Par nodded, the Sword still balanced on his knees. Padishar glanced down at it as he crossed the room. Par let his grip loosen. “What time is it?” he asked.
“Midday. The Mole hasn’t come back. I went out because I thought I might be able to learn something about Damson on my own. Ask a few questions. Poke my nose in a few holes.” He shook his head. “It was a waste of time. If the Federation has her, they’re keeping it quiet.”
He slumped down on the sofa, looking worn and discouraged. “If he isn’t back by nightfall, I’ll go out again.”
Par leaned forward. “Not without me.”
Padishar glanced at him and grunted. “I suppose not. Well, Valeman, perhaps we can at least avoid another trip down into the Pit ...”
He stopped, aware suddenly of what that implied, then looked away uncomfortably. Par lifted the Sword of Shannara from his knees and placed it next to him on the floor. “She told me that you were her father, Padishar.”
The big man stared at him wordlessly for a moment, then smiled faintly. “Love seems to cause all sorts of foolish talk.”
He rose and walked to the table. “I’ll have something to eat now, I think.” He wheeled about abruptly, and his voice was as hard as stone. “Don’t ever repeat what you just said. Not to anyone. Ever.”
He waited until Par nodded, then turned his attention to putting together a meal. He ate from the same scraps of food as the Valeman, adding a bit of dried beef he scavenged from a food locker. Par watched him without comment, wondering how long father and daughter had kept their secret, thinking how hard it must have been for both of them. Padishar’s chiseled features lowered into shadow as he ate, but his eyes glittered like bits of white fire.
When he was finished, he faced Par once more. “She promised—she swore—never to tell anyone.”
Par looked down at his clasped hands. “She told me because we both needed to have some reason to trust the other. We were sharing secrets to gain that trust. It was right before we went down into the Pit that last time.”
Padishar sighed. “If they find out who she is—”
“No,” Par interrupted quickly. “We’ll have her back before then.” He met the other’s penetrating gaze. “We will, Padishar.”
Padishar Creel nodded. “We will, indeed, Par Ohmsford. We will, indeed.”
It was several hours later when the Mole appeared soundlessly through the entryway, sliding out of the dark like one of its shadows, eyes blinking against the candlelight. His fur stood on end, bristling from his worn clothes and giving him the look of a prickly scrub. Wordlessly he moved to extinguish several of the lights, leaving the larger part of his chambers shrouded once more in the darkness with which he was comfortable. He scooted past to where his children sat clustered on the floor, cooed softly to them for a moment, gathered them up tenderly, and carried them back to the sofa.
He was still arranging them when Padishar’s patience ran out.
“What did you find out?” the big man demanded heatedly. “Tell us, if you think you can spare the time!”
The Mole shifted without turning. “She is a prisoner.”
Par felt the blood drain from his face. He glanced quickly at Padishar and found the big man on his feet, hands clenched.
“Where?” Padishar whispered.
The Mole took a moment to finish settling Chalt against a cushion and then turned. “In the old Legion barracks at the back of the inner wall. Lovely Damson is kept in the south watch-tower, all alone.” He shuffled his feet. “It took me a long time to find her.”
Padishar came forward and knelt so that they were at eye level. The scratches on his face were as red as fire. “Have they...” He groped for the words. “Is she all right?”
The Mole shook his head. “I could not reach her.”
Par came forward as well. “You didn’t see her?”
“No.” The Mole blinked. “But she is there. I climbed through the tower walls. She was just on the other side. I could hear her breathe through the stone. She was sleeping.”
The Valeman and the leader of the free-born exchanged a quick glance. “How closely is she watched?” Padishar pressed.
The Mole brought his hands to his eyes and rubbed gently with his knuckles. “Soldiers stand watch at her door, at the foot of the stairs leading up, at the gate leading in. They patrol the halls and walkways. There are many.” He blinked. “There are Shadowen as well.”
Padishar sagged back. “They know,” he whispered harshly.
“No,” Par disagreed. “Not yet.” He waited for Padishar’s eyes to meet his own. “If they did, they wouldn’t let her sleep. They’re not sure. They’ll wait for Rimmer Dall—just as they did before.”
Padishar stared at him wordlessly for a moment, a glimmer of hope showing on his rough features. “You might be right. So we have to get her out before that happens.”
“You and me,” Par said quietly. “We both go.”
The leader of the free-born nodded, and an understanding passed between them that was more profound than anything words could have expressed. Padishar rose and they faced each other in the gloom of the Mole’s shabby chambers, resolve hardening them against what most certainly lay ahead. Par pushed aside the unanswered questions and the confusion over the Sword of Shannara. He buried his doubts over the use of his own magic. Where Damson was concerned, he would do whatever it took to get her free. Nothing else mattered.
“We will need to get close to her,” Padishar declared softly, looking down at the Mole. “As close as we can without being seen.”
The Mole nodded solemnly. “I know a way.”
The big man reached out to touch his shoulder. “You will have to come with us.”
“Lovely Damson is my best friend,” the Mole said.
Padishar nodded and took his hand away. He turned to Par.
“We’ll go after her now.”
Chapter four
The man in the high castle was Walker Boh, and he walked its parapets and battlements, its towers and keeps, all of the corridors and walkways that defined its boundaries like the wraith he had been and the outcast he felt. Paranor, the castle of the Druids, was returned, come back into the world of men, brought alive by Walker and the magic of the Black Elfstone. Paranor stood as it had three hundred years before, lifting out of the dark forest where wolves prowled and thorns the size of lance-points bristled protectively. It rose out of the earth, set upon a bluff where it could be seen across the whole of the valley it dominated, from the Kennon to the Jannisson, from one ridgeline of the Dragon’s Teeth to the other, spires and walls and gates. As solid as the stone from which it had been built more than a thousand years earlier, it was the Keep of legends and folk tales made whole once more. But shades, Walker Boh thought in his despair, what it had cost!
“It was waiting for me down in the tower well, the essence of the Druid magic he had set at watch,” Walker explained to Cogline that first night, the night he had emerged from the Keep with Allanon’s presence at haunt within. “All those years it had been waiting, his spirit or some part of that spirit, concealed in the serpentine mist that had destroyed the Mord Wraiths and their allies and sent Paranor out of the land of men to wait for the time it would be summoned back again. Allanon’s shade had been waiting as well, it seems, there within the waters of the Hadeshorn, knowing that the need for the Keep and its Druids would one day prove inexorable, that the magic and the lore they wielded must be kept at hand against the possibility that history’s evolution would take a different path than the one he had prophesied.”
Cogline listened and did not speak. He was still in awe of what had happened, of whom Walker Boh had become. He was afraid. For Walker was Walker still, but something more as well. Allanon was there, become a part of him in the transformation from man to Druid, in the rite of passage that had taken place in the Keep’s dark hold. Cogline had ventured, in his spirit form, just long enough to pull Walker back from the madness that threatened to engulf him before he could come to grips with the change that was taking place. In those few seconds Cogline had felt the beginnings of Walker’s change—and he had fled in horror.