Morgan.’ ‘That’s what I mean about useless baggage. You think
about it.”
He turned and strode off into the dark. Morgan almost called
him back. He even took a step after him, thinking that now he
would tell him his suspicions about the traitor. It would have
been easy to do so. It would have freed him of the frustration
he felt at having to keep the matter to himself. It would have
absolved him of the responsibility of being the only one who
knew.
He wrestled with his indecision as he had wrestled with it all
that day.
But once again he lost.
He slept after that, wrapping himself in his cloak and curling
up on the ground within the shadow of the aspen. The earth had
dried after the morning rain; the night was warm, and the air
was filled with the smells of the forest. His sleep was dreamless
and complete. Worries and indecisions slipped away like water
shed from his skin. Banished were the wraiths of his lost magic
and of the traitor, driven from his mind by the weariness that
wrapped protectively about him and gave him peace. He drifted,
suspended in the passing of time.
And then he came awake.
A hand clutched his shoulder, tightening. It happened so
abruptly, so shockingly, that for a moment he thought he was
being attacked. He thrashed himself clear of his cloak and
bounded to his feet, wheeling about frantically in the dark.
He found himself face-to-face with Steff.
The Dwarf was crouched before him, wrapped in his blan-
kets, his hair stiff and spikey, his scarred face pale and drawn
and sweating despite the night’s comfortable feel. His dark eyes
burned with fever, and there was something frightened and des-
perate in their look.
“Teel’s gone,” he whispered harshly.
Morgan took a deep, steadying breath. “Gone where?” he
managed, one hand still fastened tightly about the handle of the
dagger at his waist.
Steff shook his head, his breathing ragged in the night’s si-
lence. “I don’t know. She left about an hour ago. I saw her. She
thought I was sleeping, but. . “He trailed off. “Something’s
wrong, Morgan. Something.” He could barely speak. “Where
is she? Where’s Teel?”
And instantly, Morgan Leah knew.
XXX
It was on that same night that Par Ohmsford went down into
the Pit after the Sword of Shannara for the final time.
Darkness had descended on the city of Tyrsis, a cloak
of impenetrable black. The rain and mist had turned into fog so
thick that the roofs and walls of buildings, the carts and stalls
of the markets, even the stones of the streets disappeared into it
as if they had melted away. Neither moon nor stars could be
seen, and the lights of the city flickered like candles that might
be snuffed out at any instant.
Damson Rhee led the Valemen from the garden shed into the
haze, cloaked and hooded once more. The fog was sufocating;
it was damp and heavy and it clung to clothing and skin alike in
a fine sheen. The day had ended early, shoved into nightfall by
the appearance of the fog as it rose out of the grasslands below
the bluff and built upon itself like a tidal wave until it simply
rolled over Tyrsis’ walls and buried her. The chill of the previous
night had been replaced by an equally unpleasant warmth that
smelled of must and rot. All day the people of the city muttered
in ill-disguised concern over the strangeness of the weather;
when the last of the day’s thin, gray light began to fade, they
barricaded themselves in their homes as if they were under siege.
Damson and the Valemen found themselves virtually alone
in the silent, shrouded streets. When travelers passed by, once
or twice only, their presence was but momentary, as if ghosts
that had ventured forth from the netherworld only to be swal-
lowed back up again. There were sounds, but they lacked both
a source and a direction. Footsteps, the soft thudding of boots,
rose into the silence from out of nowhere and disappeared the
same way. Things moved about them, shapes and forms without