inside out of the weather. Cracks in shuttered Windows and ruined walls filled the interior of the structure with gray, hazy light. Rows of stalls and a high loft stood empty, layered in shadows and dust. The air had a stale, pungent smell. They paused momentarily to brush the water from their cloaks, then moved toward a solitary door at the rear of the stable. Almost immediately they were flanked by two heavily armed Elven Hunters, who appeared soundlessly from out of the gloom to either side. Allanon took no notice of them. He walked directly to the door without turning. Tapping softly, he placed one hand on the rusted iron handle and looked back at Amberle.
«Five minutes. That is all the time we can spare.»
He pushed the door open. Valeman and Elven girl stared in. A small tack room lay below. Crispin waited there and with him an Elven woman, cloaked and hooded. The woman slipped the hood to her shoulders, and Wil was startled to find that her face, though older, mirrored Amberle’s. Allanon had kept his promise; it was the Elven girl’s mother. Amberle went to her at once, held her, and kissed her. Crispin stepped from the room and closed the door softly behind him.
«You were not followed.» The Druid made it a statement of fact.
The Captain of the Home Guard shook his head. He was dressed as were the other Elven Hunters, clothed in gray and brown colored garments that were loose and comfortable and blended well with the forestland. Beneath a cloak draped across his shoulders, he wore a brace of long knives belted at his waist. Across his back were strapped an ash bow and short sword. Rain had dampened his light brown hair, giving him a decidedly boyish look, and only the hard brown eyes suggested the boy in him was long since gone. He nodded briefly to Wil in greeting, then stepped over to speak with the Elves. One turned and disappeared wordlessly back out into the rain, the other into the loft. They moved on cat’s feet, silent, fluid.
The minutes slipped away. Wil stood silently beside Allanon, listening to the drumming of the rain against the stable roof, feeling the dampness of the air work through him. At last the Druid stepped back to the tack room door and tapped softly once more. A moment later it opened, and Amberle and her mother reappeared. Both had been crying Allanon reached for the Elven girl’s hand and held it in his own.
«It is time to go now. Crispin will see you safely out of Arborlon. Your mother will remain here with me until you are gone.» He paused. «Keep faith in yourself, Amberle. Be brave.»
Amberle nodded silently. Then she turned back to her mother and embraced her. As she did so, Allanon drew Wil aside.
«I wish you good fortune, Wil Ohmsford.» His voice was barely audible. «Remember that I depend on you most of all.»
He gripped Wil’s hand and stepped back. Wil stared at him — a moment, then turned as he felt Crispin’s hand on his shoulder.
«Stay close,” the Elf advised, and started toward the double doors.
Valeman and Elven girl moved after him wordlessly. He stopped them as he reached the doors, whistling sharply to signal the other Elven Hunters. The call was answered almost immediately. Crispin slipped through the doors into the rain. Tightening their cloaks about them, Wil and Amberle followed.
They hastened quickly down the rise to the pathway, backtracked in the direction from which they had come for some fifty feet or so, then turned down a new trail that ran east toward the Carolan. In a matter of seconds, three Elven Hunters had fallen in behind them like shadows slipped from, the forest. Wil glanced back once at the solitary barn, but it had faded already into the mist and the rain.
The trail narrowed sharply now, and the woods closed in about them. Slipping through dark, glistening trunks and sagging boughs heavy with rain, the six cloaked figures followed the rutted pathway as it began to slope downward. The path ended at a long, rambling flight of wooden stairs that wound down out of the Carolan through the tangle of the forest. Far below and barely visible through clouds of thinning mist lay the gray ribbon of the Rill Song. To the east, meadowland and forest mixed in patchwork fashion across the sweep of the land.
Crispin motioned them forward. It was a long and somewhat arduous descent, for the steps were rain– slicked and narrow, and the footing was uncertain. A guide rope, frayed and rough, hung loosely from posts fastened to the stairs, and Wil and Amberle gripped it cautiously as they went. Hundreds of steps later the stairway ended, and they started along a new pathway that disappeared into a short stretch of pine. Somewhere ahead they could hear the sullen rush of the river, rain–swollen and sluggish, its roar blending with the deep howl of the wind coming down off the heights.
When the forest broke in front of them several hundred yards further on, they found themselves at a heavily wooded cove that opened through a wall of great, drooping willows and cedar into the main channel of the Rill Song. Within the shelter of the cove, anchored beside a creaking, badly rotted dock, rode a solitary barge, its deck laden with canvas–covered crates and stares.
Crispin signaled for them to halt. The Elven Hunters behind him faded into the trees like ghosts. Crispin glanced about, then whistled sharply. A response sounded almost at once from aboard the barge, then another from the head of the cove. Nodding to Wil and Amberle to follow, the Captain of the Home Guard left the cover of the forest. Bent against the force of the wind, the three moved quickly onto the dock, boots thudding hollowly, then aboard the waiting barge. An Elven Hunter appeared suddenly from beneath the canvas, pulling back a section hastily, to reveal an opening between the stacked crates. Crispin motioned for the Valeman and the Elven girl to enter. They did so, and the canvas dropped silently behind them.
Inside, it was sheltered and dry. The darkness confused them at first, and they stood uncertainly, feeling the rocking of the boat beneath them. But a faint sliver of light filtered through where the canvas dropped to the deck, and slowly their eyes adjusted. They discovered that a space had been cleared to form a small cabin within the center of the crates. Foodstuffs and blankets lay neatly stacked against the far wall, and there were weapons bundled carefully in leather casings in one corner. Stripping their cloaks away, they stretched them out to dry next to the stores and sat down to wait.
Moments later they felt the barge lurch free of the old dock and begin to move with the current. Their journey, to the Wilderun was under way.
They spent all of that day and the next concealed within their little cabin, forbidden by Crispin to make even the briefest appearance on deck. The rain continued to fall in a steady drizzle, and the land and the sky remained gray and shadowed. Occasional glances through the flaps of the canvas covering showed to them the land through which they traveled, a mix of forestland and rolling hills for the most part, although, at one point during their journey, a series of high bluffs and ragged cliff sides hemmed in the Rill Song for several hours as she churned her way sluggishly southward. Through it all, mist and rain masked everything in shimmering gray half–light and gave the impression of some vaguely remembered dream. The river, swollen with the rain, roiling with the limbs and debris, rocked and buffeted the barge.
Sleep was impossible. They took what rest they could get, brief naps that left them disoriented when they awoke and always tired still. Muscles and joints ached and stiffened, and the constant rolling motion of the boat took away what little appetite they might have been able to muster.
Time seemed to drag endlessly. They spent it alone with each other, save for the few occasions when Crispin or one of the other Elven Hunters came in out of the weather. When the Elves ate or slept was anybody’s guess, for it appeared that most of their time was spent navigating the river and keeping close watch over their passengers. There was always at least one Elf on guard directly outside the entry to their little cabin. They came to know the names after a time, same when one ducked into the cabin momentarily, some by conversations that took place without. A few they could put faces to; such as Dilph, the small, dark Elf with the friendly eyes and the iron grip, and Katsin, the big, rawboned Hunter who never spoke at all. Kian, Rin, Cormac, and Ped remained little more than voices, though they came to recognize Kian’s quick, deep oaths of irritation and Ped’s cheerful whistling. They saw more of Crispin than any of the others, for the Elven Captain made regular visits to inquire of their needs and to inform them of their progress. But he never stayed for more than a few minutes, always excusing himself politely but firmly, to return to the Elves under his command.
In the end, it was the talks with each other that made the confinement, the dreariness, and the loneliness of the journey bearable. The talks began out of mutual need, Wil thought, but cautiously and awkwardly, for they still regarded each other with a strong sense of uncertainty. The Valeman was never sure why the Elven girl chose to discard the shell into which she had withdrawn for much of their journey north from Havenstead, but her attitude seemed to undergo a surprising transformation. Before, she had been reluctant to discuss much of anything with Wil. Now she was eager to converse with him, drawing out by her questions stories of his early years in Shady Vale, the years when his parents had been alive then later when he had lived with his grandfather and Flick. She wanted
