Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [113]
But the split lasted only a moment, and then almost effortlessly the blackness repaired itself, the jagged tear resealing. More ghosts emerged from its dark breast. More faces pressed forward. Again, he attacked. Again, the blackness split apart and again quickly resealed and re-formed, unaffected. If anything, the roiling mass appeared to be an even larger and more inexorable presence.
Now the hands of the dead were touching him. He could feel them stroking his body, their fingers as cold and icy as the mountain wind. He could feel their chill dampness against his skin; he could feel it through his clothing.
The effect was unpleasant and oddly debilitating. He could feel his strength eroding, bleeding away.
Angry now, he tried a different approach. Instead of a tearing, rending attack, he used the magic like a huge windmill in an attempt to sweep the blackness away. His efforts worked. The wind he generated exploded the dark mass, and the fire burned what remained to shards of smoke. He stood watching in the aftermath, breathing hard. Nothing of the darkness remained. The way forward was clear.
But then the ghosts of the dead pressed up against him anew, touching him everywhere, more insistent now, more demanding, and he saw that the blackness was beginning to re-form. He stood stunned as it tightened and grew ever larger, pressing toward him, the empty-eyed ghosts pouring from its opaque center in knots. There were so many now that they were tumbling over each other in their efforts to reach him. The entire pass was filled with them.
He experienced a sudden panic, and he understood its source immediately.
He had thought he would always be ready for the unexpected when it surfaced. He had told himself that he would know instinctively what to do when threatened.
But he was lost here; he was adrift without a lifeline. His attempt at attacking the blackness, at causing it to dissipate or erode, was yielding nothing at all, and he did not know what to do about it.
He took an involuntary step backward. Something about the way he was fighting this battle was doing more harm than good, and if he didn’t discover what it was, he was going to lose.
He gathered his thoughts, tightened his resolve, and pushed back the feelings of fear and doubt. He had survived too many fights to lose this one. He was a Knight of the Word, and he would not give way.
He stared at the darkness, and then turned his attention to the white, empty faces surrounding him. Perhaps the spirits of the dead were not as invulnerable as their source. He went into their midst, fighting back against his revulsion, armoring himself against the touch of their fingers, speaking words of magic to banish them. He used the fire of the staff to sweep aside each as he passed, and to his satisfaction they began to disappear, one after the other. He did not look to see how many were still coming, but kept his eyes on those pressing closest, looking at each, recognizing each, knowing he must acknowledge them if they were to be sent back to where they belonged.
He did not know for how long or to how many he did this; he lost track of time and numbers and simply kept pressing ahead. The faces came and went in a wash, so many he remembered, so many he had known. He said good-bye to each as the fire consumed them, facing down the emotions that welled up within him. What he felt was a cold certainty, a hard-edged understanding of what he was doing to himself by banishing them. He was losing his past; he was giving up his memories. With the disappearance of each white face, he let go of a little more of what he remembered.
He understood now that he was the one who had summoned them, perhaps without realizing it, perhaps with help from whatever lived in these mountains.
The darkness was his, the past carried on his shoulders, memories of the dead, of those he had known and cared about and could not forget. They weighed on him; they haunted him. He had kept them