Mist rose off its surface like steam, but no warmth was to be found in those waters. Even from where she stood, Grianne could feel that the lake was as cold as winter and as lethal as death. Nothing lived there that hadn't crossed over into the netherworld long ago.
Weka Dart scuttled up behind her and peered about. «This place is evil. Why are we here?»
«Because answers to my questions are to be found in the waters of that lake,' she replied.
«Well, ask your questions quickly then, and let's be gone!»
The wailing began anew, low and insistent, seeping from the stones and filtering through the air. The shadows reappeared, taking form this time, some familiar, some not, swirling about them like phantoms come to haunt. There were no voices, no faces, no human presence, and yet it seemed as if life might be embodied in the shadows and in the wailing, bereft of substance and soul, trapped in the ether. The sounds and the shadows responded to each other, speeding and slowing, rising and falling, a symbiosis that reflected a terrible dependence.
«Straken, do what you must, but do it quickly!» Weka Dart urged, and there was fear in his voice.
She nodded without looking at him. There was no reason to wait, nothing to be gained by deliberation. She could not know what waited for her when she summoned the spirits of the dead. It might be different here than in the Four Lands. It might be lethal.
It might be her only hope.
Resolved, she started down.
TWENTY–ONE
She felt the presence of the dead almost immediately. They had assumed the forms of the shadows that flitted about her and taken on the voices that wailed from the rocks. They were a part of the air she breathed. As she descended the slopes, she found them all about her, pressing close, trying to recapture something of the corporeal existence they had left behind in crossing over into the netherworld. Shades felt that absence, she knew. Even dead, they remembered the substance of life.
This phenomenon would not have happened in her own world, where shades were confined to the depths of the Hadeshorn and no trespass into the world of the living was allowed. But in the Forbidding, more latitude seemed to be given to the dead, and though not yet summoned from the afterlife, they were already loose in the valley.
She sensed another aberration, as well. The shades that visited her were not friendly. At best, they were hostile toward all living things, but she sensed a specific antipathy toward herself. She could not determine the reason for that right away. They did not know her personally or possess a specific grudge that would explain their attitude, and yet there was no mistaking it. She felt it prodding at her, small barbs that did not sting so much as scratch. There was disdain and frustration in those scratches; there was outright dislike. Something about her was angering these shades, and although she sought to discover a reason for it, she could not. Shades were difficult to read, their emotions not connected to the physical and therefore not easily understood.
She considered using her magic to push them away, to give herself space in which to breathe. But within the Forbidding, her magic could have unforeseen consequences, and she did not want to risk losing a chance to speak with the shades of the Druids. Her purpose in coming there was to summon them, and she could not afford to be distracted from that effort. The lesser shades were annoying but manageable.
Even so, her journey to the floor of the valley seemed endless. The shades rubbed on her nerves like sandpaper. Their whispers and icy touches left her unsettled and anxious. She felt something of her old self rise in response, an urge to crush them like dried leaves, a desire to scatter them beneath her boot heels. It was what she would have done once upon a time and not given it a second thought. But she was no longer the Ilse Witch, and nothing would ever make her be so again.
She glanced back at Weka Dart. He sat cross–legged on the rise, hands over his ears, face knotted in determination. He was hanging on, but it was taking everything he had to do so.
By the time she reached the edge of the lake, the shadows were draped all about her, frozen scraps of silk burning with death's chill. The wailing was so pervasive that she could hear nothing else, not even the crunching of her boots on the loose stone. The shades had crowded in from every side, gathering strength in numbers until they had enveloped her. She was being suffocated, punished for ignoring their warning. If she failed to rid herself of them quickly, she would be overwhelmed.
She stared momentarily at the calm waters of the lake, at its columns of steam, fingers of mist risen straight from the netherworld. She knew better than to touch those waters. In her own world, they were deadly to living things, although Druids could survive them. Here, even Druids might be at risk.
Gathering her wits and focusing her determination, she raised her arms and began the weaving motion that would call forth the Druid dead. When the waters of the lake began to stir in response, she added the words that were needed. Slowly, the waters began to churn, the steam columns to geyser, and the lake itself to groan like a sleeping giant come awake. The shades already present fell away, taking with them their wailing and their icy touches, leaving dead space and silence in their wake.
Once rid of her most bothersome distraction, Grianne brought the full force of her power to bear. Using her skills and her experience, she bore down on this other world's Hadeshorn, manipulating it as she would its twin in the Four Lands, summoning the shades that would serve her cause, beckoning them from the depths to the surface, drawing them with her call. The lake surged and heaved with sudden convulsions, and its greenish waters turned dark and menacing. Waterspouts erupted with booming coughs, angry and violent. The lake hissed and spit like a venomous snake.
Her throat tightened and her mouth went dry. Something was wrong. There was resentment in the lake's response. There was resistance. That was not the way it was supposed to be. When the gateway to the netherworld was opened properly, there should be a lowering of barriers that invited a joining. The shades sought for it; it was their one chance to touch even briefly on what they had lost. The lake that gave them that chance had no reason to complain. But it was doing so here. It was more than disgruntled; it was enraged.
Had it been so long since a summoning had occurred in that world that the lake failed to recognize it for what it was? Was it possible there had never been a summoning before?
She gave herself only a moment to consider all that before re–focusing on the task at hand. She had come too far to turn back and would not have done so if she could have. She had made her decision and she would be the equal of whatever happened. It was not bravado or foolhardiness that drove her; it was the certainty that it was her one and only chance to find a way out of this prison.
It took everything she had to maintain her concentration. Her instincts were screaming at her to back away, to cease her efforts. The air was filled with sounds and sensations that grated on her resolve and wore at her courage. The Hadeshorn was roiling by then, a volcanic pit threatening to explode with every new gesture she made, with every new word she spoke. Her magic, she saw, was anathema there, stirring the currents that led to the netherworld in the manner of fire on parchment, incendiary and destructive.
Still she continued, implacable and unyielding, as hard as the stone upon which she stood.
Then the shades began to rise in looping spirals, their transparent forms linked by the trailing iridescence that poured out of their trapped souls. Like shooting stars, they soared from the waters and lifted into the air, bright flashes against the night's firmament. They writhed and wailed piteously, giving vent to the travesty of their imprisonment, their outrage a mirror of her own. They spun like sparks showered from a fire grown too hot, released in an explosion of heat. But from where she stood on the shore, she felt only a deep, abiding cold that permeated the air and left her exposed skin freezing.
Where was Walker? Where was Allanon? Where was the help she so badly needed?
She bore down, ignoring the cold air and damp spray, the terrible wailing and the debilitating infusion of fear and doubt. She hardened herself as she had been taught to do in darker times, cloaking herself in her magic and her determination, fighting to keep her hold over the lake and its inhabitants. She had opened the door to the world of the dead to seek answers to her questions, and she would not close it again until she found what she had come for.
Her search ended when her strength was almost gone. A Druid shade surged out of the roiling waters like a
