The soldiers of the King turned south. For several hours they worked their way along the fringe of the Breakline, following the steady rise and fall of the lowland hills. Overhead; the sun passed west across the ridge of the mountains, and shadows began to lengthen in dark swatches. The still, sultry air of midday cooled in a southerly breeze that swept out of the distant forests. Gradually the hills broadened into grasslands. At their edge, straddled by a series of narrow, ragged peaks, the dark mouth of Halys Cut opened into the rock.
Eventine brought his arm to a halt and held a brief conference with his officers. Below the eastern entrance to the pass lay several miles of open plains that ran south to the forestline. If the Demons were to find a way to cross the Breakline below Halys Cut, they could slip north through the forestland and trap the Elven army within the pass. A rear guard would be necessary to protect against that possibility. A cavalry unit could best handle the assignment; the cavalry would be of little use in any case within the narrow confines of the pass.
Ander saw his father’s gaze fall briefly on Stee Jans, then move away. Elven cavalry units would form that guard, the King announced.
The order was given. The Elven cavalry detached itself from the main body of the army and began to deploy across the length of the grasslands. At a signal from Eventine, the remainder of the army turned into Halys Cut. Through the broad, shadowed gap the Elves marched, rugged cliffs towering up about them. The floor of the pass began to climb almost immediately, and the soldiers trudged upward into the rock. Quickly the air cooled, and the sound of shod hooves and booted feet striking against stone echoed eerily. As the trail continued to rise, the footing grew less sure. Loose rock littered the pathway, and cracks split its surface. Men and horses stumbled and slid with each step, and the pace slowed.
Then abruptly it stopped. Before them a huge chasm opened, a massive fissure that dropped away into black emptiness, splitting the length of the pass ahead for hundreds of yards. To the left, the trail sloped down along the mountainside, broad and even as it ran to a defile at the far end of the chasm. To the right, a narrow ledge skirted the fissure, a thin, crumbling pathway that would barely permit the passage of a single rider. All about, sheer cliff walls seemed to bend inward as they rose until all that remained of the sky was a thin, ragged blue line.
The army swung left along the broader path, staying well back of the black mouth of the chasm. When it had gained the defile, it found itself entering a, canyon bright with afternoon sunlight and grown green with scrub and saw. grass. Clusters of boulders dotted the canyon floor, and a thin stream trickled down out of the cliff walls and pooled in a small, brush–grown hollow. Jackrabbits bounded through the brush at the army’s approach; and a scattering of birds drinking at the water’s edge took sudden flight.
The Elves crossed to the far end of the canyon. There the pass opened down a broad, winding gorge into the vast emptiness of the Hoare Flats. Eventine’s hand came up sharply, signaling a halt. His eyes swept the length of the gorge, past a maze of jumbled rock pockets and drops angling down through hulking cliffs and long, rugged slides. Wordlessly, he nodded. It was here that the army would make its stand.
Dusk crept into the Breakline, shadowed gray light chasing toward a sunset that lit the sky above the Hoare Flats in a blaze of scarlet and gold. Behind the wall of the mountains, the moon’s silver disk rose above the forestland and one by one the stars winked into view. Within Halt’s Cut, the silence began to deepen.
Ander Elessedil stood alone on a small knoll midway, down the gorge that ran to the Flats, arms cradling protectively the silver–white staff of the Ellcrys. Wordlessly he surveyed the lines of Elven Hunters and Free Corps soldiers, reconstructing in his mind for the twentieth time in the past half hour the strategy his father had devised for the defense of the pass. A broad rise straddled the pass several hundred yards from its mouth, a flat shelf of rock that overlooked a rugged slide strewn thick with loose stone and scrub. It was here that the army would make its initial stand. Archers would line the front of the rise, shooting into the Demons as they came out of the Flats through the mouth of Halt’s Cut to scramble up the slide. When the Demons were too close for the longbows to be effective; the archers would be replaced by a phalanx of lancers and pikemen who would bear the brunt of the assault. A second phalanx would be held in reserve to reinforce the first. The defenders would hold the rise for as long as they were able, then fall back several hundred yards to a similar position. If the gorge were lost, they would fall back to the mouth of the canyon. If that, too, were lost, the canyon itself would be defended — and so on, until the army was forced entirely from Halys Cut. It was a good plan. Ander was satisfied on thinking it through that the pass would not be easily taken. The defensive positions had been well chosen; when the attack came, it would find the Elves ready.
He lifted his gaze and stared out toward the Flats. Nothing moved. The land lay silent and empty. There was, still no sign of the Demons.
Yet they would come. His hands moved slowly over the smooth wood of the Ellcrys staff, tracing the grain of the skin. His father had left the staff in his care momentarily while he had descended the slide to make his own inspection of the Elven defenses. Ander breathed the night air deeply. Would the staff truly protect the Elves? Would it lend its magic to those who were mortal, men now, no longer the creatures of faerie that their forefathers had been? He looked down at it, gripping it tightly within his hands, and tried to find his own strength in its firmness. Allanon had said that the power of the Ellcrys over the Demons was carried within this staff and that it would weaken the evil and make it vulnerable to Elven weapons. Yet doubt clouded Ander’s mind. The Demons were an incomprehensible evil, born of a world long since gone, a world that none but they had ever seen nor could begin to imagine.
He caught himself. None but Allanon, he corrected himself. And Allanon was himself perhaps a part of that dark, forgotten world.
His father appeared suddenly from the darkness, slipping from the shadows to stand beside him. Wordlessly, Ander passed back the Ellcrys staff. Fatigue and worry lined the old man’s face, reflected in his eyes, and Ander forced himself to look away.
«Is everything all right?» he asked after a moment.
The King nodded distantly «All of the defensive positions are established.»
They were silent again. Ander tried to think of something more that he could say. There was an uneasiness in him that would not settle, one that gave rise to a need to be close to his father. He wanted Eventine to understand this. Yet it was difficult, somehow, to speak with his father of such things. Neither of them had ever been very good at expressing feelings to the other.
His mood darkened. It was that way with Arion as well — particularly with Arion. There was a distance between them that he had never really understood, a distance that might have been shortened had either of them been able to talk about it. But neither had tried. It was worse now, of course. Arion was angered by what had taken place at the High Council, by Ander’s refusal to reject Amberle as the rightful bearer of the Ellcrys seed, and by his refusal to demand of her, as Arion thought proper, an accounting of her actions; now he would not talk with his brother at all. There was such bitterness in Arion! Still, it was bitterness that Ander understood. When Amberle had left Arborlon those many months ago, abandoning without explanation her responsibilities as one of the Chosen, both brothers had experienced that bitterness — he as much as Arion because he, too, had loved the child. For too long a time he had let the bitterness blind him to everything that she had once meant to him. Yet seeing her again had allowed him to rediscover something of his old feeling for her. He would have liked to explain that to Arion; he needed to explain it. But somehow he could not seem to find a way to do so.
He started sharply as he realized that Allanon was standing beside him. The Druid had materialized from nowhere, without even the faintest whisper of those black, concealing robes. The cowled face studied him momentarily, then looked past him to his father.
«You do not sleep?»
Eventine seemed distracted. «No. Not yet.»
«You must rest, Elven King.»
«Soon. Allanon, do you think that Amberle is still alive?»
Ander caught his breath and glanced, fleetingly at the Druid. Allanon was quiet a moment before answering.
«She is alive.»
When he said nothing more, Eventine looked over. «How can you know that?»
«I cannot know; it is what I think.»
«Then why is it that you think she is alive?»
The Druid’s head lifted slightly, deep–set eyes studying the sky. «Because Wil Ohmsford has not yet used the Elfstones. If Amberle’s life were threatened, the Valeman would use the Stones.»
Ander frowned. Elfstones? Wil Ohmsford? What was all this about? Then he remembered the second cloaked
