«An avatar,” the girl answered quietly. «A shade that lives in a pool of water north of Hearthstone where the high ridges part. It has always lived there, it tells me — since before the destruction of the old world, since the time of the world of faerie. It has the magic of the old world in its touch and the sight to see secrets hidden from living people.»
«It could tell me where to find the Sword of Leah?» Rone pressed anxiously, ignoring the restraining. hand that Brin placed upon his arm.
«Ha–ha, look at him!» Cogline cackled gleefully. «Thinks he has the answer now, doesn’t he? Thinks he’s found the way! The Grimpond has the secrets of the earth all bound up in a pretty package ready to give to him! Just a little problem of telling truth from lie, that’s all! Ha–ha!»
«What’s he talking about?» Rone demanded angrily. «What does he mean, truth from lie?»
Kimber gave her grandfather a stern look to quiet him, then turned back to the highlander. «He means that the avatar doesn’t always tell the truth. It lies much of the time or tells riddles that no one can figure out. It makes a game out of it, twisting what is real and what is not so that the listener cannot decide what to believe.»
«But why does it do that?» Brin asked, bewildered.
The girl shrugged. «Shades are like that. They drift between the world that was and the one that will be and have no real place in either.»
She said it with such authority that the Valegirl accepted what she said without questioning it further. Besides, it had been that way with the shade of Bremen as well — in part, at least. There was a sense of commitment in the shade of Bremen lacking perhaps in the Grimpond; but the shade of Bremen did not tell all of what it knew or speak clearly of what would be. Some of the truth could never be told. The whole of the future was never unalterably fixed, and the telling of it must always be shaded by what might yet be.
«Grandfather prefers that I have nothing to do with the Grimpond,” Kimber Boh was explaining to Rone. «He does not approve of the way the avatar lies. Still, its conversation is amusing sometimes, and it becomes an interesting game for me when I choose to play it.» She assumed a stern look. «Of course, it is a different kind of game entirely when you try to commit the avatar to telling you the truth of what it knows when it is really important to you. I never ask it of the future or listen to what it has to say if it offers to tell me. It is a cruel thing, sometimes.»
Rone looked down momentarily, then up again at the girl. «Do you think it could be made to tell me what has happened to my sword?»
Kimber’s eyebrows lifted. «Not made. Persuaded, perhaps. Tricked, maybe.» She looked at Brin. «But I was not just thinking of finding the sword. I was thinking as well of finding a way into the Ravenshorn and into the Maelmord. If there were a way by which the walkers could not see you coming, the Grimpond would know it.»
There was a long, anxious silence. Brin Ohmsford’s mind raced. A way into the Maelmord that would hide them from the Mord Wraiths — it was the key that she needed in order to complete the quest for the Ildatch. She would have preferred that the Sword of Leah, with its magic and its power, remain lost. But what matter that it was found again if it need not be used? She glanced at Rone and saw the determination in his eyes. The matter was already decided for him.
«We must try it, Brin,” he said softly.
Cogline’s wrinkled face split wide in a leering grin. «Go on, Southlander — try it!» His soft laughter echoed through the night stillness.
Brin hesitated. At her feet, stretched between the benches, his gray–black body curled close to his mistress, Whisper raised his massive head and blinked curiously. The Valegirl stared deep into the cat’s saucer blue eyes. How desperate she had become that she must turn to the aid of a woods girl, a half–crazed old man, and a cat that disappeared.
But Allanon was gone…
«Will you speak to the Grimpond for us?» she asked Kimber.
The girl smiled brightly. «Oh, I was thinking, Brin, that it might be better if it were you who spoke to the Grimpond.»
And it was then that Cogline really began to cackle.
Chapter Thirty–Two
Cogline was still cackling on the morning following when the strange little company set forth on their journey to find the Grimpond. Muttering gleefully to himself, he skittered about through the leaf–strewn forest with careless disinterest for what he was about, lost in the shadowed, half–crazed world of his own mind. Yet the sharp old eyes strayed often to Brin’s worried face, and there was cunning and shrewdness in their gaze. And there was always a sly, secretive mirth that whispered in his voice.
«Try it, Southland girl — you must try it, indeed! Ha–ha! Speak with the Grimpond and ask it what you will! Secrets of all that is and all that will be! For a thousand thousand years the Grimpond has seen all of what human life has done with itself, watched with eyes that no other can have! Ask, Southland girl — touch the spirit thing and learn!»
Then the cackle came and he danced away again. Time and again, Kimber Boh chastised him for his behavior with a quick word here, a hard look of disapproval there. The girl found the old man’s behavior silly and embarrassing. But this had no effect on the old man and he kept on teasing and taunting.
It was an iron gray, misted autumn day. The sky was packed with banks of clouds from the dark stretch of the Wolfsktaag west to the fading tips of the forest trees east. A cool breeze wafted down from out of the north, carrying in its wake dust and crumbling leaves that swirled and stung the face and eyes. The color of the woodlands was faded and worn in the morning light, and the first hint of winter’s coming seemed to reflect in their gray cast.
The tiny company traveled north out of Hearthstone with Kimber Boh in the lead, somber and determined; Brin and Rone Leah following close behind; old Cogline danced all about them as they walked; and Whisper ranged far afield through the dark tangle of the trees. They passed beneath the shadow of the towering rock that gave to the valley its name and on from the broad, scrub–free clearings of the sheltered hollow into the wilderness beyond. Deadwood and brush choked the forestland into which they journeyed, a chick and twisted mass of woods. As midday approached, the pace slowed to a crawl. Cogline no longer flitted about like a wild bird, for the wilderness hemmed them all close. They worked their way carefully ahead in a line. Only Whisper continued to roam free, passing like a shadow through the dark mass of the woods, soundless and sleek.
The terrain had grown even more rugged by noontime, and in the distance the dark edge of a series of ridgelines lifted above the trees. Boulders and craggy drops cut apart the land through which they passed, and much of their progress now required that they climb. The wind was blocked away as the ridgelines drew nearer, and the forest smelled of rot and must.
Then, at last, they climbed free of along, deep ravine and stood upon the crest of a narrow valley, angling downward through a pair of towering ridgelines that ran north until they were lost in a wall of mist.
«There.» Kimber pointed into the valley. A thick stand of pine surrounded a lake, its waters only partially visible within a blanket of mist that swirled and shifted with the currents of the wind.
«The Grimpond!» Cogline cackled, his fingers stroking Brin’s arm lightly, then slipping away.
They passed through the maze of pine trees that choked the valley’s broken slopes, winding their way steadily downward to where the mist stirred sluggishly above the little lake. No wind seemed to reach them here; the air had gone still, and the woodland was quiet. Whisper had disappeared entirely. Broken rock and pine needles lay scattered over the ground on which they walked, and their leather boots scraped and crunched with their passing. Though it was midday still, the clouds and mist screened away the light so completely that it appeared as if nightfall had set in. As she followed after the slight figure of Kimber Boh, Brin found herself listening to the silence of the forest, searching through the shadows for some sign of life. As she listened and searched, an uneasiness grew within her. There was indeed something here — something foul, something hidden. She could sense it waiting.
Deep within the pines, the mist began to descend about them. Still they went on. When it seemed they must surely disappear into it completely, they stepped suddenly from the trees into a small clearing where aged stone
