benches ringed an open fire pit, its charred logs and ash black with the dampness.
On the far side of the clearing, a rutted trail led away again into the mist.
Kimber turned to Brin. «You must go alone from here. Follow the trail until you reach the edge of the lake. The Grimpond will come to you there.»
«And whisper secrets in your ear!» Cogline chortled, crouching next to her.
«Grandfather,” the girl admonished.
«Truth and lies, but which is which?» Cogline cackled defiantly and skipped–away to the edge of the pines.
«Do not be frightened by grandfather,” Kimber advised, her pixie face a mask of concern as she saw Brin’s troubled eyes. «No harm can come to you from the Grimpond. It is only a shade.»
«Maybe one of us should go with you,” Rone suggested uneasily, but Kimber Boh immediately shook her head.
«The Grimpond, will only speak with one person, never more. It will not even appear if there is more than one.» The girl smiled encouragingly. «Brin must go alone.»
Brin nodded. «I guess that settles it.»
«Remember my warning,” Kimber cautioned. «Be wary of what you are told. Much of it will be false or twisted.»
«But how am I to know what is false and what is true?» Brin asked her.
Kimber shook her head once more. «You will have to decide that for yourself. The Grimpond will play games with you. It will appear to you and speak as it chooses. It will tease you. That is the way of the creature. It will play games. But perhaps you can play the games better than it can.» She touched Brin’s arm. «This is why I think you should speak to the Grimpond rather than I. You have the magic. Use it if you can. Perhaps you can find a way to make the wishsong help you.»
Cogline’s laughter rang from the edge of the little clearing. Brin ignored it, pulled her forest cloak tightly about her, and nodded. «Perhaps. I will try.»
Kimber smiled, her freckled face wrinkling. Then she hugged the Valegirl impulsively. «Good luck, Brin.»
Surprised, Brin hugged her back, one hand coming up to stroke the long dark hair.
Rone came forward awkwardly, then bent to kiss Brin. «Watch yourself.»
She smiled her promise to do so; then, gathering her cloak about her once more, she turned and walked into the trees.
Shadows and mist closed about her almost at once, so utterly that she was lost a dozen, yards into the stretch of pine. It happened so quickly that she was still moving forward when she realized that she could no longer see anything about her. She hesitated then, peering rather hopelessly into the darkness, waiting for her sight to adjust. The air had gone cold again, and the mist from the lake penetrated her clothing with a chill, wet touch. A few moments passed, long and anxious, and then she discovered that she could discern vaguely the slender shapes of the pines closest at hand, fading and reappearing phantomlike through the swirling mist. It was not likely to get any better than it was, she decided. Shrugging off her discomfort and uncertainty, she walked cautiously ahead, groping with her outstretched hands, sensing rather than seeing the passage of the trail through the trees as it wound steadily downward toward the lake.
The minutes slipped by, and she could hear the gentle lapping of water on a shoreline in the silence of the mist and the forest. She slowed and peered guardedly into the mist, searching for the thing she knew waited for her. But there was nothing to be seen except the gray haze. Carefully, she went forward.
Then suddenly the trees and the mist thinned and parted before her, and she found herself standing on a narrow, rockstrewn shoreline looking out across the gray, clouded waters of the lake. Emptiness stretched away into the haze, and clouds of mist walled her about, closing her in…
A chill slipped through her, hollowing out her body and leaving it a frozen shell. She glanced quickly about, frightened. What was there? Then anger welled up within, sharp, bitter, and hard as iron as it rose in retaliation. A fire burned away the cold, flaring through her with ferocious purpose, thrusting back the fear that threatened to overwhelm her. Standing on the shoreline of that little lake, alone within the concealing mist, she felt a strange power surge through her, strong enough, it seemed in that instant, to destroy anything that came against her.
There was a sudden stirring from within the mist. Instantly, the strange sense of power was gone, fled like a thief, back into her soul. She did not understand what had happened to her in those few brief moments, and now there was no time to think on it; there was movement within the mist. A shadow drew together and took shape, dark drawn from the grayness. Risen and formed above the lake’s waters, it began to advance.
The Valegirl watched it come, a shrouded, spectral thing that glided in silence on the currents of the air, slipping from the mist toward the shoreline and the girl who waited. It was cloaked and hooded, as insubstantial as the mist out of which it had been born, human–shaped but featureless.
The shade slowed and stopped a dozen feet before her, suspended above the waters of the lake. Robed arms folded loosely before it, and mist swirled outward from its gray form. Slowly its cowled head lifted to the girl on the shore, and twin pinpoints of red fire glimmered from within.
«Look upon me, Valegirl,” the shade whispered in a voice that sounded like steam set loose. «Look upon the Grimpond!»
Higher the cowled head lifted and the shadows that masked the being’s face fell away. Brin, stared in stunned disbelief.
The face that the Grimpond showed to her was her own.
Jair stirred awake in the dank and empty darkness of the Dun Fee Aran cell in which he lay imprisoned. A thin shaft of gray light slipped like a knife through the tiny airhole of the stonewalled cubicle. It was day again, he thought to himself, trying desperately to trace the time that had passed since he had first been brought there. It seemed like weeks, but he realized this was only the second day since his imprisonment. He had neither seen nor spoken with another living thing save the Mwellret and the silent Gnome jailer.
Gingerly, he straightened and then sat upright within the stale gathering of straw. Chains bound his wrists and ankles, fixed in iron rings to the stone walls. He had been hobbled by these shackles since the second day of his imprisonment. The jailer had placed them on him at Stythys’ command. As he shifted his weight, they clanked and rattled sharply in the deep silence, echoing down the corridors that lay without the cell’s ironbound door. Weary despite the long sleep, he listened as the echoes died away, straining for some other sound to come back to him. None did. There was no one out there to hear him, no one to come to his aid.
Tears welled up in his eyes then, flowing down his cheeks, and wetting the soiled front of his tunic. What was he thinking? That someone would come to him to help him escape from this black hold? He shook his head against the pain of his own certainty that there was no help left for him. All of the company from Culhaven were gone — lost, dead, or scattered. Even Slanter. He wiped the tears away roughly, fighting back against his despair. It did not matter that no one would come, he swore silently. He would never give the Mwellret what it wanted. And he would somehow find a way to escape.
Once again, as he had done each time he had come awake after sleeping, he worked at the pins and fastenings of the chains that bound him, trying to weaken them enough to break free. For long moments, he twisted and turned the iron, peering hopefully at their joinings through the dark. But in the end he gave it up as he always gave it up, for it was useless to pit flesh and blood against smith–forged iron. Only the jailer’s key could set him free again.
Free. He spoke the word within the silence of his mind. He must find a way to get free. He must.
He thought then of Brin; thinking of her, he found himself wondering at what he had seen when last he had looked within the mirror of the vision crystal. How strange and sad that brief glimpse had been — his sister sitting alone before a campfire, her face twisted in strain and despair as she stared out across the forestland. What had happened to Brin to cause her such unhappiness?
Self–consciously, his hand strayed to the small bulk of the crystal where it lay hidden beneath his tunic. Stythys had not found it yet, nor the bag of Silver Dust, and Jair had been careful to keep both hidden within his clothing whenever the Mwellret was about. The creature came to him all too frequently, slipping soundlessly from the dark when the Valeman least expected it, stealing from the shadows like some loathsome wraith to wheedle and cajole, to promise, and to threaten. Give to me what I ask and you will be set free… Tell me what I want to know!
Jair’s face hardened and set. Help that monster? Not in this world, he wouldn’t!
