First King of Shannara

Chapter Eighteen

Bremen, Mareth, and Kinson Ravenlock took the better part of a week to reach Hearthstone. They walked the entire way, both the Druid and the Tracker believing that they would make better time afoot than on horseback. This was country they both knew, having traveled it often, and the shortcuts they had discovered over the years could not be navigated on horseback. There would come a point early in the journey when the horses could go no farther on any trail and would have to be abandoned. It was better simply to go on foot from the beginning and not complicate matters.

All well and good for them, Mareth thought. They were used to walking long distances. She was not. But she said nothing.

Kinson led the way, setting a pace he thought would be comfortable for all three. He knew Mareth wasn’t as conditioned to foot travel as Bremen and himself, but she was tough enough. He kept them on even ground for the first two days, when the roads and trails were still visible and the terrain relatively flat. He stopped often to let Mareth rest, making certain she took water each time. At night, he checked her boots and feet to make certain both were sound. Surprisingly enough, she let him do this without arguing. She had retreated within herself a bit since Bremen’s return, and Kinson assumed she was preparing for the moment when she would tell the Druid the truth about herself.

Meanwhile, they pressed on through the passes of the Wolfsktaag into Darklin Reach. Much of the time they followed the Rabb River, for it provided a recognizable reference point and a means for locating drinking water. The days were slow and sunny, and the nights were calm. The deep woods sheltered and soothed, and the journey proceeded without incident.

On their third night out, Mareth kept her promise and told Bremen she had lied to him about her time at Storlock. She had not been one of the Stors, had not been accepted into their order, and had not studied healing with them. What she knew of magic, whether healing or otherwise, she had taught herself. Her skills had been mastered through laborious and sometimes painful experience. It seemed to her that her magic worked best when it was employed for healing, that she did better in those instances at keeping it under control.

She revealed as well her relationship with Cogline. She admitted Cogline had urged her to go to the Druids at Paranor, had told her to seek help with her magic there, and had assisted her in forging the necessary documents to gain admission.

Somewhat to Kinson’s surprise, Bremen was not angry with her. He listened attentively as she spoke, nodded in response, and said nothing. They were seated around the cooking fire, dinner consumed, the flames burned almost to coals, and the night about them bright with moon and stars. He did not glance at Kinson. He seemed, in fact, to have forgotten the Borderman was even there.

When the girl had finished, Bremen smiled encouragingly.

“Well, you are a bold young lady. And I appreciate your confidence in both Kinson and myself. Certainly, we will try to help you. As for Cogline, this business of sending you off to Paranor to learn about your magic, giving you false references, encouraging you to dissemble—that sounds exactly like him. Cogline has no love for the Druids. He would tweak their collective noses at the slightest provocation. But he also knew, I think, that if you were determined enough to discover the truth about your magic, if you were the genuine article, so to speak, you would eventually find your way to me.”

“Do you know Cogline well?” Mareth asked.

“As well as anyone knows him. He was a Druid before me. He was a Druid in the time of the First War of the Races. He knew Brona. In some ways, he sympathized with him. He thought that all avenues of learning should be encouraged and no form of study forbidden. He was something of a rebel himself in that respect. But Cogline was also a good and careful man. He would never have risked himself as Brona did.

“He left the Druid order before Brona. He left because he grew disenchanted with the structure under which he was required to study. His interest lay in the lost sciences, in sciences that had served the old world before its destruction. But the High Druid and the Druid Council were not supportive of his work. In those days, they favored magic—a power that Cogline distrusted. For them, the old sciences were better left in peace. They might have served the old world, but they had also destroyed it. Uncovering their secrets should be done slowly and cautiously and for limited use only. Cogline thought this nonsense. Science would not be contained, he would argue. It would not be revealed according to Man’s agenda, but according to its own.”

Bremen rocked back slightly, arms clasped about knees drawn up, all bones and angles, his smile one of reminiscence. “So Cogline left, infuriated at what had been done to him—and at what he had done to himself, I imagine. He went off into Darklin Reach and resumed his studies on his own. I would see him now and then, cross paths with him. We would talk.We would exchange information and ideas. We were both outcasts of a sort. Except that Cogline refused to consider himself a Druid any longer, while I refused to consider myself anything less.”

“He’s been alive longer than you have,” Kinson observed casually, poking at the coals of the fire with a stick, refusing to meet Bremen’s gaze.

“He has use of the Druid Sleep, if that’s what you are getting at,” Bremen replied quietly. “It is the one indulgence of magic’s use that he permits himself. He is mistrustful of the rest. All of it.”

He glanced at Mareth. “He thinks the magic dangerous and uncontrollable. He would have taken some delight, I expect, in learning that you found it that way as well. In sending you to Paranor, he was hoping to make a point. The trouble is, you hid your secret too well, and the Druids never discovered what you were capable of doing.”

Mareth nodded, but said nothing. Her dark eyes looked off into space thoughtfully.

Kinson stretched. He felt impatient and irritated with both of them. People complicated their own lives unnecessarily. This was just another example.

He caught Bremen’s eye. “Now that we have all our secrets and past history on the table, tell me this. Why are we going to Hearthstone? What is it that we want with Cogline?”

Bremen studied him a moment before replying. “As I said, Cogline has continued his study of the old sciences. He knows secrets lost to everyone else. One of those secrets might be of use to us.”

He stopped, smiled. He had said all he was going to say, Kinson could tell. There was probably a reason for this beyond irritating the living daylights out of the Borderman, but Kinson did not care either to speculate or to ask what it was. He nodded as if satisfied and rose.

“I will take the first watch,” he announced, and stalked off into the dark.

He sat brooding over the matter until after midnight when Bremen came to relieve him. The old man materialized out of nowhere—Kinson never heard him coming—and sat down next to the Borderman. They kept each other company for a long time without speaking, looking out into the night. They were seated on a low bluff that overlooked the Rabb as it snaked its way through the trees, its surface flat and silver with moonlight. The woods were quiet and sleepy, and the air smelled of juniper and spruce.

Darklin Reach began just west of where they camped. Starting tomorrow, the terrain would turn rugged and travel would grow much more difficult.

“What Cogline can give us,” the old man said suddenly, his voice soft and compelling, “is the benefit of his knowledge of metallurgy. Do you remember the visions? They are centered around the creation of a weapon of magic that will destroy the Warlock Lord. The weapon is a sword. The sword will be borne in battle by a man we have not yet met. The sword requires many things to endow it with sufficient strength to withstand the power of Brona. One of those things is a forging process that will make it the equal of any weapon ever shaped. Cogline will give us that process.”

He looked at Kinson and smiled. “I thought it best to keep that piece of information between ourselves.”

Kinson nodded and did not reply. He looked down at his feet, nodded again, and then rose. “Good night, Bremen.”

He started to walk away.

“Kinson?”

The Borderman turned. Bremen was looking away again, staring out over the river and the woods. “I would not be so sure that all the secrets and past history are on the table yet, either. Mareth is a very cautious and deliberate young woman. She has her own reasons for doing what she does, and she keeps them to herself until she thinks it prudent to reveal them.“ He paused. ”As you already know. Good night.”

Kinson held his ground a moment more, then walked away.

They pushed on for another three days through country so rough and tangled that the only trails they encountered were those made by animals. They saw no other humans, and they found no human tracks. The country had turned hilly, serrated by ravines and ridgelines, eroded by flash floods from springtime cresting of the Rabb, choked by scrub and grasses grown waist-high. The river broke out of its channel in a dozen places, forming loops and sloughs, and they could no longer rely on its banks to provide either a footpath or a reference point. Kinson took them away from the jumble of waterways into the deep woods, choosing country where the shade of the old growth kept the scrub and grass from growing so thick and thereby offered better passage across the drops and splits. The weather stayed good, so they were able to make reasonable progress, even with the changing topography.

As they traveled, Bremen walked with Mareth, speaking about her magic and counseling on its use.

“There are ways in which you can control it,” he offered. “The difficulty lies in identifying the ways. Innate magic is more complicated than acquired magic. With acquired magic, you learn its usage through trial and error, building on your knowledge as you go. You discover what works and what doesn’t; it is predictable, and usually you come to understand the why of things. But with innate magic, that isn’t always possible. Innate magic is simply there, born to you, a part of your flesh and blood. It does what it will, when it will, often how it will, and you are left to discover the why of things as best you can.

“The problem of controlling innate magic is further complicated by other factors which influence the way magic works. Your character can affect the results of the magic’s implementation. Your emotions, your mood. The makeup of your body—you have built-in defenses to anything that threatens your health, and these can affect the way the magic responds. Your view of the world, Mareth, your attitude, your beliefs, your reasoning—they can all determine results. The magic is a chameleon. Sometimes it simply gives up and goes away, will not try to breach your defenses or the obstacles you place in its path. Sometimes it mounts a rush to overcome them, to break through and work its will in spite of all you do to stop it.”

“What is it that so affects me?” she asked him.

And he replied, “That is what we have to discover.”

On the sixth day of their journey, they reached Hearthstone. It was just after midday, and they had come down out of a range of broad, steep hills and rugged valleys that heralded the approach of the Ravenshorn Mountains. They were hot and footsore, and having left the Rabb and its tributaries far behind, they had not bathed in two days. No one was doing much talking this day; they were concentrating all their energies on reaching their destination before nightfall, as Kinson had promised they would. Despite the fearsome reputation of Darklin Reach, nothing had threatened them on their journey and, if anything, they were growing bored with the tedium of their travel. So it was a relief to catch sight of the solitary, chimney-shaped spire that jutted skyward in the bright sunlight that lit the far end of the small valley directly before them. They emerged from a stretch of spruce and hemlock where the shadows were so thick they had to grope their way clear, and there it was. Kinson pointed, but Bremen and Mareth were already nodding and smiling in recognition.

They went down off the hills through patches of wildflowers to the cool shadow of the woods that filled the valley floor. It was silent as they passed through towering stands of hardwoods—red elm, white and black oak, shagbark hickory, and birch. Conifers grew there as well, shaggy, hoary, and ancient, but the hardwoods dominated. Hemmed in by a canopy of limbs and a wall of trunks, they quickly lost sight of Hearthstone. Kinson led, still looking for tracks, still not finding any, but now wondering why. If Cogline lived in the valley, didn’t he ever walk around in it? There were no signs of human habitation. There were birds and small ground animals, but not much of anything else.

They crossed a stream, a spray of cold mist washing over them from where the waters tumbled down a rapids. Kinson brushed at his face, closed his eyes against the coolness, and wiped the sweat from his brow. He blinked away the damp as he walked, listening to the silence, glancing back at Bremen and Mareth, who followed a few steps behind. He felt a twinge of uneasiness, but he couldn’t identify its source. His Tracker’s instincts told him something was wrong, but neither of his companions seemed bothered.

He dropped back a step to walk with them. “Something doesn’t feel right,” he muttered.

Mareth looked at him blankly. Bremen only shrugged. Irritated, Kinson strode on ahead once more. They crossed a broad clearing to a stand of fir and pushed through the curtain of boughs. Suddenly Kinson smelled smoke. He slowed and turned to warn the other two.

“Keep your eyes forward,” Bremen warned. He glanced past Kinson, and as he did so, the Tracker saw Mareth’s eyes grow huge.

Kinson whirled back and found himself face-to-face with the biggest moor cat he had ever seen. The moor cat was standing six feet away, staring at him. The lantern eyes were a luminous yellow, and the muzzle was black, but the rest of the cat was a curious brindle patchwork. Moor cats were rarely seen, and it was commonly said that seeing one was usually the last event in a person’s life. Moor cats kept mostly to themselves, living out their lives in the Eastland swamps. They were difficult to spy out because they could change color to blend into their surroundings.

They ran on average six to eight feet long and up to three feet tall at the shoulder, but this one was a dozen feet from nose to tail and at least four feet at the shoulder. It was nearly eye level with Kinson, and if it chose it would be on top of him before he could blink.

“Bremen,” he said softly.

From behind him, he heard a strange cluttering sound, and the moor cat cocked its massive head in response. The sound came again, and now Kinson realized that its source was Bremen. The moor cat licked its muzzle, made a similar noise in response, turned, and walked away.

Bremen came up beside the stunned Borderman and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “That’s Cogline’s cat. I’d say we’re close to our man, wouldn’t you?”

They walked out of the stand of fir, crossed a glade bisected by a meandering stream, and angled past a massive old white oak. All the while the moor cat padded on ahead, neither hurrying nor lagging, seemingly disinterested, but at the same time letting them keep it in sight. Kinson looked questioningly at Mareth, but she shook her head. Apparently, she didn’t know any more about this than he did.

Finally they reached a broad clearing in which a small cabin had been built. The cabin was rustic and weathered, badly in need of repairs, pieces of clapboard siding come loose, shutters off their hinges, planks on the narrow porch splintered and cracked. The roof looked solid enough and the chimney was sound, but a vegetable garden planted just south was in disarray and weeds nuzzled the cabin foundation expectantly. A man stood in front of the cabin waiting for them, and Kinson knew at once from Mareth’s description of him that this was Cogline. He was tall and stooped, a bony, ragged figure, rather disheveled and unkempt, in clothes that looked to be in about the same shape as the cabin. His hair was dark, but shot through with gray, and it stuck out from his angular head like a hedgehog’s spines. A narrow, pointed beard jutted from his chin, and a mustache drooped off his upper lip. Lines creased his weathered face, furrows that marked more than the passing of his years. He put his hands on his hips and let them come to him, a broad smile twisting his face.

“Well, well, well!” he exclaimed enthusiastically. “The girl from Storlock comes calling. Wouldn’t have thought to see you again. You’ve got more spunk than I’d given you credit for. Found the true master of the lore, too, have you? Well met, Bremen of Paranor!”

“Well met, Cogline,” Bremen replied, extending his hand, letting the other clasp it momentarily in his own. “Sent your cat to greet us, I see. What’s his name? Shifter? Startled my friend so badly he may have lost five years off his life.”

“Hah, we have the remedy for that, and if that’s Kinson Ravenlock who’s with you, he probably knows it already!” Cogline gave the Borderman a wave. “Druid Sleep will give you back those years in a blink!” He cocked his angular face. “You know what the cat’s for, my friend?” Kinson shook his head. “He screens out unwelcome guests, which includes just about everyone. The only ones who get this far are the ones who know how to talk to him. Bremen knows how, don’t you, old man?”

Bremen laughed. “Old man? Pot and the kettle there, wouldn’t you say?”

“I wouldn’t say yes, and I wouldn’t say no. So the girl found you, did she? Took her long enough. Mareth, isn’t it?” Cogline bowed slightly. “Lovely name for a lovely girl. Hope you drove all those Druids to distraction and a bad end.”

Bremen came forward a step. The smile disappeared from his face. “The Druids found a bad end all on their own, I’m afraid. Not two weeks past, Cogline. They’re all dead at Paranor save myself and two more. Hadn’t you heard?”

The other man stared at him as if he were mad, then shook his head. “Not a word. But I haven’t been out of the valley for a while either. All dead? You’re certain of that, are you?”

Bremen reached into his robes and brought forth the Eilt Druin.

He held it up for the other to see, letting it dangle in the light.

Cogline screwed up his mouth. “Sure enough. You wouldn’t have possession of that if Athabasca lived. All dead, you say? Shades! What did them in? Him, was it?”

Bremen nodded. There was no need to speak the name. Cogline shook his head again, folded his arms across his chest, and hugged himself. “I didn’t wish that for them. I never wished that. But they were fools, Bremen, and you know it. They built up their walls and closed up their gates and forgot their purpose. They drove us out, the only two who had an ounce of sense, the only two who understood what mattered. Galaphile would have been ashamed of them. But all dead? Shades!”

“We’ve come to talk about it,” Bremen said quietly.

The other’s sharp eyes snapped up to meet those of the old man.

“Of course you did. You came all this way to give me the news and talk about it. Kind of you. Well, we know each other, don’t we? One old, the other older. One a renegade, the other a castoff. Neither one the least bit devious. Hah!”

Cogline’s chuckle was dry and mirthless. He looked at the ground a moment; then his gaze swept up to Kinson. “Say, Tracker—you see the other one on your way in, sharp-eyed as you are?”

Kinson hesitated. “Other what?”

“Hah! Thought so! Other cat, that’s what! Didn’t see it?” Cogline snorted. “Well, all I can say is, it’s a good thing Bremen likes you or you’d probably be someone’s meal by now!” He chuckled, then lost interest and threw up his hands. “Well, come on, come on! No point standing around out here. There’s food waiting on the fire. I suppose you’ll want a bath, too. More work for me, not that it matters to you. But I’m a good host, aren’t I? Come on!”

Mumbling and grousing, he turned and loped up the steps and into the cabin, his visitors trailing obediently behind.

They washed themselves and their clothes, dried as best they could, dressed anew, and were sitting down to dinner by the time the sun set. The sky turned orange and gold, then crimson, and finally an indigo-amethyst that left even Kinson staring out through the screen of the trees in amazement. The meal Cogline served them was better than the Borderman would have expected, a stew of meat and vegetables, with bread, cheese, and cold ale.

They ate at a table set out in back of the cabin with the night sky visible above, its collection of stars laid out in kaleidoscopic order.

Candles lit the table, giving off some sort of incense that Cogline claimed kept the insects away. Maybe his claim was well founded, Kinson conceded, because there didn’t seem to be anything flying about while they ate.

The moor cats joined them, wandering in with the darkness to curl up close to the table. As Cogline had advised, there were two—a brother and a sister. Shifter, the male, whom they had encountered on their way in, was the larger of the pair, while the female. Smoke, was smaller and leaner. Cogline said he had found them as kittens, abandoned in the swamp regions of Olden Moor and prey at that age to the Werebeasts. They were hungry and frightened and clearly in need, so he took them home. He laughed at the memory. Little bits of fur then, but they grew up quick enough. He hadn’t done anything to make them stay; they chose to do that on their own. Probably liked his companionship, he opined.

Twilight came and went, and night deepened into warm breezes and soft silence. The meal concluded, and as they sat back to sip ale from fired clay mugs, Bremen told Cogline what had befallen the Druids at Paranor. When he was finished, the once-Druid sat back with ale glass in hand and shook his head in disgust.

“Fools all, down to the last man,” he said. “I’m sorry for them, sorry they came to such an end, but mad, too, because they wasted the opportunities Galaphile and the others gave them in forming the First Council. They lost sight of their purpose, of the reason for their being. I can’t forgive them that.”

He spit into the darkness. Smoke looked up at him and blinked, startled. Shifter never moved. Kinson looked from one to the other, wild-haired recluse and his pet moor cats, and wondered what living out here for any length of time did to your mind.

“When I left the Druids, I went to the Hadeshorn and spoke with the spirits of the dead,” Bremen went on. He sipped at his ale, the creases of his weathered face deepening with the memory.

“Galaphile himself came to me. I asked him what I might do to destroy Brona. In response, he showed to me four visions.” He described them one by one. “It is the vision of the man with the sword that brings me to you.”

Cogline’s angular face squinched down on itself like a fist. “Am I supposed to help you find this man? Am I supposed to know him?”

Bremen shook his head. His gray hair looked as fine as silk in the candlelight. “It is not the man, but the sword that requires your attention. This is a talisman that I must forge. The vision reveals that the Eilt Drain will be transformed by the forging and made part of the weapon. The weapon will be anathema to Brona. I don’t pretend to understand the particulars as yet. I only know the nature of the weapon that is needed. And I know that special care must be taken in its forging if it is to be strong enough to overcome Brona’s magic.”

“So you’ve come all the way here to ask me about it, have you?” said the other, as if the curtain had just been raised and the truth revealed.

“No one knows more about the science of metallurgy than you. The forging process must be a fusion of science and magic if it is to be successful. I have the magic—my own and that of the Eilt Druin—to incorporate into the process. But I need your knowledge of science. I need what science alone can provide—the proper mix of metals, the correct temperatures of the furnace at each melding, and the exact times of curing. What form of tempering must be used if the metal is to be strong enough to withstand whatever force is directed against it?”

Cogline dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand. “You can just stop right there. You’ve already missed the point. Magic and science do not mix. We both know that. So if you want a weapon forged of magic, then use magic. You don’t need anything from me.”

Bremen shook his head. “We have to bend the rules a bit, I’m afraid. Magic is not enough to accomplish the task. Science is needed as well. Science brought out of the old world. Brona is a creature of magic, and magic is what he has armored himself against. He does not know science, does not care about it, has no regard for it. For him, as for so many, science is dead and gone, a part of the old world. But we know differently, don’t we? Science lies dormant as magic once did. Magic is favored now, but that does not mean that science has no place. It may be necessary in the forging of this sword. If I can implement the best techniques of old world science, I have one more strength on which to rely. I need that strength. I am alone with Kinson and Mareth. Besides us, there are only two more who are allied with us, one gone east, the other west. We are all. Our magic is but a fraction of that of our enemy. How shall we prevail against the Warlock Lord and his minions without a weapon against which they cannot defend?”

Cogline sniffed. “There is no such weapon. Besides, there is nothing to say that a weapon forged of science— in whole or in part—would stand any better chance than one forged of magic. It might just as easily be true that magic is all that can prevail against magic, and that any form of science is useless.”

“I do not believe that.”

“Believe what you choose.” Cogline rubbed irritably at his hair.

A scowl twisted his thin mouth. “I left the world and its more conventional beliefs behind me a long time ago. I haven’t missed them.”

“But both will catch up with you sooner or later, just as they catch up with us all. They won’t go away or cease to be simply because you reject them.” Bremen’s eyes fixed on the other.

“Brona will come here one day, after he has finished with those of us who have not hidden away. You must know that.”

Cogline’s face hardened. “He will rue that day, I promise you!”

Bremen waited, saying nothing, not choosing to challenge the statement. Kinson glanced at Mareth. She met his gaze and held it.

He knew she was thinking the same thing he was—that Cogline’s posturing was vain and foolish, that his thinking was patently ridiculous. Yet Bremen did not choose to challenge him.

Cogline shifted uneasily on the bench. “Why do you press me so, Bremen! What is it that you expect of me? I want no part of the Druids!”

Bremen nodded, his face calm, his gaze steady. “Nor they of you. The Druids are gone. There is no part of them left to be had. There are only the two of us, Cogline, old men who have stayed alive longer than they should, conjurers of the Druid Sleep. I grow weary, but I shall not rest until I have done what I can for those who have not lived so long—the men, women, and children of the Races. These are the ones who need our help. Tell me. Should we have no part of them either?”

Cogline started to answer and stopped. Everyone sitting at the table knew what he was tempted to say and how foolish the words would sound. His jaw muscles tightened in frustration. There was indecision in his sharp eyes.

“What cost to you if you choose to help us?” Bremen pressed quietly. “If you would truly have no part of the Druids, then consider this. The Druids would not have helped in this—indeed, chose not to help when they had the chance. They were the ones who determined that their order should stay separate and apart from the politics of the Races. That choice destroyed them. Now the same choice is given to you. The same choice, Cogline—make no mistake. Isolation or involvement. Which is it to be?”

They sat silent about the table, the Druid, the once-Druid, the Tracker, and the girl, the night enfolding deep and calm about them. The big cats lay sleeping, the sound of their breathing a soft, regular whistle of air through damp nostrils. The air smelled of burning wood, food, and the forest. There was comfort and peace all about. The four were cocooned away in the heart of Darklin Reach, and if you tried hard enough, Kinson Ravenlock thought, you might imagine that nothing of the outside world could ever reach you here.

Bremen leaned forward slightly, but the distance between himself and Cogline seemed to close dramatically. “What is there to think about, my friend? You and I, we have known what the right answer is all of our lives, haven’t we?”

Cogline snorted derisively, brushed at the air in front of him, looked off into the darkness, then wheeled back irritably. “There is a metal as strong as iron, but far lighter, more flexible, and less brittle. An alloy really, a mix of metals, that was in use in the old world, conceived of the old science. Iron mostly, tempered by carbon at high temperature. A sword forged of that mix would be formidable indeed.” He looked sharply at Bremen. “But the temperatures used in the tempering are far greater than what a smith can generate in his forge. Engines are needed to generate temperatures of this magnitude, and those engines are lost to us.”

“Have you the process?” Bremen asked.

Cogline nodded and tapped his head. “Up here. I will give it to you. Anything to send you on your way and end this pointless lecturing! Still, I cannot see its use. Without a kiln or furnace hot enough...”

Kinson’s gaze wandered back to Mareth. She was staring directly at him, her dark eyes huge and shadowed beneath her helmet of short-cropped black hair, her face smooth and serene. In that instant, he thought he was on the verge of understanding her as he had been unable to do before. It was something about the way she was looking at him, in the openness of her expression, in the intensity of her gaze. But then she smiled unexpectedly, her mouth quirking at the comers, and her eyes shifted from his face to something she saw behind him.

When he turned to look, he found Shifter staring at him, the big moor cat’s face only inches from his own, the luminous eyes fixed on him as if he were the strangest thing the cat had ever seen.

Kinson swallowed the lump in his throat. He could feel the heat of the cat’s breath on his face. When had it come awake? How had it gotten so close without him noticing? Kinson held the cat’s gaze a moment longer, took a deep breath, and turned away.

“I don’t suppose you would want to come with us?” Bremen was asking their host. “A journey of a few days, just long enough to see the talisman forged?”

Cogline snorted and shook his head. “Take your games playing elsewhere, Bremen. I give you the forging process and my best wishes. If you can make use of either, well and good. But I belong here.”

He had scribbled something on a piece of old parchment, and now he passed it to the Druid. “The best that science can offer,” he muttered. “Take it.”

Bremen did, stuffing it into his robes.

Cogline straightened, then looked at Kinson and Mareth in turn.

“Watch out for this old man,” he warned. There was dismay in his eyes, as if he had suddenly discovered something that displeased him. “He needs more looking after than he realizes. You, Tracker, have his ear. Make sure he listens when he needs to. You, girl—what is your name? Mareth? You have more than his ear, don’t you?”

No one spoke. Kinson’s eyes shifted to Mareth. There was no expression on her face, but she had gone suddenly pale.

Cogline studied her bleakly. “Doesn’t matter. Just keep him safe from himself. Keep him well.”

He stopped abruptly, as if deciding he had said too much. He mumbled something they could not hear, then rose to his feet, a loose jumble of bones and skin, a rumpled caricature of himself.

“Spend the night, and then be on your way,” he muttered wearily.

He looked them over carefully, as if expecting to find something he had missed previously, as if thinking perhaps they might be other than who they claimed. Then he turned and moved away.

Good night, they called after him. But he did not respond. He walked resolutely away from them and did not look back.

Chapter Nineteen

Clouds skimmed the edges of the quarter-moon, casting strange shadows that raced across the surface of the earth like night birds ahead of the advancing Dwarves. It was the slow, deep hour before sunrise, when death is closest and dreams hold sway in men’s sleep. The air was warm and still, and the night hushed. There was a sense of everything slowing, of time losing half a tick in its clockwork progression, of life drifting momentarily from its inexorable pathway so that death, for a few precious moments, might be further delayed.

The Dwarves had slipped from the trees of the Anar in a wave of dark forms that seemed to flow like a river. They were several thousand strong, come down through the Wolfsktaag out of the Pass of Jade a dozen miles north of where the army of the Warlock Lord was encamped. It was two days since the army had passed south of Storlock, and while the Dwarves had watched its progress closely, they had determined to wait until now to attack.

They eased their way down the line of the trees to where the Rabb dropped away in a long, low swale close to a small river called the Nunne. It was there that the Northland army, unwisely, had chosen to make its camp. To be sure, there was water and grass and space to sprawl out, but it gave away the high ground to an attacker and exposed two flanks of the army to an enfilading strike. The army had set watch, but any watch was easily dispatched, and even the presence of the roving Skull Bearers was no deterrent to men in a desperate situation.

Risca gave them cover when they were close enough that cover mattered. He sent images of himself south below the Nunne to distract the winged hunters, and when the clouds masked moon and stars completely, the Dwarves went in. They crept swiftly across the last mile separating their strike force from the sleeping army, killed the sentries before they could sound an alarm, took the high ground north and east above the river, and attacked. Stretched out across the ridge of the high ground for half a mile in either direction, they used longbows and slings, and they raked the Trolls and Gnomes and monsters of darkness with volley after volley. The army came awake, men screaming and cursing, racing to put on their armor and to take up their weapons, falling wounded and dead in midstride. A cavalry assault was mounted in the midst of the confusion, a doomed counterattack that was cut to pieces as it charged up the incline from the maelstrom of the camp.

One of the Skull Bearers circled out of the dark and swept down on the Dwarves in retaliation, claws and teeth exposed, a silent stalker. But Risca was expecting this, his attention given over to preparing for it, and when the Skull Bearer appeared, he let it come almost to the earth before he struck at it with his Druid fire and flung it away, burned and shrieking.

The strike was swift and measured. The damage inflicted was largely superficial and of no lasting consequence to an army of this size, so the Dwarves did not linger. Their primary purpose was to cause disruption and to draw the enemy away from its intended line of march. In that, the Dwarves were successful. They fled back into the trees, taking the most direct route, then turned north again for the Pass of Jade. The enemy was quick to give pursuit. A large force was mounted and gave chase, the size of the Dwarf party having not yet been determined. By sunrise, the pursuers were closing on the Dwarves as they neared the mouth of the Pass of Jade.

Everything was going exactly as Risca had planned.

“There,” said Geften softly, pointing into the trees fronting the pass.

Below, the last of the Dwarf strike force was filing through the pass and dispersing into the rocks above, taking up positions next to the men already in place, four thousand strong. Behind them, less than a mile away, the first movements of their pursuers could be detected in the still, deep shadows of the predawn forest. Even as he watched, Risca could see the movement widen and spread, like a ripple from a stone thrown into the center of a still pond. It was a sizable force that had come after them, much too large for them to defeat in a direct engagement, even though a large part of the Dwarf army was assembled here.

“How long?” he asked Geften in response.

The Tracker shrugged, a small movement, spare like all his gestures, like the man himself, unobtrusive and restrained. Coarse, unruly gray hair topped an oddly elongated head. “An hour if they stop to debate the wisdom of coming into the pass without a plan.”

Risca nodded. “They’ll stop. They’ve been burned twice now.”

He smiled at the older man, a gnarled veteran of the Gnome border wars. “Keep an eye on them. I’ll tell the king.”

He abandoned his position and moved back into the rocks, climbing from where Geften monitored their pursuers’ progress.

Risca felt a wild excitement course through him, fueled by the knowledge that a second battle lay just ahead. The strike at the Northland camp had only whetted his appetite. He breathed the morning air and felt strong and ready. He had waited all his life for this, he supposed. All those years shut away at Paranor, practicing his warrior skills, his fighting tactics, his weapons mastery.

All for this, for a chance to stand against an enemy that would challenge him as nothing at Paranor ever could. It made him feel alive in a way he could not ignore, and even the desperation of their circumstances did not lessen the rush of excitement he felt.

He had reached the Dwarves three days earlier and gone at once to Raybur. Already alerted to the presence of the Northland army, already certain of its intent, the king had received him. Risca merely confirmed what he knew and gave further impetus to his need to act. Raybur was a warrior king as Risca was a warrior Druid, a man whose entire life had been spent in battle. Like Risca, he had fought against the Gnome tribes when he was a boy, a part of the Dwarf struggle to prevent Gnome encroachment on those lands in the Lower and Central Anar that the Dwarves had considered theirs for as long as anyone could remember. When he became king, Raybur had pursued his cause with a singlemindedness that was frightening. Taking his army deep into the interior, he had pushed back the Gnomes and extended the boundaries of his homeland until they were twice their previous size, until the Gnomes were so far north of the Rabb and east of the Silver River that they no longer threatened. For the first time in centuries, all that lay between was safe for the Dwarves to settle and inhabit.

But now the challenge was mounted anew, this time in the form of the army that approached. Raybur had mobilized the Dwarves in preparation for the battle that lay ahead, the battle that everyone knew they could not win without help, yet must fight if they were to survive. Risca had told them that the Elves were coming.

Bremen had charged that it must happen, and Tay Trefenwyd, whom he would trust with his life, had gone west to make it so. Yet it remained for the Dwarves to buy the time that was needed for that help to arrive. Raybur understood. He was close with Bremen and Courtann Ballindarroch, and he knew both to be honorable men. They would do what they could. But time was precious, and nothing could be taken for granted. Raybur understood that as well. So Culhaven was evacuated—it was there that the Northland army would come first, and the Dwarves could not defend their home city against so massive a force. Women, children, and old people were sent deep into the interior of the Anar, where they could be safely hidden away until the danger was over.

The Dwarf army, in the meantime, went north through the Wolfsktaag to face the enemy.

Raybur turned as Risca approached, looking away from his commanders and advisors, from Wyrik and Fleer, the eldest of his five sons, from the charts they studied and the plans they had drawn. “Do they come?” he asked quickly.

Risca nodded. “Geften keeps watch over their progress. He estimates we have an hour before they strike.”

Raybur nodded and beckoned the Druid to walk with him. He was a big man, not tall, but broad and strong through the chest and shoulders, his head huge and his features prominent, his weathered face bearded and creased. He had a hooked nose and shaggy brows that gave him a slightly bestial look, but beneath his imposing exterior he was warm and exuberant and quick to laugh.

Older than Risca by fifteen years, he was nevertheless as physically imposing as the Druid and more than a match for him in an even contest. The two were very close, more so in some ways than with their own families, for they shared common beliefs and experiences and had come from hard lives and close escapes to live as long as they had.

“Tell me again how you will make this happen,” the king directed, putting his arm around Risca and steering him away from the others.

“You know that already,” Risca responded with a snort. The plan was theirs, devised by Risca and approved by the king, and while they had shared it in general with the others, they had kept the specifics to themselves.

“Tell it to me anyway.” The gruff face glanced at him, then looked away. “Humor me. I am your king.”

Risca nodded, smiling. “The Trolls and Gnomes and what have you will converge on the pass. We will try to stop them from entering. We will make a good show of it, then fall back, apparently beaten. We will delay them through the mountains for the next day or so, slowing but not stopping them. In the meantime, they will have moved the rest of their army south to the Silver River. Dwarves will flee at their approach. They will find Culhaven abandoned. They will discover that no one challenges them. They will think that the whole of the Dwarf army must be fighting in the Wolfsktaag.”

“Which is not far from the truth,” Raybur grunted, rubbing at his beard with one massive hand.

“Which is not far from the truth,” Risca echoed. “Sensing victory, because they know the geography of these mountains, they will seize the Pass of Noose and wait for their comrades to drive us south through the valleys into their arms. The Gnomes will have assured them that there are only two ways out of the Wolfsktaag—through the Pass of Jade north and the Pass of Noose south. If the Dwarf army is trapped between the two, they have no chance of escape.”

Raybur nodded, worrying his upper lip and the edges of his mustache with his strong teeth. “But if they advance on us too quickly or too far...”

“They won’t,” Risca cut him short. “We won’t let them. Besides, they will not take that kind of chance. They will be cautious. They will worry that we will find a way around them if they proceed too quickly. It will be easier to let us come to them. They will wait until they see us, and then strike.”

They moved to a flat shelf of rock and sat down side by side, staring off into the interior of the mountains. The day was sunny and bright, but the Wolfsktaag, away from the entrance to the pass and deep into the valleys and ridges that crisscrossed its vast interior, was shrouded with mist.

“It is a good plan,” said Raybur finally.

“It is the best we could devise,” Risca amended. “Bremen might do better if he were here.”

“He’ll come to us soon enough,” Raybur declared softly. “And the Elves with him. Then we’ll have this invader in a place not so much to his liking.”

Risca nodded wordlessly, but he was thinking back to his encounter with Brona not so many nights earlier, remembering what he had felt when he realized the extent of the Warlock Lord’s power, remembering how the other had paralyzed him, had almost had him in his grasp. Such a monster would not be easily overcome, no matter the size or strength of the force sent against him.

This was more than a war of weapons and men; it was a war of magic. In such a war, the Dwarves were at a decided disadvantage unless Bremen’s vision of a talisman could be brought to pass.

He wondered where the old man was now. He wondered how many of his four visions were taking shape.

“The Skull Bearers will try to spy us out,” Raybur mused.

Risca pursed his lips and considered. “They will try, but the Wolfsktaag will not be friendly to them. Nor will it make any difference what they see. By the time they realize what we have done, it will be too late.”

The king shifted. “They will come for you,” he said suddenly, and looked at the Druid. “They know you are their greatest threat—their only threat besides Bremen and Tay Trefenwyd. If they kill you, we have no magic to protect us.”

Risca shrugged and smiled. “Then you had better take good care of me, my king.”

It took the Northlanders longer than Geften had estimated to launch their attack, but it was fierce when it came. The Pass of Jade was broad where it opened to the eastern Anar, then narrowed abruptly at the twin peaks that formed its entrance into the Wolfsktaag. Having determined beforehand that Dwarf resistance would be strong, the army of the Warlock Lord threw the whole of its force into the gap, intent on breaking through on the first try.

Against a less well prepared defender, they would have succeeded. But the Dwarves had held the passes of the Wolfsktaag for years against Gnome raiders and in doing so had learned a trick or two. The size of the Northland force was already negated to some extent by the narrowness of the pass and the ruggedness of the terrain. The Dwarves did not try to block the Northland charge, but assailed it from the protection of the slopes. Pits had been dug into the winding floor. Massive boulders were tumbled from above and spiked barricades swung into place. Arrows and spears rained down. Hundreds of attackers died in the first rush. The Trolls were particularly determined, huge and strong and armored against the missiles sent to kill them. But they were ponderous and slow, and many fell into the pits or were crushed by the boulders. Still they advanced.

They were stopped finally at the far end of the pass. Raybur had caused a log wall to be built at the back of a trench filled with dead wood, and on the Northlanders’ rush he had the whole of it fired.

Pressed forward by those who followed and too heavy themselves to climb free, the Trolls died where they stood, burned to the bone.

The screams and the stench of their ruined flesh filled the air, and the attack broke off.

They came again at midday, less reckless this time, and again they were beaten back. They attacked once more at nightfall. Each time the Dwarves were forced a little deeper into the pass. Positioned on both sides of the draw, Raybur and his sons directed the Dwarf defense, holding as long as they reasonably could before withdrawing, giving ground grudgingly, but judiciously, so that no more lives were lost than necessary. Raybur commanded the left flank in the company of Geften while Wyrik and Fleer commanded the right. Risca was left to choose his own ground. The Dwarves fought bravely, pressed at every turn by a force at least three times their size, seasoned from countless battles. No winged hunters or creatures of the netherworld came at them in daylight, so Risca did not waste his magic in support of their defense. The plan, after all, was not to win the battle. The plan was to lose it as slowly as possible.

Nightfall brought a break in the hostilities and a new quiet to the mountains. Mist slipped down from the higher elevations in the slow melting of the light to close about defender and attacker alike. The silence grew pervasive as vision narrowed and shortened, and small breezes, damp and cloying, slithered out of the rocks to caress and tease. There were living things in the touch of those breezes, invisible and shapeless, but as certain as midnight.

They were creatures of the Wolfsktaag, beings formed of magic as old as time and as needful as men’s souls. The Dwarves knew of them and were wary of their intent. They were forerunners of things larger and more powerful still and not to be listened to. They whispered lies and false promises, rendered dreams and treacherous visions, and to heed them in any way was to invite death. The Dwarves understood this. Knowledge was what protected them.

Not so with the Gnomes who camped opposite them at the head of the pass. The Gnomes were terrified of these mountains and the things that dwelled within. Superstitious and pagan, wary of all magic and particularly of the sort that resided here, they would have preferred to avoid the Wolfsktaag entirely. There were gods here to be prayed to and spirits to be appeased. This was sacred ground. But the power of the Warlock Lord and his dark followers frightened them even more, so they closed ranks with the more stolid and less impressionable Trolls. But they did so reluctantly and with little heart, and the Dwarves made ready to use their fear against them.

As Risca had foreseen, the Northland army mounted a new attack several hours before dawn, when darkness and brume still masked its movements. They came silently and in force, massing on the floor of the pass and along its higher slopes and ridges, intent on sweeping over the Dwarves through sheer strength of numbers. But Raybur had withdrawn his line of defense a hundred yards farther back into the pass from where the battle had ended at dusk. Between the two lines, the Dwarves had built piles of green wood and new leaves and left them ready to light. On the floor of the pass, fresh barricades and trenches had been readied, staggered at intervals between the fires. When the Northlanders reached the expected Dwarf line of defense, they found the position deserted.

Had the Dwarves abandoned the pass? Had they fallen back under cover of darkness? Momentarily confused, they hesitated, milling about as their leaders deliberated. Finally, they started forward once more. But by now the Dwarves were alerted to the attack.

Risca used his magic to light the fires that dotted the slopes and floor of the pass, and suddenly the Northlanders found themselves engulfed by a blanket of smoke that choked and blinded. Eyes tearing, throats clogging, they came doggedly on.

Then Risca sent the wraiths. He created some from magic, lured some from the mist, and sent all into the smoke to play. Things of tooth and claw, of red maw and black eye, of fears real and imagined, the wraiths closed on the gasping, half-blind Northlanders.

The Gnomes went mad, shrieking in terror. Nothing would hold them against this. They broke ranks and ran. Now the Dwarves struck, slingers, throwers, and bowmen sending their deadly missiles into the heart of the attacking force. Steadily they pushed the attackers back. The assault stalled and fell apart as men died at every turn. By dawn, the pass belonged to the Dwarves once more.

The Northlanders attacked again the next day, refusing to give up, determined to break through. Their losses were frightful, but the Dwarves were losing men as well, and they had fewer lives to spare. By midafternoon, Raybur had begun making preparations to withdraw. Two days was long enough to stand against this army. Now it was time to retreat a bit, to draw the enemy on. They waited until nightfall, until darkness had closed down about them once again. Then they fired a last trench of deadwood topped with leaves and green saplings so that the smoke would mask their movements and slipped away.

Risca stayed behind to make certain they were not followed too quickly. With a small band of Dwarf Hunters, he defended the narrowest point of the deep pass against a tentative assault before falling back with the others. Once a Skull Bearer showed itself, trying to wing beneath the layers of mist and smoke, but Risca countered with the Druid fire and flung it away.

They marched all night after that, traveling deep into the mountains. Geften led them, a veteran of countless expeditions, familiar with the canyons and defiles, ridges and drops, knowing where to go and how to get there. They avoided the dark, narrow places where the monsters dwelled, the things that had survived since ancient times and lent substance to the superstitions of the Gnomes. They kept to the high open ground where possible, sufficiently concealed by darkness and mist that they remained hidden from their pursuers. The Northland army would have scouts as well, but they would be Gnomes, and the Gnomes would be cautious. Raybur’s force moved swiftly and deliberately. When the army of the Warlock Lord found them, it would again be on ground of their choosing.

By the following day, after the Dwarves had stopped to rest for several hours at dawn and were again on the march, a messenger arrived from the smaller force that defended the Pass of Noose at the south end of the mountains. The balance of the army of the Warlock Lord had arrived, pressing inward from the lower end of the Rabb to set camp. An attack would probably be launched by nightfall. The Dwarves could hold the pass for at least a day before yielding. Raybur looked at Risca and smiled. A day would be long enough.

They let the Northland army coming down from the Pass of Jade catch up to them that afternoon, when the sun was already gone behind the peaks and the mist was beginning to creep down out of the higher elevations like vines in search of light. They waited in a canyon where the floor rose steeply through a maze of giant rocks and treacherous drops, and attacked as the Northlanders climbed out of the exposed bowl. They held their ground just long enough to frustrate the advance, then fell back once more. Darkness descended, and their pursuers were forced to halt for the night, unable to retaliate.

By dawn, the Dwarves were gone. The Northlanders pressed on, anxious to end this game of cat and mouse. But the Dwarves surprised them again at midday, this time leading them into a blind pass, then tearing at their exposed flanks as they sought to withdraw. By the time the Northlanders had recovered, the Dwarves had disappeared once more. All day it went on, a series of strikes and withdrawals, the smaller force taunting and humiliating the larger. But the south end of the mountains was drawing near, and the Northlanders, furious at their inability to close with the Dwarves, began to take heart from the fact that their quarry was running out of places to hide.

The contest had grown serious. One false step and the Dwarves would be finished. Messengers raced back and forth between those who harassed the enemy coming down out of the north and those who still held the Pass of Noose south. Timing was important. The enemy south pressed hard to claim the Pass of Noose, but the Dwarves held firm. The Pass of Noose was more easily defended and difficult to take, no matter the size of the force at either end. But the Dwarves would yield it up at dawn and fall back, slowly, deliberately, letting the Northlanders believe they had prevailed. The army of the Warlock Lord would claim the pass and then wait for their comrades to drive the overmatched and beleaguered Dwarves onto their spearpoints.

Dawn arrived, and while one army of Northlanders occupied the Pass of Noose, the other drove relentlessly south. The Dwarves, caught between, had nowhere left to run.

All that day, Raybur’s army fought to slow the southward advance. The Dwarf King used every tactic he had mastered in thirty years of Gnome warfare, hammering at the invaders when there was opportunity, creating opportunity when none presented itself. He divided his army in thirds, giving the largest of the three over to his generals to command so that they might provide an obvious target for the enemy to pursue. The two smaller companies, one commanded by himself, one by his eldest son Wyrik, became pincers that harried the Northlanders at every turn.

Working in unison, they drew the enemy first one way and then the other. When a flank was exposed by one, the second would be quick to strike. The Dwarves twisted and wound about the larger army with maddening elusiveness, refusing to be pinned down, pressing the attack at every turn.

By nightfall, they were exhausted. Worse, the Dwarves from the north had been backed up against those from the south. The two joined and became one, both having retreated as far as they could, and suddenly there was no place left for either to go. Night and mist shrouded them sufficiently that running them to ground should have been postponed until morning. But instead, the hunt went on, in large part because the Northlanders were too angry and frustrated to wait. The Pass of Noose was only a few miles farther on. The Dwarves were trapped, bereft of room to maneuver or hide, and now, finally, the Northlanders were certain that their superior force would be able to exact a long-overdue retribution.

As night descended and the brume thickened along the last few miles of the valley into which the Dwarves had withdrawn, Raybur dispatched scouts to give warning of any enemy approach. Time was running out, and they must act quickly now. Geften was called, and the first of the Dwarf defenders prepared for the escape that had been intended from the beginning. The escape would commence under cover of darkness and be finished by midnight. It marked the culmination of a plan the king had settled on with Risca when the Druid had first returned from Paranor, a plan devised from knowledge possessed only by the Dwarves. Unknown to any but them, there was a third way out of the mountains. Close to where they were gathered, not far from the more accessible Pass of Noose, there was a series of connecting defiles, tunnels, and ledges that twisted and wound east out of the Wolfsktaag into the forests of the central Anar. Geften himself had discovered this hidden passage, explored it with a handful of others, and reported it to Raybur some eight years past. It was knowledge carefully protected and kept secret. A select number of Dwarves had used the passage now and again to make sure it was kept open, memorizing its twists and turns, but no others were shown the way. Risca had learned about it from Raybur on a visit home several years ago, the Dwarf King sharing the secret with the one man who was as close to him as his sons. Risca had recalled it when the Northland army had come east, and his plan had taken shape.

Now the Dwarves set the plan in motion. Slowly they began to reduce their numbers, siphoning off their strength in a long, steady line that withdrew east into the mountains, following the escape route meticulously laid out by Geften. The Northlanders approached the head of the valley, and the scouts began to report back. Yet the most dangerous part of the scheme remained. The Northlanders must be delayed until the Dwarves were safely away. With Risca accompanying him, Raybur took a small band of twenty volunteers north. They placed themselves in a jumble of rocks that overlooked the valley’s broad passage in, and when the first of the Warlock Lord’s army appeared, they attacked.

It was a precise, momentary strike, intended only to disrupt and confuse, for the Dwarves were vastly outnumbered. They used bows from the cover of the rocks, firing their arrows just long enough to draw attention to themselves before falling back. Even so, escape was difficult. The Northlanders came after them, furious. It was dark and treacherous in the rocks, a maze of jagged edges and deep crevices, and the light, as always in the Wolfsktaag, was poor. Mist curled down out of the taller peaks, masking everything on the valley floor. More familiar with the terrain than their pursuers, the Dwarves slipped quickly through the maze, but the Northlanders were everywhere, swarming over the rocks. Some of the defenders were overtaken. Some turned the wrong way. All of these were killed. The fighting was ferocious.

Risca used his magic, sending Druid fire into the midst of the hunters, chasing them back. A handful of the netherworld grotesques hove into view, lurching mindlessly after the scrambling Dwarves, and Risca was forced to stand long enough to throw them back as well.

They nearly had him then. They closed on him from three sides, drawn by the flare of his Druid fire. Weapons flew, and dark things launched themselves at him and tried to drag him down. He fought with fury and exhilaration, alive as he could not otherwise be, a warrior in his element. He was strong and quick, and he would not he overpowered. He threw back his attackers, fought off their strikes, used the Druid magic to shield his movements, and escaped them.

Then he was at the back side of the maze and racing after the last of the Dwarves. Their force had been halved, and those who remained were bloodied and exhausted. Raybur lingered until Risca caught up, grim-faced and sweating in the faint light. The battle-axe he carried had one blade shattered and was covered in blood.

“We’ll have to hurry,” he warned, lumbering forward. “They’re almost on top of us.”

Risca nodded. Spears and arrows flew at them from out of the rocks below. They charged up the valley slope, hearing the cries of the Northlanders chase after. Another of the Dwarves went down in front of them, an arrow in his throat. There were only a handful left of the twenty who had come. Risca whirled as he sensed something sweep out of the skies and sent a bolt of fire after one of the winged hunters as it swooped hurriedly away. The mist was growing thicker now. If they could stay clear of their pursuers for a few more minutes, they would lose them.

And so they did, pushing on until they were past exhaustion and running on determination alone. Eight in all, the last of the Dwarves reached the gathering place of the others, deserted now save for Geften. Wordlessly, they hastened after the anxious Tracker as he led them into the hills and the peaks beyond.

Behind them, the Northlanders swarmed into the valley, crashing through trees and brush, howling in fury. Somewhere the Dwarves were hidden and trapped. Soon they would be found.

The hunt went on, moving farther south toward the Pass of Noose.

With luck, Risca thought, the two halves of the Warlock Lord’s army would run up against each other in the mist and dark and each would think the other was their quarry. With luck, each would kill large numbers of the other before they discovered their mistake.

He moved up into the boulders that marked the beginning of the high range. They would not be followed here, not in this darkness, and by morning they would have passed the point where their tracks could be found.

Raybur dropped back and clapped a congratulatory hand on his friend’s broad shoulder. Risca smiled at the king, but inwardly he felt cold and hard. He had measured the size of the army that hunted them. He had judged the nature of the things that commanded it. Yes, the Dwarves had escaped this time. They had tricked the Northlanders into a prolonged and futile hunt, delayed their advance, and lived to fight another day.

But it would be a day of reckoning when it came.

And it would come, Risca feared, all too soon.

Chapter Twenty

The rain was falling in Arborlon, a slow, steady downpour that draped the city in a curtain of shimmering damp and hazy rain. It was midafternoon. The rain had begun at dawn and now, more than nine hours later, showed no signs of lessening.

Jerle Shannara watched it from the seclusion of the king’s summer home, his current retreat, his present hideaway. He watched is spatter on the windowpanes, on the walkways, in the hundreds of puddles it had already formed. He watched it transform the trees of the forest, turning their trunks a silky black and their leaves a vibrant green. It seemed to him, in his despondency, that if he watched it long and hard enough, it would transform him as well.

His mood was foul. It had been so since his return to the city three days earlier. He had come home with the remnant of his battered company, with Preia Starle, Vree Erreden, and the Elvers Hunters Obann and Rusk. He had carried back the Black Elfstone and the body of Tay Trefenwyd. He had brought no joy with him and found none waiting. In his absence, Courtann Ballindarroch had died of his wounds. His son, Alyten, had assumed the throne, his first order of business to sally forth on an expedition dedicated to tracking down his father’s killers. Madness. But no one had stopped him. Jerle was disgusted. It was the act of a fool, and he was afraid that the Elves had inherited a fool for a king. Either that, or the Elves once again had no king at all. For Alyten Ballindarroch had departed Arborlon a week earlier, and there had been no word of him since.

He stood in the silence and stared out the window at the rain, at the space between the falling drops, at the grayness, at nothing at all. His gaze was empty. The summerhouse was empty as well—just him, alone in the silence with his thoughts. Not pleasant company for anyone. His thoughts haunted him. The loss of Tay was staggering, more painful than he could have imagined, deeper than he would let himself admit. Tay Trefenwyd had been his best and closest friend all his life. No matter the choices they had made, no matter the length of their occupational separations, no matter the events that had transformed their lives, that friendship had endured. That Tay had become a Druid while Jerle had become Captain of the Home Guard and then Court Advisor to the king had altered nothing. When Tay had come home from Paranor this final time, when Jerle had first seen his friend riding up the roadway to Arborlon, it was as if only a few moments had passed since last they had parted, as if time meant nothing. Now Tay was gone, his life given so that his friends and companions could live, so that the Black Elfstone could be brought safely to Arborlon.

The Black Elfstone. The killing weapon. A dark rage surged through Jerle Shannara as he thought of the cursed talisman. The cost of keeping the Elfstone had been his friend’s life, and he still had no concept of its purpose. For what use was it intended? What use, that he could measure its worth against the loss of his dearest friend?

He had no answer. He had done what he must. He had carried the Elfstone back to Arborlon, keeping it from falling into the hands of the Warlock Lord, thinking all the way that it would be better if he were to rid himself of the magic, if he were to drop it down the deepest, darkest crevice he could find. He might have done so if he had been alone, so intense was his anger and frustration at the loss of Tay. But Preia and Vree Erreden accompanied him, and the care of the Stone had been given over to them as well.

So he had carried it home as Tay had wanted, prepared to relinquish all claim to it the moment he arrived.

But fate worked against him in this as well. Courtann Ballindarroch was dead, and his successor son was off on a fool’s mission.

To whom, then, should he give the Elfstone? Not to the Elven High Council, a clutch of ineffectual, bickering old men who lacked foresight and reason, and were concerned mostly with protecting themselves now that Courtann was dead. Not to Alyten, who was absent in any case—the Elfstone had never been intended for him. Bremen then, but the Druid had not yet arrived in Arborlon—if he was to arrive at all.

So on Preia’s advice and with Vree Erreden’s concurrence, these two the only ones he could consult on the matter, he hid the Black Elfstone deep in the catacombs of the palace cellars, down where no one could ever find it without his help, away from the prying eyes and curious minds that might attempt to unlock its power. Jerle, Preia, and the local understood the danger of the Elfstone as no other could. They had seen what the Elfstone’s dark magic could do. They had witnessed firsthand the extent of its power. All those men, human and inhuman alike, burned to ash in the blink of an eye. Tay Trefenwyd, ruined by the backlash despite his Druid defenses. Such power was anathema. Such power was black and witless and should be locked away forever.

I hope it was worth your life, Tay, Jerle Shannara thought bleakly. But I cannot conceive that it was.

The chill of the rain worked through him, causing his bones to ache. The fire, the sole source of heat for the large gathering room, was dying in the hearth behind him, and he walked over to add a few more logs. He stared down into the rising flames when he had done so, wondering at the vagaries of circumstance and fate. So much had been lost these past few weeks. What purpose had these losses served? Where would it all culminate? In what cause? Jerle shook his head and brushed back his blond hair. Philosophical questions only confused him. He was a warrior, and what he understood best was what he could strike out against. Where was the hard substance of this matter to be found? Where was its flesh and blood? He felt ruined, battered without and empty within. The rain and the gray suited him. He was come back to nothing, to no purpose, to no recognizable future, to great loss and pain.

On the day of his return, he had gone to Tay’s parents and Kira to tell them of his death. He would have it no other way. Tay’s parents, old and easily confused, had accepted the news stoically and with few tears, seeing with the approach of the end of their own lives the inevitability and capriciousness of death. But Kira had been devastated. She had hung on Jerle as she cried, clutching him in desperation, seeking strength he did not have to give. He held her thinking she was as lost to him as her brother. She clung to him, a crumpled bit of flesh and bone and cloth, as light as air and as insubstantial, sobbing and shaking, and he thought in that moment that their grief for Tay was all they would ever share again.

He turned from the fire and stared out the window once more. Gray and damp, the day wore on, and nothing of its passing gave hope.

The front door opened and closed, a cloak was removed and hung, and Preia Starle walked into the room. Dampness glistened on her face and hands, on the smooth, brown skin still marred by the cuts and bruises of their journey to the Breakline. She brushed at the water that beaded on her curly, cinnamon hair, flicking it away. Honey-brown eyes studied him, as if surprised by what they saw.

“They want to make you king,” she declared quietly.

He stared at her. “Who?”

“All of them. The High Council, the king’s advisors, the people on the streets, the Home Guard, the army, everyone.” She smiled wanly. “You are their only hope, they say. Alyten is too unreliable, too reckless for the job. He has no experience. He has no skills. It doesn’t matter that he is already king, they want him gone.”

“But two grandchildren survive after him! What of them?”

“Babies, barely grown old enough to walk. Besides, the Elven people don’t want children sitting on the Ballindarroch throne. They want you.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “They haven’t the right to make that decision. No one has.”

“You do,” she said.

She crossed to the fire, her slim, supple body catlike in the near gloom, all grace and efficiency. Jerle marveled at the ease with which she moved. He marveled at her composure. He was awed by the depth of her strength, even now, in the face of all that had happened. She stood before the fire, rubbing her hands to warm them. After a moment she stopped and just stared.

“I heard his voice today,” she said. “On the streets. Tay’s voice. He was calling after me, speaking my name. I heard it clearly. I turned, so eager to find him I collided with a man following me. I pushed past him, ignoring what he said, looking for Tay.“ She shook her head slowly. ”But he wasn’t there. I only imagined it.”

Her voice died away in a whisper. She did not turn.

“I still can’t believe he’s gone,” Jerle said after a moment. “I keep thinking that it’s a mistake, that he’s out there and any moment he will walk through the door.”

He looked off into the shadows of the front entry. “I don’t want to be king. I want Tay to be alive again. want everything back the way it was.”

She nodded wordlessly and watched the fire some more. They could hear the patter of the rain on the roof and against the window glass. They could hear the whisper of the wind.

Then Preia turned and walked over to him. She stood before him, motionless. He could not read the look she gave him. It was filled with so many emotions that it lacked definition. “Do you love me?” she asked directly, staring into his eyes.

He was so surprised by the question, so caught off guard that he could not manage an answer. He just stared at her, openmouthed.

She smiled, laying claim to something that had eluded him. Her eyes filled with tears. “Did you know that Tay was in love with me?”

He shook his head slowly, stunned. “No.”

“For as long as I can remember.” She paused. “Just as you’ve always been in love with Kira.” She reached up quickly and put a finger to his lips. “No, let me finish. This needs to be said. Tay was in love with me, but he would never have done anything about it He wouldn’t even speak of it. His sense of loyalty to you was so strong that he couldn’t make himself. He knew I was pledged to you, and even though he was uncertain of your own feelings, he did nothing to interfere. He believed that you loved me and would marry me, and he would not jeopardize his relationship with either of us to change that. He knew of Kira, but he knew as well that she was not right for you—even when you did not.”

She came a step closer. The tears were beginning to run down her cheeks now, but she ignored them. “That was a side of Tay Trefenwyd you never saw. You didn’t see it because you didn’t look. He was a complex man, just as you are. Neither of you understood the other as clearly as you thought. You were each the shadow of the other, but as different in some ways as the shadow is from the flesh. I know that difference. I have always known.”

She swallowed. “Now you have to face up to it as well. And to what it means to be alive when your shadow is dead. Tay is gone, Jerle. We remain. What is to become of us? We have to decide. Tay loved me, but he is dead. Do you love me as well? Do you love me as strongly? Or will Kira always be between us?”

“Kira is married,” he said softly, his voice breaking.

“Kira is alive. Life breeds hope. If you want her badly enough, perhaps you can find a way to have her. But you cannot have both of us. I have lost one of the two most important men in my life. I lost him without ever taking time to speak with him as I am speaking with you. I will not let that happen a second time.”

She paused, uncomfortable with what she was about to say, but refusing to look away. “I am going to tell you something. If Tay had asked me to choose between you, I might have chosen him.”

There was an endless silence between them. Their eyes locked and held. They stood in the center of the room, motionless. The fire in the hearth crackled softly and the rain beat down. The shadows in the room had begun to lengthen with the approach of nightfall.

“I do not want to lose you,” Jerle said quietly.

Preia did not respond. She was waiting to hear more.

“I did love Kira once,” he admitted. “I love her still, I suppose. But it’s not the same as it was. I know I have lost her, and I no longer mourn that loss. I haven’t for years. I care for her. I think of her when I think of Tay and our childhood. She was part of that, and I would be foolish if I tried to pretend that it was otherwise.”

He took a deep breath. “You asked me if I loved you. I do. I haven’t really thought about it in any deliberate way—I just always accepted it. I suppose I believed that you would always be there and so dismissed any further consideration as unnecessary. Why examine something that was so obvious? There seemed no need to do so. But I was wrong. I see that. I took you for granted without even realizing it. I thought that what we shared was sufficient as it was. I didn’t allow for change or doubts or complacency.

“But I have lost Tay and a large part of myself with him. I have lost direction and purpose. I am come to the end of a road I have traveled for a long time and find no way to turn. When you ask if I love you, I am faced with the fact that loving you is perhaps all I have left. It is no small thing, no consolation to measure against my pain. It is much more than that. I feel foolish saying this. It is the one real truth I can acknowledge. It means more than anything else in my life. Tay let me discover this by dying. It is a high cost to pay, but there it is.”

His big hands reached out and fastened gently on her shoulders.

“I do love you, Preia.”

“Do you?” she asked quietly.

He felt a vast distance open between them as she spoke the words. He felt an immense weight settle on his shoulders. He stood awkwardly in front of her, unable to think of what else he could do. His size and strength had always been a source of reassurance, but with Preia they seemed to work against him.

“Yes, Preia,” he said finally. “I do. I love you as much as I have ever loved anyone. I don’t know what else to say. This, I guess—that I hope you still love me.”

She said nothing even then, standing there motionless before him, looking into his eyes. The tears had stopped, but her face was streaked and damp. A tiny smile lifted the comers of her mouth. “I have never stopped loving you,” she whispered.

She stepped forward into his arms and let him hold her. After a while, she held him back.

They were sitting together before the fire when Vree Erreden appeared several hours later. It was dark by then, the last of the daylight faded, the rain lessened to a drizzle that fell without sound on the already drenched woodlands. A silence had fallen across the weary city, and lights had begun to appear in the windows of buildings barely glimpsed through gaps in the sagging, water-laden boughs of the trees. No one lived in the palace now, the building empty while repairs were made and a ruler determined, and only the summerhouse saw life within the grounds.

Even so, the Home Guard watched over Jerle Shannara, come to protect one of their own as much as to protect a member of the royal family and a rumored king-to-be.

The Guard stopped Vree Erreden three times before he reached the door to the summerhouse, letting him pass then only because Jerle had made certain that the locat was to be given free access to him at all times. It was strange how their relationship had changed.

They had little in common, and Tay’s death might easily have ended any pretense at friendship between them, for the Druid Elf was the source of any bonding they had forged on their journey west. With Tay dead, they might have drifted apart again, each suspicious and disdainful of the other, each drawing back into himself.

But that had not happened. Perhaps it was their unspoken, individual resolve that it should not happen, that they owed Tay this much. Perhaps it was a common need that bound them, a need to understand the terrible events of their journey, a need to make something good come out of their friend’s death. Tay had sacrificed himself for them—shouldn’t they put aside their differences for his sake? They talked of many things on their return—of what their friend had done, of the importance he attached to carrying out Bremen’s charge, of the deadly nature of the Black Elfstone, of its place in the greater scheme of things, of the darkening shadow of the Warlock Lord hanging over them all. With Preia Starle, they talked of what Tay had hoped to accomplish and how they must see that his goals were realized—to see that the Black Elfstone reached Bremen and that the Elven army was dispatched in aid of the Dwarves. Their thoughts were not of themselves, but of the greater world and the danger that threatened it.

Two nights out of Arborlon on their return from the Breakline, Jerle asked the locat if he would reveal to him any visions or whisperings hereafter that might affect what they had agreed to try to accomplish. It was not easy for him to ask, and Vree Erreden knew it. The locat said, after a few moments’ reflection, that he would—that he would do anything in his power to help. He would like, in fact, to offer his services to Jerle personally, if the other thought he might have use of them. Jerle accepted the offer. They shook hands to seal their arrangement and, though they would not say so, the beginnings of their friendship.

So here was the locat come for the first time in two days, stepping in out of the rain like a beaten creature, his worn cloak soaked clear through, his small, thin form hunched and shivering. Preia met him at the door, took his cloak away and led him to the fire so that he might warm himself. Jerle poured a measure of strong ale and gave it to him. Preia wrapped him in a blanket. Vree Erreden accepted all with muttered thanks and furtive looks. His eyes were intense. He had come to them for a reason.

“I have something to tell you,” he said to Jerle after the chill had left him sufficiently that he could speak without shaking. “I have had a vision, and it involves you.”

Jerle nodded. “What have you seen?”

The locat rubbed his hands together, then drank some of the ale, a few sips only. His face was pinched and his eyes deep-set and hollow, as if he hadn’t been sleeping well. But he had looked haunted ever since their return from the Breakline. The events in the Chew Magna had devastated his psyche. The fortress and its occupants had attacked him mercilessly, tried to crush him so that he would be of no use to Tay Trefenwyd, whom they had intended for their own. They had failed, but the damage to the locat from their attack was evident.

“When Tay first came to me to solicit my help in his search for the Black Elfstone, I used my skills to look into his mind.” Vree Erreden shifted suddenly to face the other, his gaze unexpectedly steady. “It was a way to discover quickly and accurately what it was that he believed I might find. I did not tell him what I was doing; I did not want him to shade any truths that he possessed.

“What I discovered was more than what I sought. He had been told by the Druid Bremen of four visions. One was of the Chew Magna and the Black Elfstone. This was the one that I was supposed to see. But I saw the others as well. I saw the destruction at Paranor as Bremen searched for a medallion that hung from a chain. I saw the Druid again at a dark lake...”

He trailed off, then brushed aside what he was about to say with a quick, anxious wave of his hand. “Never mind either of those. It is the last that matters.”

He paused, distracted. “I have heard talk. The Elves would make you king. They would be done with Alyten and the grandchildren and crown you.”

“Just talk, nothing more,” Jerle interjected quickly.

Vree Erreden folded into himself beneath his robes. “I don’t think so.” He let the words hang.

Preia edged forward beside Jerle. “What have you seen, Vree? Is Alyten Ballindarroch dead?”

The locat shook his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t shown that. I was shown something else. But it impacts on the matter of kingship.” He took a deep breath. “The vision, Bremen’s last, that I glimpsed within Tay’s memory, was of a man standing on a battlefield armed with a sword. The sword was a talisman, a powerful magic. The Eilt Drain’s image of a hand holding forth a burning torch was graven on the pommel of the sword, clearly revealed. Across from the man was a wraith cloaked all in black, featureless and impenetrable save for eyes that were pinpricks of red fire. The man and the wraith were engaged in mortal combat.”

He sipped again at his ale, and now his gaze dropped away. “I only had a single glimpse of this vision, and I did not pay it much mind. It was not important then. It gave credence to the rest of what Tay told me of his quest, nothing more. I had not really thought about it again until now.”

The dark eyes lifted. “Today, I read my maps before the fire. The warmth of the flames and the rain falling outside in steady cadence caused me to doze, and as I slept I had a vision. It was sudden, intense, and unexpected. This is unusual, because mostly the visions, the hunches, the indicators of what is lost and might be found, are slower and more gentle in their coming. But this vision was sharp, and I recognized it immediately. It was Bremen’s vision of the man and the wraith on the battlefield. But this time I knew them. The wraith was the Warlock Lord. The man, Jerle Shannara, was you.”

Jerle wanted to laugh. For some reason, this struck him as ridiculous. Perhaps it was the impossibility of the idea. Perhaps it was his inability to believe that Tay had not recognized him in the vision, yet Vree Erreden had. Perhaps it was simply a reaction to the twinge of misgiving he felt on hearing the local’s words, “There is more.” The locat did not give him time to think. “The sword you carried bore the emblem of the medallion that Bremen carried in the vision of Paranor destroyed. The medallion is called the Eilt Drum. It is the symbol of office of the High Druids of Paranor. Its magic is very powerful. The sword was the weapon forged to destroy Brona, and the Eilt Drain was made a part of that weapon. No one told me these things, you understand. No one said they were so. I simply knew them to be true. Just as I knew, seeing you standing on that battlefield for that single moment in time, that you had become King of the Elves.”

“No.” Jerle shook his head stubbornly. “You are mistaken.”

The locat faced him and did not look away.

“Did you see my face?”

“I did not need to see your face,” Vree Erreden declared softly. “Or hear your voice. Or look about to see if others followed you as they would their king. It was you.”

“Then the vision itself is false. It must be!” Jerle looked to Preia for help, but her response to his gaze was deliberate silence. His fists knotted angrily. “I do not want any part of this!”

No one spoke. The fire crackled softly, and the night was deep and still, as if listening covertly to what was taking place, an eavesdropper waiting to see what would happen. Jerle rose and walked to the window. He stood looking out at the trees and the mist. He tried to will himself to disappear. “If I were to let them make me king...”

He did not finish. Preia rose and stood looking across the room at him. “It would give you a chance to accomplish the things Tay Trefenwyd could not. If you were king, you could persuade the High Council to send the Elves to give aid to the Dwarves. If you were king, you could dispose of the Black Elfstone at a time and place of your own choosing and not be answerable to any. Most important of all, you would have an opportunity to destroy the Warlock Lord.”

Jerle Shannara’s head snapped around quickly. “The Warlock Lord destroyed the Druids. What chance would I have against a thing so monstrous?”

“A better chance than anyone else I can think of,” she answered at once. “The vision has been shown twice now, once to Bremen, once to Vree. Perhaps it is prophetic. If so, then you have a chance to do something that not even Tay could do.You have a chance to save us all.”

He stared at her. She was telling him she believed he would be king. She was saying that he must. She was asking him to agree with her.

“She is right,” Vree Erreden said softly.

But Jerle wasn’t listening to him. He continued to stare at Preia, thinking back to several hours earlier when she had demanded that he make his choice on a different matter. How much do I mean to you? How important am I? Now she was asking the questions again, the words altered only slightly. How much do your people mean to you? How important are they to you? He was aware of a sudden, precipitous shift in both the nature of their relationship and the direction of his life, both brought about by Tay Trefenwyd’s death. Events he would never have dreamed possible had conspired to create this shift. Fate of a willful and deliberate sort had settled her hands squarely on his shoulders. Responsibility, leadership, and the hopes of his people—all hung in the balance of the decision demanded of him.

His mind raced in search of answers that would not come. But he knew, with a certainty that was terrifying, that whatever choice he made, it would haunt him always.

“You must stand and face this,” Preia said suddenly. “You must decide.”

He felt as if the world was spinning out of control. She asked too much of him. There was not yet need to decide anything. Any present need was fueled by rumors and speculation. No formal overture had been made concerning the kingship. Alyten’s fate was not determined. What of Courtann Ballindarroch’s grandchildren? Tay Trefenwyd himself had saved their lives. Were they to be cast aside without a thought? His own mind was not made up on any of this. He could barely conceive of what he was being asked to consider.

But his thoughts had a hollow and ill-considered ring to them, and in the silence of their aftermath he found himself face-to-face with the grinning specter of his own desperation.

He turned away from the two who waited for him to speak and looked out the window into the night.

No answer would come.

Chapter Twenty-One

It was sunset, and the city of Dechtera was bathed in blood-red light. The city sprawled across a plain between low-lying hills that ran north and south, the buildings a ragged, uneven jumble of walls and roofs silhouetted against the crimson horizon. Darkness crept out of the eastern grasslands, pushing back against the stain of the dying light, swallowing up the land in its black maw. The sun had settled behind a low bank of clouds, turning both sky and land first orange and then red, painting with vibrant, breathtaking colors, a defiant parting gesture as the day came to its reluctant close.

Standing east with Bremen and Mareth where the darkness already commanded the low heights and the plains below were beginning to streak with shadows, Kinson Ravenlock stared wordlessly down at the destination they had traveled so far to find.

Dechtera was an industrial city, easily reached from the other major Southland cities, set close to the mines that served its needs.

It was large, far larger than any city that lay north, any of the border cities, any of the Dwarf or Elven cities, and any but the greatest of the Troll cities. There were people and homes and shops in Dechtera, but mostly there were the furnaces. They burned without ceasing, grouped in clusters throughout the city, defined in daylight by the plumes of thick smoke that rose from their stacks and at night by the bright, hot glow of their open mouths. They drank greedily of the wood and coal that fed the firings of the ores that passed into their bellies to be melted down and shaped. The hammers and anvils of the smiths clanged and sparked at all hours, and Dechtera was a city of never-ending color and sound. Smoke and heat, ash and grit filled the air and coated the buildings and the people. Amid the cities of the Southland, Dechtera was a grime-encrusted member of a family that needed more than wanted her, put up with more than embraced her, and never once thought to view her with anything approaching pride or hope.

It was an unlikely choice for the forging of their talisman, thought Kinson Ravenlock once more, for it was a city that cared nothing for imagination, a city that survived by toil and rote, a city notoriously inhospitable to Druids and magic alike. Yet it was here, Bremen had countered when the Borderman had first mentioned his concerns some days ago, that the man they needed would be found.

Whoever he was, Kinson amended, because although the Druid had been willing enough to tell them where they were going, he hadn’t been willing to tell them who they were going to see.

It had taken them almost two weeks to complete their journey.

Cogline had given Bremen the formula for the mixing of the metal alloy to be used in the forging of the sword that would be carried in battle against the Warlock Lord. Cogline had remained recalcitrant and skeptical to the moment of their parting, bidding farewell with the firm assurance that he expected never to see any of them again. They had accepted his dismissal with weary resignation, departing Hearthstone for Storlock, retracing their steps through Darklin Reach. That portion of their trek alone had taken them almost a week. Upon their arrival back in Storlock, they had secured horses and ridden out onto the plains. The Northland army had passed south by then, engaged in its hunt for the Dwarves in the Wolfsktaag. Nevertheless, Bremen was wary of those forces still deployed outside the Anar and took his companions all the way to the Mountains of Runne and then south along the shores of the Rainbow Lake. That far west of the Anar, he believed, they had less chance of encountering those who served the Warlock Lord. They passed down across the Silver River and skirted the Mist Marsh before passing onto the Battlemound. Travel was slow and cautious, for this was dangerous country even without the added presence of the creatures that served Brona, and there was no point in taking unnecessary chances. There were things born of old magic living in the Battlemound, things akin to those that resided in the Wolfsktaag, and while Bremen knew of them and of the ways in which they could be combated, the better choice was to avoid them altogether.

So the trio rode south along a line that angled between the barren stretches of the Battlemound, with its Sirens and wights, and the dark depths of the Black Oaks with its wolf packs. They traveled by day and kept close watch over one another by night.

They sensed, rather than saw, the things they wished to avoid, things both native and foreign, things of land, water, and air alike, aware of the eyes that followed after them, feeling more than once a presence pass close by. But nothing challenged them outright or made any attempt to track them, and so they eased past the dangers of the Borderlands and moved steadily on.

So that now, at the close of the thirteenth day of this most recent leg of their odyssey, they stood looking down at the red welter of Dechtera’s industrial nightmare.

“I hate this city already,” Kinson offered glumly, brushing the dust from his clothes. The land about them was barren and dry, empty of trees and shade, thick with long grass and loose silt. If it rained in this part of the world, it did not do so regularly.

“I would not want to live in such a place,” Mareth agreed. “I cannot imagine those who do.”

Bremen said nothing. He stood looking down at Dechtera, his gaze more distant than the city itself. Then he closed his eyes and went still. Kinson and Mareth glanced at each other, waiting him out, letting him be. Below, the mouths of the furnaces glowed in white-hot spots amid the gathering dark. The red wash of the sunset had died away, the sun gone down below the horizon far enough that its light was just a dim streak barely visible through the clouds west. A silence had settled across the plains, and in its hush could be heard the hammering of metal on metal.

“We are here,” Bremen said suddenly, his eyes open once more, “because Dechtera is home to the finest smiths in the Four Lands outside the Troll nation. The Southlanders have no use for the Druids, but they are more likely to provide us with what we require than the Trolls. All we need do is find the right man. Kinson, that will be your task. You will be able to pass through the city freely and without attracting attention.”

“Fair enough,” Kinson agreed, anxious to get on with matters. “Who is it I seek?”

“That will be up to you to decide.”

“Up to me?” Kinson was astounded. “We came all this way to find a man we don’t even know?”

Bremen smiled indulgently. “Patience, Kinson. And have faith. We did not come here blindly or without reason. The man we seek is here, known to us or not. As I said, the best smiths in the Four Lands reside in Dechtera. But we must choose among them and choose wisely. It will take some investigating. Your Tracker skills should serve you well.”

“What exactly am I looking for in this man?” Kinson pressed; he was irritated by his own uncertainty.

“What you would look for in any other man—plus skill, knowledge, and pride of workmanship in his trade. A master smith.”

Bremen put one frail hand on the big man’s shoulder. “Did you really have to ask me that?”

Kinson grimaced. Standing to one side, Mareth smiled faintly.

“What do I do when I’ve found this master smith?”

“Return here for me. Then we will go down together to persuade him to our cause.”

Kinson looked back at the city, at its maze of dark buildings and scattered fires, at the mix of black shadows and crimson glare. The workday had become the work night, and there was no dimming of the furnaces or slowing of the labor. The swelter of heat and body sweat hung above the city in a damp shimmer.

“A smith who understands the concept of mixing ores to make stronger alloys and of tempering metals to gain that strength.”

Kinson shook his head. “Not to mention a smith who thinks it is all right to help the Druids forge a weapon of magic.”

Bremen tightened his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Do not be overly concerned with our smith’s beliefs. Look for the other qualities instead. Find the master we seek—leave the rest to me.”

Kinson nodded. He looked at Mareth, at the huge, dark eyes staring back into his. “What of you?”

“Mareth and I will wait here for your return. You will do better alone. You will be able to move more freely if not burdened by the presence of companions.” Bremen took his hand from the Borderman’s shoulder. “But be careful, Kinson. These are your countrymen, but they are not necessarily your friends.”

Kinson stripped off his pack, checked his weapons, and wrapped his cloak carefully about his shoulders. “I know that.”

He clasped the old man’s hand and held it. Bird bones, more fragile than he remembered. He released his grip quickly.

Then, so impulsively he could not later decipher his reasoning, he bent to Mareth, kissed her lightly on the cheek, turned, and set off down the slope of the night-draped hill for the city.

His journey in took him more than an hour. He did not set a hurried pace, but walked slowly and easily across the flats that led in.

There was no reason to rush, and should anyone be watching he did not want to call attention to himself. He worked his way steadily out of the darkness and into the light, feeling the temperature of the air rise as he neared the buildings, hearing the sounds of hammer and tongs on metal grow louder and more intense. Voices rose, a cacophony that signaled the presence of ale houses, taverns, inns, and brothels amid the great furnaces and warehouses.

Laughter rose out of the grunts and swearing, out of the clamor and din, and the mix of work and pleasure was pervasive and incongruous. No separation of life’s functions in this city, the Borderman decided. No separation of any sort.

He thought briefly of Mareth, of that quiet way she had of looking at him—as if she was studying him in ways he could not understand, as if she was measuring him for something. Strangely enough, it did not bother him. There was reassurance to be found in her gaze, a comfort to be taken from having her want to know him better. That had never happened before, not even with Bremen. But Mareth was different. They had grown close in the past two weeks, in the time they had traveled south to Dechtera.

They had talked not of the present, but of the past, of when they were young and of what growing up had meant for them. They had told their separate stories and begun to discover they shared much in common. The sharing was not of events or of experiences so much as of insights. They had learned the same lessons in their lives and arrived at the same conclusions. Their view of the world was similar. They were content with who and what they were, accepting that they were different from others. They were content to live alone, to travel, to explore what was unknown, to discover what was new. They had given up their family ties long ago. They had shed their civilized skin and taken on the wanderer’s cloak.

They saw themselves as outcasts by choice and accepted that it was all right to be so.

But most important of all was their mutual willingness to allow themselves to keep what secrets they would and to reveal them as they chose. It meant more to Mareth, perhaps, than to Kinson, for she was the more closely guarded of the two and the one to whom privacy meant the most. She had harbored secrets from the beginning, and Kinson felt certain that despite her recent revelations she harbored them still. But he did not sense bad intent in this, and he believed strongly that everyone had the right to wrestle their personal demons without interference from others. Mareth was risking as much as they in coming with them. She had taken a gamble in allying herself with them when it would have been just as easy to go her own way. Perhaps Bremen would be able to help her with her magic and perhaps not—there was no guarantee. She had to know this. After all, he had barely mentioned the matter since leaving Hearthstone, and Mareth had not sought to press him.

In any event, they had drawn closer as a result of their confidences, their bonds forged selectively and with care, and now each possessed insight to help determine how best to measure the other’s words and actions. Kinson liked that.

Yet there remained a distance between them that he could not close, a separateness that no words could transcend or actions breach. It was Mareth’s choice to enforce this condition, and while it was not just Kinson whom she kept at arm’s length it sometimes felt so to him when measured against the closeness they had otherwise achieved. Mareth’s reasons, while unknown, seemed weighted by habit and fear. There was something within her that demanded she stay isolated from others, some flaw, some defect, or perhaps some secret more frightening than anything he might imagine. Now and again, he would sense her trying to break past her self-imposed prison with some small word or act. But she could not seem to manage it. Lines had been drawn in the sand, a box for her to stand inside, and she could not make herself step out.

That was why he felt some satisfaction now, he supposed, from surprising her as he had with that kiss, an act so unexpected that for one brief moment it had breached her defenses. He recalled the look on her face as he drew away. He recalled how her arms had wrapped protectively about her small body.

He smiled to himself as he walked, Dechtera drawing close now, its separate parts coming into focus—the walls and roofs of individual buildings, the lights shining out of windows and doorways, the alleys prowled by rats and the streets roamed by homeless, the working men and women moving through the screen of ash and heat in pursuit of their goals. He put his thoughts of Mareth aside, no longer able to dwell on them, the task that lay ahead demanding his full attention. There would be time for Mareth later. He let the image of her eyes linger before him a moment more, then brushed it away.

He walked into the city along one of several main streets, taking time to study the buildings and the people crowded around him.

He was in a working district, amid a cluster of warehouses and storage sheds. Flat carts pulled by donkeys hauled pieces of metal scrap for melting and reshaping at the furnaces. He scanned the rusted, broken buildings, a neglected, mostly dilapidated collection, and then moved on. He passed through a section of smaller forges manned by single smiths, the tools and molds rudimentary, the firings meant for simple tasks, and did not slow. He passed slag heaps and scrap piles, stacks of old building timbers and rows of abandoned buildings. Smells rose out of the gutters and refuse, rank and pervasive. Kinson shied away. Shadows flickered and jumped in the glare of the furnace fires and street lamps, small creatures darting momentarily from hiding places and then disappearing back again. The men who passed him were bent and worn, laborers all their lives, trudging from payday to payday until death laid claim to their souls. Few eyes even bothered to look up as he passed. No one spoke.

He went down into the center of the city, the evening close and sluggish with heat, the hour edging toward midnight. He glanced through the doors and windows of the ale houses and taverns, debating whether he should enter. He did finally, choosing one or two that suited his purpose, staying long enough to listen to the talk, to ask a question or two, to buy a glass when it was called for, then moving on. Who did the finest metalwork in all the city? he would ask. Which of the smiths was master of his craft? The choices differed each time, and the reasons supporting the choices differed even more. Using the names he had heard mentioned more than once, Kinson stopped at a handful of midsize forges to test them on the smiths at work there. Some responded with little more than grunts of disinterest. Some had more voluble opinions to offer. One or two gave a thoughtful response. Kinson listened, smiled agreeably, and moved on.

Midnight came and went.

“He will not be back tonight,” Bremen said, looking down at the city from the hills, his cloak wrapped tightly about his spare form in spite of the heat.

Mareth stood next to him in silence. They had watched the Borderman until he could no longer be seen, a diminishing figure melting away in the gathering dark. Even then, they had not moved, continuing their vigil as if sentinels posted against the coming of the night. Overhead the skies brightened with stars and a quarter-moon, visible from the heights, but not from the smokeshrouded city below.

Bremen turned away, walked a few steps to his left, and settled himself in a patch of soft, thick grass. Comfort for his aging bones.

He sighed contentedly. It took less and less to satisfy him, he found. He thought to eat, but realized he wasn’t really hungry. He looked up as Mareth came over to join him, seating herself unbidden, looking off into the dark as if something waited for her there.

“Would you like to eat?” he asked her, but she shook her head.

Lost in her thoughts, gone back into the past again or perhaps speculating on the future—he had learned to recognize the look.

More often somewhere other than where she was, possessed of a restless spirit and a dissatisfied heart, that was Mareth.

He left her alone for a time, gathering his own thoughts, not wanting to rush what he intended. It was a delicate matter, and if she felt she was being coerced, she would close herself off from him completely. Yet there must be a resolution, and it must come now.

“On nights like these, I think of my boyhood,” he said finally, looking not at her, but at the summit of the hills and the stars that hung above them. He smiled. “Oh, I suppose it seems as if someone as old as I am could not ever have been young. But I was. I lived in the hill country below Leah with my grandfather, who was a metalworker of great skill. Even when he was old, his hands were steady and his eye keen. I would watch him for hours, amazed at his dexterity and patience. He loved my grandmother, and when she died, he said she took a part of him with her that he could never have back again, but that the loss was worth it for the time they had shared. He said I had been given him in her place. He was a fine man.”

He looked at Mareth now and found her looking back, interested. “But my parents were another matter. They were nothing like my grandfather. They were never able to settle in one spot for long, not ever in their short lives, and nothing of my grandfather’s dedication to his craft ever took root in them. They were always moving about, changing their lives, looking for something new, something different. They left me with my grandfather shortly after I was born. They had no time for me.”

His aged brow wrinkled thoughtfully. “I resented it for many years, but eventually I came to understand. That’s how it is with parents and children. Each disappoints the other in ways that neither recognizes nor intends, and it takes time to overcome that disappointment. It was so with my parents and their decision to leave me.”

“But you have a right to expect your parents to stay with you through your childhood,” Mareth declared.

Bremen smiled. “I used to believe that. But a child doesn’t always understand the complexities of adult choices. A child’s best hope in life is that its parents will try to do what is best for it, but deciding what is best is a difficult process. My parents knew I would not grow well traveling with them, for they were not able to give me the attention I needed. They could barely give it to each other. So they left me with my grandfather, who loved me and watched over me as they could not. It was the right choice.”

She mulled it over for a moment. “But it marked you.”

He nodded. “For a time, but not in any lasting way. Perhaps it even helped toughen me. I don’t pretend to know. We grow as best we can under the circumstances given us. What good does it do to second-guess ourselves years after the fact? Better that we simply try to understand why we are as we are and then better ourselves by learning from that.”

There was a long silence as they faced each other, the expressions on their faces lit well enough by the light of stars and moon to be clearly discernible.

“You are talking about me, aren’t you?” Mareth said finally. “My parents, my family.”

Bremen did not let his expression change. “You do not disappoint me, Mareth,” he said softly. “Your insight serves you well.”

Her small features hardened. “I do resent my parents. They left me to grow up with strangers. It wasn’t my mother’s fault; she died giving birth to me. I don’t know about my father. Perhaps it wasn’t his fault either.” She shook her head. “But that doesn’t change how I feel about them. It doesn’t make me feel any better about being left.”

Bremen eased forward, needing to shift his body to avoid cramping of muscles and joints. The aches and pains were more frequent and less easily dispelled these days. The very opposite of his hunger, he thought with irony. Welcome to old age. Even the Druid Sleep was losing its power to sustain him.

His eyes sought hers. “I would guess that you have reason to be angry with your parents beyond what you have told me. I would guess that your anger is a weight about your heart, a great stone you cannot dislodge. Long ago, it defined the boundaries of your life. It set you on your journey to Paranor. It brought you to me.”

He waited, letting the impact of his words sink in, letting her see what was in his eyes. He wanted her to decide that he was not the enemy she sought, for seek her enemy she did. He wanted her to accept that he might be her friend if she would let him. He wanted her to confide in him, to reveal at last the truth she kept so carefully hidden.

“You know,” she replied softly.

He shook his head. “No. I only guess, nothing more.” He smiled wearily. “But I would like to know. I would like to offer some comfort to you if I could.”

“Comfort.” She said the word in a dull, hopeless way.

“You came to me to discover the truth about yourself, Mareth,” he continued gently. “You may not have thought of it that way, but that is what you did. You came to seek help with your magic, with a power you can neither rid yourself of nor live without. It is an awesome, terrible burden, but no worse than the burden of the truth you hide. I can feel its weight from here, child. You wear it like chains wrapped about your body.”

“You do know,” she whispered insistently. Her dark eyes were huge and staring.

“Listen to me. Your burdens are inextricably bound together, the truth you hide and the magic you fear. I have learned that much in traveling with you, in watching you, in hearing of your concerns. If you would rid yourself of the magic’s hold, you must first address the truth you have hidden in your heart. Of your parents.

Of your birth. Of who and what you are. Tell me, Mareth.”

She shook her head dully, her gaze falling away from his, her arms coming about her small body as if to ward it from a chill.

“Tell me,“ he pressed.

She swallowed back the advent of her tears, fought down her sudden shaking, and lifted her face to the starlight.

Then slowly, tremulously, she began to speak.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“I’m not afraid of you” was the first thing she said to him. The words came in a rush, as if by speaking them she might tap it a hidden reservoir of strength. “You might think so after hearing what I have to say, but you would be wrong. I am not afraid of anyone.”

Bremen was surprised by her declaration, but he did not let it show. “I make no assumptions about you, Mareth,” he said.

“I might even be stronger than you,” she added defiantly. “My magic might be more powerful than yours, so there is no reason for me to be afraid. If you were to test me, you might regret it.”

He shook his head. “I have no reason to test you.”

“When you hear what I have to say, you might think differently.

You might decide you must. You might feel it necessary to protect yourself.“ She took a deep breath. ”Don’t you understand? Nothing between us is what it seems! We might be enemies of a sort that will demand that one of us hurt the other!”

He considered her words in silence for a moment, then said, “I don’t think so. But say what you must to me. Hold nothing back.”

She stared at him without speaking, as if trying to decide the depth of his sincerity, to uncover the truth behind his insistence.

Her small body was coiled into itself, and her large, dark eyes were deep, liquid pools in which the reflection of her roiling emotions was clearly visible.

“My parents were always a mystery,” she said finally. “My mother died at my birth, and my father was gone even before that. I never knew them, never saw them, had no memory of them to carry with me. I knew of them because the people who raised me made it clear enough that I was not theirs. They did not do so in an unkind way, but they were hard, determined people, and they had worked all their lives for what was theirs and thought that it should be so for everyone. I was not theirs, not really, and so they laid no claim to me. They cared for me, but I did not belong to them. I belonged to people who were dead and gone.

“I knew when I was very little that my mother had died giving birth to me. The people who raised me made no secret of it. They spoke of her now and again, and when I was old enough to ask about her, they described her to me. She was small and dark like me. She was pretty. She liked to garden and ride horses. They seemed to think she was a good person. She lived in their village, but unlike them she had traveled to other parts of the Southland and seen something of the world. She was not born in the village, but had come there from somewhere else. I never knew where. I never knew why. I think she may have kept that to herself. If I had other relatives living somewhere in the Southland, I never learned of them. Perhaps the people who raised me never knew of them either.”

She paused, but her gaze stayed fixed on the old man. “The people who raised me had two children, both older than me. They loved these children and made them feel a part of the family. They took them to visit other people and on picnics and gatherings. They did not do that with me. I understood from the beginning that I was not like these children. I was made to stay in the home, to look after things, to help with chores, to do what I was told. I was allowed to play, but I always understood that it was different for me than for my brother and sister. As I grew older, I came to see that my new parents were uneasy about me for reasons I did not understand. There was something about me that they did not like or trust. They preferred that I play by myself rather than with my brother and sister, and mostly that was what I did. I was given food and clothing and shelter, but I was a guest in the home and not a member of the family. Not like my brother and sister. I knew that.”

“This must have made you bitter and discouraged even then,” Bremen offered quietly.

Mareth shrugged. “I was a child. I did not understand enough of life to appreciate what was being done to me. I accepted my situation and did not complain. I was not treated badly. I think the people who raised me felt some sympathy for me, some compassion, or they would not have taken me in. They never said so, of course. They never explained their reasons, but I have to believe that they would not have cared for me— even in the way they did—if there was no love in their hearts for me.”

She sighed. “I was apprenticed at twelve. I was told that this would happen, and like everything else, I accepted it as part of the natural course of my life, of growing up. That my brother and my sister were not apprenticed did not bother me. They had always been treated differently, and I accepted that their lives would be different from my own. After I was apprenticed, I saw the people who raised me only a few times. My foster mother came to see me once and brought me a basket of treats. It was an awkward visit, and she left quickly. One time I saw both of them on the street, passing by the potter’s on their way to somewhere. They did not look at me. By then, I was aware of the potter’s predilection for administering beatings at the least excuse. I already hated my new life, and I blamed the people who raised me for giving me up. I did not want to see them anymore. After I fled the potter and the village of my birth, I never did.”

“Nor your brother or sister?” Bremen asked.

She shook her head. “There was no need. Whatever ties we had formed while growing had long since been broken. Thinking of them now only makes me sad.”

“You had a difficult childhood. You’ve come to understand that better now that you are grown, haven’t you?”

The smile she gave him was cold and brittle. “I have come to understand many things that were hidden from me as a child. But let me finish my story and you can judge for yourself. What matters in all of this is that just before I left to apprentice to the potter, I began hearing things about my father. I was eleven by then and already knew that I would be apprenticed at twelve. I knew I would be leaving my home, and I suppose it made me consider seriously for the first time the scope and meaning of the wider world. Traders and trappers and tinkers passed through our village, so I knew there were other places to see, places far away. I wondered sometimes if my father was out there somewhere, waiting. I wondered if he knew of me. I had determined in my own childlike way that my parents had not married and so had not lived together as husband and wife. My mother bore me alone, my father already gone. What of him, then? No one would say. I thought to ask more than once, but there was something in the way my providers spoke of my mother and her life that made it clear I was not to ask. My mother had transgressed in some way, and she was forgiven her transgression only because she had died giving birth to me. I was a part of her transgression, but it was not clear to me how or why.

“When I was old enough to know that secrets were being kept from me, I began to want to uncover them. I was eleven—old enough to recognize deception and old enough to practice it. I began to ask questions about my mother, small and inconsequential questions that would not arouse anger or suspicion. I asked them mostly of my foster mother, because she was the less taciturn of the pair. I would ask the questions when we were alone, then listen at night at the door of my sleeping room to hear what she would say to her husband. Sometimes she would say nothing. Sometimes the words were obscured by the closed door. But once or twice I caught a sentence or two, a phrase, a word—some small mention of my father. It was not the words themselves that revealed so much, but the way in which they were spoken. My father was an outsider who passed through the village, stayed briefly, returned once or twice, and then disappeared. The people of the village shunned him, all save my mother. She was attracted to him. No reason for this was offered. Was she attracted to him for the way he looked or the words he spoke or the life he led? I could not learn. But it was clear they feared and disliked him, and some part of that fear and dislike had been transferred to me.”

She went quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts. She seemed small and vulnerable, but Bremen knew that impression was false. He waited, letting her eyes continue to hold his in the deep night silence.

“I knew even then that I was not like anyone else. I knew I had the magic, even though it was just beginning to manifest itself in me, not yet come to maturity, so that it was mostly vague stirrings and small mutterings in my child’s body. It seemed logical to conclude that it was the magic that was feared and disliked, and it was this that I had inherited from my father. Magic was mistrusted in general in my village—it was the unwanted legacy of the First War of the Races, when Men had been subverted by the rebel Druid Brona and defeated in a war with the other Races and driven south into exile. Magic had caused all this, and it was a vast, dark unknown that lurked at the comers of the subconscious and threatened the unwary. The people of my village were superstitious and not well educated and were frightened of many things. Magic could be blamed for much of what they didn’t understand. I think the people who raised me believed that I might grow into some manifestation of my father, the bearer of his magic’s seed, and so they could never quite accept me as their child. In the eleventh year of my life, I began to understand why this was so.

“The potter knew my history as well, though he did not speak of it to me in the beginning when I went to work for him. He would not admit that he was afraid of a child, even one with my history, and he took pride in the fact that he took me in when no one else would. I did not realize that at first, but he told me later.

“‘No one would have you—that’s why you’re here. Be grateful to me.’ He would say that when he had drunk too much and was thinking about beating me. His drinking loosened his tongue and gave him a boldness that was otherwise absent. The longer I was with him, the more he drank—but it was not because of me. He had been drinking too much for most of his life, and it was the aging and the incumbent failure to achieve success of any kind that encouraged him. As his drinking increased, his work time and output lessened. I took his place many times, taking on the tasks I could manage. I taught myself a great deal and acquired an early skill.”

She shook her head sadly, a distance creeping into her voice. “I was fifteen when I left him. He tried once too often to beat me for no reason, and I fought back. By then, I had matured. I had my magic to protect me. I did not understand the extent of its power until the day I fought back. Then I knew. I almost killed him. I ran from the village and its people and my life, knowing I would never go back. I realized something on that day that I had only suspected before. I realized that I was indeed my father’s child.”

She paused, her face intense, a fierce resolve apparent in her dark eyes. “I had discovered the truth about my father, you see The potter had gotten drunk one too many times and told me. He would drink until he could barely stand, and then he would taunt me. He would say it over and over. ‘Don’t you know who you are? Don’t you know what you are? Your father’s child! A black spot on the earth, birthed by a demon and his bitch! You have the eyes, little girl! You have the stain of his blood and his dark presence’.

“‘Worthless to all but me, so better listen when I tell you to do something! Better heed what I say! Else you’ll have no place in the world at all!’

“So it went, followed each time by a new beating. I didn’t feel the blows much by then. I knew how to cover myself and how to say what he wished to hear so that he would stop. But I grew tired of it. I grew angry at my degradation. On the day I left him, I knew before he tried to strike me that I would resist. When he began to shout at me about my father, I laughed in his face. I called him a liar and a drunk. I told him he didn’t know anything about my father. He lost control of himself completely. He called me things I will not repeat. He told me that my father had come down out of the north, out of the border country where his black order made its home. He told me my father was a conjurer of magic and a stealer of souls. ‘A demon disguised as a man! Him in his black robes! With his wolfs eyes! Your father, girl! Oh, we knew what he was! We knew his dark secret! And you, made in such a perfect image of him, secretive and sharp-eyed! You think we don’t see, but we do! We all do, the whole village! Why do you think you were given to me? Why do you think those people who raised you were so anxious to be rid of you? They knew what you were! They knew you were a Druid’s whelp!’ ”

She took a long, slow breath, looking at him, waiting for him to speak. She wanted to hear his reaction, he could tell. She was hungry for it. But he did not answer.

“I knew he was right,” she said finally, the words a low hiss of challenge unmistakably directed at him. “I think I had known for some time. There was talk now and again of the black-robed men who prowled the Four Lands, the ones who kept their order at the castle of Paranor. Conjurers of magic, all-powerful and all-seeing, creatures more spirit than human, the cause of so much pain and suffering among the people of the Southland. They spoke of how now and again one would pass close by. ‘Once,’ it was whispered when the speaker did not realize I could hear, ‘one stayed. There was a woman seduced by him. There was a child!’ Then hands would lift in a warding motion and the voice would go still. My father. That was who they were speaking of in their hushed, frightened voices. My father!”

She hunched forward, and Bremen could tell that in doing so she was bringing her formidable magic up from the center of her small body to the tips of her fingers, readying it. A twinge of doubt passed through him. He forced himself to remain calm, to stay perfectly still, to let her finish.

“I have come to believe,” she said slowly, purposefully, “that they were speaking of you.”

The shopkeeper was just closing up as Kinson Ravenlock stepped through the door from the darkness and stood looking at the sword. The hour was late, and the streets of Dechtera had begun to empty of everyone but the men passing to and from the ale houses. Kinson was weary of his search, and he had been on his way to find a room at one of the inns when he passed down a street lined with weapons shops and saw the sword. It was displayed in a window framed by crosshatched iron bars inset with small, grimy panes of glass. He had almost missed it in his need for sleep, but the brilliant glint of the metal blade had caught his eye.

He stared at the sword now, stunned. It was the most singular piece of workmanship he had ever encountered. Even the smeared glass and the poor light could not hide the high sheen of the blade’s polished surface or the keenness of its edge. The sword was huge, seemingly too large for an average man. Intricate scrollwork had been carved into the great hilt, a montage of serpents and castles overlaid on a forest background. There were other, smaller blades, equally cunning and fine, forged by the same hands, if Kinson did not miss his guess, but it was the sword that held him spellbound.

“Sorry, I’m closing up,” the shopkeeper announced, beginning to extinguish the lamps at the rear of his worn but surprisingly clean establishment. There were blades of every kind—swords, daggers, dirks, axes, pikes, and others too numerous to count, mounted on every wall, on every available surface, in cases and racks. Kinson took them all in at a glance, but his eyes kept coming back to the sword.

“I won’t take a minute,” he said quickly. “I just wanted to ask a question.”

The shopkeeper sighed and walked over. He was lean and wiry, with muscular arms and strong hands. He moved easily as he approached Kinson, and it looked as if he could handle a blade himself if the need arose. “You want to ask about the sword, am I right?”

Kinson smiled. “I do. How did you know?”

The shopkeeper shrugged, running his hand through thinning dark hair. “I saw where your eyes traveled when you walked through the door. Besides, everyone asks about the sword. How can they not? As wondrous a piece of workmanship as you’ll find in all the Four Lands. Very valuable.”

“I’ll grant you that,” Kinson said. “I suppose that’s why you still have it for sale.”

The shopkeeper laughed. “Oh, it’s not for sale. It’s just for display. It belongs to me. I wouldn’t sell it for all the gold in Dechtera or any other city. Craftsmanship of that sort can’t be bought and only rarely can it be found.”

Kinson nodded. “It is a fine blade. But it would take a strong man to wield it.”

“Such as yourself?” the shopkeeper asked, arching one eyebrow.

Kinson pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I think it is too big even for me. Look at its length.”

“Ha!” The shopkeeper seemed amused. “Everyone thinks the same! That is the wonder of the blade. Look, it has been a long day and I am tired. But I will show you a little secret. If you like what you see, maybe you will buy something and make the time I spend with you worth my while. Fair enough?”

Kinson nodded. The shopkeeper walked to the display window, reached down under the casing, and released something. There was a series of audible clicks. Then he took away a chain cleverly looped about the handle to secure the great sword to its mount.

Carefully he lifted the blade down. He turned, grinning broadly, and held the weapon out before him, balancing it in his hands—easily, as if it had no weight at all.

Kinson stared in disbelief. The shopkeeper laughed in recognition, and then he passed the sword to the Borderman. Kinson took it from him, and his amazement grew. The sword was so light that he could hold it in one hand.

“How is this possible?” he breathed, bringing the shining blade up before his eyes, dazzled by its ease of handling as much as by its workmanship. He looked at the shopkeeper quickly. “It can have no strength if it is this light!”

“It is the strongest piece of metal you will ever encounter, my friend,” the shopkeeper announced. “The mix of metals and the tempering of the alloy make it stronger than iron and as light as tin. There is no other like it. Here, let me show you something else.”

He retrieved the sword from a wondering Kinson and restored it to its case, resecuring the locks and chain that held it in place.

Then he reached farther in and brought out a knife, the blade alone fully twenty inches long, carved with the same intricate scrollwork, clearly crafted by the same skilled hands.

“This is the blade for you,” the shopkeeper declared softly and passed it to Kinson with a smile. “This is what I would sell you.”

It was as wondrous as the sword, if not so impressive in size.

Kinson was immediately entranced. Light, perfectly balanced, finely wrought, sharp as a cat’s claw, the knife was a weapon of impossible beauty and strength. Kinson smiled in recognition of the blade’s worth, and the shopkeeper smiled back. Kinson asked the cost, and the shopkeeper told him. They bargained for a few minutes, and a deal was struck. It cost Kinson almost every coin he had, which was a considerable sum, but he did not once think to walk away.

Kinson stuck the knife and its sheath in his belt, where the blade rested comfortably against his hip. “My thanks,” he offered. “It was a good choice.”

“It is my business to know,” the shopkeeper demurred.

“I still have my question to ask,” Kinson said as the other moved to show him out.

“Ah, that’s right. Your question. Haven’t I answered it? I thought it was about the sword that you ...?”

“It is about the sword, indeed,” Kinson interrupted, looking at the blade once more. “But another sword. I have a friend who is in need of such a weapon, but he would have it forged according to his own specifications. The task will require a master smith. The man who made your sword seems right for the job.”

The shopkeeper stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “You wish to have a weapon forged by the maker of my sword?”

Kinson nodded, then added quickly, “Are you him?”

The shopkeeper smiled bleakly. “No. But you might as well ask me as ask the man who is, for all the good it will do you.”

Kinson shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t guess you do.” The shopkeeper sighed. “Listen close, and I’ll explain.”

Bremen’s first reaction to Mareth’s words was to want to tell her straight out that the charge was ridiculous. But the look on her face warned him to reconsider. She must have spent a long time arriving at her conclusion, and she had not done so lightly. She deserved to be taken seriously.

“Mareth, how did you decide I was your father?” he asked gently.

The night was fragrant with the smell of grasses and flowers, and the light of moon and stars lent a soft silver cast to the hills above the garish brightness of the distant city. Mareth glanced away for a moment, as if looking for her answer in the darkness.

“You think me a fool,” she hissed.

“No, never that. Tell me your reasoning. Please.”

She shook her head at something unseen. “From long before the time of my birth, the Druids kept to themselves at Paranor. They had withdrawn from the Races, abandoning their earlier practice of going out among the people. Now and again, one would return home to visit family and friends, but none of these were from my village. Few bothered to venture into the Southland at all.

“But there was one who did, one who visited regularly. You. You came into the Southland in spite of the suspicion directed at the Druids. You were even seen now and again. It was whispered among the people of my village that when my mother conceived me, you were the demon, the dark wraith, who seduced her, who made her fall in love with him!”

She went silent again. She was breathing hard. There was an unspoken challenge in her words that dared him to deny that it was so. She was all tension and hard edges, her magic a crackle of dark energy at the tips other fingers.

Her eyes burned into him. “I have been looking for you for as long as I can remember. I have carried the burden of my magic like a weight around my neck, and not one day has passed when it has not reminded me of you. My mother could not tell me of you. The rumors were all I had. But in my travels I always looked. I knew that one day I would find you. I went to Storlock thinking to find you, thinking you might pass through. You didn’t, but Cogline gave me entry into Paranor and that was better still, because I knew that eventually you would come there.”

“And so you asked to come with me when I did.” He considered. “Why did you not tell me then?”

She shook her head. “I wanted to know you better first I wanted to see for myself what kind of man my father was.”

He nodded slowly, thinking the matter through. Then he folded his hands in front of him, old bones and parchment skin feeling used and weathered beyond repair.

“You saved my life twice in that time.” His smile was worn and his eyes curious. “Once at the Hadeshorn, once at Paranor.”

She stared at him, thinking back on what she had done, having nothing to say.

“I am not your father, Mareth,” he told her.

“Of course you would say that!”

“If I were your father,” he said quietly, “I would be proud to admit it. But I am not. At the time of your conception, I was traveling the Four Lands and might even have come to the village of your mother. But I have no children. I lack even the possibility of children. I have been alive a long time, kept so by the Druid Sleep. But the Sleep has demanded much of me. It has given me time that I would not otherwise have, but it has exacted a price. Part of that price is an inability to sire children. Consequently, I have never entered into a relationship with a woman. I have never taken a lover. I was in love once, long ago, so long that I barely remember the face of the girl. It was before I became a Druid. It was before I began to live my present life. Since then, there has been no one.”

“I do not believe you,” she said at once.

He smiled sadly. “Yes, you do. You know that I am telling you the truth. You can sense it. I am not your father. But the truth of things may be harsher still. The superstitions of the people of your village probably helped make them believe that I was the man who conceived you. My name would be readily known to them, and perhaps they settled on it simply because your father was a black-cloaked stranger who possessed magic. But listen to me, Mareth. There is more to consider, and it will not be pleasant for you.”

Her mouth tightened. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I have been giving thought to the nature of your magic, even before this. Innate magic, magic born to you, as indigenous to who and what you are as the flesh of your body. It happens seldom. It was a characteristic of the faerie people, but they have mostly been dead for centuries. Except for the Elves, and the Elves have lost their magic—all but a little. The Druids, myself included, lack any form of innate magic. So where did yours come from if your father was a Druid? Suppose for a moment that he was. Which of the Druids has that sort of power? Which of them, that magic would have been necessary for your conception?”

“Oh, Shades,” she said softly, seeing now where he was going with this.

“Wait, say nothing yet,” he urged. He reached forward and took her hands in his. She let him do so, her dark eyes wide, her face stricken. “Be strong, Mareth. You must. Your father was described by the people of your village as a demon and a wraith, a dark creature who could take on different looks as needed. You used the words yourself. That sort of magic would not have been practiced by a Druid. For the most part, it could not have been. But there are others for whom the taking on of such magic would have been easy.”

“Lies,” she whispered, but there was no force behind the accusation.

“The Warlock Lord has creatures in his service who assume the appearance of humans. They do so for various reasons. They will try to subvert the ones they pretend to be. They will try to deceive them. They do so to win them over and to use them. Sometimes the subversion is done for no better purpose than to capture what was lost of their own humanity, to relive in some small way the life that was lost to them when they became the things they are. Sometimes they do so simply out of malice. The magic these creatures have embraced has become so much a part of who and what they are that they use it without thinking. They do not differentiate between two separate needs. They act on instinct and to sate whatever desire drives them at a given moment. Not out of reason or emotion, but out of instinct.”

There were tears in Mareth’s eyes. “My father?”

Bremen nodded slowly. “It would explain the magic born to you. Innate magic, the dark gift bequeathed you by your father. Not a Druid’s gift, but the gift of a creature for whom magic has become lifeblood. It is so, Mareth. It is hard to accept, I know, but it is so.”

“Yes,” she whispered, speaking so low that he could barely hear her. “I was so sure.”

Her head lowered, and she began to cry. Her hands clenched his, and the magic died away, fading with the anger and tension, curling into a hard knot deep within.

Bremen shifted closer, putting his thin arm around her shoulders. “One thing more, child,” he told her softly. “I would be your father still, if you would have me. I would be as much a parent to you as if you were my own. I think much of you. I would give you what advice I could in your struggle to comprehend the nature of your magic. The first thing I would tell you is that you are not your father. You are nothing like him, dark thing that he was, not even in your birthright. The magic is your own. You have its power to bear, and that is a heavy weight. But though the magic was given to you by your father, it does not define your character or dictate the nature of your heart. You are a good and strong person, Mareth. You are nothing of the dark creature who spawned you.”

Mareth’s head moved against his shoulder. “You cannot know. I may be exactly that.”

“No,” he soothed. “No. You are nothing of him, child. Nothing.”

He stroked her dark hair and held her to him, letting her cry, letting the pain of so many years leak away. She would be empty and numb when it was gone, and she must be given hope and purpose to fill her anew.

He thought now that he had a way to give her that.

Two full days passed before Kinson Ravenlock returned.

He walked from the valley at sunset, striding out of the raw orange light generated by the smoke and fire of Dechtera’s great furnaces. He was eager to reach them, to give them his news, and he tossed off his dusty cloak with a flourish and embraced them both enthusiastically.

“I have found the man we want,” he announced, dropping down cross-legged in the grass and accepting the aleskin Mareth passed him. “The very man, in my opinion.” His smile broadened, and he gave them both a quick shrug. “Unfortunately, he doesn’t agree with me. Someone will have to persuade him I’m right. That’s why I’ve come back for you.”

Bremen nodded and motioned to the aleskin. “Drink, have something to eat, and then tell us all about it.”

Kinson put the aleskin to his mouth and tipped his head back.

West, the sun was sinking beneath the horizon, and the quality and color of the light were changing rapidly as twilight descended. In the wake of its quicksilver transition, Kinson caught a glimmer of something dark and worrisome in the old man’s eyes. Without speaking, he glanced at Mareth. She met his gaze boldly.

The Borderman lowered the aleskin and regarded them solemnly. “Did something happen while I was gone?”

There was a moment of silence. “We told stories to each other,”

Bremen answered. His smile was melancholy. He looked at Mareth and then back again at Kinson. “Would you like to hear one of them?”

Kinson nodded thoughtfully. “If you think there is time.”

Bremen reached for Mareth’s hand, and the girl gave it to him.

There were tears in her eyes. “I think we should make time for this one,” the old man said.

And Kinson knew from the way he said it that he was right.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Urprox Screl sat alone on the old wooden bench, hunched forward with his elbows resting on his knees, carving knife in one hand, block of wood in the other. His hands moved deftly as he worked, turning the wood this way and that, whittling with small flicks of his wrist, the shavings flying out in front of him. He was making something wonderful, although he wasn’t sure yet what it was. The mystery was part of the pleasure.

A block of wood always suggested certain possibilities before he ever took a knife to it. You just had to look carefully enough to see what they were. Once you had done that, the job was half-finished.

The shaping always seemed to take care of itself.

It was evening in Dechtera, the light fading to hazy gray where the furnaces did not glare with their hot white eyes. The heat was oppressive, but Urprox Screl was used to heat, so it didn’t bother him to sit there. He could have stayed home with Mina and the children, dinner complete, the day at its close, rocking on the long porch or sitting out under the shade of that old hickory. It was quiet there and cool, his home removed from the city’s center.

Unfortunately, that was the problem. He missed the noise and the heat and the stench of the furnaces. When he was working, he wanted them close by. They had been a part of his life for so long that it didn’t seem right not to have them there.

Besides, this was his place of business, same as always, same as it had been for better than forty years. It had been his father’s place of business before him. Maybe it would be his son’s—one or the other of them. When he worked, this is where he liked to be. This is where he belonged, where his sweat and toil had shaped his life, where his inspiration and skill had shaped the lives of others.

It was a bold statement, he supposed, but he was a bold man. Or mad, depending on whom you asked.

Mina understood. She understood everything about her husband, and that was more than you could say for any other wife he knew. The thought of it made him smile. It gave him a special feeling for Mina. He began to whistle softly.

The people of the city passed down the street in front of Urprox Screl, hurrying this way and that, busy little beavers engaged in their tasks. He watched them surreptitiously from under the knit of his heavy dark brow without letting them know he was looking.

Many of them were friends—or what passed for friends these days. Most had been shopkeepers, tradesmen, artisans, or laborers for the same amount of time as he had been a smith. Most had admired him—his skill, his accomplishments, his life. Some had believed that he embodied the heart and soul of this city.

He sighed, and the whistling died away. Yes, he knew them all, but they paid little attention to him now. If he caught someone’s eye, he might get a solemn nod or a desultory wave. One or two might stop to speak to him. That was about the extent of it. Mostly, they avoided him. Whatever was wrong with him, they didn’t want it rubbing off on them.

He wondered one more time why they couldn’t just accept what he’d done and let it go at that.

He stared down momentarily at the carving. A dog running, swift and strong, legs extended, ears flattened, head up. He would give this one to his grandson Arken, his oldest girl’s boy. He gave most of his carvings away, though he could have sold them had he chosen to do so. But money wasn’t something he needed; he had plenty of that and could get more if it became necessary. What he needed was peace of mind and a sense of purpose. Sad to say, even two years later, he was having trouble finding both.

He glanced over his shoulder momentarily at the building behind him, a dark, silent presence amid the cacophony of the cit)

In the growing twilight, it cast its squarish shadow over him. The great doors that led to its interior were closed tonight—he hadn’t bothered to open them. Sometimes he did, just because it made him feel more at home, more a part of his work. But lately it had depressed him to sit there with the doors open and the interior dark and silent, nothing happening after all those years of constant heat and noise and activity. Besides, it only drew the curiosity seekers, suggesting to them the possibility of things that would never happen.

He stirred the wood shavings with the toe of his boot. Better let the past stay closed away, where it belonged.

Darkness fell, and he rose to light the torches that bracketed the building’s smaller side entry. These would cast the light he needed to continue his work. He should go home, he knew. Mina would be looking for him. But there was a restlessness about him that kept his hands moving and his thoughts adrift in the swell of the night sounds that rose with the coming of the dark. He could pick those sounds out, all of them, could separate them as surely as the shavings piled at his feet. He knew them all so well—as he knew this city and its people. His knowledge comforted him. Dechtera was not a city for everyone. It was special and unique and it spoke with a language of its own. Either you understood what it was saying or you didn’t. Either you were intrigued by what you heard or you moved on.

Lately, for the first time in his life, he was thinking that perhaps he had heard about as much of the city’s language as he cared to He was contemplating what that meant, his carving momentarily forgotten, when the three strangers approached. He didn’t see them at first, cloaked and hooded in the darkness, just a part of the crowd that passed on the street before him. But then they separated themselves from its flow and came toward him, and there was no mistaking their intent. He was immediately curious—it was unusual for anyone to approach him these days. The hoods bothered him a little; it was awfully hot to be wrapped up so. Were they hiding from something?

He rose to meet them, a big, rawboned man with heavy arms, a deep chest, and wide, blocky hands. His face was surprisingly smooth for a man his age, brown from the sun and strong-featured, his broad chin thinly bearded, the black hair on his head rapidly receding from his crown toward his ears and neck. He set the knife and carving on the bench behind him and stood waiting with his hands on his hips. As the trio slowed before him, the tallest pulled back his hood to reveal himself. Urprox Screl nodded in recognition. It was the fellow who had visited with him yesterday, the Borderman, come down out of Varfleet, a quiet, intense man with a good deal more on his mind than he was giving out. He had purchased a blade from one of the shopkeepers and come to compliment Urprox on his workmanship. Ostensibly. It felt as if there might be something more to the visit than just that. The Borderman had said he would be back.

“Good as your word, I see,” Urprox greeted, reminded now of the other’s promise and wanting to take matters in hand early—his city, his home, his rules.

“Kinson Ravenlock,” the Borderman reminded him.

Urprox Screl nodded. “I remember.”

“These are friends who want to meet you.” The hoods came back. A girl and an old man. They faced him squarely, but kept their backs to the crowd of passersby. “I wonder if we might speak with you for a few minutes.”

They waited patiently as he studied them, making up his mind.

It was nothing he could put his finger on, but something about them bothered him. An uneasiness stirred inside, vague and indefinable. There was an unmistakable sense of purpose about these three. They looked to have come a long way and to have endured some hardship. He felt certain the Borderman’s question had been asked as a matter of courtesy and not to offer a choice.

He smiled affably. He was curious about them in spite of his misgivings. “What do you wish to speak to me about?”

Now the old man took charge, and the Borderman was quick to defer. “We have need of your skills as a smith.”

Urprox kept his smile in place. “I am retired.”

“Kinson says you are the best, that your work is the finest he has ever seen. He would not make that statement if it were not so. He knows a great deal about weapons and the artisans who craft them. Kinson has traveled to a good many places in the Four Lands.”

The Borderman nodded. “I saw the shopkeeper’s sword. I have never seen work like that, not anywhere. You have unique talent.”

Urprox Screl sighed. “Let me save you the trouble of wasting any more of your time. I was good at what I did, but I don’t do it anymore. I was a master smith, but those days are gone. I am retired. I don’t do metalwork of any kind. I don’t do specialty work, and I don’t accept commissions. I do wood carving, and that is all I do.”

The old man nodded, seemingly unfazed. He glanced past Urprox to the wooden bench and the carving that lay there, and asked, “Did you do that? May I have a look?”

Urprox shrugged and handed him the dog. The old man studied it for a long time, turning it over in his hands, tracing the shape of the wood. There was genuine interest in his eyes.

“This is very good,” he said finally, handing it to the girl, who accepted it without comment. “But not as good as your weapons work. Your true skill lies there. In the shaping of metal. Have you been carving wood long?”

“Since I was a child.” Urprox shifted his stance uneasily. “What do you want from me?”

“You must have had a very compelling reason to go back to wood carving after being so successful as a master smith,” the old man pressed, ignoring him.

Urprox felt his temper slip a notch. “I did. I had a very good reason, and I don’t want to talk about it with you.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do, but I am afraid that you must. We need your help, and my task in coming here is to persuade you of that.”

Urprox stared at him, more than a little astonished at his candor.

“Well, at least you are honest about your intentions. But now, of course, I am forewarned of them and am prepared to reject any argument you put forth. So you really are wasting your time.”

The old man smiled. “You were already forewarned. You are astute enough to discern that we have traveled some distance to see you and that we must therefore consider you quite important.”

The weathered face creased deeper. “Tell me, then. Why did you give it all up? Why did you quit being a smith? Why, when you had been one for so many years?”

Urprox Screl’s brow darkened. “I got tired of it.”

They waited for him to say more, but he refused to do so. The old man pursed his lips. “I think it was probably more than that.”

He paused a moment, and in that moment it seemed to Urprox as if the old man’s eyes turned white, as if they lost their color and their character and became as blank and unreadable as stone. It felt as if the old man was looking right through him.

“You lost heart,” the other said softly. “You are a gentle man with a wife and children, and for all your physical strength you do not like pain. But the weapons you forged were causing pain, and you knew that was happening and you detested it. You grew weary of knowing, and you decided enough was enough. You had money and other talents, so you simply closed your shop and walked away. No one knows this but you and Mina. No one understands. They think you mad. They shun you as they would a disease.”

The eyes cleared and fixed on him anew. “You are an outcast in your own city, and you do not understand why. But the truth is you are a man blessed with unique talent, and everyone who knows you or your work recognizes it and cannot accept that you would waste it so foolishly.”

Urprox Screl felt something cold creep up his spine. “You are entitled to your opinion. But now that you’ve given it, I don’t wish to talk to you anymore. I think you should leave.”

The old man looked off into the darkness, but he did not move from where he stood. The crowds had thinned behind him, and the night had closed about. Urprox Screl suddenly felt very alone and vulnerable. Even this close to familiar surroundings, to people who knew him, and to help if he should need it, he felt completely isolated.

The girl handed back the carving of the dog. Urprox took it from her, looking deep into her great dark eyes, drawn to her in a way he could not explain. There was something in the look she gave him that suggested she understood what he had done. He had not seen that look in anyone’s eyes but Mina’s. It surprised him to find it here, in the eyes of a girl who did not know him at all.

“Who are you?” he asked again, looking from one face to the other.

It was the old man who spoke. “We are the bearers of a charge that transcends all else. We have come a long way to fulfill that charge. Our journey has taken us to many places, and even though you are important to its success, it will not end here. You are but one piece in the puzzle we must assemble. We have need of a sword, Urprox Screl, a sword unlike any other ever forged. It requires the hands of a master smith to shape it. It will have special properties. It is intended not to destroy, but to save. It will be both the hardest and finest work you have ever done or will ever do.”

The big man smiled nervously. “Bold words. But I don’t think I believe them.”

“Because you do not want to forge another weapon in your lifetime. Because you have left all that behind, and the pact you made with yourself will be compromised if you relent now.”

“That states it nicely. I reached an end to that part of my life. I swore I would never go back again. I see no need to change my mind for you.”

“What if I told you,” the old man said thoughtfully, “that you have a chance to save thousands of lives by forging this sword we seek? What if you knew that this was so? Would that change your mind?”

“But it isn’t so,” Urprox insisted stubbornly. “No weapon could achieve that.”

“Suppose that the lives of your wife and children were among those that you would save by forging this sword. Suppose that your refusal to help us would cost them their lives.”

The muscles in the big man’s shoulders bunched. “So my wife and children are in danger now—is that how you wish me to see it? You are indeed desperate if you are reduced to making threats!”

“Suppose I told you that all of this will come to pass within the next few years if you do not help us. All.”

Urprox experienced a whisper of self-doubt. The old man seemed so certain. “Who are you?” he demanded a final time.

The other stepped forward him, coming very close. Urprox Screl could see every seam in his weathered face, every stray hair on his graying head and beard. “My name is Bremen,” the old man answered, his eyes locking on the smith’s. “Do you know of me?”

Urprox nodded slowly. It took every ounce of strength he possessed to hold his ground. “I have heard of you. You are one of the Druids.”

Again, the smile. “Are you frightened by that?”

“No.”

“Of me?”

The big man said nothing, his jaw clenched.

Bremen nodded slowly. “You needn’t be. I would be your friend, though it might seem otherwise. It is not my intention to threaten you. I speak only the truth. There is need for your talent, and that need is real and desperate. It extends the length and breadth of the Four Lands. This is no game we play. We are fighting for the lives of many people, and your wife and children are among them. I do not exaggerate or dissemble when I say that we are all they have left to defend against what threatens.”

Urprox felt his certainty waver anew. “And what exactly is that?”

The old man stepped back. “I will show you.”

His hand rose and brushed at the air before Urprox Screl’s bewildered eyes. The air shimmered and took life. He could see the ruins of a city, the buildings flattened into rubble, the ground steaming and smoking, the air thick with ash and grit. The city was Dechtera. Its people all lay dead in the streets and doorways. What moved through the shadows picking at the bodies was not human, but misshapen and perverse. Something imagined—yet real enough here. Real, and in the vision of Dechtera’s destruction, all that would survive.

The vision vanished. Urprox shuddered as the old man materialized once more, standing before him, eyes hard and set. “Did you see?” he asked quietly. Urprox nodded. “That was the future of your city and its people. That was the future of your family.

That was all that remained. But by the time that vision comes to pass, everything north will already be gone. The Elves and the Dwarves will be destroyed. The dark wave that inundated them will have reached here.”

“These are lies!” Urprox spoke the words quickly, out of anger and fear. He did not stop to reason. He was incautious and headstrong in his denial. Mina and his children dead? Everyone he knew gone? It wasn’t possible!

“Harsh truths,” Bremen said quietly. “Not lies.”

“I don’t believe you! I don’t believe any of this!”

“Look at me,” the old man commanded softly. “Look into my eyes. Look deep.”

Urprox Screl did so, unable to do otherwise, compelled to obey.

He stared into Bremen’s eyes and watched them turn white once more. He felt himself drawn into a liquid pool that embraced and swallowed him. He could feel himself join with the old man in some inexplicable way, become a part of him, become privy to what he knew. There were flashes of knowledge given in the moments of that joining, truths that he could neither challenge nor avoid. His life was suddenly revealed to turn, all that had been and might be, the past and the future come together in a montage of images and glimpses that were so terrifying and so overwhelming that Urprox Screl clutched at himself in despair.

“Don’t!” he whispered, shutting his eyes against what he was seeing. “Don’t show me any more!”

Bremen broke the connection, and Urprox staggered back a step before straightening. The cold that had begun at the base of his spine had now seeped all the way through him. The old man nodded. Their eyes locked. “I am finished with you. You have seen enough to understand that I do not lie. Do not question me further. Accept that my need is genuine. Help me do what I must.”

Urprox nodded, his big hands clenching into fists. The ache in his chest was palpable. “I will listen to what you have to say,” he allowed grudgingly. “That much, at least, I can do.”

But he knew, even as he spoke the words, that he was going to do much more.

So Bremen sat him down on the bench and then took a seat next to him. They became two old friends discussing a business proposition. The Borderman and the girl stood silently before them, listening. On the street beyond, the people of the city passed by unknowing. No one approached. No one even glanced his way.

Perhaps they could not even see him anymore, Urprox thought.

Perhaps he had been rendered invisible. For as Bremen spoke, he began to recognize how much magic was at work in this business.

Bremen told him first of the Warlock Lord and his invasion of the other lands. The Northland was gone, the Eastland invaded, the Westland at risk. The Southland would be last, and by then, as the vision had shown, it would be too late for all of them. The Warlock Lord was a creature of magic who had managed to survive beyond mortal life and had summoned creatures of supernatural strength to aid his cause. No ordinary weapon would destroy him. What was needed was the sword that Urprox would forge, a thing of magic as well as iron, a blade that combined the skills and knowledge of both master smith and Druid, of science and magic alike.

“It must be strong in both ways,” Bremen explained. “It must be able to withstand the worst of what will be sent to destroy it, whether iron or magic. The forging must make it as invulnerable as possible, and that will be difficult. Science and magic. You will provide the former, I the latter. But your work is paramount, because if the sword lacks the physical characteristics needed to sustain it, the magic I supply cannot hold.”

“What do you know of forging metals?” Urprox asked, interested now in spite of himself.

“That metals must be combined and tempered just so for the alloy to gain the necessary strength.” Bremen reached into his robes and brought forth the formula that Cogline had supplied.

“This is what we will need to achieve the desired result.”

Urprox took the sheet of paper and studied it carefully. He nodded as he read, thinking. Yes, this is the right combination of metals, the proper mix of firings. Then he stopped, smiling broadly. “These temperatures! Have you looked closely at what this mix requires? No one has seen such temperatures in the firing of metal since the old world was destroyed! The furnaces and the formulas alike were lost forever! We haven’t the means to achieve what is asked!”

Bremen nodded calmly. “What heat will your forge withstand? How strong a firing?”

The smith shook his head. “Any amount. Whatever heat we can generate. I built the furnace myself, and it has layered walls of stone and earth to insulate and preserve it. But that is not the problem. The problem is with the fuel. We lack a fuel strong enough to produce the amount of heat this formula requires! You must know that!”

Bremen took the formula from his hands and slipped it back inside his robes. “We need maintain the higher temperatures for only a short period of time. I can help with that. I possess the means that you lack. Do you understand?”

Urprox did. The old man would use magic to generate the necessary heat. But was that possible? Was his magic strong enough? The temperatures needed were enormous! He shook his head, staring at the other doubtfully.

“Will you do it?” Bremen asked quietly. “One last firing of the forge, one final molding of metals?”

The master smith hesitated, come back briefly to his old self in these past few moments, to the man he had been for so many years, intrigued by the challenge of forging this weapon, impelled by consideration for the safety of his family and his neighbors, of his city and his land. There were reasons to do what the old man asked, he admitted. But there were reasons to refuse as well.

“We need you, Urprox,” the Borderman said suddenly, and the girl nodded silently in agreement. All of them waited for his response, expectant and determined.

Well, he thought, his wood carving was not of the same quality as his metalwork, that much was true. Never had been. It was an escape, though he might argue otherwise. Come right down to it, it was foolish to claim that it was of any real importance. So what would it mean for him to cast one last blade, a weapon that might have significance beyond any other he had ever forged, that might be used in a way that would save lives? Did the old man lie about this? He could not be absolutely sure, but he did not think so. He had been able to tell something of men, as he could of metal, all his life. He felt it was so here. This man, Druid or no, evinced honor and integrity. He believed in his cause, and it was clear that he was convinced that Urprox Screl should, too.

The big man shook his head, smiled, and shrugged. “Ah, well. If it will get you out of my life, I will make you your sword.”

They talked until late into the night of what was needed to undertake the forging. Urprox would have to bring in fuel to fire the furnace and metals to mix the alloy. It would take several days to bring the temperature up to the level necessary to begin the process. The forging itself could be done fairly quickly if Bremen’s magic was sufficient to raise the heat beyond that. The mold for the sword was already cast, and only small modifications were needed to give it the shape that Bremen required.

Bremen showed him the medallion he had hidden within his robes, showed him the strange, compelling image of the hand clenched about the burning torch. It was called the Eilt Druin, the Druid told him, and it must be embedded in the hilt of the sword when it was cast. Urprox shook his head. It would melt from the heat, he advised, the workmanship too fine to survive the tempering. But the old man shook his head and told him not to worry. The Eilt Druin was forged of magic, and the magic would protect it. The magic, he intoned, would give the sword the power necessary to destroy the Warlock Lord.

Urprox Screl didn’t know if he believed this or not, but he accepted it at face value. It was not his problem, after all, to decide if the sword would do what the Druid intended. It was his job to forge it in accordance with the formula provided and the science he possessed, so that it would emerge from the firings as strong as possible. Three days, then, to prepare. But there were other considerations as well. Everyone knew that he was out of business. The moment materials began to arrive, there would be questions. The moment the furnace was fired, the questions would increase. And what of the attention that the forging of the sword itself would draw?

But the old man seemed unconcerned with this, telling Urprox Screl not to worry, simply to go about his business and to concentrate on readying himself and his forge for the task at hand. While preparations were under way, he and his companions would remain close at hand and deal with whatever interest the population of the city might evince.

So it began. They separated that night with a handshake to bind their agreement, the three outlanders more satisfied with the result than Urprox Screl, but the smith was excited and intrigued by the task set to him in spite of his misgivings. He went home to his family and in the slow hours of the early morning sat with Mina at the kitchen table and told her of his decision. As it always was between them, he held nothing back. She listened to him and questioned him, but she did not advise him to change his mind. It was for him to make the choice, she said, because he understood better than she what was being asked of him and how he would live with it afterward. For her part, it seemed as if he had been shown good reason to accept the work offered him, and judgment of the men and the girl should be based on his own evaluation of their character and not on the rumors and gossip of others.

Mina, as always, understood better than anyone.

Hard coal, mined in the Eastland borders and shipped west, filled the fire pit and the fuel bins of the forge by midday next. The doors to the building were thrown open, and the first firing began.

The forge was lit and the heat brought up. Metals arrived, requisitioned in accordance with Cogline’s formula. Molds were uncovered and brought out for cleaning. Disdaining help, Urprox worked alone in the shadowy, hot interior of the building. Help was not necessary. He had constructed his forge so that winches and pulleys guided by a single hand could move everything required from one comer to the other. As for the inevitable crowds that gathered to see what he was about, they did not intrude as much as he had feared. Instead, they contented themselves simply with watching. There was a rumor given out—from where, it was not certain—that Urprox Screl was firing the furnace not because he was back in business as a smith, but because he had a buyer for the forge who wanted to make certain that it would work as advertised before he laid down his money. The owner, it was whispered, was from the deep Southland, a man who was visiting with his young wife and aged father. They could be seen from time to time at Screl’s side, or by the entry to the forge, or about the streets of the city, coming and going in pursuit of further information concerning their intended acquisition, trying to determine if the purchase they sought was a reasonable one.

For Urprox, the time passed swiftly. His doubts, so strong that first night, vanished with the unexpected exhilaration he experienced at preparing for the challenge of this unusual firing. No smith living had ever worked with magic in the Four Lands—at least not to anyone’s knowledge— and it was impossible not to be excited by the prospect. He knew in his heart, just as Kinson Ravenlock had acknowledged, that he was the best at his trade, that he had mastered the skill of shaping metal into blades as no one else had. Now he was being asked to go beyond what he had ever attempted, to create a weapon that would be better than his best, and he was enough of a craftsman to appreciate the extent of the confidence being placed in his talent. He still did not know if the blade would accomplish the task that Bremen had set for it, if it would forestall in some way the invasion the old man had warned against, if it could in any way protect against the threat of the Warlock Lord. These were questions for others. For Urprox Screl, there was only the challenge of applying his skills in a way he had never dreamed possible.

So wrapped up was he in his preparations that he was two days into them before he remembered that there had been no mention at all of payment—and in the next instant realized that it made no difference, that payment in this case was not important.

He had forgotten nothing in the two years since he had closed down the forge, and it was rewarding to discover that he still knew exactly what to do. He went about his business with confidence and determination, building the heat in the fuel pit, measuring its potency with small tests that melted metals of varying hardness and consistency. Additional fuels and materials that he had requisitioned arrived and were stored. The Druid, the Borderman, and the girl stopped by to study his progress and disappeared again. He did not know where they went when they left him. He did not know how closely they monitored his progress. They spoke to him only occasionally, and then it was the old man who did most of the talking. Now and then he would question his commitment to this task, to his belief in the old man’s tale of the destruction that threatened. But the questions were momentary and fleeting. By now he was like a runaway wagon, rolling ahead with such speed that nothing could slow him. The work itself was all that mattered.

He was surprised at how much he had missed it. The acrid smell of fuel as it was consumed in the flames, the clanging of raw metals on their way to the crucible, the sear of the fire against his skin, the rise of ash and smoke from the furnace chimney—they were old friends come to greet him on his return. It frightened him to think how easily he had abandoned his vow not to go back into his trade. It frightened him even more to think that this time he might not be able to walk away.

On the third night, late into the evening, the three came to him for the last time—the Druid Bremen, the Borderman Kinson Ravenlock, and the girl whose name he never did learn. The forge was ready, and they seemed to know this without being told, arriving after sunset and greeting him in a manner that indicated they had come to witness the fulfillment of his promise. The metals they needed for the firing were laid out, the molds set open and ready for the pour, and the winches, pulleys, chains, and crucibles that would guide the raw material through the various stages of preparation carefully set in place. Urprox knew the old man’s formula by heart. Everything was ready.

They sat together for a time in the shadows of the forge, waiting for the city to quiet and its people to sleep, letting the heat wash over them and the night draw on. They spoke little, listening to the sounds, lost in their separate thoughts. The populace of the city churned and bustled like waves washing against the rocks of some distant shore, always just out of sight. Midnight approached, and the crowds drifted to the ale houses and pleasure dens, and the streets began to clear.

The old man rose then and took Urprox Screl’s hand in his own and held it. “You must do your best work this night,” he advised firmly. “You must, if we are to succeed.”

The smith nodded. He was stripped to the waist and his muscles glistened with sweat. “I will do what is needed. Don’t you forget to do the same.”

Bremen smiled at the rejoinder, the seams of his aged face etched deep by the light that seeped from the furnace, back where the fires flared through cracks in the bin door. “You’re not afraid of this at all, are you?”

“Afraid? Of fire and metal? Of shaping one more weapon after thousands, even if it’s to be forged with magic?” Urprox Screl shook his head. “I should sooner be frightened of the air I breathe. What we do here tonight is no different than what I have done all my life. A variation perhaps, but no more. Besides, what is the worst that can befall me? That I fail? That won’t happen.”

“The magic is always unpredictable. Even if you are steady in the application of your smith’s skill, the magic might not prove sufficient.”

The smith studied the old man for a moment, then laughed slowly. “You don’t believe that. You are as much a craftsman as I. You would die before you let the magic fail you.”

There was a long silence as the two faced each other, the heat of the forge washing over them, its light flickering raggedly against their lined faces. “You are taking a final measure of me,” the smith observed quietly. “Don’t bother. It’s not necessary. I am ready for this.”

But the old man shook his head. “The measure I take is of what this will do to you. You cannot work with magic and come away unchanged. Your life will never be the same after tonight. You must sense that.”

Urprox Screl gave the old man a slow, ironic smile. “I depend upon it. Let me confess something. Save for Mina and my children, I am sick of my life. I am tired of what I have become. I didn’t understand that until you came. Now I understand it all too well. I would at this moment welcome any change.”

He felt the other’s eyes probe him for a moment, felt their weight settle somewhere deep within, and he wondered if he had spoken too rashly.

Then the old man nodded. “Very well. Let’s begin.”

There would be stories of what happened that night for years afterward, tales passed from mouth to mouth that would take on the trappings of legend. They would come from various sources, but all would have their genesis in the glimpses caught by passersby who paused for a momentary look at what was taking place within Urprox Screl’s great forge. The doors stood open to the night so that fresh air could be drawn in and stale heat vented out, and those who forced themselves close enough were witnesses to visions they later declared to have been born out of madness.

A sword was forged by Urprox Screl that night, but the manner of its shaping would be forever in dispute.

It was agreed who was present. They passed through the smoky, ash-laden air like wraiths, bent down against the heat and glare of the forge, surging upward momentarily to carry out a task in response to the demands of the casting, then ducking away again. There was the smith, the acknowledged master of his trade, the man who had given up his work for two long years and then, for a single night, without a word to anyone, gone back to it. There was the old man cloaked in his black robes, the one who seemed at times almost ethereal, at times as hard and certain as stone. And there were the Borderman and the young woman. Each had a role to play. The smith and the old man worked shoulder to shoulder in the forging of the weapon. The younger man served as their helper, acting on command to fetch this or carry that, lending his strength and weight where it was needed. The girl stood by the door and made certain that no one tried to enter or linger too long to watch. Strangely enough, she was the one who made the strongest impression. Some said she changed shape to warn off those too curious, becoming for an instant a netherworld beast or a moor cat. Some said she danced naked before the great furnace in a rite that aided in the tempering. Some said that if she but looked at you, your mind was lost. All agreed that she was more than what she appeared.

That there was magic in use that night was unquestioned. The heat of the fire was too intense, its glare too strong, its explosions, when the molten ore spilled, too raw. Some said they saw green light lance from the old man’s hands to feed the fires of the forge, saw it give aid to the winches and pulleys in lifting the casting away from the flames, watched it hone the blade after its molding to smooth and polish its rough surface. While the master smith sent the various metals into the furnace, while he mixed and then stirred the alloy, the old man muttered chants. The metals would go into the fire and come out again. The molten one would be poured into a mold, tempered, and hammered out again. And each time the old man’s magic would flare brightly in support. Oh, yes, there was magic employed in the forging and make no mistake about it, the tale-tellers all agreed.

They spoke as well of an omnipresent image of a hand holding forth a burning torch. No one understood its significance, but it was a specter that seemed to appear everywhere. Some saw it on a medallion the old man took from beneath his robes. Some saw it reflected by the fires of the forge on the walls of the building.

Some saw it rise out of the fires themselves, newly born in the pit’s hottest core, a spirit risen from the dead. But those who saw it last saw it fixed to the handle of the great broadsword, fused with the metal cast in the forge, the image burnished and glowing, the hand clenched at the joinder of blade and pommel, the flame rising upward along the blade toward its tip.

The casting, tempering, shaping, and honing of the sword took the remainder of the night. There were strange noises beyond the clang of the smith’s hammer and the whoosh of steam as the blade was cooled. There were colors in the firing that no one had ever seen before, a rainbow spectrum that transcended all experience of forging in a city of smiths. There were smells and tastes in the air that did not belong, dark and forbidding. The people who approached the forge that night took quick, anxious looks, wondered at the fury of what they witnessed, and then passed on.

By morning, the casting was complete and the three strangers were gone. No one saw them depart. No one knew where they went. The sword was gone as well, and it was assumed that the trio had taken it with them. The forge stood empty in the dawn light, its fires cooling as they would continue to cool for many days.

Some few who ventured too close to the still open doors claimed that the earth sparked beneath their feet as they tried to peer inside.

Magic, they whispered. You could tell.

Urprox Screl went home and did not come back. The forge, he announced, was closed once more. He spoke to his friends and neighbors in a normal way and assured them that nothing untoward had happened that night. He had cast a sword for potential buyers, and they had gone back to consider the value of their purchase. He smiled when he said it. He seemed quite calm. But his eyes had a haunted, faraway look.

Within a month he had left the city. Mina and his children and grandchildren all went with him, the entire family. By then there were rumors that he had sold himself body and soul to the dark things that lived north. No one wanted much to do with him. It was just as well that he was gone, everyone agreed.

No one knew where he went. There were rumors, of course.

There were always rumors.

Some said he went north into the Borderlands and settled his family there. Some said he changed his name so that no one would know who he was.

One man claimed, years later, to have seen him. A trader of jewelry, he traveled a broad stretch of the Four Lands in search of new markets. It was in a small village above the Rainbow Lake, he reported, that he had come upon Urprox Screl.

Only he wasn’t using the name Screl anymore.

He was using the name Creel.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Wind and rain tore at the ramparts and walls of Stedden Keep, mirroring the fury of the battle being fought at the castle’s broad gates. Twice the Northland army had come against the walls and twice the Dwarves had driven it back. Now it was nearing midnight, the skies black, the air thick with rain, the light so poor that it was impossible to see more than a few feet save when lightning scorched the whole of the Ravenshorn with its brilliant, momentary fire.

They were going to lose this one, too, Risca thought, striding down the stairway from the main wall to the central court in search of Raybur. Not that any of them had thought they wouldn’t. That they had held this long was a minor miracle. That they were still alive after weeks of fighting and retreating was a bigger miracle still. But they were running out of time and chances. They had stalled for just about as long as they were able.

Where were the Elves? Why hadn’t they come?

For weeks after their escape from the Wolfsktaag, the Dwarves had fought a holding action against the advancing Northlanders The army of the Warlock Lord had smashed them at every turn.

but still they had gone on fighting. They had been lucky in the Wolfsktaag; they had escaped with almost no loss of life. Their luck hadn’t lasted. They had fought a dozen engagements since, and in several their pursuers had gotten the upper hand, through either perseverance or luck. The Dwarves they had trapped, they had slaughtered on the spot. Though the Eastlanders had fought back savagely and inflicted heavy losses on their attackers, the losses seemed inconsequential. Outnumbered and overmatched, the Dwarves simply had no chance against an army of such strength and size. They were brave and they were determined, but they had been forced back steadily at every turn.

Now they were deep in the Ravenshorn and in danger of being dislodged from that protectorate as well. The Wolfsktaag and the Central Anar were lost. Culhaven had fallen early. The Silver River from the Rainbow Lake to the Cillidellan was in enemy hands. There was no way of knowing how much of the north was gone. All of it, in all probability. If the Ravenshorn was taken as well, the Dwarves would be forced to fall all the way back to the High Bens and the fortress at Dun Fee Aran. If that fell, too, they would have lost their last retreat. They would have no choice but to flee into the lands east, country into which they had barely ventured.

And that was what was going to happen, Risca supposed. Certainly they were not going to be able to hold here. Stedden Keep would fall by morning. The outlying moats and pit traps had already been crossed, and the Northlanders were building scaling ladders to throw up against the walls. The wind and the rain seemed to make no difference to their efforts. They were in the grip of something stronger than the elements—a fear, a madness, a horror of the creature commanding them. Magic drove them on, dark and terrible, and perhaps for them, in their present state, even death was preferable to facing the consequences of failure.

Risca reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed out of the tower into the courtyard. The sounds of battle washed over him, a cacophony that even the storm’s fury could not surmount. A battering ram hammered at the gates, slamming into the portals with steady, mindless insistence. The gates shuddered, but held. Atop the battlements, the Dwarves sent arrows and spears flying into attackers massed so thick it was virtually impossible to miss. Oil fires climbed one wall, the remains of an earlier attack the Dwarves had repulsed. Defenders raced everywhere, trying to fill gaps in the line for which there simply weren’t enough men.

Raybur appeared suddenly out of the chaos and seized his arm.

“We’ll only be able to hold until they complete the ladders!” he shouted into the teeth of the wind, bringing his face close to the younger man’s. “We can’t do more, Risca!”

Risca nodded. He felt worn and discouraged. He was tired of running, weary of being chased, and angry that it was about to happen all over again.

“The tunnels are readied,” he replied, not bothering to raise his voice. He had just returned from making sure their escape route was safely in place. Geften had scouted the tunnels himself, making sure they were clear. The Dwarves would flee through the mountain corridors carved out of the rock at the rear of their fortress and emerge on the east side of the peaks. From there, they would descend into the densely forested valley beyond and melt away once more.

Raybur pulled him from the court into the lee of the tower entry from which he had emerged. There he braced him, his eyes hard.

“What’s happened to the Elves?” the Dwarf King asked with tightly controlled fury.

Risca shook his head. “They would come if Tay Trefenwyd could find a way to bring them. Something’s happened. Something we don’t know anything about.”

Raybur shook his bearded face in obvious distaste. “Makes things sort of one-sided in this war, doesn’t it? Us and no one else against an army the size of that one out there?” Shouts broke from the walls, and defenders raced to fill a new breach. “How much longer are we supposed to hold on? We’re losing more men with every new battle, and we don’t have that many to lose!”

His anger was understandable. One of those lost already was his eldest son. Wyrik had fallen four days earlier, killed by a stray arrow. They had been in retreat across the Anar and into the Ravenshorn, intent on reaching the fortress at Stedden Keep. The arrow had gone through his throat and into his brain. He had died instantly, virtually before anyone had even noticed he was struck Raybur had been next to him when it had happened, and had caught him in his arms as he fell.

The two men stood looking at each other in the damp shadow of the entry, both of them thinking of the boy’s death, reading it in each other’s eyes.

Raybur looked away, disgusted. “If we just had some word, some assurance that help is coming...” He shook his head once more.

“Bremen would never desert us,” Risca declared quietly, firmly. “Whatever else happens, he will come.”

Raybur’s eyes narrowed. “If he’s still alive.”

The words hung there, blade-sharp in the silence, accusatory, bleak and despairing.

Then a terrible wrenching sound shattered their momentary consideration of the prospect of the old man’s death, a horrifying groan of metal fastenings coming apart and wooden timbers giving way. Both men knew at once what it was, but Raybur said it first.

“The gates!”

They sprinted from the doorway into the rain-soaked night. A flash of lightning split the dark ceiling of the clouds. Ahead, the main gates had buckled under the onslaught of the battering ram.

Already hinges were snapped and the crossbar splintered. The Dwarves were trying to shore up the sagging barrier with additional timbers, but it was only a matter of time now before everything collapsed. The pounding of the ram had intensified, and the cries of the attackers had risen in response. On the walls, the Dwarves drew back uncertainly from their defensive positions.

Fleer came running up to his father, his long hair flying. “We have to get everyone out!” he shouted, his face pale and stricken.

“Do so!” snapped Raybur in reply, his voice cold and harsh “Withdraw from the walls, through the fortress corridors, and into the tunnels! I have had enough of this!”

Fleer raced away, and an enraged Raybur wheeled about and strode toward the gates, his rugged face flushed and set. Seeing what he intended, Risca went after him, grabbed his arm, and spun him about.

“No, Raybur,” he declared. “I will stand against this rush, not you!”

“Alone?” the king snapped, shaking free of the other’s hand.

“How many were you planning on asking to stand with you?” Risca’s retort was sharp and brittle. “Now go! Lead the army out!”

Rain ran down into their eyes, forcing them to blink rapidly, two solitary figures locked in confrontation. “This is madness!” the king hissed.

Risca shook his head. “You are king, and you must keep yourself safe. What happens to the Dwarves if you fall? Besides, I have the Druid magic to protect me, which is more than you can say. Go, Raybur!”

The right gate collapsed, splintering, then crumbling into rubble. Dark forms surged toward the opening, weapons glinting.

Risca brought up his hands, fingers crooked, the Druid magic summoned. Raybur hesitated, then darted away, calling his commanders to come to him, giving them their orders for a retreat. The Dwarves scrambled down from the battlements and raced for the tower doors and the safety of the corridors beyond. Already the men at the gates had fled. Risca stood alone in the rain, waiting calmly. It had been an easy enough decision. He was tired of running, of being chased. He was ready to stand and fight. He wanted this chance.

When the first wave of attackers was at the opening, he sent the Druid fire into them. He burned everything in sight. Flames climbed across the rubble and consumed the front ranks of Northlanders before they could even think to flee. In the darkness beyond, the others fell back, unable to withstand the heat. Risca held the fire in place, then let it die. The magic ran through him in an exhilarating rush that swept aside fear and doubt, weariness and pain. It became for him, as it always did in the fury of battle, the thing he lived for.

The battering ram resumed its pounding and the second gate collapsed, widening the entry further. But no one approached.

Risca glanced upward through the curtain of rain. The last of the Dwarves were coming down off the battlements and out of the watchtowers. In moments, he would be alone. He should flee now, he knew. He should run with the others, escape while he could.

There was no point in remaining. Yet he could not make himself turn away. It was as if he held the outcome of this battle in his hands, as it by standing where he was, by holding firm, he could stop the onslaught that threatened to overwhelm them all.

Then something huge appeared in the charred, fire-scorched entry, a shadowy form that lumbered into the gap. Risca hesitated, waiting to see what it was. The dark shape hove into view, coming into the pale, uncertain light of the dying Druid fire. It was a creature out of Brona’s netherworld, come out of hiding with the fall of night, a thing of ooze and slime, of spikes and armored plates, of heavy limbs and massive body. It stood upright, but it was scarcely human, bent down as if by the weight of its own ugliness, yellow eyes lit by its killing need. It caught sight of the Druid and slowed, turning to face him. It carried a huge club, both clawed hands wrapped around its grip.

“Well, now,” Risca breathed out slowly.

The creature stood alone momentarily in the gap, then trudged slowly across the burning rubble. No one else appeared, although Risca could hear the Northlanders scrambling, bringing up what scaling ladders they had to place against the unmanned walls, massing in the darkness for the rush that would sweep them into Stedden Keep.

Meanwhile, this creature is sent to challenge me, Risca thought, knowing it could be for nothing less. Do they think I will not stand against it? Do they test me to see what sort of power I possess, what strength of will? What is the reason for this nonsense?

He could not answer any of these questions, of course. And now the monster was coming for him, pushing aside debris and bodies as it descended to the court out of the gap, lantern eyes fixed on the Druid.

They seek to trap me, the Druid thought suddenly. A diversion to distract me, a foil for my magic, and then they will come for me in force. The arrogance of it made him smile.

The netherworld creature lumbered toward him, picking up speed. The club lifted before it, both a shield and a weapon. There was still time to flee, but Risca held his ground. There were Northlanders watching. They knew who he was and they were waiting to see how he would react. He would give them something to remember.

When the creature was within two dozen feet, Risca brought up his battle-axe, gripped it in both hands, whirled about to gain momentum, and sent the gleaming blade flying at the monster.

The beast was right on top of him by then, rushing to the attack, and had no chance to deflect the blow. The axe struck the heavybrowed forehead and split it apart with a grating of metal on bone.

The force of the blow snapped the massive head back. Blood poured down the ruined face, a black ichor that filled the creature’s gaping maw. The beast dropped to its knees, already dead, and began to topple forward.

Risca was already drawing back, racing for the safety of the door, when something moved in the shadows to either side and he threw up his magic instinctively. The sudden glare of the flames illuminated the handful of Skull Bearers that slunk from the shadows, dark-winged and red-eyed as they sought to close on him. Risca gritted his teeth in disgust. They had been quicker than he thought, coming over the wall while he obligingly waited on their decoy. He darted left at the closest of them, sending the Druid fire hammering into it. The winged hunter fell back, hissing in fury, and red fire exploded in front of Risca as he sought to gain the tower entry. Something slammed into him, knocking him sprawling—one of the Bearers, claws slashing. Risca rolled free and came back to his feet. Steam rose out of the places where the fire had burned, mingling with the rain and mist. Thunder rumbled and cracked with new fury. Cries of glee lifted as the Northlanders surged through the unprotected gap into the courtyard behind him.

Another of the Skull Bearers attacked, a sudden dark lunge that he only barely avoided. Spears and arrows flew all about him. He was so stupid, delaying like this! The thought came and went in a flash. He threw shards of Druid fire to either side and sprinted through weapons and teeth and claws for the doorway. He did not look back, knowing what he would find, afraid that it would freeze him where he stood. He threw back another of the Bearers, this one flinging itself in front of him in an effort to slow his escape. In desperation, he sent a wash of Druid fire in all directions, forcing back the enemies seeking to close, and he ran the last few yards to the entry as if on fire himself and catapulted through the open door.

Tumbling into the dark, he was back on his feet in an instant and racing ahead. It was pitch dark within the castle corridors, the torches all extinguished, but he knew Stedden Keep and did not require light to find his way. He heard the pursuit that came after him, and when he had gone the length of the first corridor, he turned long enough to fire the passageway from end to end. It was enough to slow them, no more. But that was all he needed.

Moments later, he was through a massive, iron-plated door that he slammed shut and barred against further pursuit. They would not catch him now. Not this night. But he had come too close to discount the possibility that next time he might not be so lucky.

He brushed away the blood that ran into his eyes, feeling the sting of the gash in his forehead. He was not badly hurt. Time enough to deal with it later. Raybur and the others would be waiting somewhere back in the tunnels. Risca knew the Dwarf King too well to think he would abandon him. Friends didn’t do that.

He swallowed against the dryness in his throat.

What then, he wondered bleakly, of Tay Trefenwyd and the Elves?

Night lay over Arborlon, a soft, warm blanket of darkness. No rain fell here as it did farther east. Jerle Shannara stood at a front window of the summerhouse and waited for dawn. He had not slept at all that night, beset by doubts whose roots he could trace to the loss of Tay Trefenwyd, haunted by the possibility of what might have been and what must now surely be. He was on the summit of a climb that had begun some weeks earlier and would culminate with the arrival of morning, and he could not shake the despair he felt at knowing that circumstance and fortune had determined his fate in ways he could never have foreseen and could not now change.

“Come to me, love,” Preia Starle called to him from the darkened hall, standing with her arms wrapped protectively about her body.

“I was thinking,” he replied distantly.

She walked over to him and put her arms about his waist, holding him against her. “You think too much lately.”

It was true, he supposed. It hadn’t been that way before, not when Tay had been alive, not before the coming of the Warlock Lord and the misery he had visited on the Elves. He had been freer then, unfettered by responsibilities or obligations of any real significance, his life and his future his own, all the possibilities in the world his to choose from. How quickly it had all changed.

He lifted one great hand and placed it over hers. “I still do not want to be king.”

But king he would be at first light. He would be crowned at sunrise in the tradition of Elven Kings since the time of faerie. It was decided now, determined by the events that had begun with the assassination of Courtann Ballindarroch and culminated in the death of his last son. For weeks the Elves had held out hope that the king’s heir would return from his ill-advised search for his father’s murderers. But Alyten was a brash, foolish boy, and should never have gone looking for the trouble he found. The Northlanders were waiting for him, hoping he would seek them out. They let him stumble on them, drew him on, ambushed him, and killed him. Those with him who survived, a small number only, had brought him home. He was the last grown heir to the throne of the Ballindarroch family, and Jerle Shannara’s last hope that the Elven people would not turn instead to him.

They did so immediately, of course. Many had never wanted Alyten as ruler in the first place. The Northlanders threatened anew, claiming the whole of the Streleheim, closing off all contact with other lands and their peoples. An invasion of the Westland would come soon—of that there was little doubt. It wanted only the return of the Warlock Lord, who had gone east to attack the Dwarves. Elven Hunters sent as scouts had been able to determine that much. Still the High Council would not act, awaiting Alyten’s return, awaiting a formal declaration that he would be king. Now Alyten was gone, and there remained only the two grandchildren, too small to rule, too young even to appreciate the enormity of what they faced. Should a regent serve in their stead? Should they rule with the help of advisors? The feeling was immediate and strong that neither solution was sufficient to forestall the disaster that threatened, and that Jerle Shannara, as the king’s first cousin and the most experienced fighter and strategist in the Westland, was the only hope.

Even so, the debate on this matter might have gone on indefinitely if not for the urgency of the circumstances and the determination of Preia Starle. She had come to Jerle almost at once after Alyten’s body had been returned, when the debate was so fierce that it threatened to divide the Elven people irreparably.

“You cannot let that happen,” she had told him. It was night, another slow, sleepy eve when the day’s heat still lingered thick and pasty at the comers of the mouth and eyes. “You are the best hope of the Elven people, and you know it. We have to fight if we are to survive, Jerle. The Northlanders will give us no choice. When the time comes, who else but you will lead us? If you are to lead, then do so as king.”

“My right to be king will be questioned forever!” he had snapped, tired of the discussion, sick at heart of the need for it “Do you love me?” she had asked suddenly.

“You know that I do.”

“And I love you as well. So heed me now. Make me your wife. Make me your life’s partner and helpmate, your closest confidante and forever friend. I am these things to you already, so the step that you must take is a small one. Bond with me in the eyes of the Elven people. Tell the High Council that you want to be king, that you and I will adopt those two small boys who have lost their family and make them our sons. They have no one else. Why should they not have us? It will stop the talk. It will end the objections. It will give the boys the chance to succeed you as king when they are grown. It will bind up the wounds caused by the deaths of all the other Ballindarrochs and let the Elven people get on with the business of surviving!”

So it had come to pass. The strength of her insistence had swayed him when nothing else could. He would wonder at it afterward, at the simplicity of the solution, at Preia Starle’s remarkable resolve. He would have married her anyway, he told himself. He did love her and want her as his wife. She was his closest friend, his confidante, his lover. The Elves preferred a king with heirs and the Ballindarroch family had been well liked, so there was support for the adoption of the two boys. The acclaim for Jerle to be crowned king was overwhelming.

Wrapped in Preia’s embrace, he looked out into the night, remembering. How far he had come in so little time.

“Do you want children of your own, Preia?” he asked her suddenly.

There was silence as she mulled the matter over—or at least her answer. He did not try to see her face.

“I want my life with you,” she said finally. “For the moment, it is difficult to think of anything else. When the Elves are safe again, when the Warlock Lord is destroyed...” She paused, giving him a long, steady look. “Are you asking me if blood ties make a difference in my commitment to the boys we have agreed to take as our own? They do not. If we have no other children, the boys will do. They will be ours as if born to us. Are you satisfied?”

He nodded without speaking, thinking of how their relationship had evolved, how dramatically it had changed with Tay’s death.

He had pondered for a long time her admission that she might have loved his friend, that she might even have gone with him if he had asked. It did not bother him as much as perhaps it should.

He had loved Tay himself, and now that he was dead it was hard to begrudge him anything.

“You will sit on the High Council,” he told her quietly. “Vree Erreden will sit as well. When I am able to do so, I will make him First Minister. Do you approve?”

She nodded. “You have come a long way from your old opinion of the locat, haven’t you?”

He shrugged. “I will ask that the Elven army be mobilized for a march east—no, I will insist on it.” His shoulders bunched with his determination. “I will do what Tay would have done. I will see that the Dwarves are not abandoned. I will see that the Black Elfstone reaches Bremen. If I fail as king, then it will not be because I lacked courage or commitment.”

It was a brash, uncompromising declaration, a buttress against the doubts and uncertainties that still lurked at the edges of his confidence. Preia would know. He could not afford hesitation. The line between success and failure, between life and death, would be a thin one.

Preia pressed herself against him. “You will do what you must, what you know is right. You will be king, and there will be no regrets. You will lead your people and keep them safe. It is your destiny, Jerle. It is your fate. Vree has seen it in his visions. You must see that it is true.”

He took a long moment before answering. “I see mostly that I lack another choice and so must accept this one. And I think always of Tay.”

They stood without speaking for a long time. Then Preia led him through the darkness of the summerhouse to their bed and held him until morning.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Anxious to make up for the time they sensed they had already lost, the bearers of Urprox Screl’s newly forged sword purchased horses and rode north through the Southland toward the border country and the Silver River. They traveled steadily, stopping only for food and rest, and they did not say much to one another. Memories of the forging of the sword dominated their thoughts, the images so vivid that days later it seemed as if the event had happened only moments ago. That the effects of the magic invoked had transcended the forging itself was undeniable. In some way, perhaps differently for each, the creation of the talisman had transformed them. They were newly born, the forging having reshaped them as surely as it had cast the blade itself, and they were left to puzzle out what form they had taken.

It was given to Kinson Ravenlock to bear the sword on their journey back. Bremen entrusted it to him as soon as they had departed the city, compelled to do so by a need that the Druid could not quite manage to hide from his friend. It was almost as if he could not bear the weight of the weapon, could not tolerate the feel of it. It was a strange, disturbing moment, but Kinson took the sword without a word and strapped it across his back. Its weight was nothing to him, though its importance to the future of the Races was impossible to ignore. But, not having witnessed for himself the visions at the Hadeshorn, Kinson was not burdened by a Druid’s insight into what that future might be, and so the sword did not have the same power over him. He bore it as he would any weapon, and while his mind retraced endlessly the moments of its creation, it was not the past with which he was concerned, but the present.

At night, sometimes, he would take the blade out and examine it. He would not have done so if Mareth had not asked it of him on the first night out, her curiosity stronger than her trepidation, her own ruminations on what had transpired at the forge fueling her need to look closer at what they had made. Bremen had not objected, though he had risen and walked off into the dark, so Kinson had seen no reason not to accede to Mareth’s request.

Together, they had held the blade up to the firelight and examined it. It was a wondrous piece of work, perfectly balanced, smooth and sleek and gleaming, so light it could be wielded by a single hand in spite of its size and length. The Eilt Druin had been fused into the handle where the crossguard was set, the flame from the clenched hand rising along the blade as if to burn to its tip. No flaw appeared on the polished surface, a virtual impossibility in a normal forging, but facilitated in this instance by the nature of Cogline’s formula and the use of Bremen’s magic.

It occurred to Kinson after several days of bearing the sword that part of his lack of awe for the blade’s worth lay in the fact that Bremen did not seem to know yet what the talisman was supposed to do. Certainly, it was meant to destroy the Warlock Lord—but how? The nature of the magic with which it was imbued remained a mystery, even to the Druid. It was intended for an Elven warrior—that much the vision of Galaphile had revealed. But what was the warrior to do with the blade? Was he to wield it as he would an ordinary weapon? Given the nature of the Warlock Lord’s power, that did not seem likely. There must be a magic to it that Brona could not withstand, that could overcome all of the rebel Druid’s defenses and destroy him. But what could that magic be? There was some magic in the Eilt Druin, it was said, but Bremen had never been able to discover what that magic was, and whatever it was, it did not appear to have been used even once in the long span of his lifetime.

Bremen admitted this to both the Borderman and the girl, and he did so not reluctantly but with a mix of puzzlement and curiosity. The mystery of the sword’s magic was not an obstacle for the Druid, but a challenge that he confronted with the same determination he had evinced in his search for the blade’s maker. After all, it was not reasonable to believe that the forging alone was sufficient to imbue the sword with the magic it required. Even the fusing of the Eilt Druin did not seem enough. Something further was needed, and he must discover what it was. He took reassurance, he confided to Kinson at one point, in the fact that they had come as far and accomplished as much as they had. Because of that, he believed everything they sought was within reach.

It was a dubious premise to Kinson’s way of thinking, but Bremen had accomplished a good many things in their time together through sheer strength of belief, so there was no reason to start questioning him now. If the sword had magic that could destroy the Warlock Lord, Bremen would discover what that magic was. If a confrontation was fated, Bremen would find a way to make the result favor their cause.

So they traveled out of the deep Southland and back into the Battlemound, heading for the Silver River. Their destination, the old man advised his companions, was the Hadeshorn. There he would pay yet another visit to the spirits of the dead and attempt to ascertain what they must do next. Along the way, they would try to determine what had become of the Dwarves. The weather was hot and sultry as they rode, and they were forced to stop frequently to rest themselves and their mounts. Time crawled with weary reluctance. They saw nothing of the conflict they knew was taking place farther north, encountered no signs of a Northland presence, and heard no mention from those they passed of anything untoward. Yet there was a persistent, unsettling suspicion among the three that they had somehow strayed too far from where they had begun their journey and that on their return they would find too many chances irretrievably lost.

Late in the afternoon of their first day of travel through the Battlemound, Bremen called a halt while several hours of light yet remained and took them out of the flats and into the Black Oaks. Once again, they had been navigating a precarious passage between the two quagmires, keeping just clear of the dangers of each. Now he forsook caution and steered them directly into the forbidden forest. Kinson was alarmed, but held his tongue. Bremen would have a good reason for making this detour.

They rode just into the fringe, barely a hundred feet, the sunbleached lowlands still visible through breaks in the trees, the darker regions of the forest still ahead of them, then dismounted.

Leaving Mareth to hold the horses, the Druid took Kinson into a stand of ironwood, examined the trees thoughtfully for a time, then found a branch that suited him and ordered Kinson to cut it.

The Borderman obliged without comment, using his broadsword to back through the toughened wood. Bremen had him lop off the ancillary branches and twigs, then took the rough-cut length of wood in his gnarled hands and nodded his approval. They retraced their steps to the horses, remounted, and rode out of the forest once more. Kinson and Mareth exchanged puzzled glances, but kept silent.

They camped a little farther on in a vale that was not much more than a depression amid the trees. There Bremen had Kinson further shave the ironwood branch to form a staff. Kinson worked at the task for the better part of two hours while the other two prepared dinner and saw to the animals. When he had done as much with the wood as he could, when he had smoothed down the bumps and knots where the smaller branches had been cut away, Bremen took it from him once again. The company of three was seated about a small fire, the day faded to a few faint streaks of brightness west, the night creeping in on the heels of lengthening shadows and darkening skies. They were settled close against the trees of the Black Oaks, well back from the flats. A stream ran out of the forest several yards away, churning determinedly across a series of rocks and twisting away again into the shadows. The night was still and empty-feeling, free of intrusive sounds, of movement, of the presence of watching eyes.

Bremen rose and stood before the fire with the ironwood staff held upright before him, one end butted firmly against the earth, the other pointed skyward, both hands fastened to the midsection.

The staff was six feet in length, cut so at his instruction, still raw from the shaving Kinson had labored to complete.

“Stay seated until I am finished,” he ordered mysteriously.

He closed his eyes and went very still. After a moment, his hands began to glow with white light. Slowly the light spread out along the length of the staff, traveling in both directions. When the staff was completely enveloped, the light began to pulse. Kinson and Mareth watched in silence, mindful of Bremen’s admonition.

The light infused itself into the wood, turning it oddly transparent.

It snaked up and down in strange patterns, moving slowly at first, then more rapidly. All the while Bremen stayed as still as stone, eyes closed, brows knit in concentration.

Then the light died away, returning to the Druid’s hands before fading. Bremen’s eyes opened. He took a long, slow breath and held up the staff. The wood had turned as black as ink, and its surface was smooth and polished. Something of the light that had sealed it reflected in its deep sheen, just a spark that winked and disappeared before moving on to another spot, as elusive as the glint of a cat’s eye.

Bremen smiled and handed the staff to Mareth. “This is for you.”

She took it from him and held it, marveling at its feel. “It is warm yet.”

“And will stay so.” Bremen reseated himself, a hint of weariness creeping into his lined face. “The magic that infuses it will not be dislodged, but will reside within for as long as the staff is whole.”

“And what is the purpose of this magic? Why are you giving the staff to me?”

The old man leaned forward slightly, the light changing the pattern in the wrinkles that etched his face. “The staff is meant to help you, Mareth. You have searched long and hard for a way to control your magic, to prevent it from running amok, perhaps even from consuming you. I have given much thought to what could be done. I think the staff is the answer. It is designed to act as a conduit. Plant one end firmly against the ground, and it will carry off the excess of any magic you wish to employ.”

He paused, searching her dark eyes. “You understand what this means, don’t you? It means that I believe you will have to use the magic again now that we are traveling north. Any other expectation would be unrealistic. The Warlock Lord will be looking for us, and there will come a time when you will have to protect yourself and perhaps others as well. I may not be there to help you. Your magic is too essential for you not to be able to rely on it. I am hopeful that the staff will allow you to employ it without fear.”

She nodded slowly. “Even if the magic is innate?”

“Even so. It will take time for you to learn to use the staff properly. I wish I could promise you that time, but I cannot. You must remember the staff’s purpose, and if you are required to defend yourself, order your thoughts with the staff in mind.”

She cocked one eyebrow at him, then said, “Do not act recklessly. Do not call up the magic without first thinking of the staff. Do not employ the magic without setting the staff and opening a channel within to carry the excess out.”

He smiled. “You are quick, Mareth. If I were your father, I would be proud indeed.”

She smiled back. “I think of you as my father in any case. Not as I once did, but in a good way.”

“I am flattered. Now, take the staff as your own and do not forget its use. Once to the Silver River, we are back in enemy country, and the battle with the Warlock Lord begins anew.”

They slept well that night and set out again at dawn. They rode slowly, resting their horses often in the midsummer heat, working their way steadily north. To their right, the Battlemound shimmered in the sun, barren and stark, empty of movement. To their left, the Black Oaks were a dark wall, as still as the flats, tall and forbidding. Again they rode mostly in silence, Kinson carrying the sword, Mareth the staff, and Bremen the weight of their future.

By nightfall, they had skirted the quagmire of the Mist Marsh and reached the Silver River. Anxious to gain the heights that lay just beyond so that he could view the Rabb Plains and the whole of the country north before the morrow, Bremen made the choice to cross. They found a shallows, the river low from days of little rainfall and high heat, and with the sun setting wearily beyond the flat glimmer of the Rainbow Lake west, they rode up through a series of hills and onto a bluff. There, back within a thick band of trees, they dismounted, tethered the horses, and proceeded on foot.

By now the daylight had faded to a silvery gray and the shadows of nightfall had begun to lengthen. The air, still thick with heat, had taken on a smoky quality and tasted of dust and parched grass.

Night birds flew through the darkness in search of food, flashes of movement that appeared and were gone in an instant’s time. All about them, insects buzzed hungrily.

They reached the edge of the bluff, the sunlight streaking the flats with red fire, and stopped.

Below them lay the whole of the Northland army. It was camped several miles farther north, well out on the plains so that the details of its battle pennants were obscured, but too vast and dark to be mistaken for anything other than what it was. Cooking fires were already lit, small flickers of light that dotted the grasslands like fireflies. Horses and wagons circled sluggishly, wheels and traces creaking, riders and drivers shouting roughly as they wrestled provisions and weapons into place. Tents billowed in the hot breeze amid the army’s protective mass. One, an impenetrable black, its ribs all edges and spines, stood alone at the exact center of the camp, a broad stretch of open ground encircling it like a moat. The Druid, the Borderman, and the girl stared down at it in silence.

“What is the Northland army doing here?” Kinson asked finally.

Bremen shook his head. “I’m not certain. It must have come out of the Anar, where we saw it last, so perhaps now it moves west...”

His voice died away, leaving the rest unsaid. If the army of the Warlock Lord was withdrawing from the Eastland, then the battle with the Dwarves was finished and would now in all likelihood be carried to the Elves. But what had become of Raybur and his army? What had become of Risca?

Kinson Ravenlock shook his head despairingly. Weeks had passed since the invasion of the Eastland. Much could have happened in that time. Standing with Urprox Screl’s sword strapped across his back, he wondered suddenly if they had come too late with the talisman to be of any use.

He reached down for the buckle to the strap that secured it, loosened the sword, and handed it to Bremen. “We have to find out what’s going on. I’m the logical one to do that.” He slipped off his own broadsword as well, leaving only a short sword and hunting knife. “I should be back by sunrise.”

Bremen nodded, not bothering to argue the point. He understood what the Borderman was saying. Either of them could go down there, but it was Bremen they could least afford to lose at this point. Now that they had the sword, the talisman the visions of Galaphile had promised, they must discover its use and its wielder. Bremen was the only one who could do that.

“I will go with you,” Mareth said suddenly, impulsively.

The Borderman smiled. It was an unexpected offer. He considered it a moment, then said to her, not unkindly, “Two make it twice as hard when you are sneaking about. Wait here with Bremen. Help keep watch for my return. Next time, you can go in my place.”

Then he tightened the belt that sheathed the remainder of his blades, moved several dozen paces to his right, and started down the bluff slope into the fading light.

When the Borderman had gone, the old man and the girl moved back into the trees and set camp. They ate their meal cold, not wishing to chance a fire with the Northland army so close and Skull Bearers certain to be at hunt. Their journey and the heat of the day had drained them of energy, and they talked only briefly before Bremen assumed watch and Mareth slept.

The time passed slowly, the night darkening, the fires of the enemy camp growing brighter in the distance, the skies opening in a flood of stars. There was no moon this night; it was either new or so far south it could not be spied beyond the screen of trees that backed along the bluff. Bremen found his thoughts straying to other times and places, to his days at Paranor, now forever lost, to his introductions to Tay Trefenwyd and Risca, to his recruitment of Kinson Ravenlock, to his search for the truth about Brona. He thought of Paranor’s long history, and he wondered if the Druid Council would ever convene again. From where, he asked himself, would new Druids come, now that the old were destroyed?

The knowledge lost with their passing was irreplaceable. Some of it had been transferred to the Druid Histories, but not all. Though turned moribund and reclusive, those who had become Druids were the brightest of several generations of the people of the Four Lands. Who would take their place?

It was a pointless argument, given the fact that there was no reason to believe that anyone would be left alive to assemble a new Druid Council if he should fail in his effort to destroy the Warlock Lord. Worse, it made him consider anew the fact that he still lacked anyone to succeed him. He glanced at the sleeping Mareth and wondered momentarily if perhaps she might consider the position. She had grown close to him since leaving Paranor, and she was a genuine talent. The magic she possessed was incredibly powerful, and she had a deep appreciation for its possibilities. But there was nothing to guarantee that she would ever be able to master her lethal magic, and if she could not do so she was useless. Druids must have discipline and control before all things.

Mareth was fighting to acquire both.

He looked back across the grasslands of the Rabb, then let his hand stray to his side, where it came to rest on the sword. Still such a mystery, he lamented. What was he required to do in order to discover the solution? He would travel to the Hadeshorn to ask help from the Druids, but there was no guarantee they would give it. On his last visit, they had refused even to appear to him. Why should it be any different now? Would the presence of the sword persuade them to rise from their netherworld confines? Would they be intrigued enough to show themselves? Would they choose to respond to his summons because they had been human once themselves and could appreciate humanity’s need?

He closed his eyes and rubbed at them wearily. When he opened them again, one of the enemy watch fires was moving toward him. He blinked in disbelief, certain he must be imagining it. But the fire came on, a small, flickering brightness in the vast darkness of the plains, wending its way closer. It seemed to float.

As it neared, he rose in spite of himself, trying to decide what he should do. Oddly, he did not feel threatened, only curious.

Then the light settled and took shape, and he could see that it was carried by a small boy. The boy was smooth-faced and his clear blue eyes were inquisitive. He smiled in greeting as he approached, holding the light aloft. Bremen blinked anew. The light was like nothing he had ever seen. It burned no flame, but shone out of a glass and metal casing, as if powered by a miniature star.

“Greetings, Bremen,” the boy said softly.

“Greetings,” Bremen replied.

“You look weary. Your journey has required much of you. But you have accomplished much, so perhaps the sacrifice was a fail trade.” The blue eyes shone. “I am the King of the Silver River Do you know of me?”

Bremen nodded. He had heard of this faerie creature, the last of his kind, a being said to reside close to the Rainbow Lake and along the near stretch of the river for which he was named. It was said he had survived for thousands of years, that he had been one of the first beings created by the Word. It was said that his vision and his magic were by equal measures ancient and far-reaching He appeared on occasion to travelers in need, often as a boy sometimes as an old man.

“You sit within the fringe of my gardens,” the boy said. His hand gestured in a slow sweep. “If you look closely, you can see them.”

Bremen did look, and suddenly the bluff and the plains faded away and he found himself seated in gardens thick with flowering trees and vines, the air fragrant with their smells, the whisper of boughs a soft singing against the silky black of the night.

The vision faded. “I have come to give you rest and reassurance,” said the boy. “This night at least, you shall sleep in peace No watch will be necessary. Your journey has taken you a long way from Paranor, and it is far from over. You will be challenged at every turn, but if you walk carefully and heed your instincts, you will survive to destroy the Warlock Lord.”

“Do you know what I must do?” Bremen asked quickly. “Can you tell me?”

The boy smiled. “You must do what you think best. That is the nature of the future. It is not given to us already cast. It is given as a set of possibilities, and we must choose which of these we would make happen and then try to see it done. You go now to the Hadeshorn. You carry the sword to the spirits of the Druids dead and gone. Does that choice seem wrong to you?”

It did not. It seemed right. “But I am not certain,” the old man confessed.

“Let me see the sword,” the boy asked gently.

The Druid lifted it for the boy to inspect. The boy reached out as if he might take hold of it, then stayed his hand when it was almost touching, and instead passed his fingers down the length of the blade and drew his hand clear again.

“You will know what you must do when you are there,” he said.

“You will know what is required.”

To his surprise, Bremen understood. “At the Hadeshorn.”

“There, and afterward, at Arborlon, where all is changed and a new beginning is made. You will know.”

“Can you tell me of my friends, of what has become...?”

“The Ballindarrochs are destroyed and there is a new King of the Elves. Seek him for the answers to your questions.”

“What of Tay Trefenwyd? What of the Black Elfstone?”

But the boy had risen, carrying with him the strange light.

“Sleep, Bremen. Morning comes soon enough.”

A great weariness settled over the old man. Though he wanted to do so, he could not make himself rise to follow. There were still questions he wished to ask, but he could not make himself speak the words. It was as if a weight were pulling at him, huge and insistent. He slid to the ground, wrapped in his cloak, his eyes heavy, his breathing slow.

The boy’s hand wove through the air. “Sleep, that you may find the strength you need to go on.”

The boy and the light receded into the dark, growing steadily smaller. Bremen tried to follow their progress, but could not stay awake. His breathing deepened and his eyes closed.

When the boy and the light disappeared, he slept.

At dawn, Kinson Ravenlock returned. He walked out of u blanket of morning fog that hung thick and damp across the Rabb, the air having cooled during the night. Behind him, the army of the Warlock Lord was stirring, a sluggish beast preparing to move on. He stretched wearily as he reached the old man and the girl, finding them awake and waiting for him, looking as if they had slept surprisingly well. He glanced at them in turn, wondering at the fresh resolve he found in their eyes, at the renewal of then determination. He dropped his weapons and accepted the cold breakfast and ale that he was offered, seating himself gratefully beneath the shady boughs of a small stand of oaks.

“The Northlanders march against the Elves,” he advised, dispensing with any preliminaries. “They say that the Dwarves are destroyed.”

“But you are not certain,” Bremen offered quietly, seated acros’ from him with Mareth at his side.

Kinson shook his head. “They drove the Dwarves back beyond the Ravenshorn, beat them at every turn. They say they smashed them at a place called Stedden Keep, but Raybur and Risca both appear to have escaped. Nor do they seem certain how many of the Dwarves they killed.” He arched one eyebrow. “Doesn’t sound like a resounding victory to me.”

Bremen nodded, thinking. “But the Warlock Lord grows restless with the pursuit. He feels no threat from the Dwarves, but fears the Elves. So he turns west.”

“How did you learn all this?” Mareth asked Kinson, obviously perplexed. “How could you have gotten so close? You couldn’t have let them see you.”

“Well, they saw me and they didn’t.” The Borderman smiled. “I was close enough to touch them, but they didn’t get a look at my face. They thought me one of them, you see. In near darkness, cloaked and hooded, hunched down a bit, you can appear as they do because they don’t expect you to be anything else. It’s an old trick, best practiced before you actually try it.” He gave her an appraising look. “You seem to have slept well in my absence.”

“All night,” she admitted ruefully. “Bremen let me do so. He didn’t wake me for my watch.”

“There was no need,” the other said quickly, brushing the matter aside. “But now we have today to worry about. We have come to another crossroads, I’m afraid. We shall have to separate Kinson, I want you to go into the Eastland and look for Risca. Find out the truth of things. If Raybur and the Dwarves are yet a fighting force, bring them west to stand with the Elves. Tell them we have a talisman that will destroy the Warlock Lord, but we will need their help in bringing him to bay.”

Kinson thought the matter over a moment, frowning. “I will do what I can, Bremen. But the Dwarves were relying on the Elves, and it appears that the Elves never came. I wonder how willing the Dwarves will be now to go to the aid of the Elves.”

Bremen gave him a steady look. “It is up to you to persuade them that they must. It is imperative, Kinson. Tell them that the Ballindarrochs were destroyed, and a new king was chosen. Tell them that is why the Elves were delayed. Remind them that the threat is to us all, not to any one.” He glanced briefly at Mareth, seated next to him, then back to the Borderman. “I must go on to the Hadeshorn to speak with the spirits of the dead about the sword. From there, I will travel west to the Elves to find the sword’s wielder. We will meet again there.”

“Where am I to go?” Mareth asked at once.

The old man hesitated. “Kinson may have greater need of you.”

“I don’t need anyone,” the Borderman objected at once. His dark eyes met the girl’s and then quickly lowered.

Mareth looked questioningly at Bremen. “I have done all I can for you,” he said quietly.

She seemed to understand what he was telling her. She smiled bravely and glanced at Kinson. “I would like to come with you, Kinson. Yours will be the longer journey, and maybe it will help if there are two of us to make it. You’re not afraid to have me along, are you?”

Kinson snorted. “Hardly. Just remember what Bremen told you about the staff. Maybe you can keep from setting fire to my backside.”

He regretted the words almost before he finished saying them.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said ruefully. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head dismissively. “I know what you meant. There is nothing to apologize for. We are friends, Kinson. Friends understand each other.”

She smiled reassuringly, her gaze lingering on him, and he thought in that moment that maybe she was right, that maybe they were friends. But he found himself wondering at the same time if she didn’t mean something more.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Alone now, all those who had come with him from Paranor departed on journeys of their own, Bremen traveled north for the Hadeshorn. He went down onto the Plains of Rabb, easing his way through a midmorning haze as the sun lifted into the cloudless blue sky. He walked his horse slowly, angling east away from the departing Northland army, wary of encountering the scouts they would be dispatching and the stragglers they were sure to leave behind. He could hear the army in the distance, a rumbling of wagons and machines, a creaking of traces and stays, a hum of activity that rose out of the brume, disembodied and directionless. Bremen cloaked himself with his Druid magic so that he would not be seen even by chance, sorted through the maze of sounds to detect what threatened, and kept close watch over what moved in the blanket of mist.

Time slipped away, and the sun began to burn off the haze. The sounds of the departing army receded, moving west, away from where he rode, and Bremen relaxed his vigil. He could see the plains more clearly now, their parched, flat stretches of baked earth and burned-out grasses, their dusty sweep from the forests of the Anar to the Runne, trampled by the Northlanders, left littered and scarred. He rode through the army’s discards and leavings, through the debris that marked its passing, and he pondered on the ugliness and futility of war. He wore Urprox Screl’s sword strapped across his back, the weight of it his to bear now that Kinson was gone. He could feel it pressing against him as he rode, a constant reminder of the challenge he faced. He wondered at his insistence on assuming such responsibility. It would have been so much easier not to have done so. There was no particular reason why he should have taken on this burden. No one had forced him. No one had come to him and said that he must. The choice had been his, and he could not help but wonder this morning, as he rode toward the Dragon’s Teeth and the confrontation that waited, what perverse need had driven him to make it.

He found no water on the plains as midday approached, and so he went on without stopping. He dismounted and walked the horse for a time, hooding himself against the noon heat, the sun a brilliant white orb that burned down with pitiless insistence. He pondered the enormity of the danger that the people of the Four Lands faced. Like the land beneath the sun, they seemed so helpless. So much depended on things unknown—the sword’s magic, the sword’s wielder, the varied quests of the individual members of their little company, and the coming together of all of these at the right time and place. The undertaking was ludicrous when dissected and examined in its separate parts, fraught with the possibility of failure. Yet when considered as a whole, when looked at in terms of need measured against determination, failure was unthinkable.

With night’s fall, he camped on the open plains in a ravine where a small trickle of water and some sparse grass allowed the horse to gain nourishment. Bremen ate a little of the bread he still carried and drank from the aleskin. He watched the night sky offer up its display of stars and saw a quarter-moon on the rise crest the horizon south. He sat with the sword in his lap and pondered anew its use. He ran his fingers over the crest of the Eilt Drain, as if by doing so he might discover the secret of its magic. You will know what is required, the King of the Silver River had said. The hours slipped away as he sat thinking, the night about him still and at peace. The Northland army was too far away now to be heard, its fires too distant to be seen. The Rabb this night belonged to him, and it felt as if he were the only living person in all the world.

He rode on at dawn, making better time this day. The sky clouded across the sun, lessening the force of its heat. Dust rose from his horse’s hooves, small explosions that drifted and scattered in a soft west wind. Ahead, the country began to change, to turn green again where the Mermidon flowed down out of the Runne. Trees lifted from the flats, small stands that warded springs and tributaries of the larger river. By late afternoon, he had crossed at a wide shallows and was moving toward the wall of the Dragon’s Teeth. He could have stopped there and rested, but he chose to go on. Time was a harsh taskmaster and did not allow personal indulgence.

By nightfall, he had reached the foothills that led up into the Valley of Shale. He dismounted and tethered his horse close by a spring. He watched the sun sink behind the Runne and ate his dinner, thinking of what lay ahead. A long night, for one thing Success or failure, for another. He could break it down quite simply, but the uncertainty was still enormous. His mind drifted for a time, and he found himself picking out bits and pieces of his life to reexamine, as if by doing so he might find some measure of reassurance in his capabilities. He had enjoyed some small measure of success in his efforts to thwart the Warlock Lord, and he could take heart from that. But he knew that in this dangerous game a single misstep could prove fatal and all that had been accomplished could be undone. He wondered at the unfairness of it, but knew that never in the history of the world had fairness determined anything that mattered.

When midnight came, he rose and walked up into the mountains. He wore the black robes of his office, the insignia of the Eilt Druin emblazoned on his breast, and he carried Urprox Screl’s wondrous sword. He smiled. Urprox Screl’s sword. He should call it something else, for it belonged to the smith no longer. But there was no other name for it as yet, and no way to give it one until its real owner was discovered or its purpose determined. So he put the matter of the sword’s name aside, breathing in the night air, so cool and clean in these foothills, so clear that it seemed as it he could see forever.

He passed through the draws and defiles that led to the Valley of Shale, and it was still several hours before dawn when he reached his destination. He stood for a time at the rim of the valley and looked down at the Hadeshorn, the lake as still and flat as glass, reflecting an image of a night sky bright with stars. He looked into the mirror of the silent waters, and he found himself wondering at the secrets that it hid. Could he unlock just a handful of those? Could he find a way to discover just one or two, those that would give him a chance of successfully carrying on his struggle? There, in the depths of that lake, the answers waited, treasures hoarded and protected by the spirits of the dead, maybe because it was all that remained to them of the life they had departed, maybe because in death you had so little you could call your own.

He sat then amid the jumbled rock and continued to stare at the lake and to ponder its mysteries. What was it like when your life was gone and you assumed spirit form? What was it like to live within the waters of the Hadeshorn? Did you feel in death anything of what you felt in life? Did you carry all your memories with you? Did you have the same longings and needs? Was there purpose in being when your corporeal body was gone?

So many unknowns, he thought. But he was old, and the secrets would be revealed to him soon enough.

An hour before dawn he picked up the sword and went down into the valley. He worked his way carefully across the loose obsidian, cautious of a misstep, trying hard not to think of what lay ahead. He calmed himself, retreating deep inside as he walked, collecting his thoughts and shaping his needs. The night was peaceful and silent, but he could already sense something stirring within the earth. He came down off the valley slope and walked to the edge of the Hadeshorn and stopped. He stood there for a moment without moving, a sense of uncertainty creeping through him. So much depended on what happened next, and he knew so little of what he should do.

He placed the sword before him at the water’s edge and straightened. There was nothing he could do about it now. Time was slipping away.

He began the incantations and hand motions that would summon the spirits of the dead. He worked his way through them with grim determination, blocking out what he could of the doubts and uncertainties, casting off what he could of the fear. He felt the earth rumble and the lake stir in response to his efforts. The sky darkened as if clouds had appeared to cloak it, and the stars disappeared. Water hissed and boiled before him, and the voices of the dead began to rise in whispers that turned quickly to moans and cries. Bremen felt his own resolve toughen as if to shield him in some way from what the dead might do to him. He went hard and taut inside, so that the only movement came from the quicksilver flight of his thoughts. He was finished now with the summoning, and he picked up the sword again and stepped back. The lake was churning wildly, spray flying in all directions, and the voices were a maddening cacophony. The Druid stood rooted in place and waited for what must come. He was shut away in the valley now, isolated from the living, alone with the dead. If something went wrong, there was no one to help him. If he failed, there was no one to come for him. Whatever transpired this day, it was on his shoulders.

Then the lake exploded at its center in a volcanic surge, and a geyser rose straight into the air, a vast, black column of water.

Bremen’s eyes went wide. He had never seen that happen before.

The column lifted skyward, and its waters did not falter or dissipate. All about it fluttered the ghostly, shimmering forms of the spirits of the dead. They appeared in swarms, emerging not from the lake itself, but from the column, disgorged from its churning mass. They swam through the air as if still in water, their small forms a brilliant kaleidoscope against the black of the night. As they whirled, they cried out, their voices sharp and poignant, as if all that they had ever wanted was to be found in this single moment in time.

Booming coughs rose suddenly from the column’s center, and now Bremen fell back in spite of himself, the earth beneath his feet heaving with the force of the sound. He had overstepped himself in some way, he thought in horror. He had done something wrong.

But it was too late to change things, even if he had known what to do, and it was too late to flee.

In his hands, the embossed surface of the Eilt Drain, embedded in the pommel of the sword, began to glow.

Bremen flinched as if he had been burned. Shades!

Then the column of water split asunder, cracked down the middle as surely as if struck by lightning. Light blazed from within, so brilliant that Bremen was forced to shield his eyes. He brought his arms up protectively, the sword held before him as if to ward off what threatened. The light flared, and as it did a line of dark forms began to emerge. One by one, they materialized, cloaked and hooded, as black as the night around them, steaming with an inner heat.

Bremen dropped to one knee, unable to stand longer in the face of what was happening, still trying to shield his eyes and at the same time watch. One by one, the robed figures began to approach, and now Bremen recognized who they were. They were the ghosts of Druids past, the shades of those who had gone before, of all who had lived once in this world, larger in death than in life, apparitions that lacked substance, yet still radiated a terrible presence. The old man shrank from them in spite of himself, so many come at once, more coming still, a seemingly endless line floating in the air before him, approaching across the roiling waters of the lake, inexorable and dark.

He heard them speak now, heard them call to him. Their voices lifted above those of the smaller forms accompanying them, speaking his name over and over again. Bremen, Bremen. Foremost was Galaphile, and his voice was strongest. Bremen, Bremen. The old man wanted desperately to flee, would have given anything to be able to do so. His courage failed and his resolve turned to water. These apparitions were coming for him, and he could already feel the touch of their ghostly hands on his body. Madness buzzed inside his head, threatening to overwhelm him. On they came, huge forms wending their way through the darkness, faceless apparitions, ghosts out of time and history. He found he could not stop himself from shaking, could not make himself think. He wanted to shriek his despair.

Then they were before him, Galaphile first, and Bremen lowered his head into the crook of his arm helplessly.

—Hold forth the sword—

He did so without question, thrusting it before him as he would a talisman. Galaphile’s hand reached out, and his fingers brushed the Eilt Drum. Instantly, the emblem flared with white light.

Galaphile turned away, and another Druid approached, touched the emblem, and departed. So it went, as one by one the spirits paraded before the old man and touched the sword he held, their fingers brushing the image of the Eilt Drain before they passed on.

Over and over again the emblem flared brightly in response. From within the shelter of his raised arm, Bremen watched it happen. It might have been a blessing that they bestowed, an approval that they gave. But the old man knew it was something more, something darker and harsher. There was a transference being wrought upon the sword by the touch of the dead. He could feel it happening. He could sense it taking hold.

It was what he had come for. It could not be mistaken for anything else. It was what he had been seeking. Yet even now, at the moment of its happening, he could not decipher its meaning.

So he knelt there at the edge of the Hadeshorn in the gloom and the spray, dismayed and confused, listening to the sounds of the dead, a witness to their passing, and wondered at what was taking place. At last the Druids had all come before him, touched the Eilt Drum, and gone on. At last he was alone, hunched down in the night. The sounds of the spirit voices faded, and in the ensuing silence he could hear the rasp of his own labored breathing. Swear drenched his body and glistened on his face. His arm was cramped from holding forth the sword, yet he could not make himself withdraw it. He waited, knowing there was more, that it was not vet finished.

—Bremen—

His name, spoken by a voice he now knew. He lifted his head cautiously. The Druid shades were gone. The column of water was gone. All that remained was the lake and the blackness of the night and, directly before him, the shade of Galaphile. It waited on him patiently as he rose and drew the sword against his body as if to find strength there. There were tears on his face, and he did not know how they had gotten there. Were they his own? He tried to speak and could not.

The shade spoke instead.

—Heed me. The sword has been given its power. Carry it now to the one who will wield it. Find him west. You will know. it belongs now to him—

Bremen’s voice groped for words that would not come. The spirit’s arm lifted to him.

—Ask—

The old man’s mind cleared, and his words were harsh and filled with awe. “What have you done?”

—Given what part of us we can. Our lives have passed away. Our teachings have been lost. Our magic has dissipated in the wane of time. Only our truth remains, all that belonged to us in our lives, in our teachings, in our magic, stark and hard-edged and killing strong—

Truth? Bremen stared, uncomprehending. Where did the sword’s power lie in this? What form of magic came from truth?

All those Druids passing before him, touching the blade, making it flare so brightly—for this?

The shade of Galaphile pointed once more, a gesture so compelling that Bremen’s queries died in his throat and his attention was immediately commanded. The dark figure before him swept away all but its own presence as its arm lifted, and the silence surrounding it was complete.

—Listen, Bremen, last of Paranor, and I will tell you what you would know. Listen—

And Bremen, captured heart and soul by the power of the shade’s words, did so.

When it was finished and the shade of Galaphile was gone, when the waters of the Hadeshorn had become still and flat once more and the dawn was creeping silver and gold out of the east, the old man walked to the rim of the Valley of Shale and slept for a time amid the littered black rock. The sun rose and the day brightened, but the Druid did not wake. He slept a deep, dreamfilled sleep, and the voices of the dead whispered to him in words he could not comprehend. He woke at sunset, haunted by the dreams, by his inability to decipher their meaning and his fear that they hid from him secrets that he must reveal if the Races were to survive. He sat amid the heat and shadows in the darkening twilight, pulled the remainder of his bread from his pack, and ate half of it in silence, staring out at the mountains, at the high, strange formations of the Dragon’s Teeth where the clouds scraped against the jagged tips on their way east to the plains. He drank from the aleskin, now almost empty, and thought on what he had learned.

Of the secret of the sword.

Of the nature of its magic.

Then he rose and went back down out of the foothills to where he had left his horse the night before. He found the horse gone.

Someone had taken it, the thief s footprints plain in the dust, one set only, approaching, then departing, the horse in tow. He gave the matter almost no thought, but instead began to walk west, unwilling to delay the start of his journey longer. It would take him at least four days afoot, longer if he had to avoid the Northland army, which he almost certainly would. But there was no help for it. Perhaps he could find another horse on the way.

The night deepened and the moon rose, filling out again, brightening the sky, the clouds brief shadows against its widening crescent as they sailed past in silent procession. He walked steadily, following the silver thread of the Mermidon as it snaked its way west, keeping in the shadow of the Dragon’s Teeth, where the moonlight would not reveal him. He considered his choices as he walked, turning them over and over in his mind. Galaphile came to him, spoke to him, and revealed to him anew. The spirits of the Druids filed past him once more, solemn and voiceless wraiths, their hands reaching for the pommel of the sword, lowering to the image of the Eilt Druin, touching it momentarily and lifting away.

Passing on the truths they had discovered in life. Imbuing it with the power such truths could provide.

Empowering it.

He breathed deeply the night air. Did he understand fully now the power of this talisman? He thought so, and yet it seemed so small a magic to trust in battle against so powerful an enemy. How was he to convince the man who bore it that it was sufficient to prevail? How much should he reveal of what he knew? Too little, and he risked losing the bearer to ignorance. Too much, and he risked losing him to fear. On which side should he err?

Would he know when he met the man?

He felt adrift with his uncertainty. So much depended on this weapon, and yet it had been left to him alone to decide on the manner of its use.

To him alone, because that was the burden he had assumed and the pact he had made.

The night wore on, and he reached the juncture of the river where it branched south through the Runne. The wind blew out of the southwest and carried on its back the smell of death. Bremen drew up short as the stench filled his nostrils. There was killing below the Mermidon, and it was massive. He debated his course of action, then walked on to a narrows in the river’s bend and crossed. Below lay Varfleet, the Southland settlement from which Kinson had been recruited five years earlier. The stench rose from there.

He reached the town while morning was still several hours away, the night a silent, dark shroud. The smell sharpened as he neared, and he knew at once what had happened. Smoke rose, lazy swirls of gray ribbon in the moonlight. Red embers glowed. Timbers jutted from the earth like spears. Varfleet had been burned to the ground, and all of its people killed or driven off. Thousands of them. The old man shook his head hopelessly as he entered the silent, empty streets. Buildings were razed and looted. People and animals lay dead at every turn, sprawled in grotesque, careless heaps amid the rubble. He walked through the devastation and wondered at its savagery. He stepped over the body of an old man, eyes open and staring sightlessly. A rat eased from beneath the corpse and scurried away.

He reached the center of the village and stopped. It did not appear as if there had been much of a battle; there were few spent weapons to be found. Many of the dead looked as if they had been caught sleeping. How many of Kinson’s family and friends lay among them? He shook his head sadly. The attack was two days old, he guessed. The Northland army had come out of the Eastland and moved west above the Rainbow Lake on its way to do battle with the Elves. It was Varfleet’s misfortune that it lay in the invaders’ path.

All of the Southland villages between here and the Streleheim would suffer a similar fate, he thought in despair. A great emptiness welled up inside him. The words that would describe what he was feeling seemed so inadequate.

He gathered his dark robes about him, hitched the sword higher on his back, and walked from the village, trying not to look at the carnage. He was almost clear when he sensed movement. Another man would have missed it completely, but he was a Druid. He did not see with his eyes, but with his mind.

Someone was alive in the debris, hiding.

He veered left, proceeding carefully, his magic already summoned in a protective web. He did not feel threatened, but he knew enough to be careful in any event. He worked his way through a series of ruined homes to a collapsed shed. There, just within a sagging entry, a figure crouched.

Bremen drew to a halt. It was a boy of no more than twelve, his clothing torn and soiled, his face and hands covered in ash and grime. He pressed back into the shadows as if wishing the earth itself might cover him up. There was a knife in one hand, held protectively before him. His hair was lank and dark, cut shoulderlength and hanging loose about his narrow face.

“Come out, boy,” the old man said softly. “It’s all right.”

The boy did not move an inch.

“There is no one here but you and me. Whoever did this is gone. Come out, now.”

The boy stayed where he was.

Bremen looked off into the distance, distracted by the sudden flash of a falling star. He took a deep breath. He could not afford to linger and could do nothing for the boy in any event. He was wasting his time.

“I’m leaving now,” he said wearily. “You should do the same. These people are all dead. Travel to one of the villages farther south and ask for help there. Good luck to you.”

He turned and walked away. So many would be left homeless and shattered before this was over. It was depressing to consider.

He shook his head. He walked for a hundred yards and then suddenly stopped. When he turned, there was the boy, his back against a wall, the knife in his hand, watching.

Bremen hesitated. “Are you hungry?”

He reached into his pack and pulled out the last of his bread The boy’s head craned forward, and his face came into the light His eyes glittered when he saw the bread.

His eyes...

Bremen felt his throat tighten sharply. He knew this boy! It was the boy he had seen in Galaphile’s fourth vision! The eyes betrayed him, eyes so intense, so penetrating that they seemed strip away the skin. Just a boy, an orphan of this carnage, yet the was something so profound, so riveting about him...

“What is your name?” Bremen asked the boy softly.

The boy did not answer. He did not move. Bremen hesitate then started toward him. Instantly the boy drew back into the shadows. The old man stopped, set down the bread, turned, and walked away.

Fifty yards farther on, he stopped again. The boy was following, watching him closely, gnawing on the confiscated bread as he advanced.

Bremen asked him a dozen questions, but the boy would not talk to him. When Bremen tried to approach, the boy quickly backed away. When the Druid tried to persuade the boy to come closer, he was ignored.

Finally the old man turned and walked on. He did not know what to do about the boy. He did not want the boy to come with him, but Galaphile’s vision suggested there was a link of some sort between the two. Perhaps if he was patient he would discover what it was. As the sun rose, he turned north again and recrossed the Mermidon. Following the line of the Dragon’s Teeth, he walked on until sunset. When he made camp, there was the boy, sitting just beyond the clearing in which he had chosen to settle, back in the shadow of the trees, watching. Bremen had no food, but he put out a cup of ale. He slept until midnight, then woke to continue his journey. The boy was waiting. When he began walking, the boy followed.

So it continued for three days. At the end of the third day, the boy came into the camp to sit with him and share a meal of root and berries. When he woke the next morning, the boy was sleeping next to him. Together, they rose and walked west. That night as they reached the edge of the Plains of Streleheim and prepared to cross, the boy spoke his first words.

His name, he told the old man, was Allanon.