She took a deep breath, and he found himself thinking suddenly of how warm her hand felt against his face. She seemed to read his thoughts and lifted it away. Her fingers trailed across his cheek.
He caught her hand in his and held it. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I was drifting in and out of nightmares about last night.” Her hand felt small and light in his own. “I can’t stop thinking about Morgan and Padishar
He trailed off, not wanting to say more. It was too frightening, even now. Next to him, Coll’s eyes blinked open and fixed on him. “What’s going on?” he asked sleepily.
Damson’s fingers tightened on Par’s. “Your brother cannot seem to sleep for worrying about everyone but himself.”
Par stared up at her wordlessly for a moment, then said, “Is there any news, Damson?”
She smiled faintly. “I will make a bargain with you. If you promise me that you will try to go back to sleep for a time—or at least not leave this bed—I promise you that I will try to learn the answer to your question. Fair enough?”
The Valeman nodded. He found himself pondering anew Padishar’s final admonition to him: Trust her. She is the better part of me!
Damson glanced over at Coll. “I depend on you to make certain that he keeps his word.” Her hand slipped from Par’s and she stood up. “I will bring back something to eat as well. Stay quiet, now. No one will disturb you here.”
She paused momentarily, as if reluctant even then to leave, then turned and disappeared out the door.
Silence filled the shadowed room. The brothers looked at each other without speaking for a moment, and then Coll said quietly, “She’s in love with you.”
Par flushed, then quickly shook his head. “No. She’s just being protective, nothing more.”
Coll lay back, sighed and closed his eyes. “Oh, is that it?” He let his breathing slow. Par thought he was sleeping again when he suddenly said, “What happened to you last night, Par?”
Par hesitated. “You mean the wishsong?”
Coll’s eyes slipped open. “Of course I mean the wishsong.” He glanced over sharply. “I know how the magic works better than anyone other than yourself, and I’ve never seen it do that. That wasn’t an illusion you created; that was the real thing! I didn’t think you could do that.”
“I didn’t either.”
“Well?”
Par shook his head. What had happened indeed? He closed his eyes momentarily and then opened them again, “I have a theory,” he admitted finally, “I came up with it between sleep and bad dreams, you might say. Remember how the magic of the wishsong came about in the first place? Wil Ohmsford used the Elfstones in his battle with the Reaper. He had to in order to save the Elf-girl Amberle. Shades, we’ve told that story often enough, haven’t we? It was dangerous for him to do so because he hadn’t enough true Elf blood to allow it. It changed him in a way he couldn’t determine at first. It wasn’t until after his children were born, until after Brin and Jair, that he discovered what had been done. Some part of the Elf magic of the Stones had gone into him. That part was passed to Brin and Jair in the form of the wishsong.”
He raised himself up on one elbow; Coll did likewise. The light was sufficient now to let them see each other’s faces clearly. “Cogline told us that first night that we didn’t understand the magic. He said that it works in different ways—something like that—but that until we understood it, we could only use it in one. Then, later, at the Hadeshorn, he told us how the magic changes, leaving wakes in its passing like the water of a lake disturbed. He made specific reference to Wil Ohmsford’s legacy of magic, the magic that became the wishsong.”
He paused. The room was very still. When he spoke again, his voice sounded strange in his ears. “Now suppose for a moment that he was right, that the magic is changing all the time, evolving in some way. After all, that’s what happened when the magic of the Elfstones passed from Wil Ohmsford to his children. So what if it has changed again, this time in me?”
Coll stared. “What do you mean?” he asked finally. “How do you think it could change?”
“Suppose that the magic has worked its way back to what it was in the beginning. The blue Elfstones that Allanon gave to Shea Ohmsford when they went in search of the Sword of Shannara all those years ago had the power to seek out that which was hidden from the holder.”
“Par!” Coll breathed his name softly, the astonishment apparent in his voice.
“No, wait. Let me finish. Last night, the magic released itself in a way it has never done before. I could barely control it. You’re right, Coll; there was no illusion in what it did. But it did respond in a recognizable way. It sought out what was hidden from me, and I think it did so because subconsciously I willed it.” His voice was fierce. “Coll. Suppose that the power that once was inherent in the magic of the Elfstones is now inherent in the magic within me!”
There was a long silence between them. They were close now, their faces not two feet apart, their eyes locked. Coll’s rough features were knotted in concentration, the enormity of what Par was suggesting weighing down on him like a massive stone block. Doubt mirrored in his eyes, then acceptance, and suddenly fear.
His face went taut. His rough voice was very soft. “The Elfstones possessed another property as well. They could defend the holde against danger. They could be a weapon of tremendous power.”
Par waited, saying nothing, already knowing what was coming.
“Do you think that the magic of the wishsong can now do the same for you?”
Par’s response was barely audible. “Yes, Coll. I think maybe it can.”
By midday, the haze of early morning had burned away and the clouds had moved on. Sunshine shone down on Tyrsis, blanketing the city in heat. Puddles and streams evaporated as the temperature rose, the stone and clay of the streets dried, and the air grew humid and sticky.
Traffic at the gates of the Outer Wall was heavy and slow moving. The Federation guards on duty, double the usual number as a result of the previous night’s disturbance, were already sweating and irritable when the bearded gravedigger approached from out of the back streets beyond the inner wall. Travelers and merchants alike moved aside at his approach. He was ragged and stooped, and he smelled to the watch as if he had been living in a sewer. He was wheeling a heavy cart in front of him, the wood rotted and splintered. There was a body in the cart, wrapped in sheets and bound with leather ties.
The guards glanced at one another as the gravedigger trudged up to them, his charge wheeled negligently before him, rolling and bouncing.
“Hot one for work, isn’t it, sirs?” the gravedigger wheezed, and the guards flinched in spite of themselves from the stench of him.
“Papers,” said one perfunctorily.
“Sure, sure.” One ragged hand passed over a document that looked as if it had been used to wipe up mud. The gravedigger gestured at the body. “Got to get this one in the ground quick, don’t you know. Won’t last long on a day such as this.”
One of the guards stepped close enough to prod the corpse with the point of his sword. “Easy now,” the grave-digger advised. “Even the dead deserve some respect.”
The soldier looked at him suspiciously, then shoved the sword deep into the body and pulled it out again. The gravedigger cackled. “You might want to be cleaning your sword there, sir—seeing as how this one died of the spotted fever.”
The soldier stepped back quickly, pale now. The others retreated as well. The one holding the gravedigger’s papers handed them hastily back and motioned him on.
The gravedigger shrugged, picked up the handles of the cart and wheeled his body down the long ramp toward the plain below, whistling tunelessly as he went.