High druid of Shannara_ Jarka Ruus - Terry Brooks [28]
It took her almost an hour to complete the conjurings. Then she knelt before the wall and opened the skin of magic she had left in place, giving herself clear access to the secret doorway and the chamber beyond. She could hear the sound of her heart beating and the pumping of her blood through her body. It seemed to her that she could hear the Ard Rhys breathing on the other side of the wall, deep in sleep but capable of waking in an instant.
She prepared to remove the stopper from the bottle of night liquid.
Her hands began to shake.
For just a second she faltered, thinking suddenly that she was daring too much; that she was overreaching herself: that her failure to accomplish what she was attempting to undertake was assured; that the moment she tried to place the liquid inside the bedchamber, the Ard Rhys would wake and discover her treachery; that she would have been smarter simply to feed the Ard Rhys poison and be done with it; that this more sophisticated execution would never work. How could it?
Furious with herself, she crushed her hesitation and doubt as if they were annoying insects buzzing in her ears.
She pulled the stopper from the bottle and poured it into the funnel she had created in the last conjuring of magic, sending both the liquid night and the spells that directed it into the chamber beyond.
There, it was done, she told herself, replacing the stopper once more.
She rocked back on her heels to wait.
Grianne Ohmsford woke just long enough to recognize that something was dreadfully wrong, that an alien magic had bypassed her wardings and entered her room. She threw up her defensive magic instantly, but it was already too late. The room was moving — or she was moving in it — consumed by a blackness that transcended anything she had ever known. She fought to get free of it, but could not make herself move. She tried to cry out, but no sound came forth. She was trapped, immobilized and helpless. The blackness was enveloping her, sweeping her away, bearing her off like a death shroud wound about a corpse on its way to interment, clinging and impenetrable and final.
She felt the shroud slowly begin to tighten.
Shades! she swore silently as she realized what was happening, and then the blackness was in her mouth and nose and ears, was inside her body and her mind. She struggled until her strength was gone and with it her hope, and then she lost consciousness.
Still hidden in the passageway behind the wall of the bed chamber, Shadea a’Ru listened to the faint, sudden sounds of movement on the other side, then to the enveloping silence that followed. She was desperate for a look inside, but didn’t dare to open the passageway door for fear of what she would find. She held her breath, listening as the silence lengthened.
Then a finger of blackness wormed its way under the door, the leading edge of a clutch of ragged tendrils. They twisted and groped as if seeking to snare her, as if the Ard Rhys was not enough, and Shadea stepped back quickly, poised to flee. She did not know what it was — some residue of the liquid night, perhaps — but she wasn’t about to find out. The fingers stretched a bit farther, crooking toward her, then slowly retreated and disappeared back beneath the door.
Shadea a’Ru was sweating heavily, the tunic beneath her Druid robes drenched. Something had happened in the Ard Rhys’ bed chamber, something that was the result of what Shadea had done — of that much, she was certain. But she could not know the particulars right away — not until morning, perhaps. No matter how desperate she was to find them out, she could do nothing but go back the way she had come and wait.
She exhaled heavily, quickly, a fear she had never felt suddenly caressing her in an all-too-familiar fashion. She backed away, still watching the door, retreating cautiously down the steps she had climbed more than an hour earlier, listening, listening.
By the time she reached the landing below and turned into the passageway