Free Paladins of Shannara: The Black Irix (Short Story) by Terry Brooks

 
    More than a year had passed since his return from the Skull Kingdom, and Shea Ohmsford
     was finally beginning to sleep through the night. For a long time, that had been unthinkable.
     Nightmares of what had been—and what might have been—plagued him like demon-spawn,
     startling him awake and rendering him sleepless afterward. The hauntings drained him,
     and for a time he believed he was in danger of dying. He lost weight, color, and spirit.
     He lacked not only the energy to do his regular work at the inn, but the will to do
     much of anything else.
    Then Flick, his always-brother and forever-best-friend, took the unusual step of visiting
     a woodswoman who specialized in potions and spells to cure maladies and who, it was
     said, could divine the future. Her name was Audrana Coos, and she was neither young
     nor old, but somewhere between, and she was a recluse and an object of constant derision
     by all but those who had gone to her for help. Flick, never given to anything that
     wasn’t practical and solidly based in demonstrable fact—and who would never have gone
     to such a person before the quest for the Sword of Shannara—made a leap of faith.
     Or perhaps, more accurately, a leap of desperation. And he went to see her.
    There, deep in the Duln, miles from his home, he sat at a table with this odd-looking
     woman with her hair braided in colored lengths, her face smooth as a child’s and painted
     with brilliant rainbow stripes, and her arms encased in gold and silver bracelets
     from which tiny bells dangled, watching closely as she read the waters of a scrying
     bowl and determined the merit of his cause.
    “He is very ill,” she announced solemnly, her voice unexpectedly deep and scratchy.
     “He agonizes over what he might have done … and what he did. He is damaged by the
     closeness he experienced to the Dark Lord, and he festers with the poisons released
     in him due to his contact with the Skull Bearers. Long has his sickness waited for
     its chance, and now it breaks free of its fastenings and seeps through him. His life
     slips away.”
    She paused, as if considering her own words, and then began rifling through shelves
     of tiny bottles, leather sacks laced tight with drawstrings, and packets whose contents
     were hidden from Flick, her slender hands closing at last on a small brown bottle
     that she handed to him.
    “You must give him this,” she told him. “Do so in secret; do not let him see you do
     it. If he sees you, he may resist. Give it all to him in a single serving. Mix it
     with a drink heenjoys and make certain he drinks it down. All of it. Do it immediately upon your
     return.”
    Flick studied the bottle doubtfully. “Will it cure him of his dreams and wasting sickness?
     Will he come back to the way he used to be?”
    Audrana Coos put a finger to her lips. “Speak not of other possibilities, Valeman.
     Do not even think of them. Do not doubt what I tell you. Just do as I say.”
    Flick nodded and got to his feet. “I thank you for your help. For trying to help my
     brother.”
    He began searching for coins to pay her, but she waved him away. “I will not accept
     pay for giving aid to one who stood against the Warlock Lord. I will not profit from
     one who can be said to have saved the Four Lands and all those who dwell within.”
    She paused, cocking her head to one side and looking down again into the scrye waters,
     which had suddenly begun to ripple anew. “A moment. There is something more.”
    Flick peered down into the waters, but could see nothing.
    “Be warned,” the seer whispered. “Not long after today your brother will journey to
     a faraway place on a quest of great importance. You will not wish it. You will not
     approve. But you cannot stop him, and you should not try.”
    “This can’t be true,” Flick declared, shaking his head for emphasis. “Shea has said
     repeatedly that he will never go on another quest.”
    “Even so.”
    “He has