suddenly that it appeared to an astonished Wil as if he had simply evaporated. Then Kian’s scream sounded, short and strangled. His body flew out of the trees, sailing like a fallen limb into the rain, tumbling lifelessly to the ground below.
«Run!» Dilph cried to Wil and bolted into the trees.
The Valeman froze for a single, terrible instant. Kian was dead. Almost certainly, the entire. Elven outpost of Drey Wood was dead as well. All of his thoughts scattered, save one — if he did not get to Amberle in time, she would be dead as well. Then he ran, darting like some stricken deer through the tangle of the forest, leaping and twisting through scrub and deadwood, desperate to reach the barge and the unsuspecting Elven girl whose life he guarded. Somewhere off to his right he could hear Dilph, fleeing as he did, and further back Rin. He knew instinctively that something pursued them. He could not see it, could not hear it; but he could sense it, terrible and black and pitiless. Rain streaked his face and ran into his eyes, clouding his vision as he sought to avoid fallen logs and thorny brush. Once he went down, but he was up again almost immediately, never slowing, his lean form straining to put further stance between himself and his unseen pursuer. His chest heaved with the effort, and his legs ached. There had been few times in his life when he had been afraid, but he was afraid now. He was terrified.
Rin’s scream sounded sharply through the stillness. The thing had him. Wil gritted his teeth in fury. Perhaps the Elves at the barge would be warned now. Perhaps they would cast off at once, so that, even if he too were caught, at least Amberle would escape.
Branches and leaves tore at him like clutching hands. He looked for Dilph, but the Elf was no longer in view. Alone, he ran on.
Dusk began to slip rapidly over Drey Wood, turning gray afternoon to night. The drizzle which had fallen at a steady rate for most of the day changed abruptly to a heavy downpour, the wind gusting sharply as a new mass of black stormclouds rolled across the sky. Thunder tumbled in the distance, deep and ominous. On the banks of the Rill Song, the Elven Hunters and their charge pulled rainsoaked cloaks closer about their chilled bodies.
Then the scream sounded from somewhere within the wood, high and short, almost lost in the heavy rush of the wind. For an instant no one moved, staring wordlessly at the dark wall of trees. Then Crispin was barking orders, sending Amberle back to the barge and into hiding once more, calling Ped and Cormac to him. Weapons drawn, the three Elven Hunters backed to the end of the dock, scanning the hazy tangle of the, forest. Aboard the barge, Katsin loosened the mooring lines and stood ready to cast off.
Amberle huddled for a few moments within the dark of the cabin, listening to the sound of the wind and the rain without. Then abruptly she rose, pushed aside the canvas flap, and stepped back out into the weather. Whatever the consequences, she could not stay hidden in that cabin without knowing what was going on out here. She edged her way along the stacked crates until she was able to gain the dock. Katsin had looped the lines that moored the barge several turns about a piling; with the loose ends gripped firmly, he stood braced to release them on command. He gave Amberle a sharp look when he saw her, but the girl ignored it. At the edge of the bank, several feet from the dock, the remaining Elven Hunters faced the wood, sword blades glistening dully with rain.
Abruptly a disheveled figure broke from the trees not twenty yards downriver, stumbled, and pitched forward. When he scrambled up again, they saw that it was Dilph.
«Get away!» he cried in warning, his voice ragged. «Quick, get away!»
He started toward them, lost his footing once more and went down.
Crispin was already moving A sharp command sent Ped and Cormac to the barge as he raced for the fallen Dilph. Barely slowing, he snatched the other man up in his arms, flung him over one shoulder and streaked back toward the waiting boat.
Amberle peered through the mist and rain into the forest. Where was Wil Ohmsford?
«Drop the lines!» Crispin was shouting.
Katsin did as he was told, then hurriedly shoved Amberle aboard the barge where Ped and Cormac already waited. A second later Crispin had Dilph aboard as well, and the heavy craft began to drift.
Then suddenly Wil appeared, thrusting clear of the forest and racing for the dock. Amberle saw him, started to cry out, and then went cold. In the shadow of the trees behind the fleeing Valeman, something huge followed in pursuit.
«Look out!» she screamed in warning.
Spurred by her cry, the Valeman gained the dock in a single bound, sprinted its length without slowing, and sprang to reach the drifting barge, barely catching its deck with an outstretched foot. He would have tumbled into the river but for the Elven Hunters, who reached out and pulled him to safety.
The barge swung into the main channel of the Rill Song and began to pick up speed. Katsin seized the tiller, bringing the cumbersome boat about. As Wil stumbled back against the crates and sank down in exhaustion, Amberle quickly removed her own cloak and wrapped it tightly about him. Close at hand, Crispin bent over Dilph. Wind and the roar of the river scattered Dilph’s words.
«… Dead, all of them — smashed; broken like twigs… like the patrol in Arborlon, like… the Chosen.» His mouth opened and he choked for breath. «Kian, too… and Rin, both dead… the Demon caught them… it was waiting for us… ”
Amberle didn’t hear the rest. Her eyes were locked on Wil’s. With terrible certainty, each had realized the truth.
It was waiting for them. The Demon.
Allanon had given it a name. He had called it the Reaper.
Chapter Twenty–Three
It was midnight when Crispin took the barge ashore again. Immediately below Drey Wood, the Rill Song swung westward on its twisting journey to the Innisbore. When the Elves finally guided the barge into a narrow, heavily wooded inlet that broke south from the main channel, they found themselves at the northernmost edge of the Matted Brakes, miles from where they had intended to leave the river. The rains had diminished once more to a soft drizzle that hung in the chill air like fine mist. Heavy clouds obscured moon and stars, and the night was so black that even Elven ryes could see no further than a dozen paces. The wind had died away into stillness, and a deep haze had settled over the whole of the land.
The Elven Hunters grounded the barge on a low sand bar at the head of the inlet, pulled her nearly clear of the river and made her fast. Moving safely and quietly, they scouted the land about them for several hundred yards in all directions, determined that nothing threatened them, then reported back to Crispin. The Elf Captain decided that it would be pointless to attempt further travel until morning. Wil and Amberle were told to remain in their cabin. Wrapped in warm blankets to ward off the cold, free for the first time in two days from the river’s discomforting pitch and roll, they fell asleep at once. The Elves ringed the barge and its sleeping passengers, standing watch in shifts. Crispin posted himself beside the cabin entry and settled in for the night.
At dawn, the little company rose, packed what provisions and weapons they could carry, then freed the barge from its moorings and let the river carry it away. It disappeared swiftly, twisting in the pull of the current. As soon as it was gone, they struck out across the Matted Brakes.
The Brakes were lowlands choked with scrub and brush and dotted with stagnant lakes, bramble runs, and sink holes. They split apart the vast Westland forests from the banks of the Rill Song to the wall of the Rock Spur, a maze of wilderness through which few travelers dared to journey Those who did risked losing themselves hopelessly in a tangle of thicket and clustered bogs shrouded in mist and darkness. Worse, they risked an encounter with any number of unpleasant denizens of the Brakes, creatures that were vicious, cunning, and indiscriminate in their choice of prey. Not much of anything lived within these lowlands, but what did live there understood well that all creatures were either hunter or hunted and that only the former could survive.
«If there were another alternative, we would not come this way,” Crispin advised Wil, dropping back momentarily to share his thoughts with the Valeman. «If all had gone as planned, we would have taken horses from the outpost south along the western edge of the Brakes to the Mermidon, then ridden west into the Rock Spur. But Drey Wood has changed all that. Now we have to be concerned as much with what may follow as with what may lie
