«Helt!» Jair whispered and started forward. «Helt, you’re hurt…»
The Borderman lifted his head slowly. Angry slashes crisscrossed his face. One eye was swollen and already beginning to close. He dabbed at the wounds with his tunic sleeve and motioned the Valeman back. «No, they’re just scratches. Nothing bad.»
But he was wincing with pain. He came to his feet with an effort, bracing himself against the wall. There was an uneasy look in his eyes.
Slanter had moved away from the door and was glancing about furtively. They were at the center of a narrow corridor that ran to a pair of closed doors at one end and to a stairway Opening to daylight at the other.
«This way!» he beckoned, moving quickly toward the light. «Hurry — before something else finds us!»
They started after him, all save Helt, who was still leaning against the passage wall. Jair glanced back and slowed. «Helt?» he called.
«Hurry on, Jair.» The big man was still dabbing blood from his face. Then he pushed himself off the wall and started after. «Go on, now. Stay close to the others.»
Jair did as he was asked, conscious that the Borderman was following and conscious, too, that Helt was having difficulty doing so. There was something very wrong with him.
They reached the end of the corridor and went up the stairs in a rush. The eerie stillness of the fortress was broken by the sound of other feet and voices, jumbled, distant and indistinct. The shriek of the winged thing had given warning that there were intruders within the keep. Jair’s mind raced wildly as he bounded up the long stairway with the others. He must remember that he had the wishsong for protection — that he could use it effectively only if he remembered to keep his head…
Something hissed past his face, and he stumbled and went down. An arrow shattered on the stairway wall. Helt was next to him at once, pulling him up again. Arrows flew all about them as Gnome Hunters appeared in the corridor below and on parapets above. The companions were within Graymark’s walls, but their enemies knew it now and were converging. Scrambling to the top of the stairs, Jair wheeled right after the others along a line of battlements that overlooked a broad inner courtyard and a maze of towers and fortifications. Gnomes appeared from everywhere, weapons in hand, yelling wildly. A handful lay crumpled on the battlements ahead, brought down by Garet Jax as the black–clad Weapons Master cleared the way forward. The six darted along She battlements to a tower stairwell where Slanter brought them to a halt.
«The drop–gate — there!» He pointed across the courtyard to an iron–barred portcullis that stood raised over an arched entry leading through a massive, stone block wall. «Quickest way for us to reach the Croagh!» His yellow face grimaced as he fought for breath. «Gnomes will realize what we’re about in a moment. When they do, they’ll bring down the gate to trap us. But if we can get there first, we can use the gate to cut them off instead!»
Garet Jax nodded, oddly calm in the midst of the moment’s fury. «Where is the wheelhouse and winch?»
Slanter pointed again. «Beneath the gates — this side. We’ll have to jam the wheel!»
Shouts and cries broke from all about them. In the courtyard below the Gnomes began to come together.
Garet Jax straightened. «Quick, then — before they are too many for us.»
The little company raced down the tower stairwell, Slanter leading. At the lower end, they crossed through an anteway, dark and closed, to a single door that opened into the courtyard. All across the yard, Gnome Hunters turned to face them.
«Shades!» Slanter gasped.
They broke for the gate in a rush.
Brin Ohmsford climbed slowly to her feet, one hand resting lightly on Whisper’s massive head. The cavern was still again, empty of life. She stood for a moment at the center of the stone bridge and looked across the chasm to where daylight brightened the tall, arched alcove leading out. She rubbed Whisper’s head gently, conscious of the welts and angry furrows left from his terrible battle with the black things, feeling the hurt that he had suffered.
«No more,” she whispered softly.
Then she turned forward. She left the bridge quickly, without looking back, and began to cross the cavern floor toward the alcove. Whisper went with her, padding silently behind, saucer blue eyes gleaming. Without turning, she knew that he was there. Cautiously, she scanned the creviced rock for signs of the black things or other horrors wrought by the dark magic, but there were none. Only she and the cat remained.
Minutes later she reached the alcove with its high, smooth walls sculpted from the stone and carved with the intricate designs she had seen earlier. She paid them little heed, moving at once to the opening and to the daylight beyond. She had only one objective now.
The opening passed away behind her and she stood once more in sunlight. It was midafternoon, the sun gone westward toward the treeline, its brightness dimmed by mist and clouds that floated shroudlike across the whole of the sky above. She was on a ledge overlooking a deep valley surrounded by a cluster of barren, ragged peaks. There was an odd, dreamlike tone to the setting of mountains, clouds, and mist. The whole of the valley was bathed in a shimmering, leaden cast. She looked slowly about and then upward behind her. There, balanced upon the rock above, was a solitary, dismal fortress. Graymark. Winding down from its heights and from far above that, beyond where she could see, was the stone stairway of the Croagh. It wound past her ledge, touched briefly, then spiraled down into the valley.
It was upon the valley that her gaze at last came to rest. A deep, shadowed bowl, it fell away from the light until its lower depths were lost in misted gloom. The Croagh wound down into this darkness, into a mass of trees, vines, scrub, and choking brush, grown so thick that the light could not penetrate. This forest was a twisted and knotted wilderness and it seemed to have neither beginning nor end, but to be contained in its rampant growth only by the rock walls of the peaks.
Brin stared. It was from here that the hissing sound came, the one that she had heard earlier in the sewers. It was like a breathing. She squinted against the glare of the gray half–light. Had she seen… ?
In the bowl of the valley, the forest moved.
«You are alive!» she said softly and hardened herself against what that realization made her feel.
She stepped far out onto the ledge, to the very edge where the stem of the Croagh joined to it. Crude stairs had been cut into the rock, and she stared down their length to where they disappeared at a bend in the stone. Then she looked past again to the valley below.
«Maelmord, I am come to you,” she whispered.
Then she turned back to Whisper. She knelt beside him and rubbed his ears tenderly. Her smile was sad and gentle. «You must go no further with me, Whisper. Even though your mistress sent you to keep me safe, you must go no further. You must stay here and wait for her to come to you. Do you understand?»
The cat’s luminous eyes blinked and he rubbed against her. «Protect my way back again, if you would protect me at all,” she told him. «Perhaps it will not be as the Grimpond has foretold — that I shall die here. Perhaps I will come back again. Keep the way safe for me, Whisper. Keep your mistress and my friends safe. Do not let them follow. Wait, and when I have done what I must, I will come back to you if I am able. I promise you that I will.»
Then she sang to the cat, using the wishsong not to persuade or to deceive this time, but to explain. In images that would carry to the moor cat’s mind, she let him feel what she wished and made him understand what it was that she must do. When she was done, she leaned forward and hugged the big cat close for a moment, nestling her face in the coarse fur and feeling the warmth of the beast seep through her, taking from that warmth a measure of new strength.
She rose and stepped back. Slowly Whisper sank down on his haunches and forepaws until he was stretched outfacing her. She nodded and smiled. He was taking up guard of her path down. He would do as she wished.
«Good–bye, Whisper,” she told him and stepped upon the Croagh.
The stench that had risen from the chasm behind her rose anew from the steamy depths of the valley below. She ignored it, gazing out momentarily over the cliffs to where the light of the sun brightened above the horizon. She thought of Allanon then and wondered if he could see her — if perhaps he might in some way be with her.
Then she took a deep breath to steady herself and started down.
