Терри Брукс - The Talismans of Shannara

Still holding her, he stroked her back in small circles and said, “I’ll tell you something. It sometimes seems as if I’m frightened all the time. Ever since Coll and I first left Varfleet, all those weeks ago, I’ve been afraid. Everything that happens seems to cost something. I never know what I’m going to lose next, and I hate it. But what frightens me most, Damson Rhee, is the possibility that I might lose you.”

He tightened his arms about her, pressing her close. “What do you think about that?” he whispered.

Her response was to tighten her arms back.

They walked through the early morning without saying much after that, leaving behind the city of Tyrsis, moving north across the plains to the forested threshold of the Dragon’s Teeth.

The day warmed quickly, crystals of night’s dew faded with the sun’s rise, and dampness dried away into stirrings of dust. They saw no one for a long time, and then only peddlers and families coming in from their farms to market in the city. Par found himself thinking of home again, of his parents and Coll, but it all seemed to be something that had happened a long time ago. He might wish that things were as they had been and that all that had happened since his encounter with Cogline had not—but he knew he might as well wish the day become night and the sun the moon. He looked at Damson walking beside him, at the soft strong lines of her face and the movement of her body, and let what might have been slide quickly away.

At midday they crossed the Mermidon into the forests beyond and stopped to eat. They foraged for fresh water, berries, roots, and vegetables, and made do. It was cool and silent within the trees while the day’s heat suffocated the surrounding land in an airless, sweltering blanket. After eating, they decided to sleep for a time, weary from their night’s efforts and anxious to take advantage of their refuge. It was only several hours further to the Kennon Pass, Damson advised, where they would cross through the Dragon’s Teeth into the valley that had once been Paranor’s home. From there they would travel north and east to the Jannisson Pass and Firerim Reach. In another two days, she promised, they should reach the free-born.

But they slept longer than they had planned, lulled by the coolness and the soothing sound of the wind in the trees, and it was nearing sunset when they came awake again. They rose and set out at once, anxious to make up as much time as they could. If the moon was out, they could navigate the pass at night. Otherwise, they would have to wait until morning. In either case, they wanted to reach the Kennon by nightfall.

So they traveled swiftly, unhindered by heavy stands of scrub or grasses in woods that were well traveled and spacious, feeling rested and fit after their sleep. The sun drifted west, edging down into the trees until it was a bright flare of gold and crimson through the screen of the leaves and branches. The moon appeared in skies that were clear and blue, and the day birds began to grow silent in response to the coming of night.

Par felt at ease for the first time in days, at peace with himself. He was relieved to be out of Tyrsis, clear of her sewers and cellars, free of the confinement of her walls, safe from the things that had hunted him there. He looked over at Damson often and smiled when he did. He thought of Padishar and tried to keep from being sad. His thoughts scattered through the trees and across the carpet of the earthen floor like small creatures at play. He let them wander where they chose, content to let them—

Not once did it occur to him that it might be wise to hide his trail.

Sunset burned like fire across the plains below Tyrsis as day inched toward night and the heat began to dissipate. Shadows lengthened and grew, taking on strange and suggestive shapes, coming alive with the dark. They rose out of gullies and ravines, from forests and solitary groves, stretching this way and that as if to flex their limbs on waking from the sleep that prepared them for going abroad to hunt.

One of those shadows moved with insidious purpose along the empty stretches running north to the Mermidon, a faint darkness hidden within the long grasses through which it passed. As the light failed it grew bolder, rising up now and again to sniff the air before lowering back to the earth to keep the scent it followed fresh. It ate as it went, sustaining itself with whatever it found, roots and berries, insects and small animals, anything it came across that was unable to escape. For the most part its attention was focused on the trail it followed, on the smell of the one it hunted so diligently, the one that was the source of its madness.

At the Mermidon it lifted to its hindquarters, a hunched-over, gnarled form wrapped in a shining black cloak that somehow resisted the dust and grime that coated its wearer. Hands skinned and scraped so badly they bled clutched at the cloak so that it would not wash free as it forded that river at a shallows. The cloak never left it, not for a moment. The cloak sustained it in some way, it knew. The cloak was what protected it.

Yet it seemed a source of the madness as well. Some part of the creature’s mind whispered that this was so. It whispered it to the creature in warning, over and over again.

But most of what worked in the creature’s thoughts assured it that the cloak was good and necessary to its survival, and that the madness was caused instead by the one it tracked. By him. (My brother?) The name would not come. Only the face. The madness buzzed within its head, through its ears, and out its mouth like a swarm of gnats, itching and biting and consuming its reason until it could think of nothing else.

Earlier that day, in the shadow of late afternoon, come abroad in the hated light because the madness drove it from its den with increasing frequency, it had found at last the scent of the one it hunted. (His name? What was his name?) Prowling the base of the bluff night after night for more than a week now, it had grown increasingly desperate, needing to find him, to search him out so that relief would come, so that the madness would end.

But how? How would it end?

It didn’t know. Somehow it would happen. When it found the cause. When it... hurt him like he was hurting it...

The thought drifted before its eyes, unclear. But there was pleasure in the thought, in the taste and feel of it.

Teeth and eyes gleamed in the brightening moonlight.

On the far side of the river, the creature picked up the trail easily and again began to track. Fresh it was. As clear as the stench of something dead and left to rot in the sun. Not far it was. Another few hours, perhaps less...

A shudder passed through the creature. Anticipation. Need. The seeds of the madness in flower.

Coll Ohmsford put his nose to the ground like the animal he had become and disappeared into the trees.

Dusk was edging into night by the time Par and Damson reached the base of the Dragon’s Teeth and the trail that wound upward through the cliffs to the Kennon. Moonlight flooded down from the north, and the skies were clear and bright with stars. The day’s heat had cooled, and there was a breeze blowing out of the mountains.

Somewhere in the trees of the forest behind, an owl hooted softly and was still.

Because there was light enough to navigate the trail and they were well rested, the Valeman and the girl pushed on. The night was well suited for travel, even in the mountains, and they made good time climbing from the lower slopes into the pass. As they went, night descended and the silence deepened, the forest and its inhabitants falling away behind them in a pool of black, the rocks closing about and becoming silhouettes that rose jagged and stark against the sky. Their boots scraped and crunched on the loose stone and their breathing grew labored, but beyond those immediate sounds the world was still and empty-feeling.