Терри Брукс - The Elf Queen of Shannara

“We should be safe here for tonight, maybe longer,” she advised, turning now so that the light caught her features, the bright gleam of her green eyes, the softness of her smile. “It’s not much, is it?”

“If it’s safe, it’s everything,” he replied, smiling back. “Where do the stairs lead?”

“Back to the street. But the door is locked from the outside. We would have to break it down if we needed to escape that way, if we were unable to use the cellar entry. Still, that’s at least a measure of protection against being trapped. And no one will think to look where the lock is old and rusted and still in place.”

He nodded, took the torch from her hand, looked about momentarily, then carried it to a ruined lamp bracket and jammed it in place. “Home it is,” he declared, unslinging the Sword of Shannara and leaning it against the bed. His eyes lingered momentarily on the crest graven in its hilt, the upraised hand with its burning torch. Then he turned away. “Anything to eat in the cupboard?”

She laughed. “Hardly.” Impulsively she went to him, put her arms about his waist, held him momentarily, then kissed his cheek. “Par Ohmsford.” She spoke his name softly.

He hugged her, stroked her hair, felt the warmth of her seep through him. “I know,” he whispered.

“It will be all right for you and me.”

He nodded without speaking, determined that it would be, that it must.

“I have some fresh cheese and bread in my pack,” she said, pulling away. “And some ale. Good enough for refugees like us.”

They ate in silence, listening to the muffled tick of cooling iron nails embedded in the building’s walls, tightening as the night grew deeper. Once or twice there were voices, so distant the words were indistinguishable, carried from the street through the padlocked door and down the ancient stairs. When they had finished, they carefully packed away what was left, extinguished the torch, wrapped themselves in their blankets, lay close together on the narrow bed, and quickly fell asleep.

Daybreak brought a glimmer of light creeping through cracks and crevices, cool and hazy, and the sounds of the city grew loud and distinct as people began to venture forth on a new day’s business. Par woke refreshed for the first time in a week, wishing he had water in which to wash, but grateful simply to be shed momentarily of his weariness. Damson was bright-eyed and lovely to look upon, tousled and at the same time perfectly ordered, and Par felt as if the worst might at last be behind them.

“The first order of business is to find a way out of the city,” Damson declared between bites of her breakfast, seated across from him at the little table. Her forehead was lined with determination. “We can’t go on like this.”

“I wish we could find out something about the Mole.”

She nodded, her eyes shifting away. “I’ve looked for him when I’ve been out.” She shook her head. “The Mole is resourceful. He has stayed alive a long time.”

Not with the Shadowen hunting for him, Par almost said, then thought better of it. Damson would be thinking the same thing anyway. “What do I do today?”

She looked back at him. “Same as always. You stay put. They still don’t know about me. They only know about you.”

“You hope.”

She sighed. “I hope. Anyway, I have to find a way for us to get past the walls, out of Tyrsis to where we can discover what’s happened to Padishar and the others.”

He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back. “I feel useless just sitting around here.”

“Sometimes waiting is what works best, Par.”

“And I don’t like letting you go out alone.”

She smiled. “And I don’t like leaving you here by yourself. But that’s the way it has to be for now. We have to be smart about this.”

She pulled on her street cloak, her magician’s garb, for she still appeared regularly in the marketplace to do tricks for the children, keeping up the appearance that everything was the same as always. A pale shaft of light penetrated the gloom of the passageways that had brought them, and with a wave back to him she disappeared into it and was gone.

He spent the remainder of the morning being restless, prowling the narrow confines of his shelter. Once, he climbed to the top of the stairs leading back to the street where he tested the lock that fastened the heavy wooden door and found it secure. He wandered back through the tunnels that branched from the gristmill cellar and discovered that each dead-ended at a storage hold or bin, all long empty and abandoned. When noon came, he took his lunch from the remains of yesterday’s foodstuffs, still cached in Damson’s backpack, then stretched out on the bed to nap and fell into a deep sleep.

When he finally woke, the light had gone silver, and the day was fading rapidly into dusk. He lay blinking sleepily for a moment, then realized that Damson had not returned. She had been gone almost ten hours. He rose quickly, worried now, thinking that she should have been back long ago. It was possible that she had come in and gone out again, but not likely. She would have woken him. He would have woken himself. He frowned darkly, uneasily, twisted his body from side to side to ease the kinks, and wondered what to do.

Hungry, in spite of his concern, he decided to eat something, and finished off the last of the cheese and bread. There was a little ale in the stoppered skin, but it tasted stale and warm.

Where was Damson?

Par Ohmsford had known the risks from the beginning, the dangers that Damson Rhee faced every time she left him and went out into the city. If the Mole was captured, they would make him talk. If the safe holes were compromised, she might be, too. If Padishar was taken, there were no secrets left. He knew the risks; he had told himself he had accepted them. But faced for the first time since escaping from the sewers that the worst had happened, he found he was not prepared after all. He found that he was terrified.

Damson. If anything had happened to her...

A scuffing sound caught his attention, and he left the thought unfinished. He started, then wheeled about, searching for the source of the noise. It was behind him, at the top of the stairs, at the door leading to the street.

Someone was playing with the lock.

At first he thought it must be Damson, forced for some reason to try to enter through the back. But Damson did not have a key. And the sound he was hearing was of a key scraping in the lock. The fumbling continued, ending in a sharp snick as the lock released.

Par reached down for the Sword of Shannara and strapped it quickly across his back. Whoever was up there, it was not Damson. He snatched up the backpack, thinking to hide any trace of his being there. But his bootprints were everywhere, the bed was mussed, and small crumbs of food littered the table. Besides, there was no time. The intruder had lifted the lock from its hasp and was opening the door.

Daylight flooded through the opening, an oblique shaft of wan gray. Par backed hastily from the room into the tunnels. He left the torch. He no longer needed it to find his way. The morning’s explorations had left him with a clear vision of which way to go, even in the near dark. Boots thudded softly on the wooden steps, too heavy and rough to be Damson’s.

He went down the tunnel in a noiseless crouch. Whoever had entered would know he had been there, but would not know how long ago. They would wait for him to return, thinking to catch him unprepared. Or Damson. But he could wait for Damson somewhere close to the entrance to the old mill and warn her before she entered. Damson would never come through the back entrance with the lock sprung. His thoughts raced through his mind in rapid succession, propelling him on through the darkness, silent and swift. All he had to do was escape detection, to get back through the cellar and out the door to the street.