Bloodfire Quest (The Dark Legacy of Shannara, #2)(99)

“What are you saying, then? That I should just give up and go home and forget my brother? That there is nothing I can do for him?” Railing was so incensed by the idea that he was shouting. He caught himself, glancing out at the dark shape of Quickening, but there was no sign that anyone aboard had heard. He looked back at the old man. “I won’t do it. I won’t abandon Redden.”

“Nor am I asking you to. Nor would I expect it of you.” The aged eyes seemed to look right into him. “But finding Grianne Ohmsford may not be the answer. It may end badly for everyone involved. It may not yield the result you hope to achieve.”

“You can’t know that. You can’t know how it will end!”

“I am a Faerie creature, and I have the use of magic and the gift of premonition. While I cannot know the answers to all things, I can sense if they will be good or bad for those involved. It is so here. My sense of it is very strong.”

Railing took a deep breath to steady himself, not wanting to blurt out what he was thinking. “What are you telling me to do?”

“Only this. Make your choice wisely. Do not become wedded to the idea that there is only one way.”

“I already know that.”

The King of the Silver River shook his head. “You only think you know. In the end you may discover you are a child playing with matches and in danger of burning everything around you to the ground. Think carefully. Do you really wish to continue on after what I have just said, or will you turn back and go into the Forbidding alone?”

There was a long silence as the boy and the old man faced each other. In the distance, something splashed in the waters of the cove, and the dark shape of a bird of prey winged skyward with food for her young.

“I cannot give this up,” Railing said.

“You can give anything up just as you can take anything up. But once the choice is made, there are consequences. And you cannot change those consequences. You can only live with them.”

The insistence in the old man’s words was daunting. Clearly, he believed what he was saying. Railing hesitated. Neither of them knew exactly what would happen if Railing persisted in his search for Grianne Ohmsford, but the King of the Silver River seemed certain that it would not be anything good. Yet even creatures of magic could be mistaken. Even they could be wrong. The history of the Ohmsford family had demonstrated that often enough.

Railing was no fool; he knew he should consider carefully what he was being told. He had until at least sunrise to do so. And he had all the days of his journey after that, as well, didn’t he? He would not dismiss the old man’s warning out of hand. He would think on it for as long as there was reason to do so.

“Will the ring guide me to wherever I choose to go?” he asked the other.

The King of the Silver River shrugged. “Or out of wherever you’ve been, should that become necessary. But know this. Unlike some magic, it has a finite life. It will show the way each time you ask for it, but each time one strand of its woven threads will disappear until all are gone. Save the stone for when the threads are gone and your life is at such risk there is no other magic you can call upon. That time may come sooner than you think.”

Railing took a deep breath. “I thank you for the ring and the advice. I will consider carefully everything you have told me.”

“Will you?”

The boy nodded uneasily. The old man seemed to see right through him. “How do I get back to the ship from here?”

The King of the Silver River smiled. “Who is to say you ever left?”

Then he disappeared, and the shoreline and the trees and any view of the airship anchored in the cove disappeared as well, and Railing woke from what might have been only a dream still wrapped in his blanket and lying on wooden planking, and he was aboard Quickening once more, and all that remained was the silence and his memory of the Faerie creature’s words.

It might have been a dream if not for the ring that nestled deep inside his pant pocket.



Railing was awake for much of the rest of the night, mulling over what the King of the Silver River had told him. He was conflicted in every conceivable way, even as to whether what had happened was real.

He wanted it to have been a dream—in spite of the ring’s presence—mostly because he didn’t want to believe that what he had been told had any value. Even accepting that there was a possibility things wouldn’t work out as he wished, that Grianne Ohmsford was indeed beyond their reach and would never return, he did not want to abandon his search. Because if he did, if he gave up on trying to find Grianne, he would be forced to do what the old man had told him he ultimately must. He would be forced to go after Redden himself, into the Forbidding, a place much, much worse than the one he had barely escaped before, and with no idea of how to go about finding, let alone rescuing, his brother.

Just thinking of it terrified him. Once he had been so sure of himself, so certain that he could just hop a flit, charge back into the Forbidding, and save his brother. No more. He was ashamed of his fear, but he could not dispel it. He might be brave enough flying a Sprint into the wilderness of the Shredder, but that was child’s play compared with what he would face inside the Forbidding. He’d had time to think about it, to understand better what it meant, and his fear was so overwhelming that he could not come to terms with it.

As a result, he could not give up the idea of finding Grianne and persuading her to stand with him against the creatures of the Forbidding.