Nightfall came, and with it came Rimmer Dall once more. Par was looking for him this time, expecting him, anticipating him as he would thunder in a rainstorm. He heard the door latch give, saw it open, and watched the First Seeker come through. The black-cloaked figure moved to his chair without speaking and sat. They stared at each other in the silence, measuring.
“What have I not told you that I should?” Rimmer Dall asked finally, motionless in the growing shadows. “What answers can give?”
Par shook his head. The First Seeker had given him too many answers and too much to consider, and it tumbled about in his mind like colored glass in a kaleidoscope. A part of him continued to resist everything he heard, stubborn and intractable. It would not let him believe; it would not even let him consider. He wished that it would. His sleep was filled with nightmares, and his waking was crowded with a senseless warring of possibilities. He wanted it all to end.
He did not say this to Rimmer Dall. He asked instead about the sounds from within the castle, the thrumming through the walls, the pitch and whine, the sense of something stirring. The First Seeker smiled. The explanation was simple. What Par was hearing was the Mermidon passing through an underground channel that ran beneath the keep, its waters crashing against the walls of ancient caves below. At times you could feel the vibrations for miles about. At times you could feel them in your bones.
“Does it disturb your sleep?” the big man asked.
Par shook his head. The nightmares disturbed his sleep. “If I were to decide to believe you,” he said, letting the words slip free before his stubborn side could think better of it, “what would you do to help me control the magic of the wishsong?”
Rimmer Dall sat perfectly still. “I would teach you to manage it. I would teach you to be comfortable with it. You could learn how to use it safely again.”
Par stared straight ahead without seeing. He wanted to believe. “You think you could do that?”
“I have had years to learn how. I was forced to do so with my own magic, and the lessons have not been lost on me. The magic is a powerful weapon, Par, and it can turn against you. You need discipline and understanding to rule it properly. I can give you that.”
Par’s mind felt leaden and his eyes drooped. His weariness was a dark cloud that would not let him think. “We could talk about it, I guess,” he said.
“Talk, yes. But experiment, too.” Rimmer Dall was leaning forward, intense. “Control of the magic comes from practice; it is an acquired skill. The magic is a birthright, but it needs training.”
“Training?”
“I could show you. I could let you see inside my mind, let you see how the magic functions within me. I could give you access to the ways in which I block it and channel it. Then you could do the same for me.”
Par looked up. “How?”
“You could let me see inside your mind. You could let me explore and help set in place the protections you need. We could work together.”
He went on, explaining carefully, persuasively, but Par had ceased to hear, locked on something vaguely alarming, something that lacked an identity, but was there nevertheless. The stubborn part that refused to believe anything the First Seeker said had risen up with a gasp and closed down his mind like a trapdoor. He pretended to listen, heard bits and pieces of what the other was saying, and gave responses that committed nothing.
What was it? What was the matter?
After a time, Rimmer Dall left him alone. “Think about what I have told you,” he urged. “Consider what might be done.” The night settled in, and the darkness of Par’s chamber was complete. He lay down to sleep, exhausted without reason, then fought against the urge to close his eyes because he did not want the nightmares to come again. He stared at the ceiling and then out the windows at a sky that was clear and filled with stars. He thought of his brother and the Sword of Shannara, and he wondered what the King of the Silver River had done with them.
He thought of Damson and Padishar, Walker and Wren, and all the others who had been involved in his struggle. He wondered vaguely what the struggle had been for.
He slept finally, drifting off before he knew what was happening, sinking into a soothing blackness. But the nightmare surfaced instantly, and he experienced for the third time a confrontation with himself as a Shadowen wraith. He thrashed and twisted and fought to come awake, and afterward lay sweating and gasping in the dark.
He realized then, with chilling certainty, that something was dreadfully wrong.
Look at what was happening to him. He could not sleep without dreaming, and the dream was always the same. He ate, but he lost strength. He spent his time in his room doing nothing, yet he was always tired. He could not think straight. He could not concentrate. His energy was being sapped away.
This wasn’t happening by chance, he admonished himself. Something was causing it.
He sat upright on the bed, swung his legs to the floor, and stared into the room’s shadows. Think! He fought back against his exhaustion, against the chains of his lethargy and disorientation. Recognition came, a slow untangling of threads that had knotted. There were two possibilities. The first was that the magic of the wishsong was infecting him in some new way, and he needed to do what Rimmer Dall was urging. The second was that the magic infecting him was Shadowen, that Rimmer Dall was working to break down his defenses, and that all his talk about helping him was some sort of trick.
But a trick to do what?
Par took a deep, steadying breath. He wanted to crawl back beneath the covers but would not let himself. He felt an urge to scream and choked it down. Was Rimmer Dall lying or telling the truth? What were his real intentions in all this? Par clasped his hands together to keep them from shaking. He was falling apart. He could feel himself unraveling, and he did not know how to stop it. If Rimmer Dall was telling the truth about the wishsong, then he needed his help. If he was lying, it was a deception so intricate and so vast that it dwarfed anything the Valeman could imagine, because it had to have been at work from the moment the First Seeker had come looking for him weeks ago at the Blue Whisker Ale House.
Shades! I need to know!
Par rose, walked to the windows, and stood looking out at the night, breathing the cool air. He was paralyzed with indecision. How was he going to learn the truth? Was there some way to see past his own uncertainty, to recognize if there was a deception being played? The Sword of Shannara had showed him nothing, he reminded himself. Nothing! What else was there to try?
He watched shadows thrown by the night clouds shift like animals through the trees across the river. He would have to stall, he told himself. He could listen and talk, but he could not allow anything to happen. He would have to find a way to dispel his confusion so that he could recognize what was truth and what a lie, and at the same time he would have to find a way to keep himself from disintegrating completely.
He closed his eyes, put his face in his hands, and wondered how he was going to do that.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Heat rose off the grasslands east of Drey Wood in sweltering waves, the midday sun a fiery ball in the cloudless sky, the air thick with the smell and taste of sweat and dust. Wren Elessedil lay flat against the crest of a rise and watched the Federation army toil its way across the plains like a slow-moving, many-legged insect. Mindless and persistent, she thought bleakly. She did not bother glancing over at the others—Triss, Erring Rift, and Desidio. She already knew what she would see in their faces. She already knew what they were thinking.
They had been watching the Federation’s progress for more than an hour—not with any expectation that they would learn anything, but out of a need to do something besides sit around and wait for the inevitable. The Elves were in trouble. The Federation march north to the Rhenn had resumed two days ago, and time was running out. Barsimmon Oridio had finally completed the mobilization and provisioning of the main body of the Elven army and was headed east to the pass, a forced march that would bring the Elves into the Rhenn at least three days ahead of the enemy. But the Elves were still outnumbered ten to one, and any kind of direct engagement would result in their annihilation. Worse, the Creepers continued their approach, closer now than before, catching up quickly to the slower Southlanders. In four, maybe five days, the Creepers would overtake them and become their vanguard, the advance for a search-and-destroy action. When that happened, it would be the end of the Elves.