Damson served the Valemen the soup together with fresh fruit, bread, and milk, and Par thought it was the most wonderful meal he had ever tasted. He ate everything he was given, Coll with him, both ravenous beyond what they would have thought possible. Par was surprised that he had been able to go back to sleep, but he was unquestionably the better for it, his body rested now and shed of most of its aches and pains. There was little talk during the meal, and that left him free to think. His mind had begun working almost immediately on waking, skipping quickly from the memory of last night’s horrors to the prospect of what lay ahead—to sift through the information he had gathered, to consider carefully what he suspected, to make plans for what he now believed must be.
The process made him shudder inwardly with excitement and foreboding. Already, he discovered, he was beginning to relish the prospect of attempting the unthinkable.
When the Valemen had finished eating, they washed in a basin of fresh water. Then Damson sat them down again and told them what had become of Padishar and Morgan.
“They escaped,” she began without preamble. Her green eyes reflected amusement and awe. “I don’t know how they managed it, but they did. It took me awhile to verify that they had indeed gotten free, but I wanted to make certain of what I was being told.”
Par grinned at his brother in relief. Coll stifled his own grin and instead simply shrugged. “Knowing those two, they probably talked their way out,” he responded gruffly.
“Where are they now?” Par asked. He felt as if years had been added back onto his life. Padishar and Morgan had escaped—it was the best news he could have been given.
“That I don’t know,” Damson replied, shrugging. “They seem to have disappeared. Either they have gone to ground in the city or—more likely—they have left it altogether and are on their way back to the Jut. The latter seems the better guess because the entire Federation garrison is mobilizing and there’s only one reason they would do that. They mean to go after Padishar and his men in the Parma Key. Apparently, whatever he—and you—did last night made them very angry. There are all sorts of rumors afloat. Some say dozens of Federation soldiers were killed at the Gatehouse by monsters. Some say the monsters are loose in the city. Whatever the case, Padishar will have read the signs as easily as I. He’ll have slipped out by now and gone north.”
“You’re certain the Federation hasn’t found him instead?” Par was still anxious.
Damson shook her head. “I would have heard.” She was propped against the leg of the pruning bench as they sat on the pallets that had served as their beds the night before. She let her head tilt back against the roughened wood so that the soft curve of her face caught the light. “It is your turn now. Tell me what happened. Par. What did you find in the Pit?”
With help from Coll, Par related what had befallen them, deciding as he did that he would do as Padishar had urged, that he would trust Damson in the same way that he had trusted the outlaw chief. Thus he told her not only of their encounter with the Shadowen, but of the strange behavior of the wishsong, of the unexpected way its magic had performed, even of his suspicions of the influence of the Elf stones.
When he had finished, the three of them sat staring wordlessly at one another for a moment, of different minds as they reflected on what the foray into the Pit had uncovered and what it all meant.
Coll spoke first. “It seems to me that we have more questions to answer now than we did when we went in.”
“But we know some things, too, Coll,” Par argued. He bent forward, eager to speak. “We know that there is some sort of connection between the Federation and the Shadowen. The Federation has to know what it has down there; it can’t be ignorant of the truth. Maybe it even helped create those monsters. For all we know they might be Federation prisoners thrown into the Pit like Ciba Blue and changed into what we found. And why are they still down there if the Federation isn’t keeping them so? Wouldn’t they have escaped long ago if they could?”
“As I said, there are more questions than answers,” Coll declared. He shifted his heavy frame to a more comfortable position.
Damson shook her head. “Something seems wrong here. Why would the Federation have any dealings with the Shadowen? The Shadowen represent everything the Federation is against—magic, the old ways, the subversion of the Southland and its people. How would the Federation even go about making such an arrangement? It has no defense against the Shadowen magic. How would it protect itself?”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to,” Coll said suddenly. They looked at him. “Maybe the Federation has given the Shadowen someone else to feed on besides itself, someone the Federation has no use for in any case. Perhaps, that’s what became of the Elves.” He paused. “Perhaps that’s what’s happening now to the Dwarves.”
They were silent as they considered the possibility. Par hadn’t thought about the Dwarves for a time, the horrors of Culhaven and its people shoved to the back of his mind these past few weeks. He remembered what he had seen there—the poverty, the misery, the oppression. The Dwarves were being exterminated for reasons that had never been clear. Could Coll be right? Could the Federation be feeding the Dwarves to the Shadowen as part of some unspeakable bargain between them?
His face tightened in dismay. “But what would the Federation get in return?”
“Power,” Damson Rhee said immediately. Her face was still and white.
“Power over the Races, over the Four Lands,” Coll agreed, nodding. “It makes sense, Par.”
Par shook his head slowly. “But what happens when there is no one left but the Federation? Surely someone must have thought of that. What keeps the Shadowen from feeding on them as well?”
No one answered. “We’re still missing something,” Par said softly. “Something important.”
He rose, walked to the other side of the room, stood looking into space for a long moment, shook his head finally, turned, and came back. His lean face was stubborn with determination as he reseated himself.
“Let’s get back to the matter of the Shadowen in the Pit,” he declared quietly, “since that, at least, is a mystery that we might be able to solve.” He folded his legs in front of him and eased forward. He looked at each of them in turn, then said, “I think that the reason they are down there is to keep anyone from getting to the Sword of Shannara.”
“Par!” Coll tried to object, but his brother cut him off with a quick shake of his head.
“Think about it a moment, Coll. Padishar was right. Why would the Federation go to all the trouble of remaking the People’s Park and the Bridge of Sendic? Why would they hide what remains of the old park and bridge in that ravine? Why, if not to conceal the Sword? And we’ve seen the vault, Coll! We’ve seen it!”
“The vault, yes—but not the Sword,” Damson pointed out quietly, her green eyes intense as they met those of the Valemen.
“But if the Sword isn’t down in the Pit as well, why are the Shadowen there?” Par asked at once. “Surely not to protect an empty vault! No, the Sword is still in its vault, just as it has been for three hundred years. That’s why Allanon sent me after it—he knew it was there, waiting to be found.”
“He could have saved us a lot of time and trouble by telling us as much,” said Coll pointedly.
Par shook his head. “No, Coll. That isn’t the way he would do it. Think about the history of the Sword. Bremen gave it to Jerle Shannara some thousand years ago to destroy the Warlock Lord and the Elf King couldn’t master it because he wasn’t prepared to accept what it demanded of him. When Allanon chose Shea Ohmsford to finish the job five hundred years later, he decided that the Valeman must first prove himself. If he was not strong enough to wield it, if he did not want it badly enough, if he were not willing to give enough of himself to the task that finding it entailed, then the power of the Sword would prove too much for him as well. And he knew if that happened, the Warlock Lord would escape again.”