count for something!»
Jair ran with him and said nothing more, his face flushed with shame. He understood the Gnome’s anger. Slanter was right. He had acted without thinking — without consideration for what the others of the little company had given up for him. His intentions might have been good, but his judgment had been poor indeed.
Ahead, the shadows fell away in a haze of graying sunlight that poured down through a massive crevice in the mountain stone. In the floor of the cavern, caught in the half–light, foul black water bubbled up from out of the rock in a broad Basin, pumped in some impossible way through thousands of feet of stone from the depths of the earth. Gathering and churning, it gushed through a slot at one end of the basin into a worn channel, then poured through — an opening in the mountain wall to tumble to the canyons below, where it began its long journey west to become the Silver River.
Gnome and Valeman slowed cautiously, eyes darting through gloom and hazy spray to the deep niches and corners of the cavern’s dark ends. Nothing moved. Only the flow of the blackened waters gave evidence of life, a terrible rush of poison that steamed and boiled as it lifted from the wellspring. All about, the stench of the Maelmord hung like a shroud.
Jair went forward once more, eyes fixed on the basin that was Heaven’s Well. How perverse that name seemed to him now as he gazed upon the fouled waters. Silver River no more, he thought dismally, and he wondered how even the magic of the old man could change it back to what it had once been. Slowly, he reached into his tunic front and his fingers closed about the tiny pouch of Silver Dust that he had carried with him all through his long journey east. He slipped the drawstrings free and peered within. The dust lay gathered, like ordinary sand.
And if it were only sand… ?
«Quit wasting time!» Slanter snapped.
Jair moved to the edge of the basin, conscious of the sludge that choked the well’s dark waters and of the reek. It could not be only sand! He swallowed against that fear, remembering Brin…
«Throw it!» Slanter cried angrily.
Jair’s hand jerked up, flinging the Silver Dust from its pouch, scattering it in a wide sweep across the surface of the fouled well. The tiny grains flew from the darkness of their container; and in the light of the cavern they seemed suddenly to sparkle and shimmer. They touched the waters and flared to life. A sheet of brilliant silver fire burst from the dark well. Jair and Slanter recoiled, shielding their eyes with their hands, blinded by the glare.
«The magic!» Jair cried.
Hissing and boiling, the waters of Heaven’s Well exploded skyward, raining down across the length and breadth of the cavern, showering the two who crouched at the basin’s walls. Then a rush of clean air seemed to spring to life, born out of the shower of water. Gnome and Valeman stared in awe and disbelief. Before them, the waters of Heaven’s Well bubbled clear and fresh from the mountain rock. The stench and the black, poisoned color were gone. The Silver River was clean once more.
Quickly, Jair took from around his neck the vision crystal and its silver chain. There was no hesitation now. He moved back to the basin and climbed to a small outcropping of rock that overlooked it. He heard again in his mind the King of the Silver River telling him what he must do if he were to save Brin.
His hand tightened on the crystal, and he stared downward into the waters of the basin. All of the weariness and pain seemed to seep away in that single instant.
He threw the crystal and the chain into the basin’s depths. There was a blinding flash of light — a flash greater than that created by the scattering of the Silver Dust — and the whole of the cavern seemed to explode in white fire. Jair dropped to his knees in fright, hearing Slanter’s harsh cry behind him, and for an instant he thought that something had gone terribly wrong. But then the light fell away into the surface of the basin’s waters, and the waters became as smooth and clear as glass.
The answer — show me the answer!
An image spread slowly across the mirrored surface, shimmering like a thing of transparency, then tightening. A tower room appeared, cavernous and flooded with musted, graying light, and there was an oppression that was almost palpable. Jair shrank from what he felt as he watched the room broaden and begin to draw him in.
And then the face of his sister appeared…
Brin Ohmsford felt the eyes looking at her, seeing all that she was and would become, then reaching to draw her close. Though wrapped within layers of magic as the power of the Ildatch built within her, she sensed the eyes and her own snapped up.
Stay from me! she howled. I am the dark child!
But that tiny part of her that the magic had not subverted knew the eyes and sought their help. Trapped thoughts broke from their shackles within her mind, fleeing like sheep from wolves that hunted, crying out and striving to reach shelter. She saw them, and the discovery filled her with fury. She reached for the scattered thoughts as they fled and she crushed them, one by one. Childhood, home, parents, friends — the disparate pieces of what she had been before she had found what she could be — she crushed them all.
Her voice found release then in a wail of anguish, and even the aged walls of the dark tower shook with the force of her keening. What had she done? There was pain within her now, brought about by the harm she had caused. A brief moment’s insight flooded through her, and she heard the echo of the Grimpond’s prophecy. It was her own death, indeed, that she had come into the Maelmord to find that she had found! But it was not the death that she had supposed. It was the death of self through her entrapment by the magic! She was destroying herself!
But even in the horror of that realization, she could not release the Ildatch. She was caught up in the feel of the magic’s power as it built and expanded like flood waters gathering. Before her, she held the book in a death grip, hearing its dispassionate voice whisper in encouragement and promise. Her pain was forgotten. The eyes were swept away. There was only the voice. She listened to its words, unable not to, and the world began to open up before her…
At the basin of Heaven’s Well, Jair staggered back from the vision of his sister. Was it truly Brin whom he had seen? Horror flooded through him as he forced himself to view again the apparition that the waters had shown him. It was his sister, but twisted into a thing barely recognizable — a perversion of the human being she had once been. She was lost to herself — just as the King of the Silver River had said she would be.
And Allanon! Where was Allanon? Where was Rone? Had they failed her as he had failed her by reaching Heaven’s Well too late?
Tears streaked Jair Ohmsford’s face. It had come to pass as the old man had warned that it would — everything as he had foreseen. A terrible desperation filled the Valeman. He was all that was left. Allanon, Brin, Rone, the little company from Culhaven, all were gone.
«Boy, what is it that you do?» he heard Slanter call to him «Get back from there and use what sense…»
Jair closed his ears and his mind to the rest of what the Gnome would have told him, his eyes fixing once more on the apparition in the basin’s waters. It was Brin that he saw there, however twisted. It was Brin, gone down into the Maelmord, drawn to the book of the Ildatch, subverted somehow by the magic she had come to destroy.
And he must go to her. Even if it were too late, he must try to help her.
He came to his feet again, remembering the final gift of the King of the Silver River. «Once only shall the magic of your wishsong be used to create not illusion, but reality.»
He brushed aside the confusion, horror, fear, and despair, and he sang. The music of the wishsong rose up in the stillness of the cavern, flooding the silence and drowning the sudden cries of protest that broke from Slanter’s throat. Pain and weariness faded into yesterday as.he cried out for the wish. The brilliant white light of the basin waters shimmered again in the air above Heaven’s Well, and again the spray geysered skyward.
Slanter staggered away, blinded and deafened. When he finally looked back again, Jair Ohmsford had disappeared into the light.
Chapter Forty–Five
