Терри Брукс - The Druid of Shannara

The ramp began to break apart before them, an escarpment out of which strange rock formations rose against the light. They might have been carvings of some sort save for the fact that they lacked any recognizable form. Like pillars that had been hewn apart by weather’s angry hand over thousands of years, they jutted and angled in bizarre shapes and images, the mindless visions of a madman. The company passed between them, anxious in their shadow, and hurried on.

They arrived finally at the peaks. There was a rift between them, a break so deep and narrow that it appeared to have been formed by some cataclysm that had split apart what had once been a single peak to form the two. They loomed to either side, spirals of rock that thrust into the clouds as if to pin them fast. Beyond, the skies were murky and misted, and the waters of the Tiderace crashed and rumbled against the rocky shores.

Horner Dees moved ahead and the others followed until all had been enveloped in shadows. The air was chill and unmoving in the gap, and the distant shrieks of seabirds echoed shrilly. What sort of creatures besides those of the sea could possibly live here? Morgan Leah wondered uneasily. He drew his sword. His whole body was rigid with tension, and he strained to catch some sign of the danger he sensed threatening them. Dees was hunched forward like an animal at hunt, and the three behind the Highlander were ghosts without substance. Only Quickening seemed unaffected, her head held high, her eyes alert as she scanned the rock, the skies, the gray that shrouded everything.

Morgan swallowed against the dryness in his throat. What is it that waits for us?

The walls of the break seemed to join overhead, and they were left momentarily in utter blackness with only the thin line of the passageway ahead to give them reassurance that they had not been entombed. Then the walls receded again, and the light returned. The rift opened into a valley that lay cradled between the peaks. Shallow, rutted, choked with the husks of trees and brush and with boulders many times the size of any man, it was an ugly catchall for nature’s refuse and time’s discards. Skeletons lay everywhere, vast piles of them, all sizes and shapes, scattered without suggestion of what creatures they might once have been.

Horner Dees brought them to a halt. “This is Bone Hollow,” he said quietly. “This is the gateway to Eldwist. Over there, across the Hollow, through the gap in the peaks, Eldwist begins.”

The others crowded forward for a better look. Walker Boh stiffened. “There’s something down there.”

Dees nodded. “Found that out the hard way ten years ago,” he said. “It’s called a Koden. It’s the Stone King’s watchdog. You see it?”

They looked and saw nothing, even Pe Ell. Dees seated himself ponderously on a rock. “You won’t either. Not until it has you. And it won’t matter much by then, will it? You could ask any of those poor creatures down there if they still had tongues and the stuff of life to use them.”

Morgan scuffed his boot on a piece of deadwood as he listened. The deadwood was heavy and unyielding. Stone. Morgan looked at it as if understanding for the first time. Stone. Everything underfoot, everything surrounding them, everything for as far as the eye could see—it was all stone.

“Kodens are a kind of bear,” Dees was saying. “Big fellows, live up in the cold regions north of the mountains, keep pretty much to themselves. Very unpredictable under any conditions. But this one?” He made his nod an enigmatic gesture. “He’s a monster.”

“Huge?” Morgan asked.

“A monster, ” Dees emphasized. “Not just in size, Highlander. This thing isn’t a Koden anymore. You can recognize it for what it’s supposed to be, but just barely. Belk did something to it. Blinded it, for one thing. It can’t see. But its ears are so sharp it can hear a pin drop.”

“So it knows we are here,” Walker mused, edging past Dees for a closer look at the Hollow. His eyes were dark and introspective.

“Has for quite a while, I’d guess. It’s down there waiting for us to try to get past.”

“If it’s still there at all,” Pe Ell said. “It’s been a long time since you were here, old man. By now it might be dead and gone.”

Dees looked at him mildly. “Why don’t you go on down there and take a look?”

Pe Ell gave him that lopsided, chilling smile.

The old Tracker turned away, his gaze shifting to the Hollow. “Ten years since I saw it and I still can’t forget it,” he whispered. He shook his grizzled head. “Something like that you don’t ever forget.”

“Maybe Pe Ell is right; maybe it is dead by now,” Morgan suggested hopefully. He glanced at Quickening and found her staring fixedly at Walker.

“Not this thing,” Dees insisted.

“Well, why can’t we see it if it’s all that big and ugly?” Carisman asked, peering cautiously over Morgan’s shoulder.

Dees chuckled. His eyes narrowed. “You can’t see it because it looks like everything else down there—like stone, all gray and hard, just another chunk of rock. Look for yourself. One of those mounds, one of those boulders, something that’s down there that doesn’t look like anything—that’s it. Just lying there, perfectly still. Waiting.”

“Waiting,” Carisman echoed.

He sang:

“Be still, tunesmith,” Pe Ell said, a warning edge to his voice. He scowled at Dees. “You got past this thing before, if we’re to believe what you tell us. How?”

Dees laughed aloud. “I was lucky, of course! I had twelve other men with me and we just walked right in, fools to the last. It couldn’t get us all, not once we started running. No, it had to settle for three. That was going in. Coming out, it only got one. Of course, there were just two of us left by then. I was the one it missed.”

Pe Ell stared at him expressionlessly. “Like you said, old man—lucky for you.”

Dees rose, as bearish as any Koden Morgan might have imagined, sullen and forbidding when he set his face as he did now. He faced Pe Ell as if he meant to have at him. Then he said, “There’s all sorts of luck. Some you’ve got and some you make. Some you carry with you and some you pick up along the way. You’re going to need all kinds of it getting in and out of Eldwist. The Koden, he’s a thing you wouldn’t want to dream about on your worst night. But let me tell you something. After you see what else is down there, what lies beyond Bone Hollow, you won’t have to worry about the Koden anymore. Because the dreams you’ll have on your worst nights after that will be concerned with other things!”

Pe Ell’s shrug was scornful and indifferent. “Dreams are for frightened old men, Horner Dees.”

Dees glared at him. “Brave words now.”

“I can see it,” Walker Boh said suddenly.

His voice was soft, almost a whisper, but it silenced the others instantly and brought them about to face him. The Dark Uncle was staring out across the broken desolation of the Hollow, seemingly unaware that he had spoken.

“The Koden?” Dees asked sharply. He came forward a step.

“Where?” Pe Ell asked.

Walker’s gesture was obscure. Morgan looked anyway and saw nothing. He glanced at the others. None of them appeared to be able to find it either. But Walker Boh was paying no attention to any of them. He seemed instead to be listening for something.

“If you really can see it, point it out to me,” Pe Ell said finally, his voice carefully neutral.

Walker did not respond. He continued to stare. “It feels...” he began and stopped.