28.

They stayed on for two days at the Rooker Line Trading Center, waiting for Rone to regain strength enough to resume the journey east. The fever was gone by morning and the highlander was resting comfortably, but he was still entirely too weak to attempt to travel. So Brin asked permission of the trader Stebb to keep the use of the tack room for one day more, and the trader agreed. He provided them with food for their meals, rations of ale, medicines, and blankets, and he refused quickly all offers of payment. He was happy to be of help to them, he a.s.sured the Valegirl. But he was uneasy in her presence and he never quite managed to let his eyes meet hers.

Brin understood well enough what was happening. The trader was a kind and decent man, but now he was frightened of her and of what she might do to him if he refused it. He would probably have helped her out of his basic generosity, but fear had added urgency to his impulse.

He obviously felt that this was the quickest and most expedient way to get her out of his life.

She remained for the most part within the confines of the little tack room with Rone, seeing to his needs and talking with him of what had befallen them since the death of Allanon.

Talking about it seemed to help; while both were still stunned by what had happened, the sharing of their feelings brought forth a common determination that they must go forward to complete the quest that the Druid had left to them. A new closeness developed between them, stronger and more certain in its purpose. With the death of Allanon, they now had only each other upon whom to rely and each felt new value in the other's presence. Alone together in the solitude of their tiny room at the rear of the trader's stables, they spoke in hushed tones of the choices that had been made to bring them to this point in their lives and of those that must yet be made. Slowly, surely, they bound themselves as one.

Yet despite their binding together in spirit and cause, there remained some things of which Brin could not bring herself to speak, even to Rone Leah. She could not tell him of the blood that Allanon had taken from his own ravaged body to place upon her-blood that in some way was meant to pledge her to him, even in death. Nor could she tell Rone of the uses to which she had put the wishsong-once in fury to destroy human life, a second time in desperation to save it. She could speak of none of these things to the highlander-in part because she did not fully understand them, in part because the implications frightened her so greatly that she was not sure she wanted to. The blood oath was too remote in purpose now for her to dwell upon, and the cases of the wishsong were the result of emotions that she promised herself she would not let get away from her again.

There was another reason for not speaking to Rone of these things. The highlander was troubled enough as matters stood by the loss of the Sword of Leah-so troubled, in fact, that he could seem to think of little else. He meant to have the sword back again, he told her over and over. He would search it out and reclaim it whatever the cost. His insistence frightened her, for he seemed to have bound himself to the sword with such need that it was as if the weapon had somehow become a part of him. Without it, she guessed, the highlander did not believe that he could survive what lay ahead. Rone felt that without it he must surely be lost.

All the while she listened to him talk of this and thought about how deeply he seemed now to depend on the magic of the blade, she pondered as well her own dependence on the wishsong. It was just a toy, she had always told herself-but that was a lie. It was anything but a toy; it was magic every bit as dangerous as that contained in the missing Sword of Leah. It could kill. It was, in fact, what her father had always said-a birthright that she would have been betteroff without. Allanon had warned her as he lay dying. "The power of the wishsong is like nothing I have ever seen." The words whispered darkly as she listened to Rone. Power to heal-power to destroy-she had seen them both. Must she be as dependent on the magic as Rone now seemed to be? Between her and the Elven magic, which was to be master?

Her father had fought his own battle to discover the answer to that question, she knew. He had fought it when he had struggled to overcome his inability to master the power of the magic contained within the Elfstones. He had done so, survived the staggering forces it had unleashed within him, and then cast it aside forever. Yet his brief use of the power had exacted its price-a trans.m.u.tation of the magic from the Elfstones to his children. So now, perhaps, the battle must be fought yet another time. But what if this time the power could not be controlled?

The second day drifted into night. The Valegirl and the highlander ate the meal brought to them by the trader and watched the darkness deepen. When Rone had grown weary and rolled into his blankets to sleep, Brin slipped out into the cool autumn night to breathe smells that were sharp and clean and to lose herself for a time in skies grown bright with a crescent moon and stars. On her way past the trading center, she caught sight of the trader as he sat smoking his pipe on the empty veranda, his high-backed chair tilted against the rail. No one had come by for drinks or talk that evening, so he sat alone.

Quietly, she walked over to him.

"Evening," he greeted hastily, sitting forward a bit too quickly in the chair, almost as if he were poised to flee.

Brin nodded. "We will be leaving in the morning," she informed him and thought she detected a look of immediate relief in his dark eyes. "But I wanted to thank you first for your help."

He shook his head. "No need." He paused, brushing back his thinning hair. "I'll see to it that you have some supplies to get you through the first few days or so."

Brin didn't argue. It was pointless to do anything other than simply to accept what was offered.

"Would you have an ash bow?" she asked, thinking suddenly of Rone. "One that could be used for hunting when we...?"

"Ash bow? Got one right here, as a matter of fact." The trader was on his feet at once. He ducked through the doorway leading into the center and emerged a moment later with a bow and quiver of arrows. "You take these," he pressed. "No charge, of course. Good, solid weapons.

Belong to you, anyway, since they were dropped by those fellows you chased off." He caught himself, and cleared his throat self-consciously. "Anyway, you take them," he finished.

He set, them down in front of her and dropped back into his chair, fingers drumming nervously on the wooden arm.

Brin picked up the bow and arrows. "They don't really belong to me, you know," she said quietly. "Especially not because of...what happened."

The trader looked down at his feet. "Don't belong to me, either. You take them, girl."

There was a long silence. The trader stared past her resolutely into the dark. Brin shook her head. "Do you know anything of the country east of here?" she asked him.

He kept his eyes turned away. "Not much. It's bad country."

"Is there anybody who might know?"

The trader didn't answer.

"What about the woodsman who was here the other night?""Jeft?" The trader was silent for a moment. "I suppose. He's been a lot of places."

"How would I find him?" she pressed, growing increasingly uncomfortable with the man's reticence.

The trader's brows knitted. He was thinking about what answer he should give her.

Finally, he looked directly at her. "You don't mean him any harm, do you, girl?"

Brin stared at him sadly for a moment, then shook her head. "No, I don't mean him any harm."

The trader studied her a moment, then looked away. "He's a friend, you see." Then he pointed out toward the Chard Rush. "He's got a camp a few miles downriver, south bank.."

Brin nodded. She started to turn away, then stopped. "I am the same person I was when you helped me that first night," she said quietly.

Leather boots scuffed against the wooden planks of the porch. "Maybe it just don't seem that way to me," came the response.

Her mouth tightened. "You don't have to be afraid of me, you know. You really don't."

The boots went still and the trader looked down at them. "I'm not afraid," he said, his voice low.

She waited a moment longer, searching futilely for something more to say, then turned and walked into the dark.

The following morning, shortly after daybreak, Brin and Rone departed the Rooker Line Trading Center for the country that lay east. Carrying foodstuffs, blankets, and the bow supplied by the trader, they bade the anxious man farewell and disappeared into the trees.

It was a bright, warm day that greeted them. As they made their way downriver along the south bank of the Chard Rush, the air was filled with the sounds of forest life and the smell of drying leaves. A west wind blew gently out of the distant Wolfsktaag, and leaves drifted earthward in lazy spirals to lie thick upon the forest ground. Through the trees, the land ahead could be seen to run on in a gentle sloping of rises and vales. Squirrels and chipmunks scattered and darted away at the sound of their approach, interrupted in their preparations for a winter that seemed far distant from this day.

At midmorning, Valegirl and highlander paused to rest for a time, sitting side by side on an old log, hollowed out and worm-eaten with age. In front of them, barely a dozen yards distant, the Chard Rush flowed steadily eastward into the deep Anar; in its grasp, deadwood and debris that was washed down from out of the high country twisted and turned in intricate patterns.

"It's still hard for me to believe that he's really gone," Rone said after a time, eyes gazing out across the river.

Brin didn't have to ask whom he meant. "For me, too," she acknowledged softly. "I sometimes think that he really isn't gone at all-that I was mistaken in what I saw-that if I am patient, he will come back, just as he always has."

"Would that be so strange?" Rone mused. "Would it be so surprising if Allanon were to do exactly that?"

The Valegirl looked at him. "He is dead, Rone."

Rone kept his face turned away, but nodded. "I know." He was quiet for a moment before continuing. "Do you think that there was anything that could have been done to save him, Brin?"

He looked at the girl then. He was asking her if there was anything that he could have done. Brin's smile was quick and bitter. "No, Rone. He knew that he was going to die; he wastold that he would not complete this quest. He had accepted the inevitability of that, I think."

Rone shook his head. "I would not have done so."

"Nor I, I suppose," Brin agreed. "Perhaps that was why he chose to tell us nothing of what was to happen. And perhaps his acceptance is something we cannot hope to understand, because we could never hope to understand him."

The highlander leaned forward, his arms braced against his outstretched legs. "So the last of the Druids disappears from the land, and there is no one left to stand against the walkers except you and me." He shook his head hopelessly. "Poor us."

Brin glanced down self-consciously at her hands, folded in her lap before her. She remembered Allanon touching her forehead with his blood as he lay dying and she shivered with the memory.

"Poor us," she echoed softly.

They rested for a few minutes longer, then resumed their journey east. Barely an hour later, they crossed a shallow, gravel-bottomed stream that meandered lazily away from the swifter flow of the main channel of the Chard Rush back along a worn gully. They caught sight of a single-room cabin that sat back in among the forest trees. Built from hand-cut logs laid crosswise and caulked with mortar, the little home was settled in a clearing upon a small rise that formed a threshold to a series of low hills sloping gently away into the forest. A handful of sheep and goats and a single milk cow grazed in the timber behind the cabin. At the sound of their approach, an aged hunting dog rose from his favorite napping spot next to the cabin stoop and stretched contentedly.

The woodsman Jeft stood at the far side of the little clearing, stripped to the waist as he cut firewood. With a sure, practiced swing downward of the long-handled axe, he split the piece of timber that stood upright on the worn stump that served as a chopping block. Working the embedded blade free, he brushed aside the cloven halves before pausing in his work to watch his visitors approach. Lowering the axe-head to the stump, he rested his gnarled hands on the smooth b.u.t.t of the handle and waited.

"Morning," Brin greeted as they came up to him.

"Morning," the woodsman replied, nodding. He seemed pot at all surprised that they were there. He glanced at Rone. "Feeling a bit better, are you?"

"Much," Rone answered. "Thanks in part to you, I'm told."

The woodsman shrugged, the muscles on his powerful body knotting. He gestured toward the cabin. "There's drinking water on the stoop in that bucket. I bring it fresh from the hills in back each day."

He led them down to the cabin porch and the promised bucket. All three took a long drink. Then they seated themselves on the stoop, and the woodsman produced pipe and tobacco.

He offered the pouch to his guests, but they declined, so he packed the bowl of his own pipe and began to smoke.

"Everything fine back at the trading center?" he asked casually. There was a long silence.

"I heard about what happened the other night with that bunch from Spanning Ridge country."

His eyes shifted slowly to Brin. "Word has a way of getting around a lot quicker than you'd think out here."

The Valegirl held his gaze, ignoring her discomfort. "The trader told us where to find you," she informed him. "He said you might be able to help us."

The woodsman puffed on the pipe. "In what way?""He told us that you know as much as anyone about this country."

"I've been out here a long time," the man agreed.

Brin leaned forward. "We are already in your debt for what you did to help us back at the trading center. But we need your help again. We need to find a way through the country that lies east of here."

The woodsman stared at her sharply, then slowly removed the pipe from between his teeth. "East of here? You mean Darklin Reach?"

Both Valegirl and highlander nodded.

The woodsman shook his head doubtfully. "That's dangerous country. No one goes into Darklin Reach if they can avoid it." He glanced up. "How far in do you plan to go?"

"All the way," Brin said quietly. "And then into Olden Moor and the Ravenshorn."

"You're mad as jays," the woodsman announced matter-of-factly and knocked the ashes from the pipe, grinding them into the earth with his boot. "Gnomes and walkers and worse own that country. You'll never come out alive."

There was no reply. The woodsman studied their faces in turn, rubbed his bearded chin thoughtfully, and finally shrugged.

"Guess you've got your own reasons for doing this, and it's none of my business what they are. But I'm telling you here and now that you're making a big mistake-maybe the biggest mistake you'll ever make. Even the trappers stay clear of that country. Men disappear up there like smoke-gone without a trace."

He waited for a reply. Brin glanced briefly at Rone and then back at the woodsman once more. "We have to go. Can you help us?"

"Me?" The woodsman grinned crookedly and shook his head. "Not me, girl. Even if I was to go with you-which I won't, 'cause I like living-I'd be lost myself after the first day or so."

He paused, studying them shrewdly. "I suppose you're set on this?"

Brin nodded wordlessly, waiting.

The woodsman sighed. "Maybe there's someone else who can help you then-if you're sure this is what you want." He blew sharply through the stem of his pipe to clean it, then folded his arms across his broad chest. "There's an old man named Cogline. Must be ninety by now if he's still alive. Haven't seen him for almost two years, so I can't be sure if he's even there anymore.

Two years ago, though, he was living up around a rock formation called Hearthstone that sits right in the middle of Darklin Reach-formation that looks just like a big chimney." He shook his head doubtfully. "I can give you directions, but the trails aren't much. That's wild country; hardly anything human living that far east that isn't Gnome."

"Do you think he would help us?" Brin pressed anxiously.

The woodsman shrugged. "He knows the country. He's lived there all his life. Doesn't bother coming out more than once a year or so-not even that the last two. Stays alive somehow in that jungle." The heavy brows lifted. "He's an odd duck, old Cogline. Crazier than a fish swimming through gra.s.s. He might be more trouble than help to you."

"We'll be all right," Brin a.s.sured him.

"Maybe." The woodsman looked her over carefully. "You're a pretty thing to be wandering off into that country, girl-even with your singing to protect you. There's more than thieves and cowards out there. I'd think on this before you go any further with it."

"We have thought." Brin came to her feet. "We're decided."

The woodsman nodded. "You're welcome to take with you all the water you can carry,then. At least you won't die of thirst."

He helped them refill their water pouches, carrying a fresh bucket of water from the spring that ran down out of the hills behind his cabin, then took several minutes more to give them the directions they needed to reach Hearthstone, scratching a crude map in the earth before the stoop.

"Look after yourselves," he admonished, offering each a firm handshake.

With a final word of farewell, Brin and Rone hitched up their provisions across their backs and walked slowly from the little cabin into the trees. Behind them, the woodsman stood watching. It was clear from the look on his bearded face that he did not expect to see them pa.s.s that way again.

29.

They journeyed through that day and the next, following the twists and turns of the Chard Rush as it wound steadily deeper through the forests of the Anar and crossed into Darklin Reach. Rone was gaining in strength, but he had not yet fully recovered, and progress was slow. After a brief meal on the second evening, he went directly to sleep.

Brin sat before the fire, staring into the flames. Her mind was still filled with unhappy memories and dark thoughts. Once, before she felt herself growing sleepy, it seemed that Jair was with her. Unconsciously, she looked up, seeking him. But there was no one there, and logic told her that her brother was far away, indeed. She sighed, banked the fire, and crawled into her blankets.

It was not until well into the afternoon of the third day following their departure from the Rooker Line Trading Center that Brin and Rone caught sight of a singular rock formation that loomed blackly in the distance and knew that they had found Hearthstone.

Hearthstone was a dark, clear silhouette against the changing colors of autumn, its rugged pinnacle dominating the shallow, wooded valley over which it stood watch. Chimneylike in appearance, the formation was a ma.s.s of weathered stone carved by nature's fine hand and shaped with. the pa.s.sing of the years. Silence hung starkly over its towering shadow. Solitary and enduring, it beckoned compellingly from out of the dark sea of the vast, sprawling forestland of Darklin Reach.

Standing at the crest of a ridge, staring out across the land, Brin felt its unspoken whisper call out through her weariness and her uncertainty and experienced an unexpected sense of peace.

Another leg of the long trek east was almost over. The memories of what she had endured to reach this point and the warnings of what yet lay ahead were strangely distant now. She smiled at Rone and the smile clearly caught the highlander by surprise. Then, touching his arm gently, she started downward along the shallow valley slope.

The barely discernible line of a trail snaked down through the wall of the great trees. As the sun moved steadily toward the western horizon, the forest closed about them once more.