night vision. Nothing ever crept up on Helt or got past him.
Jair hunched down within his blankets against the growing cold. A fire burned at the center of the outcropping, but the heat failed to penetrate the damp to where he sat. He stared a while longer at Helt. The Borderman hadn’t said anything further to him after their brief conversation of the previous night. Jair had thought to talk again with him, and once or twice had almost done so. Yet something had kept him from it. Perhaps it was the look of the man; he was so big and dark. Like Allanon, only… different somehow. Jair shook his head, unable to decide what that difference was.
«You should be sleeping.»
The voice startled Jair so that he jumped. Garet Jax was next to him, a silent black shadow as he settled in beside the Valeman and wrapped himself in his cloak.
«I’m not sleepy,” Jair murmured, struggling to regain his composure.
The Weapons Master nodded, gray eyes peering out into the rain. They sat there in silence, huddled down in the dark, listening to the patter of the rainfall, the churning rush of the river, and the soft ripple of leaves and limbs as the wind blew past. After a time, Garet Jax stirred and Jair could feel the other’s eyes shift to find him.
«Do you remember asking me why I helped you in the Black Oaks?» Garet Jax asked softly. Jair nodded. «I told you it was because you interested me. That was true; you did. But it was more than that.»
He paused, and Jair turned to look at him. The hard, cold eyes seemed distant and searching.
«I am the best at what I do.» The Weapons Master’s voice was barely a whisper. «All my life I have been the best, and there is no one even close. I have traveled all of the lands, and I have never found anyone who was a match for me. But I keep looking.»
Jair stated at him. «Why do you do that?»
«Because what else is there for me to do?» the other asked. «What purpose is there in being a Weapons Master if not to test the skill that the name implies? I test myself every day of my life; I look for ways to see that the skill does not fail me. It never does, of course, but I keep looking.»
His gaze shifted once more, peering into the rain. «When I first came upon you back in that clearing in the Oaks, bound and gagged, trussed hand and foot, guarded by that Gnome patrol — when I saw you like that, I knew there was something special about you. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was there. I sensed it, I guess you’d say. You were what I was looking for.»
Jair shook his head. «I don’t understand what you mean.»
«No, I don’t guess you do. At first, I didn’t understand either. I just sensed that somehow you were important to me. So I freed you and went with you. As we traveled, I saw more of what had intrigued me in the first place… something that I was looking for. Nothing really told me what I should do with you. I just sensed what I should do, and I did it.»
He straightened. «And then…» His eyes snapped back to find Jair’s. «You came awake that morning by the Silver River and told me of the dream. Not a dream, I guess — but something like it. Your quest, you called it. And I was to be your protector. An impossible quest, a quest deep into the heart of the lair of the Mord Wraiths for something no one knew anything about but you — and I was to be your protector.»
He shook his head slowly. «But you see, I had a dream that night, also. I didn’t tell you that. I had a dream that was so real that it was more… vision than dream. In a time and place I did not recognize, I stood with you as your protector. Before me was a thing of fire, a thing that burned at the touch. A voice whispered to me from within my mind. It said that I must do battle with the fire, that it would be a battle to the death, and that it would be the most terrible battle of my life. The voice whispered that it was for this battle alone that I had trained all of my life — that all of the battles that had gone before had been to prepare me for this.»
His gray eyes burned with the heat of his words. «I thought after hearing of your vision that perhaps mine, too, came from the King of the Silver River. But whatever its source, I knew that the voice spoke the truth. And I knew as well that this was what I had been looking for — a chance to match my skill against power greater than any that I had ever faced and to see if I was indeed the best.»
They stared silently at each other in the dark. What Jair saw in the other man’s eyes frightened him — a determination, a strength of purpose — and something more. A madness. A frenzy, barely controlled and hard as iron.
«I want you to understand, Valeman,” Garet Jax whispered. «I choose to come with you that I might find this vision. I shall be your protector as I have pledged that I would. I shall see you safely past whatever dangers threaten. I shall defend you even though I die doing so. But in the end it is the vision that I seek to test my skill against this dream!»
Pausing, he drew back from the Valeman. «I want you to understand that,” he repeated softly.
Silent again, he waited. Jair nodded slowly. «I think I do.»
Garet Jax looked out into the rain once more, withdrawing into himself. As if alone, he sat and watched the rain fall in steady sheets and said nothing. Then, after a time, he rose and slipped back into the shadows.
Jair Ohmsford sat alone for a long time after he was gone, wondering if he really did understand after all.
The next morning, when they came awake, Jair brought forth the vision crystal to discover what had become of Brin since last he had sought her out.
Rain and gray mist shrouded the forest as the members of the little company crowded about the Valeman. Holding the crystal before him so that all could see, he began to sing. Soft and eerie, the wishsong filled the dawn silence with its sound, rising up through the patter of the rain on the earth. Then light flared from within the crystal, fierce and sudden, and Brin’s face appeared. She stared out at the members of the company, searching for something their own eyes could not see. There were mountains behind her, stark and barren as they rose against a dawn as gray and dismal as their own. Still Jair sang, following his sister’s face as she turned suddenly. Rone Leah and Allanon were there, haggard–looking faces lifted toward a deep, impenetrable forest.
Jair ceased to sing, and the vision was gone. He looked anxiously at the faces about him. «Where is she?»
«The mountains are the Dragon’s Teeth,” Helt rumbled softly. «No mistaking them.»
Garet Jax nodded and looked at Foraker. «The forest?»
«It’s the Anar.» The Dwarf rubbed his bearded chin. «She comes this way, she and the other two, but farther north, across the Rabb.»
The Weapons Master gripped Jair’s shoulder. «When you used the vision crystal before, the mountains were the same, I think the Dragon’s Teeth. Your sister and the Druid were within them then; now they come out. What would they be doing there?»
There was a moment’s silence, faces glancing one from the other.
«Paranor,” Edain Elessedil said suddenly.
«The Druid’s Keep,” Jair agreed at once. «Allanon took Brin into the Druid’s Keep.» He shook his head. «But why would he do that?»
This time no one spoke. Garet Jax straightened. «We won’t find out huddled here. The answers to such questions lie east.»
They rose, and Jair slipped the vision crystal back into his tunic. The march into the Anar resumed.
Chapter Sixteen
On the fourth day out of Culhaven, they arrived at the Wedge.
It was late afternoon, and the sky hung gray and oppressive across the land. Rain fell in steady sheets as it had fallen for three days past, and the Anar was sodden and cold. Trees stripped bare of autumn color shone black and stark through trailers of mist that slipped like wraiths across the deepening dusk. In the empty, sullen forest, there was only silence.
All day the land had been rising in a steady, gentle slope that lifted now into a mass of cliffs and ridgelines. The Silver River churned through their midst, swollen by the rains, cradled within a deep and winding gorge. Mountains rose up about the gorge and blocked it away with walls of cliffs that were sheer and stripped of trees and scrub. Shadowed by mist and coming night, the Silver River was soon lost from sight entirely.
