Part 36 (1/2)

She straightened. Now she must find her way back to the others. She stumbled forward again, groping ahead through the gloom, her direction uncertain. Trailers of mist slipped past her, and in their meandering movement she was surprised to discover images. They crowded about her, drawn from the haze into her mind and out again. The images began to take the shapes and forms of memories resurrected from her childhood. Her mother and her father pa.s.sed before her, larger in memory than in life in their warmth and security, gentle figures that sheltered and loved.

Jair was there. Shadows slipped through the strange, empty half-light, ghosts of the past. Allanon might be one of those ghosts, come from death to the living. She looked to find him, half-expecting...

And suddenly, shockingly, he was there. Come from the mist like the shade he now was, he stood barely a dozen yards distant, gray haze all about him, swirling like the Hadeshorn stirred to life.

”Allanon?” she whispered.

Yet she hesitated. The shape belonged to Allanon, but it was the mist-only the mist.

The shadow that was Allanon slipped back into the gloom-gone, as if it had never really been. Gone...

And yet there had been something, after all. Not Allanon, but something else.

Swiftly, she glanced about, searching for the thing, sensing somehow that it was out there, watching her. Images danced again before her eyes, born on the trailers of mist, reflections of her memory. The mist gave them life, a magic that entranced and lured. She stood transfixed in their wake and wondered momentarily if she were indeed going mad. Such imaginings as she was experiencing were certainly indicative of madness, and yet she felt herself clear-headed and sure.

It was the mist that sought to seduce her, teasing her with its musings, playing with her memories as if they were its own. It was the mist-or something in the mist!

Werebeast! The word whispered from somewhere back in her consciousness. Cogline had warned of the mist things as the little company had crouched within the rocks on the ridgeline overlooking the camp of the Spider Gnomes. Scattered all through Olden Moor, they preyed on beings weaker than they, snaring them, draining away their lives.

She straightened, hesitated, then slowly began to walk ahead. Something moved in the mist with her-a shadow, dim and not fully formed, a bit of night. A Werebeast. She hastened on, letting her feet take her where they would. She was hopelessly lost, but she could not stay where she was. She must keep moving. She thought of those who had left her behind. Would they besearching for her? Would they be able to find her in this wall of mist? She shook her head doubtfully. She could not depend on that. She must find her own way out. Somewhere ahead, the wall of mist would fade and the moor would end. She must simply walk until she was out of it, free of its numbing haze.

But what if it would not let her get free?

Her memories came to life once more in the trailers of mist that swirled about her, teasing and seductive. She walked faster, ignoring them, aware that somewhere just beyond her vision the shadow kept pace. A chill settled through her at the awareness of the other.

She tried to envision the thing that followed her. What manner of creature was the Werebeast? It had come to her as Allanon-or had that merely been a trick of the mist and her imagination? She shook her head in voiceless confusion.

Something small and wet skittered away from beneath her feet, flitting off into the dark.

She turned away from it, moving down a broad incline into a vast, marshy bowl. Muck and swamp sucked at her boots, and wintry gra.s.ses slapped at her legs, clutching. She slowed, sensing the unpleasant give in the ground, then backed away toward the rim again. Quicksand lay at the bottom of that bowl and it would draw her down and swallow her. She must stay clear of it and follow the harder, dryer earth. Mist swirled thickly all about, obscuring her vision as she sought to see her way clear. Still she had no sense of direction. For all she knew, she had been traveling in a circle.

She tramped on. The mists of Olden Moor swirled and thickened in the deep night about her, and shadows moved through their dampened haze-Werebeasts. There was more than one of them trailing her now. Brin stared out at them, following their quicksilver movements as they swam like fish through twilight waters. Grimly she quickened her pace, slipping through the marsh gra.s.s, keeping to the high ground. They still came after her. But they would not have her, she swore in silent promise. She belonged to another fate.

She hastened onward, running now, the pumping of her heart and blood a dull pounding in her ears. Anger, fear, and determination all mingled as one and drove her forward. The moor rose before her gently, and she scrambled to the center of a small rise thick with long gra.s.ses and scrub. Slowing, she glanced about in disbelief.

The shadows were everywhere.

Then a tall, lean figure appeared from out of the mist before her, wrapped in a highlander's cloak and bearing a giant broadsword strapped across its back. Brin stiffened in surprise. It was Rone! Arms lifted from out of the robes, reaching for her, beckoning her close.

Willingly she started toward the highlander, her hand stretching to take his.

And then something stopped her.

She blinked. Rone? No!

A red veil fell across her vision, rage sweeping through her as she recognized the deception. It was not Rone Leah she saw. It was again the Werebeast that tracked her.

It came forward, a s.h.i.+mmering and fluid apparition. Robes and sword fell away, bits of the mist through which it pa.s.sed. Nothing of the highlander was there now, but only a shadow, huge and changing. Swiftly it drew together, a ma.s.sive body crouched on thick, clawed hindlegs, great forearms crooked and bristling with s.h.a.ggy hair, and a head wrinkled and twisted about jaws that split to reveal whitened teeth.

It rose up through the mist, twice her size, swathed in the moor's haze. Soundless, it bent its head and snapped at her, a ma.s.s of hair and scales, muscle, spiked bone, teeth, and slittedeyes. It was a thing born of darkest nightmares, one Brin might have dreamed in the anguish of her own despair.

Was it real? Or was it simply born out of the mist and the wanderings of her imagination?

It made no difference. Forsaking the oath she had taken only minutes earlier, she used the wishsong. Hardened with purpose, maddened by what she saw, she called it forth. She was not meant to die here within Olden Moor at the hands of this monster. This one further time she would use the magic-on a thing whose destruction did not matter.

She sang, and the wishsong froze in her throat.

It was her father who stood before her now.

The Werebeast slouched toward her, form s.h.i.+fting and changing in the haze, jaws slavering in antic.i.p.ation of how the Valegirl's life would sate its needs. Brin staggered back, seeing now her mother's dark and gentle face. She called out in desperation, a wild, anguished cy that seemed locked in the silence of her mind.

Back came an answering cry, calling her name. Brin! Confusion swept through her; the cry seemed real, but who...?

”Brin!”

The monster loomed over her, and she could smell the evil of it. But the wishsong stayed locked in her throat, imprisoned by the image she retained of its power tearing into her mother's slim form, leaving it broken and lifeless.

”Brin!”

Then a frightening roar shattered the stillness of the night. A sleek shadow flew out of the mist, and five hundred pounds of enraged moor cat crashed into the Werebeast, flinging it back from Brin. Teeth and claws slas.h.i.+ng, the cat tore into the monstrous apparition and both went tumbling headlong through the deep gra.s.ses.

”Brin! Where are you?”

Brin stumbled back, barely able to hear the voices over the sounds of the battle. Frantic, she called back to them. An instant later Kimber appeared, darting through the haze, her long hair streaming out behind her. Cogline followed, shouting wildly, his crooked body struggling to keep pace with the girl.

Whisper and the Werebeast surged back into view, lunging and feinting. The moor cat was the stronger of the two; although the mist thing sought to break past, it was blocked at every turn. But now other shadows were gathering in the darkness beyond, huge and shapeless, ringing them all close about. Too many shadows!

”Leah! Leah!”

And then Rone was there, his slim form bolting through the ma.s.s of shadows, sword lifted. Eerie, green incandescence swirled about the ebony blade. The Werebeast cornered by Whisper whirled instantly, sensing the greater danger of the sword's magic. Thrusting away from the moor cat, the monster leaped at Rone. But the Prince of Leah was ready. His sword arced down, knifing through the mist into the Werebeast. Green fire flared sharply through the night, and the mist thing exploded in a shower of flames.

Then the light died away, and the night and the mist returned. The shadows that had gathered in the darkness beyond melted back into the void.

The highlander turned, the sword dropping forgotten at his side. He came quickly to Brin, his face stricken.

”I'm sorry, sorry,” he whispered. ”The magic...” He shook his head helplessly. ”When Ifound the sword again, when I touched it...I couldn't seem to think of anything else. I picked it up and I ran with it. I forgot everything-even you. It was the magic, Brin...

He faltered, and she nodded into his chest, hugging him close. ”I know.”

”I won't leave you like that again,” he promised. ”I won't.”

”I know that, too,” she replied softly.

But she said nothing of her decision to leave him.

37.

It was the third day after leaving the prisons at Dun Fee Aran before Jair and the little company from Culhaven reached the towering mountain range they called the Ravenshorn. Unable to use the open roadways than ran close to the banks of the Silver River as it wound south out of the mountains for fear of being seen, they were forced to traverse the deep forests above, picking their way at a slower pace through the tangled wilderness. The rains finally ceased on the second day out, slowed to a drizzle by midmorning, and turned to mist by noon. The air warmed as the skies cleared, and the clouds drifted east. When darkness slipped across the land, the moon and stars became visible through the trees. Their pace was slow, even after the rains had subsided, for the saturated earth could not absorb all of the surface water that had gathered, and the ground was muddied and slick with it. Stopping only for short periods of time to rest and eat, the company did its best to ignore the poor travel conditions and resolutely pressed ahead.