. Certainly Par’s persistence in going after the Sword of Shannara was in character, as was this new search to find his brother. The problem now was that Par was more alone than ever, and Morgan was reminded once again of his failure to watch out for his friend.
He realized Damson was studying him, a hard, probing look, and without warning his suspicions flared anew. Damson Rhee—was she the friend that Par believed or the enemy he sought so desperately to escape. Certainly she could have been the reason he’d had so many narrow escapes, the reason the Shadowen had almost trapped him so many times. But then, too, wasn’t she also the reason he had escaped?
“You’re not certain of me, are you?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”
She nodded. “I don’t know what I can do to convince you, Morgan. I don’t know that I even want to try. I have to spend whatever energy is left me finding a way to free Padishar. Then I will go in search of Par.”
He looked away into the trees, thinking of the dark suspicions that the Shadowen bred in all of them, wishing it could be otherwise. “When I was at the Jut with Padishar,” he said, “I was forced to kill a girl who was really a Shadowen.” He looked back at her. “Her name was Teel. My friend Steff was in love with her, and it cost him his life.”
He told her then of Teel’s betrayals and the eventual confrontation deep within the catacombs of the mountains behind the Jut where he had killed the Shadowen who had been Teel and saved Padishar Creel’s life.
“What frightens me,” he said, “is that you could be another Teel and Par could end up like Steff.”
She did not respond, her gaze distant and lost. She might have been looking right through him. There were tears in her eyes.
He reached back suddenly and drew out the Sword of Leah. Damson watched him without moving, her green eyes fixing on the gleaming blade as he placed it point downward in the earth between them, his hands fastened on the pommel.
“Put your hands on the flat of the blade, Damson,” he said softly.
She looked at him without answering, and for a long time she did not move. He waited, listening to the distant sounds of the free-born as they gathered for dinner, listening to the silence closer at hand. The light was fading rapidly now, and there were shadows all about. He felt oddly removed from everything about him, as if he were frozen in time with Damson Rhee.
Not this girl, he found himself praying. Not again.
At last she reached out and touched the Sword of Leah, her palms tight against the metal. Then she deliberately closed her fingers about the edge. Morgan watched in horror as the blade cut deep into her flesh, and her blood began to trickle down its length.
“A Shadowen couldn’t do that, could it?” she whispered.
He reached down quickly and pried her fingers away. “No,” he said. “Not without triggering the magic.” He lay the talisman aside, tore strips of cloth from his cloak, and began to bind her hands. “You didn’t have to do that,” he reproached her.
Her smile was faint and wistful. “Didn’t I? Would you have been sure of me otherwise, Morgan Leah? I don’t think so. And if you’re not sure of me, how can we be of help to each other? There has to be trust between us.” She fixed him with her gentle eyes. “Is there now?”
He nodded quickly. “Yes. I’m sorry, Damson.”
Her bound hands reached up to clasp his own. “Let me tell you something.” The tears were back in her eyes. “You said that your friend Steff was in love with Teel? Well, Highlander, I am in love with Par Ohmsford.”