« The snakes?»
His head cocked. «Do you know about them?»
She did. Asphinx had been exiled to the Forbidding with the other dark things of Faerie. Except for one that had been sealed in a crevice by the Stone King, Uhl Belk, in the caverns of the Hall of Kings to guard the Black Elfstone. Walker Boh, before he became a Druid, had been bitten while searching for the talisman, and his arm had turned to stone. The story was a part of Bek’s histories of the Shannara kin, a story she remembered as crucial to what happened to Walker later in his transformation into Allanon’s heir.
She glanced back at the flats. «How many are out there?»
He shrugged. «Thousands. Want to have a look?»
« No, I don’t want to have a look. Can we get around them?»
He gestured left. «This way. Stay off the rocks and you won’t have to deal with them. But watch your step anyway. If one bites you, you will make a nice statue for the birds to perch on.»
They walked carefully around the colony, staying on the grassy fringe and keeping well back from where the rocks began. It took them a long time to get all the way to the other side, and by then darkness had settled in so thoroughly that it was difficult to see more than a dozen feet.
Weka Dart took a quick visual survey of their surroundings and nodded. «We’ll camp over there, in that stand of wincies.» He gestured toward a small grove of needled trees that looked like diseased pines. «Wincies give us some protection. Snakes don’t like their scent, and flying things can’t get through the screen of their branches without first landing, which they won’t do at night. A good place for us to get some rest.»
Grianne glanced back the way they had come, toward Kraal Reach. «Do you think they have begun to track us yet?»
« Oh, yes.» Weka Dart sounded indifferent. «The Straken Lord will have found his guards and your discarded collar. He will have determined which way you have gone. He will have sent Hobstull and his minions to bring you back.» His dark eyes glittered in the fading light. «His magic is very powerful, Grianne Ohmsford. Very powerful. But not so powerful as yours.»
She knelt in front of the Ulk Bog. «Listen to me. I know you want me to take you out of the Forbidding, and I have promised I will try. But if Hobstull and whatever dark things he commands catch up to us, I want you to leave me to deal with them. I want you to find someplace to hide—and don’t let them see you. Don’t give yourself away.» She paused. «They don’t know about you yet, do they?»
He snorted. «Of course they know about me. Tael Riverine will have determined my presence as easily as he will have recognized your absence. Running and hiding will do me no good. I settled my fate by coming to you in the dungeons of Kraal Reach, Straken Queen. That is why it is so important that you take me with you. If I remain in the world of the Jarka Ruus, I am dead. Now, come.»
She ignored the sinking feeling in her stomach and followed him to the trees he called wincies. They were tall, spidery hardwoods with long, thin, whiplike branches that interlaced and, at some points, knotted together. With Weka Dart leading, they slipped into their midst, ducking more than once to get through, wending their way into the center of the grove. The Ulk Bog made a quick check of their surroundings and determined them safe.
« Now you should sleep while I keep watch,” he told her. «We must set out early, and you will need your strength. Go ahead. Sleep.»
Too tired to argue, she lay down obediently. She closed her eyes, thinking to do little more than nap. Her mind was awash in doubts and fears, in worries of what they would have to do to stay alive another day. Images of her imprisonment and of the creatures that had threatened her paraded like specters. She felt the magic of the conjure collar even as she slept, ripping her apart, draining her strength, and filling her with pain.
She would never sleep again, she thought, and was asleep in seconds.
Her waking thoughts followed her into her sleep and became her dreams, dark and menacing. The Straken Lord tracked her down shadowy corridors, close behind but just out of sight. He carried in one hand the conjure collar with which he would bind her to him, its fastenings glittering like teeth. Other creatures from the Forbidding appeared in front of her, creatures of all sizes and shapes, their features not entirely distinct, but their intentions clear. Winged monsters clung to the ceiling overhead, with claws that gripped like iron, threatening to drop on top of her if she dared to slow. She ran from all of them, blindly and helplessly, with no destination in mind and no end in sight.
She came awake to the sound of howling wolves, and a terrified gasp escaped her lips.
« Hssstt!» Weka Dart whispered in her ear. He was crouched next to her in the darkness, a vague shape barely distinguishable from the night. «Demonwolves! They’ve found us!»
She tried to scramble to her feet, but he forced her down again, hissing, «No, no, don’t move! Stay still! They don’t know exactly where we are and we don’t want to tell them. Let them come to us!»
She panicked. «But they’ll—”
« They’ll go the way I want them to go, Straken Queen. They’ll go the way of dead things!»
She forced herself to remain calm while trying to sort through what he was talking about. He didn’t seem panicked. He didn’t even seem particularly worried. He stared past her east, toward Kraal Reach and the sound of the howling as it drew steadily louder, drawing nearer.
She realized suddenly that she was cold. She glanced down and saw that she was missing her cloak.
Weka Dart glanced over quickly. «They have your scent well and good. But they won’t have you, Grianne of the wincie woods!»
The howls were very close, coming fast, and there were other sounds as well, shouts and cries of other creatures as they urged the demonwolves on. The pursuit was heated, a sense of expectancy reverberating in the wildness of its sounds.
Then suddenly, with a swiftness that turned her stomach to ice, everything changed. The howls turned to screams and growls filled with rage. The shouts and cries turned to shrieks filled with terror. The pitch rose and the rawness sharpened, and the night was alive with a cacophony that transcended anything Grianne Ohmsford had ever heard. Her pursuers were under attack themselves and fighting for their lives.
At her side, Weka Dart laughed aloud. «They’ve found what they were searching for, but not what they expected, Straken Queen! Listen to them! Too bad they weren’t paying better attention to what they were doing! I think maybe they’ve encountered something with teeth sharper than their own!»
She stared at him, and then she remembered.The Asphinx!
Her pursuers had stumbled right into the center of the colony, and the snakes were striking at them. She listened anew to the sounds of the struggle, and the sounds told her everything. «You put my cloak out there in the middle of the snakes!» she exclaimed. «You knew!»
His grin was frightening. «I suspected. They came more quickly than I had thought they would. Your cloak was a lure to draw them away from us. The night is dark and visibility poor. Too bad for them.»
The sounds were dying out, the growls and screams and shrieks turned to whimpers and moans, to gasps that carried even to where she crouched in the trees next to the Ulk Bog. She tried not to listen, but could not help herself. It was destruction of a sort with which she was familiar and from which she could not turn away.
Then everything went still, save for a single lengthy, ragged sob. And then even that was gone.
Weka Dart bent close. «Isn’t the silence beautiful?» he whispered.
When it was light enough to do so, the dawn a faint tinge of pale gray brightness set low against the horizon to the east, they walked back to where the Asphinx colony waited. What Grianne Ohmsford saw left her stunned. Statues filled the flats, sculpted creatures posed in desperate positions of battle and flight. There were demonwolves and Goblins, dozens of each, their bodies and necks twisted, their limbs lifted and crooked, and their mouths open in soundless cries.
In their midst stood Hobstull, his lean body rigid, his narrow face taut, hands closed into fists in recognition of what was happening to him.
All had been turned to stone. Not a one had escaped.
« It happens so quickly when you are bitten repeatedly,” Weka Dart ventured. «No waiting around for the inevitable. No false hope that you might somehow find a cure. You haven’t got more than a minute before it’s over. Better that way.»
He walked to the edge of the field, picked up one end of a thin line, and reeled in Grianne’s cloak, which had been tossed into the center of the killing field. Shaking it out carefully to make certain no snakes had hidden in its folds, he detached the line and handed the cloak back to her. «There, good as ever.»
