Others pa.s.sed north in those days as well, bound for the deep Anar. On the wide road that ran parallel to the Silver River, which the Mwellret cautiously avoided, caravans of Gnome soldiers and their prisoners trekked in steady procession, mired in mud and laden with the pillage of an invading army. The prisoners were bound and chained-men who had fought as defenders at Capaal. They stumbled past in long lines, herded like cattle, Dwarves, Elves, and Bordermen, haggard, beaten, and stripped of hope. Jair looked down on them through the trees above the roadway over which they traveled and there were tears in his eyes.

Armies of Gnomes from Graymark also traveled the road, southbound in great, unruly ma.s.ses as they hastened to join those tribes already advancing into the lands of the Dwarf people.

Thousands came, grim and frightening, their hard yellow faces twisted with jeers as they called to the hapless prisoners that marched past them. Mord Wraiths came, too, though no more than a handful, dark and shadowed things that walked alone and were avoided by all.

The weather turned worse as the journey wore on. Skies turned black with thunderclouds and the rain began to fall in steady sheets. Lightning flashed in brilliant streaks and booming peals of thunder rolled the length of the sodden land. Autumn's trees drooped and matted with the wet, the colored leaves sinking and falling into the mire, and the ground turned muddied and uncertain. A gray and dismal cast settled down across the forestland, and it seemed as if the skies pressed against the earth to choke its life away.

Jair Ohmsford felt as if that might be so as he trudged helplessly through the wilderness brush, pulled on by the leather bindings gripped in the hands of the dark-robed figure before him.

Cold and wet sank deep within him. As the hours pa.s.sed, exhaustion began to take its toll. A fever settled in, and, as it did so, his mind began to wander. Flashes of what had brought him to this sorry state mingled with childhood memories in garbled bits of still-life that hovered briefly within his stricken mind and disappeared. Sometimes he was not entirely lucid, and strange and frightening visions would wrack him, stealing through his thoughts like thieves. Even when he was free momentarily of the effects of the fever, a dark despair colored his thoughts. There was no hope for him now, it whispered. Capaal, the defenders that had held her, and all of his friends and companions were gone. Images of them. in the moment of their fall flashed in his mind with the blinding clarity of the lightning that crackled overhead through the canopy of the trees. Garet Jax, pulled deep into the gray waters of the Cillidellan by the Kraken; Foraker and Helt, buried beneath the wall of stone rubble brought down by the dark magic of the walkers; Slanter, runningheedlessly down the underground corridors of the fortress before him, never looking back, never seeing. Even Brin, Allanon, and Rone appeared at times, lost somewhere deep within the Anar.

Sometimes thoughts of the King of the Silver River would come to him, clear and strangely poignant, filled with the wonder and the mystery of the old man. Remember, they whispered in soft, anxious tones. Do not forget what you must do. But he had forgotten, it seemed. Tucked within his tunic, hidden from the prying eyes of the Mwellret, were the gifts of magic the old man had bestowed on him-the vision crystal and the leather bag with the Silver Dust. He had them still and he meant to keep them. But somehow their purpose was strangely unclear, lost in the swell of the fever, hidden in the wanderings of his mind.

Finally, when they stopped for the night; the Mwellret saw that he was taken with fever and gave him a medicine to drink, mixing the contents of a pouch at his waist with a cup of dark, bitter ale. The Valeman tried to refuse the drink, wracked with the fever and his own sense of uncertainty, but the Mwellret forced it down him. Shortly after, he fell asleep and slept that night untroubled. At dawn he was given more of the bitter potion; by dusk of the second night, the fever had begun to subside.

They slept that night within a cave on a high ridgeline overlooking the dark curve of the river, dryer and warmer than they had been on previous nights, free of the extreme discomfort that had plagued them in the open forest. It was on this night that Jair again came to speak with his captor. They had finished their meal of ground roots and dried beef and drunk a small measure of the bitter ale; now they sat facing each other in the dark, huddled down within their cloaks against the night's chill. Without, the rain fell in a slow, steady drizzle, spattering noisily against trees, stones, and muddied earth. The Mwellret had not replaced the gag in the Valeman's mouth as he had done the past two nights, but had left it loose about his neck. He sat watching Jair, his cold eyes glittering, his reptilian face a vague shadow within the darkness of his cowl.

He made no move, nor did he speak. He simply sat and watched as the Valeman crouched across from him. The minutes slipped by, and at last Jair grew determined to engage the creature in conversation.

"Where are you taking me?" he ventured cautiously.

Slitted eyes narrowed further, and it was then the Valeman realized that the Mwellret had been waiting for him to speak. "We go into the High Benss."

Jair shook his head, not understanding. "The High Bens?"

"Mountainss below the Ravensshorn, Elfling," the other hissed. "Sstay for a time within thosse mountainss. Put you in the Gnome prissonss at Dun Fee Aran!"

Jair's throat tightened. "Prison? You plan to lock me in a prison?"

"Guesstss of mine sstay there," the other rasped, laughing softly.

The Valeman stiffened at the sound of the laughter and fought back against the fear that washed through him. "Why are you doing this to me?" he demanded angrily. "What do you want from me?"

"Hss!" A hooked finger pointed. "Doess the Elfling truly not know? Doess he not ssee?"

The cloaked form hunched closer. "Then lissten, little peopless. Hear! Ourss wa.s.s the gifted peopless, lordss over all the mountainss' life. Comess to uss the Dark Lord many yearss gone pa.s.st now, and a bargain wars sstruck. Little Gnome peopless ssent to sserve the Dark Lord if he leavess our peopless be, lordss sstill within the mountainss. Doess thiss, the Dark Lord, and in hiss time pa.s.ssess from the earth. But we endure. We live!"

The crooked finger twisted slowly. "Then comess the walkerss, climbed from the dark pitof the Maelmord, climbed into our mountainss. Sserve the magic of the Dark Lord, they ssay.

Give we up our homess, they ssay. Give we up the little peopless that sserve uss. Bargainss mean nothing now. We refusse the walkerss, the Wraithss. We are sstrong alsso. But ssomething done to uss. We ssicken and die. No young are born. Our peopless fail. Yearss pa.s.ss, and we weaken to a handful. Sstill the walkerss ssay we musst go from the mountainss. At la.s.st we are too few, and the walkerss drive uss forth!"

He paused then, and the green slitted eyes burned deep into the Valeman's, filled with rage and bitterness. "Left me for dead, did the walkerss, the Wraithss. Black thingss of evil. But I live!"

Jair stared at the monster. Stythys was admitting to him that the Mwellrets in the time of Shea Ohmsford had sold to the Warlock Lord the lives of the mountain Gnomes so that they might be used to fight against the Southland in the aborted Third War of the Races. The Mwellrets had done this in order to preserve their lordship over their mountain kingdom in the Ravenshorn. It was as Foraker had told him and as the Dwarf people had suspected. But then the Mord Wraiths had come, successors to the power of the dark magic of the Warlock Lord. The Eastland was to be theirs now, and the Ravenshorn would no longer belong to the Mwellrets.

When the lizard things had resisted, the Wraiths had sickened and destroyed them. So Stythys had indeed been driven forth from his homeland to be found by the Dwarves and brought into Capaal...

"But what has all this to do with me?" he demanded, a sinking suspicion settling through him.

"Magicss!" the Mwellret hissed instantly. "Magicss, little friend! I wissh what you posssess. Ssongss you ssing musst be mine! You have the magicss; you musst give them to me!'

"But I can't!" Jair exclaimed in frustration.

A grimace twisted the other's scaled face. "Can't, little friend? Powerss of magicss musst again come to my peopless-not to the Wraithss. Your magicss sshall be given, Elfling. At the prissonss you sshall give them. You will ssee."

Jair looked away. It was the same with Stythys as it had been with the Gnome Sedt Spilk-both had wanted mastery over something that Jair could not give them. The magic of the wishsong was his, and only he could use it. It would be as useless to the Mwellret as it had been to the Sedt.

And then a chilling thought struck him. Suppose that Stythys knew that? Suppose that the Mwellret knew he could not have the magic, but that he must make use of it through Jair? The Valeman remembered what had been done to him in that cell in Capaal-how the Mwellret had made him reveal the magic...

He caught his breath. Oh, shades! Suppose Stythys knew-or suppose that he even suspected-that there were other magics? Suppose he sensed the presence of the vision crystal and the Silver Dust?

"You can't have them," he whispered, almost before he realized what he was saying.

There was a hint of desperation in his voice.

The Mwellret's reply was a soft hiss. "Prissonss will change your mind, little peopless.

You will ssee."

Jair Ohmsford lay awake for a long time after that, gagged and hobbled once more, lost in the darkness of his thoughts as he listened to the sounds of the rainfall and the breathing of the sleeping Mwellret. Shadows lay all about the entrance to the little cave; without, the wind blewthe stormclouds above the sodden forest. What was he to do? Behind him lay his quest and his shattered plans for saving Brin. Before him lay the Gnome prisons of Dun Fee Aran. Once locked within their walls, he might never come away again, for it was certain that the Mwellret meant to keep him there until he had revealed what he knew of the secrets of the Elven magic. But he would never give up those secrets. They were his to use in service to the King of the Silver River in exchange for the life of his sister. He would never give them up. Yet he sensed that, despite his resolve and whatever strength he could muster to resist his captor, sooner or later Stythys would find a way to wrest those secrets from him.

Thunder rumbled in the distance somewhere, rolling across the forestland, deep and ominous. More ominous still was the despair of the Valeman. It was a long time before exhaustion overcame him and he at last fell asleep.

Jair and the Mwellret resumed their march north with the coming of dawn on the third day, plodding through rain, mist, and sodden woods, and at midday they pa.s.sed into the High Bens. The mountains were dark and rugged, a cl.u.s.ter of broken peaks and crags that straddled the Silver River where it washed down out of the high forestland below the Ravenshorn. The two climbed into their midst, swallowed by mist that clung to the rocks until at last, as the day waned and the night began to fall, they stood upon a bluff overlooking the fortress of Dun Fee Aran.

Dun Fee Aran was a sprawling, castlelike complex of walls, towers, watches, and battlements. The whole of the fortress had a gray and dreary cast to it as it materialized out of the rain before them, one that would have been there, Jair sensed, even in the best of weather.

Wordlessly, they trudged from the trees, the tall, cloaked Mwellret leading the hobbled Valeman, and pa.s.sed through the brush and scrub of the bluff face into the sodden camp. Gnome Hunters and retainers of all ranks and standings plodded past them across the muddied grounds, cloaked and hooded against the weather and caught up in their own concerns. No one questioned them.

No one gave them a second look. They pa.s.sed over stone parapets and walkways, over walls and causeways, down stairs, and through halls. The night began to deepen and the light to fail. Jair felt as if the world were closing in about him, shutting him away. He could smell the stench of the place, the closed and fetid reek of cells and human bodies. Lives were expended here without much thought, he sensed with a chill. Lives were locked away within these walls and forgotten.

A huge, blocklike structure loomed before them, windows no more than tiny slits through the stones, doors ironbound and ma.s.sive. They entered this building and silence closed about them.

"Prissonss, Elfling," Jair heard the Mwellret whisper back at him.

They traversed a maze of dark and shadowed corridors, hallways filled with doors whose bolts and hinges showed rust and cobwebs undisturbed by the pa.s.sage of time. Jair felt cold and empty as he watched row after row of these doors pa.s.s away. Their boots echoed dully in the silence, and only the distant sound of iron clanging and stone being chiseled came otherwise to his ears. Jair's eyes scanned dismally the walls that rose about him. How will I ever get out of here? he wondered in the silence of his mind. How will I ever find my way?

Then a torch flared before them in the corridor, and a small cloaked form came into view.

It was a Gnome, aged and ruined, yellow face ravaged by some nameless disease so loathsome that Jair pulled back against the leather ties that bound him. Stythys advanced to where the Gnome stood waiting, bent over the ugly little man, and made a few cryptic signs with his fingers. The Gnome replied in kind; with a brief motion of one crooked hand, he bade themfollow.

They went deeper into the prisons, the light from the world without all but lost in the twist of stone and mortar. Only the torch showed them the Way, burning and smoking through the blackness.

They stopped at last before an ironbound door similar to the hundreds they had pa.s.sed before it. Hands twisting roughly about the metal latch, the Gnome wrenched its bolt free. With a grating screech, he brought the heavy portal open. Stythys looked back at Jair, then pulled at the leash and brought him forward into the room beyond. It was a small, cramped cell, empty save for a pile of straw bundled in one corner and a wooden bucket next to the door. A single tiny slit cut into the far wall let though a sliver of gray light from without.

The Mwellret turned, cut free the bonds that tied fair's hands and slipped loose the gag that bound his mouth. Roughly, he shoved the Valeman past him onto the bed of straw.

"Thiss iss yourss, Elfling," he hissed. "Home for little peopless until you tell me of the magicss." The crooked finger pointed back to the hunched form of the Gnome behind him. "Your jailer, Elfling. He iss mine; one who sstill obeyss. Mute he iss-doess not sspeak or hear. Ssongss of magicss usseless on him. Feedss and tendss you, he doess." He paused. "Hurtss you, too, if you dissobeyss."

The Gnome's ravaged face was turned toward the Valeman as Stythys spoke, but revealed nothing of what the mind behind it thought. Jair glanced about bleakly.

"Tellss me what I musst know, Elfling," the Mwellret whispered suddenly. "Tellss me or never leavess thiss pla.s.se!"

The cold voice hung with a hiss in the silence of the little room as the yellow eyes bore deep into the Valeman's. Then Stythys wheeled away and strode back through the cellroom door.

The Gnome jailer turned as well, crooked hands gripping the ironbound door by its latch bolt and pulling it firmly shut.

Huddled alone in the dark, Jair listened until the sound of their footfalls had disappeared.

The minutes slipped away into hours as he sat motionless within the cell, listening to the silence and thinking of how hopeless his position had become. Smells a.s.sailed his nostrils as he sat there, rank and harsh, mingling with the sense of despair that coursed relentlessly through him. He was scared now, so scared that he could barely bring himself to think. The thought had never crossed his mind before in all the time that had pa.s.sed since he had abandoned his home in Shady Vale, fleeing from the Gnomes that hunted for him, but now for the first time it did.

You are going to fail, it whispered.

He would have cried then if he could have made himself do so, but somehow the tears would not come. Perhaps he was too frightened even for that. Think about how you will escape this place, he ordered himself. There is always a way out of everything.

He took a deep breath to steady himself. What would Garet Jax do in this situation? Or even Slanter? Slanter always had a way out; Slanter was a survivor. Even Rone Leah would have been able to come up with something.

His thoughts drifted for a time, wandering through memories of what had been, sidestepping effortlessly into dreams of what might somehow yet be. All of it was fantasy, false rendering of truths twisted in the madness of his own despair to become what he would have them be.

Then at last he made himself rise and walk about his tiny prison, exploring what he couldalready see was there, touching the damp, cold stone, and peering at the shaft of gray that slipped through the airhole from the skies without. He journeyed all about the cell, studying to no particular purpose, waiting for his emotions to still themselves and his thoughts to settle.

Suddenly he decided to use the vision crystal, If he were to have any sense of what time remained to him, he must discover what had become of Brin.

Hurriedly, he brought the crystal and its silver chain out from their place of concealment within his tunic. He stared down at the crystal, cupped gently within his hands. He could hear the old King's voice whispering to him, cautioning him that this would be the means by which he could follow Brin's progress. All he need do was sing to it...

Softly, he sang. At first, his voice would not come, choked with emotions that swam restlessly through him still. Yet he hardened himself against his own sense of uncertainty, and the sound of the wishsong filled the tiny room. Almost at once, the vision crystal brightened, sharp light flaring outward into the gloom and chasing the shadows before it.

He saw at once that it came from a small fire, and Brin's face was before him, obviously studying the flames of a campfire. Her lovely face was cupped in her hands. Then she looked up and seemed to be searching. There were signs of strain and worry, and she looked almost haggard. Then she looked down again and sighed. She shuddered slightly, as if repressing a sob.

All of her that Jair could see seemed to be given over to despair. Whatever had happened to her had obviously been unpleasant...

Jair's voice broke as worry for his sister flooded through him, and the image of his sister's frowning face wavered and vanished. The Valeman stared down in stunned silence at the crystal cupped in his hands.

Where, he wondered, was Allanon? There had been no sign of him in the crystal.

Leaves in the wind, the voice of the King of the Silver River whispered in his mind. She will be lost.

Then he closed his hands tightly about the vision crystal and stared sightlessly into the darkness.

27.

Night had settled down across the forests of the Anar when Brin Ohmsford saw the lights. They winked at her like fireflies through the screen of the trees and shadows that stretched away into the dark, small, elusive, and distant.

She slowed, her arms wrapping quickly about Rone to keep him from falling as he stumbled to a halt beside her. An aching weariness wracked her body, but she forced herself to hold the highlander upright as he fell against her, his head drooping to her shoulder, his face hot and flushed with the fever.

"...can't find where...lost, can't find..." he muttered incoherently and the fingers of his hand gripped her arm until it hurt.

She whispered to him, letting him hear her voice and know she was still there. Slowly the fingers relaxed their grip, and the fevered voice went silent.

Brin stared ahead at the lights. They danced through forest boughs still thick with autumn leaves, bits and pieces of brightness. Fire! She whispered the word urgently, and it pushed back against the despair and the hopelessness that had closed in about her in steadily deepening layers since the march east from the Chard Rush had begun. How long ago it all seemed now-Allanon gone, Rone so badly wounded, and she alone. She closed her eyes against the memory. She had walked all that afternoon and into the night, following the run of the Chard Rush eastward, hoping, praying that it would lead her to some other human being who could help her. She didn't know how long or how far she had walked; she had lost track of time and distance. She only knew that somehow she had managed to keep going.

She straightened, pulling Rone upright. Ahead, the lights flickered their greeting. Please!

she cried silently. Please, let it be the help I need!

She trudged ahead, Rone's arm looped about her shoulders, his body sagging against hers as he stumbled beside her. Tree limbs and scrub brushed at her face and body, and she bent her head against them. Putting one foot before the other with wooden doggedness, she went forward.

Her strength was almost gone. If there was no help to be had here...

Then abruptly the screen of trees and shadows broke apart before her, and the source of the lights stood revealed. A building loomed ahead, shadowed and dark, save for slivers of yellow light that escaped from two places in its squarish bulk. Voices sounded from somewhere within, faint and indistinct.

Holding Rone close, she pushed on. As she drew nearer, the building began to come into focus. A low, squat structure with a peaked roof, it was constructed of timbers and sideboards on a stone foundation. A covered porch fronted a single storey with a garret, and a stable sat back away from the rear of the building. Two horses and a mule stood tied to a hitching post, heads lowered to crop the drying gra.s.s. Along the front of the building, a series of windows stood barred and shuttered against the night. It was through the gaps in the shutters that light thrown by oil lamps had escaped and been seen by the Valegirl.

"A little farther, Rone," she whispered, knowing that he didn't understand, but would respond to the sound of her voice.

When she was a dozen feet from the porch, she saw the sign that hung from the eaves of its sloping roof: ROOKER LINE TRADING CENTER.

The sign swayed gently in the night wind, weathered and split, the paint so badly faded into the wood that the letters were barely legible. Brin glanced up at it briefly and looked away.All that mattered was that there were people inside.

They climbed onto the porch, stumbling and tripping on the weathered boards, to sag against the door jamb. Brin groped for the handle, and the voices within suddenly went still.

Then the Valegirl's hand closed about the metal latch, and the heavy door swung open.

A dozen rough faces turned to stare at her, a mix of surprise and wariness in their eyes.

Trappers, Brin saw through a haze of smoke and exhaustion-bearded and unkempt, their clothes of worn leather and animal skins. Hard-looking, they cl.u.s.tered in groups about a serving bar formed of wood planks laid crosswise on upended ale kegs. Animal pelts and provisions lay stacked behind the counter, and a series of small tables with stools sat before it. Oil lamps hung from low-beamed ceiling rafters and cast their harsh light against the night shadows.

With her arms wrapped about Rone, Brin stood silently in the open doorway and waited.

"They's ghosts!" someone muttered suddenly from along the serving counter; and there was a shuffling of feet.

A tall, thin man in shirt-sleeves and ap.r.o.n came out from behind the counter, head shaking slowly. "If they was dead things, they'd have no need to open the door now, would they?

They'd just walk right on through!"

He crossed to the middle of the room and stopped. "What's happened to you, girl?"

Brin realized suddenly, through the haze of fatigue and pain that a.s.sailed her, how they must appear to these men. They might well have been something brought back from the dead-two worn and ragged things, their clothing damp and muddied, their faces white with exhaustion, hanging onto each other like straw-filled scarecrows. A bloodied strip of cloth had been bound about Rone's head, but the rawness of the wound showed through. On his back, the scabbard that had once held the great broadsword lay empty. Her own face was soiled and drawn, and her dark eyes haunted. Spectral apparitions, they stood framed in the light of the open doorway, swaying unevenly against the night.

Brin tried to speak, but no words came out.

"Here, lend a hand," the tall man called back to the others at the counter, coming forward at once to catch hold of Rone. "Come on now, lend a hand!"

A brawny woodsman came forward quickly, and the two ushered the Valegirl and the highlander to the nearest table, placing them on the low stools. Rone slumped forward with a groan, his head sagging.