Small MagicSmall Magic: Short Fiction, 1977-2020 by Terry Brooks

Author:Terry Brooks [Brooks, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780525619970
Google: 7L3NDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2021-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

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He fled the chamber, skittering through the sprawl of Mwellret bodies and out the door, hugging the walls of the smoke-filled corridors and stairwells that led to safety. His mind spun with images of what he had just experienced, leaving him unsteady and riddled with doubt. Despite having the wishsong to disguise his passing, he felt completely exposed.

What happened back there?

Had Garet Jax found a way to come back from the dead on his own, choosing to be Jair’s protector one final time? Had Allanon sent him through a trick of Druid magic that transcended the dictates of the grave?

Or had the peddler been right, that the shades of the dead really did haunt Dun Fee Aran? And somehow, through his use of the wishsong, Jair had given his physical body over to that shade, becoming Garet Jax incarnate and leaving but a shadow remnant of himself—his own spirit, perhaps—behind? A shadow that might have become a shade itself had he not rejoined with it at the end.

It seemed impossible, but yet he believed it was the truth.

He took deep, slow breaths to steady himself as he climbed out of Dun Fee Aran’s prisons. It was madness to think that his magic could give life to the dead. It suggested possibilities that he could hardly bear to consider. Giving life to the dead violated all of nature’s laws. It made his skin crawl.

But it had saved him, hadn’t it? It had enabled him to destroy the Ildatch fragment, and that was what he had come to Dun Fee Aran to do. So what difference did it make how it had been accomplished?

Yet it did make a difference. He remembered how it had felt to be a part of Garet Jax. He remembered how it had felt to kill those Mwellrets, to hear their frantic cries, to see their stricken looks, to smell their blood and fear. He remembered the grating of his blade against their bones and the surprisingly soft yield of their scaly flesh. He hadn’t hated it; he had enjoyed it—enough so that, for the brief moments he had been connected to the Weapons Master, he had craved it. Even now, in the terrible, blood-drenched aftermath when his thoughts and body were his own again, he hungered for more.

What if he had not looked back at the last moment and seen himself fading away? What if he had not sensed the unexpectedly dangerous position he had placed himself in, joined to a ghost out of time?

He found his way up from the prisons more easily than he had expected he would, moving swiftly and smoothly through the chaos. He did not encounter any more Mwellrets until he reached the upper halls, where they were clustered in angry bands, still looking for something that wasn’t there, still unaware that the Druid they sought was an illusion. Perhaps the sounds had been muffled by the stone walls and iron doors, but they had not discovered yet what had happened belowground.

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