Swiftly, he lifted the silver chain and its stone from within his tunic and held it lovingly within the cupped palms of his hands. It was the sole tie he had with the world beyond this cell, his only means of discovering what Brin was about. He stared at the crystal, and his mind was decided. He would use it one time more. He would have to be careful, he knew. But just a moment was all that was required. He would call up the image and then banish it quickly. The monster would never be the wiser.
He had to know what had become of Brin.
With the crystal cupped in his hands, he began to sing. Soft and low, his voice called forth the dormant power of the stone, reaching into its murky depths. The light slowly rose from within and spread outward — a flood of whiteness that brightened the terrible gloom and brought an unexpected smile to his face.
Brin! he cried softly.
The image came to life — his sister’s face suspended within the light before him. He sang, steady and slow, and the image sharpened. She stood before a lake now. The sadness on her face had turned to shock. Stiff and unmoving, she stared out across the gray and misted waters at a cloaked and hooded apparition that hung upon the air. Slowly the image turned as he sang, swinging about to where he could see the face of the apparition.
The wishsong wavered and broke as the face drew near.
The face was Brin’s!
Then a furtive rustling sound from across the darkened cell turned Jair’s stomach to ice. Instantly, he went still and the strange vision faded. Jair’s hands closed about the vision crystal, desperately drawing it down within his tattered clothing, knowing even then that it was already too late.
«Ssee, little friend, you have found a way to help me,” a cold, familiar reptilian voice hissed.
And the cloaked form of the Mwellret Stythys advanced through the open cell door.
On the shore’s edge at the lake of the Grimpond, there was a long, endless moment of silence, broken only by the soft lapping of the gray waters as they washed against the rocks. The shade and the Valegirl faced each other in the gloom of mist and shadow like voiceless ghosts called forth from another world and time.
«Look upon me!» the shade commanded.
Brin kept her gaze steady. The face the Grimpond wore was her own, drawn, haggard, and ravaged with grief, and where her own dark eyes would have been, twin slits of crimson light burned like coals. Her smile taunted her from the shade’s lips, teasing with insidious purpose, the laughter low and evil.
«Do you know me?» came the whisper. «Speak my name.»
Brin swallowed against the tightness in her throat. «You are the Grimpond.»
The laughter swelled. «I am you, Brin of the Vale people, Brin of the houses of Ohmsford and Shannara. I am you! I am the telling of your life, and in my words you shall find your destiny. Seek, then, what you will.»
The hissing of the Grimpond’s voice died into a sudden roiling of the waters over which it hung suspended. A fine, thin spray exploded geyserlike into the misted air and showered down upon the Valegirl. It was as cold as death’s forbidden touch.
The Grimpond’s crimson eyes narrowed. «Would you know, child of the light, of the darkness that is the Ildatch?»
Wordlessly, Brin nodded. The Grimpond laughed mirthlessly and glided closer. «All that is and all that was of the dark magic traces to the book, bound by threads that close you and yours tight about. Wars of Races, wars of man — faerie demons, all one hand. Like rhymes of the voice, all are one. The humankind come to the dark magic, seeking power that they cannot hope to make theirs — seeking then death. They creep to the hiding place of the book, drawn by the lure, by the need. One time to the face of death, one time to the pit of night. Each time they find what they seek and are lost to it, changed from moral self to spirit. Bearers and Wraiths, all are one. And the evil is one with them.»
The voice faded. Brin’s mind raced, thinking through the meaning of what she had been told. One time to the face of death… Skull Mountain. Past and present were one, Skull Bearer and Mord Wraith — that was the Grimpond’s meaning. They were born of the same evil. And somehow, in some way, all of it was bound together in a single source.
«The dark magic made them all,” she said quickly. «Warlock Lord and Skull Bearers in the time of my great– grandfather; Mord Wraiths now. That is your meaning, isn’t it?»
«Is it?» the voice hissed softly, teasingly. «One of one? Where lies the Warlock Lord now, Valegirl? Who now gives voice to the magic and sends the Mord Wraiths forth?»
Brin stared at the apparition wordlessly. Was it saying that the Warlock Lord had come back again? But no, that was impossible…
«That voice is dark when it speaks to humankind,” the Grimpond intoned in a singsong hiss. «That voice is born of the magic, born of the lore. It is found in different ways — by some in printed word, by some… in song!»
Brin went cold. «I am not of their kind!» she snapped. «I do not use the dark magic!»
The Grimpond laughed. «Nor does any, Valegirl. The magic uses them. There is the key of all that you seek. There is all you need know.»
Brin struggled to understand. «Speak more,” she urged.
«More? More of what?» The shade’s misted form shimmered darkly. «Would you have me tell you of the eyes — eyes that follow you, eyes that seek you out at every turn?» The Valegirl stiffened. «Love sees you in those eyes when they are the eyes that command the crystal. But dark intent sees you likewise when the eyes are sightless and born of your own birthright. Do you see? Are your own eyes open? Not so the eyes of the Druid when he lived, dark shadow of his time. They were closed to the greatest part of the truth, closed to what was apparent, had he thought it through. He did not see the truth, poor Allanon. He saw only the Warlock Lord come again; he saw only what was as what is — not as what could be. Deceived, poor Allanon. Even in death, he walked where the dark magic willed that he should — and when he came to his end, he was seen a fool.»
Brin’s mind spun. «The walkers — they knew he was coming, didn’t they? They knew he could come into the Wolfsktaag. That was why the Jachyra was there.»
Laughter swelled and echoed in the silence of the mist. «Truth wins out! But once only, perhaps. Trust not what the Grimpond says. Shall I speak more? Shall I tell you of your journey to the Maelmord with the clown Prince of Leah and his lost magic? Oh, so desperate he is to have that magic, so much in need of what will destroy him. You suspect it will destroy him, don’t you, Valegirl? Let him have it, then, so that he might have his wish and become one with all who shared that wish before and passed into death. His is the strong arm that leads you to a similar fate. Ah, shall I tell you of how you, too, shall come to die?»
Brin’s dusky face tightened. «Tell me what you will, shade. But I will listen only to the truth.»
«So? Am I to judge what is true and what is not, where we speak of what is yet to be?» The Grimpond’s voice was low and taunting. «The book of your life lies open before me, though there are pages yet to write. What shall be written shall be written by you, not by words that I may speak. You are the last of three, each to live in the shadow of the others, each to seek to be free of that shadow, each to grow apart therefrom and then to reach back to the ones who went before. Yet your reach is darkest on the land.»
Brin hesitated uncertainly. Shea Ohmsford must be the first, her father the second, she the third. Each had sought to be free of the legacy of the Elven house of Shannara from which all were descended. But what did that last part mean?
«Ah, your death awaits you in the land of the walkers,” the Grimpond hissed softly. «Within the pit of dark, within the breast of the magic you seek to destroy, there shall you find your death. It is foreordained, Valegirl, for you carry its seeds within your own body.»
The Valegirl’s hand came up impatiently. «Then tell me how to reach it, Grimpond. Give me a way into the Maelmord that will shield me from the eyes of the walkers. Let me go to my death quickly, if you see it so.»
The Grimpond laughed darkly. «Clever girl, you would seek to have me tell you forthright what you have truly come here to discover. I know what brings you hence, child of the Elfkind. You can hide nothing from me, for I have lived since all that was and will live for all that is to be. It is my choice to do so, to stay within this old world and not to be at peace in another. I have made playthings of those of flesh and blood who are my sole companions now, and none have ever broken past the guard I place upon myself. Would you know the truth of what you ask, Valegirl? Beg it from me, then.»
Anger welled up within her at the Grimpond’s boastful words, and she stepped to the very edge of the gray lake waters. Spray hissed warningly from out of the mist, but she ignored it.
