Indomitable: The Epilogue to The Wishsong of Shannara

“I’m sorry about this,” Kimber declared later. There was a pronounced weariness in her voice. “I didn’t think he was going to be this vague once he had the chance to speak with you. I should have known better. I shouldn’t have brought you.”

They were sitting together on the bench again, sipping at mugs of cold ale and listening to the night. They had put the old man to sleep a short while earlier, tucking him into his bed and sitting with him until he began to snore. Kimber had done her best to hasten the process with a cup of medicated tea.

He smiled at her. “Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you brought me. I don’t know if I can help, but I think you were right about not wanting to handle this business alone. I can see where he could become increasingly more difficult if you tried to put him off.”

“But it’s all such a bunch of nonsense! He hasn’t been out of his bed in months. He hasn’t slept down by the pond. Whatever dreams he’s been having are the result of his refusal to eat right.” She blew out a sharp breath in frustration. “All this business about the Ildatch surviving somehow in a page fragment! I used to believe everything he told me, when I was little and still thought him the wisest man in the world. But now I think that he’s losing his mind.”

Jair sipped at his ale. “I don’t know. He seems pretty convinced.”

She stared at him. “You don’t believe him, do you?”

“Not entirely. But it might be he’s discovered something worth paying attention to. Dreams have a way of revealing things we don’t understand right away. They take time to decipher. But once we’ve thought about it . . .”

“Why would Allanon’s shade come to Grandfather in a dream and ask him to bring you here rather than just appearing to you?” she interrupted heatedly. “What sense does it make to go through Grandfather? He would not be high on the list of people you might listen to!”

“There must be a reason, if he’s really had a vision from a shade. He must be involved in some important way.”

He looked at her for confirmation, but she had turned away, her mouth compressed in a tight, disapproving line. “Are you going to help him, Jair? Are you going to try to make him see that he is imagining things or are you going to feed this destructive behavior with pointless encouragement?”

He flushed at the rebuke, but kept his temper. Kimber was looking to him to help her grandfather find a way out of the quicksand of his delusions, and instead of doing so, he was offering to jump in himself. But he couldn’t dismiss the old man’s words as easily as she could. He was not burdened by years and experiences shared; he did not see Cogline in the same way she did. Nor was he so quick to disbelieve visions and dreams and shades. He had encountered more than a few himself, not the least of which was the visit from the King of the Silver River, two years earlier, under similar circumstances. If not for that visit, a visit he might have dismissed if he had been less open-minded, Brin would have been lost to him and the entire world changed. It was not something you forgot easily. Not wanting to believe was not always the best approach to things you didn’t understand.

“Kimber,” he said quietly, “I don’t know yet what I am going to do. I don’t know enough to make a decision. But if I dismiss your grandfather’s words out of hand, it might be worse than if I try to see through them to what lies beneath.”

He waited while she looked off into the distance, her eyes still hot and her mouth set. Then finally, she turned back to him, nodding slowly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to attack you. You were good enough to come when I asked, and I am letting my frustration get in the way of my good sense. I know you mean to help.”

“I do,” he reassured her. “Let him sleep through the night, and then see if he’s had the vision again. We can talk about it when he wakes and is fresh. We might be able to discover its source.”

She shook her head quickly. “But what if it’s real, Jair? What if it’s true? What if I’ve brought you here for selfish reasons and I’ve placed you in real danger? I didn’t mean for that to happen, but what if it does?”

She looked like a child again, waiflike and lost. He smiled and cocked one Elfish eyebrow at her. “A moment ago, you were telling me there wasn’t a chance it was real. Are you ready to abandon that ground just because I said we shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand? I didn’t say I believed it either. I just said there might be some truth to it.”