It was the third day after leaving the prisons at Dun Fee Aran before Jair and the little company from Culhaven reached the towering mountain range they called the Ravenshorn. Unable to use the open roadways than ran close to the banks of the Silver River as it wound south out of the mountains for fear of being seen, they were forced to traverse the deep forests above, picking their way at a slower pace through the tangled wilderness. The rains finally ceased on the second day out, slowed to a drizzle by midmorning, and turned to mist by noon. The air warmed as the skies cleared, and the clouds drifted east. When darkness slipped across the land, the moon and stars became visible through the trees. Their pace was slow, even after the rains had subsided, for the saturated earth could not absorb all of the surface water that had gathered, and the ground was muddied and slick with it. Stopping only for short periods of time to rest and eat, the company did its best to ignore the poor travel conditions and resolutely pressed ahead.
The sun appeared on the third day, brilliant and warm, filtering down in friendly streamers through the forest shadows, returning bits and pieces of color to the sodden land. The dark mass of the Ravenshorn came into view, barren rock rising up above the treeline. All morning they worked their way toward it, then on through the noonday, and by midafternoon they had reached the lower slopes and were starting up.
It was then that Slanter brought them to a halt.
“We have a problem,” he announced matter-of-factly. “If we try to cross through these mountains, it will take us days-weeks, maybe. Only other way in is by following the Silver River upstream to its source at Heaven’s Well. We can do that-if we’re careful-but sooner or later we will have to pass right under Graymark. Walkers will see us coming for sure.”
Foraker frowned. “There must be some way we can slip past them.”
“There isn’t,” Slanter grunted. “I ought to know.”
“Can we follow the river until we’re close to Graymark and then cross into the mountains?” Helt asked, his big frame lowering onto a boulder. “Can we come at it from another direction?”
The Gnome shook his head. “Not from where we are. Graymark sits on a cliff shelf that overlooks the whole of the land about it-the Ravenshorn, the Silver River, everything. Rock is barren and open-no cover at all.” He glanced at Stythys, who sat sullenly to one side. “That’s why the lizards like it there so well. Nothing could ever creep up on them.”
“Then we’ll have to go in at night,” Garet Jax said softly.
Again Slanter shook his head. “Break your neck if you try it. Cliffs are sheer drops all the way in and the paths are narrow and guarded. You’ll never make it.”
There was a long silence. “Well, what do you suggest?” Foraker asked finally.
Slanter shrugged. “I don’t suggest anything. I got you this far; the rest is up to you. Maybe the boy can hide you with his magic again.” He lifted his eyebrows at Jair. “How about, it-can you sing for half the night?”
Jair flushed. “There must be some way to get past the guards, Slanter!”
“Oh; it’s no problem for me.” The Gnome sniffed. “But the rest of you might have some trouble.”
“Helt has the night vision...” Foraker began thoughtfully.
But Garet Jax cut him short, beckoning to Stythys. “What suggestion would you make, Mwellret? This is your home. What would you do?”
Stythys let his lidded eyes narrow. “Findss your own way, little peopless. Sseekss another’ss foolissh aid. Leavess me be!”
Garet Jax studied him a moment, then walked over to him wordlessly, gray eyes so cold that Jair stepped back involuntarily. The Weapons Master’s finger lifted and came to rest on the Mwellret’s cloaked form.
“You seem to be telling me that you are no longer of any use to us,” he said softly.
The Mwellret seemed to shrink back within the robes then, slitted eyes glittering with hate. But he held no power over Garet Jax. The Weapons Master stood where he was, waiting.
Then a low hiss escaped the lizard’s mouth and its forked tongue licked out slowly. “Helpss you if you ssetss me free,” he whispered. “Takess you where no one sseess you.”
There was a long silence as the members of the little company glanced at one another suspiciously. “Don’t trust him,” Slanter said.
“Sstupid little Gnome cannot help you now,” Stythys sneered. “Needss my help, little friendss. Knowss wayss that no other can passs.”
“What ways do you know?” Garet Jax asked, his voice still soft.
But the Mwellret shook his head stubbornly. “Promisse firsst to sset me free, little peopless. Promisse.”
The Weapons Master’s lean face showed nothing of what he was thinking. “If you can get us into Graymark, you go free.”
Slanter’s face wrinkled with disapproval, and he spit into the earth. Standing with the others of the company, Jair waited for Stythys to say something more. But the Mwellret seemed to be thinking.
“You have our promise,” Foraker interjected, a hint of impatience in his voice. “Now tell us what way we must go.”
Stythys grinned, an evil, unpleasant smile that appeared to be almost a grimace. “Takess little peopless through Cavess of Night!”
“Why, you black...!” Slanter exploded in fury and came at the Mwellret in a rush. Helt caught him about the waist as he tried to push past and hauled him back, the Gnome yelling and struggling as if he had gone mad. Stythys’ laughter was a soft hiss as the members of the little company closed about Slanter to keep him back.
“What is it, Gnome?” Garet Jax demanded, one hand fastening about Slanter’s arm. “Do you know of these caves?”
Slanter wrenched himself free of the Weapons Master, though Helt still maintained his grip. “The Caves of Night, Garet Jax!” the Gnome snarled. “Death bins for the mountain Gnomes since the time they fell under the rule of the lizards! Thousands of my people were given over to the Caves, thrown within and lost! Now this...monster would do likewise with us!”
Garet Jax turned quickly back to Stythys. The long knife appeared as if by magic in one hand. “Be careful of your answer this time, Mwellret,” he advised softly.
But Stythys seemed unperturbed. “Liess from little Gnome. Cavess are passsagess into Graymark. Takess you beneath the mountainss, passt the walkerss. No one sseess.”
“Is there truly passage in?” Foraker asked Slanter.
The Gnome went suddenly still, rigid in Helt’s firm grip. “Doesn’t matter if there is. The Caves are no place for the living. Miles of tunnels cut within the Ravenshorn, black as any pit and filled with Procks! Have you heard of Procks? They are living things, formed of magic older than the lands-magic from the old world, it’s said. Living mouths of rock, all through the Caves. Everywhere you walk, the Procks are there in the cavern floor. One wrong step and they open, swallowing-you up, closing about you, crushing you into...” He was shaking with fury. “That was the way the lizards disposed of the mountain Gnomes-pushed them into the Caves!”
“But the Caves do offer a passage through.” Garet Jax turned Foraker’s question into a statement of fact.
“A passage useless to us!” Slanter exploded once more. “We can’t see to find our way! A dozen steps in and the Procks would have us!”
“Havess not me!” Stythys cut him short with a hiss. “Mine iss the ssecret of the Cavess of Night! Little peopless cannot passs, but my peopless know the way. Prockss cannot harm uss!”
They were all still then. Garet Jax stalked back to stand before the Mwellret. “The Caves of Night run to Graymark beneath the Ravenshorn-safe from the eyes of the walkers? And you can lead us through?”
“Yess, little friendss,” Stythys rasped softly. “Takess you through.”
Garet Jax turned to the others. For a moment no one spoke. Then Helt gave a quick nod. “There are only six of us. If we are to have any chance at all, we have to reach the fortress unseen.
Foraker and Edain Elessedil nodded as well. Jair looked at Slanter. “You’re all fools!” the Gnome exclaimed bitterly. “Blind, stupid fools! You can’t trust the lizards!”
There was an awkward silence. “You don’t have to go any farther, if you don’t want to, Slanter,” Jair told him.
The Gnome stiffened. “I can take care of myself, boy!”
“I know. I just thought that...”
“Well, keep your thoughts to yourself!” the other cut him short. “As for not going any farther, you’d be better off taking that advice yourself. But you won’t, I’m sure. So we’ll all be fools together.” He glanced darkly at Stythys. “But this fool will be keeping close watch, and if anything goes wrong in this, I’ll be there to make certain the lizard doesn’t see the end of it!”
Garet Jax turned back to Stythys. “You’ll take us through then, Mwellret. Just remember-it will be as the Gnome says. What happens to us happens as well to you. Don’t play games with us. If you try...”
Stythys’ smile was quick and hard. “No gamess with you, little friendss.”
They waited until nightfall to resume their journey, then slipped down out of the rocks above the Silver River and turned north into the mountains. Light from the gibbous moon and stars brightened the dark mass of the Ravenshorn. as it rose about them, great barren peaks towering against the deep blue of the skyline. A worn pathway ran parallel to the riverbank through a scattering of trees and brush, and the little company from Culhaven followed it in until the forestland south was lost from view.
All night they walked, Helt and Slanter in the lead, the others following in cautious silence. The dark peaks drew steadily closer about the channel of the Silver River to wall them in. Save for the steady rush of the river, it was oddly silent within these peaks, a deep and pervasive stillness wrapping about the barren rock as if Mother Nature cradled her sleeping child. As the hours slipped away, Jair found himself growing increasingly uneasy with the silence, staring about at the massive walls of rock, peering into the shadows, and searching for something he could not see yet sensed was there, watching. The company chanced upon no other living creature that night, save for the great cliff birds that winged silently overhead across their nocturnal haunts, and still the Valeman sensed that they were not alone.
A part of this feeling sprang, he knew, from the continued presence of Stythys. Trailing, he could see the black figure of the Mwellret immediately in front of him. He could feel the creature’s green eyes constantly shifting to find him, watching him, waiting. Like Slanter, he did not trust the Mwellret. Whatever promises Stythys might have made to aid them, Jair was certain that behind it all lay a ruthless determination to gain mastery over the Valeman’s Elven magic. Whatever else happened, the creature meant to have that power. The certainty of it was frightening. The days he had spent walled away in the prisons at Dun Fee Aran haunted him like a specter so terrible that nothing could ever entirely banish it. It was Stythys who was responsible for that specter, and Stythys who would see life breathed back into it once more. While Jair now seemed free of the Mwellret, he could not shake the feeling that in some insidious way the creature had not lost control of him entirely.
But as night lengthened into early morning and weariness blunted the sharp edge of his doubt and his fear, Jair found himself thinking instead of Brin. In his mind he saw her face again as he had seen it twice so recently in the vision crystal-once ravaged as she experienced some unspeakable grief, once awestruck as she looked upon the twisted image of herself in the form of that shade. Glimpses only, those two brief visions, and nothing in either could tell the Valeman what had come to pass. Much had befallen his sister, he sensed-some of it frightening. An empty feeling opened within him as he thought of her, gone so long now from the Vale and from him, on a quest that the King of the Silver River had said would cause her to be lost. It was odd, but in a sense she seemed already lost to him, for the distance and the time that separated them was strangely magnified by the events that had transpired since last he had seen her. So much had happened, and he was so far from what and who he had been.
The emptiness grew suddenly into an ache. What if the King of the Silver River had misjudged him? What if he were to fail and Brin be lost to him? What if he were to come to her too late? He bit his lip against such thoughts, swearing fiercely that it would not be so. Deep ties bound him to her, brother to sister-ties of family, of a life shared, of knowledge, understanding, and caring, and most of all ties of love.
They marched on through the dark of early morning. With the first light of dawn, Stythys took the company up into the rocks. Moving away from the Silver River where it churned dark and sluggish in its channel, they passed deep into the cliffs. Trees and scrub disappeared and barren rock stretched away on all sides. Sunlight broke east above the mountain’s edge, a brilliant, blinding gold that flared through the cracks and splits of the rock like fire. They climbed toward that fire until suddenly, unexpectedly, their ascent took them into a cliff’s dark shadow and they stood at the entrance of an enormous cavern.
“Cavess of Night!” Stythys hissed softly.
The cavern yawned before the little company like an open maw, jagged rock split and twisted about the passageway like teeth. Wind blew down across the mountain heights, and it seemed as if it whistled at them from out of the Caves. Lengths of dull, whitish wood lay scattered about the entry as if stripped by age and weather. Jair looked closer and froze. The lengths of wood were bones, splintered, broken, and bleached of life.
Garet Jax placed himself before Stythys. “How are we to see anything in there, Mwellret? Have you torches.?”
Stythys laughed, low and evil. “Torchess not burn in the Cavess, little friendss. Needss the magic!”
The Weapons Master glanced back momentarily at the cavern entrance. “And you have this magic?”
“Havess it, indeed,” the other answered, arms folding within the robes, body swelling slightly. “Havess the Fire Wake! Liess within!”
“How long will this take?” Foraker asked uneasily. Dwarves were not fond of closed places, and he was less than anxious to venture into this one.
“Passs through Cavess quickly, little friendss,” Stythys reassured rather too eagerly. “Takess you through in three hourss. Graymark waitss for uss.”
The members of the little company glanced at one another and at the cavern entrance. “I’m telling you, you can’t trust him!” Slanter warned yet again.
Garet Jax produced a length of rope and tied one end about himself and the other about Stythys. Testing the knots that bound them, he slipped free the long knife. “I will be closer to you than your shadow, Mwellret. Remember that. Now take us in there and show us your magic.” Stythys started to turn, but the Weapons Master yanked him about. “Not too far in. Not until we see what you can do.”
The Mwellret grimaced. “Sshowss little friendss. Come.”
He slouched toward the monstrous black entry to the Caves, Garet Jax a step behind him and the rope about their waists binding them as one. Slanter followed them at once. After a moment’s hesitation, the others of the little company also followed. Sunlight fell away as, the shadows about them deepened, and they passed into the stone maw and the darkness beyond. For a few moments, the dawn’s faint light aided them in their progress, silhouetting the shapes of walls, floors, jagged stalactites, and clustered rocks. Then quickly even that small light began to fail, and the blackness swallowed them.
Now they were practically blind, and their steps faltered to a ragged halt, the scraping of leather boots on rock a rough echo in the cavern’s silence. They stood in a knot and listened to the echo die. The sound of dripping water reached their ears from somewhere deep within the blackness ahead. And from deeper still came the unpleasant sound of rock grating against rock.
“Ssee, little friendss,” Stythys hissed suddenly. “All iss black in the Cavess!”
Jair glanced about uneasily, seeing almost nothing. Beside him, Edain Elessedil’s lean Elven face was a faint shadow. There was a curious dampness to the air, a clinging wetness that stirred, though there was no wind, and seemed to wrap and twist about them. It had an unpleasant feel, and it smelled of rot. The Valeman wrinkled his nose in distaste, realizing suddenly that it was the same smell that had been present in Stythys’ cell at Capaal.
“Callss now the Fire Wake!” the Mwellret rasped, startling the Valeman. “Lissten! Callss now the light!”
He cried out sharply, a kind of grim, hollow whistle that sounded of bone scraping, rough and tortured. The whistle rang through the blackness, carrying deep into the caverns. It echoed, long and mournful, and then the Mwellret repeated it a second time. Jair shivered. He was liking this whole idea of the Caves less and less.
Then abruptly the Fire Wake came. It flew at them through the darkness like a gathering of brilliant dust, bits of iridescent fire whirling and sailing on wind that wasn’t there. Scattered through the blackness as it darted toward them, it drew together in a rush before the Mwellret’s outstretched hand, tiny particles swirling in a tightened ball of light that cast its yellow glow outward to brighten the shadows of the Caves. The members of the little company stared in astonishment as the Fire Wake gathered and hung suspended before Stythys, and against their faces the strange glow flickered and danced.
“Magicss of my own, little friendss,” Stythys hissed triumphantly. The snouted face turned to find Jair, green eyes gleaming in the whirling light. “Ssee how the Fire Wake obeyss?”
Garet Jax stepped quickly between them. “Point the way, Mwellret. Time slips from us.”
“Sslipss quickly, it doess,” the other rasped softly.
They pressed on into the darkness, the Fire Wake lighting their path forward. The walls of the Caves of Night rose higher about them, lost finally in shadowed gloom that even the Fire Wake could not penetrate. From out of the gloom, the sound of their footfalls fell back upon them in strange, sullen echoes. The smell grew worse the deeper in they went, turning foul the air they breathed and forcing them to take shortened breaths to avoid gagging. The passageway split and divided before them into dozens of corridors intertwined in an impossible maze of tunnels. But Stythys did not slow, choosing without hesitation the tunnel he would have them follow. The glowing dust of the Fire Wake danced on before him.
Time dragged past. Still the tunnels and passageways wore on, endless black openings in the rock. The smell grew even worse, and now the sound of grating rock was no longer distant, but unpleasantly close at hand. Then suddenly Stythys drew to a halt at an entrance leading into a particularly massive cavern, the Fire Wake dancing close as his hand lifted.
“Prockss!” he whispered.
He cast the Fire Wake from him with a snap of his wrist and it flew into the cave ahead, lighting the impenetrable blackness. The members of the little company from Culhaven stared in horror at what the light revealed. There, dotting the whole of the cavern floor, were hundreds of jagged, gaping fissures that opened and closed as if mouths engaged in some hideous chewing, the rock grinding hatefully in the dark. Sounds came from within those mouths-gurgling-rushes, rendings, deep groaning belches of liquid and crushed stone.
“Shades!” they heard Helt whisper then. “The whole cave is alive!”
“Musst passs through,” Stythys announced with an ugly grin. “Little peopless sstay closse.”
They stayed practically on top of one another, pale faces gleaming with sweat in the light of the Fire Wake, eyes fixed on the cavern floor before them. Again Stythys led, Garet Jax a step behind, Slanter, Jair, Edain Elessedil, and Helt in a line following, and Foraker trailing. They made their way in a slow, twisting path into the midst of the Procks, stepping where the Fire Wake showed the black mouths not to be, their ears and minds filled with the sounds those terrible mouths made. The Procks opened and closed all about them as if waiting to be fed, hungry animals that sensed the presence of food. At times they closed so tightly that they seemed a part of the cavern floor that was solid, no more than thin lines in the roughened stone. Yet they could open quickly, snatching away the seemingly safe ground offered, ready to swallow anything that ventured above. But each time one lay hidden on the path ahead, the Fire Wake showed the members of the company where it waited and guided them carefully past.
They passed from that first cavern into another and after that into another. Still the Procks were with them, dotting the floor of every cave and passageway so that none was safe to traverse. They moved slowly now, and the minutes dragged away in a seemingly endless passage of time. Weariness set in as their concentration intensified, each knowing that a single misstep would be the last. All the while the Procks opened and closed about them, grinding in gleeful anticipation.
“There is no end to this maze!” Edain Elessedil whispered once in frustration to Jair.
The Valeman nodded in helpless agreement. Foraker pressed close behind now, and Helt brought up the rear. The Dwarf’s bearded face was soaked with sweat and his hard eyes were glittering.
A concealed Prock opened suddenly, almost at Jair’s feet, its black maw yawning. Frantically, the Valeman jerked away, stumbling into Slanter. The Prock had been right next to him and he hadn’t seen it! He fought back against the wave of disgust and fear that swept over him and set his jaw determinedly. It would not be much longer. They would be clear soon.
But then, as they were passing through yet another cavern, through yet another maze of Procks, Stythys did what Slanter had warned all along he would do. It happened so quickly that not even Garet Jax had time to act. One moment they were all together, easing past the hideously grinding fissures; in the next, the Mwellret’s hand flicked suddenly backward, casting the Fire Wake directly into their faces. It came at them in a flare of brilliant light, scattering. Instinctively they turned away, shielding their eyes, and in that instant Stythys moved. He leaped past Garet Jax and Slanter to where Jair crouched. Snatching the Valeman about the waist with one powerful arm, the lizard creature slipped a wicked-looking knife from somewhere beneath the dark robes where he had kept it hidden and pressed it close against his captive’s throat.
“Sstay back, little friendss!” The Mwellret hissed, turning to face them as the Fire Wake again gathered-before him.
No one moved. Garet Jax crouched barely two yards away, a black shadow poised to spring. The length of rope still bound him to the Mwellret. Stythys kept the Valeman between them, the knife glittering in the half-light.
“Foolissh little peopless!” the monster rasped. “Thinkss to usse me againsst my will! Sseess now what liess ahead for you?”
“I told you he couldn’t be trusted!” Slanter cried out in fury.
He started forward, but a warning hiss from the Mwellret brought him to a halt instantly. Behind him, the others of the little company stood frozen in a tight circle-Helt, Foraker and Edain Elessedil. All about them the Procks continued to grind steadily, stone grating on stone.
Garet Jax shifted from the crouch, gray eyes so cold that Stythys’ arm tightened further about Jair. “Let the Valeman go, Mwellret,” the Weapons Master said softly.
The blade of the knife pressed closer against Jair’s throat. Jair swallowed and tried to shrink away from it. Then his eyes met those of Garet Jax. The Weapons Master was fast-faster than anyone. It was when he had confronted the Gnome Hunters who had taken Jair prisoner in the Black Oaks that he had first shown how fast he could be. And the same look he had worn then was now in the lean, hard face-a calm, inscrutable look where only the eyes spoke of the death that was promised.
Jair breathed a deep, slow breath. Garet Jax was close enough. But the knife at the Valeman’s throat was closer still.
“Magicss belong to uss, not to little peopless!” Stythys rasped in a quick, anxious whisper. “Magicss to sstand againsst the walkerss! Little peopless cannot usse it, cannot usse uss! Sstupid little peopless! Crussh you like bugss!”
“Let the Valeman go!” Garet Jax repeated.
The Fire Wake danced and glimmered before the Mwellret, a whirling cloud of shimmering dust. Stythys’ green eyes drew into slits of hatred, and he laughed softly.
“Letss you go insstead, black one!” he snapped. He glanced quickly at Slanter. “You, little Gnome? Cut loosse thiss tie that bindss me to him!”
Slanter looked at Garet Jax, then looked back again. His eyes shifted for just an instant to find Jair’s. The Valeman read there what was expected of him. If he hoped to get out of this alive, he was going to have to do something to help..
Slowly Slanter came forward, a step at a time, slipping the long knife from his belt. No one else moved. Jair steadied himself, fighting back against the fear and repulsion that coursed through him. Slanter came closer, another step. One hand reached for the slackened rope that bound the Mwellret to Garet Jax. Jair went perfectly still. One chance was all he would get. Slanter’s hand closed about the rope and the knife lifted to the hemp.
Then Jair sang-a quick, sharp cry that Slanter recognized at once. Dozens of gray, hairy spiders clustered on Stythys, crawling over the arm that held the knife to Jair’s throat. The Mwellret jerked his arm away with a howl, beating it wildly against his robes in an effort to dislodge the things that clung to it. Abruptly the Fire Wake scattered in a wide circle, taking back the light and throwing everything into shadow.
Cat-quick, Slanter threw himself on Stythys, burying his long knife in the arm that gripped Jair about his waist. That arm, too, jerked away, and Jair tumbled to the roughened stone, free again. Shouts rose from the others of the little company as they charged forward to pull him clear. Stythys flew backward onto the cavern floor, Slanter clinging to him, Garet Jax leaping after. A long knife appeared in the Weapon Master’s hand as he sought to cut through the rope that bound him to the Mwellret. But he was yanked off balance as the rope snapped taut. He lost his footing and skidded to his knees.
“Slanter!” Jair screamed.
The Gnome and the Mwellret stumbled through the maze of Procks, clawing wildly at each other. The Fire Wake continued to rise as Stythys’ control over it slipped away, and the entire cavern was rapidly falling into shadow. Another few seconds and no one would be able to see anything.
“Gnome!” Foraker cried in warning, breaking away from the others to where the two forms struggled.
But Garet Jax was quicker. He leaped like a shadow from the gloom, his footing regained. The long knife severed the rope about his waist with a single cut. Procks grated and snapped in response to the sounds above, dark maws working madly. Stythys and Slanter were directly in their midst, squirming closer, slipping...
And then Garet Jax reached them, flinging himself across the remaining space that separated them, his iron grip fastening on Slanter’s leg. With a yank, he tore the Gnome free from Stythys’ claws. Clothing shredded and ripped, and a frightful hiss burst from Stythys’ throat.
The Mwellret tumbled backward, thrown off balance. Beneath him, a Prock’s black maw gaped open. The lizard seemed to hang suspended for an instant, clawed fingers grasping at the air. Then he fell, disappearing from sight. The Prock closed and there was a sudden shriek. Then the black fissure began to grind, a terrible crunching, and the whole of the cavern was filled with the dreadful sound.
Instantly the Fire Wake scattered and fled back into the gloom, taking with it the precious light. The Caves of Night were plunged into darkness once more.
It was several minutes before anyone moved again. They, crouched where they were in the blackness, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the absence of light, listening to the sounds of the Procks grinding all about them. When it quickly became apparent that there was not even the smallest amount of light to allow their eyes to adjust, Elb Foraker called out to the others and asked them to respond. One by one, they called back, faceless voices in the impenetrable dark. All were there.
But they knew that they were not likely to be there for long. The Fire Wake was gone, the light they so desperately needed to show them the path forward. Without it, they were blind. They must attempt to move through the maze of Procks using little more than instinct.
“Hopeless,” Foraker announced at once. “Without light, we cannot tell where the passages open before us and we cannot choose our path. Even if we escape the Procks, we will wander in these Caves forever.”
There was a hint of fear in the Dwarf’s voice that Jair had never heard before. “There has to be a way,” he murmured quietly, as much to himself as to the others.
“Helt, can you use the night vision?” Edain Elessedil asked hopefully. “Can you see to find a way through this darkness?”
But the giant Borderman could not. Even the night vision must have some light to aid it, he explained gently. In the absence of all light, the night vision was useless.
They were quiet then for a time, bereft it seemed of even the smallest hope. In the darkness, Jair could hear Slanter’s rough voice admonishing Garet Jax that he should have known better than to trust the lizard, as Slanter had told him. Jair listened and seemed to hear Brin speaking to him as well, telling him that he, too, should have listened. He brushed the whisper of her voice from his mind, thinking as he did so that, if the wishsong served him as it did her, he could call back the Fire Wake. But his song was only illusion, a pretense of what was real.
Then he thought of the vision crystal.
Calling excitedly to the others, he fumbled through his clothing until he found it, still tucked safely away, dangling from its silver chain, and he brought it forth into the cup of his hands. The crystal would give them light-all the light that was needed! With the crystal and Helt’s night vision to guide them, they would yet get clear of these Caves!
Barely able to suppress the excitement that coursed through him, he sang to the gift of the King of the Silver River and called forth the magic. The brilliant light sprang up, flooding the cavern with its glow. Brin Ohmsford’s face appeared within it, dark, beautiful, and worn, rising up before them in the gloom of the Caves of Night like some wraith come forth from another world. Grayness surrounded the Valegirl, gloom all too reminiscent of their own, close and stifling. Wherever she was as she looked past them to her own future, it was no less hostile a place than their own.
Cautiously, they rejoined one another, gathering about the light of the crystal. Joining hands as children might on a walk through some dark place, they began to move forward through the maze of Procks. Jair led, the light of the vision crystal sustained by his voice, scattering the shadows before them. Helt followed a step behind, sharp eyes scanning the cavern floor for where the Procks lay hidden. Behind them, the others followed.
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They passed from that cavern into another, but this new cavern was smaller and the proper choice of passage less difficult to discern. Jair’s song lifted, clear, strong, and filled with certainty. He knew now that they were going to escape these Caves, and it was because of Brin. He wanted to cry out in thanks to her image as it floated before him. How strange that she should come like this to save them!
Closing his ears to the sounds of the Procks as they grated stone on stone, closing his mind to everything but the light and the vision of his sister’s face as it hung suspended before him, he gave himself over to the wishsong’s magic and passed on through the darkness.
It took the remainder of the night for Brin and her rescuers to work their way clear of Olden Moor. They would not have done so even then without Whisper to guide them, but the big moor cat was at home in the bottomland, and neither the mist nor the shapeless, mired earth gave him pause. Choosing their pathway with instincts that the moor could not deceive, he led them south toward the dark wall of the Ravenshorn.
“We would have lost you to the moor without Whisper,” Kimber explained to the Valegirl after they had found her again and begun their march south. “It was Whisper who tracked you through the mist. He is not misled by appearances, and nothing of the moor can fool him. Still, it was fortunate that we reached you when we did, Brin. You must stay close to us after this.”
Brin accepted the well-intentioned rebuke without comment. There was no point in discussing the matter further. Her decision to leave them before they reached the Maelmord was already made. It merely remained for her to find the right opportunity to do so. Her reasons were simple. The task entrusted to her by Allanon was to penetrate the forest barrier that protected the Ildatch and to see to it that the book of dark magic was destroyed. She would do this by pitting the magic of the wishsong against the magic of the Maelmord. Once she had wondered if such a thing were even possible. Now she wondered not if such a thing were possible, but if such a thing would prove cataclysmic. The power of the magics unleashed would be awesome-a match not of white magic against dark as she had once envisioned, but a match of magics equally dark in tone and effect. The Maelmord was created to destroy. But the wishsong, too, could destroy, and now Brin knew that not only would the potential for such destruction always be there, but that she could not be assured of being able to control it. She might vow to do so. She might swear her strongest oath. But she could never be certain that she could keep that oath-not anymore, unless she forbore all use of the wishsong. She could accept the risk to herself; she had done that long ago when she had decided to come on this quest. But she could not accept the risk to those who traveled with her.
She must leave them. Whatever fate she was to suffer when she entered the Maelmord, her companions must not be there to share it with her. You go to your death, Brin of Shannara, the Grimpond had warned. You carry within you the seeds of that destruction. Perhaps that was so. Perhaps those seeds were carried in the magic of the wishsong. But one thing was certain. The others of the little company had risked themselves enough for her already. She would not have them do so again.
She thought about it all night as she trudged on wearily through the bottomland, remembering what she had felt in the times she had used. the wishsong’s magic. The hours slipped past, and, the Werebeasts did not come to haunt them again that night. But in the mind of the Valegirl, there were demons of another sort.
By dawn the little company was clear of Olden Moor and found itself in the foothills bordering the southern mountains of the Ravenshorn. Wearied from their long march up from Hearthstone and the events of the night past and wary of traveling further in daylight when they might easily be seen, the five took refuge in a small copse of pine in a lea between two ridgelines and fell asleep.
They resumed their journey with the return of nightfall, traveling east now, following the high wall of the mountains where it brushed up against the moor. Trailers of mist wound through the trees of the forested lower slopes, a spider’s web across the pathway as the travelers passed silently by. The mountain peaks of the Ravenshorn were huge and stark, barren rock lifting out of the forestland to etch sharply against the sky. It was an empty, still night, and the whole of the land about seemed stripped of life. Shadows lay across the cliffs, forests, and the moor’s deep mists. In their pooling darkness nothing moved.
They rested at midnight, an uneasy pause where they found themselves listening to the silence as they rubbed aching muscles and tightened boot straps. It was then that Cogline chose to talk about his magic.
“Magic it is, too,” he whispered cautiously to Brin and Rone, almost as if he feared that someone might be listening. “Magic of a different sort than that wielded by the walkers, though-born not of their time nor the time when Elves and faerie folk had the power, but of the time between!”
He bent forward, eyes sharp and accusing. “Thought I knew nothing of the old world, didn’t you, girl?” he asked Brin. “Well, I have the teachings of the old world, too-passed down to me by my ancestors. Not Druids, no. But teachers, girl-teachers! Theirs was the lore of the world that existed when the Great Wars caused such destruction to mankind!”
“Grandfather,” limber Boh cautioned gently. “Just explain it to them.”
“Humphh!” Cogline grunted testily. “Explain it, she says! What is it that you think I do, girl?” His forehead furrowed. “Earth power! That’s the magic I wield! Not the magic of words and spells-no, not that magic! Power born of the elements that comprise the ground on which we walk, outlanders. That is the earth power. Bits and pieces of ores and powders and mixings that can be seen by the eye and felt by the hand. Chemics, they were once called. Developed by skills of a different sort than the simple ones we use now in the Four Lands. Most of the knowledge was lost with the old world. But a little-just a little-was saved. And it is mine to use.”
“This is what you carry in those pouches?” Rone asked. “This is what you used to make those fires explode?”
“Ha-ha!” Cogline laughed softly. “They do that and much more, Southlander. Fires can be exploded, earth turned to mud, air to choking dust, flesh to stone! I have potions for all and dozens more. Mix and match, a bit of this and a bit of that!” He laughed again. “I’ll show the walkers power they haven’t seen before!”
Rone shook his head doubtfully. “Spider Gnomes are one thing; the Mord Wraiths are something else again. A finger points at you and you are reduced to ash. The sword I carry, infused with the Druid magic, is the only protection against those black things.”
“Bah!” Cogline spit. “You’d best look to me for your protection-you and the girl!”
Rone began to phrase a sharp retort, then thought better. of it and simply shrugged. “If we come up against the walkers, we shall both need to offer Brin whatever protection we can.”
He glanced at the Valegirl for confirmation, and she smiled agreeably. It cost her nothing to do so. She already knew that neither of them would be with her, in any case.
She pondered for a time what Cogline had told them. It troubled her that any part of the old skills should have survived the holocaust of the Great Wars. She did not like to think it possible that such awesome power could come again into the world. It was bad enough that the magic of the world of faerie had been reborn through the misguided efforts of that handful of rebel Druids in the Councils of Paranor. But to be faced with the prospect that the knowledge of power and energy might again be pursued was even more unsettling. Almost all of the learning that had gone into that knowledge had been lost with the destruction of the old world. What little had survived, the Druids’ had locked away again. Yet here was this old man, half-crazed and as wild as the wilderness in which he lived, in possession of at least a portion of that learning-a special kind of magic that he had resolved was now his own.
She shook her head. Perhaps it was inevitable that all learning, whether born of good or bad intention, whether used to give life or to take life away, must come to light at some point in time. Perhaps it was true both of skill and of magic-one born of the world of men, the other of the world of faerie. Perhaps both must surface periodically in the stream of time, then disappear again, then surface once more, and so on forever.
But a return now of the knowledge of energy and power, when the last of the Druids was gone...?
Still, Cogline was an old man and his knowledge was limited. When he died, perhaps the knowledge would die with him and be lost again-for a time, at least.
And so, too, perhaps it would be with her magic.
They walked east for the remainder of the night, picking their way through the thinning forestland. Ahead, the wall of the Ravenshorn began to curve back toward them, turning north into the wilderness of the deep Anar. It rose up from out of the night, a towering, dark band of shadow. Olden Moor dropped away behind them, and only the thin green line of the foothills separated them from the mountain heights. A deeper silence seemed to settle over the land. It was in the crook of the mountains where they turned north, Brin knew, that Graymark and the Maelmord lay concealed.
And there I must find a way to be free of the others, she thought. There, I must go on alone.
The first trailers of sunrise began to slip into view beyond the mountain wall. Slowly the skies lightened, turning from deep blue to gray, from gray to silver, and from silver to rose and gold. Shadows fled away into the receding night, and the broad sweep of the land began to etch itself out of the dark. The trees grew visible first, leaves, crooked limbs, and roughened trunks drawn and colored by the light; then rocks, scrub, and barren earth, from foothills to bottomland, took form. For a time, the shadow of the mountains lingered, a wall against the light, lost in darkness not yet faded. But finally that, too, gave way to the sunrise, and the light spilled down over the rim of the peaks to reveal the awesome face of the Ravenshorn.
It was a stark and ugly face-a face that had been ravaged by time and the elements and by the poison of the dark magic sown within it. Where the mountains curved north into the wilderness, the rock had been bleached and worn-as if the life in it had been peeled away like skin to leave only bone. It rose up against the skyline, thousands of feet above them, a wall of cliffs and ragged defiles burdened with the weight of ages gone and horrors endured. On the hard, gray emptiness, nothing moved.
Brin lifted her face momentarily as the wind brushed past. Her nose wrinkled in distaste. An unpleasant smell rose up from somewhere ahead.
“Graymark’s sewers.” Cogline spit, ferret eyes darting. “We’re close now.”
Kimber slipped ahead of them to where Whisper sniffed tentatively at the odorous morning air. Bending close to the great cat, she spoke softly in his ear-just a word-and the beast nuzzled her face gently.
She turned back to them. “Quickly now, before it gets any lighter-Whisper will show us the way.”
They hurried forward through the new light and receding shadow, following the moor cat as he guided them along the twist of the foothills to where the Ravenshorn bent north. Trees and scrub fell away completely, grasses turned sparse and wintry, and the earth gave way to crushed stone and shelf rock. The smell grew steadily worse, a rank and fetid odor that smothered even the freshness of the new day’s birthing. Brin found herself choking for breath. How much worse would it be once they had found their way into the sewers?
Then the hills dropped away sharply before them into a deep valley that was lost in the shadow of the mountain wall. There, sullen and still, lay a dark lake of stagnant water, fed by a stream that seeped down through the rocks from a broad, blackened hole.
Whisper padded to a halt, Kimber at his side. “There.” She pointed. “The sewers.”
Brin’s eyes strayed upward along the ragged line of the peaks, upward thousands of feet to where the mountain wall cut its jagged edge against the golden dawn sky. There, still hidden from view, lay Graymark, the Maelmord, and the Ildatch.
She swallowed against the smell of the sewers. There, too, lay the fate that was to be hers. Her smile was hard. She must go to meet it.
At the entrance to the sewers, Cogline unveiled a bit more of his magic. From a sealed packet buried in one of the pouches he wore strapped to his waist, he produced an ointment that, when rubbed into the nostrils, deadened the stench of the sewer’s poisonous discharge. A small magic, he claimed. Though the smell could not be obliterated entirely, it nevertheless could be made tolerable. Fashioning short-handled brands from pieces of deadwood, he dipped the ends into the contents of a second pouch and they emerged covered with a silver substance that glowed like oil lamps when introduced into the cavern’s darkness-even in the absence of any fire.
“Just a little more of my magic, outlanders.” He chuckled as they scared wonderingly at the flameless torches. “Chemicals, remember? Something the walkers don’t know anything about. And I’ve a few more surprises. You’ll see.”
Rone frowned doubtfully and shook his head. Brin said nothing, but decided quickly that she would be just as happy if the opportunity to test those surprises never arose.
Torches in hand, the little company moved out of the dawn light into the tunnel darkness of the sewers. The passageways were wide and deep, the liquid poison discharged from the halls of Graymark and the Maelmord flowing down a worn, rutted channel that cut through the tunnel floor. To either side of where the sewage flowed, there were stone walkways that offered footing broad enough for the company to pass upon. Whisper led the way, luminous eyes blinking in sleepy reflection against the light of the torches, splayed feet padding soundlessly on the stone. Cogline followed with Kimber, and Brin and Rone brought up the rear.
They walked for a long time. Brin lost track of how long a time it was, her concentration divided between picking her way through the half-light and thinking of her promise to find a way to go down into the Maelmord without the others. The sewer wound upward through the mountain rock, twisting and turning like a coiled snake. The stench permeating the passage was almost unbearable, even with the aid of the repellant that Cogline had provided to ease their breathing difficulties. From time to time, sudden drafts of cold air blew down from above them, clearing the smell of the sewage-wind from the peaks into which they climbed. But the drafts of fresh air were few and brief, and the smells of the sewer were always quick to return.
The morning slipped away, the hours lost in the endless spiral of their ascent. Once they came upon a massive iron grate that had been dropped across the passageway to prevent anything larger than a rat from entering. Rone reached for his sword, but a sharp word from Cogline brought him up short. A gleeful cackle breaking from his lips, the old man motioned them back, then produced yet another pouch-this one containing an odd, blackish powder laced with something that looked to be soot. Dabbing the powder on the bars of the grate where they joined the rock, he touched the treated spots quickly with the flameless torch and the powder flared a brilliant white. When the light died away, the bars had been eaten completely through. At a stiff nudge, the entire grate collapsed onto the cavern floor. The company went on.
No one spoke as they climbed. Instead, they listened for the sound of the enemy that waited somewhere above-the walkers and the things that served them. They heard nothing of these, but there were other sounds that echoed through the empty passageways-sounds that came from far above and were not immediately identifiable. There were clunks and thuds, as if heavy bodies had fallen, scrapes and scratchings, a low howling, as if a hard wind slipped down through the tunnels from the mountain peaks, and a hissing, as if steam escaped some fissure in the earth. These distant sounds filled and thus magnified the otherwise utter silence of the sewers. Brin found herself searching for a pattern to the sounds, but there was none-except, perhaps, for the hissing which lifted and fell with a peculiar regularity. It reminded Brin, unpleasantly, of the Grimpond’s rise from the lake and the mist.
I must find a way to go on alone, she thought one time more. I must do so soon.
Tunnels came and went, and the climb wore on. The air within the sewers had grown steadily warmer with the passing of the day, and beneath their cloaks and tunics the members of the little company were sweating freely. A kind of peculiar mist had begun to filter down through the corridors, clinging and grimy, filled with the sewer’s smell. They brushed at it distastefully, but it drifted after them, closed about them, and would not be moved away. It grew thicker as the climb progressed, and soon they were having difficulty seeing further than a dozen feet ahead.
Then abruptly the mist and gloom cleared before them, and they stood upon a shelf of rock that overlooked an immense chasm. Down into the mountain’s core the chasm dropped, disappearing into utter blackness. The members of the little company glanced uneasily at one another. To their right, the passageway curved upward into the rock, following the trench that carried the sewage from the Mord Wraith citadel. To their left, the passageway ran downward a short distance to a slender stone bridge barely a yard in width that arched across the chasm to a darkened tunnel that bore into the far cliff face.
“Which way now?” Rone muttered softly, almost as if asking himself.
Left, Brin thought at once. Left, across the chasm. She did not understand why, yet she knew instinctively that this was the path she must choose.
“The sewers are the way.” Cogline was looking at her. “That’s what the Grimpond said, wasn’t it, girl?”
Brin found herself unable to speak. “Brin?” Kimber called to her softly.
“Yes,” she replied finally. “Yes, that is the way.”
They turned right along the shelf, following it up along the sewage channel, trudging back again into the blackness. Brin’s mind raced. This isn’t the way, she thought. Why did I say it was? She took a sudden gulp of air, forcing her thoughts to slow. What she sought was back the way they had come, back across the stone bridge. The Maelmord was back that way-she could sense it. Why, then, had she...?
She caught herself roughly, the question answered almost as quickly as it was asked. Because this was where she would leave them, of course. This was the opportunity that she had looked for since Olden Moor. This was how it must be. The wishsong would aid her-a small deceit, a little lie. She sucked in her breath sharply at the thought. Even though it would betray their trust in her, she must do it.
Softly, gently, she began to hum, building the wishsong a stone at a time into a wall of non-seeing, creating in her place and in the minds of her companions an image of herself. Then abruptly she stepped away from her own ghost, flattened herself against the stone wall of the passageway, and watched the others walk past.
The illusion would only last a few minutes, she knew. She sped back down the sewer tunnel, following the cut and weave of the rock. The sound of her breathing was ragged in her ears. She reached the shelf, hastened to where it narrowed, and turned onto the stone bridge. The chasm yawned blackly before her. A step at a time, she inched out onto the bridge, picking her pathway across. There was silence in the gloom and mist that swirled about, yet she felt somehow that she was not alone. Her mind hardened against the brief surge of fear and doubt, and she withdrew deep into herself, passionless and cold. Nothing could be allowed to touch her.
At last she was across the bridge. She stood within the entrance to this new tunnel for a moment and let the feeling return. A brief thought of Rone and the others passed through her mind and disappeared. She had used the wishsong against them now as well, she thought bitterly. And though it might have been necessary, it hurt her deeply to have done so.
Then she wheeled abruptly toward the stone bridge, pitched the wishsong to a quick, hard shriek and sang. The sound echoed in fury through the black, and the bridge exploded into fragments and dropped away into the chasm.
Now there could be no going back.
She turned into the tunnel and disappeared.
The sound of the shriek penetrated up into the sewer tunnel where the others of the little company still picked their way through the gloom.
“Shades! What was that?” Rone cried.
There was a moment’s silence as the echo died away. “Brin-it was Brin,” Kimber whispered in reply.
Rone stared. No, Brin was right next to him...
Abruptly, the image the Valegirl had created in their minds faded into nothingness. Cogline swore softly and stamped his foot.
“What has she done...?” the highlander stammered in confusion, unable to finish the thought.
Kimber was at his side, her, face intense. “She has done what she has wanted to do from the beginning, I think. She has left us and gone on alone. She said before that she did not want any of us to go with her; now she has made certain that we do not.”
“For cat’s sake!” Rone was appalled. “Doesn’t she understand how dangerous...?”
“She understands everything,” the girl cut him short, pushing past him down the tunnel’s passage. “I should have realized before that she would do this. We must hurry if we are to catch up with her. Whisper, track!”
The big moor cat leaped ahead effortlessly, gliding back down the sewer tunnel into the shadows. The three humans hurried after, slipping and stumbling through the mist and gloom. Rone Leah was angry and frightened at the same time. Why would Brin do this? He did not understand.
Then abruptly they were back upon the stone shelf, staring out across the chasm to where the bridge fell away into the dark, broken at its center.
“There, you see, she’s used the magic!” Cogline snapped.
Wordlessly, Rone hurried forward, stepping out onto the jagged remnant of the bridge. Twenty feet away, the other end jutted from the cliff face. He could make that jump, he thought suddenly. It was a long way over, but he could make it. At least he must try...
“No, Rone Leah,” Kimber pulled him back from the precipice, reading at once his intentions. Her grip on his arm was surprisingly strong. “You must not be foolish. You cannot jump so far.”
“I can’t leave her again,” he insisted stubbornly. “Not again.”
The girl nodded solemnly. “I care for her, too.” She turned. “Whisper!” The moor cat padded up to her, whiskered face rubbing her own. Softly she spoke. to the cat, stroking him behind his ears. Then she stepped away. “Track, Whisper!” she commanded.
Wheeling, the moor cat darted onto the bridge, gathered himself and sprang into the air. He cleared the chasm effortlessly, landed on the far end of the shattered bridge, and disappeared into the darkened tunnel beyond.
There was concern reflected in Kimber Boh’s young face. She had not wanted to separate herself from the cat, but Brin might have greater need of him than she, and the Valegirl was her friend. “Guard well,” she whispered after.
Then she looked back again at Rone. “Now let us also try to find a way to reach Brin Ohmsford.”
It was nearly noon of the same day when Jair and his companions emerged once more from the Caves of Night and found themselves on a broad shelf of rock overlooking a deep canyon between the mountain peaks of the Ravenshorn. The peaks were so close that they shut away all but a narrow strip of blue sky far above where the company stood, lost in a gathering of shadows. The shelf ran left along the mountain face for several hundred yards and then disappeared again into a cut in the cliffs.
The Valeman stared upward wearily, following the lift of the mountains against the noonday sky. He was exhausted-drained physically and emotionally. He still clutched the vision crystal in one hand, its silver chain dragging against the shelf rock. They had been in the Caves since sunrise. For a good part of that time, it had been necessary to use the wishsong to project the light of the crystal so that they might find their way clear. It had taken every ounce of strength and every bit of concentration that he could muster to do that. In his mind, he could still hear the sound of the Procks, stone grating on stone, a whisper now of what had been left behind in the darkness of the caves. In his mind, he could also still hear Stythys’ final scream.
“Let’s not stand where we can be so easily seen,” Garet Jax said softly and motioned him left.
Slanter caught up with them, glancing about doubtfully. “I’m not sure this is the way, Weapons Master.”
Garet Jax did not turn. “How many other ways do you see?”
Silently, the members of the little company edged down along the rock shelf to the cut in the cliff face. A narrow defile stretched away before them, twisting into the rock and disappearing into shadow. They moved through it in a line, their eyes darting upward guardedly along its roughened walls. A draft of icy air brushed against them, blown down from the heights. Jair shivered with its touch. Numbed by the horrors of the Caves, he welcomed even this unpleasant feeling. He could sense that they were now close to Graymark’s walls. Graymark, the Maelmord, Heaven’s Well were all near at hand. His quest was almost ended, the long journey done. He felt a strange compulsion to laugh and cry at the same time, but the weariness and the ache in his body would let him do neither.
The defile wound on, slipping deeper into the rock. His mind wandered. Where was Brin? The crystal had shown them her face. But it had shown them nothing of where she might be. Gray mist and gloom had surrounded her in a dreary and desolate place. A passageway, perhaps, similar to their own? Was she, too, within these mountains?
“You must reach Heaven’s Well before she reaches the Maelmord,” the King of the Silver River had warned. “You must be there for her.”
He stumbled and nearly went down, his concentration drifting from the task at hand. He righted himself hastily and shoved the vision crystal back into his tunic front.
“Watch yourself,” Edain Elessedil whispered at his elbow. Jair nodded and went on.
Anticipation began to build within him. An entire army of Gnomes guarded Graymark’s battlements and watchtowers. Mord Wraiths walked its halls. Things darker still might lie in wait within, sentinels against intruders like themselves. Their company was but six in number. What hope had they against so many and such power? Little, it would appear; and yet, while it should have seemed altogether hopeless to the Valeman, it did not. Perhaps it was the faith that the King of the Silver River had shown in choosing him for this quest-a demonstration of the old man’s belief that he could somehow find a way to succeed. Perhaps it was his own determination, a strength of will that would not let him fail.
He shook his head gently. Perhaps. But it was also the character of the five men who had elected to come with him and had sustained him. It was Garet Jax, Slanter, Foraker, Edain Elessedil and Helt-come from the Four Lands to this final, terrible confrontation, an enigmatic mixture of strength and courage. Two trackers, a hunter, a Weapons Master, and a Prince of the Elves had traveled different life-paths to reach this day, and none might live to see its end. But here they were. Their bonding to Jair and to the trust that had been given him transcended the caution and reason that might otherwise have caused them to give greater consideration to the obvious danger to their own lives. It was so even with Slanter. The Gnome had made his choice at Capaal when he had turned his back on a chance to flee north to the borderlands and the life from which he had strayed. All were committed, and in that commitment there was a unity that seemed almost indomitable. Jair knew little of his companions. Yet one thing he knew with certainty, and it was enough: whatever was to happen to him this day, these five would stand by him.
Perhaps that was why he was not afraid.
The defile widened again before them and sunlight streamed down from a new broadened skyline. Garet Jax slowed, then dropped into a crouch and eased ahead. One lean arm beckoned them after. Hunched down against the rocks, they crept forward until they were beside him.
“There,” he whispered, pointing.
It was Graymark. Jair knew it instantly without need of being told. The fortress sat high upon a cliff face that curved away before them. It rested upon a broad shelf of rock that jutted sharply outward against the noonday sky. It was a grim and massive thing. Battlements, towers, and parapets rose upward from stone block walls hundreds of feet high, like spikes and blunted axe-heads reaching into the cloudless blue. No pennants flew from the tower standards; no colors draped the casements. The whole of the fortress had a flat and wintry cast to it even in the brilliant light of the sun; the stone had a sullen, ashen tone. What windows there were small, pinched openings covered over with bars and wooden shutters. A single narrow roadway wound upward against the mountainside-little more than a ledge cut into the rock-ending at a pair of tall, ironbound gates that fronted the complex. The gates stood closed.
They studied the stronghold wordlessly. There was no sign of anyone. Nothing moved.
Then Jair caught sight of the Croagh. He could see only pieces of it lifting from behind Graymark, a rugged arch of stone that seemed almost a part of the towers and the parapets of the complex. Curling back upon itself like some suspended stairway, it threaded its way skyward until it ended high upon a solitary peak that rose above those surrounding it.
Jair caught Slanter’s arm and pointed to the peak and the slender ribbon of stones that joined to it.
“Yes, boy-the Croagh and Heaven’s Well.” The Gnome nodded. “All that the King of the Silver River has sent you to find.”
“And the Maelmord?” Jair asked quickly.
Slanter shook his head. “On the other side of the fortress, down within a ring of cliffs. There the Croagh begins its climb, wrapping about Graymark as it passes, then rising on.”
They were silent again, their eyes fixed on the fortress. “Doesn’t seem to be anyone in there,” Helt murmured after a moment.
“What’s in there wants you to think exactly that,” Slanter observed dryly; easing back on his heels. “Besides, the walkers prefer the dark. They rest for the most part during the day and move about at night. Even the Gnomes that serve them here soon begin to live like that and don’t show themselves when it’s light. But make no mistake. They’re in there, Borderman-walkers and Gnomes both. And a few other things as well.”
Garet Jax was studying the mountain trail that wound upward to the fortress entrance. “That is the way they would expect us to come.” He spoke more to himself than to the others. “On the trail or by scaling the cliffs.” He glanced left to where the shelf they stood upon curved down among the rocks and disappeared back into the mountains through a narrow tunnel. “Maybe not this way, though.”
Slanter touched his arm. “The tunnel connects to a series of passageways that leads upward into the fortress cellars. That’s how we’ll go.”
“Guarded?”
Slanter shrugged.
“I’d feel better if we could find a way to climb the Croagh from out here,” Foraker muttered. “I’ve seen enough of caverns and tunnels.”
The Gnome shook his head. “Can’t be done. Only way to reach the Croagh is through Graymark-right through the walkers and whatever serves them.”
Foraker grunted. “What do you think, Garet?”
Garet Jax continued to study the fortress and the cliffs about it. His lean face was expressionless. “Do you know the way well enough to take us safely through, Gnome?” he asked Slanter shortly.
Slanter gave him a dark look. “You ask a lot. I know it, but not well. Went through it once or twice when I was first brought here, before this whole thing began...”
He trailed off abruptly, and Jair knew that he was remembering how he had chosen to come back to his homeland to be with his own people and been sent by the walkers to track the Druid Allanon. He was remembering and perhaps regretting momentarily how he had let things get turned about.
“Fair enough,” Garet Jax said softly and started ahead.
He took them down through the rocks to where the shelf opened into the tunnel that led back under the mountain. There, out of sight of Graymark, concealed within the shelter of a gathering of massive boulders, he beckoned them close.
“Do the walkers always rest during the daylight hours?” he asked Slanter. It was close and hot within the clustered rocks, and there was a fine sheen of sweat on his brow.
The Gnome frowned. “If you are asking whether we should go in now rather than when it is dark, I say we should.”
“If there remains time enough to do so,” Foraker interjected. “Midday is gone, and darkness comes early in the mountains. We might be better off to wait until tomorrow when we have the use of a full day. Another twelve hours or so can’t make that much difference.”
There was a moment’s silence. Jair glanced skyward, his eyes scanning the ragged edge of the cliffs. Another twelve hours? An uneasy suspicion tugged at his mind in warning. How far had Brin gotten? The words of the King of the Silver River repeated themselves once again. “You must reach Heaven’s Well before she reaches the Maelmord.”
He turned quickly to Garet Jax. “I’m not sure we have twelve hours left. I have to know where Brin is to be certain. I have to use the crystal again-and I think I had better use it now.”
The Weapons Master hesitated, then rose. “Not here. Move into the cave.”
They slipped through the darkened opening and groped their way back into the gloom. There, huddled close about, the others waited patiently as Jair fumbled through his tunic for the vision crystal. He had it in a moment’s time, gripping it by its silver chain as he pulled it forth. Cupping it gently in his hands, he wet his lips and fought back against the fatigue that bore down against him.
“Sing to it, Jair,” he heard Edain Elessedil encourage softly.
He sang, his voice low and whispered, wearied by the strain to which he had put it in leading them safely through the Caves of Night. The crystal began to glow and the light to spread...
Brin paused in the gloom of the tunnel through which she stole. She had a sudden sense of being watched, of eyes following after her. It was as it had been on entering the Dragon’s Teeth and again on leaving-as if someone watched her from a great distance off.
She hesitated, her thoughts frozen, and a flash of insight whispered to her. Jair! It was Jair! She took a deep breath to steady herself. There was no logical explanation for such a conclusion-it was simply there. But how could that be? How could her brother...?
In the tunnel behind her, something moved.
She had come some distance from the causeway, a slow and cautious passage through darkness with the aid of Cogline’s flameless torch. She had neither seen nor heard another living thing in all that time. She had come so far without sensing other life that she had begun to wonder if perhaps she had been mistaken in taking this tunnel.
But now there was something there at last-not ahead of her as expected, but behind. She turned guardedly, the feeling of being watched forgotten. She thrust the torch forward and started in shock. Great, luminous blue eyes blinked at her from out of the gloom. Then a massive whiskered face pushed its way into the circle of her light.
“Whisper!”
She spoke the moor cat’s name with a sigh of relief and dropped to her knees as the beast came up to her and rubbed its broad head against her shoulder in friendly greeting.
“Whisper, what are you doing here?” she murmured as the cat dropped down on his haunches and regarded her solemnly.
She could guess readily enough the answer to that question, of course. Discovering her absence, the others must have backtracked to the stone bridge. Being unable to follow farther themselves, they had sent Whisper after her. Or rather, Kimber had sent Whisper, for Whisper answered only to the girl. Brin reached out and rubbed the cat’s ears. It must have cost Kimber something to send Whisper on like this without her-as close as they were, as much as the girl relied on him. As was her nature, she had chosen to give the moor cat’s strength to her friend. The Valegirl’s eyes misted, and she put her arms about him.
“Thank you, Kimber,” she whispered.
Then she rose, stroked the cat for a moment and shook her head gently. “But I cannot take you with me, can I? I cannot take anyone. It is much too dangerous-even for you. I promised myself that no one would be exposed to whatever it is that waits for me, and that includes you. You have to go back.”
The moor cat blinked up at her and remained where he was.
“Go on, now. You have to go back to Kimber. Go on, Whisper.”
Whisper didn’t move a hair. He simply sat there, waiting.
“So.” Brin shook her head again.” As determined as your mistress, I guess.”
She was left with no other choice; she used the wishsong. She sang softly to the cat, wrapping him close about with her words and music, telling him that he must go back. For several minutes she sang, a gentle urging that would not injure. When she was done, Whisper rose to his feet and padded back down the corridor, disappearing into the dark.
Brin watched him until he was out of sight, then turned and started ahead once more.
Moments later the darkness began to dissipate and the gloom to lighten. The passageway, narrow and close before, broadened and lifted in seconds so that her small light could no longer reach to the walls and ceiling. But now there was light ahead that rendered her own unnecessary, filling the passageway with dusty gray brightness. It was the sun. Somewhere close at hand, the tunnel was opening back into the world without.
She hurried forward, Cogline’s flameless torch dropping to her side. The passageway turned upward, a stairwell honed and shaped from the tunnel rock rising far ahead into a massive, open-air cavern. She went up the stairs quickly, her weariness forgotten, sensing that her journey was nearing its end. Sunlight spilled down into the cavern above, silver streamers thick with swirling bits of dust and silt that danced and spun like living things.
Then she reached the last step, walked clear of the tunnel onto the broad ledge that lay beyond, and stopped. Before her, a second stone bridge spanned a second chasm, this one twice the size of the first, rugged and massive. It dropped away down the mountain rock thousands of feet into an abyss so deep that even the sunlight streaming down through crevices in the cavern ceiling could not penetrate its blackness. Brin peered downward, her nose wrinkling against the stench that wafted up. Even with Cogline’s salve to numb her sense of smell, she felt nauseated. Whatever lay at the bottom of the pit was much worse than what passed through Graymark’s sewers.
She glanced across the stone bridge to what waited beyond. The cavern stretched back into the mountain several hundred feet, then opened into a short, high tunnel. Yet it was not a tunnel so much as an alcove, she thought-hewn by hand, shaped and smoothed, with intricate symbols carved into the rock. Light streamed down at its far end, and the sky stretched away in a dim and hazy green.
She looked closer. No, it was not the sky that stretched away. It was a valley’s misted wall.
It was the Maelmord.
She knew it instinctively, as if she had seen it in a dream and remembered. She could feel its touch and hear its whisper.
She hastened forward onto the bridge, a broad arched causeway some two dozen feet in width with wooden railing posts pegged into its rock and linked with chains. She moved forward quickly, passed the apex of the arch, and started down.
She was almost across when the black creature rose suddenly from a deep crevice in the cavern floor a dozen feet in front of her.
Muttering irritably, Cogline shuffled to a halt, Rone and Kimber crowding close behind him. Ahead, the sewer bisected into a pair of tunnels, each exactly like the other. There was no indication of which offered passage to wherever it was that Brin had now gone. There was nothing to suggest that either was the better way to go.
“Well, which do we follow?” Cogline demanded of Rone.
The highlander stared at him. “Don’t you know?”
The oldster shook his head. “No idea. Make your choice.”
Rone hesitated, looked away, then looped back again. “I can’t. Look, maybe it doesn’t make any difference which one we follow. Maybe both end in the same place.”
“Sewer tunnels run to the same place, not from the same place! Any fool knows that!” the old man snorted.
“Grandfather!” Kimber admonished sharply.
She edged forward between them, scanning the tunnels in turn, studying the blackened waters that flowed through the grooved channels cut into each. At last she stepped back, shaking her head slowly.
“I cannot help you,” she confessed, as if somehow she should have been able to do so. “I have no sense of where either leads. They appear the same.” She looked over to Rone. “You will have to choose.”
They stared at each other for a moment like frozen statues. Then Rone nodded slowly. “All right-we’ll go left.” He started past them. “At least that tunnel seems to run back toward the chasm.”
He hastened into the sewer corridor, his flameless torch held firmly before him, his face grim. Cogline and Kimber looked at each other briefly and hurried after.
The black thing rose from the split in the cavern floor like a shadow come alive out of night’s dreamworld and crouched down before the bridge. It was human in look, though as hairless and smooth as if sculpted from dark clay. Hunched. over until it rocked forward on its long forearms, it was still taller than Brin. There was an odd, shapeless quality to its limbs and body, as if the muscles beneath lacked definition-or as if there were no muscles there at all and it not a thing of flesh. Sightless, deadened eyes lifted to find hers, and a mouth as ragged and black as the creature’s skin yawned in a deep, toneless hiss.
The Valegirl froze. There was no way to avoid the creature. It had clearly been placed there for the purpose of guarding the bridge, and nothing was to pass it. Probably the Mord Wraiths had created it from the dark magic-created it, or called it to life from some nether place and time, as they had done with the Jachyra.
The black thing advanced a step, slow and certain, dead eyes staring. Brin forced herself to stand where she was. There was no way to know how dangerous this creature was, but she sensed that it was dangerous enough and that, if she turned or backed away, it would be on her.
The creature’s black maw split wide and its hiss filled the silence. Brin went deathly cold. She knew what would happen next. And that meant that once again she was going to have to use the wishsong. Instantly her throat tightened. She did not want to use the Elven magic, but she could not let this monster reach her, even if it meant...
Abruptly the black thing attacked, lunging forward from its half-crouch. The swiftness of the thing caught her by surprise. It was hypnotic. The wishsong stuck in her throat, her indecision freezing it away. The moment hung suspended like a knot in the thread of time, and she waited for the impact of the blow.
But the blow never came. Something came streaking from behind her in a sudden blur of motion, caught the black thing in midleap, and hammered it back. Brin staggered away, dropping to her knees. It was Whisper! The spell of the wishsong had not been strong enough to counteract the command of his mistress; Whisper had shaken the magic and come after her!
The antagonists went down in a tangled heap, claws and teeth ripping. The black thing was caught completely by surprise, having seen only the girl. Hissing with rage, it struggled to dislodge the moor cat from its back where the great beast had fastened himself in a death grip. Over and over they tumbled along the length of the bridge, the moor cat’s jaws tearing at the monster’s neck and shoulders while the massive black form hunched and thrashed convulsively.
Brin remained frozen with indecision a dozen yards away at the center of the bridge. She must do something, she told herself. This was not Whisper’s fight-this was hers. She flinched at the fury of the struggle, a small cry escaping her lips as the battle between the two took them perilously close to the railing, shaking the iron chains. She must help! But how could she? She had no weapon save for the wishsong, and she could not use the magic. She could not!
She surprised herself with the intensity of her declaration. She could not use the wishsong because...because...Rage and fear flooded her, mixing with confusion to hold her bound. Why? She howled the question within her mind, a cry of anguish. What was wrong with her?
Then abruptly she was moving forward, edging her way to the far side of the stone arch, away from the combatants. She had made her decision-she would flee. It was she whom the black thing sought. Seeing her run, the thing would follow. And if she were quick enough, she would make the Maelmord before it...
She stopped. Ahead where the cavern floor stretched away to the arched opening, she caught sight of something new as it emerged from the creviced rock.
A second creature!
She went perfectly still. The passage opening to the daylight and the valley beyond was too far and the black thing stood directly in her line of flight. Already it was coming for her. It lifted from the rock, then lumbered toward the bridge on all fours, its blackened maw gaping. Brin backed away. She must defend herself this time. The fear and uncertainty ripped through her. She must use the wishsong. She must!
The black thing hissed and reached for her. Again, she felt her throat knot.
And again, it was Whisper who saved her. Breaking free of the first creature, the cat whirled and catapulted violently into the second, knocking it away from the girl. Scrambling up again, Whisper turned to meet this new enemy. The black thing came at him with a rasping howl, vaulting high into the air. But Whisper was too quick. Sidestepping deftly, the big cat slashed at his attacker’s exposed underbelly. Chunks of dark flesh ripped free, yet the monster did not slow. It thrust itself clear with a lunge, dead eyes fixed.
Now the second creature was joined by the first. Warily, they began closing on the moor cat. Whisper dropped back guardedly, keeping himself in front of Brin, his thick fur bristling until he looked twice his normal size. Crouched down on all fours, the black things feinted with quick rushes, moving fluidly from side to side with an ease that belied their bulky appearance. Carefully, they worked to find an opening in the big cat’s defenses. Whisper held his ground, refusing to be drawn out. Then both creatures came at him at once, teeth and claws ripping angry furrows through fur and flesh. Whisper was thrown back against the chains of the bridge railing, his powerful body nearly pinned there by the ferocious charge. But he fought his way clear with a surge, slashing savagely at the black things, screaming his hatred of them.
The circling began once more. Panting heavily, his sleek gray coat streaked with blood, Whisper slipped back into his defensive crouch. The attackers had forced him against the bridge railing, away from Brin. They ignored the Valegirl now, their lifeless eyes fixed on the cat. Brin saw what they intended. They would come at Whisper again, and this time the chains would not break the force of their rush. The moor cat would be thrown back over the edge and fall to his death.
The moor cat also seemed to realize what was happening. He lunged and feinted, trying to skirt the edges of the circle, trying to regain the center of the bridge. But the monsters maneuvered quickly to cut him off, keeping him trapped against the railing.
Brin Ohmsford’s chest knotted with fear. Whisper could not win this fight. These creatures were too much for him. He had shredded both with wounds that should have crippled them, yet they did not seem affected by the injuries. Their flesh hung in tatters, yet they did not bleed. They were enormously strong and quick-stronger and quicker than anything born of this world. They had obviously been created by the dark magic, not by nature’s hands.
“Whisper,” she breathed, her voice cracked and dry.
She must save him. There was no one else to do so. She had the wishsong and the strength of its magic. She could use it to destroy these creatures, to obliterate them as surely as...
The trees intertwined in the Runne Mountains...
The minds of the thieves from west of Spanning Ridge...
The Gnome...shattered...
Tears ran down her cheeks. She could not! Something interposed itself between her will and its execution, held her back from her intended purpose, and froze her resolve with indecision. She must help him, but she could not!
“Whisper!” she screamed.
The black things jerked erect, half-turning. Abruptly Whisper lunged in a feint that froze them in their tracks, then whirled sharply to his right, gathered himself and vaulted them both with a tremendous leap. Landing at a dead run, the moor cat raced for the center of the bridge and Brin. The black things were after him instantly, hissing in fury, tearing at his flanks in an effort to bring him down.
A dozen feet in front of Brin, they succeeded. All three tumbled to the causeway in a raging tangle of teeth and claws. For a few desperate seconds, Whisper held them both. Then one gained his back and the second tore free. It hurtled past the struggling cat toward Brin. The Valegirl threw herself to one side, sprawling down upon the bridge. Whisper screamed. With the last of his strength, he threw himself into the girl’s assailant, the second creature still clinging to his back like some monstrous spider. The force of his lunge carried all three into the chains of the bridge railing. Iron links snapped like deadwood, and the black things hissed gleefully as Whisper began to slide from the bridge into the chasm.
Brin came to her knees, a cry of rage and determination wrenched from her throat. The restraints that bound her fell away, the indecision and uncertainty were shattered, and her purpose freed. She sang, hard and quick, and the sound of the wishsong filled the heights and depths of the cavern rock. The song was darker than any she had sung before, a new and terrible sound, filled with fury that surpassed all she had believed herself capable of knowing. It exploded into the black things like an iron ram. They surged upward at its impact and their lifeless eyes snapped back. Limbs clawing, black mouths wide and soundless, they were flung away from Whisper, back away from the safety of the bridge, and into space. Convulsing tike blown leaves, they fell into the abyss and were gone.
It was done in an instant. Brin went silent, her dusky, worn face flushed and vibrant. Again she felt that sudden, strange sense of twisted glee-but stronger this time, much stronger. It burned through her like fire. She could barely control her excitement. She had destroyed the black things almost without trying.
And she had enjoyed it!
She realized then that the barrier that had interposed itself between her will and its execution had been one of her own making-a restraint she had put there to protect against what had just happened. Now it was gone, and she did not think it could be put back again. She had sensed that she was losing control of the magic. She had not understood why, only, that it was happening. Each use had seemed to bring her a little further away from herself. She had tried to resist what was being done to her, but her efforts to forbear use of the magic had been thwarted at every turn-almost as if some perverse fate had willed that she must use the magic. By using it this time, she had embraced it fully, and she no longer felt that she could struggle against it. She would be what she must.
Slowly, gingerly, Whisper padded over to where she knelt, pushing his dark muzzle against her face. Her arms came up to wrap about the big cat gently, and tears ran down her cheeks.
Jair Ohmsford’s voice died away in a ragged gasp, and the light of the vision crystal died with it. The face of his sister was gone. A deep silence filled the sudden gloom, and the faces of the men gathered there were white and drawn.
“Those were Mutens,” Slanter whispered finally.
“What?” Edain Elessedil, seated next to him, looked startled.
“The black things-that’s what they’re called-Mutens. The dark magic made them. They guard the sewers below Graymark...” The Gnome trailed off, glancing quickly at Jair.
“Then she is here,” the Valeman breathed, his mouth dry and his hands tightening. about the crystal.
Slanter nodded. “Yes, boy, she’s here. And closer to the pit than we.”
Garet Jax rose swiftly, a lean, black shadow. The others scrambled up with him. “It seems we have no time left us and no choice but to go in now.” Even in the half-light, his eyes were like fire. He reached out to them, palms upward. “Give me your hands.”
One by one, they stretched forward their hands, joining with his. “By this we make our pledge,” he told them, a hard and brittle edge to his voice. “The Valeman shall reach the basin at Heaven’s Well as he has sworn he would. We are as one in this, whatever happens. As one, to the end. Swear it.”
There was a hushed silence. “As one,” Helt repeated in his deep, gentle voice. “As one,” the others echoed.
The hands fell away, and Garet Jax turned to Slanter. “Take us in,” he said.
They went up through the mountain passageways to the cellars that lay below Graymark like the Wraiths they shunned. With the aid of torches they found stored in a niche at the tunnel entrance, they crept through the gloom and the silence to the bowels of the fortress keep. Slanter led them, his rough yellow face bent close to the light, his black eyes bright with fear. He went quickly and purposefully, and only the eyes betrayed what he might wish hidden of himself. But Jair saw it, recognized it, and found that it mirrored what lurked now within himself.
He, too, was afraid. The anticipation that had earlier given him such strength of purpose was gone. Fear had replaced it, wild and barely controlled, racing through him and turning his skin to ice. Strange, fragmented thoughts filled his mind as he worked his way ahead with the others through the tunnel rock, his nostrils thick with the smell of musted air and his own sweat-thoughts of his home in the Vale, of his family scattered across the lands, of friends and familiar things left behind and perhaps lost, of the shadow things that hunted him, of Allanon and Brin, and of what they had come to this dark place and time to do. All jumbled and ran together like colors mixed in water, and there was no sense to be made of any of them. It was the fear that made his thoughts scatter so, and he tightened his mind and his resolve against it.
The passageways wound upward for a long time, crossing and recrossing, a puzzle maze that seemed to lack beginning or end. Yet Slanter did not pause, but led them steadily on until at last they came in sight of a broad, ironbound doorway fastened to the rock. They came up to it and stopped, as silent as the tunnels through which they had come. Jair crouched down with the others as Slanter put one ear to the door and listened. In the stillness of his mind, he could hear the beat of his body’s pulse.
Slanter rose and nodded once. Carefully, he lifted the latch that held the door closed, fixed his hands on the iron handle and pulled. The door swung open with a low groan. A stairway rose before them, disappearing beyond the circle of their torchlight into blackness. They began to climb, with Slanter leading them once more. A step at a time, slow and cautious, they made their way up the stairwell. Gloom and silence deepened and wrapped them close about. The stairwell ended, opening upward through a stone block floor. The soft scrape of someone’s boot on the stairs echoed harshly through the darkness above, disappearing far away into the silence. Jair swallowed against what he was feeling. It was as if there was nothing up there but the dark.
Then they were clear of the stairs and within the gloom. Voiceless, they stood close about the opening and peered into the gloom, torches held forth. The light could not penetrate to walls or ceiling, but there was a clear sense of a chamber so huge that they were dwarfed by it. They could discern at the edges of their torchlight the shadowed outline of crates and barrels. The wood was dry and rotting, its iron bindings rusted. Cobwebs lay over everything, and the floor was thick with dust.
But in the carpet of the dust, splayed footprints marked the passing of something that was clearly not human. It had not been all that long since whatever it was had ventured down into the lower levels of Graymark, Jair thought chillingly.
Slanter beckoned them ahead. The members of the little company moved into the gloom, groping their way forward from the open stairwell, the dust stirring beneath their boots and rising in soft clouds to mix with the light of their torches in a hazy glare. Mounds of stores and discarded provisions appeared and were left behind. Still the chamber ran on.
Then suddenly the entire floor rose half a dozen steps to a new level and stretched away from there into darkness. They went up the stairs in a knot, walked ahead twenty yards or so, and passed into a monstrous, arched corridor. Iron doors, barred and sealed, appeared on either side as they pushed forward. Blackened torch stubs sat within their iron racks, chains lay in piles against the walls, and multilegged insects scurried from the light to the seclusion of the gloom. A stench hindered breathing and choked the senses, emanating in waves from the cellar stone.
The corridor ended at yet another stairway, this one curling upward like a snake coiled. Slanter paused, then began to climb. The others followed. Twice the stairway wound back upon itself, then opened into another corridor. They followed this new passageway several dozen yards to where it branched in two directions. Slanter took them right. The passageway ended a short distance further on at a closed iron door. The Gnome tested the latch, tugged futilely, and shook his head. There was concern on his face as he turned to the others. Clearly he had hoped to find it open.
Garet Jax pointed back down the corridor, the unasked question in his eyes. Could they backtrack and go the other way? Slanter shook his head slowly, the answer in his eyes. The Gnome did not know.
They hesitated a moment longer, eyes locked. Then Slanter pushed past, motioning for the others to follow. He led them back down the passageway to where it divided. This time he took them left. The second corridor wound farther than the first, passing stairwells, niches cloaked in shadow, and numerous doors, all closed and barred. Several times the Gnome paused, undecided, then continued on. The minutes slipped away, and Jair began to grow increasingly uneasy.
Then at last the passageway ended, this time at a pair of massive iron doors so huge that Slanter was forced to reach upward to seize the handles. They gave with surprising ease, and the door on the right swung silently in. The members of the little company peered through guardedly. Another chamber lay beyond, huge and cluttered with stores. But the gloom dissipated somewhat here, chased by a thin, gray light that slipped downward through tiny slits in the walls that were cut close against the chamber’s high ceiling.
Slanter gestured toward the slits, then to the far wall of the chamber where a second pair of iron doors stood closed. The others understood. They were within Graymark’s outer walls.
With Slanter in the lead, they passed cautiously into the room. No dust lay upon these floors; no cobwebs draped its crates and barrels. The stench still hung upon the air, stifling and rank, but it now seemed carried as much from without as held by the closure of the walls. Jair wrinkled his nose in distaste. The smell might well kill them before the dark things found them out. It was as bad as...
Something scraped softly in the shadows to one side. Garet Jax whirled, daggers in both hands, crying out in warning to the others.
Too late. Something huge, black, and winged seemed to explode out of the shadows. It rose against the half-light, its leathered body spreading outward like some monstrous bat. Teeth and claws gleamed, a flash of ivory, and a fierce shriek broke from its throat. It was on them so quickly that there was no time to defend against it. It flew at them in a rush, swept past the leaders, and came at Helt. It caromed into the giant Borderman, winged limbs flailing, and its shriek turned to a frightening hiss. Helt staggered back with a howl, then got both hands on the black thing, and thrust it from him violently, flinging it across the room into a pile of stores.
Garet Jax leaped forward, and the daggers flew from his hands, pinning the thing to the wooden crates.
Slanter had reached the far end of the room and wrenched wide one of the iron doors. “Get out!” he howled.
They raced swiftly from the chamber, one after the other, until all were clear. Slanter shoved the open door closed with a grunt and threw the iron bolts into their fastenings. Shaking, he collapsed back against the door.
“What was that?” Foraker gasped, his black-bearded face shiny with sweat and his heavy brows knit fiercely.
The Gnome shook his head. “I don’t know. Something the walkers made of the dark magic-some sentinel, perhaps.”
Helt was down on one knee, his face buried in his hands. Blood seeped through his fingers in small trickles of scarlet.
“Helt!” Jair whispered and started forward. “Helt, you’re hurt...”
The Borderman lifted his head slowly. Angry slashes crisscrossed his face. One eye was swollen and already beginning to close. He dabbed at the wounds with his tunic sleeve and motioned the Valeman back. “No, they’re just scratches. Nothing bad.”
But he was wincing with pain. He came to his feet with an effort, bracing himself against the wall. There was an uneasy look in his eyes.
Slanter had moved away from the door and was glancing about furtively. They were at the center of a narrow corridor that ran to a pair of closed doors at one end and to a stairway Opening to daylight at the other.
“This way!” he beckoned, moving quickly toward the light. “Hurry-before something else finds us!”
They started after him, all save Helt, who was still leaning against the passage wall. Jair glanced back and slowed. “Helt?” he called.
“Hurry on, Jair.” The big man was still dabbing blood from his face. Then he pushed himself off the wall and started after. “Go on, now. Stay close to the others.”
Jair did as he was asked, conscious that the Borderman was following and conscious, too, that Helt was having difficulty doing so. There was something very wrong with him.
They reached the end of the corridor and went up the stairs in a rush. The eerie stillness of the fortress was broken by the sound of other feet and voices, jumbled, distant and indistinct. The shriek of the winged thing had given warning that there were intruders within the keep. Jair’s mind raced wildly as he bounded up the long stairway with the others. He must remember that he had the wishsong for protection-that he could use it effectively only if he remembered to keep his head...
Something hissed past his face, and he stumbled and went down. An arrow shattered on the stairway wall. Helt was next to him at once, pulling him up again. Arrows flew all about them as Gnome Hunters appeared in the corridor below and on parapets above. The companions were within Graymark’s walls, but their enemies knew it now and were converging. Scrambling to the top of the stairs, Jair wheeled right after the others along a line of battlements that overlooked a broad inner courtyard and a maze of towers and fortifications. Gnomes appeared from everywhere, weapons in hand, yelling wildly. A handful lay crumpled on the battlements ahead, brought down by Garet Jax as the black-clad Weapons Master cleared the way forward. The six darted along She battlements to a tower stairwell where Slanter brought them to a halt.
“The drop-gate-there!” He pointed across the courtyard to an iron-barred portcullis that stood raised over an arched entry leading through a massive, stone block wall. “Quickest way for us to reach the Croagh!” His yellow face grimaced as he fought for breath. “Gnomes will realize what we’re about in a moment. When they do, they’ll bring down the gate to trap us. But if we can get there first, we can use the gate to cut them off instead!”
Garet Jax nodded, oddly calm in the midst of the moment’s fury. “Where is the wheelhouse and winch?”
Slanter pointed again. “Beneath the gates-this side. We’ll have to jam the wheel!”
Shouts and cries broke from all about them. In the courtyard below the Gnomes began to come together.
Garet Jax straightened. “Quick, then-before they are too many for us.”
The little company raced down the tower stairwell, Slanter leading. At the lower end, they crossed through an anteway, dark and closed, to a single door that opened into the courtyard. All across the yard, Gnome Hunters turned to face them.
“Shades!” Slanter gasped.
They broke for the gate in a rush.
Brin Ohmsford climbed slowly to her feet, one hand resting lightly on Whisper’s massive head. The cavern was still again, empty of life. She stood for a moment at the center of the stone bridge and looked across the chasm to where daylight brightened the tall, arched alcove leading out. She rubbed Whisper’s head gently, conscious of the welts and angry furrows left from his terrible battle with the black things, feeling the hurt that he had suffered.
“No more,” she whispered softly.
Then she turned forward. She left the bridge quickly, without looking back, and began to cross the cavern floor toward the alcove. Whisper went with her, padding silently behind, saucer blue eyes gleaming. Without turning, she knew that he was there. Cautiously, she scanned the creviced rock for signs of the black things or other horrors wrought by the dark magic, but there were none. Only she and the cat remained.
Minutes later she reached the alcove with its high, smooth walls sculpted from the stone and carved with the intricate designs she had seen earlier. She paid them little heed, moving at once to the opening and to the daylight beyond. She had only one objective now.
The opening passed away behind her and she stood once more in sunlight. It was midafternoon, the sun gone westward toward the treeline, its brightness dimmed by mist and clouds that floated shroudlike across the whole of the sky above. She was on a ledge overlooking a deep valley surrounded by a cluster of barren, ragged peaks. There was an odd, dreamlike tone to the setting of mountains, clouds, and mist. The whole of the valley was bathed in a shimmering, leaden cast. She looked slowly about and then upward behind her. There, balanced upon the rock above, was a solitary, dismal fortress. Graymark. Winding down from its heights and from far above that, beyond where she could see, was the stone stairway of the Croagh. It wound past her ledge, touched briefly, then spiraled down into the valley.
It was upon the valley that her gaze at last came to rest. A deep, shadowed bowl, it fell away from the light until its lower depths were lost in misted gloom. The Croagh wound down into this darkness, into a mass of trees, vines, scrub, and choking brush, grown so thick that the light could not penetrate. This forest was a twisted and knotted wilderness and it seemed to have neither beginning nor end, but to be contained in its rampant growth only by the rock walls of the peaks.
Brin stared. It was from here that the hissing sound came, the one that she had heard earlier in the sewers. It was like a breathing. She squinted against the glare of the gray half-light. Had she seen...?
In the bowl of the valley, the forest moved.
“You are alive!” she said softly and hardened herself against what that realization made her feel.
She stepped far out onto the ledge, to the very edge where the stem of the Croagh joined to it. Crude stairs had been cut into the rock, and she stared down their length to where they disappeared at a bend in the stone. Then she looked past again to the valley below.
“Maelmord, I am come to you,” she whispered.
Then she turned back to Whisper. She knelt beside him and rubbed his ears tenderly. Her smile was sad and gentle. “You must go no further with me, Whisper. Even though your mistress sent you to keep me safe, you must go no further. You must stay here and wait for her to come to you. Do you understand?”
The cat’s luminous eyes blinked and he rubbed against her. “Protect my way back again, if you would protect me at all,” she told him. “Perhaps it will not be as the Grimpond has foretold-that I shall die here. Perhaps I will come back again. Keep the way safe for me, Whisper. Keep your mistress and my friends safe. Do not let them follow. Wait, and when I have done what I must, I will come back to you if I am able. I promise you that I will.”
Then she sang to the cat, using the wishsong not to persuade or to deceive this time, but to explain. In images that would carry to the moor cat’s mind, she let him feel what she wished and made him understand what it was that she must do. When she was done, she leaned forward and hugged the big cat close for a moment, nestling her face in the coarse fur and feeling the warmth of the beast seep through her, taking from that warmth a measure of new strength.
[[pg 429 picture]]
She rose and stepped back. Slowly Whisper sank down on his haunches and forepaws until he was stretched outfacing her. She nodded and smiled. He was taking up guard of her path down. He would do as she wished.
“Good-bye, Whisper,” she told him and stepped upon the Croagh.
The stench that had risen from the chasm behind her rose anew from the steamy depths of the valley below. She ignored it, gazing out momentarily over the cliffs to where the light of the sun brightened above the horizon. She thought of Allanon then and wondered if he could see her-if perhaps he might in some way be with her.
Then she took a deep breath to steady herself and started down.
As one, the six who had come from Culhaven broke from the shelter of the tower door and raced into the courtyard beyond. Screams of warning rose up about them, and the Gnomes converged from every quarter.
At the center of the maelstrom, Jair watched the battle unfold with curious detachment. Time fragmented, and his sense of being slipped from him. Hemmed close about by the friends who sought to protect him, he floated in their midst, voiceless and ephemeral, a ghost that none could see. Earth, sky, and the whole of the world beyond these walls were lost, along with all else that had ever been or would ever be. There was only now and the faces and the forms of those who fought and died in that yard.
Garet Jax led the charge, darting through the Gnomes that rushed to bar his passage, swift and fluid as he killed them. He was like a black-clad dancer, all grace, power, and seemingly effortless motion. Gnome Hunters, gnarled and worn from countless battles, threw themselves in front of him with frenzied determination, their weapons hacking and cutting with lethal force. They might as well have been trying to contain quicksilver. None could touch the Weapons Master, and those who came close enough to try found in him the black shadow of death come to claim their lives.
The others of the company fought beside him, no less driven in their purpose and only a shade less deadly. Foraker flanked him on one side, the Dwarf’s black-bearded face ferocious as he swung the great double-edged axe and attackers scattered with howls of dismay. Edain Elessedil flanked him on the other, a slender sword flicking snakelike and a long knife parrying counterblows. Slanter stayed close behind them all, long knives in both hands, a hunted look in his black eyes. Helt brought up the rear, a giant shield, his wounded face bleeding again and frightening to look at, a great pike snatched from an attacker thrusting and cutting all who tried to slip past his guard.
A strange sense of exhilaration flooded through Jair. It was as if nothing could stop them.
Weapons flew past from every direction, and the screams of the wounded and dying filled the gray afternoon. They were in the center of the courtyard now, the castle wall rising up before them. Then a sudden blow struck the Valeman, staggering him with its force. Stunned, he looked down and found the tip of a dart protruding from his shoulder like a peg hook. Pain lanced from the wound through his body, and he went rigid with shock. Slanter saw him stumble and was next to him in an instant, arms wrapping about him to hold him up, pulling him after the others. Helt roared with fury and used the long pike to hammer back the Gnomes that sought to rush forward to seize them. Jair squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. He was hurt, he thought in disbelief as he staggered forward under Slanter’s guidance.
The drop-gate loomed ahead. There were Gnomes in its shadow now, rushing about wildly and calling out in warning. The doors to the blockhouse slammed shut and iron winches began to turn. Slowly, the drop-gate started down.
Garet Jax leaped forward, so quickly that the others could barely follow. He reached the gate in seconds, thrusting into the Gnomes who held there. But the winches continued to turn in the blockhouse, iron chains unwrapping. The drop-gate was still coming down.
“Garet!” Foraker screamed in warning, nearly buried in a rush of Gnome attackers who came at him.
But it was Helt who acted. He charged through the Gnome Hunters, pike lowered, sweeping them aside like leaves scattered in a fall wind. Blows rained down upon him, but he. shrugged them aside as if they were not felt and went on. Gnome archers trained their fire on. the giant Borderman from the walls behind. Twice he was struck; the second time, he staggered to his knees. Still he went on.
Then he was before the blockhouse, his giant frame slamming into the closed doors. The doors buckled with a crunch and flew apart, and the Borderman was within. He hurtled into a knot of defenders, flinging them from the machinery like dolls, his massive hands closing about the winch levers to pull them tight again. The drop-gate slowed and stopped in a grinding of chains and gears, its teeth barely ten feet from the ground.
Garet Jax scattered the Gnomes who remained before the gate, and Slanter and Jair stumbled through into a shadowed court beyond. For the moment, at least, the court was empty. Jair collapsed to one knee, feeling the searing pain from his wound flare outward with the movement. Then Slanter was in front of him.
“Sorry boy, but I’ve got to do this.”
One gnarled hand fixed on his shoulder and the other on the dart. With a wrench, the Gnome pulled the dart free. Jair screamed and almost lost consciousness, but Slanter held him upright, jamming a wad of cloth down into his tunic front and binding it fast against the wound with his belt.
Beneath the drop-gate, Garet Jax, Foraker and Edain Elessedil stood in a line against the advancing Gnomes. A dozen paces beyond, still within the blockhouse, Helt pulled free the winch levers once more. Again, the drop-gate started down.
Jair blinked through the tears brought by the pain. Something was wrong. The Borderman was making no attempt to come after them. He was leaning heavily against the machinery, watching as the gate descended.
“Helt...?” Jair whispered weakly.
He realized then the Borderman’s intent. Helt meant to bring down the drop-gate and jam it from the other side. If he did so, it would leave him trapped there. It would mean his certain death.
“Helt, no!” he screamed and jerked to his feet.
But it was already done. The gate came down, slamming into the earth with the force of its release. The Gnome defenders howled with rage and turned on the man within the blockhouse. Bracing himself, Helt threw the whole of his great strength against the winch levers and wrenched them from their fastenings, wrecking the machine.
“Helt!” Jair screamed again, trying to pull free of Slanter.
The Borderman staggered to the blockhouse door, long pike held before him. Gnomes came at him from everywhere. He bent and swayed against their rush, but for an instant he withstood them. They swarmed over him and he was gone.
Jair stood frozen behind the gates as Garet Jax came back to him. Roughly, the Weapons Master turned him about and pushed him away. “Go!” he snapped. “Quickly, Jair Ohmsford, go now!”
The Valeman stumbled from the gate, still stunned. The Weapons Master kept pace at his side. “He was dying already;” Garet Jax said. Jair’s head jerked about, and the gray eyes fixed on him. “The winged thing in the storeroom poisoned him. It was in his eyes, Valeman.”
Jair nodded dumbly, remembering the look the Borderman had given him. “But we...we might have...”
“We might have done many things were we not where we are,” Garet Jax cut him short, his voice calm and icy. “The poison was lethal. He knew he was dying. He chose this way to finish it. Now, run!”
Giant Helt! Jair remembered the big man’s kindness to him during the long journey north. He remembered his gentle eyes. Helt, about whom he had known so very little...
Head lowered to shield his tears, he ran on.
At the edge of the Croagh, midway down its length where it joined to the rock shelf on the cliffs below Graymark, Whisper listened as the sounds of the battle being fought above him grew more fierce. Stretched full-length upon the shadowed stone, he kept watch for the return of Brin or the coming of his mistress. His hearing was keener than that of any human, and he had caught the sounds long ago. But the sounds did not threaten him, and so he kept his vigil and did not move.
But then a new sound reached his ears, a sound not from the battle being fought within Graymark, but from something close at hand. Footfalls sounded on the stone steps of the Croagh-soft and furtive. The moor cat’s head lifted. Something was coming down. Claws scraped against the rock. Whisper’s head dropped down again, and he seemed to disappear into the stone.
The seconds slipped past, and then a shadow appeared. Whisper’s-narrowed eyes caught the movement, and the big cat stayed frozen. One of the black things crept down the stairs of the Croagh-one like the things that he had fought within the caves of the mountain. Down the stone walkway it slipped, dead eyes staring as if sightless. It did not see Whisper. The moor cat waited.
When the monster was less than half a dozen steps from where he crouched, Whisper sprang. He hurtled into the black thing before it even knew he was there, a silent blur of motion. Arms flailing, the creature flew from the Croagh to drop like a stone into the valley below. Balanced at the edge of the stairway’s long spiral, Whisper watched the thing fall. When it struck, the entire forest about it convulsed in a frenzy of limbs and leafy trailers. It had the unpleasant look of a throat swallowing. Finally, it went still.
Whisper backed from the Croagh, ears flattened in a mixture of fear and hatred. The smell of the steamy jungle rose to assail the cat’s nostril’s, and he coughed and spit in distaste. He padded back upon the rock shelf.
Then a new sound brought him about with a low snarl. Other dark forms stood upon the Croagh above him-two more of the black things and behind them a robed figure, tall and hooded. Whisper’s saucer blue eyes blinked and narrowed. It was too late to hide. They had already seen him.
Soundlessly he turned to meet them, dark muzzle drawing back.
Jair Ohmsford and his companions raced through shadows and half-light deep within the fortress of Graymark now. They ran down hallways thick with the stench of must and sewage, corridors of rusted iron doors and crumbling stone, chambers that echoed with their footfalls, and stairways worn and broken. The castle of Graymark was a dying place, sick with age and disuse and rotten with decay. Nothing that lived here gave tolerance to life; those within found comfort only in death.
And it seeks my death, Jair thought as he ran, his wound throbbing painfully. It seeks to swallow me and make me a part of it.
Ahead, the dark form of Garet Jax darted swiftly on, a wraith that beckoned. The gloom about them lay empty, silent and waiting. The Gnomes had been left behind; the Mord Wraiths had not appeared. The Valeman fought back against the fear that coursed through him. Where were the Wraiths? Why hadn’t they seen them yet? They were here within the keep, hidden somewhere within its walls, the things that could destroy minds and bodies. They were here and they must surely come.
But where were they?
He stumbled, fell against Slanter, and almost went down. But the Gnome held him up, one stout arm coming quickly about him. “Watch where you step!” Slanter cried.
Jair gritted his teeth as pain flooded outward from his shoulder. “It hurts, Slanter. Every step...”
The Gnome’s blocky face turned from his own. “The pain tells you that you’re still alive, boy. Now run!”
Jair Ohmsford ran. They raced down a curving hall, and ahead there was the sound of other feet running and voices calling out. Gnomes had come another way and were searching for them.
“Weapons Master!” Slanter warned urgently, and Garet Jax skidded to a halt. The Gnome beckoned them into an alcove where a small door opened onto a narrow stairway that disappeared upward into blackness.
“We can slip above them this way,” Slanter panted, leaning wearily against the stone block walls. “But a moment for the boy, first.”
Quickly, he pulled the cork from his ale pouch and lifted the spout to the Valeman’s lips. Jair drank gratefully in a series of deep swallows. The bitter liquid burned through him; almost at once, it seemed to ease the pain. Leaning back against the wall with the Gnome, he watched as Garet Jax slipped ahead along the stairway, searching the darkness above. Behind them, Foraker and Edain Elessedil stood, guard at the stairway entrance, crouched down within the shadows.
“Better now?” Slanter asked him shortly.
“Better.”
“Like that time in the Black Oaks, eh? After you’d taken that beating from Spilk?”
“Like then.” Jair smiled, remembering. “Cures everything, that Gnome ale.”
The Gnome laughed bitterly. “Everything? No, boy-not what the walkers will do to us when they catch us. Not that. Coming for us, you know-just like they did in the Oaks. Coming from the shadows, soundless black things. I can smell them!”
“It’s just the stench of the place, Slanter.”
The Gnome’s rough face lowered, as if he had not heard. “Helt-gone just like that. Wouldn’t have thought we would lose the big man so quick. Bordermen are a tough breed; trackers tougher still. Wouldn’t have thought it would happen so quick with him.”
Jair swallowed. “I know. But it will be different for the rest of us, Slanter. The Gnomes are behind us. We’ll get away, just as we have done before.”
Slanter shook his head slowly. “No, we’ll not get away this time, boy. Not this time.” He pushed clear of the wall, his voice a whisper. “We’ll all be dead before it’s done.”
Roughly, he pulled the Valeman up after him, made a quick motion back to Foraker and Edain Elessedil and started up the stairs. The Dwarf and the Elf followed at once. They caught up with Garet Jax several dozen steps ahead, and together the five climbed into the blackness. Step by step, they made their way forward, with a small glimmer of light from somewhere above as their only guide. Within Graymark’s walls, it was like a tomb meant to hold them fast. Jair let the thought linger momentarily, desperately aware of his own mortality. He could die as easily as Helt had died. It was not assured, as he had once believed, that he would live to see the end of this.
Then he brushed the thought away. If he did not live, there would be no one to help Brin. It would end for both of them, for there could be no hope for her without him. Therefore, he must live, must find a way to live.
The stairway ended at a small wooden door with a barred window. It was through this window that the daylight slipped down into the darkness where they crouched. Slanter pressed his rough yellow face tight against the bars and peered out into what waited beyond. From somewhere close, the cries of their pursuers rang out.
“Have to run for it again,” Slanter said over his shoulder. “Ahead, through the great hall. Stay close!”
He threw open the wooden door, and they burst into the daylight beyond. They were in a long corridor, high-ceilinged and raftered, with narrow, arched windows cut into its length. Slanter took them left, past alcoves and doorways draped in shadow, shells of rusted armor on pedestals, and clusters of weapons hung against the stone. The cries grew stronger, and it seemed as if the company were running toward them. Then suddenly the cries were all about them. Behind, only yards back, a door flew wide and Gnome Hunters poured through. Howls of excitement burst from their throats, and they turned to give chase.
“Quick!” Slanter cried.
A shower of arrows whistled past them as they charged onto a threshold fronting a pair of tall, arched wooden doors carved in scroll. Slanter and Garet Jax flew, into the doors, the others only a step behind, and the doors snapped at their bindings and sagged open. The company rushed through, tumbling over one another down a long stairway. They were within the great hall that Slanter had sought, a massive chamber bright with daylight that poured through high, barred windows. Beams, aged and cracked by time’s passage, ran crosswise overhead, buttressing a cavernous ceiling canopied over rows of tables and benches scattered across the floor beneath in disarray. The five from Culhaven regained their footing hurriedly and raced through the tables and benches, dodging the debris frantically. Behind them, their pursuers burst into the room.
Jair followed Slanter right, conscious of Garet Jax close ahead. on the left and Foraker and Edain Elessedil trailing. His lungs burned and the wound in his shoulder throbbed painfully once again. Arrows and darts hissed wickedly past, thudding into the wood of the benches and tables. Gnome Hunters were appearing all about them now.
“The stairs!” Slanter screamed frantically.
Ahead, a long, curving stairway wound upward toward a balcony, and they broke for it in a rush. But several Gnomes reached it first, fanning out. across the lower steps, cutting off their escape. Garet Jax went directly for them. Springing atop a trestle bench, he skidded its length and dove into their midst. Somehow he kept his feet on landing, like a black cat striking out at the harried Gnomes. With long knives in both hands, he slipped past their cumbersome pikes and broadswords and slew them one by one, as if they were but helpless targets. By the time the others of the company reached him, all but a few lay dead, and those few had scattered.
Garet Jax wheeled on Slanter, blood streaking his lean face. “Where is the Croagh, Gnome?”
“Through the hallway beyond the balcony!” Slanter barely slowed to answer. “Quick, now!”
They were up the stairs in a rush. Behind, a cluster of new pursuers closed on the stairs and bounded after. Halfway up, the Gnomes caught them. The Weapons Master, the Dwarf, and the Elf turned to fight. Slanter pulled Jair a dozen steps further on to shield him. Gnome broadswords and maces swung high, and there was a fearful clash of metal. Garet Jax staggered back, separated from the others by the press of attackers. Then Elb Foraker went down, his head laid open to the bone by a deflected blade. He struggled to rise, blood streaming down his bearded face, and Edain Elessedil leaped to his aid. For an instant, the young Elf held the attackers at bay, his slender sword darting. But a pike pierced his sword arm. As his guard dropped, one of the Gnomes brought a mace down against his leg. The Elf toppled over with a scream of pain, and the Gnomes were on him.
For an instant it appeared as if they were all finished. But then Garet Jax was there once more, his black-clad form hurtling into the attackers and flinging them back. Down went the Gnome Hunters, dying in astonishment, dead almost before they knew what had killed them. The last of the Hunters fell, and the members of the little company were alone once more.
Foraker stumbled over to where Edain Elessedil writhed in pain, his gnarled hands reach down to feel the injured leg. “Smashed,” he breathed softly and exchanged a knowing look with Garet Jax.
He bound the leg with strips of his short cloak, using shattered arrows for splints. Slanter and Jair hastened down the steps. to rejoin them, and the Gnome forced some of the bitter ale he carried down the Elfs throat. Edain Elessedil’s face was white and drawn with the pain as Jair bent over him. The Valeman saw at once that the damaged leg was useless.
“Help me get him up,” Foraker ordered. With Slanter’s aid, they carried the Elf to the top of the stairs. There they propped him up against the balustrade and knelt before him.
“Leave me,” he whispered, grimacing as he shifted his weight. “You have to. Take Jair on to the Croagh. Go quickly.”
Jair looked hurriedly at the others. Their faces were grim and set. “No!” he cried out angrily.
“Jair.” The Elf s hand closed tightly about his arm. “It was agreed, Jair. We pledged it. Whatever happens to the rest of us, you must reach Heaven’s Well. I can no longer help you. You must leave me and go on.”
“What he says is true, Ohmsford-he can go no further.” Elb Foraker’s voice was oddly hushed. He put his hands on the Valeman’s shoulders, then slowly came to his feet, glancing in turn at Slanter and Garet Jax. “I think that maybe I’ve gone as far as I can go, too. That sword cut has left me too dizzy for long climbs. The three of you go on. I think I’ll stay here.”
“Elb, no, you can’t do that...” the injured man tried to object.
“My choice, Edain Elessedil,” the Dwarf cut him short. “My choice as it was yours when you chose to come to my aid. We have a bond, you and I-a bond shared by Elves and Dwarves as far back as anyone can remember. We always stand by each other. It’s time for me to honor that bond.”
He turned then to Garet Jax. “This time the matter of my staying is not open to argument, Garet.”
A scattering of Gnome Hunters appeared at the far end of the hall. They slowed guardedly, calling back to others that followed.
“Hurry, now,” Foraker whispered. “Take Ohmsford and go.”
Garet Jax hesitated only a moment, then nodded. His hand reached out to grip that of the Dwarf. “Luck, Foraker.”
“And you,” the other answered.
His dark eyes met those of the Gnome momentarily. Then wordlessly, he placed an ash bow, arrows, and the slender Elf blade by Edain Elessedil’s side. In his own hands, he gripped the double-edged axe.
“Go now!” he snapped without turning, his black-bearded countenance fierce and set.
Jair held his ground defiantly, eyes darting from the face of the Weapons Master to that of Slanter. “Come, boy,” the Gnome said quietly.
Rough hands fastened on the Valeman’s good arm and propelled him along the balcony. Garet Jax followed, gray eyes cold and fixed. Jair wanted to scream in protest, to say that they could not leave them, but he knew that it would do no good. The decision had been made. He glanced over his shoulder to where Foraker and the Elven Prince waited at the stairway’s edge. Neither looked toward him. Their eyes were on the advancing Gnome Hunters.
Then Slanter had them through a doorway into another hall and hastening down its length. Cries of pursuit sounded once more, scattered and distant save in the direction from which they had fled. Jair ran silently at Slanter’s side and fought to keep from looking back.
The hallway they followed ended at an arched opening. They passed through into gray, hazy daylight, and the walls of the keep were left behind. A broad courtyard spread out before them to a railing. Beyond, the cliffs and the fortress dropped away into a valley; out of the valley, a single thread of stone spiraled upward past the courtyard’s edge. High and then higher it rose, to wrap at last about a solitary peak far above.
The Croagh, with Heaven’s Well at its summit.
The three who remained of the little company from Culhaven hurried forward to where the stairway and the courtyard joined and began to climb.
Hundreds of steps passed away beneath Brin’s feet as she descended the stone stairway of the Croagh into the pit of the Maelmord. The slender ribbon of stone spiraled downward, winding from Graymark’s leaden towers into the mist and steamy heat of the jungle below, a narrow and dizzying drop through space. The Valegirl traversed it with wooden steps, her mind numb with fear and weariness and wracked with whispers, of doubt. One hand rested lightly on the stone railing to give her some sense of support. In the west, the clouded sun continued to pass slowly behind the mountains.
Through the whole of her descent, her eyes remained fixed on the pit below. A dim and hazy mass when she began, the Maelmord sharpened in clarity with each step taken. Slowly, the life that lay rooted there took shape and form, lifting away from the broad backdrop of the valley. The trees were huge, bent, and hoary, warped somehow from the way that nature’s hand had shaped them. And within their midst were massive stalks of scrub and weed, grown to disproportionate size, and vines that wound and twisted over everything like snakes without heads or tails. The color of this jungle was not a vibrant, spring green, but a dull and grayish color that bore the cast of something dying with the freeze of winter.
Yet the heat was awesome. To Brin, the feel of the Maelmord was like a day in hottest summer when the ground had cracked, the grass browned, and the surface water dissipated to dust. The terrible stench of the sewers had its life-source here, rising from the earth and the jungle foliage in sickening waves, hanging in the still afternoon air, and gathering like fouled soup in the bowl of the mountain stone. At first, it was almost unbearable, even with Cogline’s salve still thick within her nostrils. But after a time, it grew less noticeable as her sense of smell was mercifully dulled. So, too, it was with the heat as her body temperature adjusted. Heat and stench lost the edge of their unpleasantness, and there was only the stark and blasted look of the pit that could not be blocked away.
There was the hissing, too, and there was the rise and fall of the foliage, as if it were a body breathing. There was the certainty that the whole of the valley was a thing alive, a solitary being for all of its disparate parts that could act and think and feel. And while it had no eyes, still the Valegirl could feel it looking at her, watching and waiting.
But she kept on. There could be no thought of turning back. It had been a long and arduous journey that had brought her to this place and time, and much had been sacrificed. Lives had been lost and the character of those saved was forever changed. She, herself, was no longer the girl she had been, for the magic had made her over into something new and terrible. She winced at the admission she could now freely make. She was changed, and the magic had wrought it. She shook her head. Well, perhaps it was not change, after all, that she had experienced, but merely insight. Perhaps learning of the frightening extent of the wishsong’s power had but shown her what had always been there and she was who she had always been and had not changed at all. Perhaps it was simply that now she understood.
The musings distracted her only slightly from the Maelmord’s bulk as it drew close now with the final twist in the stone stairway of the Croagh, marking the end of her descent. She slowed, staring fixedly downward into the mass of the jungle beneath, seeing the twisted maze of trunks, limbs, and vines shrouded in trailers of mist and the rise and fall of the life that rooted there, its breath hissing in steady cadence. Within the ravaged breast of the pit, no other life gave evidence of its existence.
Yet somewhere within that tangle, the Ildatch lay hidden.
How was she to find it?
She stood upon the Croagh two dozen steps from its lower end, with the Maelmord swelling softly all about her. She looked out across it in confusion, fighting down the repulsion and fear that coursed through her and trying desperately to stay calm. She must use the wishsong now, she knew, as she had been told by Allanon that she could. The trees, brush, and vines of this jungle were like those trees twisted close about each other within the forests above the Rainbow Lake. The wishsong could be used to make them part. A pathway could be made.
But where should that pathway lead?
She hesitated. Something within her advised caution, whispering that the wishsong’s power was to be used a different way this time-that strength alone would not be enough. The Maelmord was too large, too overpowering to be mastered in that way. Guile and cleverness must be employed. This thing was but a creation of the same magic that she wielded, all of it descended through the ages from the world of faerie, from a time when magic was the only power...
She cut short the thought, her eyes lifting toward the sky once again. The sunlight warmed her face in a way far different from that of the heat of the pit. There was life in its warmth and brightness. It called to her with such strength of purpose that, for an instant, she felt an inexplicable and frantic need to run back.
She jerked her eyes away, forcing her gaze to settle again upon the steamy depths of the jungle. Still she hesitated in her descent. The way was not yet clear to her, not yet certain. She could not proceed blindly into the maw of this thing. She must first discover where it was that she was going and where it was that the Ildatch lay concealed. Her dusky face tightened. She must understand the thing. She must look within it...
The words of the Grimpond mocked her, a whisper that teased slyly from the deep recesses of her memory: Look within, Brin of Shannara. Do you see?
And suddenly, startlingly, she saw everything. It had been told to her at the Valley of Shale, but she had not understood. Savior and destroyer, Bremen had named her, risen from the Hadeshorn to summon Allanon. Savior and destroyer.
She leaned weakly against the stone railing as the impact of it struck her. It was not within the Maelmord that she must look to find her answers-not within the pit.
It was within herself!
She straightened then, her dark face savage with the certainty of what she knew. How easy it was going to be for her to pass into the Maelmord and to find what she sought! There was no need for her to force a path within this being that kept watch over the Ildatch-no need, even, to search the Ildatch out. There would be no struggle here, no confrontation of magics.
There would instead be a joining!
She descended the final steps of the Croagh until she stood at last at its end. The roof of the jungle above her, seemed to close suddenly about, shutting away the sunlight, leaving her wrapped in shadows, heat, and the unbearable stench. But it no longer bothered her to be here. She knew what it was that she had to do, and nothing else mattered.
Gently, she sang. The wishsong rolled forth, low, hard, and eager. The music flooded the massive tangle of limbs, vines, rampant brush. It stroked and soothed with a deft touch, then wrapped about and cloaked with warm reassurance. Accept me, Maelmord, it whispered. Accept me into you, for I am like you. For us, there is no difference of kind. We are the same, our magics joined. We are the same!
The words that whispered in the music should have horrified her, but they were strangely pleasing. Where once the wishsong had seemed but a marvelous toy with which she might amuse herself-a toy to play with color and shape and sound-the vastness of its use had at last revealed itself to her. It could be anything. Even here, where evil lay strongest, she could belong. The Maelmord was created to prevent anything from entering that was not in harmony with it. Even the strength inherent in the wishsong’s magic could not overcome the basic purpose of its existence. But so versatile was the magic that it could forsake strength for cunning and make Brin Ohmsford appear kindred to whatever might stand against her. She could be in harmony with the life in this pit-and she could do so for as long as it might take to reach what it was she sought.
Exhilaration soared through her as she sang to the Maelmord and felt it respond. She was crying, so intense was the feeling that bound her to the music. The jungle swayed in response about her, its limbs bending and its vines and scrub curling like snakes. The music she sang whispered of the death and horror that gave life to the valley. She played a game with it, immersed within her self-creation so that she could be thought nothing less than what she wished to appear.
She drifted deep into herself, bound up in the song she sang. Allanon and the journey that had brought her were forgotten, as were Rone, Kimber, Cogline, and Whisper. Barely remembered was the task she had come to complete-to find and destroy the Ildatch. The release of the magic brought again the strange and frightening sense of glee. She could feel her control slipping away, just as had happened when she had used the wishsong against that Spider Gnome on Toffer Ridge and the black things in the sewers. She could feel the threads of herself unraveling. But she must risk it, she knew. It was necessary.
The breathing of the Maelmord rose and fell more quickly now and the hissing was more intense. It wanted her, had need for her. It found in her a vibrant piece of itself, the heart of the body that lay rooted there, missing for so long, but now returned. Come to me, it hissed. Come to me!
Her face alive with excitement and need, Brin passed from the Croagh into the jungle beyond.
“There has got to be an end to these sewers, for cat’s sake!” Rone was insisting to Kimber and Cogline as he stepped clear of the tunnel passage into the cavern beyond. It seemed to him in his frustration that they had been stumbling about in the sewers of Graymark forever.
“There doesn’t have to be anything of the sort!” Cogline snapped back, as disagreeable as ever.
But the highlander barely heard, his attention focused instead on the cavern into which they had passed. It was a massive chamber, its roof cracked so that hazy sunlight flooded downward in bright streamers and its floor split down the center by a monstrous chasm. Wordlessly, Rone hurried forward along the chasm’s edge, his eyes sweeping toward the stone bridge that spanned it. Beyond the bridge, the cavern stretched away to a high, arched alcove of polished stone, scrolled in some ancient markings and opening into daylight and the green of a misted valley.
The Maelmord, he thought at once.
And that’s where Brin will be.
He bounded onto the bridge and crossed, the old man and the girl hurrying after. He was moving toward the alcove when Kimber’s sharp cry brought him about.
“Highlander, come look!”
He turned and walked quickly back. She waited for him at the center of the bridge, then pointed wordlessly as he came up. A great section of iron chain forming the bridge railing had snapped and broken. At her feet, streaks of blood lay drying on the stone.
The girl knelt and touched the blood with her fingers. “Not very old,” she said softly. “Not more than an hour.”
He stared at her in stricken silence, and the same unspoken thought passed between them. His hand came up quickly, as if to ward it off. “No, it can’t be hers...”
Then a scream rent the air, shrill and terrifying-the scream of an animal filled with rage and fear. It shattered the stillness and their thoughts and left them frozen. It came. from beyond the alcove.
“Whisper!” Kimber cried.
Rone whirled. Brin!
He sprang from the bridge to the cavern floor and raced for the alcove’s passageway, both hands reaching back across his shoulder for the great broadsword strapped there. He was quick, but Kimber was even quicker. She went past him like a frightened animal, darting from the shadows of the cavern to the alcove and the light beyond. Trailing, Cogline called out in a furious attempt to slow them both, his voice high and shrill with desperation, but his crooked legs too slow to keep up.
Then they were through the alcove and into the light, with Kimber a dozen yards in front of Rone. There was Whisper, locked in battle with a pair of faceless black things on a narrow rock shelf before them, a blur of motion and darkness. Beyond, on a stone stairway that wound downward from the cliffs to the ledge and the valley below-on a stairway that Rone knew at once to be the Croagh-one of the Mord Wraiths stood watching.
At the approach of the girl and the highlander, the Mord Wraith turned.
“Kimber, look out!” Rone howled in warning.
But the girl was already springing to Whisper’s aid, long knives appearing in both hands. The Wraith pointed toward the girl and red fire exploded from its fingers. The fire lanced past the girl, missing her somehow, and fragments of rock flew into the air as it struck. Rone sprang forward with a cry, the ebony blade of the Sword of Leah held before him. The Wraith turned toward him instantly, and the fire burst forth a second time. It hammered at the highlander, caught on the blade of the sword, and the whole of the air about him turned bright with flame. The force of the blow lifted him clear of the ground and threw him back.
Then Cogline appeared from out of the caverns, old, bent, and fierce as he screamed at the Wraith in challenge. A little bit of flesh, bone, and cloth, he skittered toward the black-robed form. The walker swung about, pointing. But the old man’s sticklike arm whipped forward, and a dark object flew from his hand, hurtling into the Wraith’s crimson fire. A tremendous explosion rocked the whole of the mountainside. Flames and smoke geysered skyward from the stem of the Croagh, and bits of shattered rock flew everywhere.
For an instant everything disappeared in smoke and silt. Frantic, Rone scrambled back to his feet.
“Taste a bit of my magic, you worm food!” Cogline was howling in glee. “See what you can do against that!”
He darted past Rone before the highlander could stop him, dancing about in maddened delight, his sticklike form disappearing into the smoke. Whisper’s sudden snarl lifted from somewhere ahead, then Kimber’s sharp cry. Rone swore in fury and leaped forward. Crazy old man!
Directly before him, red fire erupted from the haze. Cogline’s thin form flew sideways as if it were a doll flung by an angry child. The highlander set his teeth and hurtled toward the source of the fire. Almost at once, he came up against the Wraith, its black-cloaked form tattered and bent. The Sword of Leah pierced into a burst of red fire, shattering it apart. The Wraith disappeared. Something moved behind him, and the highlander swung about. But it was Whisper who lunged past through a trailer of smoke, the first of the black things clinging to him, the second borne before him in his teeth. Swiftly, Rone struck, the sword cleaving through the creature that hung upon the moor cat’s back and stripping it from him.
“Kimber!” he screamed.
Red fire exploded close to him, but he caught it again on the sword. A cloaked form appeared momentarily through the smoke, and he lunged at it. This time the Wraith was not quick enough. Backed against the stone stairway of the Croagh, it tried to slip left, with fire bursting from its fingers. Rone was on it at once. The Sword of Leah came down, and the Wraith exploded into a pile of ash.
Everything went still then, save for the low coughing sound Whisper made as he padded ghostlike through the haze toward Rone. Slowly the smoke drifted away and the whole of the ledge and the Croagh became visible once more. The ledge was littered with broken rock, and an entire section of the Croagh where it joined to the ledge-where the Mord Wraith had been standing when Cogline had challenged it-was gone.
Rone glanced quickly about. The Wraith and the black things were gone as well. He wasn’t sure what had happened to them-whether they had been destroyed or merely driven off-but they were nowhere to be seen.
“Rone. “
He whirled at the sound of Kimber’s voice. She appeared from the far side of the ledge, looking small and bedraggled, limping slightly as she came. Anger and relief flooded through him. “Kimber, why in the name of all that’s right and sensible did you...?”
“Because Whisper would have done the same for me. Where is grandfather?”
Rone clamped his mouth shut on the rest of what he would have said to her. Together, they scanned the littered rock shelf. They saw him finally, half buried in a pile of rubble by the cliff side, as blackened as the ash left by the fires of their battle with the Wraith. They hurried to him and lifted him clear. His face and arms were burned, his hair singed, and he was covered with soot. Gently, Kimber cradled the old man’s head. His eyes were closed and he did not appear to be breathing.
“Grandfather?” the girl whispered, her hand on his cheek.
“Who’s that?” the old man cried abruptly, startling both the girl and the highlander. Arms and legs began to thrash. “Get out of my house, trespassers! Get out of my home!”
Then his eyes blinked and opened. “Girl?” he muttered weakly. “What happened to the black things?”
“Gone, grandfather.” She smiled, relief in her dark eyes. “Are you all right?”
“All right?” He looked dazed, but nodded resolutely, his voice becoming stiff with indignation. “Of course I’m all right! Just got a bit ahead of myself, that’s all! Help me up!”
Rone took a deep breach. Lucky to be alive is what you are, old man, you and the girl, he thought grimly.
With Kimber’s aid he pulled Cogline back to his feet and let him test his weight alone. The old man looked like something dredged up from an ash pit, but he seemed uninjured. The girl hugged him warmly and began to brush him off.
“You must be more careful, grandfather,” she admonished. “You are not as quick as you used to be. The walkers will have you if you try to run past them again the way you did here.”
Rone shook his head in disbelief. Who should be scolding whom-the girl the old man or the old man the girl? What had Brin and he been thinking anyway when they...
He caught himself. Brin. He had forgotten about Brin. He glanced toward the Croagh. If the Valegirl had gotten this far, she had almost certainly gone down into the Maelmord. And that was where he must go as well.
He turned from Kimber and her grandfather and hurried across the rock shelf to where it joined with the steps of the Croagh. He was still gripping the Sword of Leah firmly. How much time had he lost here? He had to catch Brin before she got too far ahead into whatever it was that waited in the valley below...
Abruptly, he slowed and stopped. Whisper stood directly in his path, blocking the stairway down. The moor cat stared at him momentarily, then sat back on his haunches and blinked.
“Get out of the way!” Rone snapped.
The cat did not move. The highlander hesitated, then started forward impatiently. Whisper’s muzzle drew back slightly, and a low growl rumbled in his throat.
Rone stopped at once and looked back angrily at Kimber. “Get your cat out of my way, Kimber. I’m going down.”
The girl called softly to the moor cat, but Whisper stayed where he was. Puzzled, she came forward and bent close to him, talking in a low, calm voice, rubbing the massive head about the ears and neck. The cat nuzzled her back and made a soft purring sound, but did not move. Finally, the girl stepped back.
“Brin is well,” she informed him with a brief smile. “She has gone down into the pit.”
Rone nodded with relief. “Then I’ve got to go after her.”
But the girl shook her head. “You must remain here, highlander.”
Rone stared. “Remain here? I can’t do that! Brin is all alone down there! I’m going after her!”
But again the girl shook her head. “You cannot. She doesn’t want you doing that. She has used the wishsong to prevent it. She has made Whisper her sentry. No one may pass-not even me.”
“But he’s your cat! Make him move! Tell him that he has to move! The magic isn’t that strong, is it?”
Her pixie face looked up at him calmly. “It is more than the magic, Rone. Whisper’s instincts tell him that Brin is right about this. The magic does not hold him; his reason does. He knows that whatever danger waits in the valley is too great. He will not let you pass.”
The highlander continued to stare at the girl, anger and disbelief flooding his face. His gaze shifted to the giant cat and back again.
What was he supposed to do now?
Euphoria engulfed Brin, sweeping over her in a warm rush, flooding through her as if it were her life’s blood. She felt it carry her down within herself like a tiny leaf borne on the waters of some great river. Sight, sound, and smell meshed and ran in a dazzling mix of wild imaginings, some of beauty and light, some of darkest misshape, all in the ebb and flow of her mind’s eye. Nothing was as it had been, but new and exotic and alive with wonder. It was a journey of self-discovery that transcended thought and feeling and was its own reason for being.
She sang, the music of the wishsong the food and drink that fed her, sustained her, and gave her life.
She was deep within the Maelmord now, far from the stairway of the Croagh and the world she had left behind. It was another world entirely here. As she worked to make herself one with it, it reached out to her and drew her in. Stench, heat, and the rot of living things wrapped about her and found in her their child. Gnarled limbs, vines twisted and mottled, and great stalks of brush and weed stroked her body as she slipped past, feeding on the vibrancy of the music, finding in it an elixir that gave back life. From a great distance away, Brin felt their caress and smiled in response.
It was as if she had ceased to exist. Some tiny part of her knew that she should have been horrified by the things that wound about her and rubbed so lovingly against her. But she was given over to the music of the wishsong now, and she was no longer the one she had been. All of the feelings and reasonings that had been hers, that had made her who she was, were masked away by the dark magic, and she was become a thing like that into which she journeyed. She was a kindred spirit, wandered back from some distant place, the evil within her as strong as the evil she found waiting. She had become as dark as the Maelmord and the life that had been spawned there. She was one with it. She belonged.
A tiny part of her understood that Brin Ohmsford had ceased to exist, made over by the magic of the wishsong. It understood that she had let herself become this other thing-a thing so repulsive that she could not have stood it otherwise-and that she would not come back to herself until she had found her way through to the heart of the evil enfolding her. The euphoria, the exhilaration brought on by the frightening power of the wishsong, threatened to steal her away from herself completely, to strip her of her sanity and make her forever the thing she pretended to be. All the strange and marvelous imaginings were but trappings of a madness that would destroy her. All that remained of the one she once had been was that small bit of self that she still kept wrapped carefully within. All else had become the child of the Maelmord.
The wall of the jungle passed away and came about again, and nothing of it changed. Shadows wrapped close about, as soft as black velvet and as silent as death. The whole of the sky stayed screened away, and only the half-light of night’s coming penetrated beyond the gloom. All the while that she walked in this maze of darkness and stifling heat, the hissing of the Maelmord’s breath lifted from the earth, and the limbs, trunks, stalks, and vines swayed and writhed with the motion. Save for the hissing, there was only silence-intense and expectant. There was no sign of other life-no sign of the walkers, of the dark things that served them, or of the Ildatch that had given them all life.
She went on, driven by that spark of memory she harbored deep within herself. Find the Ildatch, it whispered in its small, empty voice. Find the book of the dark magic. Time fragmented and slipped away until it no longer had meaning. Had she been here an hour? Or more? There was a strange sense of having been here for a very long time, almost as if she had been here forever.
Far distant, almost lost to her in the vast tangle of the jungle, something tumbled from the cliffs above and fell into the pit. She could sense its fall and hear its scream as the Maelmord closed quickly about it, squeezing, crushing, and consuming until the thing was no more. She savored its death, tasted its blood as it was devoured. When it was gone, she longed for more.
Then whispered warnings brushed at her. From a dimly remembered past she saw Allanon once more. Tall and bent, his black hair gone gray, his lean face lined with age, he reached for her across a chasm she could not bridge, and his words were like sprinkled drops of rain upon a window closed before her. Beware. The wishsong is power like nothing I have ever seen. Use it with caution. She heard the words, saw them spatter on the glass and found herself laughing at the way they fell. The figure of the Druid receded and was gone. Dead, now, she reminded herself in surprise. Gone from the Four Lands forever.
She called him back again, as if his reappearance would serve to remind her of something that she had somehow forgotten. He came, sweeping out of the mists, striding across the chasm that had separated them. His strong hands came down gently to rest upon her shoulders. Wisdom and determination reflected in his eyes, and there was a sense of his never having truly left, but his always having been there. This is not a game you play, he whispered. Never that! Beware! And she shook her head. I am savior and destroyer, she whispered back. But who am I? Tell me now! Tell me...
A ripple in the fabric of her consciousness swept him away, a ghost, and suddenly she was back within the Maelmord. There was a rumbling of uneasiness within the pit, a tone of dissatisfaction in its hiss. It had sensed a momentary change in her and was disturbed. She reverted instantly to the thing she had created. The wishsong rose and swept into the jungle, soothing it, lulling it once again. The uneasiness and dissatisfaction faded.
She slipped ahead again into the nothingness, letting the Maelmord swallow her up. There was a deepening of shadows and a fading of the light. The breathing of the pit seemed to grow heavier. The sense of kinship that the wishsong created between them tightened and left her breathless with anticipation. She was close now-close to what she sought. The feel of it speared through her like a sudden rush of blood, and she sang with renewed intensity. The magic of the wishsong lifted through the gloom, and the Maelmord shuddered in response.
Then the wall of the jungle fell away, and she stood within a massive, shadowed clearing, wrapped close about by trees, brush, and vines. A tower stood at the center of the clearing, ancient and crumbling, lost in the gloom. Walls of stone rose upward toward the forest roof, forming and reforming in a series of spiraling turrets and notched parapets, as stripped and barren in their look as bleached bones. Nowhere did the foliage of the jungle grow upon the tower. As if its touch meant death, the jungle had passed it by.
Brin stopped, the music of the wishsong lowering to a whisper of expectancy as she stared at the tower.
Here! The heart of the evil is here. The Ildatch!
Drawing close the layers of magic that cloaked her, she went to meet it.