They were dealing with a Shadowen! The pieces of the puzzle
suddenly began to fit together. A Shadowen could have hidden
among them and they would not have known. A Shadowen could
have summoned a Gnawl, sent word to Toner Ridge to another
of its kind, have gotten to Tyrsis ahead of Padishar’s company,
have spied out its purpose, and slipped away again before its
return. A Shadowen could get close enough. And it could dis-
guise itself as Hirehone. No, not disguise t could be Hire-
hone! And it could have killed him when he had served his
purpose, and killed the lift watch because they would have re-
ported seeing it no matter whose face it had worn. It had re-
vealed the location of the Jut to the Federation army-even
mapped a path for them to follow!
Who? All that remained was to determine . . .
Morgan sagged back slowly against the trunk of the aspen
behind him, the puzzle suddenly complete. He knew who. Steff
or Teel. It had to be one or the other. They were the only ones,
besides himself, who had been with the company from the very
beginning, from Culhaven to the Jut, to Tyrsis and back. Teel
had been unconscious practically the entire time Padishar’s band
was in Tyrsis. That would have given either of the Dwarves, or
more specifically the Shadowen within, the opportunity to slip
away and then back again. They were alone much of the time
in any case-just the two of them.
He stiffened against the weight of his suspicions as they bore
down on him. For an instant, he thought he was crazy, that he
should discard his reasoning entirely and start over again. But
he couldn’t do that. He knew he was right.
The wind brushed at him, and he pulled his cloak closer in
spite of the evening’s warmth. He sat without moving in the
protective shadow of his haven and examined carefully the con-
clusions he had reached, the reasonings he had devised, the
speculations that had slowly assumed the trappings of truth. It
was silent now in the outlaw camp, and he could imagine him-
self to be the only human being living in all the vast, dark ex-
panse of the Parma Key.
Shades.
Steff or Teel.
His instincts told him it was Teel.
XXVII
It was three days after they had made their decision to go
back down into me Pit to recover the Sword of Shannara
that Damson at last took the Valemen from their garden
shed hideaway into the streets of Tyrsis. By then Par was beside
himself with impatience. He had wanted to go immediately;
time was everything, he had argued. But Damson had flatly
refused. It was too dangerous, she insisted. Too many Federa-
tion patrols were still combing the city. They had to wait. Par
had been left with no choice but to do so.
Even now, when she finally judged the margin of risk small
enough to permit them to venture forth, it was on a night when
reasonable men would think twice about doing so, a night that
was bone-cold, the city wrapped in a blanket of mist and rain
that prevented even friends of long standing from recognizing
each other from a distance of more than a few feet and sent the
few citizens who had worked past their normal quitting time
scurrying down the glistening, empty streets for the warmth and
comfort of their homes.
Damson had provided the little company with foul-weather
cloaks, hooded and caped, and they wore them now pulled close
as they made their way through the damp and the silence. Their
boots thudded softly on the stone roadway as they walked, echo-
ing in the stillness, filling up the night with a strange, rushed
cacophony. Water dripped from eaves and trickled down mor-
tared grooves, and the mist settled on their skin with a chill,
possessive adherence that was faintly distasteful. They followed
the backstreets as always, avoiding the Tyrsian Way and the
other main thoroughfares where Federation patrols still kept
watch, steering into the narrow avenues that burrowed like tun-
nels through the colorless, semi-abandoned blocks of the city’s