He walked back with them to the skiff and retrieved supplies sufficient to last him a week. Then he embraced them hesitantly, Damson first, then Matty. The tall girl held him tightly against her, almost as if to persuade him of her reluctance to leave. She did not speak, but her hands pressed into his back, and her lips brushed his cheek. She looked hard at him as she broke away, and he had the feeling that she was leaving something of herself behind with him in that look. He started to give her a reassuring smile in reply, but she had already turned away.
When they were gone, faded into the mist that had settled over the river, he turned west toward his selected watch post and trudged into the growing dark. The clouds blanketed the skies from horizon to horizon, and the air had begun to cool. A wind had sprung up, gusting across the flats, sending dust and silt swirling into his eyes. Far west, the rain was a dark curtain moving toward him. He pulled up the hood of his forest cloak and lowered his eyes to the ground.
He had just reached his destination when the rain arrived, a downpour that swept across the plains in a rush and covered everything in an instant’s time. Morgan burrowed deep within the shelter of a broad-limbed fir and settled down against the base of the trunk. It was dry and protected there, and the storm rolled past leaving him untouched. The rain continued for several hours, then turned to drizzle, and finally stopped. The thunderheads passed east, the skies cleared, and the sunset was a red and purple blaze in the fading light.
Morgan left the shelter of the fir and found a stand of broad-leaf maple that allowed him to remain hidden while at the same time giving him a clear view of Southwatch and the Mermidon east, a large stretch of the Rainbow Lake south, and a cut through the hills below the Runne that funneled any land traffic that might approach the Shadowen keep from the north and west. It was an ideal position to observe everything for nearly a dozen miles. Good enough, he decided, and settled in to await the night.
He ate a little of the food he had brought and drank some water. He wondered if Damson and Matty had attempted a crossing of the Rainbow Lake before the storm had struck or if they had decided to wait. He wondered if they were camped somewhere along the river looking back across at him.
The light faded to gray, and the stars began to appear. Morgan stared down at Southwatch and wished he could see inside. He tried not to think too closely about what might be happening there. Too much imagination could be a dangerous thing. He studied the plains east, barren and stripped of life, a wasteland of brown earth and gray deadwood that radiated out from the tower of the Shadowen like a stain. The fringes, he noted, were already darkening as well, infected by the poison as it spread. Trees rotted and grasses withered. The bluff on which he sat was an island already at risk.
He unstrapped the Sword of Leah from his back and cradled it in his arms. A talisman against the Shadowen, Matty Roh had called it. But it was power, too, that stole your soul, and there was little that could be done to protect against it. Each time he used the magic, a test of wills resumed, his own and the Sword’s, both fighting for supremacy, struggling for control. Three hundred years ago Allanon had answered Rone Leah’s desperate, angry plea by bestowing a tiny part of the Druid magic on the ancient weapon, and the legacy of that gift or curse—take your choice—was a bittersweet taste that once experienced cried out for more.
As did the wishsong for Par. As did all the magic that ever was or had ever been—siren songs of power that transcended everything in their compelling, inexorable need to be sung.
He smiled darkly. Be careful what you wish for. Wasn’t that the old admonition to those who begged for what they did not have?
The smile faded. Maybe he would find out when it came time to summon the Sword’s magic again—as summon it he surely must, sooner or later. Maybe Quickening’s healing touch, the magic that had restored his talisman, would prove in the end to be as killing as that of the Shadowen.
The thought left him feeling cold and empty and impossibly alone. He sat motionless in the shadows, staring out across the countryside, waiting for the darkness to claim it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Three days earlier another storm had passed, one markedly more violent, a torrential downpour riddled by explosions of thunder and flashes of lightning and driven by a rough-faced howling wind, the sort of deluge that came and went regularly in the Borderlands with the buildup of late summer pressure and heat. It swept into Callahorn at dusk, inundated the land through the night, and disappeared south with the coming of dawn.
In the wake of its passing a solitary figure rose from the sodden earth at the edge of the Rainbow Lake, muddied beyond recognition and stooped as if weighed down with chains.
Dark eyes blinked and tried to focus. The day was late in waking, worried perhaps that the storm might return, dark-edged clouds lingering fitfully in the leaden skies, sunrise iron-gray and cautious as it eased back the night’s stubborn shadows. The figure stared out at the flat expanse of the lake, at the light east, at the skies, at a world that was clearly unfamiliar. One hand held a sword that glimmered faintly where the grass and mire caked on it were scraped down to the metal. The figure hesitated uncertainly, then stumbled to the edge of the lake and submerged hands and face and finally body as well, washing and rinsing down to a tangle of rags and bare skin.
Mud and debris swirled away in the dark waters, and Coll Ohmsford rose to look about.
At first he could not remember anything beyond who he was—though he was quite determined of that, as if perhaps his identity had been in doubt once. He recognized the Rainbow Lake, the ground upon which he stood, and the country that surrounded him. He was standing on the lake’s southern shore west of Culhaven and north of the Battlemound. But he did not know how he had gotten there.
He looked down at the blade in his hand (Had he managed to wash himself without releasing it?) and realized that he was holding the Sword of Shannara.
And then the memories came back in a rush that caused him to gasp and double over as if a blow had been delivered to his stomach. The images hammered at him. He had been captured by the Shadowen and imprisoned at Southwatch. He had managed an escape, but in truth Rimmer Dall had managed it for him. He had been tricked into believing that the Mirrorshroud would conceal him when in truth it had subverted him in ways he did not care to recall, turning him into one of them, making him over in their image. He had lost control of himself, becoming something very close to animal, scouring the countryside in search of his brother, Par, seeking him without clear reason or purpose beyond a vague intention to cause him harm. Cloaked in the Mirrorshroud’s dark folds, he had tracked, found, and attacked his brother...
He was breathing rapidly through his mouth. His chest tightened and his stomach churned.
His brother.
... and tried to kill him—and would have, if something hadn’t stopped him, hadn’t driven him away.
He shook his head, fighting through the maze of memories. He had fled from Par confused and maddened, torn between who he had been and what he had become. He had drawn Par after, barely aware of what he was doing, fleeing by day, seeking by night, hunting always, lost somewhere deep within himself. Hatred and fear drove him, but their source was never clear. He could feel the Mirrorshroud’s hold on him beginning to loosen, yet was undecided whether or not that was good. He was changing back again, but could not come the whole distance, still bound by the Shadowen magic, still held within its thrall. In darkness he would return to find his brother, thinking to kill him, thinking at the same time to find salvation, the thoughts twisting about each other like snakes. Follow me! he had prayed to Par—then sought to run so fast and so far that his brother couldn’t.