Perhaps Ciba Blue had already completed his descent. He
glanced at Coil, who just shook his head helplessly.
The Federation commander stepped up to Padishar. “You
should know, Padishar Creel,” he said quietly, his tone mea-
sured, ‘ ‘that you were betrayed by one of your own.”
He waited momentarily for a response, but there was none.
Padishar’s face was expressionless. Only his eyes revealed the
rage that he was somehow managing to contain.
Then the silence was shattered by a terrifying scream that
rose out of the depths of the Pit. It lifted into the night like a
stricken bird, hovering against the cliff rock until at last, mer-
cifully, it dropped away.
The scream had been Ciba Blue’s, Par thought in horror.
The Federation commander gave the ravine a perfunctory
glance and ordered his prisoners led away.
They were taken through the park along the ravine wall to-
ward the Gatehouse, kept in single file and apart from each other
by the soldiers guarding them. Par trudged along with the others
in stunned silence, the sound of Ciba Blue’s scream still echo-
ing in his mind. What had happened to the outlaw down there
alone in the Pit? He swallowed against me sick feeling in his
stomach and forced himself to think of something else. Be-
trayed, the Federation commander had said. But by whom? None
of them there, obviously-so someone who wasn’t. One of Pad-
ishar’s own . . .
He tapped over a tree root, righted himself and stumbled on.
His mind whirled with a scattering of thoughts. They were being
taken to the Federation prisons, he concluded. Once there, the
grand adventure was over. There would be no more searching
for the missing Sword of Shannara. There would be no further
consideration of the charge given him by Allanon. No one ever
came out of the Federation prisons.
He had to escape.
The thought came instinctively, clearing his mind as nothing
else could. He had to escape. If he didn’t, they would all be
locked away and forgotten. Only Damson Rhee knew where
they were, and it occurred suddenly to Par that Damson Rhee
had been in the best position to betray them.
It was an unpleasant possibility. It was also unavoidable.
His breathing slowed. This was the best opportunity to break
free that he would get. Once within the prisons, it would be
much more difficult to manage. Perhaps Padishar would come
up with a plan by then, but Par didn’t care to chance it. Un-
charitably, perhaps, he was thinking that Padishar was the one
who had gotten them into this mess.
He watched the lights of the Gatehouse flicker ahead through
the trees of the park. He only had a few minutes more. He
thought he could manage it, but he would have to go alone. He
would have to leave Coil and Morgan. There wasn’t any choice.
Voices sounded from ahead, other soldiers waiting for their
return. The line began to string out and some of the guards were
straying a bit. Par took a deep breath. He waited until they
were passing along a cluster of scrub birch, then used the wish-
song. He sang softly, his voice blending into the sounds of the
night, a whisper of breeze, a bird’s gentle call, a cricket’s brief
chirp. He let the wishsong’s magic reach out and fill the minds
of the guards immediately next to him, distracting mem, turn-
ing their eyes away from him, letting them forget that he was
there…
And then he simply stepped into me birch and shadows and
disappeared.
The line of prisoners passed on without him. No one had
noticed that he was gone. If Coil or Morgan or any of the others
had seen anything, they were keeping still about it. The Feder-
ation soldiers and their prisoners continued moving toward the
lights ahead, leaving him alone.
When they were gone, he moved soundlessly off into the
night.
He managed to free himself almost immediately of the ropes
that held his hands. He found a spike with a jagged edge on the
ravine wall a hundred yards from where he had slipped away
and, boosting himself up on the wall, sawed through the ropes