Jair looked at him then and nodded. «Yes, I do, Slanter. I do. He was a match for anything. He was the best.»
There was a long moment of silence between them. Then the Gnome nodded, too. «Yes, I guess he was.»
Again the tremors shook the mountain, reverberating out of the deep rock. Slanter caught hold of Jair’s arm and gently turned him away. «We can’t stay, boy. We have to find your sister right away.»
Jair glanced back at the still form of the Weapons Master one final time and then forced his eyes away. «Good–bye, Garet Jax,” he whispered.
Together, Gnome and Valeman hastened to the stairway of the Croagh and started down.
Brin ran through the dim and misted tangle of the Maelmord, free at last of the tower of the Ildatch. Deep tremors wracked the valley floor, shudders that rippled the peaks of the mountains all about. The dark magic was gone from the land, and with, its passing the Maelmord could not survive. The rise and fall of its breathing and the hiss that had whispered of its unnatural life were stilled.
Where am I? Brin wondered frantically, her eyes casting through the gathering shadows. What has become of the Croagh?
She knew that she was hopelessly lost. She had been from the moment that she had fled the tower. Nightfall lay over the whole of the valley, and she was deep within a graveyard where all signs appeared as one and no path showed itself. Through the webbing of limbs and vines overhead, she could see the rim of the mountains that ringed the valley pit, but the stem of the Croagh lay wrapped in darkness against their backdrop. The Maelmord had become an impossible maze, and she was caught within it.
She was exhausted, her strength drained by prolonged use of the wishsong and by her long journey down into the pit. She was lost, and the magic no longer gave her sight. And all about her, the tremors continued to shake the valley floor, forewarning of the destruction of the Maelmord and everything caught within it. Only her spirit remained strong, and it was her spirit that kept her moving now in search of an escape.
The ground sank sharply beneath her feet, giving way with a suddenness that was frightening. Brin stumbled and nearly went down. The Maelmord was breaking up. It was crumbling beneath her, and she knew now that she would be carried with it.
She slowed to a weary halt, gasping for breach. It was pointless to go on. She was running to no purpose, blind and directionless. Even the vaunted magic of the wishsong, should she choose to use it, could not save her now. Why had Jair abandoned her? Why had he gone? Despair washed through her at the terrible sense of betrayal — despair and unreasoning anger. But she fought back against those feelings, knowing that they were senseless and unfair. Jair would not have left her unless he had been given no choice. Whatever had brought him to her had simply taken him back again.
Or perhaps what she had thought was Jair was not and what she had seen and felt had not even been real. Perhaps it had all been something that in her madness she had dreamed…
«Jair!» she screamed.
The echo of her voice broke against the rumblings of the earth and then was gone. The ground sank further beneath her.
Resolutely, stubbornly, she turned and went on. She no longer ran, too wearied to run further. Her dusky face hardened with determination, and she brushed everything from her mind but the need to put one foot before the other. She would not give up. She would go on. When she could no longer walk upright, she would crawl. But she would go on.
Then suddenly a shadow bounded from the tangled dark, huge, lean, and ghostly. It came toward her and she cried out in fright. A massive whiskered face rubbed against her body, and luminous blue eyes blinked in greeting. It was Whisper! She fell against the moor cat in grateful disbelief, crying openly, wrapping her arms about the shaggy neck. Whisper had come for her!
The moor cat turned and started away at once, drawing her with him. She fastened one hand in the ruff of his neck and stumbled after. They slipped through the maze of the dying jungle. All about them, the rumblings grew and tremors shook the earth. Rotted limbs began to crash down about them. Steam smelling rank and fetid geysered from cracks that split the hardened earth. Boulders and slides broke away from the cliffs that walled the valley close and came tumbling through the dark.
Yet somehow they reached the Croagh, its coiled length materializing abruptly out of the gloom, rising from the valley floor into the night. The giant cat bounded onto the stairway with Brin a step behind. The Valegirl scrambled upward, groping her way uncertainly as the rumblings intensified. Massive tremors rocked the Croagh, one following close upon another. Brin was thrown to her knees. Beneath her, the stone began to crack and split. Whole sections of the stairway were breaking off and tumbling downward into the pit. Not yeti she screamed soundlessly. Not until I am free! Whisper’s deep roar lifted above the rumblings, and she struggled after the big cat. Below them, giant trees snapped apart like deadwood. The last of the failing twilight died as the sun slipped beneath the horizon and the whole of the land was wrapped in shadow.
And then the cliff ledge was before her again, and she stumbled onto it, crying out to the shadowy forms that closed about her. Arms reached for her, pulling her clear of the crumbling stairs, drawing her back from the precipice. Kimber was hugging and kissing her, her pixie face beaming with happiness and her eyes filled with tears. Cogline was muttering and grumbling, dabbing at her cheeks with a soiled cloth. And Rone was there, his lean, sun–browned face haggard and bruised, but his gray eyes were fierce with love. Whispering her name, he wrapped his arms about her and held her against him. It was then, finally, that she knew that she was safe.
Only moments later, Jair and Slanter came upon them, descending the Croagh from Heaven’s Well in their desperate search for Brin. There were astonished looks and exclamations of relief. Then Brin and Jair were clasping each other close once more.
«It was you who came to me in the Maelmord,” Brin whispered, stroking her brother’s head. She smiled through her tears. «You saved me, Jair.»
Jair hugged, her back to mask his embarrassment. Rone came over and hugged them both. «For cat’s sake, tiger — you’re supposed to be back in the Vale! Don’t you ever do anything you’re told?»
Slanter hung back tentatively, eyeing them all with studied suspicion, from the three who persisted in hugging and kissing each other to the spindly old man, the woods girl, and the giant moor cat stretched out beside them. «Oddest bunch I’ve ever come across,” he muttered to himself.
Then the rumblings from the floor of the valley rolled through the mountain rock like thunder, and the tremors shattered apart the whole of the Croagh. It tumbled into the pit and was gone. All of the little company that were gathered on the cliff ledge hastened to its edge and peered through the gloom. Shards of brightness from the moon and stars laced the darkness. In a rippling of shadows, the pit of the Maelmord began to sink. Downward it slipped, downward into the earth as if swallowed by quicksand. Soil, rock, and dying forest crumbled and fell away. The shadows lengthened and drew together until the moonlight could no longer show any trace of what had once been.
In moments, the Maelmord had disappeared forever.
Chapter Forty–Seven
Autumn had settled down across the land, and everywhere the colors of the season brightened and shone in the sunshine’s warmth. It was a clear, cool day in the Eastland forests where the Chard Rush tumbled down from out of the Wolfsktaag, and the skies were a depthless blue. There had been a frost that morning, and melted patches of it lingered still in the deep grasses and on the hardened earth and moss–grown rocks that lined the riverbanks, mixed with the spray of the channel’s foaming waters.
Brin paused at the edge of those waters to gather her thoughts.
It had been a week now since the little company of friends had departed the Ravenshorn. With the destruction of the Ildatch and the fading of the dark magic and all the things that it had made, the Gnome Hunters defending Graymark had fled back into the hills and forestlands of the deep Anar — back to the tribes from which they had been taken. Left alone in the crumbling, deserted fortress, Brin, Jair, and their friends had found the bodies of the Borderman Helt, the Dwarf Elb Foraker, and the Elven Prince Edain Elessedil and laid them to rest. Only
