Songsmith

16

Steel Talon led them, winging from tree to bush, alighting always a short distance away, then voicing his shrill cry. Monso cantered after the falcon, and Eydryth and her family followed the Keplian.

Roads stretched before them in the darkness of the waning, now-overcast night—first the broad, well-traveled highway Eydryth had taken to reach Kar Garudwyn, then another, narrower way that turned south off the main route somewhere in Bluemantle lands. This secondary road soon deteriorated to little more than an overgrown, cart-rutted track.

All of the party, except for Jervon, could summon night vision at need, so they took turns riding point. In that way, no one person had to bear that burden alone. When Kerovan rode at the head of the group, Jervon rode beside him. As they companied side by side, Eydryth could hear the soft rise and fall of Kerovan’s voice, broken every so often by a quiet question or comment from her father. She guessed that Kerovan was attempting to fill in the missing years for his newly recovered friend.

Dawn was still more than an hour away when the little party reached the Place of Power that was Yachne’s destination. For the past hour, the riders had crossed moorland and picked their way across marshy hallows, for the trail had deteriorated to a game path, then dwindled away completely. If it had not been for the Keplian and the falcon, they would have been completely lost.

As they rounded a stand of brush, Eydryth, who was riding in the fore with Hyana, saw Monso stop. The stallion snorted, then stuck out his upper lip, exposing his teeth, as if he scented something foul. Steel Talon alighted on the cantle of Alon’s saddle a moment later. “Our destination lies just ahead,” Eydryth’s foster-sister said in a hushed voice. “I can sense that from the falcon.”

Peering through the night, Eydryth concentrated her night vision, making out a faint light from somewhere ahead. It brightened the way ahead, seeming as strong as the glow of a forest fire Eydryth had once seen—a forest fire that had burned itself down to embers. But the bard knew instinctively that whatever caused this light had no kinship with honest fire or once-living wood. The glow that now rose ahead of them was unclean.

Vyar, Eydryth’s Kioga mare, suddenly halted, ears pointing forward, then abruptly flattening as her nostrils flared. The songsmith felt her shiver; then, without warning, the horse ducked her head down to her chest and began backing away. If Eydryth had not driven her forward with her legs, she would have turned tail and bolted.

Hyana’s gelding shied also. Even in the darkness the songsmith could see the ring of white encircling the terrified creature’s eye. Kerovan’s voice came from behind them, floating softly on the pitchy air. “What chances?”

“The horses,” Eydryth kept her own voice soft. “They are balking. They smell something ahead that they do not care to approach.”

“Must we go on afoot?” Joisan asked.

“I do not know. Perhaps.”

But, after a brief struggle (and a firm smack with the reins), the songsmith was able to force her mount onward. Vyar was trembling beneath her, but, having managed the Keplian, Eydryth found a mortal horse far easier to handle. Once he was given a lead to follow, Hyana’s grey, Raney, fell in behind Vyar.

Stiff-legged, trembling, the mare followed Monso toward the source of that glow. It seemed to Eydryth to be a forest, one that had died—died so swiftly that the leaves had had no chance to drop from the branches. They shone white, a rank, phosphorescent white, like the lichens which grew in some caves. The branches and trunks which sprouted those eldritch leaves were dull black, as if they had turned in a trice to solid pillars of rot. And from many of those branches hung lengths of dead, silvery moss, veiling the depths of the forest from their eyes like concealing tapestries.

If it had not been for the stomach-wrenching reek that emanated from that strange wood, that eye-searing aura of total wrongness, the place might have been termed strangely beautiful. As they halted just outside of the strange wood, Eydryth looked over at Hyana. “What do you make of it, Sister?” she asked, knowing that the other had the gift of seeing beyond the ken of humankind, into the spirit and future of things.

“Truly, this is a case where fair is foul and foul, fair,” Hyana replied. “If your Alon has followed the witch within, he has endangered not merely his body, but his innermost essence. To die in this place would leave one not only dead, but damned without hope of succor or mercy.”

“A path.” Jervon, ever the practical strategist, pointed to a distinct trail. “But there is no telling whether it leads to the right place.”

“If there is a path, then it is that way we must go,” Kerovan said. “Touching one of those ‘trees’—if such they ever truly were—would be as poisonous as inviting the strike of an adder.” Eydryth saw that the wristlet he always wore was softly glowing, warning, as was its nature, against evil.

“Will the horses take it?” Joisan asked, soothing her golden chestnut. “Varren is not happy even standing here, much less entering that place.”

“Monso is already going,” Eydryth cried, pointing to the Keplian, who was even now trotting up the trail. “Quickly, while he gives us a lead!” Her legs closed around Vyar’s barrel, but it took another smack with the reins to force the mare after the stallion.

The rot-trees (or so Eydryth had come to think of them) closed in around her. The soil beneath the mare’s hooves was grey, leached of life, sterile and powdery as talc. After a breath or two, Eydryth fumbled out her kerchief and tied it over her mouth and nose. She risked a swift glance back, and saw the others following her example. The horses were plainly not at ease in this “forest,” but none had balked.

Eydryth was in a fever of impatience, wanting to urge Vyar into a gallop, but, after Kerovan’s warning about the danger of touching the trees, she restrained herself… barely. Her conviction that Alon was in trouble grew until she was quivering like a plucked harpstring. She found herself remembering every moment, every passing touch between them since they had met, and was powerless to halt the images flowing through her mind.

The wood stretched away on either side of them, quiet and poisonous, but, somewhat to Eydryth’s surprise, they met no one and nothing. She had half-expected another contingent of web-riders. If there ever existed a place more perfect to have been their spawning ground, she had never seen it.

Glancing back at the others, she saw Kerovan’s wristlet glowing brilliant blue, as it had that day she and Jervon were nearly ensorcelled by the Keplian. But they did not need the talisman to warn them against the Shadow—or to tell them they were in grave peril. The rank stench surrounding them would not allow even a moment’s forgetting.

Steel Talon sat hunched on the cantle of the Keplian’s saddle, and Eydryth realized that the falcon was, rightfully, loath to perch on any of the limbs in this unnatural wood. She wondered how far this Place extended—they had already ridden for nearly a league.

Even as that thought crossed her mind, they came to the end of their trail. Suddenly the rot-trees ended, leaving a huge, roughly circular meadow in their midst. The “meadow” was covered in a short, sere turf, the color of ancient lichen. In its center rose an enormous rock, as large as a good-sized cottage.

Monso trotted swiftly into the meadow with a nicker of recognition. Eydryth followed the Keplian’s direction, then saw, silhouetted against that massive boulder, two figures.

Violet light surrounded one, emanating from the crystal talisman he wore. His hands were up in a warding gesture, and a violet haze wreathed them, shaped almost like a warrior’s shield. The other figure was undoubtedly Yachne, though she still wore a shapeless grey robe and hood, hiding her identity. Serpent-shaped trails of purple light shot through with dark-red streaks fell from the tip of her fingers, then launched themselves across the intervening space, aimed at the Adept’s head.

“Alon!” Eydryth shouted, and was off Vyar and running toward him before the mare even came to a stop. “Alon!”

Monso bolted toward his master; then, with a suddenness that nearly knocked him off all four feet, the half-bred stopped dead, as though he had run into some invisible barrier.

Which indeed he had, as Eydryth discovered a heartbeat later, as she, too, slammed into something unyielding. She fell hard, then lay winded. A moment later Kerovan grabbed her arm, and aided her to her feet.

The songsmith saw with horror what was happening. Evidently Alon had lost his concentration on his spelling when he had heard her shout, because, even as Eydryth focused on him again, the Adept was struck by one of Yachne’s snake-bolts of Power. He reeled, stumbled, then went down to his knees, plainly dazed.

“No!” Eydryth whispered in agony. Trapped behind the unseen wall, she was forced to watch helplessly. Seeing her and the other would-be rescuers, Yachne laughed aloud, gave the newcomers a cheery “thank you!” wave, then bent to her task. Horrified, Eydryth realized that she was completing the last closing of the spell she had employed to steal Dinzil’s Power. A dead fawn lay on the “grass” not far from her, its throat slashed. The blood-circle was nearly complete.

Eydryth pounded helplessly against the unseen barrier as the witch scratched her skinny wrist with the blade of the athame. In a trice she had completed the closing of her ghastly circle; then she began to chant.

Alon slumped forward onto his hands and knees as the mist began coalescing around him. “Alon!” Eydryth screamed. “Stop her! You must stop her!”

After a moment the young man wavered to his feet, then stared down in horror as the thickening mist suddenly billowed up, nearly waist-high. “No!” Eydryth sobbed. She was scarcely aware of her father putting an arm around her, as she turned to Hyana. “Does Yachne’s wall extend all the way around this clearing?” she gasped.

Her foster-sister nodded. “I can see it. A barrier of pale light, nearly as tall as the tops of these loathsome trees.”

“Can you break the spell?” the songsmith implored Joisan and Kerovan.

The Wise Woman shook her head. “I have been trying to do just that, ever since we came here, but this is no spell I have ever encountered before.”

Laughing delightedly, Yachne walked closer to Alon. The Adept was struggling to force the mist back down into the ground, using the glow given off by his crystal talisman. But, slowly, a finger-width at a time, he was losing that battle. The mist by now was up to his chest. Eydryth knew that if it completely enclosed him, the Alon as she knew him now would be forever lost—to himself as well as to her.

“Alon!” she screamed. “The sword! Remember the sword!” Cold iron or steel, she knew, was ofttimes a powerful weapon against evil magic. And the gryphon-sword had quan-iron, that bane of all Darkness, embedded in its hilt. “The sword!” she cupped her hands around her mouth to help her voice carry. “Try the sword!”

Still obviously dazed from Yachne’s Power-blast, Alon shook his head, one hand still clutching his crystal talisman. Eydryth realized that he could no longer hear her—somehow Yachne’s spell must also be muffling sound.

The sorceress came closer to her victim now, just as Monso screamed in rage and rose onto his hind legs. The stallion’s powerful forefeet battered at the invisible barrier, but to no avail.

The mist was creeping up toward Alon’s chin. Eydryth turned to Hyana, clutching the other woman’s hands in both of hers desperately. “Can you mind-send?” she demanded.

Hyana hesitated. “I can with my mother and father… and Firdun. Sometimes with you.”

“Try to mind-send to Alon, Hyana! Tell him to use the sword! Try, please!

The other frowned, but obediently closed her eyes, concentrating. The sword, Eydryth thought. Alon, use the sword. It may break the mist! Use the sword!

Yachne was standing before Alon, now, her hands weaving in the air as she continued her chant. The mist thickened even further…

Alon fumbled at his back, as if in a dream. “Yes!” Eydryth whispered. “Yes, Alon! The sword… oh, please, use it!”

The Adept bent, disappearing from view behind the mist that by now nearly reached his eyes. Eydryth clenched her fists so hard that her hands ached, but she was hardly aware of the pain. The sword! Is he unbuckling it, unsheathing it? What is he doing?

Yachne gave a final, commanding cry, using a Word that made the air seem to curdle with darkness. Mist lapped over the top of the pillar enclosing Alon. Eydryth shut her eyes, unable to watch—then immediately opened them again. She could not look, but she swiftly discovered that she could not bear to look away.

Amber Lady, she prayed silently, tears slipping from her eyes, help him!

Purple light wreathed the sorceress’s arms as she began to draw Alon’s Power into herself, just as she had done with Dinzil.

Help him! Somebody help him!

A shrill scream rent the air, just as something small and black fell upon Yachne like a stone, wicked talons aiming for her eyes. The only one of them who could fly over the barrier—Steel Talon!

The witch ducked, barely missing the winged death stooping out of the skies. The purple light wreathing her arms faltered, halted completely as she threw up both arms. A lash of dark lightning crackled from her fingers, striking the small black shape with the white V on its chest—

—even as the blade of Eydryth’s sword poked through the mist surrounding Alon, cutting it away as though it were a solid substance. It slashed an opening; then, before Yachne was more than half-aware that her captive was making a bid for escape, Eydryth saw Alon’s dim form move within that pillar of deadly mist.

Weight balanced on the balls of his feet, knees flexed, arm extended—it was the one lunge she had taught him, and he did it perfectly. The length of shining steel licked out like a cleansing streak of blue-white fire, thrusting through the hole in the mist, burying its sharpness just below the breast of the woman’s tattered grey robe, impaling the witch.

Yachne stiffened with a shriek of mingled pain and fury as Eydryth’s gryphon-hilted sword, with all the strength of Alon’s arm behind it, transfixed her.

The mist vanished as the witch toppled over backward— and lay unmoving.

At the same moment, Eydryth and the others staggered forward as the barrier that had kept them helpless on the outside of the meadow disappeared.

“Alon, oh, Alon!” The songsmith ran straight to the Adept, grabbing his shoulders, hugging him ecstatically, but only for a moment did he return her embrace. His face set, he gently put her aside, then walked forward to pick up a small, stricken form lying on the ground next to the dying sorceress.

Eydryth cried out softly with grief and pity. Steel Talon was not dead yet… but he soon would be, that was plain. “Oh, no!” she whispered.

Tears stood in the Adept’s eyes as he cradled the dying falcon against him. “Steel Talon…” he whispered brokenly. “You saved me…”

Eydryth lifted a hand to gently touch that fierce beak, staring at those dimming eyes. She thought that she glimpsed a strange satisfaction deep in them. Alon glanced up at her, startled. “Steel Talon is… content,” he whispered.

Eydryth nodded as understanding suddenly flooded through her. “Because he has fulfilled the quest that was the only thing keeping him alive, is that not so?” she asked. “He dies content, knowing that he has gained his revenge.”

Alon nodded. “Yachne… it was Yachne that night, when Jonthal died. She set the trap… for me. But it was Jonthal who died…”

Steel Talon’s fierce eyes seemed to blaze even more fiercely; then the bird abruptly stiffened, jerked several times, and sagged, limp. Alon swallowed, then turned to walk away, toward Monso.

Eydryth started after him, but Jervon caught her arm. “No,” her father said gently. “Give him a moment to grieve in private. He would wish it so.”

The songsmith took a deep breath; then she nodded. They watched as Alon walked over to Monso, gave the stallion a quick pat, then carefully, tenderly, wrapped the falcon’s body in his undertunic. He tied the small, wrapped form to the saddle. She knew, without being told, that the Adept intended to give the bird proper burial on clean ground.

Eydryth turned back to her family, and saw Joisan and Hyana crouched beside Yachne. The songsmith was faintly surprised to see that the sorceress still lived, though it was plain that no healcraft could aid her.

Dropping to her knees beside the witch, Eydryth stared down at her, thinking how suddenly small and shrunken she appeared. Yachne opened grey eyes to regard her, and the younger woman realized that the gleam of madness that had so frightened her before was gone. The witch struggled to draw breath. “Am… am I dying?” she whispered.

Joisan hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. If I could help you, I would, but your wound is beyond any ability of mine to heal.”

Sweat stood out on the dying woman’s face. “Yes… feel it. Hurts… hurts so…”

“I am sorry,” Joisan said. “I can try to sing you into a painless state, if you so wish. That is all I can do to ease your passing.”

The witch nodded. “Alon?” she whispered. “Where is Alon?”

Eydryth hastily beckoned the Adept, who was even now returning to them, to come quickly. When he reached the woman who had cared for him as a child, he dropped down beside her, took her hand. “I am sorry,” he said quietly. “So sorry. I wish there had been some other way.”

“Not… not your fault,” she whispered. “I see clearly now… been so long since I could do that…”

“Hush,” Alon said, fighting to keep his voice from breaking. “Don’t try to talk.”

“Must… must talk…” she insisted. “It was the Turning… the Turning.” She gasped for breath. “I was… witch of Estcarp before then…”

“So we guessed,” Eydryth said. “And you lost your powers after the Turning?”

The former witch nodded. “Angry. Wanted what should have been mine forever… wanted it back…” Joisan carefully wiped Yachne’s dry lips with a cloth moistened in water. The old woman (for all her borrowed “youth” had vanished) sucked gratefully at the moisture. Joisan aided her as she swallowed a sip from a water flask. “Then I found out… about the ones who still had the Power… the males. They had what should have been mine…”

After a moment she went on, “Wandered… long time. Garth Howell… they took me in. They were there, too, the males with the Power… the creatures against nature… but they offered me a way…” She sucked in breath, then writhed for a moment. Finally, sweat pouring down her face, she subsided. “The spell. The abbot taught me… spell. As long as I would take the Power from you…” She gasped, staring at Alon. “That was the price… one I was willing to pay… and gladly. I am sorry for that, Alon…”

“Me?” He was plainly startled. “Why? I have never encountered the denizens of Garth Howell, never harmed them. I was half the world away! Why me?”

“They fear you…” she whispered. “You are one of the Seven.” She stared then at Eydryth, and Hyana. “As are they. The Seven…”

“The Seven what?” Eydryth wondered.

“Defenders… defenders of this land… defenders of Arvon,” Yachne replied. She was laboring now for breath, and it was pain to hear her. “There will be… Seven. Last has not yet… been born.” Her gaze turned again to Eydryth. “Your brother,” she muttered. “Will be the last. If he is ever born.”

Eydryth grabbed the old woman’s hand in both of hers. “What know you of my brother?” she demanded fiercely.

“Promise… promise you will ease my passing…” the sorceress said.

“I swear by Gunnora’s amulet,” she vowed. “Where is my brother, Yachne?”

“Here… and not-here. Within the stone that is not-stone. Beyond the cage, beneath the flesh… uhhhh…” With a rattling moan, she trailed off.

To Eydryth, the words had no meaning. She began to demand further explanation, but Joisan nudged her. “She is beyond speech, Daughter,” she whispered. “Shall we fulfill our promise?”

Together, Joisan and Eydryth sang softly, and all of the group watched the lines of pain smooth away from the aged features. When Yachne died, minutes later, her countenance was almost peaceful.

They covered her face with a fold from her ragged mantle, then withdrew to the other side of the massive stone to speak together for the first time. Joisan looked up at the eastern side of the Shadow Place. “Dawn is breaking,” she said softly. “We have lived through this night… something that I doubted, a few hours ago.”

Alon stared around him at his rescuers. “I thank you for coming to my aid. Without your”—he nodded at Hyana— “mind-sending, I would never have remembered that sword.”

“Alon, this is Hyana, my foster-sister,” Eydryth said, remembering her manners. “And this is Lord Kerovan and Lady Joisan, my foster parents.” Pride tinged her voice as she hooked her arm through Jervon’s. “And this is my father, Jervon.”

Alon had bowed in turn as each introduction was made, but when he heard this last, he blinked in surprise. “Dahaun’s mud worked!” he cried. “This is… this is wonderful hearing! Sir,” he added hastily.

Jervon smiled. “I owe you much, young sorcerer,” he said. “And I gather from everything that my daughter has not said, that we have a great deal to discuss, you and I.” He held out his hand. “Well-met, Alon!”

This time it was the Adept’s turn to color, but he grasped the older man’s hand with a strong grip, and met his eyes steadily. “You have the right of it… sir,” he said. “Well-met, indeed, Jervon. You are a most fortunate man. We had no idea whether Dahaun’s red mud would restore an injured mind.”

“I am fortunate indeed,” Jervon said. “To have a daughter such as mine. Although”—he gave Alon an equally level stare—“I have gained the impression that I must now resign myself to sharing her.”

Alon’s mouth quirked slightly. “Perceptive, as well as fortunate,” he said.

Kerovan chuckled, then reached into his saddlebag and brought out hunks of journeybread and another water flask. “Here, Alon, you must be hungry.”

The little group sat in a circle, sharing food and water, while dawn slowly brightened the eldritch woods around them. The events of the night weighed heavy upon the songsmith now, and she felt at once so tired that she could have lain down and slept next to Yachne’s stiffening corpse, and so keyed up with frustration that she felt as though she must needs scream aloud.

Catching her father’s eye upon her, she gave him a wan smile. “To come so close to finding her… and fail. Yachne knew where my mother is.”

He nodded. “It is hard,” he said. “But we will not give up.”

“Here and not-here,” Alon repeated, puzzling aloud. “Stone that is not-stone.” He shook his head. “What can it mean?”

None of them could think of an answer. But Alon refused to give up, worrying at the riddle as though it were a bone and he a hound. “Here…” He glanced around the clearing. “What could be here, and yet not-here? Stone and not-stone? Stone… stone is rock, it is granite, it is limestone, and quartz…” He trailed off, staring down at the crystal he wore. “Crystal!” he exclaimed. “It is stone, yet not-stone. Could that be what Yachne meant?”

All of them turned to survey their surroundings in the growing light. “There is no stone except that one,” Jervon said, finally, pointing to the monstrous boulder. “And that appears grey, not crystal.”

The Adept rose and walked over to the stone. Eydryth walked beside him, and together they gazed upon it. “Here and not-here,” Alon said. “Stone and not-stone. It sounds rather like those mirror Gates we used, does it not?”

It was obvious that he was having some insight that Eydryth could not follow. “But that stone is nothing like this one,” she said, touching the crystal talisman he wore with her fingers, tapping it with a nail. It rang, ever so faintly, and Alon, who had been staring at the huge rock, gasped.

“Do that again!” he commanded, holding the crystal out to her. “And match the note with your voice, as you did once before!”

Puzzled, she obeyed him, making the crystal ting, then attempting to match the note.

“I see it!” Alon exclaimed, wide-eyed. “Eydryth, look at the stone as you do so!”

Again she sounded the crystal, echoed it with a sung note. And, before her eyes, the great stone grew translucent!

She could see within it… and, in the crystalline depths, there was a pallet, and upon the pallet, a human shape!

“It is a Gate!” she exclaimed in astonishment. By that time the others, arrested by their excited voices, had come over to discover what chanced.

Once more Alon performed his demonstration, and this time it was Jervon’s turn to grow wide-eyed. “That is Elys!” he gasped. “That is what I saw in the Seeing Stone! I knew I would recognize it if I ever saw it again!”

“We must break the illusion that this is a solid boulder,” Joisan said. “We must link and attempt to open the Gate.”

“How?” Kerovan asked. “You and Alon seem to be the ones who have done so in the past.”

“I believe we should link hands and Power,” Joisan said. “Then pour our Power into Eydryth. The crystal responds to sound, and she is our singer. Her voice is the key that will unlock this Gate.” The Wise Woman glanced at Alon, and he nodded agreement.

So it was that they linked hands, concentrated. Within moments Eydryth began to feel light-headed, as though she were some kind of rod that was being used to conduct a thunderbolt. Opening her mouth, she sang—and her voice rang out with greater volume and clarity than she had ever possessed before.

Slowly, the boulder cleared again… became crystal… then became mist. With Jervon close behind them, the group took a step forward, straight into that mist.

They were in a place, and it was filled with light—but it was a Dark light, as though Shadow had been turned to flame, and given substance. The place had no horizons, no boundaries. There was no sky… nothing. Their feet rested on something, but it was difficult to tell what. Eydryth swallowed as she was assailed by sudden vertigo. It was extremely disconcerting to have no reference points.

Except one. Before her was the pallet, and on it, Elys lay sleeping. Eydryth saw the gentle mound of her belly beneath her robe. “She has been here the entire time,” Joisan whispered.

“But why?” Kerovan asked. “Why take her and confine her? If these Adepts at Garth Howell are so powerful, and yet evil enough to do this, then why not simply do away with her?”

“Because to murder a woman who is carrying is such a great transgression that even the masters and mistresses of Garth Howell would not dare to do so,” Hyana replied. “Gunnora is a powerful spirit who protects the unborn, and those who carry them. They dared not harm Elys outright. They feared Gunnora’s reprisal too much.”

Eydryth walked forward, and they followed her. The songsmith’s eyes adjusted more to the strangeness of this Place, and she could see lines of Dark light arcing over her sleeping mother’s form, as though she lay within a cage.

“Beyond the cage, beneath the flesh,” Alon whispered. “The Seventh Defender of Arvon sleeps before us.”

“How can we free her?” Hyana asked. “I know of no spell to undo this kind of sorcery.”

“Nor do I,” Joisan admitted.

“Landisl cannot help us here,” Kerovan said. “This Place is outside our world, and not within any that he ever trod.”

Eydryth scarcely heard her family’s comments. She stared at those lines of Dark light. And the longer she stared at those lines of Dark light arcing over the pallet, the more they seemed to her to akin to harpstrings. As though they could be… plucked. Music. Music had been the key to so many of the spells they had encountered…

“Alon…” the minstrel whispered hoarsely, “lend me all your strength!”

“You have it,” he replied, and a moment later his fingers tightened around hers. Power flooded her… poured into her in a wave of warmth.

Humming, the songsmith formed in her mind the image of a giant finger pick. Concentrating fiercely, she forced herself to see it, glimpse it hovering over those “strings.”

Then, with an effort that made her break out in a sweat, she moved her giant mind-pick downward, made it pluck one of those “strings.”

A sound so loud it staggered her boomed out. Eydryth waited, but the cage remained in place. She concentrated again, and “plucked” another string. Then another.

“That’s three,” Alon said. “One of the numbers of Power.”

“What are the others?” she asked. “Three did not work, as you can see.”

“Seven,” he said. “And nine.”

“Seven,” she said. “Seven Defenders… and, Alon”—her voice grew more excited, as she swiftly counted—“there are seven ‘strings’!”

“Try it,” he urged.

Shaking with the effort it took, the songsmith plucked the strings steadily… until finally all seven had been sounded.

Nothing happened. Eydryth fought back tears of disappointment.

“Seven… it must be related to seven,” Alon whispered. “It cannot be coincidence. Spells are often constructed with repetitions of certain numbers, words, sounds…”

“Seven Defenders, seven strings…” Eydryth whispered. “Seven sevens…”

“Try it,” Alon urged again.

Eydryth began. Wielding the huge “mind-pick” was taking an increasing toll of her strength… and of the borrowed Power she was getting from Alon. The songsmith knew she was draining him every bit as surely as Yachne had planned to. His hand in hers began to tremble.

And still she sounded the notes. Seven different notes, in a complex pattern, choosing them nearly at random… but aware all the time that a melody was being shaped. A melody of love, of longing. A child’s love for her mother, a husband’s love for his wife… all of that and more she forged into that melody.

Fourteen… twenty-one… thirty-five… Blackness was nibbling at the edges of her vision, like a voracious rasti. Forty-two… forty-nine!

With a suddenness that made them all blink and stagger, the lines of Dark light vanished!

Alon and Eydryth stumbled forward; then Alon caught her arm, held her back. “Let your father go first,” he whispered.

The songsmith hesitated, then halted, knowing the Adept was right.

Slowly, reverently, Elys’s lord approached the pallet; then his fingers went out, stroked his sleeping wife’s cheek. “Elys…” he whispered. “Oh, my heart… my lady…”

Gently, he kissed her forehead, her lips; then Jervon raised her hand, prisoned safely within his own, to his face. A tear broke free, ran down his stubbled cheek, to trickle at last over her finger. At that touch, the sleeping woman’s eyelids fluttered, then lifted. She gazed up at him, bewildered. “Jervon…” she whispered. “My lord…”

“My lady,” he murmured, in a hushed, ragged voice. “Oh, Elys!” Quickly, he scooped her up into his arms, and, when Kerovan would have aided him, unsure that his friend was up to bearing her weight, shook his head fiercely at the other.

Silently, the group trailed behind them as Jervon strode forward, carrying his precious burden, and vanished through the Gate, leaving that uncanny Place behind forever.

When they emerged back into the clearing, it was into full sunlight. Elys seemed to have suffered no ill effects from her long ensorcellment, and as soon as her husband set her on her feet, she held out a hand to her daughter. “Eydryth?” she whispered. “Can it be?”

“Mother!” the songsmith said, and then the two of them were hugging and weeping with joy. Eydryth felt as though her heart could hold no more happiness. To have both her parents returned to her in the space of a single day!

When, at length, Elys was able to relinquish her hold on her child (as though she were afraid one of them might be torn away again), she greeted her friends. “Tell me what has chanced,” she begged, “for I remember naught.”

Voices rose in an excited babble as each tried to render his or her own version of all the lost years. When their story was finished, the witch’s lovely features were troubled, but Elys had been a warrior for years in a war-torn land, as well as a witch, so she did not cry out or rail when she discovered that the Adepts at Garth Howell had stolen nine years of her life from her.

Instead she shook her head, staring around her. “I remember nothing,” she said simply. “As far as I know, I lay down to nap in Kar Garudwyn, then awoke here. It is you”—she gazed at her husband and grown daughter, her friends and shield-mates—“my loved ones, who have suffered, not I!” Her mouth tightened. “I swear by All the Powers That Be, there will be a reckoning.” Her voice was quiet, but a note in it sent shivers down Eydryth’s back.

In silent accord, the group turned to make their way across the clearing to where the horses were tethered. But scarcely had she taken more than a step when Elys suddenly gasped, putting a hand to the small of her back. “Elys?” Joisan was at her side immediately, her arm circling her friend, supporting her. “Is it the baby?”

Eydryth’s mother nodded. “And none too soon, apparently,” she said, with a grim attempt at humor, “since I have been carrying him, if what you tell me is true, for nine years!”

The single group quickly separated into three. Hyana and Joisan, both experienced healers and midwives, tended Elys as the hours passed. Jervon and Kerovan rode out of the clearing in quest of supplies and transportation for Elys, and returned some time later with their horses hitched to an ancient wagon they had managed to persuade a local farmer to lend them. They had left their swords with the man as a pledge of good faith in lieu of the future payment in gold they promised.

Eydryth and Alon worked together to bury Yachne, then spent their time talking, tending Monso and the other horses, catching each other up on the desperate hours of the past night. The songsmith learned that the Adept had been caught and tricked into entering Yachne’s illusion-cloaked circle with a vision of herself, lying upon the ground with a broken leg.

The sun was slantingtoward the west, far past noon, when a squalling yowl of indignation—sounding almost like a cat whose tail has been assaulted by an unwary foot—filled the clearing. Eydryth and Alon, hand in hand, went together to gaze upon where Jervon, grinning broadly, stood holding the Seventh Defender of Arvon.

He was much too small, the songsmith decided, to bear such a portentious title… and seemed almost too small to bear the name his fond parents had bestowed upon him. “Trevon,” Elys whispered, from her nest of blankets in the wagon, as she regarded the squirming red morsel her lord held so proudly.

“Hope,” Alon said. “In the Old Tongue, that means ‘hope.’ ”

“I know,” Eydryth told him, putting her arm around his waist and leaning wearily against him. “And hope is something we will need sorely in the coming years, if Hyana’s foretelling about a great conflict here in Arvon comes to pass—a war like unto the one you finished fighting in Escore not so long ago.”

The Adept nodded soberly, but there was a light in his grey eyes. “And apparently you and I have a role to play in that conflict,” he whispered softly. “Hope. We will need it.” He gazed intently at Trevon. “We will need him.”

Some hours later, the party left the clearing, leaving behind a mound of freshly turned earth where Yachne lay. Alon, astride Monso, suddenly pointed. “Look!”

Eydryth, beside him on Vyar, gasped. “The grass! It has turned green!”

Hyana’s voice rose, also filled with wonderment. “Look! Look at the woods!”

The rot-trees were changing, altering, as they neared them. Oak, rowan, beech and maple and evergreen now stood, instead of those stark black-and-white ghosts of trees. “The wood!” Eydryth cried, staring amazed. “It is healing itself!”

Beside her, Alon smiled, then reached over to take her hand. They rode on together, side by side, and the new tide of living greenness went before them, swelling outward, like a wave upon the shore.