Part 24 (1/2)

The promise of the day was lost, however, to Brin Ohmsford and Rone Leah. Haunted by Allanon's dark revelation and by a tense expectation of what lay ahead, neither could share much of the warmth that the day had to offer. Separate and withdrawn, each within a dark covering of private emotions and secretive thoughts, Valegirl and highlander rode forward in determined silence through the dappled shadows of the great, dark trees, feeling only the cold that lay buried within themselves.

”Our path hereafter will be a treacherous one,” Allanon had told them as they gathered that morning before the stables where their horses had been tended, his voice low and strangely gentle. ”All across the Eastland and through the forests of the Anar, the Wraiths will be watching for us. They know that we come; Paranor removed all question of that. They know as well that they must stop us before we reach the Maelmord. Gnomes will seek us, and where they do not, others who obey the walkers will. No path east into the Ravenshorn will be safe for us.”

His hands had come up then to rest upon their shoulders, drawing them close. ”Still, we are but three and not so easily found. The Wraiths and their Gnome eyes will look two ways for our approach-north above the Rabb River and south out of Culhaven. Safe and un.o.bstructed but for themselves, these are the approaches a wise man would choose. We will choose neither, therefore. Instead, we will pa.s.s where it is most dangerous-not only to us, but to them as well.

We will pa.s.s directly east into the central Anar-through the Wolfsktaag, Darklin Reach, and Olden Moor. Older magics than theirs dwell within those regions-magics that they will be hesitant to challenge. The Wolfsktaag are forbidden to the Gnomes, and they will not enter, even though the Wraiths command it. There are things there more dangerous than the Gnomes we seek to avoid, but most lie dormant. If we are quick and cautious, we should pa.s.s through unharmed.

Darklin Reach and the Moor are the haunts of other magics yet, but there perhaps we shall find some more friendly to our cause than to theirs...”

They rode through the western fringe of the central Anar up into the high ground that formed the doorstep to the rugged, forested humps of the Wolfsktaag. As they traveled, they searched past sunlight and warmth and the brilliant autumn colors for the dark things that lay hidden there. By midday, they had reached the Pa.s.s of jade and begun a long, circuitous climb along its southern slope, where trees and scrub hid them from view as they walked their horses in the deep shadow. Midafternoon found them well east of the pa.s.s, wending their way upward toward the high peaks. Timber and rock stretched dark and silent about them as the daylight began to wane. By nightfall, they were deep within the mountains. In the trees through whichthey pa.s.sed, the shadows slipped now like living things. All the while they searched, yet found no sign of other life and felt themselves to be alone.

It was curious and somehow frightening that they could be so alone, Brin thought as the dusk settled into the mountains and the day came to an end. She should sense at least a touch of life other than their own, yet it was as if these peaks and forests had been stripped. There were no birds within these trees, no insects, no living creatures of any kind. There was only the silence, deep and pervasive-the silence, itself become a living thing in the absence of all other life.

Allanon brought them to a halt in the shelter of a grove of rough and splintering hickory to set their camp. When provisions were sorted, the horses tended, and the camp at ready, the Druid called them to him, ordered that no fire be lighted, and stalked off into the trees with a quick word of farewell. Valegirl and highlander stared after him wordlessly until he was out of sight, then sat down to consume a cold meal of bread, cheese, and dried fruit. They ate in darkness, not speaking, watching the shadows about them for the life that never seemed to come.

Overhead, the night sky brightened with a great scattering of stars.

”Where do you think he has gone this night?” Rone Leah wondered after a time. He spoke almost as if he were asking himself the question. Brin shook her head and said nothing, and the highlander glanced away again. ”Just like a shadow, isn't he? s.h.i.+fts with every change of sun and moon, appears, and then he's gone again-always for reasons all his own. He wouldn't share those reasons with us, of course. Not with mere humans like us.” He sighed and set aside his plate.

”Except that I guess we're not mere humans anymore, are we?”

Brin toyed with the bit of bread and cheese that remained on her own plate. ”No,” she answered softly.

”Well, no matter. We are who we always were, nevertheless.” He paused, as if wondering how sure of that he really was. Then he leaned forward. ”It's odd, but I don't feel the same way about him now that I did before. I've been thinking about it all day. I still don't trust him entirely.

I can't. He knows too much that I don't. But I don't mistrust him either. He is trying to help, I think, in the best way that he can.”

He stopped, waiting for Brin to agree with him, but the Valegirl stayed silent, eyes turned away.

”Brin what's troubling you?” he asked finally.

She looked at him and shook her head. ”I'm not sure.”

”Is it what he told us last night-that we wouldn't see him again after this?”

”That, yes. But it's more than that.”

He hesitated. ”Maybe you're just...”

”Something is wrong,” she cut him short, and her eyes locked on his.

”What?”

”Something is wrong.” She said it slowly, carefully. ”With him, with you, with this whole journey-but most especially with me.”

Rone stared at her. ”I don't understand.”

”I don't understand either. I just feel it.” She pulled her cloak tightly about her, hunching down within its folds. ”I've felt it for days-ever since the shade of Bremen appeared in the Hadeshorn, and we destroyed that Wraith. I feel something bad coming...something terrible. And I don't know what it is. I feel, too, that I'm being watched; all the time I'm being watched, but there is never anything there. I feel, worst of all, that I'm being...pulled away from myself, from you and Allanon. Everything is changing from what it was when we started out at Shady Vale.It's all different, somehow.”

The highlander didn't say anything for a moment. ”I suppose it's because of what's happened to us, Brin. The Hadeshorn, Paranor-Allanon telling us what the shade of Bremen told to him. It had to change us. And we've been away from the Vale and the highlands for many days now, from everything familiar and comfortable. That has to be a part of it, too.”

”Away from Jair,” she said quietly.

”And your parents.”

”But Jair most of all,” she insisted, as if searching for a reason for this. Then she shook her head. ”No, it's not that. It's something else, something besides what's happened with Allanon and missing home and family and...That's too easy, Rone. I can feel it, deep down within me.

Something that...”

She trailed off, her dark eyes uncertain. She looked away. ”I wish I had Jair here with me now-just for a few moments. I think he would know what was wrong. We're so close that way...”

She caught herself, then laughed softly. ”Isn't that silly? Wis.h.i.+ng for something like that when it would probably mean nothing?”

”I miss him, too.” The highlander tried a quick smile. ”At least he might take our minds off our own problems. He'd be out tracking Mord Wraiths or something.”

He stopped, realizing what he had said, then shrugged away his discomfort. ”Anyway, there's probably nothing wrong-not really. If there was, Allanon would sense it, wouldn't he?

After all, he seems to sense everything else.”

Brin was a long time responding. ”I wonder if that is still so,” she said finally. ”I wonder if he still can.”

They were silent then, neither looking back at the other as they stared fixedly into the dark and pondered their separate thoughts. As the minutes slipped away, the stillness of the mountain night seemed to press in about them, anxious to wrap them in the blanket of its stark, empty solitude. It seemed more certain with the pa.s.sing of each moment that some sound must break the spell, the distant cry of a living creature, the small s.h.i.+fting of forest wood or mountain rock, or the rustle of leaf or insect's buzz. But nothing did. There was only the quiet.

”I feel as if we are drifting,” Brin said suddenly.

Rone Leah shook his head. ”We travel a fixed course, Brin. There is no drifting in that.”

She looked over at him. ”I wish I had listened to you and had never come.”

The highlander stared at her in shock. The beautiful, dusky face stayed turned toward his own. In the girl's black eyes there was a mix of weariness and doubt that bordered too closely on fear. For just an instant he had the unpleasant sensation that the girl who sat across from him was not Brin Ohmsford.

”I will protect you,” he said softly, urgently. ”I promise.”

She smiled then, a faint, uneven smile that flickered and was gone. Gently her hands reached out to touch his own. ”I believe that,” she whispered in reply.

But somewhere deep inside, she found herself wondering if he really could.

It was nearly midnight when Allanon returned to the campsite, stepping from the trees as silently as any shadow that moved within the Wolfsktaag. Moonlight slipped through the boughs overhead in thin streamers of silver and cast the whole of the night in eerie brightness. Wrapped within their blankets, Rone and Brin lay sleeping. Across the broad, forested sweep of the mountains, all was still. It was as if he alone kept watch.The Druid paused several dozen feet from where his charges slept. He had walked to be alone, to think, and to ponder the certainty of what was to be. How unexpected the words of Bremen had been when the shade had spoken them-how strangely unexpected. They should not have been, of course. He had known what must be from the beginning. Yet there was always the feeling that somehow it might be changed. He was a Druid, and all things were possible.

His black eyes s.h.i.+fted across the mountain range. The yesterdays of his life were far away, the struggles he had weathered and the roads he had walked down to reach this moment.

The tomorrows seemed distant, too, but that was an illusion, he knew. The tomorrows were right before him.

So much had been accomplished, he mused. But not enough. He turned and looked down at the sleeping Valegirl. She was the one upon whom everything would depend. She would not believe that, of course, or the truth about the power of the wishsong, for she chose to see the Elven magic in human terms, and the magic had never been human. He had shown her what it could be-just a glimpse of the limits to which it could be taken, for she could stand no more, he sensed. She was a child in her understanding of the magic and her coming of age would be difficult. More difficult, he knew, because he could not help her.

His long arms wrapped tightly within the black robes. Could he not help her? There it was again. He smiled darkly. That decision that he should never reveal all, only so much as he felt necessary-that decision that as it had been for Shea Ohmsford in a time long past, truth was best learned by the one who would use it. He could tell her, of course-or at least he could try to tell her. Her father would have said that he should tell her, for Wil Ohmsford had believed the same about the Elven girl Amberle. But the decision was not Wil Ohmsford's to make. It was his own.

It was always his own.

A touch of bitterness twisted his mouth. Gone were the Councils at Paranor when many voices and many minds had joined in finding solutions to the problems of mankind. The Druids, the wise men of old, were no more. The histories and Paranor and all the hopes and dreams they had once inspired were lost, and only he remained.