All of which would take time, but Walker needed that time to accomplish two things. First, he must wait for Quentin Leah and Bek Rowe to find Truls Rohk, then reach Arborlon. Second, he must confer with a seer.
Why a seer? Hunter Predd had asked as they flew aboard Obsidian across the peaks of the Irrybis toward Grimpen Ward. What need did they have of a seer when Walker had already determined the purpose of the map? But their journey, Walker explained, was not so easily fathomed. Think of the Blue Divide as a depthless void and its islands as stepping-stones. The stability of those stones and the dark secrets of the waters all around were unknown. The Addershag might help them better understand their dangers. She could see some of what would threaten, what would lie in wait, what would steal away their lives if they weren’t prepared.
A seer could always provide insights, and no seer could provide more than the Addershag. Her abilities were renowned, and while she was dangerously unpredictable, she had never been antagonistic toward him. Once, long ago, she had helped his cousin, the Elf Queen Wren Elessedil, in her search for the missing Elven nation. It was the beginning of a connection he had carefully preserved. The Addershag had accommodated him now and again over the years, always with a grudging nod of admiration for the magic he could wield, always with a veiled hint of warning that her own was a match. She had been alive almost as long as he had, without the benefit of the Druid Sleep. He had no idea how she had managed this. She was both burdened and conflicted by her talent, and her life was a closely guarded secret.
Walker was not certain that Hunter Predd could succeed in persuading her to speak to him. She might well refuse. But it made sense to try. If he were to accomplish anything, he would have to do so both swiftly and surreptitiously.
Still, he chafed at the waiting and the uncertainty, and wished he could involve himself openly. Time was precious and success uncertain. The Addershag’s aid was vital. She would never agree to go with him, but she could open his eyes to the things he must know if he were to go himself. She would do so reluctantly and with carefully crafted words and confusing images, but even that would help.
A soft rustle broke his concentration, and he looked up as Hunter Predd materialized out of the night. The Wing Rider was alone.
“Did you find her?” the Druid asked at once.
Hunter Predd shook his head. “She’s been dead five years. The woman who looked after her told me so.”
Walker took a long, slow breath and exhaled. Disappointment welled up inside. A lie? No, a lie of that sort wouldn’t stand up for long. He should have known of the seer’s death, but he had shut himself away in Paranor for the better part of twenty years and much of what had happened in the world had passed him by completely.
The Wing Rider seated himself on a stump and drank from his water skin. “There is another possibility. Before she died, the seer took an apprentice.”
“An apprentice?” Walker frowned.
“A girl called Ryer Ord Star. Very talented, according to the woman I spoke with. But she had some sort of falling out with the Addershag. The woman hinted that it had something to do with a flaw in the girl’s character, but wouldn’t say more. She said I should ask her myself if I wanted to know. She lives not far from here.”
Walker thought it through quickly, weighing the possible risks and gains. Ryer Ord Star? He had never heard of her. Nor had he heard of the Addershag taking an apprentice. But then he hadn’t heard of the seer’s death either. What he knew or didn’t know of the larger world the past few years was not the most accurate measure of its truths. Better to find things out for himself before deciding what was or wasn’t so.
“Show me where she is,” he said.
Hunter Predd led him along a series of trails that circumvented the center of Grimpen Ward and avoided contact with its denizens. Darkness hid their passage, and the forests were a vast, impenetrable maze into which only they appeared to have ventured. Distant and removed, the sounds of the village rose up in tiny bursts within the cloaking silence, and slivers of light appeared and faded like predators’ eyes. But both Wing Rider and Druid knew how to walk undetected, and so their passing went unnoticed.
As he slipped through the dark tangle of the trees, Walker’s thoughts crowded in on him. His opportunities, he sensed, were slipping away. Too many he had depended on were dead—first Allardon Elessedil, then the castaway, and now the Addershag. Each represented information and assistance that would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace. The loss of the Addershag troubled him most. Could he manage without a seer’s visions in this endeavor? Allanon had done so, years earlier. But Walker was not chiseled from the same rock as his predecessor and made no claims to being his equal. He did what he could with what he had, mostly because he understood the need for doing so and not because he coveted the role into which he had been cast. Druids had traditionally desired their positions in the order. The mold had been broken with him.
He did not like thinking about who he was and how he had gotten to be that way. He did not like remembering the road he had been forced to travel to become what he had never intended to be. It was a bitter memory he carried and a difficult burden he bore. He had become a Druid because of Allanon’s machinations and Cogline’s urgings and in spite of his own considerable misgivings because, in the end, the need for his doing so was overwhelming. He had never thought to have anything to do with the Druids, never thought to be part of what they represented. He had grown up with a determination to stay apart from the legacy that had claimed so many of his family—the legacy of the Shannara. He had vowed to take his life in another direction.
But this is old news, he admonished himself even as he remembered the early fire of his doomed commitment to change what was fated. He supposed what pained him most, what weighed so heavily on his conscience, was not the breaking of the vow itself, which he could justify in light of the need it served, but the distance he had strayed from his appointed path in taking up his role. He had sworn he would not be a Druid like those others, like Allanon and Bremen before him. He would not cloak himself in subterfuge and secrecy. He would not manipulate others to achieve the ends he wished. He would not deceive and misdirect and conceal. He would be open and forthright and honest in his dealings. He would reveal what he knew and be truthful always.
He marveled at how naive he had been. How foolish. How terribly, fatally unrealistic.
Because life’s dictates did not allow for quick and easy distinctions between right and wrong or good and bad. Choices were made between shades of gray, and there was healing and harm to be weighed on both sides of each. As a result, his life had irrevocably followed the path of his predecessors, and in time he had taken on the very characteristics he had despised in them. He had assumed their mantles more completely than he had ever intended. Without ever wishing it to be so, he had become like them.
Because he could see the need for doing so.
Because he was then required to conduct himself accordingly.
Because, always and forever, the greater good must be considered in determining his course of action.
Tell that to Bek Rowe when this is over, he thought darkly. Tell it to that boy.
They emerged suddenly from the forest into a clearing in which a solitary cottage sat dark and silent. Far removed from everything, the cottage was poorly tended, its windows broken, its roof sagging, its yard choked with weeds, and its gardens bare. It looked as if no one had lived in it for some time, as if it had been abandoned and let run to ruin.