Valegirl and highlander rose and followed as she opened the door and stepped outside.

The moment the latch clicked free, Whisper was on his feet, padding silently through the door after them.

They paused momentarily on the porch of the little cottage, losing themselves in the splendor of the evening's peaceful, almost mystical still-life. The air was chill and faintly damp and smelled sweetly of the darkened forest. White moonlight bathed the lawn, flower gardens, neatly trimmed hedgerows, and shrubs with dazzling brightness. Each blade of gra.s.s, soft petal, and tiny leaf glistened wetly, deep emerald laced with frost as the dew of the autumn evening gathered. In the blackness beyond, the trees of the forest rose against the star-filled sky like monstrous giants-ageless, ma.s.sive, frozen in the silence of the night. The gentle wind of early dusk had faded entirely now, drifting soundlessly into stillness. Even the familiar cries of the woodland creatures had softened to faint and distant murmurs that soothed and comforted.

"Grandfather will be at the willow," Kimber Boh said softly, breaking the spell.

Together, they moved off the porch onto the walkway that led to the rear of the cottage.

No one spoke a word. They simply walked slowly, the girl leading, their boots sc.r.a.ping softly against the worn stone. Something skittered through the dry leaves in the dark curtain of the forest and was gone. A bird called sharply, its piercing cry echoing in the stillness, lingering on.

The three moved past the corner of the house now, through groupings of pine and spruce and lines of hedgerows. Then a huge, sagging willow appeared from out of the darkness of the edge of the forest, its branches trailing in thick streamers that hung like a curtain against the night. Ma.s.sive and gnarled, its humped form lay wrapped in shadowed darkness, as if drawn inward onto itself. There, beneath its canopied arch, the bowl of a pipe glowed deep red in the darkness, and puffs of smoke rose skyward to thin and vanish.

As they pa.s.sed through the trailing limbs of the willow, they saw clearly the skeletal form of Cogline, hunched over on one of a pair of wooden benches that had been placed at the base of the ancient trunk, his wizened face turned toward the darkened forest. Kimber Boh went directly over to him and placed the forest cloak about his shoulders.

"You will catch cold, grandfather," she scolded gently.

The old man grimaced. "Can't even come out here for a smoke without you hovering over me like a mother hen!" He pulled the cloak about him nevertheless as he glanced over at Brin and Rone. "And I don't need these two for company either. Or that worthless cat. I pose you brought him out here, too!"

Brin looked about for Whisper and was surprised to find that he had disappeared again. A moment earlier, he had been right behind them.

Kimber Boh seated herself next to her grandfather. "Why won't you at least try to be friends with Brin and Rone?" she asked him quietly.

"What for?" the other snapped. "I don't need friends! Friends are nothing but trouble, always expecting you to do something for them, always wanting some favor or other. Had enough friends in the old days, girl. You don't understand enough about how life is, that's your trouble!"

The girl glanced apologetically at Brin and Rone and nodded toward the empty bench.

Wordlessly, the Valegirl and the highlander sat down across from her.

Kimber Boh turned back to the old man. "You must not be like that. You must not be so selfish.""I'm an old man. I can be what I want!" Cogline muttered petulantly.

"When I used to say things like that, you called me spoiled and sent me to my room. Do you remember?"

"That was different!"

"Should I send you to your room?" she asked, speaking to the old man as a mother would to her child, her hands clasping his. "Or perhaps you would prefer it if Whisper and I also had nothing more to do with you since we are your friends, too, and you do not seem to want any friends."

Cogline clamped his teeth about the stem of his pipe as if he might bite it through and hunched down sullenly within the cloak, refusing to answer. Brin glanced quickly over at Rone, who arched one eyebrow in response. It was clear to both that despite her age, it was Kimber Boh who was the stabilizing force in this strange little family.

The girl leaned over then and kissed her grandfather's cheek softly. "I know that you don't really believe what you said. I know you are a good, kind, gentle man, and I love you." She brought her arms about his thin frame and hugged him close.

To Brin's surprise, the old man's arm came up tentatively and hugged her back.

"They should have asked before they came here," he muttered, gesturing vaguely toward the Valegirl and the highlander. "I might have hurt them, you know."

"Yes, grandfather, I know," the girl responded. "But now that they are here, after having made such a long journey to find you, I think you should see why it is that they have come and if there is anything you can do to help them."

Brin and Rone exchanged hurried glances once more. Cogline slipped free of Kimber Boh's arms, muttering and shaking his head, wispish hair dancing in the moonglow like fine silk thread.

"Dratted cat, where's he got to this time! Whisper! Come out here, you worthless beast!

I'm not sitting around..."

"Grandfather!" the girl interrupted him firmly. The old man looked at her in startled silence, and she nodded toward Brin and Rone. "Our friends, grandfather-will you ask them?"

The wrinkles in the old man's face creased deeper as he frowned. "Oh, very well," he huffed irritably. "What was it that brought you here?"

"We have need of someone who can show us a way through this country," Brin replied at once, hardly daring to hope that the help they so badly needed might at last be offered. "We were told that Cogline was the one man who might know that way."

"Except that there isn't any Cogline anymore!" the oldster snapped, but a warning glance from the girl quieted him at once.

"Well then, what country is it that you plan to travel through?"

"The central Anar," Brin answered. "Darklin Reach, the moor beyond-all the way east to the Ravenshorn." She paused. "Into the Maelmord."

"But the walkers are there!" Kimber Boh exclaimed.

"What reason would you have for going into that black pit?" the old man followed up heatedly.

Brin hesitated, seeing where matters were headed. "To destroy the walkers."

"Destroy the walkers!" Cogline was aghast. "Destroy them with what, girl?"

"With the wishsong. With the magic that..."

"With the wishsong? With that singing? That's what you plan to use?" Cogline was on hisfeet, leaping about wildly, skeletal arms gesturing. "And you think me mad? Get out of here! Get out of my house! Get out, get out!"

Kimber Boh rose and gently pulled the old man back down on the bench, talking to him, soothing him as he continued to rant. It took a few moments to quiet him. Then wrapping him once more in the forest cloak, she turned again to Brin and Rone.

"Brin Ohmsford," she addressed the Valegirl solemnly, her face quite stern. "The Maelmord is no place for you. Even I do not go there."

Brin almost smiled at the other's emphasis on her own forbidding. "But I do not have a choice in this, Kimber," she explained gently. "I have to go."

"And I have to go with her," Rone added grudgingly. "When I find the sword again, at is.

I have to find the sword first."

Kimber looked at them each in turn and shook her head in confusion. "I don't understand.

What sword? Why is it that you have to go into the Maelmord? Why is it that you have to destroy the walkers?

Again Brin hesitated, this time in caution. How much should she reveal of the quest that had brought her to this land? How much should she tell of the truth that had been entrusted to her? But as she looked into the eyes of Kimber, the caution that bade her keep watch over all that she so carefully hid suddenly ceased to have meaning. Allanon was dead, gone forever from the Four Lands. The magic he had given Rone in order that he might protect her was lost. She was alone, weary, and frightened, despite the determination that carried her forward on this impossible journey; if she were to survive what lay ahead, she knew she must take what help she could find where she might find it. Hidden truths and clever deceptions had been a way of life for Allanon, a part of the person that he had been. It could never be so for her.

So she told the girl and the old man all that had been told to her and all that had befallen her since Allanon had first appeared in the village of Shady Vale those many days gone past. She hid nothing of the truth save those secrets she kept hidden even from Rone, those frightening suspicions and unpleasant whisperings of the powers, dark and unfathomable, of the wishsong. It took a long time to tell it all, but for once the old man was quiet and the girl listened with him in silent wonderment.

When she had finished, she turned to Rone to see if there were anything further that should be said, but the highlander shook his head wordlessly.

"You see, then, that I have to go," she repeated the words one final time, looking from the girl to the old man and back again, waiting.

"Elven magic in you, eh?" Cogline murmured, eyes piercing. "Druid's touch on the whole of what you do. I've a bit of that touch myself, you know-a bit of the dark lore. Yes. Yes, I do."

Kimber touched his arm gently. "Can we help them find their path east, grandfather?"

"East? Whole of the country east is known to me-all that there is, here to there and back.

Hearthstone, Darklin Reach, Olden Moor-all to the Ravenshorn, all to the Maelmord." He shook his wispish head thoughtfully. "Kept the touch, I have. Walkers don't bother me here; walkers don't come into the valley. Outside, they go where they please, though. That's their country."

"Grandfather, listen to me," she prodded him gently. "We must help our friends, you and Whisper and I."

Cogline looked at her wordlessly for a moment, then threw up his hands. "Waste of time!" he announced. "Ridiculous waste of time!" His bony finger came up to touch the girl's nose. "Have to think better than that; girl. I taught you to think better than that! Suppose we dohelp; suppose we take these two right through Darklin Reach, right through Olden Moor, right to the Ravenshorn and the black pit itself. Suppose! What, then? Tell me! What then?"

"That would be enough..." Brin started to reply.

"Enough?" Cogline exclaimed, cutting her short. "Not nearly so, girl! Cliffs rise up before you like a wall, hundreds of feet high. Barren rock for miles. Gnomes everywhere. What happens then? What do you do then?" The finger shifted like a dagger to point at her. "No way in, girl!

There's no way in! You cannot go all that distance unless you know a way in!"

"We will find a way," Brin a.s.sured him firmly.

"Bah!" The old man spit, grimacing. "Walkers would have you in a moment! They'll see you coming halfway up the climb-if you can find a place to make the climb, that is! Or can the magic make you invisible? Can it do that?"

Brin set her jaw. "We will find a way," she repeated.

"Maybe and maybe not," Rone spoke up suddenly. "I don't like the sound of it, Brin. The old man knows the country and if he says it's all open ground, then we ought to take that into account before we go charging in." He glanced at Cogline as if to rea.s.sure himself that the old man did in fact know what he was talking about. "Besides, first things first. Before we start off on this trek through the Eastland, we have to recover the sword. It's the only real protection we have against the walkers."

"There is no protection against the walkers!" Cogline snorted.

Brin stared at the highlander for a moment, then took a deep breath. "Rone, we have to forget about the sword," she told him gently. "It's gone and we have no way of finding what's become of it. Allanon said it would find its way again into human hands, but he did not say whose hands those would be nor did he say how long it would take for this to happen. We cannot..."

"Without a sword to protect us, we don't take another step!" Rone's jaw tightened as he cut short the rest of what Brin was about to say.

There was a to silence. "We have no choice," Brin said. "At least, I don't."

"On your way, then." Cogline brushed them both aside with a wave of his hand. "On your way and leave us in peace-you with your foolish plans of scaling the pit and destroying the walkers; foolish, foolish plans! Go on, fly on out of our home, dratted...Whisper, where have you got to, you worthless...Show yourself or I'll...Yiiii!"

He shrieked in surprise as the big cat's head appeared from out of the darkness at his shoulder, luminous eyes blinking, cold muzzle pressed right up against his bare arm. Furious at being surprised like that, Cogline swatted at the cat and stalked a dozen yards away beneath the willow boughs, swearing as he went. Whisper stared after him, then walked about the bench to lie down next to Kimber.

"I think that grandfather can be persuaded to show you the way east-at least as far as the Ravenshorn," Kimber Boh mused thoughtfully. "As to what you will do after that..."

"Wait a minute-just...let's think this through a moment." Rone held up his hands imploringly. He turned to Brin. "I know you have decided to complete this quest that Allanon has given you. I understand that you must. And I'm going with you, right to the end of it. But we have to have the sword, Brin. Don't you see that? We have to! We have no other weapons with which to stand against the Mord Wraiths!" His face tightened with frustration. "For cat's sake, how can I protect you without the sword?"

Brin hesitated then, thinking suddenly of the power of the wishsong and of what she hadseen that power do to those men from west of Spanning Ridge at the Rooker Line Trading Center. Rone did not know, nor did she want him to, but power such as that was more weapon than she cared to think-and she loathed the very idea that it could live within her. Rone was so certain that he must regain the use of the power of the Sword of Leah. But she sensed somehow that, as with the magic of the wishsong and the magic of the Elfstones before it, the magic of the Sword of Leah was both light and dark at once-that it could cause harm to the user as well as give him aid.

She looked at Rone, seeing in his gray eyes the love he bore for her mingled with the certainty that he could not help her without the magic that Allanon had given him. That look was desperate-yet without understanding of what he asked.

"There is no way for us to find the sword, Rone," she said softly.

They faced each other wordlessly, seated close upon the wooden bench, lost in the shadowed dark of the old willow. Let it go, Brin prayed silently. Please, let it go. Cogline shambled back to join them, still muttering at Whisper as he squatted warily on one end of the bench and began fiddling with his pipe.

"There might be a way," Kimber said suddenly, her small voice breaking through the silence. All eyes turned toward her. "We could ask the Grimpond."

"Ha!" Cogline snorted. "Might as well ask a hole in the ground!"

But Rone sat forward at once. "What is the Grimpond?"

"An avatar," the girl answered quietly. "A shade that lives in a pool of water north of Hearthstone where the high ridges part. It has always lived there, it tells me-since before the destruction of the old world, since the time of the world of faerie. It has the magic of the old world in its touch and the sight to see secrets hidden from living people."

"It could tell me where to find the Sword of Leah?" Rone pressed anxiously, ignoring the restraining. hand that Brin placed upon his arm.

"Ha-ha, look at him!" Cogline cackled gleefully. "Thinks he has the answer now, doesn't he? Thinks he's found the way! The Grimpond has the secrets of the earth all bound up in a pretty package ready to give to him! Just a little problem of telling truth from lie, that's all! Ha-ha!"

"What's he talking about?" Rone demanded angrily. "What does he mean, truth from lie?"

Kimber gave her grandfather a stern look to quiet him, then turned back to the highlander.

"He means that the avatar doesn't always tell the truth. It lies much of the time or tells riddles that no one can figure out. It makes a game out of it, twisting what is real and what is not so that the listener cannot decide what to believe."

"But why does it do that?" Brin asked, bewildered.

The girl shrugged. "Shades are like that. They drift between the world that was and the one that will be and have no real place in either."

She said it with such authority that the Valegirl accepted what she said without questioning it further. Besides, it had been that way with the shade of Bremen as well-in part, at least. There was a sense of commitment in the shade of Bremen lacking perhaps in the Grimpond; but the shade of Bremen did not tell all of what it knew or speak clearly of what would be. Some of the truth could never be told. The whole of the future was never unalterably fixed, and the telling of it must always be shaded by what might yet be.

"Grandfather prefers that I have nothing to do with the Grimpond," Kimber Boh was explaining to Rone. "He does not approve of the way the avatar lies. Still, its conversation isamusing sometimes, and it becomes an interesting game for me when I choose to play it." She a.s.sumed a stern look. "Of course, it is a different kind of game entirely when you try to commit the avatar to telling you the truth of what it knows when it is really important to you. I never ask it of the future or listen to what it has to say if it offers to tell me. It is a cruel thing, sometimes."

Rone looked down momentarily, then up again at the girl. "Do you think it could be made to tell me what has happened to my sword?"

Kimber's eyebrows lifted. "Not made. Persuaded, perhaps. Tricked, maybe." She looked at Brin. "But I was not just thinking of finding the sword. I was thinking as well of finding a way into the Ravenshorn and into the Maelmord. If there were a way by which the walkers could not see you coming, the Grimpond would know it."

There was a long, anxious silence. Brin Ohmsford's mind raced. A way into the Maelmord that would hide them from the Mord Wraiths-it was the key that she needed in order to complete the quest for the Ildatch. She would have preferred that the Sword of Leah, with its magic and its power, remain lost. But what matter that it was found again if it need not be used?

She glanced at Rone and saw the determination in his eyes. The matter was already decided for him.

"We must try it, Brin," he said softly.

Cogline's wrinkled face split wide in a leering grin. "Go on, Southlander-try it!" His soft laughter echoed through the night stillness.

Brin hesitated. At her feet, stretched between the benches, his gray-black body curled close to his mistress, Whisper raised his ma.s.sive head and blinked curiously. The Valegirl stared deep into the cat's saucer blue eyes. How desperate she had become that she must turn to the aid of a woods girl, a half-crazed old man, and a cat that disappeared.

But Allanon was gone...

"Will you speak to the Grimpond for us?" she asked Kimber.

The girl smiled brightly. "Oh, I was thinking, Brin, that it might be better if it were you who spoke to the Grimpond."

And it was then that Cogline really began to cackle.