clared, tight-lipped and wan before leaving him only hours ear-
lier to search anew for a hiding place about which their pursuers
did not know. “Or they have caught one of us and extracted all
of our secrets. There is no other explanation.”
But even she had been forced to admit that no one other
than Padishar Creel knew all the hiding places she used. No one
else could have betrayed them.
Which led, in turn, to the disquieting possibility that despite
their hopes to the contrary, the fall of the Jut had yielded the
Federation the catch it had been so anxious to make.
Par let his head fall back to rest against the rough, heated
stone, his eyes closing momentarily in despair. Coil dead. Pad-
ishar and Morgan missing. Wren and Walker Boh. Steff and
Tee!. The company. Even the Mole-there had been no word
of him since they had fled his subterranean chambers. There
was no sign of him, nothing to reveal what had happened. It
was maddening. Everyone he had started out with weeks ago-
his brother, his cousin, his uncle, and his friends-had disap-
peared. It sometimes seemed as if everyone he came in contact
with was doomed to fall off the face of the earth, to be swal-
lowed by some netherworid blackness and never resurface again.
Even Damson .
No. His eyes snapped open again, anger reflected in the glim-
mer from the lamps. Not Damson. He would not lose her. It would not
happen again.
But how much longer could they keep running like this?
How long before their enemies finally ran them to earth?
There was sudden movement at the corner of the wall ahea
where it turned the building to follow the street west toward
the bluff, and Damson appeared. She scurried through the shad-
ows in a crouch and came up next to him, breathless and flushed.
“Two other safe holes are discovered,” she said. “I could
smell the stench of the things that watch for us even before I
saw them.” Her long red hair was tangled and damp against her
face and neck, tied back by a cloth band about her forehead.
Her smile, when it came, was unexpected. “But I found one they
missed.”
Her hand reached out to brush his cheek. “You look so
tired, Par. Tonight you will sleep well. This place-I remem-
bered it, actually. A cellar beneath an old gristmill that was once
something else, I forget what. It hasn’t been used in more than
a year-not by anyone. Once, Padishar and I . . .” She stopped,
the memory retrieved at the verge of its telling and drawn back
again-too painful, her eyes said, to relate. “They will not know
of this one. Come with me, Valeman. We’ll try again.”
They hurried off into the night, twin shadows that appeared
and faded again as quick as the blink of an eye. Par felt the
weight of the Sword of Shannara against his back, flat and hard,
its presence a reminder of the travesty his quest had become
and of the confusions that plagued him. Was this, in fact, the
ancient talisman he had been sent to find, or some trick of
Rimmer Dali’s meant to bring him to his destruction? If it was
the Sword, why had he not been able to make it work when
face to face with the First Seeker? If it was a fake, what had
become of the real Sword?
But the questions, as always, yielded no answers, only fur-
ther questions, and as always, he quickly abandoned them. Sur-
vival was all that counted for the moment, evasion of the black
things and, more important, escape from the city. For their flight
had been that of rats in a maze, trapped behind walls from
which they could not break free. All efforts at getting clear of
Tyrsis to regain the open country beyond had been thwarted.
The gates were carefully watched, all the exits guarded, and
Damson lacked sufficient skill, in the absence of the Mole, to
navigate the tunnels beneath the city that provided the only
other means of escape. So there was nothing left for them but