The High Druid's Blade (The Defenders of Shannara, #1)(91)

He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m plenty scared.”

“Maybe. But it hasn’t stopped you from doing the right thing.”

“But going after Arcannen isn’t the right thing.”

“Going after medicine or information that will help Chrysallin is the better right thing. That’s what you need to realize.”

She turned him down a side street, and by now he was completely lost. “All right,” he said. “I’ll think about it. I will. But I’m not making any promises.”

“Just weigh the two. Take their measure. Think about what needs doing the most.”

They walked in silence for a time, turning down one small street, alleyway, and pass-through after another, the shadows deepening around them in spite of the sunrise.

I like you, too, he said to himself.

All at once they were in front of an entry that led into a small residence sandwiched between larger buildings. The door to the house had been smashed in, and all that remained were pieces of wood and iron hinges.

He looked at her in confusion. “My house,” she said, heading through the open entry. “Mischa’s creature found your sister here and tried to get at her. This is where we escaped into the tunnels.”

They walked inside, and she looked around distractedly. “Some small damage, but nothing that can’t be put right. Everything valuable is tucked safely away. Like the charges I need for the flash rip. Wait here.”

She disappeared in back. He stood looking around. It was odd that she had been gone for days and no one appeared to have looted the place. In almost every scenario he could imagine, that would have happened. He wondered again about who she really was.

When she rejoined him, she was dressed in different clothing—shirt, pants, boots, and gloves, all in black. She was checking the flash rip’s diapson crystal chamber as she came up to him. “All charged up,” she announced, snapping the cover closed. “If we run into the sorcerer or any other sort of trouble, I don’t want to find myself one load short.”

“You still don’t have to come,” he told her.

She smiled, tossing back her silver-streaked hair from her face. “Yes, I do. I want to.”

They left the building and went back out into the street, turning in the opposite direction from the one in which they had come. Leofur was doing the leading again, and Paxon—because he was lost anyway—had to be content with letting her. Some of what he was viewing appeared familiar, but it was difficult to be certain.

Dozens of people were in the streets by now, the sun fully up and their day begun. Carts and wagons rolled through, horses trotted by, and the silence had given way to the sounds of people and their activities.

“Where now?” he asked her finally, trying to be heard over the din.

She grabbed his arm and pulled him close to her, lifting her head to his ear. “Mischa’s quarters. All right?”

He nodded, and she released him. “Good choice,” she might have said, but he wasn’t sure.

Before long they were standing at the head of an alleyway running between two buildings. Paxon believed they were close to where he had done battle with the black creature a few days earlier.

Leofur gestured to the building on the right. “Mischa’s rooms are on the second floor,” she whispered. “We have to be really careful from here on. I’ll lead until we get inside, then you take over.”

He already had his black sword free of its sheath and grasped firmly in his right hand. “Go ahead.”

They entered through a wooden gate overgrown with vines and greenery that made it barely visible beneath a shadowy overhang. The alley was empty, and the windows of Mischa’s building were dark. There was no sign of life. The sounds of the city that had surrounded them earlier had become faint and distant. When they reached the door leading off the alley, Leofur paused to test the locks. But they were not secure, so she opened the door without trouble and led them inside.

She paused there a moment so they could listen to the silence. Then she led Paxon down a hallway to a set of stairs and up to the second floor. Again, she paused. Satisfied, she took him to rooms about halfway down to the other end of the hall, opened the door cautiously, and led him inside.

The rooms appeared empty. Paxon, sword held guardedly in front of him, moved from room to room to make sure. When he reached the bedroom in which Chrysallin had been tortured and saw the bed on which she had been tied down and the detritus from the broken threads of magic lying in lines of ash and cinders across the floor, he had to back out again right away.

“I’ll search in here,” Leofur offered. “You take the rest of the rooms.”

So they hunted through the witch’s chambers for the better part of two hours, carefully searching for hidden panels and stashes, for books and papers on which conjuring and magic might be written. They tested floorboards for looseness, searched walls for hollow places, and turned the furniture upside down. In the end, Paxon even went into the adjoining rooms, which were all vacant and mostly empty of furniture, and searched them, as well.

They found nothing.

“This can’t be right,” Paxon said as they stared at each other in frustration. “There has to be something. She would keep her important supplies and writings for her magic close.”

“Grehling said he rescued Chrys when Mischa went out to retrieve some potions and ran into her just outside while she was coming back with them. So her store of supplies should be here.” He looked around. “But she’s hidden it well. We’ve searched everywhere.”