Famine backed away then, and one by one the Four Horse-
men turned right, spreading out in a thin line to circle the cas-
tle walls. Around they went, passing beneath Walker one by
one as he watched them return and disappear again, keeping
carefully apart in their movement so that there was always one
at each wall, one at each comer of the compass.
A siege. Walker realized. The knock was a challenge, and if
he did not come out to answer it, they intended to keep him
trapped within. Rimmer Dall and the Shadowen had discovered
that Paranor was back and that Walker had accepted the mantle
of Allanon. The Horsemen had been sent in response.
Walker folded his arms within his cloak. We ‘II see who traps
whom, he thought darkly.
He stood looking down for a while longer on the apparitions
below, then went to wake Cogline.
v
The sewers beneath Tyrsis were dank and chill in a twi-
light dark that seeped along gutters and down grates
like spilled ink. Daylight had gone west, and the night
hovered in shadows that lengthened from buildings and walls,
a ghost come to life. Footsteps and voices faded homeward,
and the weariness of day’s end was a sigh echoed by the hot
summer wind as it settled into pockets of still, suffocating heat
in the runnels of the city’s streets and byways, an airless blan-
ket laid over the catacombs below.
Padishar Creel, Par Onmsford, and the Mole groped their
way slowly and steadily through those catacombs, three of the
shadows that grew out of night’s coming, as silent as the dust
stirred by the boots passing in the streets above. They breathed
through their mouths, the sewer smells oppressive and rank
within the twisting conduits, the city’s waste a sluggish flow at
the edges of their feet. At times they climbed iron ladders and
stone steps, at times they crawled through narrow tunnels, all
the while working their way outward from the city’s center to-
ward its walls and the bluff face, the watchtower where Dam-
son Rhee was held prisoner, and the confrontation that waited.
“We will not return without her,” Padishar had declared.
“Whatever proves necessary to free her, we will do. Once we
have her, we will not give her up again.
“Mole,” he had whispered, kneeling before the strange little
fellow. “You will guide us in and, if possible, out again. But
you will not fight, do you understand? Keep yourself clear and
safe. Because, Mole, once we have freed Damson”—there was
no suggestion. Par noted, that they would not—”you alone will
39
40 The Talismans of Shannara
know how to see her safely away again. Agreed? ” And the
Mole had nodded solemnly.
“Par, yours is a harder task still,” the leader of the free-born
had continued, turning next to the Valeman. “If we encounter
the Shadowen, you must use your magic to keep them from us.
The Highlander was able to do so with his sword when we
were trapped in the Pit. This time it will be up to you. I lack
any means to defend against these monsters. If we encounter
them, lad, don’t hesitate.”
Par had already decided that use of the wishsong in this en-
deavor was a foregone conclusion, so he was quick to give
Padishar his promise. What he could not promise—and what
he did not tell the other—was that he was no longer certain he
could control the magic. It had already proved unreliable, al-
ready shown that it could take on a life of its own, unleashing
power that might well consume him. But such fears as recog-
nition of this danger generated paled against his feelings for
Damson Rhee. Buried by the struggle they had shared to es-
cape the city and its hunters, and by the fact that he had felt
her safe with him, his feelings had surfaced instantly with the
report of her taking, and now they raged within him like a fire
unchecked. He loved her. Perhaps he had loved her from the
first, but certainly since she had held him together after Coil’s
death. She was as much a’ part of him as anything separate