The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [136]
Behind them, the Northlanders swarmed into the valley, crashing through trees and brush, howling in fury. Somewhere the Dwarves were hidden and trapped. Soon they would be found.
The hunt went on, moving farther south toward the Pass of Noose.
With luck, Risca thought, the two halves of the Warlock Lord’s army would run up against each other in the mist and dark and each would think the other was their quarry. With luck, each would kill large numbers of the other before they discovered their mistake.
He moved up into the boulders that marked the beginning of the high range. They would not be followed here, not in this darkness, and by morning they would have passed the point where their tracks could be found.
Raybur dropped back and clapped a congratulatory hand on his friend’s broad shoulder. Risca smiled at the king, but inwardly he felt cold and hard. He had measured the size of the army that hunted them. He had judged the nature of the things that commanded it. Yes, the Dwarves had escaped this time. They had tricked the Northlanders into a prolonged and futile hunt, delayed their advance, and lived to fight another day.
But it would be a day of reckoning when it came.
And it would come, Risca feared, all too soon.
Chapter Twenty
The rain was falling in Arborlon, a slow, steady downpour that draped the city in a curtain of shimmering damp and hazy rain. It was midafternoon. The rain had begun at dawn and now, more than nine hours later, showed no signs of lessening.
Jerle Shaimara watched it from the seclusion of the king’s summer home, his current retreat, his present hideaway. He watched is spatter on the windowpanes, on the walkways, in the hundreds of puddles it had already formed. He watched it transform the trees of the forest, turning their trunks a silky black and their leaves a vibrant green. It seemed to him, in his despondency, that if he watched it long and hard enough, it would transform him as well.
His mood was foul. It had been so since his return to the city three days earlier. He had come home with the remnant of his battered company, with Preia Starle, Vree Erreden, and the Elvers Hunters Obann and Rusk. He had carried back the Black Elfstone and the body of Tay Trefenwyd. He had brought no joy with him and found none waiting. In his absence, Courtann Ballindarroch had died of his wounds. His son, Alyten, had assumed the throne, his first order of business to sally forth on an expedition dedicated to tracking down his father’s killers. Madness. But no one had stopped him. Jerle was disgusted. It was the act of a fool, and he was afraid that the Elves had inherited a fool for a king. Either that, or the Elves once again had no king at all. For Alyten Ballindarroch had departed Arborlon a week earlier, and there had been no word of him since.
He stood in the silence and stared out the window at the rain, at the space between the falling drops, at the grayness, at nothing at all. His gaze was empty. The summerhouse was empty as well — just him, alone in the silence with his thoughts. Not pleasant company for anyone. His thoughts haunted him. The loss of Tay was staggering, more painful than he could have imagined, deeper than he would let himself admit. Tay Trefenwyd had been his best and closest friend all his life. No matter the choices they had made, no matter the length of their occupational separations, no matter the events that had transformed their lives, that friendship had endured. That Tay had become a Druid while Jerle had become Captain of the Home Guard and then Court Advisor to the king had altered nothing. When Tay had come home from Paranor this final time, when Jerle had first seen his friend riding up the roadway to Arborlon, it was as if only a few moments had passed since last they had parted, as if time meant nothing. Now Tay was gone, his life given so that his friends and companions could live, so that the Black Elfstone could be brought safely to Arborlon.
The Black Elfstone.