Triss rose at once. Tiger Ty rose with him, looking decidedly awkward. Then, to her pleasant surprise, Fruaren Laurel, who had not said a word the entire time, stood up as well.
She waited. Four stood, four remained seated. Of the four who stood, only three were members of the High Council. Tiger Ty was only an emissary of his people. If nothing changed, Wren lacked the support she needed.
She turned her gaze on Eton Shart, then held out her hand to him, a gesture at once conciliatory and challenging. He stared at her in surprise, eyes questioning. He hesitated momentarily, undecided, then reached out to accept her hand and rose. “My lady,” he acknowledged, and bowed. “As you say, we must stand together.”
Barsimmon Oridio rose, too. “Better a gamecock than a plucked chicken,” he grumbled. He shook his head, then looked at Wren with something akin to admiration in his aging eyes. “Your grandmother would have advised us in the same way, my lady.”
Jalen Ruhl and Perek Arundel stood up reluctantly, casting helpless glances at each other as they did so. They were not persuaded, but they did not care to stand alone against her. Wren gave them a gracious nod. She would take what she could get.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. She squeezed Eton Shart’s hand and released it. “Thank you all. Let us remember in the days that come what we have committed to this night. Let us remember to let our belief and trust in each other sustain us.”
She looked about the table, at each face, at the way their eyes were fixed on her. For that moment, at least, she had bound them to her, and she was indeed their queen.
Chapter Thirteen
Walker Boh deliberated for two days before he again tried to escape the Shadowen siege of Paranor.
Perhaps he wouldn’t have gone even then, but he found himself slipping into a dangerous state of mind. The more he thought about various ways of breaking free, the more it seemed he needed to consider further. Each plan had its flaws, and each flaw became magnified as it was held up this way and that for examination. Nothing he conceived seemed exactly right, and the harder he worked at discovering a foolproof method of gaining his escape, the more he began to doubt himself. Finally it became apparent that if he allowed himself to go on, he would lose all confidence and in the end be unable to act at all.
It was all part of a game that the Shadowen were playing with him, he was afraid.
His first encounter with the Four Horsemen had left him physically battered, but those injuries were not the ones that troubled him. It was the psychological damage that refused to mend, that lingered within like a fever. Walker Boh had always been in control of his life, able to manipulate events around him and to keep intrusions at bay. He had accomplished this mostly by isolating himself within the familiar confines of Darklin Reach, where the dangers to be faced and problems to be solved were familiar and within the purview of his enormous capabilities. He had command of magic, intelligence coupled with extraordinary insight, and other assorted abilities that ranged from the intuitive to the acquired—all of which were far superior to those of anyone against whom he chose to direct them.
But that was changed. He had crossed out of Darklin Reach and come into the outside world. This was his home now, the cottage at Hearthstone reduced to ashes, the life he had known gone into another time. He had traveled a road that had altered his existence as surely as dying. He had taken up Allanon’s charge and followed it through to its conclusion. He had recovered the Black Elfstone and brought back Paranor. He had become the first of the new Druids. He was someone entirely different than the person he had been only weeks ago. That change had given him new insight, strength, knowledge, and power. But it had also exposed him to new responsibilities, expectations, challenges, and enemies. It remained to be decided if the former would be sufficient to overcome the latter. For the moment at least, the matter was unresolved. Walker Boh might fall and be lost forever—or he might find a way to climb back to safety. He was a man hanging from a precipice.
The Shadowen knew this. They had come for him as soon as they had discovered that Paranor was returned. Walker was still a child in his role as Druid, and now was the time when he would be most vulnerable. Besiege him, frustrate him, distract his development, kill him if possible, but cripple him at all costs—that was the plan.
And the plan was working. Walker had come back into Paranor, after his first aborted attempt at escape, aware of several very unpleasant truths. First, he did not possess sufficient power to break free in a head-to-head confrontation. The Four Horsemen were his equal and more, their magic a match for his own. Second, he could not slip past them undetected. Third, and worst of all, their experience was superior to his own—and they did not fear him. They had come looking for him. They had done so openly, without subterfuge. They had challenged him, daring him to come out and fight them. They circled Paranor in open disdain of what he might do. He was a prisoner in his own castle, reduced to trying to come up with a plan that would let him be free, and the Four Horsemen were betting he couldn’t do it. It was possible, he was forced to admit, that they were right.
“You are working too hard at this,” Cogline advised him finally, finding him back on the walls, staring down at the wraiths circling below. He looked gaunt and pale, ragged and worn. “Look at you, Walker. You barely sleep. You take no notice of your appearance—you have not bathed since your return. You do not eat.”
A frail hand rubbed at the whiskers of the old man’s chin. “Think, Walker. This is what they want. They are afraid of you! If they weren’t, they would simply force the gates and finish this business. But that won’t be necessary if you can be made to doubt yourself, to panic, to forgo the caution and resolve that got you this far. If that happens, they will have won. Sooner or later, they think, you will do something foolish, and then they will have you.”
It was the most that Cogline had said to him since his return. Walker stared at him, at the ancient, weather-beaten face, at the stick-thin body, at the arms and legs jutting from his robes like poles. Cogline had welcomed him back with reassurances, but mostly he had seemed removed and distant—just as he had for those few days before Walker had first tried to go out. Something was happening with Cogline, some secret conflict, but Walker had been too preoccupied with his own problems then, as he was now, to take time to decipher what it was.
Nevertheless, he let the old man lead him down from the parapets to the inner shell of the castle and a hot meal. He ate without enthusiasm, drank a little ale, and decided that a bath was a good idea after all. He sat in the steaming water, letting it cleanse him inside and out, feeling the heat soothe and relax his body and mind. Rumor kept him company, curled up against the side of the tub as if to share its warmth. While Walker dried himself and dressed again, he pondered the enormous calm of the moor cat, the facade that all cats assumed as they regarded the world about them, considering it in their own impenetrable way. A little of that calm would be useful, he thought.
Then his thoughts shifted abruptly.
What was wrong with Cogline?
He left his own troubles behind with the bathwater and went out to find the old man. He came on him in the library, reading once more the Druid Histories. Cogline looked up as he entered, startled by his appearance or by something it suggested—Walker could not tell which.
Walker sat beside him on a carved, cushioned bench. “Old man, what is it that bothers you?” he asked quietly. He reached out to place a reassuring hand on the other’s thin shoulder. “I see the worry in your eyes. Tell me.”
Cogline shrugged in an exaggerated manner. “I worry for you, Walker. I know how strange everything seems to you since... well, since all this began. It cannot be easy. I keep thinking there must be something I can do to help.”