Chapter Sixteen

The fissure widened immediately into a corridor broad enough for the Elves to stand two abreast. Steps wound downward into darkness so complete that not even Tay Trefenwyd’s keen vision could penetrate to what lay beyond. He moved forward several yards, feeling his way along the wall, and encountered a metal plate. When he touched it, light appeared across its flat surface, pale yellow and cool. He stared at the plate in surprise; here was a magic he had never encountered. The light revealed another plate, just at the edge of the darkness farther on.

He walked over to it, placed his hand on it, and it, too, brightened.

Amazing, he thought. He could hear the footsteps of the others coming up behind him. He wondered what they must be thinking.

But no one spoke, and he did not look back at them. Instead, he continued on, touching the metal plates, lighting their way through the darkened corridor.

Their descent took a long time. Tay could not measure it, the whole of his concentration given over to the casting of his Druid magic before him to ferret out hidden traps. The metal plates that gave off light revealed a sophistication he had not expected. Faerie magic was not well known, for most of the lore had been lost with time’s passage, but Tay had always assumed that magic to be grounded more in nature and less in technology. Yet the plates suggested he was mistaken, and that made him uneasy. Take nothing for granted here, he warned himself. Riding the air currents, skimming through the seams in the rock, bouncing across the dust motes that were stirred with their passing, his Druid magic hunted. With swift precision, he sorted and defined the secrets of the world through which they passed. He found no trace of human life, though the warning above the door had suggested it should be otherwise. He found no trace of another’s passing, not in years, perhaps centuries. But, in spite of this, he experienced a sharp feeling of being watched, of his measure being taken, of something waiting farther on, patient and inexorable in its purpose.

The stairway ended at a massive iron door. No locks bound it.

No magic warded it. Above its rusted, pitted frame, the words CHEW MAGNA were carved in stone — but those words only and nothing else of what had been written on the wall above the fissure into which they had entered. The others of the little company crowded close. On hands and knees, Preia Starle examined the ground before the doors, then rose and shook her head. No one had passed this way in a very long time.

Tay probed the doors and the spaces between. Nothing revealed itself. He stepped forward then, seized the great iron handles, and pulled down.

The handles gave easily, the latches released, and the doors swung inward as if perfectly balanced. Misty light poured through the opening, streaming down in a surreal shimmer, as if filtered through a pane of rain-streaked glass.

A massive fortress stood before them, its stone blocks so ancient the edges were worn smooth and its surface so cracked it seemed as if spiderwebs had covered it over. It was a wondrous construction, a balancing of towers atop battlements, an interlinking of parapets that cantilevered forward and back at every turn, and a spiraling of catwalks that suggested the intricacy of tapestry threads woven on a loom. The castle rose high and then higher, until its farthest reaches were barely discernible. Mountains ringed the castle, opening to the sky through a ceiling of clouds and mist. Trees and scrub grew thick along the rock wall at the higher elevations, branches and vines drooping inward toward the castle spires, letting daylight slip through in a ragged seam. It was from here that the light took its odd cast, spilling down through the filter of the leafy canopy and swirling haze to coat the fortress stone in its watery illumination.

Tay moved through the doors and into a vast courtyard that spread to either side and toward the central structure of the keep.

He discovered now that he had passed through the castle’s outer walls, which abutted the peaks themselves. He stared back at the walls in astonishment, realizing that with the passing of time, the mountains had shifted, closing and tightening about the ancient fortress until its walls had begun to crack and crumble. Inch by inch, the mountains were reclaiming the ground on which the fortress had been built. One day they would close about it for good.

The company advanced farther into the courtyard, glancing about guardedly. The air was damp and fetid, smelling of swamp and decay, strange for where they were, so deep in the mountains.

But they had descended a long way since coming through the fissure in the crater wall, and Tay felt they might again be nearing sea level, far enough down to encounter marshy conditions. He glanced up again at the trees and scrub and vines growing high above them on the cliffs, and realized that the mist was almost a rain. He could feel the damp on his face. He looked at the fortress doors and windows, black holes in the gray haze. Iron hinges and locks hung empty and useless; the wood had rotted away at every turn. Moisture worked at the stone and mortar as well, wearing it down, eroding it. Tay walked to the wall of the nearest tower and rubbed his hand across the stone. The surface crumbled like sand under his fingers. This ancient keep, this Chew Magna, had the unpleasant feel of a place that would collapse under a strong wind.

Then Tay saw Vree Erreden. The locat was on his knees at the center of the court, head lowered between his shoulders, arms braced to keep himself from collapsing completely, his breath a harsh gasp in the near silence. Tay hurried over and knelt beside him. Preia appeared as well, then Jerle, their faces anxious and intent.

“What is it?” Tay asked the stricken man. “Are you sick?”

The locat nodded quickly, pulling his arms into his body, sagging against Tay for support, shivering as if struck with a terrible chill.

“This place!” he hissed. “Shades, can you feel it?”

Tay held him close. “No. Nothing. What do you feel?”

“Such power! Evil, harsh as grit against my skin! I felt nothing and then, suddenly, it was everywhere! It overwhelmed me! For a moment, I could not breathe!”

“What is its source?” Jerle asked quickly, edging close.

The locat shook his head. “I cannot tell! This is nothing I am familiar with, nothing I have experienced before! It wasn’t a vision, or a hunch, or ... anything. It was blackness, a wave of blackness, then a feeling of...”

He took a deep, steadying breath, closed his eyes, and went still.

Tay glanced down hurriedly, thinking he had lost consciousness.

But Preia touched him and shook her head; Vree Erreden was only resting. Tay let him be. He remained kneeling, holding the locat in his arms, and the entire company waited with him.

Finally the stricken man opened his eyes once more, exhaled a long, deep breath, eased away from Tay, and climbed to his feet.

He was steady as he faced them, but his hands still shook. “The Black Elfstone,” he whispered, “is here. That was what I sensed, the source of the evil.” He blinked, then looked sharply at Tay. “Its power is immense!”

“Can you tell where it is?” Tay asked, trying to stay calm.

The locat shook his head, arms folding against his chest defensively. “Ahead, somewhere. In the keep.”

So they went on, moving cautiously into the fortress proper.

Tay led once more, his magic sent before him in a sweeping net to guard against all dangers. They went through a doorway at the center of the keep and began to wind their way along the corridors beyond. Tay felt Jerle brush against his elbow, then Preia, a step behind. They were protecting him, he realized. He shook his head.

He was disturbed by his lack of awareness of the Black Elfstone’s proximity when it had been so clear to Vree Erreden. His Druid magic had failed him. Why was that? Was his magic rendered useless in this keep? No, he answered himself, because he had sensed a presence earlier on entering, eyes keeping watch. Whose, then?

The Elfstone could not possess intelligence, but there was clearly something that lived here. What could it be?

They pressed on through the fortress, working their way deeper into its catacombs. Shadows lay over everything in dark layers of musty velvet. Dust rose from beneath their feet to cloud the air.

The furnishings that had once graced this castle had crumbled.

Nothing remained but scraps of metal and shreds of cloth. Nails poked from the walls, where once tapestries and paintings had hung. There had been artistry and craftsmanship at work in another time, but nothing they had produced remained. Rooms opened off hallways and passages, some vast and regal, some small and intimate, all empty of life. Benches lined a corridor they traversed, but when Tay put his hand on one it crumbled into dust.

Glass lay shattered in niches. Weapons lay broken and rendered useless, stacks of rotted wood and rusted metal. Ceilings lifted into clouds of gloom, and windows gaped like the ruined sockets of blinded eyes. Everything was still, the silence of a crypt.

At a juncture of several broad corridors, Vree Erreden brought them to a sudden stop. He was holding his head with one hand, pain etched on his thin features, his slender body taut.

“Go left!” he gasped, pointing raggedly.

They turned as he directed. Preia Starle dropped back to take his arm, lending her support. He was breathing rapidly again, his eyes blinking as if to rid themselves of an irritation. Tay glanced back at him, then ahead once more. He still sensed nothing. He felt oddly defenseless, as if his magic had abandoned him and he could no longer rely on it. He gritted his teeth against his perceived inadequacy and forced himself to go on. His magic would never desert him, he admonished himself. Never.

They passed down a broad stairway that wound about the outer wall of a vast rotunda. Their footsteps echoed faintly in the muffling silence, and now Tay sensed the eyes again, more strongly this time, more evident. What lived within this keep was close.

They reached the bottom of the stairway and stopped. A courtyard opened before them, broad and bright with misty sunlight.

Shadows fell away, tattered and frayed. The musty staleness of the dark corridors faded. The dust and grit that hung upon the captured air disappeared.

At the center of the courtyard was a garden.

The garden was rectangular in shape, encircled by a broad walkway constructed of painted tiles and stone, the colors still resonant. Flowers grew along the outer border, a variety Tay could not identify, multicolored, profuse. The central portion of the garden was given over to a grove of slender trees and vines so closely intertwined as to be virtually inseparable, their leaves bright green and shiny, their limbs and trunks a curious mottled pattern.

A garden! Tay Trefenwyd marveled. Excitement washed through him. A garden, deep within the bowels of this ancient fortress, where nothing should grow, where no sunlight should reach! He could hardly believe it!

Almost without thinking, he came down off the stairs and hurried toward the garden’s edge. He was within several yards when Jerle Shannara caught hold of his arm and yanked him firmly back.

“Not so quick, Tay,” his friend warned.

Startled, Tay looked at the other, then saw Vree Erreden down on one knee again, shaking his head slowly from side to side as Preia held him. He realized suddenly how strong the impulse had been to go forward, how anxious he had been to explore. He realized as well that he had abandoned his defenses entirely. So eager had he been that he had released the protective shield of his Druid magic without a thought.

Saying nothing, he walked quickly to where Vree Erreden knelt. The locat grasped him immediately, sensing rather than seeing him, drawing him close. “The Black Elfstone,” he hissed through teeth clenched against some inner pain, “lies there!”

His hand, shaking, pointed at the garden.

Preia touched Tay’s arm gently so that he would look at her.

Her ginger eyes were wary, guarded. “He went down the moment you left the stairs. Something attacked him. What’s happening?”

Tay shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

He reached for Vree Erreden’s hands and took them in his own.

The locat flinched, then went still again. Tay summoned his magic, called up a healing balm, and sent it flowing into the other’s slender arms and body. Vree Erreden sighed and went still, his head drooping.

Preia looked at Tay, one eyebrow cocked. “Just hold him for a moment,” he said to her.

Then he rose again to stand with Jerle. “What do you suppose this garden is doing here?” he asked softly.

His friend shook his head. “Nothing good, if that’s where the Black Elfstone lies. I wouldn’t walk in there if I were you.”

Tay nodded. “But I cannot reach the Elfstone if I don’t.”

“I wonder if you can reach it even if you do. You said yourself that the vision warned that something wards the Stone. Perhaps it is this garden. Or something that lives within it.”

They stood close, staring into the tangle of vines and limbs, trying to detect something of the danger they sensed waiting. A soft wind seemed to ruffle the shiny leaves momentarily, but nothing else moved. Tay stretched out his arm and sent a feeler of Druid magic to probe the garden’s interior. The feeler snaked its way inward, searching carefully. But there was only more of what he could already see — the slender trees and vines with their shiny leaves and the earth from which they grew.

Yet he could feel life there, life beyond what the plants suggested, a presence strong and ancient and deadly.

“Walk with me,” he said to Jerle finally.

They left the company and began a slow, cautious exploration of the garden’s perimeter. The walkway was broad and unobstructed, so they were able to keep a wary eye in all directions as they proceeded. The garden ran for several hundred feet down one side, another hundred across, then several hundred back again. On each side, it looked the same — flowers along its border, trees and vines within. There were no paths. There were no indications of other life. There was no sign of the Black Elfstone.

When they were back where they started, Tay walked over to Vree Erreden once more. The locat was conscious again and crouched next to Preia. His eyes were open, and he was staring fixedly at the garden, although it seemed to Tay that he was looking at something else entirely.

Tay knelt beside him. “Are you certain the Black Elfstone is here?” he asked quietly.

The locat nodded. “Somewhere in that maze,” he whispered, his voice rough and thick with fear. His eyes shifted suddenly to Tay. “But you must not go in there! You will not come out again, Tay Trefenwyd! What wards the Elfstone, what lives in this place, waits for you!”

One hand came up to knot before his pain-etched face. “Listen to me! You cannot stand against it!”

Tay rose and walked over to Jerle Shannara. “I want you to do something,” he said. He was careful to make certain Vree Erreden could not hear. “Call the other Hunters over. Leave Preia with the locat.”

Jerle studied him a moment, then beckoned the remaining Elven Hunters to his side. When they were gathered about, he looked questioningly at Tay.

“I want you to take hold of my arms,” he told them. “Two on each side. Take hold, and no matter what I say or do, you are to keep hold. Do not release me. Do not react to anything I say. Do not even look at me if you can help it. Can you do that?”

The Elven Hunters looked at one another and nodded. “What are you going to do?” Jerle demanded.

“Use Druid magic to find what lies within the garden,” Tay answered. “I will be all right if you remember to do as I said.”

“I’ll remember,” his friend answered. “We all will. But I don’t like this much.”

Tay smiled, his heart pounding. “I don’t like it much either.”

He closed his eyes then and washed the others of the company from his consciousness. Gathering his magic to him, he went down inside himself. There, deep within the core of his being, he formed of the magic an image of himself, a thing of spirit and not substance, and dispatched it forth in a long, slow exhale of his breath.

He emerged from his corporeal body an invisible wraith, a bit of ether against the pale gray light of the ancient fortress. He slipped past Jerle Shannara and the Elven Hunters, past Preia Starle and Vree Erreden, toward the thick, green tangle of the silent garden. As he went, he came to sense more clearly the magic buried there. Old, wily, and established, it rooted deeper than the trees and vines that concealed it. It was the entity to which the lines of power that warded this fortress were attached. They grew from it as gossamer threads, entwining stone and iron, reaching from outer walls to tallest spires, from deepest cellars to highest battlements. They stretched across the chasm of the mountains where they breached against the sky, a vast concentration of thought and feeling and strength. He came up against their webbing and eased his way carefully past, sliding by without touching to continue on.

Then he was within the garden, wending his way through its maze, into the lush mustiness of earth and the sweet tang of leaves and vines. Everywhere, the garden was the same, deep and secret and enveloping. He sailed weightless and substanceless on a current of air, avoiding the lines of power that stretched everywhere, doing nothing to trigger a disturbance that might alert whatever watched to his presence.

He had penetrated so far into the garden that he thought he must be close to passing all the way through when he encountered an unexpected tightening of the lines of power at a place where the light seemed to diminish and the shadows to encroach once more.

Here, the slender trees and vines disappeared. Here, darkness held sway. Bare earth lay revealed in a space where nothing grew and the diffuse light was absorbed as if water soaked into a sponge.

Something unseen throbbed with the vibrancy and consistency of a beating heart, layered in protective magic, wrapped in blanketing power.

Tay Trefenwyd eased close, peering into the suffocating shadows, stealing past the warding lines. Within his guise, he stilled himself, and even the beating of his pulse, the whisper of his breath, and the shudder of his heart slowed to silence. He withdrew all but the smallest part of himself and became one with the darkness.

Then he saw it. Resting on an ancient metal frame into which runes had been scrolled and strange creatures wrought was a gem as black as ink, so impenetrable that no light reflected from its smooth surface. Opaque, depthless, radiating power that was beyond anything Tay Trefenwyd had imagined possible, the Black Elfstone waited.

For him.

Oh, Shades! For him!

A moth drawn to a flame, he reached for it — impulsive, unthinking, unable to resist. He reached for it with the desperation and need of a drowning man, and this time Jerle Shannara was not there to stop him. An image only, a wraith without substance, he gave no thought to what he did. In that moment, reason was lost to him and his need was all that mattered.

That he was a ghost and nothing more was what saved him. The moment his hand closed about the Elfstone, he was known. He could feel the lines of power shimmer in response to his presence, feel them vibrate and whine in warning. He tried to draw back, to flee what was coming, but there was no escape. The watcher he had not been able to identify, the thing that lived within the ruins of the Chew Magna, took sudden, hideous shape. The earth trembled in response to its waking, and the vines that grew throughout the garden, limp and flaccid a moment earlier, thrust upward — become the coils of death of which Galaphile’s shade had warned. They whipped through the spaces between the slender trees like snakes, searching. Magic drove them, fed them, gave life to them, and Tay Trefenwyd, even in his spirit form, knew them for what they were instantly. They fastened on his arms and legs, about his body and head, dozens strong, come from everywhere. They fastened, and then they began to squeeze. Tay could feel the pressure. He should not have been able to do so — he had made himself a spirit. But the garden’s magic had the power to ferret him out even in this elusive form. Magic to hold magic — magic to destroy even a Druid. Tay felt himself being ripped apart. He heard himself scream in response — the pain a reality within his psyche. Gathering himself within the core of his shattered form, bringing the small part that mattered into a particle no larger than a dust mote, he hurtled out through a gap in the writhing mass of vines and into the light.

Then abruptly he was back inside his body, twisting and screaming, arching as if electrified, struggling so hard to break free that it was all Jerle Shannara and the Elven Hunters could do to hold him. He gasped, shuddered, and collapsed finally into their arms, spent. He was drenched in sweat, and his clothes were ripped from his efforts to rid himself of their hands. Before him, the garden undulated with life, an ocean of deadly intent, a quagmire that nothing caught within could hope to escape.

Yet he had done so.

His eyes closed and tightened into slits. “Shades!” he whispered, fighting down his memory of the tenacious vines as they crawled over him, tightening.

“Tay!” Jerle’s voice was harsh, desperate. The big man held him, arms wrapped about his body. He trembled violently. “Tay, do you hear me?”

Tay Trefenwyd gripped his friend in response and his eyes snapped open. He was all right now, he told himself. He was safe, unharmed. He took a long, slow, steadying breath. He was returned to the living, and of the horror of the Black Elfstone’s dark magic he had discovered all that he needed to know.

He told the others of the company what he had learned. He gathered them close, all of them, for there was no reason they should not all know, and told them what had occurred. He did not lie, but he kept from them the darkest of the truths he had uncovered. He tried not to show how frightened he was, though his fear worked through him anew as he recounted the experience, a river vast and wide and deep. He kept his voice calm and steady and his story brief. When he was finished, he told them he needed to think awhile about what they should do next.

They left him alone save for Vree Erreden. The locat came away with him unbidden, and as soon as they were out of hearing of the others, he took Tay’s arm.

“You said nothing of the watcher. You did not name it, yet you must know its identity.” The thin, strong fingers tightened. “I sensed it waiting for you — you, in particular, as if you were special to it. Tell me what it is, Tay Trefenwyd.”

They moved onto the spiral staircase and sat together in the echoing silence of the fortress depths. Before them, the garden had gone still again, a garden once more, and nothing else. It was as if nothing had happened.

Tay glanced at the locat and then looked away. “If I tell you, it must remain between us. No one else is to know.”

Vree Erreden nodded. “Is it the Warlock Lord?” he whispered.

Tay shook his head. “What rules here is older than that. What lives in the garden is what once lived in this castle. It is a compendium of lives, a joining of faerie creatures. Elves mostly, that centuries ago were just as you and I. But they coveted the power of the Black Elfstone. They coveted it, and their need was so desperate that they could not resist. They used the Stone, all of them, together perhaps, or separately, and they were destroyed. I can’t tell how, but their story was made known to me. I could feel their horror and their madness. They are transformed, become the substance of this garden, a collective conscience, a collaborative power, their magic sustaining what remains of the fortress, gathered here, where all that is left of them has taken root in the form of these trees and vines.”

“They were human?” the locat asked in horror.

“Once. No more. They lost what was human when they summoned the power of the Elfstone.” Tay fixed him with a haunted gaze. “Bremen warned me of the danger. He told me that whatever happened, whatever the cause, I must not use the Black Elfstone. He must know what it would cost me if I did.”

Vree Erreden’s thin face lowered into shadow. His eyes blinked rapidly. “I could feel what lives here waiting for you — I told you that. But why does it wait? Does it seek its own kind, creatures of power, beings who have use of the magic in some form? Or does it ward against them? What drives it? It passed me by, I think, because my magic lacks definition and strength. My magic is instinct and vision, and it has no use for that. But, Shades, I could feel the darkness of it!”

He turned back to Tay. “You have a Druid’s power, and such power is infinitely more compelling. There can be no question that it either fears or covets your magic.”

Tay’s mind raced. “It protects the Black Elfstone because the Elfstone is the source of its power. And of its life. I threatened it by coming into the garden and disturbing the lines of power it has established. Does it know me as a Druid, though? I wonder.”

“It knows you as an enemy, certainly. It must, since it tried to destroy you. It knows you are not subverted.” The locat exhaled, a long, ragged breath. “It will be waiting for you to try again, Tay. If you go back into that garden, you will be devoured.”

They stared at each other wordlessly. It knows you as an enemy, Tay thought, repeating Vree Erreden’s words. It knows you are not subverted. He was reminded of something suddenly, but he could not think what. He wrestled with it for a moment before remembering. It was Bremen, changing his appearance, his form, his very thinking, so that he could penetrate the stronghold of the Warlock Lord. It was Bremen, altering himself so that he became one with the monsters that dwelled within.

Could he do that here?

His breath caught in his throat, and he turned away, unwilling to let Vree Erreden see what was in his eyes. He could not believe what he was thinking. He could not imagine he was giving the idea even the smallest consideration. It was insane!

But what other choice was left to him? There was no other way — he knew that already. He looked at the others sitting grouped at the edge of the deadly garden. They had come a long way to find the Black Elfstone, and none of them would turn back now. It was pointless to think otherwise. The stakes were too great, the price too high, for them to fail. They would die first.

Oh, but there must be another way! His mind tightened with the pressure of iron bands drawn taut. How could he make himself do it? What chance did he have? This time, should he fail, there would be no escape. He would be consumed...

Devoured.

He rose, needing to stand if he was to face this decision, needing to move away from his fear. He stepped down from the stairway, leaving the perplexed locat staring after him. He walked away from the others as well — from Jerle and Preia and the Hunters — to collect himself and take measure of his strength. A tall, gangly figure, he felt as worn and bent as the stone about him, and no less vulnerable to time. He knew himself for what he was — a Druid first, last, and always, but one of only a handful, one of an order that was in all probability moving toward extinction.

The world was changing, and some things must pass. It might be so with them, with Bremen, Risca, and himself.

But they should not pass in quiet complacency, he thought angrily. They should not pass as ghosts, fading into mist with the coming of the new day, inconsequential things and only half-believed.

We should not be less than what we are.

Empowered by his words and armored in the strength of his convictions, he summoned up the last of his courage and called to Jerle Shannara.