The Valegirl and the highlander stared at each other in disbelief. What was happening?

As if it were the most natural thing in the world, it had just been decided that a girl barely more than Brin's age, a half-crazed old man, and a sometimes disappearing cat would retrieve for them the missing Sword of Leah from some creatures they had labeled as Spider Gnomes and then afterward guide them into the mountains of the Ravenshorn and Graymark! Gnomes and walkers and other dangerous beings would be all about-beings whose power had destroyed the Druid Allanon-and the old man and the girl were acting as if none of that really made any difference at all.

"Kimber, no," Brin said finally, not knowing what else to say. "You can't go with us."

"She's right," Rone agreed. "You can't even begin to understand what we'll be up against."

Kimber Boh look at each of them in turn. "I understand better than you think. I told you before-this land is my home. And grandfather's. We know its dangers and we understand them."

"You don't understand the walkers!" Rone exploded. "What can the two of you do against the walkers?"

Kimber held her ground. "I don't know. Much the same as you, I'd guess. Avoid them."

"And what, if you can't avoid them?" Rone pressed. "What then?"

Cogline s.n.a.t.c.hed a leather bag belted at his waist and held it forth. "Give them a taste of my magic, outlander! Give them a taste of a fire they know nothing about at all!"The highlander frowned doubtfully and looked at Brin for help. "This is crazy!" he snapped.

"Do not be so quick to dismiss my grandfather's magic," Kimber advised, with a rea.s.suring nod to the old man. "He has lived in this wilderness all of his life and survived a great many dangers. He can do things you might not expect of him. He will be of great help to you. As will Whisper and I as well."

Brin shook her head. "I think this is a very bad idea, Kimber."

The girl nodded her understanding. "You will change your mind, Brin. In any case, you really don't have a choice. You need Whisper to track. You need grandfather to guide you. And you need me to help them do that."

Brin started to object once more, then stopped. What was she thinking? They had come to Hearthstone in the first place because they needed someone to guide them through Darklin Reach. There was only one man who could do that, and that man was Cogline. Without Cogline, they might wander the wilderness country of the Anar for weeks-weeks that they did not have.

Now that they had found him and he was offering them the help they so desperately needed, here she was trying to refuse it!

She hesitated. Perhaps she had good reason for doing so. Kimber appeared to her as a girl whose heart was greater than her strength. But the fact remained that Cogline was unlikely to go anywhere without her. Did Brin, then, have the right to put her concern for Kimber above the dictates of the trust which she had been given by Allanon?

She did not think so.

"I believe the matter is decided," Kimber said softly.

Brin looked at Rone one final time. The highlander shook his head in helpless resignation.

Brin turned back and smiled wearily. "I guess it is," she agreed and hoped against reason that it had been decided correctly.

35.

They departed Hearthstone at dawn of the following day and journeyed northeast through the forestland toward the dark rise of Toffer Ridge. Travel was slow, as it had been during their trek north to the Grimpond. The whole of the wilderness beyond the valley between the Ravenshorn and the Rabb was a treacherous maze of craggy ravines and drops that could cripple the unwary.

With packs strapped tightly across their backs and weapons secured about their waists, Brin, Rone, Kimber Boh, and Cogline wound their way cautiously ahead on a warm, sweetsmelling autumn day filled with sound and color. Only occasionally visible, the shadowy form of Whisper kept pace in the trees about them. The members of the little company felt rested and alert, much more so than they should have, since their discussion of the previous night had not ended until early morning. They knew that lack of sleep would catch up with them eventually, but for now, at least, they were filled with the tension and excitement of their quest, and all traces of weariness were easily brushed aside.

Not so easily dismissed, however, were Brin's feelings of uncertainty about taking along Kimber and Cogline. The decision had been made, the pledge given, and the journey begun-yet still the uncertainty that had troubled her from the first would not subside. Some doubts and fears would have been there in any case, she supposed, fostered by her knowledge of the dangers that lay ahead and by the haunting prophecies of the Grimpond. But such doubts and fears would have been for her and for Rone-Rone, whose determination to stand with her in this was so strong that she had finally accepted that he would never be persuaded to leave her. The doubts and fears would not have been, as they were now, for the old man and the girl. All of their rea.s.surances notwithstanding, the Valegirl still thought neither strong enough to survive the power of the dark magic. How could she see it otherwise? It made no difference that they had lived all these years within the wilderness of the Anar, for the dangers they would face now were not dangers made of this world and time. What magics or lore could they hope to employ that would turn aside the Mord Wraiths when the walkers were next encountered?

It frightened Brin to think of the power of the Mord Wraiths being turned against the girl and the old man. It frightened her more than anything that she could imagine might happen to her. How could she live with the knowledge that she had permitted them to come on this journey, if it were to end in their deaths?

And yet Kimber seemed so certain of herself and of her grandfather. There was neither fear nor doubt in her mind. There was only her self-a.s.surance, determination, and that unshakable sense of obligation toward Brin and Rone that motivated her in what she had undertaken to do for them.

"We are friends, Brin, and friends do for each other what they. see needs to be done," the girl had explained in the late hours of the previous night when all talk had drifted into weary whispers. "Friendship is a thing sensed inwardly as much as a thing pledged openly. One feels friendship and becomes bound by it. It was this that drew Whisper to me and gained me his loyalty. I loved him as he loved me, and each of us sensed that in the other. I have sensed it with you as well. We are to be friends, all of us, and if we are to be friends, then we must share both good and bad in our friendship. Your needs become mine."

"That's a very beautiful sentiment, Kimber," she had replied. "But what if my needs are too great, as they are in this instance? What if my needs are too dangerous to share?"

"All the more reason that they must be shared." Kimber had smiled somberly. "Andshared with friends. We must help each other if the friendship is to mean anything at all."

There really wasn't much to be said after that. Brin might have argued that Kimber barely knew her, that she was owed no obligation, and that this quest she had been given was hers alone and not the responsibility of the girl and her grandfather. But such arguments would have meant nothing to Kimber, who saw so clearly the relationship between them as one of equals, and whose sense of commitment was such that there could be no compromise.

The journey wore on and the day slipped past. It was a savage timberland through which they pa.s.sed, a rugged ma.s.s of towering black oaks, elms, and gnarled hickories. Their lofty, twisted limbs stretched wide like giants' arms. Through the bones of the forest roof, skeletal and stripped of their leaves, the sky shone deep crystal blue, with sunshine streaming down to brighten the woodland shadows with friendly patches of light. Yet the sunlight was but a brief daytime visitor to this wilderness. Here, only the shadows belonged-pervasive, impenetrable, filled with a subtle hint of hidden dangers, of things unseen and unheard, and of a phantom life that came awake only when the light was completely gone and the forestland lay wrapped in blackness. That life lay waiting, concealed silently within the darkened heart of these woodlands, a cunning and hateful force that resented the intrusion of these creatures into its private world and would snuff them out as a wind would a candle's small flame. Brin sensed its presence. It whispered softly in her mind, worming past the slender thread of confidence lent her by the presence of those who traveled with her, warning her that when nightfall came again, she must be very careful.

Then the sun began to drop below the western skyline and dusk to settle over the land.

The dark line of Toffer Ridge loomed before them, a rugged and uneven shadow, and Cogline took them through a twisting pa.s.s that breached its wall. They walked in silence, fatigue now beginning to slip through them. Insect sounds filled the darkness, and high above them, lost in the tangle of the great trees, night birds sent forth their shrill calls. Ridgeline and wilderness forest tightened about them, closing them away in the darkened pa.s.s. The air, warm all day, grew hot and unpleasant, and its smell turned stale. That hidden life which waited within the woodland shadows came awake and rose up to look about...

Abruptly, the timber broke apart before them, sloping sharply downward through the ridgeline into a vast, featureless lowland shrouded in mist and lighted in eerie glow by stars and a strange, pale orange gibbous moon that hung at the edge of the eastern horizon. Sullen and dismal, the sprawling bottomland was little more than a shadowed.. black ma.s.s of stillness that seemed to open into the earth like some bottomless canyon where Toffer Ridge slipped away into the mist.

"Olden Moor," Kimber whispered softly.

Brin stared down at the moor in watchful silence. She could feel it staring back.

Midnight came and went, and time slowed until it seemed to cease all pa.s.sage. A hint of wind fluttered enticingly across Brin's dust-streaked face and faded away. She looked up expectantly, but there was nothing more. The heat returned, harsh and oppressive. She felt as if she had been shut within a furnace, its unseen fires s.n.a.t.c.hing from her aching lungs the very air she needed to survive. In the bottomland, the autumn night gave nothing back of its cooling promise. Sweat soaked Brin's clothing through, ran down her body in distracting rivulets, and coated her worn countenance with a silver gray sheen. Muscles cramped and knotted wearily.

Though she shifted about frequently in an effort to relieve the discomfort, she quickly foundthere were no new positions to be tried. The ache simply followed. Swarms of gnats buzzed annoyingly, drawn by the moisture from her body, biting at her face and hands as she brushed at them uselessly. All about her, the air reeked of rotting wood and stagnant water.

Crouched in the concealing shadows of a clump of rocks with Rone, Kimber, and Cogline, she stared downward along the base of the ridgeline to where the camp of the Spider Gnomes lay settled at the edge of Olden Moor. A jumble of makeshift huts and burrows, the camp stretched between the base of Toffer Ridge and the darkness of the moor. A scattering of fires burned in its midst, their sullen, ragged light barely penetrating the gloom. The crooked, bent shadows of the camp's inhabitants pa.s.sed through the muted glare. The Spider Gnomes, their strange and grotesque bodies covered with gray hair, were naked to the elements as they skittered about in the withered long gra.s.s on all fours, hunched and faceless. Large groups of them gathered at the edge of the moor, shielded from the mist by the flames as they chanted dully into the night.

"Calling to the dark powers," Cogline had informed his companions hours earlier, after first bringing them to this hiding place. "A tribal people, the Gnomes-the Spider folk more so than any. Believe in spirits and dark things that rise from other worlds with the change of seasons. Call to them for their own strength, do the Gnomes-hoping at the same time that strength doesn't turn against them. Ha! Superst.i.tious stuff!"

But the dark things were real sometimes, however, Cogline told them. There were things within Olden Moor as dark and terrible as those that inhabited the forests of the Wolfsktaag-things born of other worlds and lost magics. They were called Werebeasts. They lived within the mists, creatures of dreadful shapes and forms that preyed upon body and mind, snaring mortal beings weaker than they and draining away their lives. The Werebeasts were not imaginary, Cogline admitted grimly. It was against their coming that the Spider Gnomes sought to protect themselves-for the Spider Gnomes were the Werebeasts' favorite food.

"Now, with the autumn's change to winter, the Gnomes come down to the moor to call out against the rise of the mists." The old man's voice had been a harsh whisper. "Gnomes think the winter won't come or the mists stay low if they don't. A superst.i.tious folk. Come here like this each fall for nearly a month, whole camps, whole tribes of them-just migrate down off the ridge. Call out to the dark powers day and night so that the winter will keep them safe and keep the beasts away." He grinned secretively and winked. "Works, too. Werebeasts feed off them for that whole month, you see. Eat enough to carry them through the winter. No need to go onto the ridge after that!"

Cogline had known where the Spider people would be found. With the fall of night, the little group had traveled north along the base of the ridgeline until the Gnome camp had been sighted. Then, as they hunched down within the concealment of the rocks, Kimber Boh had explained what must happen next.

"They will have your sword with them, Rone. A sword such as that, pulled from the waters of the Chard Rush, will be considered a talisman sent to them by their dark powers. They will set it before them, hoping it will shield them from the Werebeasts. We must discover where it is housed and then steal it back from them."

"How will we do that?" Rone had asked quickly. He had talked of little else for the whole of their journey there. The lure of the sword's power had claimed him once more.

"Whisper will track it," she had replied. "If given your scent, he can follow it to the sword, however well concealed. Once he has found it, he will return to lead us in."So Whisper had been given the highlander's scent and dispatched into the night. He had gone soundlessly, fading into the shadows, lost from view almost instantly. The four from Hearthstone had been waiting ever since for his return, crouched down in the humid dark and the fetid dampness of the bottomland, listening and watching. The moor cat had been gone a very long time.

Brin closed her eyes against the weariness that seeped through her and tried to block the sound of the Gnomes chanting from her mind. A dull, empty monotone, it went on ceaselessly.

Several times, while she listened, there had been screams from close to the mists-shrill, quick, and horror-stricken. Almost at once, though, they had ceased. Still the chanting went on...

A monstrous shadow detached itself from the dark right in front of her, and she started to her feet with a small cry.

"Hush, girl!" Cogline yanked her down again, one bony hand slipping tightly across her mouth. "It's only the cat!"

Whisper's ma.s.sive head materialized then, luminous blue eyes winking lazily as he padded up to Kimber. The girl bent down to wrap her arms about him, stroking him gently, whispering in his ear. For several moments she spoke with the moor cat, and the cat nuzzled and rubbed up against her. Then she turned back to them, excitement dancing in her eyes.

"He has found the sword, Rone!"

Instantly Rone was beside her. "Take me to where it can be found, Kimber!" he begged.

"We will have a weapon then with which to face the walkers and any other dark thing that might serve them!"

Brin fought back against the bitterness that welled up suddenly within her. Rone has forgotten already what little good the sword did him in Allanon's defense, she thought. He was consumed by his need for it.

Cogline called them close, while Kimber spoke a quick word to Whisper. Then they began their descent into the camp of the Gnomes. They crept down off the rise on which they had hidden, crouched low against the shadow of the ridgeline. Light from the distant fires barely touched them here, and they slipped swiftly ahead. Warnings nudged Brin Ohmsford's restless mind, whispering to her that she must turn back, that nothing good lay this way. Too late, she whispered back. Too late.

The camp drew closer. In the gradual brightening of the fires, the Spider Gnomes grew more distinct, crouched forms creeping about the huts and burrows like the insects for which they were named. They were loathsome things to look upon, all hair and sharp ferret eyes, bent and crooked forms drawn from some best-forgotten nightmare. Dozens of them slipped about, emerging from and then disappearing into the gloom, chittering in a language less than human.

All the while, they continued to gather before the wall of mist and chant in hollow, toneless cadence.

The moor cat and his four companions crept soundlessly along the perimeter of the camp, circling toward its far side. The mist drifted past them in trailing wisps, broken free of the wall that hung motionlessly over the empty reaches of the moor. It was damp and clinging, unpleasantly warm as it touched their skin. Brin brushed at it distastefully.

Ahead, Whisper drew to a halt, his saucer eyes swinging about to find his mistress.

Sweating freely now, Brin glanced about, desperately trying to get her bearings. The darkness was filled with shadows and movement, the warmth of the autumn night, and the drone of the Spider Gnomes chanting before the moor."We must go down into the camp," Kimber was saying, her voice a soft, excited whisper.

"Now we'll see them jump!" Cogline cackled gleefully. "Stay clear of them when they do!"

At a word from the girl, Whisper turned down into the Gnome encampment. Slinking soundlessly through the mist, the giant cat moved toward the nearest gathering of buts and burrows. Kimber, Cogline, and Rone followed, crouched low. Brin trailed behind them, her eyes searching the night.

To her left, things moved at the fringes of the firelight, crawling through a ma.s.s of rocks and slipping into the tall gra.s.s. Others appeared further out to their right, lurching toward the sound of the chancing and the wall of mist. Smoke from the fires drifted into Brin's eyes now, mingling with trailers of fog, stinging and sharp.

And suddenly she could not see. Anger and fear rose within her. Her eyes teared and she brushed at them with her hands...

A shriek broke suddenly from the darkness, rising above the drone of the chanting and freezing the night about it. A Spider Gnome leaped from the shadows before them, frantically trying to escape the giant moor cat that had suddenly appeared in its path. Whisper sprang ahead with a roar, knocking the flailing Gnome aside as if it were a bit of deadwood and scattering half a dozen more that blocked the way. Kimber raced beside the giant cat, a slight, swift figure in the dark. Cogline and Rone followed, each howling like men gone mad. Desperately, Brin ran after all of them, struggling to keep pace.

Led by the moor cat, the little company charged down into the very center of the encampment. Spider Gnomes flew past them, hairy, crooked shadows that chittered, howled, and leaped for cover. The company raced past the nearest bonfire. Cogline slowed, grappling with the contents of a leather bag secured about his waist. He produced a handful of black powder and threw it squarely into the flames. Instantly, an explosion rocked the bottomland as the fire geysered skyward in a shower of sparks and burning fragments of wood. The chanting before the wall of mist died away as the shrieks of the Gnomes in the camp intensified. The four dashed past another fire, and again Cogline threw the black powder into the flames. A second time the earth beneath exploded, filling the night with a flare of brightness and scattering the Spider Gnomes everywhere.

Far ahead, Whisper sprang upward through the firelight like a ma.s.sive wraith, gaining the summit of a crudely constructed platform that rose close to the wall of mist. The platform splintered and collapsed with a crash, toppled by the weight of the beast, and a collection of jars, carved wooden objects, and glittering weapons spilled to the ground.

"The sword!" Rone cried out above the din of shrieking Gnomes. Knocking aside the wiry forms that sought to block his way, he charged ahead. An instant later, he was next to Whisper, s.n.a.t.c.hing from the fallen treasures a slim ebony blade. "Leah! Leah!" he cried, brandishing the Sword of Leah triumphantly above his head and forcing back a handful of Gnomes that came at him.

Explosions erupted all about them now as Cogline fed the black powder into the Gnome fires. The whole of the bottomland was lighted in a yellow glare that surged skyward out of blackened, charred earth. Gra.s.s fires burned everywhere. Smoke and mist thickened and rolled across the encampment, and everything began to disappear into it. Brin ran on after the others, forgotten in the excitement of the battle, falling farther and farther behind. They had abandoned the toppled platform now and turned balk toward the ridgeline. Little more than dim forms in thehaze of smoke and mist, they could barely be seen.

"Rone, wait!" Brin cried out frantically.

Spider Gnomes raced past her on all sides, chittering madly. A few reached for her with their hairy limbs, their crooked fingers fastening on her clothing and tearing at it. Wildly, she lashed out at them, breaking free and running on to catch the others. But there were too many.

They were all about her, grasping. In desperation, she used the wishsong; the strange, numbing cry flung them back from her with howls of dismay.

Then she fell, sprawling face forward in the tall gra.s.s, dirt flying into her eyes and mouth.

Something heavy sprang atop her, a ma.s.s of hair and sinew wrapping itself tightly about her. She lost control of herself in that instant, fear and loathing consuming her so that she could no longer reason. She staggered to her hands and knees, but the unseen thing still clung to her. She used the wishsong with all the fury that she could muster. It burst from her throat like an explosion, and the thing on her back simply flew apart, shredded with the force of the magic.

Brin whirled then and saw what she had done. A Spider Gnome lay broken and lifeless against the rocks behind her, curiously small and fragile-looking in death. She stared at the shattered form and for one brief instant she felt an odd, frightening sense of glee.

Then she thrust the feeling from her. Voiceless, horrorstricken, she turned and ran blindly into the smoke, all sense of direction lost.

"Rone!" she screamed.

She fled into the wall of mist that rose before her and disappeared from view.

36.

It was as if the world had fallen away.

There was only the mist. Moon, stars, and sky had vanished. Forest trees, mountain peaks, ridgelines, valleys, rocks, and streams were all gone. Even the ground over which Brin ran was a dim and shapeless thing, its gra.s.ses a part of the shifting gray haze. She was alone in the vast and empty void into which she had fled.

She stumbled to a weary halt, her arms folding tightly against her body, the sound of her breathing harsh and ragged in her ears. For a long time, she stood within the haze and did not move, only vaguely aware even now that she had become turned about in her flight from the bottomland and run into Olden Moor. Her thoughts scattered like blown leaves, and though she s.n.a.t.c.hed frantically at them, trying to hold them back and gather them together, they were lost almost instantly. A single clear, hard image remained fixed before her eyes-a Spider Gnome, twisted, broken, and lifeless.

Her eyes closed against the light and her hands clasped into fists of rage. She had done what she had said she would never do. She had taken another human, life, wrenching it away in a frenzy of fear and anger, using the wishsong to do it. Allanon had warned her that it could happen. She could hear the whisper of his caution. "Valegirl, the wishsong is power like nothing that I have ever seen. The magic can give life, and the magic can take life away."

"But I would never use it..."

"The magic uses all, dark child-even you!"

It was the Grimpond's warning and not Allanon's that mocked her now, and she thrust it from her mind.

She straightened. It was not as if she had not known somewhere deep within that she might someday be forced to use the wishsong's magic as Allanon had warned. She had recognized the possibility from the moment he had shown her the extent of its power in that simple demonstration of the trees intertwined in the forests of the Runne Mountains. It was not as if the death of the Spider Gnome came as some shocking and unexpected revelation.

It was the fact that some part of her had enjoyed what she had done, that some part of her had actually taken pleasure in the killing, that horrified her.

Her throat tightened. She remembered the sudden, furtive sense of glee she had felt on seeing the Gnome's shattered form, realizing that it was the wishsong that had destroyed it. She had reveled for that single instant in the power of the magic...

What kind of monster had she let herself become?

Her eyes snapped open. She had not let herself become anything. The Grimpond was right: You did not use the magic-the magic used you. The magic made you what it would. She could not fully control it. She had discovered that in the encounter at the Rooker Line Trading Center with the men from west of Spanning Ridge and had promised herself that she would never lose control of the magic like that again. But when the Spider Gnomes had come at her as she fled through their encampment, such control as she had thought to exercise had quickly evaporated under the flood of her emotions and the confusion and urgency of the moment. She had used the magic without any real presence of mind at all, but had simply reacted, wielding the power as Rone Leah would wield his sword, a terrible, destructive weapon.

And she had enjoyed it.

Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. She could argue that the enjoyment had beenmomentary and tinged with guilt and that her horror at its being-would prevent it from reoccurring. But the truth could not be avoided. The magic had proven to be dangerously unpredictable. It had affected her behavior in ways she would not have thought possible. That made it a threat not only to her but to those close to her, and she must guard carefully against that threat.

She knew that she could not turn aside from her journey eastward to the Maelmord.

Allanon had given her a trust, and she knew that, despite everything that had happened and all that argued against it, she must fulfill that trust. She believed that even now. But even though she was bound by the need she saw, she could yet choose her own code of being. Allanon had intended that the wishsong be put to a single use-to gain Brin entry into the pit. She must find a way therefore to keep the magic to herself until it was time to call upon it for that intended use.

Only once more would she risk using the magic. Determined, she brushed the tears from her eyes. It would be as she had sworn. The magic would use her no more.