The Druid of Shannara
by
Terry Brooks

Book 5. THE DRUID OF SHANNARA.

By Terry Brooks.

CHAPTER 1 THE KING OF THE SILVER RIVER stood at the edge of the Gardens
that had been his domain since the dawn of the age of faerie and looked
out over the world of mortal men.  What he saw left him sad and
discouraged.

Everywhere the land sickened and died, rich black earth turning to
dust, grassy plains withering, forests becoming huge stands of
deadwood, and lakes and rivers either stagnating or drying away.

Everywhere the creatures who lived upon the land sickened and died as
well, unable to sustain themselves as the nourishment they relied upon
grew poisoned.  Even the air had begun to turn foul.

And all the wbile, the King of the Silver River thought, the Sbadowen
grow stronger.

His fingers reached out to brush the crimson petals of the cyclamen
that grew thick about his feet.  Forsythia clustered just beyond,
dogwood and cherry farther back, fuchsia and hibiscus, rhododendrons
and dahlias, beds of iris, azaleas, daffodils, roses, and a hundred
other varieties of flowers and flowering plants that were always in
bloom, a profusion of colors that stretched away into the distance
until lost from sight.  There were animals to be seen as well, both
large and small, creatures whose evolution could be traced back to that
distant time when all things lived in harmony and peace.

In the present world, the world of the Four Lands and the races that
had evolved out of the chaos and destruction of the Great Wars, that
time was all but forgotten.  The King of the Silver River was its sole
remnant.  He had been alive when the world was new and its first
creatures were just being born.

He had been young then, and there had been many like him.

Now he was old and he was the last of his kind.  Everything that had
been, save for the Gardens in which he lived, had passed away.  The
Gardens alone survived, changeless, sustained by the magic of faerie.

The Word had given the Gardens to the King of the Silver River and told
him to tend them, to keep them as a reminder of what had once been and
what might one day be again.  The world without would evolve as it
must, but the Gardens would remain forever the same.

Even so, they were shrinking.  It was not so much physical as
spiritual.  The boundaries of the Gardens were fixed and unalterable,
for the Gardens existed in a plane of being unaffected by changes in
the world of mortal men.  The Gardens were a presence rather than a
place.  Yet that presence was diminished by the sickening of the world
to which it was tied, for the work of the Gardens and their tender was
to keep that world strong.

As the Four Lands grew poisoned, the work became harder, the effects of
that work grew shorter, and the boundaries of human belief and trust in
its existence-always somewhat marginalbegan to fail altogether.

The King of the Silver River grieved that this should be.  He did not
grieve for himself; he was beyond that.  He grieved for the people of
the Four Lands, the mortal men and women for whom the magic of faerie
was in danger of being lost forever.

The Gardens had been their haven in the land of the Silver River for
centuries, and he had been the spirit friend 'who protected its
people.

He had watched over them, had given them a sense of peace and
well-being that transcended physical boundaries, and gave promise that
benevolence and goodwill were still accessible in some corners of the
world to all.  Now that was ended.  Now he could protect no one.  The
evil of the Shadowen, the poison they had inflicted upon the Four
Lands, had eroded his own strength until he was virtually sealed within
his Gardens, powerless to go to the aid of those he had worked so long
to protect.

He stared out into the ruin of the world for a time as his despair
worked its relentless will on him.  Memories played hideand-seek in his
mind.  The Druids had protected the Four Lands once.  But the Druids
were gone.  A handful of descendents of the Eiven house of Shannara had
been champions of the races for generations, wielding the remnants of
the magic of faerie.

But they were all dead.

He forced his despair away, replacing it with hope.  The Druids could
come again.  And there were new generations of the old house of
Shannara.  The King of the Silver River knew most of what was happening
in the Four Lands even if he could not go out into them.  Allanon's
shade had summoned a scattering of Shannara children to recover the
lost magic, and perhaps they yet would if they could survive long
enough to find a means to do so.  But all of them had been placed in
extreme peril.  All were in danger of dying, threatened in the east,
South, and west by the Shadowen and in the north by Uhl Belk, the Stone
King.

The old eyes closed momentarily.  He knew what was needed to save the
Shannara children-an act of magic, one so powerful and intricate that
nothing could prevent it from succeeding, one that would transcend the
barriers that their enemies had created, that would break past the
screen of deceit and lies that hid everything from the four on whom so
much depended.

Yes, four, not three.  Even Allanon did not understand the whole of
what was meant to be.

He turned and made his way back toward the center of his refuge.

He let the songs of the birds, the fragrances of the flowers, and the
warmth of the air soothe him as he walked and he drew in through his
senses the color and taste and feel of all that lay about him.

There was virtually nothing that he could not do within his Gardens.

Yet his magic was needed without.

He knew what was required.  In preparation he took the form of the old
man that showed himself occasionally to the world beyond.  His gait
became an unsteady shamble, his breathing wheezed, his eyes dimmed, and
his body ached with the feelings of life fading.  The birdsong stopped,
and the small animals that had crowded close edged quickly away.  He
forced himself to separate from everything he had evolved into,
receding into what he might have been, needing momentarily to feet
human mortality in order to know better how to give that part of
himself that was needed.

When he reached the heart of his domain, he stopped.  There was a pond
of clearest water fed by a small stream.  A unicorn drank from it.

The earth that cradled the pond was dark and rich.  Tiny, delicate
flowers that had no name grew at the water's edge; they were the color
of new snow.  A small, intricately formed tree lifted out of a
scattering of violet grasses at the pond's far end, its delicate green
leaves laced with red.  From a pair of massive rocks, streaks of
colored ore shimmered brightly in the sunshine.

The King of the Silver River stood without moving in the presence of
the life that surrounded him and willed himself to become one with
it.

When he had done so, when everything had threaded itself through the
human form he had taken as if joined by bits and pieces of invisible
lacing, he reached out to gather it all in.  His hands, wrinkled human
skin and brittle bones, lifted and summoned his magic, and the feelings
of age and time that were the reminders of mortal existence
disappeared.

The little tree came to him first, uprooted, transported, and set down
before him, the framework of bones on which he would build.

Slowly it bent to take the shape he desired, leaves folding close
against the branches, wrapping and sealing away.

The earth came next, handfuls lifted by invisible scoops to place
against the tree, padding and defining.  Then came the ores for muscle,
the waters for fluids, and the petals of the tiny flowers for skin.  He
gathered silk from the unicorn's mane for hair and black pearls for
eyes.  The magic twisted and wove, and slowly his creation took form.

When he was finished, the girl who stood before him was perfect in
every way but one.  She was not yet alive.

He cast about momentarily, then selected the dove.  He took it out of
the air and placed it still living inside the girl's breast where it
became her heart.  Quickly he moved forward to embrace her and breathed
his own life into her.  Then he stepped back to wait.

The girl's breast rose and fell, and her limbs twitched.  Her eyes
fluttered open, coal black as they peered out from her delicate white
features.  She was small boned and finely wrought like a piece of paper
art smoothed and shaped so that the edges and corners were replaced by
curves.  Her hair was so white it seemed silver; there was a glitter to
it that suggested the presence of that precious metal.

"Who am I?"  she asked in a soft, lilting voice that whispered of tiny
streams and small night sounds.

"You are my daughter," the King of the Silver River answered,
discovering within himself the stirring of feelings he had thought long
since lost.

He did not bother telling her that she was an elemental, an earth child
created of his magic.  She could sense what she was from the instincts
with which he had endowed her.  No other explanation was needed.

She took a tentative step forward, then another.  Finding that she
could walk, she began to move more quickly, testing her abilities in
various ways as she circled her father, glancing cautiously, shyly at
the old man as she went.  She looked around curiously, taking in the
sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of the Gardens, discovering in them
a kinship that she could not immediately explain.

"Are these Gardens my mother?"  she asked suddenly, and he told her
they were.  "Am I a part of you both?"  she asked, and he told her
yes.

"Come with me," he said gently.

Together, they walked through the Gardens, exploring in the manner of a
parent and child, looking into flowers, watching for the quick movement
of birds and animals, studying the vast, intricate designs of the
tangled undergrowth, the comp ex ayers of rock and earth, and the
patterns woven by the threads of the Gardens' existence.  She was
bright and quick, interested in everything, respectful of life,
caring.

He was pleased with what he saw; he found that he had made her well.

After a time, he began to show her something of the magic.

He demonstrated his own first, only the smallest bits and pieces of it
so as not to overwhelm her.  Then he let her test her own against it.

She was surprised to learn that she possessed it, even more surprised
to discover what it could do.  But she was not hesitant about using
it.

She was eager.

"You have a name," he told her.  "Would you like to know what it is?"

"Yes," she answered, and stood looking at him alertly.

"Your name is Quickening."  He paused.  "Do you understand why?"

She thought a moment.  "Yes," she answered again.

He led her to an ancient hickory whose bark peeled back in great,
shaggy strips from its trunk.  The breezes cooled there, smelling of
jasmine and begonia, and the grass was soft as they sat together.  A
griffin wandered over through the tall grasses and nuzzled the girl's
hand.

"Quickening," the King of the Silver River said.  "There is something
you must do."

Slowly, carefully he explained to her that she must leave the Gardens
and go out into the world of men.  He told her where it was that she
must go and what it was that she must do.  He talked of the Dark Uncle,
the Highlander, and the nameless other, of the Shadowen, of Uhl Belk
and Eldwist, and of the Black Effstone.  As he spoke to her, revealing
the truth behind who and what she was, he experienced an aching within
his breast that was decidedly human, part of himself that had been
submerged for many centuries.  The ache brought a sadness that
threatened to cause his voice to break and his eyes to tear.  He
stopped once in surprise to fight back against it.  It required some
effort to resume speaking.  The girl watched him without
cornment-intense, introspective, expectant.  She did not argue with
what he told her and she did not question it.  She simply listened and
accepted.

When he was done, she stood up.  "I understand what is expected of
me.

I am ready."

But the King of the Silver River shook his head.  "No, child, you are
not.  You will discover that when you leave here.  Despite who you are
and what you can do, you are vulnerable nevertheless to things against
which I cannot protect you.  Be careful then to protect yourself.  Be
on guard against what you do not understand."

"I will," she replied.

He walked with her to the edge of the Gardens, to where the world of
men began, and together they stared out at the encroaching ruin.

They stood without speaking for a very long time before she said, "I
can tell that I am needed there."

He nodded bleakly, feeling the loss of her already though she had not
yet departed.  She is only an elemental, he thought and knew
immediately that he was wrong.  She was a great deal more.

As much as if he had given birth to her, she was a part of him.

"Goodbye, Father," she said suddenly and left his side.

She walked out of the Gardens and disappeared into the world beyond.

She did not kiss him or touch him in parting.

She simply left, because that was all she knew to do.

The King of the Silver River turned away.  His efforts had wearied him,
had drained him of his magic.  He needed time to rest.  Quickly he shed
his human image, stripping away the false covering of skin and bones,
washing himself clean of its memories and sensations, and reverting to
the faerie creature he was.

Even so, what he felt for Quickening, his daughter, the child of his
making, stayed with him.

ALKER BOH CAME awake with a shudder.

Dark Uncle.

The whisper of a voice in his mind jerked him back from the edge of the
black pool into which he was sliding, pulled him from the inky dark
into the gray fringes of the light, and he started so violently that
the muscles of his legs cramped.  His head snapped up from the pillow
of his arm, his eyes slipped open, and he stared blankly ahead.

There was pain all through his body, endless waves of it.  The pain
wracked him as if he had been touched by a hot iron, and he curled
tightly into himself in a futile effort to ease it.  Only his right arm
re mained outstretched, a heavy and cumbersome thing that no longer
belonged to him, fastened forever to the floor of the cavern on which
he lay, turned to stone to the elbow.

The source of the pain was there.

He closed his eyes against it, willing it to disperse, to ths appear.

But he lacked the strength to command it, his magic almost gone,
dissipated by his struggle to resist the advancing poison of the
Asphim.  It was seven days now since he had come into the Hall of Kings
in search of the Black Elfstone, seven days since he had found instead
the deadly creature that had been placed there to snare him.

Oh, yes, he thought feverishly.  Definitely to snare him.

But by whom?  By the Shadowen or by someone else?  Who now had
possession of the Black Elfstone?

He recalled in despair the events that had brought him to I 0 this
end.

There had been the summons from the shade of Allanon, dead three
hundred years, to the heirs of the Shannara magic: his nephew Par
Ohmsford, his cousin Wren Ohmsford, and himself.  They had received the
summons and a visit from the once-Druid Cogline urging them to heed
it.

They had done so, assembling at the Hadeshorn, ancient resting place of
the Druids, where Allanon had appeared to them and charged them with
separate undertakings that were meant to combat the dark work of the
Shadowen who were using magic of their own to steal away the life of
the Four Lands.  Walker had been charged with recovering Paranor, the
disappeared home of the Druids, and with bringing back the Druids
themselves.  He had resisted this charge until Cogline had come to him
again, this time bearing a volume of the Druid Histories which told of
a Black Elfstone which had the power to retrieve Paranor.  That in turn
had led him to the Grimpond, seer of the earth's and mortal men I s
secrets.

He searched the gloom of the cavern about him, the doors to the tombs
of the Kings of the Four Lands dead all these centuries, the wealth
piled before the crypts in which they lay, and the stone sentinels that
kept watch over their remains.  Stone eyes stared out of blank faces,
unseeing, unheeding.  He was alone with their ghosts.

He was dying.

Tears filled his eyes, blinding him as he fought to hold them back.  He
was such a fool!

Dark Uncle.  The words echoed soundlessly, a memory that taunted and
teased.  The voice was the Grimpond's, that wretched, insidious spirit
responsible for what had befallen him.  It was the Grimpond's riddles
that had led him to the Hall of Kings in search of the Black
Elfstone.

The Grimpond must have known what awaited him, that there would be no
Elfstone but the Asphim instead, a deadly trap that would destroy
him.

And why had he thought it would be otherwise?  Walker asked himself
bleakly.  Didn't the Grimpond hate him above all others?

Hadn't it boasted to Walker that it was sending him to his doom by
giving him what he asked for?  Walker had simply gone out of his way to
accommodate the spirit, anxiously rushing off to greet the death that
he had been promised, blithely believing that he could protect himself
against whatever evil he might encounter.  Remember?  he chided
himself.  Remember how confident you were?

He convulsed as the poison burned into him.  Well and good.

But where was his confidence now?

He forced himself to his knees and bent down over the opening in the
cavern floor where his hand was pinned to the stone.

He could just make out the remains of the Asphim, the snake's stone
body coiled about his own stone arm, the two of them forever joined,
fastened to the rock of the mountain.  He tightened his mouth and
pulled up the sleeve of his cloak.  His arm was hard and unyielding,
gray to the elbow, and streaks of gray worked their way upward toward
his shoulder.  The process was slow, but steady.  His entire body was
turning to stone.

Not that it mattered if it did, he thought, because he would starve to
death long before that happened.  Or die of thirst.  Or of the
poison.

He let the sleeve fall back into place, covering the horror of what he
had become.  Seven days gone.  What little food he'd brought with him
had been consumed almost immediately, and he'd drunk the last of his
water two days ago.  His strength was failing rapidly now.  He was
feverish most of the time, his lucid periods growing shorter.  He had
struggled against what was happening at first, trying to use his magic
to banish the poison from his body, to restore his hand and arm to
flesh and blood.  But his magic had failed him completely.  He had
worked at freeing his arm from the stone flooring, thinking that it
might be pried loose in some way.  But he was held fast, a condemned
man with no hope of release.  Eventually his exhaustion had forced him
to steep, and as the days passed he had slept more often, slipping
further and further away from wanting to come awake.

Now, as he knelt in a huddle of darkness and pain, salvaged momentarily
from the wreckage of his dying by the voice of the Grimpond, he
realized with terrifying certainty that if he went to sleep again it
would be for good.  He breathed in and out rapidly, choking back his
fear.  He must not let that happen.  He must not give up.

He forced himself to think.  As long as he could think, he reasoned, he
would not fall asleep.  He retraced in his mind his onversation with
the Grimpond, hearing again the spirit's words, trying anew to decipher
their meaning.  The Grimpond had not named the Hall of Kings in
describing where the Black Elfstone could be found.  Had Walker simply
jumped to the wrong conclusion?  Had he been deliberately misled?  Was
there any truth in what he had been told?

Walker's thoughts scattered in confusion, and his mind refused to
respond to the demands he placed on it.  He closed his eyes in despair,
and it was with great difficulty that he forced them open again.  His
clothes were chill and damp with his own sweat, and his body shivered
within them.  His breathing was ragged, his vision blurred, and it was
growing increasingly difficult to swallow.  So many distractions-how
could he think?

He wanted simply to lie down and ...

He panicked, feeling the urgency of his need threaten to swallow him
up.  He shifted his body, forcing his knees to scrape against the stone
until they bled.  A little more pain might help keep me awake, he
thought.  Yet he could barely feel it.

He forced his thoughts back to the Grimpond.  He envisioned the wraith
laughing at his plight, taking pleasure at it.

He heard the taunting voice calling out to him.  Anger gave him a
measure of strength.  There was something that he needed to recall, he
thought desperately.  There was something that the Grimpond had told
him that he must remember.

Please, don't let mefall asleep!

The Hall of Kings did not respond to the urgency of his plea; the
statues remained silent, disinterested, and oblivious.

The mountain waited.

I have to breakfree!  he howled wordlessly.

And then he remembered the visions, or more specifically the first of
the three that the Grimpond had shown him, the one in which he had
stood on a cloud above the others of the little company that had
gathered at the Hadeshorn in answer to the summons of the shade of
Allanon, the one in which he had said that he would sooner cut off his
hand than bring back the Druids and then lifted his arm to show that he
had done exactly that.

He remembered the vision and recognized its truth.

He banished the reaction it provoked in horrified disbelief THE DRLIID
OF SHANNARA and let his head droop until it was resting on the cavern
stone.

He cried, feeling the tears run down his cheeks, the sides of his face,
stinging his eyes as they mingled with his sweat.  His body twisted
with the agony of his choices.

No!  No, he would not!

Yet he knew he must.

His crying turned to laughter, chilling in its madness as it rolled out
of him into the emptiness of the tomb.  He waited until it expended
itself, the echoes fading into silence, then looked up again.

His possibilities had exhausted themselves; his fate was sealed.

If he did not break free now, he knew he never would.

And there was only one way to do so.

He hardened himself to the fact of it, walling himself away from his
emotions, drawing from some final reserve the last of his strength.

He cast about the cavern floor until he found what he needed.  It was a
rock that was approximately the size and shape of an axe-blade, jagged
on one side, hard enough to have survived intact its fall from the
chamber ceiling where it had been loosened by the battle four centuries
earlier between Allanon and the serpent Valg.  The rock lay twenty feet
away, of any ordinary man.  But not him.  He of the magic that remained
to him, forcsteady during its use.  The rock inched moved, a slow
scratching in the cavern's light-headed from the strain, the fever
leaving him nauseated.  Yet he kept the At last it was within reach of
his free hand.  He let the magic slip away, taking long moments to
gather himself.  Then he stretched out his arm to the rock, and his
fingers closed tightly about it.  Slowly he gathered it in, finding it
impossibly heavy, so heavy in fact that he was not certain he could
manage to lift it let alone ...

He could not finish the thought.  He could not dwell on what he was
about to do.  He dragged the rock over until it was next to him, braced
himself firmly with his knees, took a deep breath, raised the rock
overhead, hesitated for just an instant, then in a rush of fear and
anguish brought it down.  It smashed into the clearly beyond reach
summoned a fragmenting himself to remain forward, scraping as it
silence.  Walker grew burning through him, rock moving closer.

stone of his arm between elbow and wrist, hammering it with such force
that it jarred his entire body.  The resulting pain was so agonizing
that it threatened to render him unconscious.  He screamed as waves of
it washed through him; he felt as if he were being torn apart from the
inside out.  He fell forward, gasping for breath, and the axe-blade
rock dropped from his nerve less fingers.

Then he realized that something had changed.

He pushed himself upright and looked down at his arm.  The blow had
shattered the stone limb at the point of impact.  His wrist and hand
remained fastened to the Asphim in the gloom of the hidden compartment
of the cavern floor.  But the rest of him was free.

He knelt in stunned disbelief for a long time, staring down at the ruin
of his arm, at the gray-streaked flesh above the elbow and the jagged
stone capping below.  His arm felt leaden and stiff.  The poison
already within it continued to work its damage.

There were jolts of pain all through him.

But he was free!  Shades, he was free!

Suddenly there was a stirring in the chamber beyond, a faint and
distant rustling like something had come awake.  Walker Boh went cold
in the pit of his stomach as he realized what had happened.  His scream
had given him away.  The chamber be yond was the Assembly, and it was
in the Assembly that the serpent Vaig, guardian of the dead, had once
lived.

And might live still.

Walker came to his feet, sudden dizziness washing through him.  He
ignored it, ignored the pain and weariness as well, and stumbled toward
the heavy, ironbound entry doors that had brought him in.  He shut away
the sounds of everything about him, everything within, concentrating
the whole of his effort on making his way across the cavern floor to
the passageway that lay beyond.  If the serpent was alive and found him
now, he knew he was finished.

Luck was with him.  The serpent did not emerge.  Nothing is appeared.

Walker reached the doors leading from the tomb and pushed his way
through into the darkness beyond.

What happened then was never clear afterward in his mind.

Somehow he managed to work his way back through the Hall of Kings, past
the Banshees whose howl could drive men mad, and past the Sphimes whose
gaze could turn men to stone.  He heard the Banshees wall, felt the
gaze of the Sphimes burning down, and experienced the terror of the
mountain's ancient magic as it sought to trap him, to make him another
of its victims.  Yet he escaped, some final shield of determination
preserving him as he made his way clear, an iron will combining with
weariness and pain and near madness to encase and preserve him.

Perhaps his magic came to aid him as well; he thought it possible.  The
magic, after all, was unpredictable, a constant mystery.

He pushed and trudged through near darkness and phantasmagoric images,
past walls of rock that threatened to close about him, down tunnels of
sight and sound in which he could neither see nor hear, and finally he
was free.

He emerged into the outside world at daybreak, the sun's light chill
and faint as it shone out of a sky thick with clouds and rain that
lingered from the previous night's storm.  With his arm tucked beneath
his cloak like a wounded child, he made his way down the mountain trail
toward the plains south.  He never looked back.  He could just manage
to took ahead.  He was on his feet only because he refused to give
in.

He could barely feet himself anymore, even the pain of his poisoning.

He walked as if jerked along by strings attached to his limbs.  His
black hair blew wildly in the wind, whipping about his pale face,
lashing it until his eyes blurred with tears.  He was a scarecrow
figure of madness as he wandered out of the mist and gray.

Dark Uncle, the Grimpond's voice whispered in his mind and laughed in
glee.

He lost track of time completely.  The sun's weak light failed to
disperse the stormclouds and the day remained washed of color and
friendless.  Trails came and went, an endless procession of rocks,
defiles, canyons, and drops.  Walker remained oblivious to all of it.

He knew only that he was descending, working his way downward out of
the rock, back toward the world he had so foolishly left behind.  He
knew that he was trying to save his life.

It was midday when he emerged at last from the high peaks into the
Valley of Shale, a tattered and aimless bit of human wreckage so badly
fevered and weakened that he stumbled half way across the crushed,
glistening black rock of the valley floor before realizing where he
was.  When he finally saw, his strength gave out.  He collapsed in the
tangle of his cloak, feeling the sharp edges of the rock cutting into
the skin of his hands and face, heedless of its sting as he lay
facedown in exhaustion.  After a time, he began to crawl toward the
placid waters of the take, inching his way painfully ahead, dragging
his stone-tipped arm beneath him.  It seemed logical to him in his
delirium that if he could reach the Hadeshorn's edge he might submerge
his ruined arm and the lethal waters would counteract the poison that
was killing him.  It was nonsensical, but for Walker Boh madness had
become the measure of his life.

He failed even in this small endeavor.  Too weak to go more than a few
yards, he lapsed into unconsciousness.  The last thing he remembered
was how dark it was in the middle of the day, the world a place of
shadows.

He slept, and in his sleep he dreamed that the shade of Allanon came to
him.  The shade rose out of the churning, boiling waters of the
Hadeshorn, dark and mystical as it materialized from the netherworld of
afterlife to which it had been consigned.  It reached out to Walker,
lifted him to his feet, flooded him with new strength, and gave clarity
once more to his thoughts and vision.  Spectral, translucent, it hung
above the dark, greenish waters-yet its touch felt curiously human.

-Dark Uncle When the shade spoke the words, they were not taunting and
hateful as they had been when spoken by the Grimpond.

They were simply a designation of who and what Walker was.

-Why will you not accept the charge I have given youWalker struggled
angrily to reply but could not seem to find the words.

-The need for you is great, Walker.  Not my need, but the need of the
Lands and their people, the races of the new world.

If you do not accept my charge, there is no hope for them Walker's rage
was boundless.  Bring back the Druids, who were no more, and
disappeared Paranor?  Surely, thought Walker in response.  Surely,
shade of Allanon.  I shall take my ruined body in search of what you
seek, my poisoned limb, though I be dying and cannot hope to help
anyone, still I ...

-Accept, Walker.  You do not accept.  Acknowledge the truth of yourself
and your own destiny Walker didn't understand.

-Kinship with those who have gone before you, those who understood the
meaning of acceptance.  That is what you lackWalker shuddered,
disrupting the vision of his dream.  His strength left him.  He
collapsed at the Hadeshorn's edge, blanketed in confusion and fear,
feeling so lost that it seemed to him impossible that he could ever
again be found.

Help me, Allanon, he begged in despair.

The shade hung motionless in the air before him, ethereal against a
backdrop of wintry skies and barren peaks, rising up like death's
specter come to retrieve a fresh victim.  It seemed suddenly to Walker
that dying was all that was left to him.

Do you wish me to die?  he asked in disbelief.  Is this what you demand
of me?

The shade said nothing.

Did you know that this would happen to me?  He held forth his arm,
jagged stone stump, poison-streaked flesh.

The shade remained silent.

Why won't you help me?  Walker howled.

-Why won't you help me The words echoed sharply in his mind, urgent and
filled with a sense of dark purpose.  But he did not speak them.

Allanon did.

Then abruptly the shade shimmered in the air before him and faded
away.

The waters of the Hadeshorn steamed and hissed, roiled in fury, and
went still once more.  All about the air was misted and dark, filled
with ghosts and wild imaginings, a place where life and death met at a
crossroads of unanswered questions and unresolved puzzles.

Walker Boh saw them for only a moment, aware that he was seeing them
not in sleep but in waking, realizing suddenly that his vision might
not have been a dream at all.

Then everything was gone, and he fell away into blackness.

WHEN HE CAME AWAKE AGAIN there was someone bending over him.

Walker saw the other through a haze of fever and pain, a I 8 thin,
sticklike figure in gray robes with a narrow face, a wispy beard and
hair, and a hawk nose, crouched close like something that meant to suck
away what life remained to him.

"Walker?"  the figure whispered gently.

It was Cogline.  Walker swallowed against the dryness in his throat and
struggled to raise himself.  The weight of his arm dragged against him,
pulling him back, forcing him down.  The old man's hands groped beneath
the concealing cloak and found the leaden stump.  Walker heard the
sharp intake of his breath.

"How did you ... find me?"  he managed.

"Allanon," Cogline answered.  His voice was rough and laced with
anger.

Walker sighed.  "How long have I ... ?"

"Three days.  I don't know why you're still alive.  You haven't any
right to be."

"None," Walker agreed and reached out impulsively to hug the other man
close.  The familiar feel and smell of the old man's body brought tears
to his eyes.  "I don't think ... I'm meant to die ... just yet."

Cogline hugged Walker back.  He said, "No, Walker.  Not yet."

Then the old man was lifting him to his feet, hauling him up with
strength Walker hadn't known he possessed, holding him upright as he
pointed them both toward the south end of the valley.  It was dawn
again, the sunrise unclouded and brilliant gold against the eastern
horizon, the air still and expectant with the promise of its coming.

"Hold on to me," Cogline urged, walking him along the crushed black
rock.  "There are horses waiting and help to he had.  Hold tight,
Walker."

Walker Boh held on for dear life.

OGLINE TOOK Walker Boh to Storlock.  Even on horseback with Walker
lashed in place, it took until nightfall to complete the journey.  They
came down out of the Dragon's Teeth into a day filled with sunshine and
warmth, turned east across the Rabb Plains, and made their way into the
Eastland forests of the Central Anar to the legendary village of the
Stors.  Wracked with pain and consumed with thoughts of dying, Walker
remained awake almost the entire time.  Yet he was never certain where
he was or what was happening about him, conscious only of the swaying
of his horse and Cogline's constant reassurance that all would be
well.

He did not believe that Cogline was telling him the truth.

Storlock was silent, cool and dry in the shadow of the trees, a haven
from the swelter and dust of the plains.  Hands reached up to take
Walker from the saddle, from the smell of sweat and the rocking motion,
and from the feeling that he must at any moment give in to the death
that was waiting to claim him.  He did not know why he was alive.

He could give himself no reason.  White-robed figures gathered all
around, supporting him, easing him down-Stors, the Gnome Heaters of the
Village.  Everyone knew of the Stors.  Theirs was the most advanced
source of healing in the Four Lands.  Wil Ohmsford had studied with
them once and become a healer, the only Southiander ever to do so.

Shea Ohmsford had been healed after an attack in the Wolfsktaag.

Earlier, Par had been brought to them as well, infected by the poison
of the Werebeasts in Olden Moor.  Walker had brought him.  Now it was
Walker's turn to be saved.  But Walker did not think that would
happen.

A cup was raised to his lips, and a strange liquid trickled down his
throat.  Almost immediately the pain eased, and he felt himself grow
drowsy.  Steep would be good for him, he decided suddenly,
surprisingly.  Sleep would be welcome.  He was carried into the Center
House, the main care lodge, and placed in a bed in one of the back
rooms where the forest could be seen through the weave of the curtains,
a wall of dark trunks set at watch.

He was stripped of his clothes, wrapped in blankets, given something
further to drink, a bitter, hot liquid, and left to fall asleep.

He did so almost at once.

As he slept, the fever dissipated, and the weariness faded away.

The pain lingered, but it was distant somehow and not a part of him.

He sank down into the warmth and comfort of his bedding, and even
dreams could not penetrate the shield of his rest.  There were no
visions to distress him, no dark thoughts to bring him awake.  Allanon
and Cogline were forgotten.  His anguish at the loss of his limb, his
struggle to escape the Asphim and the Hall of Kings, and his terrifying
sense of no longer being in command of his own destiny-all were
forgotten.  He was at peace.

He did not know how long he slept, for he was not conscious of time
passing, of the sweep of the sun across the sky, or of the change from
night to day and back again.  When he began to come awake once more,
floating out of the darkness of his rest through a world of half-sleep,
memories of his boyhood stirred unexpectedly, small snatches of his
life in the days when he was first learning to cope with the
frustration and wonder of discovering who and what he was.

The memories were sharp and clear.

He was still a child when he first learned he had magic.  He didn't
call it magic then; he didn't call it anything.  He believed such power
common; he thought that he was like everyone else.

He lived then with his father Kenner and mother Risse at Hearthstone in
Darklin Reach, and there were no other children to whom he might
compare himself.  That came later.  It was his mother who told him that
what he could do was unusual, that it made him different from other
children.  He could still see her face as she tried to explain, her
small features intense, her white skin striking against coal black hair
that was always braided and laced with flowers.  He could still hear
her low and compelling voice, Risse.  He had loved his mother deeply.

She had not had magic of her own; she was a Boh and the magic came from
his father's side, from the Ohmsfords.  She told him that, sitting him
down before her on a brilliant autumn day when the smell of dying
leaves and burning wood filled the air, smiling and reassuring as she
spoke, trying unsuccessfully to hide from him the uneasiness she
felt.

That was one of the things the magic let him do.  It let him see
sometimes what others were feeling-not with everyone, but almost always
with his mother.

"Walker, the magic makes you special," she said.  "it is a gift that
you must care for and cherish.  I know that someday you are going to do
something wonderful with it."

She died a year later after failing ill to a fever for which even her
formidable healing skills could not find a cure, He lived alone with
his father then, and the "gift" with which she had believed him blessed
developed rapidly.  The magic was an enabler; it gave him insight.  He
discovered that frequently he could sense things in people without
being told-changes in their mood and character, emotions they thought
to keep secret, their opinions and ideas, their needs and hopes, even
the reasons behind what they did.  There were always visitors at
Hearthstone-travelers passing through, peddlers, tradesmen, Woodsmen,
hunters, trappers, even Trackers-and Walker would know all about them
without their having to say a word.  He would tell them so.

He would reveal what he knew.  It was a game that he loved to play.  It
frightened some of them, and his father ordered him to stop.

Walker did as he was asked.  By then he had discovered a new and more
interesting ability.  He discovered that he could communicate with the
animals of the forest, with birds and fish, even with plants.  He could
sense what they were thinking and feeling just as he could with humans,
even though their thoughts and feelings were more rudimentary and
limited.  He would disappear for hours on excursions of learning, on
make-believe adventures, on journeys of testing and seeking out.  He
designated himself early as an explorer of life.

As time passed, it became apparent that Walker's special insight was to
help him with his schooling as well.  He began reading from his
father's library almost as soon as he learned how the letters of the
alphabet formed words on the fraying pages of his father's books.  He
mastered mathematics effortlessly.  He understood sciences
intuitively.

Barely anything had to be explained.  Somehow he just seemed to
understand how it all worked.  History became his special passion; his
memory of things, of places and events and people, was prodigious.  He
began to keep notes of his own, to write down everything he learned, to
compile teachings that he would someday impart to others.

The older he grew, the more his father's attitude toward him seemed to
change.  He dismissed his suspicions at first, certain that he was
mistaken.  But the feeling persisted.  Finally he asked his father
about it, and Kenner-a tall, lean, quick-moving man with wide,
intelligent eyes, a slammer he had worked hard to overcome, and a gift
for crafting-admitted it was true.  Kenner did not have magic of his
own.  He had evidenced traces of it when he was young, but it had
disappeared shortly after he had passed out of boyhood.  It had been
like that with his father and his father's father before that and every
Ohmsford he knew about all the way back to Brin.  But it did not appear
to be that way with Walker.  Walker's magic just seemed to grow
stronger.

Kenner told him that he was afraid that his son's abilities would
eventually overwhelm him, that they would develop to a point where he
could no longer anticipate or control their effects.  But he said as
well, just as Risse had said, that they should not be suppressed, that
magic was a gift that always had some special purpose in being.

Shortly after, he told Walker of the history behind the Ohmsford magic,
of the Druid Allanon and the Valegirl Brin, and of the mysterious trust
that the former in dying had bequeathed to the latter.

Walker had been twelve when he heard the tale.  He had wanted to know
what the trust was supposed to be.  His father hadn't been able to tell
him.  He had only been able to relate the history of its passage
through the Ohmsford bloodline.

"it manifests itself in you, Walker," he said.  "You in turn will pass
it on to your children, and they to theirs, until one day there is need
for it.  That is the legacy you have inherited."

"But what good is a legacy that serves no purpose?"  Walker had
demanded.

And Kenner had repeated, "There is always purpose in magic-even when we
don't understand what it is."

Barely a year later, as Walker was entering his youth and leaving his
childhood behind, the magic revealed that it possessed another, darker
side.  Walker found out that it could be destructive.

Sometimes, most often when he was angry, his emotions transformed
themselves into energy.  When that happened, he could move things away
and break them apart without touching them.  Sometimes he could summon
a form of fire.  It wasn't ordinary fire; it didn't burn like ordinary
fire and it was different in color, a sort of cobalt.  It wouldn't do
much of what he tried to make it do; it did pretty much what it
wished.

It took him weeks to learn to control it.  He tried to keep his
discovery a secret from his father, but his father learned of it
anyway, just as he eventually learned of everything about his son.

Though he said little, Walker felt the distance between them widen.

Walker was nearing manhood when his father made the decision to take
him out of Hearthstone.  Kenner Ohmsford's health had been failing
steadily for several years, his once strong body afflicted by a wasting
sickness.  Closing down the cottage that had been Walker's home since
birth, he took the boy to Shady Vale to live with another family of
Ohmsfords, Jaralan and Mirianna and their sons Par and Coll.

The move became for Walker Bob the worst thing that had ever happened
to him.  Shady Vale, though little more than a hamlet community,
nevertheless seemed constricting after Hearthstone.  Freedom there had
been boundless; here, there were boundaries that he could not escape.

Walker was not used to being around so many people and he could not
seem to make himself fit in.  He was required to attend school, but
there was nothing for him to learn.  His master and the other children
disliked and mistrusted him; he was an outsider, he behaved differently
than they, he knew entirely too much, and they quickly decided that
they wanted nothing to do with him.  His magic became a snare he could
not escape.  It manifested itself in everything he did, and by the time
he realized he should have hidden it away it was too late to do so.  He
was beaten a number of times because he wouldn't defend himself.  He
was terrified of what would happen if he let the fire escape.

He was in the village less than a year when his father died.

Walker had wished that he could die, too.

He continued to live with Jaralan and Mirianna Ohmsford, who were good
to him and who sympathized with the difficul ties he was encountering
because their own son Par was just beginning to exhibit signs of having
magic of his own.  Par was a descendent of Jair Ohmsford, Brin's
brother.  Both sides of the family had passed the magic of their
ancestors down through the bloodline in the years since Allanon's
death, so the appear ance of Par's magic was not entirely unexpected.

Par's was a less unpredictable and complicated form of magic,
manifesting itself principally in the boy's ability to create lifelike
images with his voice.  Par was still little then, just five or six,
and he barely understood what was happening to him.  Coll was not yet
strong enough to protect his brother, so Walker ended up taking the boy
under his wing.  It seemed natural enough to do so.  After all, only
Walker understood what Par was experiencing.

His relationship with Par changed everything.  It gave him something to
focus on, a purpose beyond worrying about his own survival.  He spent
time with Par helping him adjust to the presence of the magic in his
body.  He counseled him in its use, advised him in the cautions that
were necessary, the protective devices he must learn to employ.  He
tried to teach him how to deal with the fear and dislike of people who
would choose not to understand.  He became Par's mentor.

The people of Shady Vale began calling him "Dark Uncle."

It began with the children.  He wasn't Par's uncle, of course; he
wasn't anybody's uncle.  But he hadn't a firm blood tie in the eyes of
the villagers; no one really understood the relationship he bore to
Jaralan and Mirianna, so there were no constrictions on how they might
refer to him.  "Dark Uncle" became the ap pellation that stuck.  Walker
was tall by then, pale skinned and black haired like his mother,
apparently immune to the browning effect of the sun.  He looked
ghostly.  It seemed to the Vale children as if he were a night thing
that never saw the light of iw day, and his relationship toward the boy
Par appeared mysterious to them.  Thus he became "Dark Uncle," the
counseler of magic, the strange, awkward, withdrawn young man whose
insights and comprehensions set him apart from everyone.

Nevertheless, the name "Dark Uncle" notwithstanding, Walker's attitude
improved.  He began to learn how to deal with the suspicion and
mistrust.  He was no longer attacked.  He found that he could turn
aside these assaults with not much more than a glance or even the set
of his body.  He could use the magic to shield himself.  He found he
could project wariness and caution into others and prevent them from
following through on their violent intentions.  He even became rather
good at stopping fights among others.  Unfortunately, all this did was
distance him further.  The adults and older youths left him alone
altogether; only the younger children turned cautiously friendly.

Walker was never happy in Shady Vale.  The mistrust and the fear
remained, concealed just beneath the forced smiles, the perfunctory
nods, and the civilities of the villagers that allowed him to exist
among them but never gain acceptance.  Walker knew that the magic was
the cause of his problem.  His mother and father might have thought of
it as a gift, but he didn't.  And he never would again.  It was a curse
that he felt certain would haunt him to the grave.

By the time he reached manhood, Walker had resolved to return to
Hearthstone, to the home he remembered so fondly, away from the people
of the Vale, from their mistrust and suspicion, from the strangeness
they caused him to feel.  The boy Par had adjusted well enough that
Walker no longer felt concerned about him.  To begin with, Par was a
native of the Vale and accepted in a way that Walker never could be.

Moreover, his attitude toward using magic was far different than
Walker's.

Par was never hesitant; he wanted to know everything the magic could
do.  What others thought did not concern him.  He could get away with
that; Walker never could.  The two had begun to grow apart as they grew
older.  Walker knew it was inevitable.

It was time for him to go.  Jaralan and Mirianna urged him to stay, but
understood at the same time that he could not.

Seven years after his arrival, Walker Boh departed Shady Vale.  He had
taken his mother's name by then, disdaining fur ther use of Ohmsford
because it linked him so closely with the legacy of magic he now
despised.  He went back into Darklin Reach, back to Hearthstone,
feeling as if he were a caged wild animal that had been set free.  He
severed his ties with the life he had left behind him.  He resolved
that he would never again use the magic.  He promised himself that he
would keep apart from the world of men for the rest of his life.

For almost a year he did exactly as he said he would do.

And then Cogline appeared and everything changed ...

Half-sleep turned abruptly to waking, and Walker's memories faded
away.

He stirred in the warmth of his bed, and his eyes blinked open.

For a moment he could not decide where he was.  The room in which he
lay was bright with daylight despite the brooding presence of a cluster
of forest trees directly outside his curtained window.  The room was
small, clean, almost bare of furniture.  There were a sitting chair and
a small table next to his bed, the bed, and nothing else.  A vase of
flowers, a basin of water, and some cloths sat on the table.

The single door leading into the room stood closed.

Storlock.  That was where he was, where Cogline had brought him.

He remembered then what had happened to bring him here.

Cautiously, he brought his ruined arm out from beneath the bedding.

There was little pain now, but the heaviness of the stone persisted and
there was no feeling.  He bit his lip in anger and frustration as his
arm worked free.  Nothing had changed beyond the lessening of the
pain.

The stone tip where the lower arm had shattered was still there.  The
streaks of gray where the poison worked its way upward toward his
shoulder were there as well.

He slipped his arm from view again.  The Stors had been unable to cure
him.  Whatever the nature of the poison that the Asphim had injected
into him, the Stors could not treat it.  And if the Stors could not
treat it-the Stors, who were the best of the Four Lands' Healers ...

He could not finish the thought.  He shoved it away, closed his eyes,
tried to go back to sleep, and failed.  All he could see was his arm
shattering under the impact of the stone wedge.

Despair washed over him and he wept.

AN HOUP HAD PASSED when the door opened and Cogline entered the room,
an intrusive presence that made the silence seem even more
uncomfortable.

"Walker," he greeted quietly.

"They cannot save me, can they?"  Walker asked bluntly, the despair
pushing everything else aside.

The old man became a statue at his bedside.  "You're alive, aren't
you?"  he replied.

"Don't play word games with me.  Whatever's been done, it hasn't driven
out the poison.  I can feel it.  I may be alive, but only for the
moment.  Tell me if I'm wrong."

Cogline paused.  "You're not wrong.  The poison is still in you.

Even the Stors haven't the means to remove it or to stop its spread.

But they have slowed the process, lessened the pain, and given you
time.  That is more than I would have expected given the nature and
extent of the injury.  How do you feet?"

Walker's smile was slow and bitter, "Like I am dying, naturally.

But in a comfortable fashion."

They regarded each other without speaking for a moment.

Then Cogline moved over to the sitting chair and eased himself into it,
a bundle of old bones and aching joints, of wrinkled brown skin.  "Tell
me what happened to you, Walker," he said.

Walker did.  He told of reading the ancient, leatherbound Druid History
that Cogline had brought to him and learning of the Black Elfstone, of
deciding to seek the counsel of the Grimpond, of hearing its riddles
and witnessing its visions, of determining that he must go to the Hall
of Kings, of finding the secret compartment marked with runes in the
floor of the Tomb, and finally of being bitten and poisoned by the
Asphim left there to snare him.

"To snare someone at least, perhaps anyone," Cogline observed.

Walker looked at him sharply, anger and mistrust flaring in his dark
eyes.  "What do you know of this, Cogline?  Do you play the same games
as the Druids now?  And what of Allanon?

Did Allanon know .  . ."

"Allanon knew nothing," Cogline interrupted, brushing aside the
accusation before it could be completed.  The old eyes glittered
beneath narrowed brows.  "You undertook to solve the Grimpond's riddles
on your own-a foolish decision on your part.  I warned you repeatedly
that the wraith would find a way to undo you.  How could Allanon know
of your predicament?

You attribute far too much to a man three-hundred-years dead.

Even if he were still alive, his magic could never penetrate that which
shrouds the Hall of Kings.  Once you were within, you were lost to
him.

And to me.  It wasn't until you emerged again and collapsed at the
Hadeshorn that he was able to discover what happened and summon me to
help you.  I came as quickly as I could and even so it took me three
days."

One hand lifted, a sticklike finger jabbing.  "Have you bothered to
question why it is that you aren't dead?  It is because Allanon found a
way to keep you alive, first until I arrived and second until the Stors
could treat you!  Think on that a bit before you start casting blame
about so freely!"

He glared, and Walker glared back at him.  It was Walker who looked
away first, too sick at heart to continue the confrontation.  "I have
trouble believing anyone just at the moment," he offered lamely.

"You have trouble believing anyone at any time," Cogline snapped,
unappeased.  "You cast your heart in iron long ago, Walker.  You
stopped believing in anything.  I remember when that wasn't so."

He trailed off, and the room went silent.  Walker found himself
thinking momentarily of the time the old man referred to, the time when
he had first come to Walker and offered to show him the ways in which
the magic could be used.  Cogline was right.  He hadn't been so bitter
then; he'd been full of hope.

He almost laughed.  That was such a long time ago.

"Perhaps I can use my own magic to dispel the poison from my body," he
ventured quietly.  "Once I return to Hearthstone, once I'm fully
rested.  Brin Ohmsford had such power once."

Cogline dropped his eyes and looked thoughtful.  His gnarled hands
clasped loosely in the folds of his robe.  It appeared as if he were
trying to decide something.

Walker waited a moment, then asked, "What has become of the others-of
Par and Coll and Wren?"

Cogline kept his gaze lowered.  "Par has gone in search of the Sword,
young Coll with him.  The Rover girl seeks the Elves.

They've accepted the charges Allanon gave to them."  He looked up
again.  "Have you, Walker?"

Walker stared at him, finding the question both absurd and troubling,
torn between conflicting feelings of disbelief and uncertainty.  Once
he would not have hesitated to give his answer.

He thought again of what Allanon had asked him to do: Bring back
disappeared Paranor and restore the Druids.  A ridiculous, impossible
undertaking, he had thought at the time.  Game playing, he had
decried.

He would not be a part of such foolishness, he had announced to Par,
Coll, Wren, and the others of the little company that had come with him
to the Valley of Shale.

He despised the Druids for their manipulation of the Ohmsfords.

He would not be made their puppet.  So bold he had been, so certain.

He would sooner cut off his hand than see the Druids come again, he had
declared.

And the loss of his hand was the price that had been exacted, it
seemed.

Yet had that loss truly put an end to any possibility of the return of
Paranor and the Druids?  More to the point, was that what he now
intended?

He was conscious of Cogline watching him, impatient as he waited for
Walker Boh's answer to his question.  Walker kept his eyes fixed on the
old man without seeing him.  He was thinking suddenly of the Druid
History and its tale of the Black Elfstone.

If he had not gone in search of the Elfstone, he would not have lost
his arm.  Why had he gone?  Curiosity, he had thought.  But that was a
simplistic answer and he knew it was given too easily.

In any case, didn't the very fact of his going indicate that despite
any protestations to the contrary he indeed had accepted Alianon's
charge?

If not, what was it that he was doing?

He focused again on the old man.  "Tell me something, Cogline.

Where did you get that book of the Druid Histories?  How did you find
it?  You said when you brought it to me that you got it out of
Paranor.

Surely not."

Cogline's smile was faint and ironic.  "Why 'surely not,' Walker?"

"Because Paranor was sent out of the world of men by Allanon three
hundred years ago.  It doesn't exist anymore."

Cogline's face crinkled like crushed parchment.  "Doesn't exist?

Oh, but it does, Walker.  And you're wrong.  Anyone can reach it if
they have the right magic to help them.  Even you."

Walker hesitated, suddenly uncertain.

"Allanon sent Paranor out of the world of the men, but it still
exists," Cogline said softly.  "It needs only the magic of the Black
Elfstone to summon it back again.  Until then, it remains lost to the
Four Lands.  But it can still be entered by those who have the means to
do so and the courage to try.  It does require courage, Walker.  Shall
I tell you why?  Would you like to hear the story behind my journey
into Paranor?"

Walker hesitated again, wondering if he wanted to hear anything ever
again about the Druids and their magic.  Then he nodded slowly.

"Yes."

" But you are prepared to disbelieve what I am going to tell you,
aren't you?"

"Yes."

The old man leaned forward.  "Tell you what.  I'll let you judge for
yourself."

He paused, gathering his thoughts.  Daylight framed him in brightness,
exposing the flaws of old age that etched his thin frame in lines and
hollows, that left his hair and beard wispy and thin, and that gave his
hands a tremulous appearance as he clasped them tightly before him.

"it was after your meeting with Allanon.  He sensed, and I as well,
that you would not accept the charge you had been given, that you would
resist any sort of involvement without further evidence of the
possibility that you might succeed.  And that there was reason to want
to.  You differ in your attitude from the others-you doubt everything
that you are told.  You came to Allanon already planning to reject what
you would hear."

Walker started to protest, but Cogline held up his hands quickly and
shook his head.  "No, Walker.  Don't argue.  I know you better than you
know yourself.  Just listen to me for now.  I went north on Allanon's
summons, seeming to disappear, leaving you to debate among yourselves
what course of action you would follow.  Your decision in the matter
was a foregone conclusion.  You would not do as you had been asked.

Since that was so, I resolved to try to change your mind.  You see,
Walker, I believe in the dreams; I see the truth in them that you as
yet do not.  I would not be a messenger for Allanon if there were any
way to avoid it.  My time as a Druid passed away long ago, and I do not
seek to return to what was.  But I am all there is and since that is so
I will do what I think necessary.  Dissuading you from refusing to
involve yourself in the matter at hand is something I deem vital."

He was shaking with the conviction of his words and the look he
extended Walker was one that sought to convey truths that the old man
could not speak.

"I went north, Walker, as I said.  I traveled out of the Valley of
Shale and across the Dragon's Teeth to the valley of the Druid's
Keep.

Nothing remains of Paranor but a few crumbling outbuildings on a barren
height.  The forests still surround the spot on which it once stood,
but nothing will grow upon the earth, not even the smallest blade of
grass.  The wall of thorns that once protected the Keep is gone.

Everything has disappeared-as if some giant reached down and snatched
it all away.

"I stood there, near twilight, looking at the emptiness, envisioning
what had once been.  I could sense the presence of the Keep.  I could
almost see it looming out of the shadows, rising up against the
darkening eastern skies.  I could almost define the shape of its stone
towers and parapets.  I waited, for Allanon knew what was needed and
would tell me when it was time."

The old eyes gazed off into space.  "I slept when I grew tired, and
Allanon came to me in my dreams as he now does with all of us.  He told
me that Paranor was indeed still there, cast away by magic into a
different place and time, yet there nevertheless.

He asked me if I would enter and bring out from it a certain volume of
the Druid Histories which would describe the means by which Paranor
could be restored to the Four Lands.  He asked if I would take that
book to you."  He hesitated, poised to reveal something more, then
simply said, "I agreed.

"He reached out to me then and took my hand.  He lifted me away from
myself, my spirit out of my body.  He cloaked me in his magic.  I
became momentarily something other than the man I am-but I don't know
even now what that something was.  He told me what I must do.  I walked
alone then to where the walls of the Keep had once stood, closed my
eyes so that they would not deceive me, and reached out into worlds
that lie beyond our own for the shape of what had once been.  I found
that I could do that.  Imagine my astonishment when Paranor's walls
materialized suddenly beneath my fingers.  I risked taking a quick look
at them, but when I did so there was nothing to see.  I was forced to
begin again.  Even as a spirit I could not penetrate the magic if I
violated its rules.  I kept my eyes closed tightly this time, searched
out the walls anew, discovered the hidden trapdoor concealed in the
base of the Keep, pushed the catch that would release the locks, and
entered."

Cogline's mouth tightened.  "I was allowed to open my e)les then and
look around.  Walker, it was the Paranor of old, a great sprawling
castle with towers that rose into clouds of ancient brume and
battlements that stretched away forever.  It seemed endless to me as I
climbed its stairs and wandered its halls; I was like a rat in a
maze.

The castle was filled with the smell and taste of death.  The air had a
strange greenish cast; everything was swathed in it.  Had I attempted
to enter in my flesh-andblood body, I would have been destroyed
instantly; I could sense the magic still at work, scouring the rock
corridors for any signs of life.  The furnaces that had once been
fueled by the fire at the earth's core were still, and Paranor was cold
and lifeless.

When I gained the upper halls I found piles of bones, grotesque and
misshapen, the remains of the Mord Wraiths and Gnomes that Allanon had
trapped there when he had summoned the magic to destroy Paranor.

Nothing was alive in the Druid's Keep save myself."

He was silent for a moment as if remembering.  "I sought out the vault
in which the Druid Histories were concealed.  I had a sense of where it
was, quickened in part by the days in which I studied at Paranor, in
part by Allanon's magic.  I searched out the library through which the
vault could be entered, finding as I did so that I could touch things
as if I were still a creature of substance and not of spirit.  I felt
along the dusty, worn edges of the bookshelves until I found the
catches that released the doors leading in.  They swung wide, and the
magic gave way before me.  I entered, discovered the Druid Histories
revealed, and took from its resting place the one that was needed."

Cogline's eyes strayed off across the sunlit room, seeking visions that
were hidden from Walker, "I left then.  I went back the same way as I
had come, a ghost out of the past as much as those who had died there,
feeling the chill of their deaths and the immediacy of my own.

I passed down the stairwells and corridors in a half-steep that let me
feel as well as see the horror of what now held sway in the castle of
the Druids.  Such power, Walker!  The magic that Allanon summoned was
frightening even yet.  I fled from it as I departed-not on foot, you
understand, but in my mind.  I was terrified," The eyes swung back.

"So I escaped.  And when I woke, I had in my possession the book that I
had been sent to recover and I took it then to you."

He went silent, waiting patiently as Walker considered his story.

Walker's eyes were distant.  "It can be done then?  Paranor can be
entered even though it no longer exists in the Four Lands?"

Cogline shook his head slowly.  "Not by ordinary men."  His brow
furrowed.  "Perhaps by you, though.  With the magic of the Black
Elfstone to help you."

"Perhaps," Walker agreed dully.  "What magic does the Elfstone
possess?"

"I know nothing more of it than you," Cogline answered quietly.

"Not even where it can be found?  Or who has it?"

Cogline shook his head.  "Nothing."

"Nothing."  Walker's voice was edged with bitterness.  He let his eyes
close momentarily against what he was feeling.  When they opened, they
were resigned.  "This is my perception of things.  You expect me to
accept Allanon's charge to recover disappeared Paranor and restore the
Druids.  I can only do this by first recovering the Black Elfstone.

But neither you nor I know where the Elfstone is or who has it.

And I am infected with the poison of the Asphim; I am being turned
slowly to stone.  I am dying!  Even if I were persuaded to .  . ."  His
voice caught, and he shook his head.  "Don't you see?  There isn't
enough time!"

Cogline looked out the window, hunching down into his robes.  "And if
there were?"

Walker's laugh was hollow, his voice weary.  "Cogline, I don't know."

The old man rose.  He looked down at Walker for a long time without
speaking.  Then he said, "Yes, you do."  His hands clasped tightly
before him.  "Walker, you persist in your refusal to accept the truth
of what is meant to be.  You recognize that truth deep in your heart,
but you will not heed it.  Why is that?"

Walker stared back at him wordlessly.

Cogline shrugged.  "I have nothing more to say.  Rest, Walker.

You will be well enough in a day or two to leave.  The Stors have done
all they can; your healing, if it is to be, must come from another
source.  I will take you back to Hearthstone."

"I will heat myself," Walker whispered.  His voice was suddenly urgent,
rife with both desperation and anger.

Cogline did not respond.  He simply gathered up his robes and walked
from the room.  The door closed quietly behind him.

"I will," Walker Boh swore.

T TOOK MORGAN LEAH the better part of three days after parting with
Padishar Creel and the survivors of the Movement to travel south from
the empty stretches of the Dragon's Teeth to the forest-sheltered Dwarf
community of Culhaven.  Storms swept the mountains during the first
day, washing the ridgelines and slopes with torrents of rain, leaving
the trailways sodden and slick with the damp, and wrapping the whole of
the land in gray clouds and mist.  By the second day the storms had
passed away, and sunshine had begun to break through the clouds and the
earth to dry out again.  The third day brought a return of summer, the
air warm and fragrant with the smell of flowers and grasses, the
countryside bright with colors beneath a clear, windswept sky, the
slow, lazy sounds of the wild things rising up from the pockets of
shelter where they made their home.

Morgan's mood improved with the weather.  He had been disheartened when
he had set out.  Steff was dead, killed in the catacombs of the Jut,
and Morgan was burdened with a lingering sense of guilt rooted in his
unfounded but persistent belief that he could have done something to
prevent it.  He didn't know what, of course.  It was Teel who had
killed Steff, who had almost killed him as well.  Neither Steff nor he
had known until the very last that Teel was something other than what
she appeared, that she was not the girl the Dwarf had fallen in love
with but a Shadowen whose sole purpose in coming with them into the
mountains was to see them destroyed.  Morgan had sus pected what she
was, yet lacked any real proof that his suspicions were correct until
the moment she had revealed herself and by then it was too late.  His
friends the Vatemen, Par and Coll Ohmsford, had disappeared after
escaping the horrors of the Pit in Tyrsis and not been seen since.  The
Jut, the stronghold of the members of the Movement, had fallen to the
armies of the Federation, and Padishar Creel and his outlaws had been
chased north into the mountains.  The Sword of Shannara, which was what
all them had come looking for in the first place, was still missing.

Weeks of seeking out the talisman, of scrambling to unlock the puzzle
of its hiding place, of hair-raising confrontations with and escapes
from the Federation and the Shadowen, and of repeated frustration and
disappointment, had come to nothing.

But Morgan Leah was resilient and after a day or so of brooding about
what was past and could not be changed his spirits began to lift once
more.  After all, he was something of a veteran now in the struggle
against the oppressors of his homeland.  Before, he had been little
more than an irritant to that handful of Federation officials who
governed the affairs of the Highlands, and in truth he had never done
anything that affected the outcome of larger events in the Four
Lands.

His risk had been minimal and the results of his endeavors equally
so.

But that had all changed.  In the past few weeks he had journeyed to
the Hadeshorn to meet with the shade of Allanon, he had joined in the
quest for the missing Sword of Shannara, he had battled both Shadowen
and Federation, and he had saved the lives of Padishar Creel and his
outlaws by warning them of Teel before she could betray them one final
time.  He knew he had done something at last that had value and
meaning.

And he was about to do something more.

He had made Steff a promise.  As his friend lay dying, Morgan had sworn
that he would go to Cuthaven to the orphanage where Steff had been
raised and warn Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt that they were in
danger.

Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt-the only parents Steff had ever known, the
only kindred he was leaving-were not to be abandoned.  If Teel had
betrayed Steff, she would have betrayed them as well.  Morgan was to
help them get safely away.  ' It gave the Highlander a renewed sense of
purpose, and that as much as anything helped bring him out of his
depression.  He had begun his journey disenchanted.  He had lagged in
his travel, bogged down by the weather and his mood.  By the third day
he had shaken the effects of both.  His resolution buoyed him.

He would spirit Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt out of Culhaven to
somewhere safe.  He would return to Tyrsis and find the Valemen.  He
would continue to search for the missing Sword of Shannara.  He would
find a way to rid Leah and the whole of the Four Lands of both Shadowen
and Federation.  He was alive and everything was possible.  He whistled
and hummed as he walked, let the sun's rays warm his face, and banished
self-doubt and discouragement.  It was time to get on with things.

Now and again as he walked his thoughts strayed to the lost magic of
the Sword of Leah.  He still wore the remains of the shattered blade
strapped to his waist, cradled in the makeshift sheath he had
constructed for it.  He thought of the power it had given him and the
way the absence of that power made him feel-as if he could never be
whole again without it.  Yet some small part of the magic still
lingered in the weapon; he had managed to call it to life in the
catacombs of the Jut when he destroyed Teel.  There had been just
enough left to save his life.

Deep inside, where he could hide it and not be forced to admit the
implausibility of it, he harbored a belief that one day the magic of
the Sword of Leah would be his again.

It was late afternoon on that third day of travel when he emerged from
the forests of the Anar into Culhaven.  The Dwarf village was shabby
and worn where he walked, the refuge of those now too old and as yet
too young who had not been taken by the Federation authorities to the
mines or sold as slaves in the market.  Once among the most
meticulously maintained of communities, Culhaven was now a dilapidated
collection of buildings and people that evidenced little of care or
love.  The forest grew right up against the outermost buildings, weeds
intruding into yards and gardens, roadways rutted and choked with
scrub.  Wooden walls warped under peeling paint, tiles and shingles
cracked and splintered, and trim about doorways and windows drooped
away.  Eyes peered out through the shadows, following after the
Highlander as he made his way in; he could sense the people staring
from behind windows and doors.  The few Dwarves he encountered would
not meet his gaze, turning quickly away.  He walked on without slowing,
his anger rekindled anew at the thought of what had been done to these
people.

Everything had been taken from them but their lives, and their lives
had been brought to nothing.

He pondered anew, as Par Ohmsford had done when last they were there,
at the purpose of it.

He kept clear of the main roads, staying on the side paths, not anxious
to draw attention to himself.  He was a Southiander and therefore free
to come and go in the Eastland as he pleased, but he did not identify
in any way with its Federation occupiers and preferred to stay clear of
them altogether.  Even if none of what had happened to the Dwarves was
his doing, what he saw of Culhaven made him ashamed all over again of
who and what he was.  A Federation patrol passed him and the soldiers
nodded cordially.  It was all he could do to make himself nod back.

As he drew nearer to the orphanage, his anticipation of what he would
find heightened perceptibly.  Anxiety warred with confidence.

What if he were too late?  He brushed the possibility away.  There was
no reason to think that he was.  Teel would not have risked
jeopardizing her disguise by acting precipitately.

She would have waited until she was certain it would not have
mattered.

Shadows began to lengthen as the sun disappeared into the trees west.

The air cooled and the sweat on Morgan's back dried beneath his
tunic.

The day's sounds began to fade away into an expectant hush.

Morgan looked down at his hands, fixing his gaze on the irregular
patchwork of white scars that crisscrossed the brown skin.  Battle
wounds were all over his body since Tyrsis and the Jut.  He tightened
the muscles of his jaw.  Small things, he thought.  The ones inside him
were deeper.

He caught sight of a Dwarf child looking at him from behind a low stone
wall with intense black eyes.  He couldn't tell if it was a girl or a
boy.  The child was very thin and ragged.  The eyes followed him a
moment, then disappeared.

Morgan m6ved ahead hurriedly, anxious once more.  He caught sight of
the roof of the orphanage, the first of its walls, a window high up, a
gable.  He rounded a bend in the roadway and slowed.  He knew instantly
that something was wrong.  The yard of the orphanage was empty.  The
grass was untended.

There were no toys, no children.  He fought back against the panic that
rose suddenly within him.  The windows of the old building were dark.

There was no sign of anyone.

He came up to the gate at the front of the yard and paused.

Everything was still.

He had assumed wrong.  He was too late after all.

He started forward, then stopped.  His eyes swept the darkness of the
old house, wondering if he might be walking into some sort of trap.

He stood there a long time, watching.  But there was no sign of
anyone.

And no reason for anyone to be waiting here for him, he decided.

He pushed through the gate, walked up on the porch, 'and pushed open
the front door.  It was dark inside, and he took a moment to let his
eyes adjust.  When they had done so, he entered.  He passed slowly
through the building, searched each of its rooms in turn, and came back
out again.  There was dust on everything.  It had been some time since
anyone had lived there.

Certainly no one was living there now.

So what had become of the two old Dwarf ladies?

He sat down on the porch steps and let his tall form slump back against
the railing.  The Federation had them.  There wasn't any other
explanation.  Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt would never leave their home
unless they were forced to.  And they would never abandon the children
they cared for.  Besides, all of their clothes were still in the chests
and closets, the children's toys, the bedding, everything.  He had seen
it in his search.  The house wasn 't closed up properly.  Too much was
in disarray.  Nothing was as it would have been if the old ladies had
been given a choice.

Bitterness flooded through him.  Steff had depended on him; he couldn't
quit now.  He had to find Granny and Auntie.  But where?  And who in
Culhaven would tell him what he needed to know?  No one who knew
anything, he suspected.  The Dwarves surely wouldn't trust him-not a
Southiander.  He could ask until the sun rose in the west and set in
the east.

He sat there thinking a long time, the daylight fading into dusk.

After a while, he became aware of a small child looking at him through
the front gate-the same child who had been watching him up the road.  A
boy, he decided this time.  He let the boy watch him until they were
comfortable with each other, then said, "Can you tell me what happened
to the ladies who lived here?"

The boy disappeared instantly.  He was gone so fast that it seemed as
if the earth must have swallowed him up.  Morgan sighed.  He should
have expected as much.  He straightened his legs.  He would have to
devise a way to extract the information he needed from the Federation
authorities.  That would be dangerous, especially if Teel had told them
about him as well as Granny and Auntie-and there was no reason now to
believe that she hadn't.  She must have given the old ladies up even
before the company began its journey north to Darklin Reach.

The Federation must have come for Granny and Auntie the moment Teel was
safely beyond the village.  Teel hadn't worried that Steff or Morgan or
the Valemen would find out; after all, they would all be dead before it
mattered.

Morgan wanted to hit something or someone.  Teel had betrayed them
all.

Par and Coll were lost.  Steff was dead.  And now these two old ladies
who had never hurt anyone ...

"Hey, mister," a voice called.

He looked up sharply.  The boy was back at the gate.  An older boy
stood next to him.  It was the second boy who spoke, a hefty fellow
with a shock of spiked red hair.  "Federation soldiers took the old
ladies away to the workhouses several weeks ago.  No one lives here
now."

Then they were gone, disappeared as completely as before.

Morgan stared after them.  Was the boy telling him the truth?

The Highlander decided he was.  Well and good.  Now he had a little
something to work with.  He had a place to start looking.

He came to his feet, went back down the pathway, and out the gate.

He followed the rutted road as it wound through the twilight toward the
center of the village.  Houses began to give way to shops and markets,
and the road broadened and split in several directions.

Morgan skirted the hub of the business district, watching as the light
faded from the sky and the stars appeared.  Torchlight brightened the
main thoroughfare but was absent from the roads and paths he
followed.

Voices whispered in the stillness, vague sounds that lacked meaning and
definition, hushed as if the speakers feared being understood.  The
houses changed character, becoming well tended and neat, the yards
trimmed and nourished.  Federation houses, Morgan thoughtstolen from
Dwarves-tended by the victims.  He kept his bitterness at bay,
concentrating on the task ahead.  He knew where the workhouses were and
what they were intended to accomplish.  The women sent there were too
old to be sold as personal slaves, yet strong enough to do menial work
such as washing and sewing and the like.  The women were assigned to
the Federation barracks at large and made to serve the needs of the
garrison.  If that boy had been telling the truth, that was what Granny
Elise and Auntie Jilt would be doing.

Morgan reached the workhouses several minutes later.  There were five
of them, a series of long, low buildings that ran parallel to each
other with windows on both sides and doors at both ends.  The women who
worked them lived in them as well.  Pallets, blankets, washbasins, and
chamber pots were provided and pulled out from under the workbenches at
night.  Steff had taken Morgan up to a window once to let him peer
inside.  Once had been quite enough.

Morgan stood in the shadows of a storage shed across the way for long
moments, thinking through what he would do.

Guards stood at all the entrances and patroled the roadways and
lanes.

The women in the workhouses were prisoners.  They were not permitted to
leave their buildings for any reason short of sickness or death or some
more benevolent form of releaseand the latter almost never occurred.

They were permitted visitors infrequently and then closely watched.

Morgan couldn't remember when it was that visits were permitted.

Besides, it didn't matter.  It infuriated him to think of Granny Elise
and Auntie Jilt being kept in such a place.  Steff would not have
waited to free them, and neither would he.

But how was he going to get in?  And how was he going to get Granny and
Auntie out once he did?

The problem defeated him.  There was no way to approach the workhouses
without being seen and no way to know in which of the five workhouses
the old ladies were being kept in any case.  He needed to know a great
deal more than he did now before he could even think of attempting any
rescue.  Not for the first time since he had left the Dragon's Teeth,
he wished Steff were there to advise him.

At last he gave it up.  He walked down into the center of the village,
took a room at one of the inns that catered to Southland traders and
businessmen, took a bath to wash off the grime, washed his clothes as
well, and went off to bed.  He lay awake thinking about Granny Elise
and Auntie Jilt until sleep finally overcame him.

When he awoke the following morning he knew what he needed to do to
rescue them.

He dressed, ate breakfast in the inn dining room, and set out.

What he was planning was risky, but there was no help for it.

After making a few inquiries, he discovered the names of the taverns
most frequented by Federation soldiers.  There were three of them, and
all were situated on the same street close to the city markets.  He
walked until he found them, picked the most likely-a dimly lit hall
called the High Boot-entered, found a table close to the serving bar,
ordered a glass of ate, and waited.  Although the day was still young
there were soldiers drifting in already, men from the night shift not
yet ready for bed.  They were quick to talk about garrison life and not
much concerned with who might be listening.  Morgan listened closely.

From time to time he looked up long enough to ask a friendly
question.

Occasionally he commented.  Once in a while he bought a glass for
someone.  Mostly he waited.

Much of the talk revolved around a girl who was rumored to be the
daughter of the King of the Silver River.  She had appeared rather
mysteriously out of the Silver River country south and west below the
Rainbow Lake and was making her way east.  Wherever she went, in
whatever villages and towns she passed through, she performed
miracles.

There had never been such magic, it was said.  he was on her way now to
Culhaven.

The balance of the tavern's chatter revolved around complaints about
the way the Federation army was run by its officers.  Since it was the
common soldiers who were doing the complaining, the nature of the talk
was hardly surprising.  This was the part that Morgan was interested in
hearing.  The day passed away in lazy fashion, sultry and still within
the confines of the hall with only the cold glasses of ale and the talk
to relieve the heat and boredom.  Federation soldiers came and went,
but Morgan remained where he was, an almost invisible presence as he
sipped and watched.  He had thought earlier to circulate from one
tavern to the next, but it quickly became apparent that he would learn
everything he needed to know by remaining at the first.

By midafternoon he had the information he needed.  It was time to act
on it.  He roused himself from his seat and walked across the roadway
to the second of the taverns, the Frog Pond, an aptly named
establishment if ever there was one.  Seating himself near the back at
a green cloth table that sat amid the shadows like a lily pad in a dark
pool, he began looking for his victim.  He found him almost
immediately, a man close to his own size, a common soldier of no
significant rank, drinking alone, lost in some private musing that
carried his head so far downward it was almost touching the serving
bar.  An hour passed, then two.  Morgan waited patiently as the soldier
finished his final glass, straightened, pushed away from the bar,
lurched out through the entry doors.  Then he followed.

The day was mostly gone, the sun already slipping into the trees of the
surrounding forests, the daylight turning gray with the approach of
evening.  The soldier shuffled unsteadily down the road through knots
of fellow soldiers and visiting tradesmen, making his way back to the
barracks.  Morgan knew where he was going and slipped ahead to cut him
off.  He intercepted him as he came around a corner by a blacksmith's
shop, seeming to bump into him by accident but in fact striking him so
hard that the man was unconscious before he touched the ground.  Morgan
let him fall, muttered in mock exasperation, then picked the fellow up,
hoisting him over one shoulder.  The blacksmith and his workers glanced
over together with a few passersby, and Morgan announced rather
irritably that he supposed he would have to carry the fellow back to
his quarters.  Then off he marched in mock disgust.

He carried the unconscious soldier to a feed barn a few doors down and
slipped inside.  No one saw them enter.  There, in near darkness, he
stripped the man of his uniform, tied and gagged him securely, and
shoved him back behind a pile of oat sacks.  He donned the discarded
uniform, brushed it out and straightened its creases, stuffed his own
clothes in a sack he had brought, strapped on his weapons, and emerged
once more into the light.

He moved quickly after that.  Timing was everything in his plan; he had
to reach the administration center of the workhouses just after the
shift change came on at dusk.  His day at the taverns had told him
everything he needed to know about people, places, and procedures; he
need only put the information to use.  Already the twilight shadows
were spreading across the forestland, swallowing up the few remaining
pools of sunlight.  The streets were starting to empty as soldier,
trader, and citizen alike made their way homeward for the evening
meal.

Morgan kept to himself, careful to acknowledge senior officers in
passing, doing what he could to avoid drawing attention to himself.  He
assumed a deliberate look and stance designed to keep others at bay.

He became a rather hard-looking Federation soldier about his
business-no one to approach without a reason, certainly no one to
anger.  It seemed to work; he was left alone.

The workhouses were lighted when he reached them, the day's activities
grinding to a close.  Dinner in the form of soup and bread was being
carried in by the guards.  The food smells wafted through the air,
somewhat less than appetizing.  Morgan crossed the roadway to the
storage sheds and pretended to be checking on something.  The minutes
slipped past, and darkness approached.

At precisely sunset the shift change occurred.  New guards replaced the
old on the streets and at the doors of the workhouses.

Morgan kept his eyes fixed on the administration center.

The officer of the day relinquished his duty to his nighttime
counterpart.  An aide took up a position at a reception desk.

Two men on duty-that was all.  Morgan gave everyone a few minutes to
settle in, then took a deep breath and strode out from the shadows.

He went straight to the center, pushed through the doors, and
confronted the aide at the reception desk.  "I'm back," he announced.

The aide looked at him blankly.

"For the old ladies Morgan added, allowing a hint of irritation to
creep into his voice.  He paused.  "Weren't you told?"

The aide shook his head.  "I just came on .  . ."

"Yes, but there should be a requisition order still on your desk from
no more than an hour ago," Morgan snapped.  "Isn't it there?"

"Well, I don't The aide cast about the desktop in confusion, moving
stacks of papers aside.

"Signed by Major Assomal."

The aide froze.  He knew who Major Assomat was.  There wasn't a
Federation soldier garrisoned at Culhaven who didn't.

Morgan had found out about the major in the tavern.  Assomat was the
most feared and disliked Federation officer in the occupying army.

No one wanted anything to do with him if they could help it.

The aide rose quickly.  "Let me get the watch captain," he muttered.

He disappeared into the back office and emerged moments later with his
superior in tow.  The captain was clearly agitated.

Morgan saluted the senior officer with just the right touch of
disdain.

"What's this all about?"  the captain demanded, but the question came
out sounding more like a plea than a demand.

Morgan clasped his hands behind his back and straightened.

His heart was pounding.  "Major Assomal requires the services of two of
the Dwarf women presently confined to the workhouses.  I selected them
personally earlier in the day at his request.  I left so that the
paperwork could be completed and now I am back.  It seems, however,
that the paperwork was never done."

The watch captain was a sallow-skinned, round-faced man who appeared to
have seen most of his service behind a desk.

"I don't know anything about that," he snapped peevishly.

Morgan shrugged.  "Very well.  Shall I take that message back to Major
Assomal, Captain?"

The other man went pale.  "No, no, I didn't mean that.  It's just that
I don't He exhaled sharply.  "This is very annoying."

"Especially since Major Assomal will be expecting me back
momentarily."

Morgan paused.  "With the Dwarves."

The watch captain threw up his hands.  "All right!  What difference
does it make!  I'll sign them out to you myself!  Let's have them
brought up and be done with it!"

He opened the registry of names and with Morgan looking on determined
that Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt were housed in building four.

Hurriedly he scribbled out a release order for the workhouse guards.

When he tried to dispatch the aide to collect the old ladies, Morgan
insisted that he go as well.

'Just to make certain there are no further mix-ups, Captain," he
explained.  "After all, I have to answer to Major Assomal as well."

The watch captain didn't argue, obviously anxious to be shed of the
matter as quickly as possible, and Morgan went out the door with the
aide.  The night was still and pleasantly warm.

Morgan felt almost jaunty.  His plan, risky or not, was going to
work.

They crossed the compound to building four, presented the release order
to the guards stationed at the front doors, and waited while they
perused it.  Then the guards unfastened the locks and beckoned for them
to proceed.  Morgan and the aide pushed through the heavy wooden doors
and stepped inside.

The workhouse was crammed with workbenches and bodies and smelled of
stale air and sweat.  Dust lay over everything, and the lamplight shone
dully against walls that were dingy and unwashed.  The Dwarf women were
huddled on the floor with cups of soup and plates of bread in hand,
finishing their dinner.

Heads and eyes turned hurriedly as the two Federation soldiers entered,
then turned just as quickly away again.  Morgan caught the unmistakable
look of fear and loathing.

"Call their names," he ordered the aide.

The aide did so, his voice echoing in the cavernous room and near the
back two hunched forms came slowly to their feet.

"Now wait outside for me," Morgan said.

The aide hesitated, then disappeared back through the doors.

Morgan waited anxiously as Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt made their way
gingerly through the clutter of bodies, benches, and pallets to where
he stood.  He barely recognized them.  Their clothes were in tatters.

Granny Elise's fine gray hair was un kempt, as if it were fraying all
around the edges, Auntie Jilt's sharp, birdlike face was pinched and
harsh.  They were bent over with more than age, moving so slowly that
it appeared it hurt them even to walk.

They came up to him with their eyes downcast and stopped.

"Granny," he said softly.  "Auntie Jilt."

They looked up slowly and their eyes widened.  Auntie Jilt caught her
breath.  "Morgan!"  Granny Elise whispered in wonder.  "Child, it's
really you!"

He bent down quickly then and took them in his arms, hugging them
close.  They collapsed into him, rag dolls lacking strength of their
own, and he could hear them both begin to cry.  Behind them, the other
Dwarf women were staring in confusion.

Morgan eased the two old ladies gently away.  "Listen now," he said
softly.  "We haven't much time.  I've tricked the watch captain into
releasing you into my custody, but he's liable to catch on if we give
him the chance so we have to hurry.  Do you have somewhere that you can
go to hide, someplace you won't be found?"

Auntie Jilt nodded, her narrow face a mask of determination.

"The Resistance will hide us.  We still have friends."

"Morgan, where's Steff?"  Granny Elise interrupted.

The Highlander forced himself to meet her urgent gaze.  "I'm sorry,
Granny.  Steff is dead.  He was killed fighting against the Federation
in the Dragon's Teeth."  He saw the pain that filled her eyes.  "Teel
is dead, too.  She was the one who killed Steff.

She wasn't what any of us thought, I'm afraid.  She was a creature
called a Shadowen, a thing of dark magic linked to the Federation.  She
betrayed you as well."

"Oh, Steff," Granny Elise whispered absently.  She was crying again.

"The soldiers came for us right after you left," Auntie Jilt said
angrily.  "They took the children away and put us in this cage.  I knew
something had gone wrong.  I thought you might have been taken as
well.

Drat it, Morgan, that girl was like our own!"

"I know, Auntie," he answered, remembering how it had been.  "it has
become difficult to know who to trust.  What about the Dwarves you plan
to hide with?  Can they be trusted?  Are you sure you will be safe?"

"Safe enough," Auntie replied.  "Stop your crying, Elise," she said and
patted the other woman's hand gently.  "We have to do as Morgan says
and get out of here while we have the chance."

Granny Elise nodded, brushing away her tears.  Morgan stood up again.

He stroked each gray head in turn.  "Remember, you don't know me,
you're just my charges until we get clear of this place.  And if
something goes wrong, if we get separated, go where you'll be safe.  I
made a promise to Steff that I would see to it that you did.  So you
make certain I don't break that promise, all right?"

"All right, Morgan," Granny Elise said.

They went out the door then, Morgan leading, the two old ladies
shuffling along behind with their heads bowed.  The aide was standing
rigidly to one side by himself; the guards looked bored.  With the
Dwarf ladies in tow, Morgan and the aide returned to the administration
center.  The watch captain was waiting impatiently, the promised
release papers clutched in his hand.

He passed them across the reception desk to Morgan for his si nature,
then shoved them at the aide and stalked back into his office.

The aide looked at Morgan uncomfortably.

Inwardly congratulating himself on his success, Morgan said, "Major
Assomal will be waiting."

He turned and was in the process of ushering Granny Elise and Auntie
Jilt outside when the door opened in front of them and a new Federation
officer appeared, this one bearing the crossed bars of a divisional
commander.

"Commander Soldt!"  The aide leaped to his feet and saluted smartly.

Morgan froze.  Commander Soldt was the officer in charge of supervising
the confinement of the Dwarves, the ranking officer off the field for
the entire garrison.  What he was doing at the center at this hour was
anybody's guess, but it was certainly not going to do anything to help
further Morgan's plans.

The Highlander saluted.

"What's this all about?"  Soldt asked, glancing at Granny Elise and
Auntie Jilt.  "What are they doing out of their quarters?"

" just a requisition, Commander," replied the aide.  "From Major
Assomal."

"Assomal?"  Soldt frowned.  "He's in the field.  What would he want
with Dwarves .  . ."  He glanced again at Morgan.  "I don't know you,
soldier.  Let me see your papers."

Morgan hit him as hard as he could.  Soldt fell to the floor and lay
unmoving.  Instantly Morgan went after the aide, who backed away
shrieking in terror.  Morgan caught him and slammed his head against
the desk.  The watch captain emerged just in time to catch several
quick blows to the face.  He staggered back into his office and went
down.

"Out the door!"  Morgan whispered to Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt.

They rushed from the administration center into the night.

Morgan glanced about hurriedly and breathed out sharply in relief.

The sentries were still at their posts.  No one had heard the
struggle.

He guided the old ladies quickly along the street, away from the
workhouses.  A patrol appeared ahead.  Morgan slowed, moving ahead of
his charges, assuming a posture of command.  The patrol turned off
before it reached them, disappearing into the dark.

Then someone behind them was shouting, calling for help.

Morgan pulled the old ladies into an alleyway and hastened them toward
its far end.  The shouts were multiplying now, and there was the sound
of running feet.  Whistles blew and an assembly horn blared.

"They'll be all over us now," Morgan muttered to himself.

They reached the next street over and turned onto it.  The shouts were
all around them.  He pulled the ladies into a shadowed doorway and
waited.  Soldiers appeared at both ends of the street, searching.

Morgan's rescue plans were collapsing about him.  His hands tightened
into fists.  Whatever happened, he couldn't allow the Federation to
recapture Granny and Auntie.

He bent to them.  "I'll have to draw them away," he whispered
urgently.

"Stay here until they come after me, then run.

Once you're hidden, stay that way-no matter what."

"Morgan, what about you?"  Granny Elise seized his arm.

"Don't worry about me.  Just do as I say.  Don't come looking for me.

I'll find you when this whole business is over.  Goodbye, Granny.

Goodbye, Auntie Jilt."

Ignoring their pleas to remain, he kissed and hugged them hurriedly,
and darted into the street.  He ran until he caught sight of the first
band of searchers and yelled to them, "They're over here!"

The soldiers came running as he turned down an alleyway, leading them
away from Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt.  He wrenched the broadsword he
wore strapped to his back from its scabbard.  Breaking free of the
alleyway, he caught sight of another band and called them after him as
well, gesturing vaguely ahead.  To them he was just another soldier-for
the moment, at least.  If he could just maneuver them ahead of him, he
might be able to escape as well.

"That barn, ahead of us," he shouted as the first bunch caught up with
him.  "They're in there!"

The soldiers charged past, one knot, then the second.  Morgan turned
and darted off in the opposite direction.  As he came around the corner
of a feed building, he ran right up against a third unit.

"They've gone into He stopped short.  The watch captain stood before
him, howling in recognition.

Morgan tried to break free, but the soldiers were on him in an
instant.

He fought back valiantly, but there was no room to maneuver.

His attackers closed and forced him to the ground.

Blows rained down on him.

This isn't working out the way I expected, he thought bleakly and then
everything went black.

HREE DAYS LATER she who was said to be the daughter of the King of the
Silver River arrived in Culhaven.

The news of her coming preceded her by half a day and by the time she
reached the outskirts of the village the roadway leading in was lined
with people for more than a mile.

They had come from everywhere-from the village itself, from the
surrounding communities of both the Southland and the Eastland, from
the farms and cottages of the plains and deep forests, even the
mountains north.  There were Dwarves and Men and a handful of Gnomes of
both sexes and all ages.  They were ragged and poor and until now
without hope.  They jammed the roadside expectantly, some come simply
out of a sense of curiosity, most come out of their need to find
something to believe in again.

The stories of the girl were wondrous.  She had appeared in the heart
of the Silver River country close by the Rainbow Lake, a magical being
sprung full-blown from the earth.  She stopped at each village and
town, farm and cottage, and performed miracles.  It was said that she
healed the land.  She turned blackened, withered stalks to fresh, green
shoots.  She brought flowers to bloom, fruit to bear, and crops to
harvest with the smallest of touches.  She gave life back to the earth
out of death.

Even where the sickness was most severe, she prevailed.  She bore some
special affinity to the land, a kinship that sprang directly from her
father's hands, from the legendary stewardship of the King of the
Silver River.  For years it had been believed that the spirit lord had
died with the passing of the age of magic.

Now it was known he had not; as proof he had sent his daughter to
them.

The people of the Silver River country were to be given back their old
life.  So the stories proclaimed.

No one was more anxious to discover the truth of the matter than Pe
Ell.

It was midday, and he had been waiting for the girl within the shade of
the towering old shagbark hickory on a rise at the very edge of town
since just after sunrise when word had reached him that today was the
day she would appear.  He was very good at waiting, very patient, and
so the time had gone quickly for him as he stood with the others of the
growing crowd and watched the sun lift slowly into the summer sky and
felt the heat of the day settle in.  Conversation around him had been
plentiful and unguarded, and he listened attentively.

There were stories of what the girl had done and what it was believed
she would do.  There were speculations and judgments.  The Dwarves were
the most vehement in their beliefs-or lack thereof.  Some said she was
the savior of their people; some said she was nothing more than a
Southland puppet.  Voices raised in shouts, quarreled, and died away.

Arguments wafted through the still, humid air like small explosions of
steam out of a fiery earth.  Tempers flared and cooled.

Pe Ell listened and said nothing.

"She comes to drive out the Federation soldiers and restore our land to
us, land that the King of the Silver River treasures!

She comes to set us free!"

"Bah, old woman, you speak nonsense!  There is nothing to say she is
who she claims to be.  What do you know of what she can or cannot
do?"

"I know what I know.  I sense what will be."

"Hal That's the ache of your joints you feel, nothing more!

You believe what you want to believe, not what is.  The truth is that
we have no more sense of who this girl is than we do of what tomorrow
will bring.  It is pointless to get our hopes up!"

"it is more pointless to keep them down!"

And so on, back and forth, an endless succession of arguments and
counterarguments that accomplished nothing except to help pass the
time.  Pe Ell had sighed inwardly.  He seldom argued.  He seldom had
cause to.

When at last she was said to approach, the arguments and conversation
faded to mutterings and whispers.  When she actually appeared, even the
mutterings and whispers died away.  A strange hush settled over those
who lined the roadway suggesting that either the girl was not at all
what they had expected or, perhaps, that she was something more.

She came up the center of the roadway surrounded by the would-be
followers who had flocked to her during her journey east, a mostly
bedraggled lot with tattered clothes and exhilarated faces.  Her own
garb was rough and poorly sewn, yet she evinced a radiance that was
palpable.  She was small and slight, but so exquisitely shaped as to
seem not quite real.  Her hair was long and silver, shining as water
would when it shimmered in the moonlight.  Her features were perfectly
formed.  She walked alone in a rush of bodies that crowded and stumbled
about her yet could not bear to approach.  She seemed to float among
them.  Voices called out anxiously to her, but she seemed unaware that
anyone was there.

And then she passed by Pe Ell and turned deliberately to look at him.

Pe Ell shuddered in surprise.  The weight of that look-or perhaps
simply the experience of it-was enough to stagger him.  Almost
immediately her strange black eyes shifted away again, and she was
moving on, a sliver of brilliant sunlight that had momentarily left him
blind.  Pe Ell stared after her, not knowing what she had done to him,
what it was that had occurred in that brief moment when their eyes
met.

It was as if she had looked into his heart and mind and read them quite
clearly.  It was as if with that single glance she had discovered
everything there was to know about him.

He found her to be the most beautiful creature he had ever seen in his
life.

She turned down the roadway into the village proper, the crowd trailing
after, and Pe Ell followed.  He was a tall, lean man, so thin that he
appeared gaunt.  His bones were prominent, and the muscles and skin of
his body were molded tightly against them so as to suggest he might
easily break.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

He was as hard as iron.  He had a long, narrow face with a hawk nose
and a wide forehead with eyebrows set high above hazel eyes that were
disarmingly frank to took upon.  When he smiled, which was often, his
mouth had a slightly lopsided appearance to it.  His hair was brown and
cropped close, rather spiky and uncontrolled.  He slouched a bit when
he walked and might have been either a gangly boy or a stalking cat.

His hands were slim and delicate.  He wore common forest clothing made
of rough cloth dyed various shades of green and taupe, boots of worn
leather laced back and across, and a short cloak with pockets.

He carried no visible weapon.  The Stiehl was strapped to his thigh
just below his right hip.  The knife rode beneath his loose-fitting
pants where it could not be seen but where it could be reached easily
through a slit cut into a deep forward pocket.

He could feel the blade's magic warm him.

As he moved to keep up with the girl, people stepped asidewhether from
what they saw in his face or the way he moved or the intangible wall
they sensed surrounded him.  He did not like to be touched, and
everyone seemed instinctively to know it.  As always, they shied
away.

He passed through them as a shadow chasing after the light, keeping the
girl in sight as he did so, wondering.  She had looked at him for a
reason, and that intrigued him.  He hadn't been certain what she would
be like, how she would make him feet when he saw her for the first
time-but he hadn't thought it would be anything like this.  It
surprised him, pleased him, and at the same time left him vaguely
worried.  He didn't like things that he couldn't control and he
suspected that it would be difficult for anyone to exercise control
over her.

Of course, he wasn't just anyone.

The crowd was singing now, an old song that told of the earth being
reborn with the harvesting of new crops, the bearing of food from the
fields to the tables of the people who had worked to gather it.

There was praise for the seasons, for rain and sun, for the giving of
life.  Chants rose for the King of the Silver River; the voices grew
steadily louder and more insistent.

The girl seemed not to hear.  She walked through the singing and the
cries without responding, making her way first past the houses that lay
at the edge of the village, then the larger shops that formed the core
of the business center.  Federation soldiers began to appear and tried
to police the traffic as it surged ahead.

They were too few and too ill-prepared, thought Pe Ell.

Apparently they had misjudged badly the extent of the community's
response to the coming of the girl.

The Dwarves were feverish in their adoration.  It was as if they had
been given back the lives that had been stolen from them.  A broken,
subjugated people for so many years, there had been little enough to
happen to give them hope.  But this girl seemed to be what they had
been waiting for.  It was more than the stories, more than the claims
of who she was and what she could do.  It was the took and feel of
her.

Pe Ell could sense it as readily as the people who rallied about her.

He could feet something of it in himself.  She was different from
anyone he had ever seen.  She had come here for a reason.  She was
going to do something.

Business ground to a halt in Culhaven as the whole of the village,
oppressed and oppressors alike, turned out to discover what was
happening and became a part of it.  Pe Ell had the sense of a wave
gathering force out in the ocean, growing in size until it dwarfed the
vast body of water that had given life to it.  It was so with this
girl.  There was a sense of all other events beyond this one ceasing to
exist.  Everything but what she was faded away and lost meaning.  Pe
Ell smiled.  It was the most wonderful feeling.

The wave swept on through the village, past the shops and businesses,
the slave markets, the workhouses, the compounds and soldiers'
quarters, the shabby homes of the Dwarves and the well-kept houses of
the Federation officials, down the main thoroughfare, and out again.

No one seemed able to guess where it was going.  No one but the girl,
for she led even at the center of the maelstrom of bodies, guiding
somehow the edges of the wave, directing it as she wished.  The cries
and singing and chants continued unabated, exhilarated, rapturous.  Pe
Ell marveled.

And then the girl stopped.  The crowd slowed, swirled about her, and
grew still.  She stood at the foot of the blackened slopes that had
once been the Meade Gardens.  She lifted her face to the stark line of
the hill's barren crest much as if she might have been looking beyond
it to a place that no one else could see.

Few in the crowd looked where she was looking; they simply stared at
her.  There were hundreds of them now, and all of them waited to see
what she would do.

Then slowly, deliberately she moved onto the slope.  The crowd did not
follow, sensing perhaps that it was not meant to, divining from some
small movement or look that it was meant to wait.  It parted for her, a
sea of faces rapt with expectation.

A few hands stretched out in an attempt to touch her, but none
succeeded.

Pe Ell eased his way through the crowd until he stood at its foremost
edge less than ten yards from the girl.  Although he was purposeful in
his advance, he did not yet know what he meant to do.

A knot of soldiers intercepted the girl, led by an officer bearing the
crossed shoulder bars of a Federation commander.

The girl waited for them.  An unpleasant murmur rose from the crowd.

"You are not allowed here," announced the commander, his voice steady
and clear.  "No one is.  You must go back down."

The girl looked at him, waiting.

"This is forbidden ground, young lady," the other continued an officer
addressing an inferior in a manner intended to demonstrate authority.

"No one is permitted to walk upon this earth.

A proclamation of the Coalition Council of the Federation government,
which I have the honor to serve, forbids it.  Do you understand?"

The girl did not answer.

"if you do not turn around and leave willingly, I shall be forced to
escort you."

A scattering of angry cries sounded.

The girl came forward a step.

"If you do not leave at once, I shall have to The girl gestured and
instantly the man's legs were entwined in ground roots an inch thick.

The soldiers who had accompanied him fell back with gasps of dismay as
the pikes they were holding turned to gnarled staffs of deadwood that
crumbled in their hands.  The girl walked past them, unseeing.  The
blustering voice of the commander turned to a whisper of fear and then
disappeared in the shocked murmur of the crowd.

glanced swiftly about.  Apparently there were no village.  In the
absence of Seekers, no one would The girl proceeded up the empty,
burned slope toward its summit, and her passing barely earth on which
she walked.  The sun beat down the midday sky, turning the empty
stretch of Pe Ell smiled fiercely.  Magic!  The girl possessed real
magic!

The stories were true.  It was more than he could have hoped for.

Was she really the daughter of the King of the Silver River, he
wondered?

The soldiers kept away from her now, unwilling to challenge the kind of
power she obviously wielded.  There were a few attempts at issuing
orders by lesser officers, but no one was sure what to do after what
had happened to the commander.  Pe Ell Seekers in the act.

surface of the stirred the dry fiercely out of ground into a furnace.

The girl seemed not to notice, her face calm as she passed through the
swelter.

As he stared at her, Pe Ell felt himself drawn to the rim of a vast
chasm, knowing that beyond was something so impossible that he could
not imagine it.

What will she do?

She came to the summit of the slope and stopped, a slim, ethereal form
outlined against the sky.  She paused for a moment, as if searching for
something in the air around her, an invisible presence that would speak
to her.  Then she knelt.  She dropped down to the charred earth of the
hillside and buried her hands within it.  Her head lowered and her hair
fell about her in a veil of silver light.

The world about her went absolutely still.

Then the earth beneath began to tremble and shake, and a rumbling sound
rose out of its depths.  The crowd gasped and fell back.  Men steadied
themselves, women snatched up children, and cries and shouts began to
sound.  Pe Ell came forward a step, his hazel eyes intense.

He was not frightened.  This was what he had been waiting for, and
nothing could have chased him away.

Light seemed to flare from the hillside then, a glow that dwarfed even
the sunlight's brilliance.  Geysers exploded from the earth, small
eruptions that burst skyward, showering Pe Ell and the foremost members
of the crowd with dirt and silt.  There was a heaving as if some giant
buried beneath was rising from his sleep, and huge boulders began to
jut from the ground like the bones of the giant's hunched shoulders.

The burned surface of the hillside began to turn itself over and
disappear.  Fresh earth rose up to cover it, rich and glistening,
filling the air with a pungent smell.  Massive roots lifted out like
snakes, twisting and writhing in response to the rumblings.  Green
shoots began to unfold.

In the midst of it all, the girl knelt.  Her body was rigid beneath the
loose covering of her clothes, and her arms were buried in the earth up
to her elbows.  Her face was hidden.

Many in the crowd were kneeling now, some praying to the forces of
magic once believed to have controlled the destiny of men, some simply
steadying themselves against tremors which had grown so violent that
even the most sturdy trees were being shaken.  Excitement rushed
through Pe Ell and left him flushed.

He wanted to run to the girl, to embrace her, to feel what was
happening within her, and to share in the power.

Boulders grated and boomed as they rearranged themselves, changing the
shape of the hillside.  Terraced walls formed out of the rock.

Moss and ivy filled the gaps.  Trails wound down from one level to the
next in gentle descent.  Trees appeared, roots become small saplings,
the saplings in turn thickening and branching out, compressing dozens
of seasons of growth into scant minutes.  Leaves budded and spread as
if desperate to reach the sunlight.  Grasses and brush spread out
across the empty earth, turning the blackened surface a vibrant
green.

And flowers!  Pe Ell cried out in the silence of his mind.  There were
flowers everywhere, springing forth in a profusion of bright colors
that threatened to blind him.  Blues, reds, yellows, violetsthe
rainbow's vast spectrum of shades and tones blanketed the earth.

Then the rumbling ceased and the silence that followed was broken by
the singing of birds.  Pe Ell glanced at the crowd behind him.  Most
were on their knees still, their eyes wide, their faces rapt with
wonder.  Many were crying.

He turned back to the girl.  In a span of no more than a few minutes
she had transformed the entire hillside.  She had erased a hundred
years of devastation and neglect, of deliberate razing, of purposeful
burning off and leveling out, and restored to the Dwarves of Culhaven
the symbol of who and what they were.

She had given them back the Meade Gardens.

She was still on her knees, her head lowered.  When she came back to
her feet she could barely stand.  All of her strength had been expended
in her effort to restore the Gardens; she seemed to have nothing left
to give.  She swayed weakly, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her
beautiful, perfect face drawn and lined, her silver hair damp and
tangled.  Pe Ell felt her eyes fix upon him once more and this time he
did not hesitate.  He went up the hillside swiftly, bounding over rocks
and brush, skipping past the trails as if they were hindrances.  He
felt the crowd surging after him, heard their voices crying out, but
they were nothing to him and he did not look back.  He reached the girl
as she was falling and caught her in his arms.

Gently he cradled her, holding her as he might a captured wild
creature, protectively and possessively at once.

Her eyes stared into his, he saw the intensity and brilliance of them,
the depth of feeling they held, and in that moment he was bound to her
in a way that he could not describe.  "Take me to where I can rest,"
she whispered to him.

The crowd was all about them now, their anxious voices a babble he
could not lock out.  A sea of faces pressed close.  He said something
to those closest to reassure them that she was only tired and heard his
words pass from mouth to mouth.  He caught a glimpse of Federation
soldiers at the fringes of the crowd, but they were wisely choosing to
keep their distance.

He began moving away, carrying the girl, amazed at how little she
weighed.  There was nothing to her, he thought.  And everything.

A handful of Dwarves intercepted him, asking him to follow them, to
bring the daughter of the King of the Silver River to their home, to
let her rest with them.  Pe Ell let himself be guided by them.  One
home was as good as another for now.

The eyes of the crowd followed after, but already it was dispersing at
its fringes, straying off into the paradise of the Gardens, discovering
for themselves the beauty that it held.  There was singing again,
softer now, songs of praise and thanksgiving for the girl, lyrical and
sweet.

Pe Ell descended the hillside and passed out of the Meade Gardens and
back into the village of Culhaven with the girl asleep in his arms.

She had given herself into his keeping.  She had placed herself under
his protection.  He found it ironic.

After all, he had been sent there to kill her.

E ELL CARRIED the daughter of the King of the Silver River to the home
of the Dwarves who had offered to keep her, a family that consisted of
a man, his wife, their widowed daughter, and two small grandchildren.

Their home was a stone cottage at the east end of the village sheltered
by white oak and red elm and set back against the wall of the forest
close by the channel of the river.  It was quiet there, isolated from
the village proper, and by the time they reached it most of the
following crowd had turned back.  A handful chose to stay and set up
camp at the edge of the property, most of them those who had followed
the girl up from the country south, zealots who were determined that
she would be their savior.

But she wasn't for them, Pe Ell knew.  She belonged now to him.

With the help of the family he placed the girl in a bed in a tiny back
room where the man and woman slept.  The husband and his wife and
widowed daughter went out again to prepare something to eat for those
who had chosen to keep vigil over the girl, but Pe Ell remained.  He
sat in a chair next to the bed and watched her sleep.  For a time the
children remained, curious to see what would happen, but eventually
they lost interest, and he was left alone.  The daylight faded into
darkness and still he sat, waiting patiently for her to wake.  He
studied the line of her body as she lay sleeping, the curve of her hip
and shoulder, the soft rounding of her back.  She was such a tiny
thing, just a little bit of flesh and bone beneath the coverings, the
smallest spark of life.  He marveled at the texture of her skin, at the
coloring, at the absence of flaws.  She might have been molded by some
great artist whose reflection and skill had created a once-and-only
masterpiece.

Fires were lit without, and the sound of voices drifted in through the
curtained window.  The sounds of night filled the silence between
exchanges, the songs of birds and the buzzing of insects rising up
against the faint rush of the river's waters.

Pe Ell was not tired and had no need to steep.

Instead, he used the time to think.

AWEEK EARLIER he had been summoned to Southwatch and a meeting with
Rimmer Dail.  He had gone because it pleased him and not because it was
necessary.  He was bored and he was hopeful that the First Seeker would
give him something interesting to do, that he would provide him with a
challenge.  To Pe Ell's way of thinking, that was all that mattered
about Rimmer Dail.  The rest of what the First Seeker did with his life
and the lives of others was of no interest to him.

He had no illusions, of course.  He knew what Rimmer Dall was.  He
simply didn't care.

It took him two days to make the journey.  He traveled north on
horseback out of the rugged hill country below the Battlemound where he
made his home and arrived at Southwatch at sunset on the second day.

He dismounted while still out of sight of the sentries and made his
approach by foot.  He need not have bothered; he could have come all
the way in and gained immediate admittance.  But he liked the idea of
being able to come and go as he chose.  He liked demonstrating his
talent.

Especially to the Shadowen.

Pe Ell was as they were as he came into the black monolith, seemingly
through the creases in the stone, a wraith out of darkness.

He went past the sentries unseen and unheard, as invisible to them as
the air they breathed.  Southwatch was silent and dark, its walls
polished and smooth, its corridors empty.  It had the feel and look of
a well-preserved crypt.  Only the dead belonged here, or those who
trafficked in death.  He worked his ,way through its catacombs, feeling
the pulse of the magic im prisoned in the earth beneath, hearing the
whisper of it as it sought to break free.  A sleeping giant that Rimmer
Dall and his Shadowen thought they would tame, Pe Ell knew.  They kept
their secret well, but there was no secret that could be kept from
him.

When he was almost to the high tower where Rimmer Dall waited, he
killed one of those who kept watch, a Shadowen, but it made no
difference.  He did so because he could and because he felt like it.

He melted into the black stone wall and waited until the creature came
past him, drawn by a faint noise that he had caused, then drew the
Stiehl from its sheath within his pants and cut the life out of his
victim with a single, soundless twist.

The sentry died in his arms, its shade rising up before him like black
smoke, the body crumbling into ash.  Pe Ell watched the astonished eyes
go flat.  He left the empty uniform where it could be found.

He smiled as he floated through the shadows.  He had been killing for a
long time now and he was very good at it.  He had discovered his talent
early in life, his ability to seek out and destroy even the most
guarded of victims, his sense of how their protection could be broken
down.  Death frightened most people, but not Pe Ell.  Pe Ell was drawn
to it.  Death was the twin brother of life and the more interesting of
the two.  It was secretive, unknown, mysterious.  It was inevitable and
forever when it came.  It was a dark, infinitely chambered fortress
waiting to be explored.  Most entered only once and then only because
they had no choice.  Pe Ell wanted to enter at every opportunity and
the chance to do so was offered through those he killed.

Each time he watched someone die he would discover another room,
glimpse another part of the secret.  He would be reborn.

High within the tower, he encountered a pair of sentries posted before
a locked door.  They failed to see him as he eased close.  Pe Ell
listened.  He could hear nothing, but he could sense that someone was
imprisoned within the room beyond.  He debated momentarily whether he
should discover who it was.  But that would mean asking, which he would
never do, or killing the sentries, which he did not care to do.

He passed on.

Pe Ell ascended a darkened flight of stairs to the apex of Southwatch
and entered a room of irregular chambers that con nected together like
corridors in a maze.  There were no doors, only entryways.  There were
no sentries.  Pe Ell slipped inside, a soundless bit of night.  It was
dark without now, the blackness complete as clouds blanketed the skies
and turned the world beneath opaque.  Pe Ell moved through several of
the chambers, listening, waiting.

Then abruptly he stopped, straightened, and turned.

Rimmer Dail stepped out of the blackness of which he was a part.

Pe Ell smiled.  Rimmer Dail was good at making himself invisible,
too.

"How many did you kill?"  the First Seeker asked in his hushed,
whispery voice.

"One," Pe Ell said.  His smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"Perhaps I will kill another on the way out."

Dall's eyes shone a peculiar red.  "One day you will play this game too
often.  One day you will brush up against death by mistake and she will
snatch you up instead of your victim."

Pe Ell shrugged.  His own dying did not trouble him.  He knew it would
come.  When it did, it would be a familiar face, one he had seen all
his life.  For most, there was the past, the present, and the future.

Not for Pe Ell.  The past was nothing more than memories, and memories
were stale reminders of what had been lost.  The future was a vague
promise-dreams and puffs of smoke.  He had no use for either.

Only the present mattered, because the present was the here and now of
what you were, the happening of life, the immediacy of death, and it
could be controlled as neither past nor future could.  Pe Ell believed
in control.  The present was an ever-evolving chain of moments that
living and dying forged, and you were always there to see it come.

A window opened on the night across a table and two chairs, and Pe Ell
moved to seat himself.  Rimmer Dail joined him.  They sat in silence
for a time, each looking at the other, but seeing something more.  They
had known each other for more than twenty years.  Their meeting had
been an accident.  Rimmer Dail was a junior member of a policing
committee of the Coalition Council, already deeply enmeshed in the
poisonous politics of the Federation.  He was ruthless and determined,
barely out of boyhood, and already someone to be feared.

He was a Shad owen, of course, but few knew it.  Pe Ell, almost the
same age, was an assassin with more than twenty kills behind him.

They had met in the sleeping quarters of a man Rimmer Dail had come to
dispatch, a man whose position in the Southland government he coveted
and whose interference he had tolerated long enough.  Pe Ell had gotten
there first, sent by another of the man's enemies.  They had faced each
other in silence across the man's lifeless body, the night's shadows
cloaking them both in the same blackness that mirrored their lives, and
they had sensed a kinship.  Both had use of the magic.  Neither was
what he seemed.  Both were relentlessly amoral.  Neither was afraid of
the other.  Without, the Southland city of Wayford buzzed and clanked
and hissed with the intrigues of men whose ambitions were as great as
their own but whose abilities were far less.  They looked into each
other's eyes and saw the possibilities.

They formed an irrevocable partnership.  Pe Ell became the weapon,
Rimmer Dail the hand that wielded it.  Each served the other at his own
pleasure; there were no constraints, no bonds.

Each took what was needed and gave back what was requiredyet neither
really identified with nor understood what the other was about.

Rimmer Dail was the Shadowen leader whose plans were an inviolate
secret.  Pe Ell was the killer whose occupation remained his peculiar
passion.  Rimmer Dail invited Pe Ell to eliminate those he believed
particularly dangerous.  Pe Ell accepted the invitation when the
challenge was sufficiently intriguing.  They nourished themselves
comfortably on the deaths of others.

"Who is it that you keep imprisoned in the room below?"

Pe Ell asked suddenly, breaking the silence, ending the flow of
recollections.

Rimmer Dali's head inclined slightly, a mask of bones that gave his
face the look of a fieshless skull.  "A Southiander, a Valeman.

One of two brothers named Ohmsford.  The other brother believes he has
killed this one.  I arranged for him to think so.  I planned it that
way."  The big man seemed pleased with himself.  "When it is time, I
will let them find each other again."

"A game of your own, it seems."

"A game with very high stakes, stakes that involve magic of
unimaginable proportions-magic greater than either yours or mine or
anyone else's.  Unbounded power."

Pe Ell did not respond.  He felt the weight of the Stiehl against his
thigh, the warmth of its magic.  It was difficult for him to imagine a
magic more powerful-impossible to envision one more useful.

The Stiehl was the perfect weapon, a blade that could cut through
anything.  Nothing could withstand it.

Iron, stone, the most impenetrable of defenses-all were useless against
it.  No one was safe.  Even the Shadowen were vulnerable; even they
could be destroyed.  He had discovered as much some years back when one
had tried to kill him, sneaking into his bedchamber like a stalking
cat.  It had thought to catch him sleeping; but Pe Ell was always
awake.  He had killed the black thing easily.

Afterward it had occurred to him that the Shadowen might have been sent
by Rimmer Dall to test him.  He hadn't chosen to dwell on the
possibility.  It didn't matter.  The Stiehl made him invincible.

Fate had given him the weapon, he believed.  He did not know who had
made the Stiehl, but it had been intended for him.  He was twelve years
old when he found it, traveling with a man who claimed to be his
uncle-a harsh, embittered drunkard with a penchant for beating anything
smaller and weaker than himself-on a journey north through the
Battlemound to yet another in an endless succession of towns and
villages they frequented so that the uncle might sell his stolen
goods.

They were camped in a ravine in a desolate, empty stretch of scrub
country at the edge of the Black Oaks, fence-sitting between the Sirens
and the forest wolves, and the uncle had beaten him again for some
imagined wrong and fallen asleep with his bottle tucked close.  Pe Ell
didn't mind the beatings anymore; he had been receiving them since he
was orphaned at four and his uncle had taken him in.  He hardly
remembered what it was like not to be abused.  What he minded was the
way his uncle went about it these days-as if each beating was being
undertaken to discover the limits of what the boy could stand.  Pe Ell
was beginning to suspect he had reached those limits.

He went off into the failing light to be alone, winding down the empty
ravines, trudging over the desolate rises, scuffing his booted feet,
and waiting for the pain of his cuts and bruises to ease.  The hollow
was close, no more than several hundred yards away, and the cave at its
bottom drew him as a magnet might iron.  He sensed its presence in a
way he could not explain, even afterward.  Hidden by the scrub,
half-buried in loose rock, it was a dark and ominous maw opening down
into the earth.  Pe Ell entered without hesitation.  Few things
frightened him even then.

His eyesight had always been extraordinary, and even the faintest light
was enough to let him find his way.

He followed the cave back to where the bones were gathered-human bones,
centuries old, scattered about randomly as if kicked apart.  The Stiehl
lay among them, the blade gleaming silver in the dark, pulsing with
life, its name carved on its handle.  Pe Ell picked it up and felt its
warmth.  A talisman from another age, a weapon of great power-he knew
at once that it was magic and that nothing could withstand it.

He did not hesitate.  He departed the cave, returned to the camp, and
cut his uncle's throat.  He woke the man first to make certain that he
knew who had done it.  His uncle was the first man he killed.

It had all happened a long time ago.

"THERE IS A GIRL," Rimmer Dail said suddenly and paused.

Pe Ell's gaze shifted back to the other's raw-boned face, silhouetted
against the night.  He could see the crimson eyes glitter.

The First Seeker's breath hissed from between his lips.  "They say that
she possesses magic, that she can change the character of the land
simply by touching it, and that she can dispatch blight and disease and
cause flowers to spring full grown from the foulest soil.  They say
that she is the daughter of the King of the Silver River."

Pe Ell smiled.  "is she?"

Rimmer Dail nodded.  "Yes.  She is who and what the stories claim.

I do not know what she has been sent to do.  She travels east toward
Culhaven and the Dwarves.  It appears that she has something specific
in mind.  I want you to find out what it is and then kill her."

Pe Ell stretched comfortably, his response unhurried.  "Kill her
yourself, why don't you?"

Rimmer Dail shook his head.  "No.  The daughter of the King of the
Silver River is anathema to us.  Besides, she would recognize a
Shadowen instantly.  Faerie creatures share a kinship that prohibits
disguise.  It must be someone other than one of us, someone who can get
close enough, someone she will not suspect."

"Someone."  Pe Ell's crooked smile tightened.  "There are lots of
someones, Rimmer.  Send another.  You have entire armies of blindly
loyal cutthroats who will be more than happy to dispatch a girl foolish
enough to reveal that she possesses magic.

This business doesn't interest me."

"Are you certain, Pe Ell?"

Pe Ell sighed wearily.  Now the bargaining begins, he thought.

He stood up, his lean frame whiplike as he bent across the table so
that he could see clearly the other's face.  "I have listened to you
tell me often enough how like the Shadowen you perceive me to be.  We
are much the same, you tell me.  We wield magic against which there is
no defense.  We possess insight into the purpose of life which others
lack.  We share common instincts and skills.  We smell, taste, sound,
and feel the same.  We are two sides of one coin.  You go on and on.

Well then, Rimmer Dail, unless you are lying I would be discovered by
this girl as quickly as you, wouldn't I?  Therefore, there is no point
in sending me."

"it must be you."

"Must it, now?"

"Your magic is not innate.  It is separate and apart from who and what
you are.  Even if the girl senses it, she will still not know who you
are.  She will not be warned of the danger you pose to her.  You will
be able to do what is needed."

Pe Ell shrugged.  "As I said, this business doesn't interest me."

"Because you think there is no challenge in it?"

Pe Ell paused, then slowly sat down again.  "Yes.  Because there is no
challenge."

Rimmer Dail leaned back in his chair and his face disappeared into
shadow.  "This girl is no simple flesh-and-blood creature; she will not
be easily overcome.  She has great magic, and her magic will protect
her.  It will take stronger magic still to kill her.  Ordinary men with
ordinary weapons haven't a chance.

My legions of cutthroats, as you so disdainfully describe them, are
worthless.  Federation soldiers can get close to her, but cannot harm
her.  Shadowen cannot even get close.  Even if they could, I am not
certain it would make any difference.  Do you understand me, Pe Ell?"

Pe Ell did not respond.  He closed his eyes.  He could feel Rimmer Dail
watching him.

"This girl is dangerous, Pe Ell, the more so because she has obviously
been sent to accomplish something of importance and I do not know what
that something is.  I have to find out and I have to put a stop to
it.

It will not be easy to do either.  It may be too much even for you."

Pe Ell cocked his head thoughtfully.  "is that what you think?"

"Possibly."

Pe Ell was out of his chair with the swiftness of thought, the Stiehl
snatched from its sheath and in his hand.  The tip of the blade swept
upward and stopped not an inch from Rimmer Dall's nose.  Pe Ell's smile
was frightening.  "Really?"

Rimmer Dail did not flinch, did not even blink.  "Do as I ask, Pe
Ell.

Go to Culhaven.  Meet this girl.  Find out what she plans to do.

Then kill her."

Pe Ell was wondering if he should kill Rimmer Dail.  He had thought
about it before, contemplated it quite seriously.  Lately the idea had
begun to take on a certain fascination for him.  He felt no loyalty to
the man, cared nothing for him one way or the other beyond a vague
appreciation of the opportunities he offered and even those were no
longer as rewarding as they had once been.  He was tired of the other's
constant attempts to manipulate him.  He no longer felt comfortable
with their arrangement.  Why not put an end to him?

The Stiehl wavered.  The trouble was, of course, that there was no real
point to it.  Killing Rimmer Dail accomplished nothing, unless, of
course, he was ready to discover what secrets might reveal themselves
at the moment of the First Seeker's dying.  That could prove
interesting.  On the other hand, why rush things?  It was better to
savor the prospect for a time.  It was better to wait.

He sheathed the Stiehl with a quicksilver movement and backed away from
Rimmer Dail.  For just an instant he had a sense of missed opportunity,
as if such a chance might never come again.  But that was foolish.

Rimmer Dail could not keep him away.  The First Seeker's life was his
to take when he chose.

He looked at Rimmer Dail for a moment, then spread his hands
agreeably.

"I'll do it."

He wheeled and started away.  Rimmer Dail called after him.

"Be warned, Pe Ell.  This girl is more than a match for you.  Do not
play games with her.  Once you have discovered her purpose, kill her
quickly."

Pe Ell did not respond.  He slipped from the room and melted back into
the shadows of the keep, uninterested in anything Rimmer Dal] thought
or wished.  It was enough that he had agreed to do what the Shadowen
had asked.  How he accomplished it was his own business.

He departed Southwatch for Culhaven.  He did not kill any of the
sentries on his way out.  He decided it wasn't worth the effort.

MIDNIGHT APPROACHED.  He grew tired of thinking and dozed in his chair
as the hours slipped away.  It was only several hours from dawn when
the girl awoke.  The cottage was silent, the Dwarf family asleep.

The fires of those camped without had burned to coals and ash, and the
last whispers of conversation had died away.  Pe Ell came awake
instantly as the girl stirred.

Her eyes blinked open and fixed on him.  She stared at him without
speaking for a very long time and then slowly sat up.

"I am called Quickening, " she said.

"I am Pe Ell," he replied.

She reached for his hand and took it in her own.  Her fingers were as
light as feathers as they traced his skin.  Then she shivered and drew
back.

"I am the daughter of the King of the Silver River," she said.

She swung her legs off the bed and faced him.  She smoothed back her
tangled silver hair.  Pe Ell was transfixed by her beauty, but she
seemed completely unaware of it.  "I need your help," she said.  "I
have come out of the Gardens of my father and into the world of men in
search of a talisman.  Will you journey with me to find it?"

The plea was so unexpected that for a moment Pe Ell did not respond but
simply continued staring at the girl.  "Why do you choose me?"  he
asked finally, confused.

And she said at once, "Because you are special."

It was exactly the right answer, and Pe Ell was astonished that she
should know enough to give it, that she could sense what he wanted to
hear.  Then he remembered Rimmer Dall's warning and hardened himself.

"What sort of talisman is it that we search for?"

She kept her eyes fastened on him.  "One of magic, one with power
enough to withstand even that of the Shadowen."

Pe Ell blinked.  Quickening was so beautiful, but her beauty was a mask
that distracted and confused.  He felt suddenly stripped of his
defenses, bared to his deepest corners, the light thrown on all his
secrets.  She knew him for what he was, he sensed.  She could see
everything.

In that instant, he almost killed her.  What stopped him was how truly
vulnerable she was.  Despite her magic, formidable indeed, magic that
could transform a barren, empty stretch of hillside back into what was
surely no more than a memory in the minds of even the most elderly of
the Dwarves, she lacked any form of defense against a killing weapon
like the Stiehl.  He could sense that it was so.  She was helpless
should he choose to kill her.

Knowing that, he decided not to.  Not yet.

"Shadowen," he echoed softly.

"Are you frightened of them?"  she asked him.

"No."

"Of magic?"

Pe Ell breathed in slowly.  His narrow features twisted in upon
themselves as he bent toward her.  "What do you know of me?"  he asked,
his eyes searching her own.

She did not took away.  "I know that I need you.  That you will not be
afraid to do what is necessary."

It seemed to Pe Ell that her words held more than one meaning, but he
was unable to decide.

"Will you come?"  she asked again.

Kill her quickly, Rimmer Dall had said.  Find out her purpose and kill
her.  Pe Ell looked away, staring out the cottage window into the
night, listening to the rushing sound of the river and the wind, soft
and distant.  He had never much bothered with the advice of others.

Most of it was self-serving, useless to a man whose life depended on
his ability to exercise his own judgment.

Besides, there was a great deal more to this business than what Rimmer
Dall had revealed.  There were secrets waiting to be discovered.

It might be that the talisman the girl searched for was something that
even the First Seeker feared.  Pe Ell smiled.

What if the talisman happened to fall into his hands?  Wouldn't that be
interesting?

He looked back at her again.  He could kill her anytime.

"I will come with you," he said.

She stood suddenly, reaching out her hands to take his own, drawing him
up with her.  They might have been lovers.  "There are two more that
must come with us, two like yourself who are needed," she said.  "One
of them is here in Culhaven.  I want you to bring him to me."

Pe Ell frowned.  He had already resolved to separate her from those
fools camped without, misguided believers in miracles and fate who
would only get in his way.  Quickening belonged to him alone.  He shook
his head.  "No."

She stepped close, her coal black eyes strangely empty.

"Without them, we cannot succeed.  Without them, the talisman is beyond
our reach.  No others need come, but they must."

She spoke with such determination that he found it impossible to argue
with her.  She seemed convinced that what she was saying was true.

Perhaps it was, he decided; she knew more of what she was about at this
point than he.

'Just two?"  he asked.  "No others?  None of those without?"

She nodded wordlessly.

"All right," he agreed.  No two men would be enough to cause him
problems, to interfere with his plans.  The girl would still be his to
kill when he chose.  "One man is here in the village, you say.  Where
am I to find him?"

For the first time since she had come awake, she turned away so that he
could not see her.

"in the Federation prisons," she said.

ORGAN LEAH.

That was the name of the man that Pe Ell was sup posed to find and
bring to the daughter of the King of the Silver River.

The streets of Culhaven were deserted save for the homeless huddled in
the crooks and crannies of the shops, shapeless bundles of rags waiting
out the night.  Pe Ell ignored them as he made his way toward the
center of town and the Federation prisons.  Dawn was the better part of
two hours away; he had more than sufficient time to do what was
needed.

He might have postponed this rescue business another night, but he saw
no reason to do so.  The quicker this fellow was found, the quicker
they would all be on their way.  He hadn't asked the girl yet where it
was that they were going.  It didn't matter.

He kept to the shadows as he moved ahead, mulling over in his mind the
ambivalent effect she had on him.  He was both exhilarated and
appalled.  She made him feel as if he were a man in the process of
rediscovering himself and at the same time as if he were a fool.

Rimmer Dail would certainly claim he was the latter, that he was
playing the most dangerous of games, that he was being led about by the
nose and deluding himself into thinking he was in command.  But Rimmer
Dail had no heart, no soul, no sense of the poetry of life and death.

He cared nothing for anything or anyone-only for the power he wielded
or sought to secure.  He was a Shadowen, and the Shadowen were empty
things.  However Rimmer Dail saw it, Pe Ell was less like him than the
First Seeker thought.  Pe Ell understood the harsh realities of
existence, the practical necessities of staying alive, and of making
oneself secure; but he also could feel the beauty of things,
particularly in the prospect of death.  Death possessed great beauty.

Rimmer Dail saw it as extinction.  But when Pe Ell killed, he did so to
discover anew the grace and symmetry that made it the most wondrous of
life's events.

He was certain that there would be incredible beauty in the death of
Quickening.  It would be unlike any other killing he had ever done.

So he would not rush it, not hurry the irrevocable fact of it; he would
take time to anticipate it.  The feelings she invoked in him would not
alter or adversely effect the course of action he had set for
himself.

He would not disparage himself for experiencing them; they were part of
his makeup, a reaffirmation of his humanity.  Rimmer Dail and his
Shadowen could know nothing of such feelings; they were as unfeeling as
stone.

But not Pe Ell.  Not ever.

He slipped past the workhouses, avoiding the lights of the compound and
the Federation soldiers on watch.  The surrounding forest was hushed
and sleeping, a black void in which sounds were disembodied and somehow
frightening.  Pe Ell became a part of that void, comfortable within its
cloaking as he moved soundlessly ahead.  He could see and hear what no
one else could; it had always been that way.

He could feel what lived within the dark even though it hid from him.

The Shadowen were like that; but even they could not assimilate as he
could.

He paused at a lighted crossway and waited to be certain it was
clear.

There were patrols everywhere.

He pictured Quickening's image in the aura cast by a solitary
streetlamp.  A child, a woman, a magical being-she was all of these and
much more.  She was the embodiment of the land's most beautiful
things-a sunlit woodland glen, a towering falls, a blue sky at midday,
a rainbow's kaleidoscope of color, an endless sweep of stars at night
viewed from an empty plain.  She was a creature of flesh and blood, of
human life, and yet she was a part of the earth as well, of
fresh-turned soil, of mountain streams, of great old rocks that would
not yield to anything but time.  It baffled him, but he could sense
things in her that were at once incongruous and compatible.  How could
that be?  What was she, beyond what she claimed?

He moved swiftly through the light and melted back into the shadows.

He did not know, but he was determined to find out.

The squarish dark bulk of the prisons loomed ahead.  Pe Ell took a
moment to consider his options.  He knew the design of the Federation
prisons at Culhaven; he had even been in them once or twice, though no
one knew about it but Rimmer Dail.

Even in prison, there were men who needed to be killed.  But that was
not to be the case tonight.  Admittedly, he had considered killing this
man he had been sent to rescue, this Morgan Leah, That would be one way
to prevent the girl from insisting that he accompany them in their
search for the missing talisman.

Kill this one now, the other one later, and that would be the end of
the matter.  He could lie about how it happened.  But the girl might
guess the truth, might even divine it.  She trusted him; why take a
chance on changing that?  Besides, perhaps she was right about needing
these men to reclaim the talisman.  He did not know enough yet of what
they were about.  It was better to wait and see.

He let his lean frame disappear into the stone of the wall against
which he rested, thinking.  He could enter the prisons directly,
confront the commanding officer with his Shadowen insignia, and secure
the release of the man without further fuss.

But that would mean revealing himself, and he preferred not to do
that.

No one knew about him now besides Rimmer Dail.  He was the First
Seeker's private assassin.  None of the other Shadowen even suspected
that he existed; none had ever seen him.

Those who had encountered him, Shadowen or otherwise, were all dead.

He was a secret to everyone and he preferred to keep it that way.  It
would be better to take the man out in the usual way, in silence and
stealth, alone.

Pe Ell smiled his lopsided smile.  Save the man now so that he could
kill him later.  It was a strange world.

He eased himself out from the wall and snaked his way through the
darkness toward the prisons.

MORGAN LEAH WAS not asleep.  He lay wrapped in a blanket in his cell on
a pallet of straw, thinking.  He had been awake for most of the night,
too restless to sleep, plagued by worries and regrets and a nagging
sense of futility that he could not seem to banish.  The cell was
claustrophobic, barely a dozen feet square while more than twenty feet
from floor to ceiling with an iron door several inches thick and a
single barred window so high up he could not manage to reach it to took
out even by jumping.

The cell had not been cleaned since he had been thrown into it, so
consequently it stank.  His food, such as it was, was brought to him
twice a day and shoved through a slot at the base of the door.  He was
given water to drink in the same way, but none with which to wash.  He
had been imprisoned now for almost a week and no one had come to see
him.  He was beginning to think that no one would.

It was an odd prospect.  When they had caught him he had been certain
they would be quick to use whatever means they had at their disposal to
find out why he had gone to so much trouble to free two old Dwarf
ladies.  He wondered even now if Granny Elise and Auntiejilt had
escaped, if they remained free; he had no way of knowing.  He had
struck a Federation commander, perhaps killed him.  He had stolen a
Federation uniform to impersonate a Federation soldier, used a
Federation major's name to secure entry to the workhouses, deceived the
Federation officer on duty, and made the Federation army in general
appear like a bunch of incompetents.  All for the purpose of freeing
two old ladies.  A maligned and misused Federation command had to want
to know why.  They had to be anxious to repay him for the humiliation
and hurt he had caused them.  Yet they had left him alone.

He played mind games with the possibilities.  It seemed unlikely he was
going to be ignored indefinitely, that he was to be left in that cell
until he was simply forgotten.  Major Assomal, as he had discovered,
was in the field; perhaps they were waiting for him to return to begin
the questioning.  But would Commander Soldt be patient enough to wait
after what had been done to him?  Or was he dead; had Morgan killed him
after all?

Or were they all waiting for someone else?

Morgan sighed.  Someone else.  He always came back to the me
inescapable conclusion.  They were waiting for Rimmer sa Dail.

He knew that had to be it.  Teel had betrayed Granny and Auntie to the
Federation, but more particularly to the Shadowen.  Rimmer Dail had to
know of their connection to Par and Coll Ohmsford and all those who had
gone in search of the Sword of Shannara.  If someone tried to rescue
them, surely he would be notified-and would come to see who it was that
had been caught.

Morgan eased himself gingerly over on one side facing out from the wall
into the blackness.  He didn't hurt as much as he had the first few
days; the aches and pains of his beating were beginning to heal.

He was lucky nothing had been brokenlucky, in fact, that he was still
alive.

Or not so lucky, he amended his assessment, depending on how you looked
at it.  His luck, it appeared, had run out.  He thought momentarily of
Par and Coll and regretted that he would not be able to go to them, to
look after them as he had promised he would.  What would become of them
without him?

What had happened to them in his absence?  He wondered if Damson Rhee
had hidden them after their escape from the Pit of Tyrsis.  He wondered
if Padishar Creel had found out where they were.

He wondered a thousand things, and there were no answers to be found
for any of them.

Mostly he wondered how much longer he would be kept alive.

He rolled onto his back again, thinking of how different things might
have been for him.  In another age he would have been a Prince of Leah
and one day ruled his homeland.  But the Federation had put an end to
the monarchy more than two hundred years ago, and today his family
ruled nothing.  He closed his eyes, trying to dispel any thoughts of
might-have-beens and would-have-beens, finding no comfort there.  He
remained hopeful, his spirit intact despite all that had happened, the
resiliency that had seen him through so much still in evidence.  He did
not intend to give up.  There was always a way.

He just wished he could discover what it was.

He dozed for a bit, lost in a flow of imaginings that jumbled together
in a wash of faces and voices, teasing him with their disjointed, false
connectings, lies of things that never were and could never be.

He drifted into sleep.

Then a hand came down over his mouth, cutting off his exclamation of
surprise.  A second hand pinned him to the floor.

He struggled, but the grip that held him was unbreakable.

"Quiet, now," a voice whispered in his ear.  "Hush."

Morgan went still.  A hawk-faced man in a Federation uniform was bent
over him, peering into his eyes intently.  The hands released, and the
man sat back.  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and laugh
lines wreathed his narrow face.

"Who are you?"  Morgan asked softly.

"Someone who can get you free of this place if you're smart enough to
do as I say, Morgan Leah."

"You know my name?"

The laugh lines deepened.  "A lucky guess.  Actually, I stumbled in
here by chance.  Can you show me the way out again?"

Morgan stared at him, a tall, gaunt fellow who had the look of a man
who knew what he was about.  The smile he wore seemed wired in place
and there was nothing friendly about it.

Morgan shoved his blanket aside and came to his feet, noticing the way
the other backed off as he did so, always keeping the same amount of
space between them.  Cautious, thought Morgan, like a cat.

" Are you with the Movement?"  he asked the man.

"I'm with myself.  Put this on."

He tossed Morgan some clothing.  When the Highlander examined it, he
found he was holding a Federation uniform.  The stranger disappeared
back into the dark for a moment, then reemerged carrying something
bulky over one shoulder.  He deposited his burden on the pallet with a
grunt.  Morgan started as he realized it was a body.  The stranger
picked up the discarded blanket and draped it over the dead man to make
it look as if he were sleeping.

"It will take them longer this way to discover you're missing," he
whispered with that unnerving smile.

Morgan turned away and dressed as quickly as he could.

The other man beckoned impatiently when he was finished and together
they slipped out through the open cell door.

The corridor without was narrow and empty.  Lamplight brightened the
darkness only marginally.  Morgan had seen nothing of the prisons when
they brought him in, still unconscious from his beating, and he was
immediately lost.  He trailed after the stranger watchfully, following
the passageway as it burrowed through the stone block walls past rows
of cell doors identical to his own, all locked and barred.

They encountered no one.

When they reached the first watch station, it was deserted as well.

There appeared to be no one on duty.  The stranger moved quickly to the
corridor beyond, but Morgan caught a glint of metal blades through a
half-open door to one side.  He slowed, peering in.  Racks of weapons
lined the walls of a small room.  He suddenly remembered the Sword of
Leah.  He did not want to leave without it.

"Wait a minute!"  he whispered to the man ahead.

The stranger turned.  Quickly Morgan pushed at the door.

It gave reluctantly, dragging against something.  Morgan shoved until
there was enough space to get through.  Inside, wedged against the back
of the door, was another dead man.  Morgan swallowed against what he
was feeling and forced himself to search the racks for the Sword of
Leah.

He found it almost immediately, still in its makeshift sheath, hung on
a nail behind a brace of pikes.  He strapped the weapon on hurriedly,
grabbed a broadsword as well, and went out again.

The stranger was waiting.  "No more delays," he said pointedly.

"The shift change comes just after sunrise.  It's almost that now.

Morgan nodded.  They went down a second corridor, a back set of stairs
supported by timbers that creaked and groaned as they descended, and
out through a courtyard.  The stranger knew exactly where he was
going.

There were no guards until they reached a post just inside the walls
and even then they were not challenged.  They passed through the gates
and out of the prison just as the first faint tinges of light began to
appear on the horizon.

The stranger took Morgan down the roadway a short ths tance, then into
a barn through a backdoor where the shadows were so thick the
Highlander had to feel his way.  Inside, the stranger lit a lamp.

Digging under a pile of empty feed sacks, he produced a change of
clothing for each of them, woods garb, indistinguishable from what most
Eastland laborers wore.  They changed wordlessly, then stuffed the
discarded Federation uniforms back beneath the sacks.

The stranger motioned Morgan after him and they went out again into the
first light of the new day.

"A Highlander, are you?"  the stranger asked abruptly as they walked
eastward through the waking village.

Morgan nodded.

"Morgan Leah.  Last name the same as the country.  Your family ruled
the Highlands once, didn't they?"

"Yes," Morgan answered.  His companion seemed more relaxed now, his
long strides slow and easy, though his eyes never stopped moving.

"But the monarchy hasn't existed for many years.

They took a narrow bridge across a sewage-fouled tributary of the
Silver River.  An old woman passed them carrying a small child.  Both
looked hungry.  Morgan glanced over at them.  The stranger did not.

"My name is Pe Ell," he said.  He did not offer his hand.

"Where are we going?"  Morgan asked him.

The corners of the other's mouth tugged upward slightly.

"You'll see."  Then he added, "To meet the lady who sent me to rescue
you.

Morgan thought at once of Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt.  But how would
they know someone like Pe Ell?  The man had already said he was not a
part of the Free-born Movement; it seemed unlikely that he was allied
with the Dwarf Resistance either.  Pe Ell, Morgan thought, was with
exactly who he had said he was with-himself.

But who then was the lady on whose behalf he had come?

They passed down lanes that wound through the Dwarf cottages and shacks
at the edge of Cuthaven, crumbling stone and wood slat structures
failing down around the heads of those who lived within.

Morgan could hear the sluggish flow of the Silver River grow nearer.

The houses separated as the trees thickened and soon there were few to
be seen.  Dwarves at work in their yards and gardens looked up at them
suspiciously.  If Pe Ell noticed, he gave no sign.

Sunlight was breaking through the trees ahead in widening streamers by
the time they reached their destination, a small, well-kept cottage
surrounded by a ragged band of men who had settled in at the edge of
the yard and were in the process of completing breakfast and rolling up
their sleeping gear.  The men whispered among themselves and looked
long and hard at Pe Ell as he approached.  Pe Ell went past them
without speaking, Morgan in tow.  They went up the steps to the front
door of the cottage and inside.  A Dwarf family seated at a small table
greeted them with nods and brief words of welcome.  Pe Ell barely
acknowledged them.  He took Morgan to the back of the cottage and into
a small bedroom and shut the door carefully behind them.

A girl sat on the edge of the bed.

"Thank you, Pe Ell," she said quietly and rose.

Morgan Leah stared.  The girl was stunningly beautiful with small,
perfect features dominated by the blackest eyes the Highlander had ever
seen.  She had long, silver hair that shimmered like captured light,
and a softness to her that invited protection.  She wore simple
clothes-a tunic, pants cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt,
and boots-but the clothes could not begin to disguise the sensuality
and grace of the body beneath.

"Morgan Leah," the girl whispered.

Morgan blinked, suddenly aware that he was staring.  He flushed.

"I am called Quickening," the girl said.  "My father is the King of the
Silver River.  He has sent me from his Gardens into the world of Men to
find a talisman.  I require your help to do so.

Morgan started to respond and stopped, not knowing what to say.

He glanced at Pe Ell, but the other's eyes were on the girl.  Pe Ell
was as mesmerized as he.

Quickening came up to him, and the flush in his face and neck traveled
down his body in a warm rush.  She reached out her hands and placed her
fingers gently on the sides of his face.

He had never felt a touch like hers.  He thought he might give anything
to experience it again.

"Close your eyes, Morgan Leah," she whispered.

He did not question her; he simply did as she asked.  He was
immediately at peace.  He could hear voices conversing somewhere
without, the flow of the waters of the nearby river, the whisper of the
wind, the singing of birds, and the scrape of a garden hoe.  Then
Quickening's fingers tightened marginally against his skin and
everything disappeared in a wash of color.

Morgan Leah floated as if swept away in a dream.  Hazy brightness
surrounded him, but there was no focus to it.  Then the brightness
cleared and the images began.  He saw Quickening enter Culhaven along a
roadway lined with men, women, and children who cheered and called out
to her as she passed, then followed anxiously after.  He watched as she
walked through growing crowds of Dwarves, Southianders, and Gnomes to
the barren stretch of hillside where the Meade Gardens had once
flourished.  It seemed that he became a part of the crowd, standing
with those who had come to see what this girl would do, experiencing
himself their sense of expectancy and hope.  Then she ascended the
hillside, buried her hands in the charred earth, and worked her
wondrous magic.  The earth was transformed before his eyes; the Meade
Gardens were restored.  The colors, smells, and tastes of her miracle
filled the air, and Morgan felt an aching in his chest that was
impossibly sweet.  He began to cry.

The images faded.  He found himself back in the cottage.  He felt her
fingers drop away and he brushed roughly at his eyes with the back of
his hand as he opened them.  She was staring at him.

"Was that real?"  he asked, his voice catching in spite of his resolve
to keep it firm.  "Did that actually happen?  It did, didn't it?  11

"Yes," she answered.

"You brought back the Gardens.  Why?"

Her smile was faint and sweet.  "Because the Dwarves need to have
something to believe in again.  Because they are dying."

Morgan took a deep breath.  "Can you save them, Quickening.

"No, Morgan Leah," she answered, disappointing him, "I cannot."

She turned momentarily into the room's shadows.  "You can, perhaps, one
day.  But for now you must come with me."

The Highlander hesitated, unsure.  "Where?"

She lifted her exquisite face back into the light.  "North, Morgan
Leah.  To Darklin Reach.  To find Walker Boh."

PE ELL STOOD to one side in the little cottage bedroom, momentarily
forgotten.  He didn't like what he was seeing.  He didn't like the way
the girl touched the Highlander or the way the Highlander responded to
it.  She hadn't touched him like that.

It bothered him, too, that she knew the Highlander's name.  She knew
the other man's name as well, this Walker Boh.  She hadn't known his.

She turned to him then, drawing him back into the conversation with
Morgan Leah, telling them both they must travel north to find the third
man.  After they found him they would leave in search of the talisman
she had been sent to find.  She did not tell them what that talisman
was, and neither of them asked.  It was a result of the peculiar effect
she had on them, Pe Ell decided, that they did not question what she
told them, that they simply accepted it.  They believed.  Pe Ell had
never done that.  But he knew instinctively that this girl, this child
of the King of the Silver River, this creature of wondrous magic, did
not lie.  He did not believe she was capable of it.

"I need you to come with me," she said again to the Highlander.

He glanced at Pe Ell.  "Are you coming?"

The way he asked the question pleased Pe Ell.  There was a measure of
wariness in the Highlander's tone of voice.  Perhaps even fear.  He
smiled enigmatically and nodded.  Of course, Highlander, but only to
kill you both when it pleases me, he thought.

The Highlander turned back to the girl and began explaining something
about two old Dwarf ladies he had rescued from the workhouses and how
he needed to know that they were safe because of some promise he had
made to a friend.  He kept staring at the girl as if the sight of her
gave him life.  Pe Ell shook his head.  This one was certainly no
threat to him.  He could not imagine why the girl thought he was
necessary to their recovery of the mysterious talisman.

Quickening told the Highlander that among those who had come with her
to the cottage was one who would be able to discover what had become of
the Dwarf ladies.  He would make certain that they were well.

She would ask him to do so immediately.

"Then if you truly need me, I will come with you," Morgan Leah promised
her.

Pe Ell turned away.  The Highlander was coming because he had no
choice, because the girl had captured him.  He could see it in the
youth's eyes; he would do anything for her.  Pe Ell understood that
feeling.  He shared something of it as well.  The only difference
between them was what they intended to do about it.

Pe Ell wondered again what it would feel like when he finally killed
the girl.  He wondered what he would discover in her eyes.

Quickening guided Morgan toward her bed so that he could rest.  Pe Ell
departed the room in silence and walked out of the cottage into the
light.  He stood there with his eyes closed and let the sun's warmth
bathe his face.

OLL OHMSFORD WAS a prisoner at Southwatch for eight days before he
discovered who had locked him away.

His cell was the whole of his world, a room twenty feet square, high
within the black granite tower, a stoneand-mortar box with a single
metal door that never opened, a window closed off by metal shutters, a
sleeping mat, a wooden bench, and a small table with two chairs.  Light
filtered through the shutters in thin, gray shafts when it was daytime
and disappeared when it was night.  He could peer through the cracks in
the shutters and see the blue waters of the Rainbow Lake and the green
canopy of the trees.  He could catch glimpses of birds flying, cranes
and terns and gulls, and he could hear their solitary cries.

Sometimes he could hear the howl of the wind blowing down out of the
Runne through the canyons that channeled the Mermidon.  Once or twice
he could hear the howling of wolves.

Cooking smells reached him now and then, but they never seemed to
emanate from the food that he was fed.  His food came on a tray shoved
through a hinged flap at the bottom of the iron door, a furtive
delivery that lacked any discernible source.  The food was consumed,
and the trays remained where he stacked them by the door.  There was a
constant humming sound from deep beneath the castle, a sort of
vibration that at first suggested huge machinery, then later something
more akin to an earth tremor.  It carried through the stone of the
tower, and when Coll placed his hands against the walls he could feet
the stone shiver.  Everything was warm, the walls and floor, the door
and window, the stone and mortar and metal.  He didn't know how that
could be with the nights sometimes chill enough to cause the air to
bite, but it was.  Sometimes he thought he could hear footsteps beyond
his door-not when the food was delivered, but at other times when
everything was still and the only other sound was the buzz of insects
in the distant trees.

The footsteps did not approach, but passed on without slowing.

Nor did they seem to have an identifiable source; they might as easily
come from below or above as without.

He could feel himself being watched, not often, but enough so that he
was aware.  He could feel someone's eyes fixed on him, studying him,
waiting perhaps.  He could not determine from where the eyes watched;
it felt as if they watched from everywhere.  He could hear breathing
sometimes, but when he tried to listen for it he could hear only his
own.

He spent most of his time thinking, for there was little else to do.

He could eat and sleep; he could pace his cell and look through the
cracks in the shutters.  He could listen; he could smell and taste the
air.  But thinking was best, he found, an exercise that kept his mind
sharp and free.  His thoughts, at least, were not prisoners.  The
isolation he experienced threatened to overwhelm him, for he was closed
away from everything and everyone he knew, without reason or purpose
that he could discern, and by captors that kept themselves carefully
hidden.

He worried for Par so greatly that at times he nearly wept.  He felt as
if the rest of the world had forgotten him, had passed him by.

Events were happening without him; perhaps everything he once knew had
changed.  Time stretched away in a slow, endless succession of seconds
and minutes and hours and, after a while, days as well.  He was lost in
shadows and half-light and near-silence, his existence empty of
meaning.

Thinking kept him together.

He thought constantly of how he might escape.  The door and window were
solidly seated in the stone of the fortress tower, and the walls and
floor were thick and impenetrable.  He lacked even the smallest digging
tool in any event.  He tried listening for those who patroled without,
but the effort proved futile.  He tried catching sight of those who
delivered his meals, but they never revealed themselves.

Escape seemed impossible.

He thought as well about what he might do to let someone know he was
there.  He could force a bit of cloth or a scrap of paper with a
message scrawled on it through the cracks in the shutters of the
window, but to what end?  The wind would likely carry it away to the
lake or the mountains and no one would ever find it.  Or at least not
in time to make any difference.  He thought he might yell, but he knew
he was so far up and away from any travelers that they would never hear
him.  He peered at the countryside unfailingly when it was light and
never saw a single person.  He felt himself to be completely alone.

He turned his thoughts finally to envisioning what was taking place
beyond his door.  He tried using his senses and when that failed, his
imagination.  His captors assumed multiple identities and behavioral
patterns.  Plots and conspiracies sprang to life, fleshed out with the
details of their involvement of him.

Par and Morgan, Padishar Creel and Damson Rhee, Dwarves, Elves, and
Southlanders alike came to the black tower to free him.  Brave rescue
parties sallied forth.  But all efforts failed.  No one could reach
him.  Eventually, everyone gave up trying.  Beyond the walls of
Southwatch, life went on, uncaring.

After a week of this solitary existence, Coll Ohmsford began to
despair.

Then, on the eighth day of his captivity, Rimmer Dall appeared.

It was late afternoon, gray and rainy, storm clouds low and heavy
across the skies, lightning a wicked spider's web flashing through the
creases, thunder rolling out of the darkness in long, booming peals.

The summer air was thick with smells brought alive by the damp, and it
felt chill within Coll's cell.  He stood close against the shuttered
window, peering out though the cracks in the fittings, listening to the
sound of the Mermidon as it churned through the canyon rocks below.

When he heard the lock on the door to his room release he did not turn
at first, certain that he must be mistaken.  Then he saw the door begin
to open, caught sight of the movement out of the corner of his eye, and
wheeled about instantly.

A cloaked form appeared, tall and dark and forbidding, lacking face or
limbs, seemingly a wraith come out of the night.

Coll's first thought was of the Shadowen, and he dropped into a
protective crouch, frantically searching his suddenly diminished cell
for a weapon with which to defend himself.

"Don't be frightened, Valeman," the wraith soothed in an oddly
familiar, whispery voice.  "You are in no danger here."

The wraith closed the door behind it and stepped into the room's faint
light.  Coll saw by turns the black clothing marked with a white wolf's
head, the left hand gloved to the elbow, and the rawboned, narrow face
with its distinctive reddish beard.

Rimmer Dail.

Instantly Coll thought of the circumstances of his capture.

He had gone with Par, Damson, and the Mole through the tunnels beneath
Tyrsis into the abandoned palace of the old city's kings, and from
there the Ohmsford brothers had gone on alone into the Pit in search of
the missing Sword of Shannara.  He had stood guard outside the entry to
the vault that was supposed to contain the Sword, keeping watch while
his brother went inside.

It was the last time he had seen Par.  He had been seized from behind,
rendered unconscious, and spirited away.  Until now he had not known
who was responsible.  It made sense that it should be Rimmer Dail, the
man who had come for them weeks ago in Varfleet and hunted them ever
since across the length and breadth of the Four Lands.

The First Seeker moved to within a few feet of Coll and stopped.

His craggy face was calm and reassuring.  "Are you rested?"

"That's a stupid question," Coll answered before he could think better
of it.  "Where's my brother?"

Rimmer Dail shrugged.  "I don't know.  When I last saw him he was
carrying the Sword of Shannara from its vault."

Coll stared.  "You were there-inside?"

"I was."

"And you let Par take the Sword of Shannara?  You just let him walk
away with it?"

"Why not?  It belongs to him."

"You want me to believe," Coll said carefully, "that you don't care if
he has possession of the Sword, that it doesn't matter to you?"

"Not in the way you think."

Coll paused.  "So you let Par go, but you took me prisoner.

Is that right?"

"It is."

Coll shook his head.  "Why?"

"To protect you."

Coll laughed.  "From what?  Freedom of choice?"

"From your brother."

"From Par?  You must think me the biggest foot who ever lived!"

The big man folded his arms across his chest comfortably.

"To be honest with you, there is more to it than just offering you
protection.  You are a prisoner for another reason as well.

Sooner or later, your brother will come looking for you.  When he does,
I want another chance to talk with him.  Keeping you here assures me
that I will have that chance."

" hat really happened," Coll snapped angrily, "is that you cauiht me,
but Par escaped!  He found the Sword of Shannara and slipped past you
somehow and now you're using me as bait to trap him.  Well, it won't
work.  Par's smarter than that."

Rimmer Dail shook his head.  "If I was able to capture you at the
entrance to the vault, how is it that your brother managed to escape?

Answer me that?"  He waited a moment, then moved over to the table with
its wooden chairs and seated himself.  "I'll tell you the truth of
things, Coll Ohmsford, if you'll give me a chance.  Will you?"

Coll studied the other's face wordlessly for a moment, then shrugged.

What did he have to lose?  He stayed where he was, standing,
deliberately measuring the distance between them.

Rimmer Dail nodded.  "Let's begin with the Shadowen.  The Shadowen are
not what you have been led to believe.  They are not monsters, not
wraiths whose only purpose is to destroy the races, whose very presence
has sickened the Four Lands.  They are victims, for the most part.

They are men, women and children who possess some measure of the faerie
magic.  They are the result of man's evolution through generations in
which the magic was used.  The Federation hunts them like animals.  You
saw the poor creatures trapped within the Pit.  Do you know what they
are?  They are Shadowen whom the Federation has imprisoned and starved
into madness, changing them so that they have become worse than
animals.  You saw as well the woodswoman and the giant on your journey
to Culhaven.  What they are is not their fault."

The gloved hand lifted quickly as Coll started to speak.

"Valeman, hear me out.  You wonder how it is that I know so much about
you.  I will explain if you will just be patient."

The hand came down again.  "I became First Seeker in order to hunt the
Shadowen-not to harm or imprison them, but to warn them, to get them to
safety.  That was why I came to you in Varfleet-to see that you and
your brother were protected.  I did not have the chance to do so.

I have been searching for you ever since to explain what I know.

I thought that you might return to the Vale and so placed your parents
under my protection.  I believed that if f, could reach you first,
before the Federation found you in soene other way, you would be
safe."

"I don't believe any of this," Coll interjected coldly.

Rimmer Dall ignored him.  "Valeman, you have been lied to from the
beginning.  That old man, the one who calls himself Cogline, told you
the Shadowen were the enemy.  The shade of Allanon warned you at the
Hadeshorn in the Valley of Shale that the Shadowen must be destroyed.

Retrieve the lost magics of the old world, you were advised.  Find the
Sword of Shannara.

Find the missing Elfstones.  Find lost Paranor and bring back the
Druids.  But were you told what any of this would accomplish?

Of course not.  Because the truth of the matter is that you are not
supposed to know.  If you did, you would abandon this business at
once.

The Druids care nothing for you and your kin and never have.

They are interested only in regaining the power they lost when Allanon
died.  Bring them back, restore their magics, and they will again
control the destiny of the Races.

This is what they work for, Coll Ohmsford.  The Federation,
unwittingly, ignorantly, helps them.  The Shadowen provide the perfect
victim for both to prey upon.  Your uncle recognized the truth of
things.  He saw that Allanon sought to manipulate him, to induce him to
undertake a quest that would benefit no one.  He warned you all; he
refused to be part of the Druid madness.  He was right.  The danger is
far greater than you realize."

He leaned forward.  "I told all of this to your brother when he came
into the vault after the Sword of Shannara.  I was waiting there for
him-had been waiting in fact for several days.  I knew he would come
back for the Sword.  He had to; he couldn't help himself.  That's what
having the magic does to you.  I know.

I have the magic, too."

He stood up suddenly, and Coll shrank back in alarm.  The black-clad
body began to shimmer in the gloom as if translucent.

Then it seemed to come apart, and Coll heard himself gasp.  The dark
form of a Shadowen lifted slowly out of Rimmer Dall's body, red eyes
glinting, hung suspended in the air for a moment, and settled back
again.

The First Seeker smiled coldly.  "I am a Shadowen, you see.

All of the Seekers are Shadowen, Ironic, isn't it?  The Federation
doesn't know.  They believe us ordinary men, nothing more, men who
serve their twisted interests, who seek as they do to rid the land of
magic.  They are fools.  Magic isn't the enemy of the people.  They
are.  And the Druids.  And any who would keep men and women from being
who and what they must."

One finger pointed at Coll like a dagger.  "I told this to your
brother, and I told him one thing more.  I told him that he,'too, is a
Shadowen.  Ah, you still don't believe me, do you?  But listen, now.

Par Ohmsford is in truth a Shadowen, whether either of you cares to
admit it or not.  So is Walker Boh.  So is anyone who possesses real
magic.  That's what we are, all of usShadowen.  We are sane, rational,
and for the most part ordinary men, women, and children until we become
hunted and imprisoned and driven mad by fools like the Federation.

Then the magic overwhelms us and we become animals, like the woodswoman
and the giant, like the things in the Pit."

Coll was shaking his head steadily.  "No.  This is all a lie."

"How is it that I know so much about you, do you think?"

Rimmer Dall persisted, his voice maddeningly calm, even now.

"I know all about your flight south down the Mermidon, your encounters
with the woodswoman and the old man, how you met with that Highlander
and persuaded him to join you, how you journeyed to Culhaven, then to
Hearthstone, and finally to the Hadeshorn.  I know of the Dwarves and
Walker Boh.  I know of your cousin Wren Ohmsford.  I know of the
outlaws and Padishar Creel and the girl and all the rest.

I knew when you were going down into the Pit and tried to have you
stopped.  I knew that you would return and waited there for you.  How,
Vateman?  Tell me."

"A spy in the outlaw camp, Coll answered, suddenly unsure.

"Who?"

Coll hesitated.  "I don't know."

"Then I will tell you.  The spy was your brother."

Coll stared.

Ily our brother, though he didn't realize it.  Par is a ShadOwen, and I
sometimes know what other Shadowen think.  When they use their magic,
my own responds.  It reveals to me their thoughts.  When your brother
used the wishsong, it let me know what he was thinking.  That was how I
found you.  But Par's use of his magic alerted others as well.

Enemies.  That was why the Gnawl tracked you in the Wolfsktaag and the
Spider Gnomes at Hearthstone.

"Think, Valeman!  All that has befallen you has been the result of your
own doing.  I did not seek to harm you in Tyrsis.

It was Par's decision to go down into the Pit that brought you to
grief.  I did not withhold the Sword of Shannara.  Yes, I kept it
hidden-but only to force Par to come to me so that I might save him."

Coll stiffened.  "What do you mean?"

Rimmer Dall's pale eyes were intense.  "I told you that the reason I
brought you here was to protect you from your brother.

I spoke the truth.  The magic of a Shadowen is as two-edged as any
sword.  You have surely thought the same thing many times.

It can be either salvation or curse.  It can work to help or to hurt.

But it is more complicated than that.  A Shadowen can be affected by
the stresses that use of the magic demands, particularly when he is
threatened or hunted.  The magic can grow frayed; it can escape.

Remember the creatures in the Pit?  Remember those you encountered on
your travels?  What do you think happened to them?  Your brother has
the wishsong as his magic.  But the wishsong is only a thin shell
covering the magic that lies beneath-a magic more powerful than your
brother imagines.  It begins to grow stronger as he runs and hides and
tries to keep himself safe.  If I don't reach him in time, if he
continues to ignore my warnings, that magic will consume him."

A long silence followed.  Coll reflected silently.  He remembered Par
telling him that he believed the magic of the wishsong was capable of
doing much more than creating images, that he could feel it seeking a
release.  He remembered the way it had responded during their first
venture into the Pit, casting a light through the gloom, illuminating
the scroll of the vault.  He thought of the creatures trapped there,
become monsters and demons.

He wondered, just for an instant, if Rimmer Dall might not be telling
him the truth.

The First Seeker came forward a single step and stopped.

"Think about it, Coll Ohmsford," he suggested softly.  He was big and
dark against the gloom and frightening to took at.  But his voice was
reassuring.  "Reason it through.  You will have time enough to do so.

I intend that you remain here until your brother comes looking for you
or he uses his magic.  One way or the other, I have to find him and
warn him.  I have to protect you both and those with whom you will
eventually come in contact.  Help me.  We must find a way to reach your
brother.

We must try.  I know you don't believe me now, but that will change."

Coll shook his head.  "I don't think so."

Outside, distant and low, thunder rumbled and faded into the hissing of
the rain.  "So many lies have been told to you by others," Rimmer Dail
said.  "in time, you will see."

He moved back toward the cell door and stopped.  "You have been kept in
this room long enough.  You may leave during the day.  Just knock on
the door when you wish to go out.  Go down to the exercise yard and
practice with the weapons.  Someone will be there to help you.

You should have some training.

You need to learn better how to protect yourself.  Make no mistake,
though.  You cannot leave.  At night you will be locked in again.  I
wish it could be otherwise, but it cannot.  Too much is at stake."

He paused.  "I have a short visit to make, a journey of several days.

Another requires my attention.  When I return, we will talk again."

He seemed to consider Coll for a long moment, as if measuring him for
something, then turned, and went out the way he had come.  Coll watched
him go, then walked back to the shuttered window and stood looking out
again into the rain.

HE SLEPT POORLY that night, plagued by dreams of dark things that bore
his brother's face, haunted when he came awake by what he had been
told.  Nonsense, was his first thought.  Lies.  But his instincts told
him that some part of it, at least, was trueand that, in turn,
suggested the unpleasant possibility that it might all be.  Par a
Shadowen.  The magic a weapon that could destroy him.  Both of them
threatened by dark forces beyond their understanding or control.

He no longer knew what to believe.

When he woke, he rapped on the door.  A black-cloaked Seeker released
him and walked him down to the exercise yard.

Another, a gruff fellow with a shaven head and knots and scars all over
him, offered to spar with him.  Using padded cudgels, they trained
through the morning.  Coll sweated and strained.  It felt good to make
use of his body again.

Later, alone in his cell, the afternoon clearing as the clouds thinned
and sunshine broke through to the distant south, he evaluated his new
situation.  He was a prisoner still, but not so much so.  He was no
longer confined to a single room.  He had been offered the means to
stay fit and strong.  He did not feel as threatened.

Whether or not Rimmer Dail was playing mind games with him remained to
be seen, of course.  In any case, the First Seeker had made a
mistake.

He had given Coll Ohmsford the opportunity to explore Southwatch.

And the further opportunity to find a way to escape.

ALKER BOH LANGUISHED at Hearthstone in a prison far more forbidding
than the one that had secured Morgan Leah.  He had returned from
Storlock filled with a fiery determination to cure the sickness that
attacked him, to drive from his body the poison that the Asphim had
injected into it, and to heal himself as even the Stors could not.

Within a week he had changed completely, grown dispirited and bitter,
frightened that his hopes had been in vain, that he could not save
himself after all.  His days were long, heat-filled stretches of time
in which he wandered the valley lost in thought, desperately trying to
reason out what form of magic it would take to stem the poison's
flow.

His nights were empty and brooding, the dark hours expended in a
silent, futile effort to implement his ideas.

Nothing worked.

He tried a little of everything.  He began with a series of mind sets,
inward delvings of his own magic that were designed to dissolve, break
apart, turn back, or at least slow the poison I s advance.  None of
these occurred.  He used channeling of the magic in the form of an
assault, the equivalent of an inner summoning of the fire that he
sometimes used to protect and defend.

The channeling could not seem to find a ready source; it scattered and
lost its potency.  He attempted spells and conjurings from the lore he
had accumulated over the years, both that which was innate and that he
had been taught.  All failed.  He resorted finally to the chemicals and
powders that Cogline relied upon, the sciences of the old world brought
into the new.  He attacked the stone ruin of his arm and tried to burn
it to the flesh so that cauterization might take place.  He tried
healing potions that were absorbed through the skin and permeated the
stone.  He used magnetic and electric fields.  He used antitoxins.

These, too, failed.  The poison was too strong.  It could not be
overcome.  It continued to work its way through his system, slowly
killing him.

Rumor stayed at his side almost constantly, trailing silently after him
on his long daytime walks, stretching out next to him in the darkness
of his room as he struggled in vain to employ the magic in a way that
would allow him to survive.  The giant moor cat seemed to sense what
was happening to Walker; it watched him as if fearful he might
disappear at any mombnt, as if by watching closely it might somehow
protect against this unseen thing that threatened.  The luminous yellow
eyes were always there, regarding him with intelligence and concern,
and Walker found himself staring into them hopefully, searching for the
answers he could find nowhere else.

Cogline, too, did what he could to help Walker in his struggle.

Like the moor cat, he kept watch, albeit at a somewhat greater
distance, afraid that Walker would not tolerate it if he came too close
or stayed too long.  There was still an antagonism between the two that
would not be dispelled.  It was difficult for them to remain in each
other's presence for more than a few minutes at a time.  Cogline
offered what advice he could, mixing powders and potions at Walker's
request, administering salves and healing medicines, suggesting forms
of magic he thought might help.  Mostly he provided what little
reassurance he could that an antidote would be found.

Walker, though he would not admit it to the other, was grateful for
that reassurance.  For the first time in many years, he did not want to
be alone.  He had never given much thought to his own death, always
convinced it was still far away and he would be prepared for it in any
case when it arrived.  He discovered now that he had been wrong on both
counts.  He was angry and frightened and confused; his emotions
careened about inside him like stones tossed in a wagon bed, the debris
of some emptied load.  He fought to maintain his sense of balance, a
belief in himself, some small measure of hope, but without the
steadying presence of Cogline he would have been lost.  The old man's
face and voice, his movements, his idiosyncrasies, all so familiar,
were handholds on the cliff to which Walker Boh clung, and they kept
him from dropping away completely.  He had known Cogline a long time;
in the absence of Par and Coll, and to a lesser extent Wren, Cogline
was his only link with the past-a past that he had in turn scorned,
reviled, and finally cast away entirely, a past he was now desperate to
regain as it was his link to the use of the magic that could save
him.

Had he not been so quick to disparage it, so anxious to be rid of its
influence, had he taken more time to understand it, to learn from it,
to master it and make it serve his needs, he might not be struggling so
hard now to stay alive.

But the past is always irretrievable, and so Walker Bob found it
here.

Yet there was some comfort to be taken from the continued presence of
the old man who had given him what understanding of the magic he had.

With his future become so shockingly uncertain, he discovered a strange
and compelling need to reach out to those things that remained his from
the past.  The most immediate of those was Cogline.

Cogline had come to him,during the second year of his solitary life at
Hearthstone.  Risse had been dead fifteen years, Kenner five.

He had been on his own ever since despite the efforts of Jaralan and
Mirianna Ohmsford to make him a part of their family, an outcast from
everyone because his magic would not let him be otherwise.  While it
had disappeared with the coming of age of all the Ohmsfords since Brin,
it did not do so in him.  Rather, it grew stronger, more insistent,
more uncontrollable.  It was bad enough when he lived in Shady Vale; it
became intolerable at Hearthstone.  It began to manifest itself in new
ways-unwanted perceptions, strange foresights, harsh sensory
recognition, and frightening exhibitions of raw power that threatened
to shatter him.  He could not seem to master them.

He didn't understand them to begin with and therefore could not find a
way to decipher their workings.  It was best that he was alone; no one
would have been safe around him.  He found his sanity slipping away.

Cogline changed everything.  He came out of the trees one afternoon,
materializing from the mist that spilled down off the Wolfsktaag at
autumn's close, a little old man with robes that hung precariously on
his stick frame, wild unkempt hair, and sharp knowing eyes.  Rumor was
with him, a massive, immutable black presence that seemed to foreshadow
the change that was to come into the Dark Uncle's life.  Cogline
related to Walker the history of his life from the days of Bremen and
the Druid Council to the present, a thousand years of time.  It was a
straightforward telling that did not beg for acceptance but demanded
it.  Strangely enough, Walker complied.  He sensed that this wild and
improbable tale was the truth.  He knew the stories of Cogline from the
time of Brin Ohmsford, and this old man was exactly who and what the
stories had described.

"I was sleeping the Druid sleep," Cogline explained at one point, "or I
would have come sooner.  I had not thought it was time yet, but the
magic that resides within you, brought to life with your arrival at
manhood, tells me that it is.  Allanon planned it so when he gave the
blood trust to Brin; there would come a time when the magic would be
needed again and one among the Ohmsfords would be required to wield
it.

I think that perhaps you are meant to be that one, Walker.  If so, you
will need my help in understanding how the magic works."

Walker was filled with misgivings, but recognized that the old man
might be able to show him how to bring the magic under control.  He
needed that control desperately.  He was willing to take a chance that
Cogline could give it to him.

Cogline stayed with him for the better part of three years.

He revealed to Walker as a teacher to a student the lore of the Druids,
the keys that would unlock the doors of understanding.

He taught the ways of Bremen and Allanon, of going within to harness
the magic's raw power, of working mind sets so that the power could be
channeled and not loosed haphazardly.  Walker had some knowledge to
begin with; he had lived with the magic for many years and learned
something of the self-denial and restraint that was necessary to
survive its demands.  Cogline expanded on that knowledge, advancing it
into areas that Walker had not thought to go, instructing on methods he
had not believed possible.  Slowly, gradually, Walker began to find
that the magic no longer governed his life; unpredictability gave way
to self-control.  Walker began to master himself.

Cogline instructed on the sciences of the old world as well, the
chemicals and potions that he had developed and utilized over the
years, the powders that burned through metal and exploded like fire,
and the solutions that changed the form of both liquids and solids.

Another set of doors opened for Walker; he discovered an entirely
different form of power.  His curiosity was such that he began to
explore a combining of the two-old world and new world, a blending of
magic and science that no one had ever successfully tried.  He
proceeded slowly, cautiously, determined that he would not become
another of the victims that the power had claimed over the years, from
the men of the old world who had brought about the Great Wars to the
rebel Druid Brona, his Skull Bearers, and the Mord Wraiths who had
sparked the Wars of the Races.

Then for some reason his thinking changed.  Perhaps it was the
exhilaration he felt when wielding the magic.  Perhaps it was the
insatiable need to know more.  Whatever it was, he came to believe that
complete mastery over the magic was not possible, that no matter how
diligently he went about protecting himself against its adverse
effects, the power would eventually claim him.  His attitude toward
using it reversed itself overnight.

He tried to back away from it, to thrust it from him.  His dilemma was
enormous; he sought to distance himself from the magic yet could not do
so successfully because it was an integral part of him.  Cogline saw
what was happening and tried to reason with him.  Walker refused to
listen, wondering all of a sudden why it was that Cogline had come to
him in the first place, no longer believing it was simply to help.  An
effort was being made to manipulate him, a Druidic conspiracy that
could be traced all the way back to the time of Shea Ohmsford.  He
would not be a part of it.  He quarreled with Cogline, then fought.  In
the end, Cogline went away.

He came back, of course, over the years.  But Walker would no longer
accept instruction on use of the magic, fearing that further knowledge
would result in an erosion of the control he had worked so hard to
gain, that enhancement would lead to usurpation.  Better simply to rely
on what understanding he had, limited but manageable, and keep apart
from the Races as he had planned from the first.  Cogline could come
and go, they could maintain their uneasy alliance, but he would not
give himself over to the ways of Druids or once-Druids or anyone
else.

He would be his own person until the end.

And now that end had come, and he was no longer so sure of the path he
had chosen to take.  Death had arrived to claim him, and had he not
distanced himself so from the magic he might have delayed its arrival a
bit longer.  Admission of the possibility required swallowing a bitter
dose of pride.  It was harsh to second-guess himself so, but it could
not be avoided.

Walker Bob had never in his life shied away from the truth; he refused
to begin doing so now.

On the second week of his return from Storlock, sitting before the fire
in the early evening hours, the pain of his sickness a constant
reminder of things left undone, he said to Cogline, who was somewhere
in the shadows behind rummaging through the books he kept at the
cottage for his own use, "Come sit with me, old man."

He said it kindly, wearily, and Cogline came without argument, seating
himself at Walker's elbow.  Together they stared into the fire's bright
glow.

"I am dying," Walker said after a time.  "I have tried everything to
dispel the poison, and nothing has worked.  Even my magic has failed.

And your science.  We have to accept what that means.  I intend to keep
working to prevent it, but it seems that I will not survive."  He
shifted his arm uncomfortably against his side, a stone weight that
worked relentlessly to pull him down, to make an end of him.  "There
are things I need to say to you before I die."

Cogline turned toward him and started to speak, but Walker shook his
head.  "I have embittered myself against you without reasonable
cause.

I have been unkind to you when you have been more than kind to me.  I
am sorry for that."

He looked at the old man.  "I was afraid of what the magic would do to
me if I continued to give myself over to it; I am still afraid.

I have not changed my thinking completely.  I still believe that the
Druids use the Ohmsfords for their own purposes, that they tell us what
they wish and direct us as they choose.  It is a hard thing for me to
accept, that I should be made their cat's-paw.  But I was wrong to
judge you one of them.

Your purpose has not been theirs.  It has been your own."

"As much as any purpose is mine and not one of circumstance and fate,"
Cogline said, and his face was sad.  "We use so many words to describe
what happens to us, and it all amounts to the same thing.  We live out
our lives as we are meant to live them-with some choice, with some
chance, but mostly as a result of the persons we are."  He shook his
head.  "Who is to say that I am any freer of the Druids and their
manipulations than you, Walker?  Allanon came to me in the same way as
he did to you, young Par and Wren, and made me his.  I cannot claim
otherwise."

Walker nodded.  "Nevertheless, I have been harsh with you and I wish I
had not been.  I wanted you to be the enemy because you were a
flesh-and-blood person, not a Druid dead and gone or an unseen magic,
and I could strike out at you.  I wanted you to be the source of the
fear I felt.  It made things easier for me if I thought of you that
way."

Cogline shrugged.  "Do not apologize.  The magic is a difficult burden
for any to bear, but more so for you."  He paused.

"I don't believe you will ever be free of it."

"Except in death," Walker said.

"if death comes as swiftly as you think it will."  The old eyes
blinked.  "Would Allanon establish a trust that could be thwarted so
easily?  Would he risk a complete undoing of his work on the chance
that you might die too soon?"

Walker hesitated.  "Even Druids can be wrong in their judgments."

"In this judgment?"

"Perhaps the timing was wrong.  Another besides myself was meant to
possess the magic beyond youth.  I am the mistaken recipient.

Cogline, what can possibly save me now?  What is there left to try?"

The old man shook his head.  "I do not know, Walker.  But I sense that
there is something."

They were silent then.  Rumor, stretched out comfortably before the
fire, lifted his head to check on Walker, and then let I 0 2 it drop
again.  The wood in the fireplace snapped loudly, and a whiff of smoke
tinged the air of the room.

"So you think the Druids are not finished with me yet?"

Walker said finally.  "You think they will not let me give up my
life?"

Cogline did not reply at once.  Then he said, "I think you will
determine what is to become of you, Walker.  I have always thought
that.  What you lack is the ability to recognize what you are meant to
do.  Or at least an acceptance of it."

Walker felt a chill run through him.  The old man's words echoed
Allanon's.  He knew what they meant.  That he was to acknowledge that
Brin Ohmsford's trust was meant for him, that he was to don the magic's
armor and go forth into battle-like some invincible warrior brought
forth out of time.  That he was to destroy the Shadowen.

A dying man?

How?

The silence returned, and this time he did not break it.

THREE DAYS LATER Walker's condition took a turn for the worse The
medicines of the Stors and the ministerings of Cogline sud denly gave
way before the onslaught of the poison.  Walker woke feverish and sick,
barely able to rise.  He ate breakfast, walked out onto the porch to
enjoy the warmth of the sun, and collapsed.

He remembered only snatches of what happened for several days after
that.  Cogline put him back to bed and bathed him with cold cloths
while the poison's fever raged within him, an unquenchable fire.

He drank liquids but could not eat.  He dreamed constantly.  An endless
mirage of vile, frightening creatures paraded themselves before him,
threatening him as he stood helpless, stripping him of his sanity.

He fought back against them as best he could, but he lacked the
necessary weapons.

Whatever he brought to bear the monsters withstood.  In the end, he
simply gave himself over to them and drifted in black sleep.

From time to time he came awake and when he did so Cogline was always
there.  It was the old man's reassuring presence that saved him once
again, a lifeline to which he clung, pulling I 0 3 him back from the
oblivion into which he might otherwise have been swept.  The gnarled
hands reached out to him, sometimes gripping as if to hold him fast,
sometimes stroking as if he were a child in need of comfort.  The
familiar voice soothed him, speaking words without meaning but filled
with warmth.  He could feel the other beside him, always near, waiting
for him to wake.

"You are not meant to die, Walker Boh," he thought he heard more than
once, though he could not be certain.

Sometimes he saw the old man's face bending close, leathery skin
wrinkled and seamed, wispy hair and beard gray and disheveled, eyes
bright and filled with understanding.  He could smell the other, a
forest tree with ancient limbs and trunk, but leaves as fresh and new
as spring.  When the sickness threatened to overwhelm him, Cogline was
there to lift him free.  It was because of the old man that he did not
give up, that he fought back against the effects of the poison and
willed himself to recover.

On the fourth day he awoke at midday and took some soup.

The poison had been arrested temporarily, the medicines and
ministerings and Walker's own will to survive taking command once
more.

Walker forced himself to explore the devastation of his shattered
arm.

The poison had progressed.  His arm was turned to stone almost to the
shoulder.

He wept that night in rage and frustration.  Before he fell asleep he
was aware of Cogline standing over him, a fragile presence against the
vast, inexorable dark, telling him quietly that all would be well.

HE AWOKE AGAIN in the slow, aimless hours between midnight and dawn
when time seems to have lost its way.  It was instinct that woke him, a
sense that something was impossibly wrong.  He struggled up on one
elbow, weak and disoriented, unable to pinpoint the source of his
trepidation.  An odd, unidentifiable sound rose out of the night's
stillness, a buzz of activity from somewhere without that sleep and
sickness rendered indistinct.  His breathing was ragged as he pushed
himself into a I 0 4 sitting position, shivering beneath his bedclothes
against the chill of the air.

Light flared sharply, suddenly visible through the breaks in his
curtained window.

He heard voices.  No, he thought anxiously.  Not voices.

Guttural, inhuman sounds.

It took what strength he had to crawl from the bedside to the window,
working his way slowly and painfully through fatigue and fever.

He kept still, aware of a need for caution, sensing that he should not
reveal himself.  Without, the sounds had risen, and an overpowering
smell of decay had descended over everything.

Groping, he found the windowsill before him and pulled himself level
with its edge.

What he saw through the part in the curtains turned his stomach to
ice.

COGLINE AWOKE when Rumor nudged him with his face, a rough, urgent
shove that brought the old man upright instantly.  He had not gone to
bed until well after midnight, buried in his books of old world
science, fighting to discover some means by which Walker Boh's life
could be saved.  Eventually he had fallen asleep in his chair before
the fire, the book he was perusing still open in his lap, and it was
there that Rumor found him.

"Confound it, cat," he muttered.

His first thought was that something had happened to Walker.  Then he
heard the sounds, faint still, but growing louder.  Growls and snarls
and hisses.  Animal sounds.  And no effort being made to disguise their
coming.

He pushed himself to his feet, taking a moment to wipe the sleep from
his eyes.  A single lamp burned at the dining table; the fire in the
hearth had gone out.  Cogline drew his robes close and shuffled toward
the front door, uneasy, anxious to discover what was happening.

Rumor went with him, moving ahead.  The fur along the ridge of his back
bristled, and his muzzle was drawn back to expose his teeth.

Whatever was out there, the moor cat didn't like it.

Cogline opened the door and stepped out onto the covered porch that
fronted the cottage.  The sky was clear and depthless.

Moonlight flooded down through the trees, bathing the valley in white
luminescence.  The air was cool and brought Cogline fully awake.

He stopped at the edge of the porch and stared.

Dozens of pairs of tiny red lights blinked at him from out of the
shadows of the forest, a vast scattering of delicate scarlet blossoms
that shone in the black.  They were everywhere, it seemed, ringing the
cottage and its clearing.

Cogline squinted to better make them out.  Then he realized that they
were eyes.

He jumped as something moved amid the eyes.  It was a man dressed in a
black uniform with the silver insignia of a wolf's head sewn on his
breast.  Cogline saw him clearly as he stepped into the moonlight, big
and rawboned with a face that was hollowed and pitted and eyes that
were empty of life.

Rimmer Dall, he thought at once and experienced a terrible sinking
feeling.

"Old man," the other said, and his voice was a grating whis per.

Cogline did not respond, staring fixedly at the other, forcing himself
to keep from looking to his right, to where the window to Walker's
bedroom stood open, to where Walker slept.  Fear and anger raced
through him, and a voice within screamed at him to run, to flee for his
life.  Quickly, it warned.  Wake Walker.

Help him escape!

But he knew it was already too late for that.

He had known for some time now that it would be.

"We are here for you, old man," whispered Rimmer Dal], my friends and
I."  He motioned, and the creatures with him began to edge into the
light, one after another, horrors all, Shadowen.  Some were misshapen
creatures like the woodswoman he had chased from the camp of Par and
Coll Ohmsford weeks ago; some had the took of dogs or wolves, bent down
on all fours, covered with hair, their faces twisted into animal
muzzles, teeth and claws showing.  The sounds they made suggested that
they were anxious to feed.

"Failures," their leader said.  "Men who could not rise above their
weaknesses.  They serve a better purpose now."  He came I 0 6 forward a
step.  "You are the last, old man-the last who stands against me.  All
the Shannara children are gone, swept from the earth.

You are all that remains, a poor once-Druid with no one to save him."

The lines that etched Cogline's face deepened.  "is that so?"  he
said.

"Killed them all, did you?"  Rimmer Dail stared at him.

Not half a chance of it, Cogline decided instantly.  The truth is he
hasn't killed a one, just wants me to think he has.  "And you came all
this way to tell me about it, did you?"  he said.

"I came to put an end to you," Rimmer Dail replied.

Well, there you have it, the old man thought.  Whatever the First
Seeker had managed to do about the Shannara children, it wasn't enough;
so now he had come after Cogline as well, easier prey, perhaps.  The
old man almost smiled.  To think it had all come down to this.  Well,
it wasn't as if he hadn't known.  Allanon had warned him weeks ago,
warned him in fact when he'd summoned him to retrieve the Druid History
from Paranor.  Oh, he hadn't told Walker, of course.  He had thought
about it, but hadn't done it.  There just didn't seem to be any
point.

Know this, Cogline, the shade had intoned, deep-voiced, prophetic.

I have read the netberworld signs; your time in this world is nearly
finisbed.  Deatb stalks you and she is an implacable buntress.  Wben
next you see the face of Rimmer Dail, she will have found you.

Remember, tben.  Wben that time comes, take back the Druid History from
Walker Bob and bold it to you as if it were your life.  Do not release
it.  Do not give it up.  Remember, Cogline.

Remember.

Cogline collected his thoughts.  The Druid History rested within a
niche in the stone fireplace inside the cottage, right where Walker had
hidden it.

Remember.

He sighed wearily, resignedly.  He'd asked questions, of course, but
the shade had given no answers.  Very like Allanon.

It was enough that Cogline knew what was coming, it seemed.

It wasn't necessary that he know the particulars.

Rumor snarled, his fur standing on end all over.  He was crouched
protectively before the old man, and Cogline knew there was no way to
save the big cat.  Rumor would never leave him.  He shook his head.

Well.  An odd sense of calm settled over him.  His thoughts were quite
clear.  The Shadowen had come for him; they knew nothing at all about
Walker Boh being there.  That was the way he intended to keep it.

His brow furrowed.  Would the Druid History, if he could reach it, aid
him in this?

His eyes found Rimmer Dall's.  This time he did smile, "I don't think
there's enough of you to do the job," he said.

His arm swept up and silver dust flew at the First Seeker, bursting
into flame as it struck him.  Rimmer Dall screamed in fury and
staggered away, and the creatures with him attacked.

They came at Cogline from everywhere, but Rumor met them with a lunge,
stopped them short of the porch and tore the foremost to pieces.

Cogline flung handfuls of the silver dust at his would-be destroyers
and whole lines of them were set ablaze.

The Shadowen screeched and howled, blundering into one another as they
sought first to attack, then to escape.  Bodies lurched wildly through
the moonlight, filling the clearing with burning limbs.  They began
attacking each other.  They died by the dozens.  Easy prey, do they
tbink!  Cogline experienced a wild, perverse elation as he flung back
his robes and sent the night exploding into white brilliance.

For an impossible moment, he thought he might actually survive.

But then Rimmer Dall reappeared, too powerful to be overcome by
Cogline's small magic, and lashed out with fire of his own at the
creatures he commanded, at his dogs and wolves and half-humans, at his
near-mindless brutes.  The Shadowen-kind, terrified of him, attacked in
a renewed frenzy of hate and anger.

This time they would not be driven off.  Rumor savaged the first wave,
quick and huge amid their smaller forms, and then they were all over
him, a maelstrom of teeth and claws.  Cogline could do nothing to help
the gallant cat; even with the silver dust exploding all through them,
the Shadowen came on.  Rumor slowly began to give ground.

Despairing, Cogline used the last of his powder, dashing handfuls to
the earth, igniting a wall of flame that for just an instant brought a
halt to the beasts' advance.  Swiftly he darted inside and snatched the
Druid History from its hiding place.

Now we'll see.

He barely made the front door again before the Shadowenkind were
through the wall of fire and on him.  He heard Rimmer Dail screaming at
them.  He felt Rumor press back against him protectively.  There was
nowhere to run and no point in trying, so he simply stood his ground,
clutching the book to his chest, a scarecrow in tattered robes before a
whirlwind.  His attackers came on.  When they had their hands on him,
as his body was about to be ripped apart, he felt the rune markings on
the book flare to life.  Brilliant white fire burst forth, and
everything within fifty feet was consumed.

It remains now for you, Walker, was Cogline's last thought.

He disappeared in the flames.

THE FINAL EXPLOSION threw Walker clear of the curtained window an
instant before it was engulfed in flame.  Even so, his face and hair
were singed and his clothes were left steaming.  He lay in a heap as
the fire licked its way across the ceiling of his room.  He ignored it,
no longer caring what happened.  He had been helpless to aid Cogline
and Rumor, too weak to sumMon the magic, too weak even to rise and
stand with them against the Shadowen, too weak to do anything but hang
there on that window ledge and watch.

Useless!  He screamed the word silently in his mind, rage and grief
washing through him.

He lurched to his knees in desperation and peered out through the
flames.  Cogline and Rumor were gone.  Rimmer Dail and what remained of
the Shadowen-kind were melting back into the forest.  He stared after
them momentarily, and then his strength left him and he collapsed
again.

Useless!

The fire's heat intensified about him.  Timbers crashed down, fiery
brands splintering off and searing his skin.  His body jerked in pain,
his stone arm an anchor that dragged against the wooden floor.

His fate was assured, he realized.  Another minute or two and he would
be consumed.  No one would come for him.  No one even knew he was
here.

The old man and the giant moor I 0 9 cat had concealed his presence
from the Shadowen; they had given up their lives to do so....

He shuddered as an image of Rimmer Dall's face appeared in his mind,
the dead eyes looking at him appraisingly.

He decided he did not want to die.

Almost without realizing what he was doing, he began to crawl.

I I 0 UICKENING FOUND HIM two days later.  Pe Ell and Morgan Leah were
with her, drawn on by the mystery of who and what she was, by her
promise that they were needed to recover the talisman that she insisted
she had been sent to find, by curiosity, by passion, and by a dozen
other things that neither could begin to define.  They had made the
journey north out of Culhaven in three days' time, traveling openly and
on foot along the Rabb where it bordered on the Anar, safely west of
the Wolfsktaag and the dark things that lived there.  Secrecy seemed
the least of Quickening's concerns.

She had chosen to depart in daylight rather than under cover of
darkness, having told her band of would-be followers that they must
remain behind and continue her work to help restore the health of the
land, and she had kept to the open plains the entire way up the
forestline.  While Morgan Leah had been relieved that he would not have
to venture into the Wolfsktaag again, he had been certain that
Federation patrols along the Rabb would attempt to detain them.

Curiously, that did not happen.

They were seen more than once and approached, but each time the patrols
got close they suddenly veered away.  It was almost as if they had
decided they were mistaken-as if they had decided that they hadn't seen
anything after all.

It was nearing dusk when the three finally arrived at Hearthstone, the
men footsore, sweaty, and vaguely disgruntled by the quick pace the
girl had set and the fact that she could maintain it seemingly without
effort.  They had bypassed Storlock, crossed I I I through the Pass of
Jade and come down the Chard Rush into Darklin Reach.  The sun was
behind them, dropping quickly toward the rim of the mountains, and the
skies ahead were sharply etched by the light.  A column of thick black
smoke rose before them like a snake.  They could see the smoke long
before they were able to determine its source.  They watched it lift
into the darkening eastern skies and dissipate, and Morgan Leah began
to worry.  Quickening said nothing, but it seemed to the Highlander
that her face grew more intense.  By the time they reached the rim of
the valley and there was no longer any doubt, the girl's face looked
stricken.

They followed the smoke to the ruins of the cottage.  Charred rubble
was all that remained; the fire that had consumed it was so hot that it
was still burning in spots, wood and ash glowing red, sending the black
smoke curling skyward.  The clearing about it was scared and lifeless,
and huge knots of earth had been exploded away.  It looked as if two
great armies had fought a war in the space of a hundred yards.

There was nothing left that was recognizable.  Bits and pieces were
scattered about of what once might have been something human, but it
was impossible to tell.  Even Pe Ell, who was usually so careful not to
reveal anything of what he was thinking, stared.

"The Shadowen were here," Quickening said, and that brought both men
about to search the shadows of the forest behind them, until she added,
"But they are gone now and will not return."

At the girl's direction, they searched the clearing for Walker Boh.

Morgan's heart sank.  He had been hoping that Walker was not there,
that the Shadowen attack had been for some other reason.

Nothing could have survived this, he thought.  He watched Pe Ell kick
halfheartedly at piles of rubble, clearly of the same mind.

Morgan did not like the man.  He didn't trust him; he didn't understand
him.

Despite the fact that Pe Ell had saved him from the Federation prisons,
Morgan couldn't bring himself to feel any friendship toward the
other.

Pe Ell had rescued him at Quickening's request; he wouldn't have lifted
a finger if the girl hadn't asked.  He had already told Morgan as much;
he had made a point of telling him.  Who he was remained a mystery, but
the Highlander didn't think anything good would I 1 2 come of his being
there.  Even now, picking his way across the blackened clearing, he had
the look of a cat in search of something to play with.

Quickening found Walker Boh moments later, calling out urgently to the
other two when she did.  How she determined where he was hiding was
anyone's guess.  He was unconscious and buried several feet beneath the
earth.  Pe Ell and Morgan dug him free, discovering when they did that
he had apparently been trapped in an underground passageway that led
from the cottage to the edge of the forest.  Although the passageway
had collapsed, probably during the Shadowen attack, sufficient air had
been able to reach him to allow him to survive.  They pulled him into
the failing light, and Morgan saw the remains of his arm, the lower
part gone entirely, a stone stub protruding from the shoulder.

Walker's breathing was faint and shallow, his skin drawn and white.  At
first, the Highlander didn't think he was even alive.

They laid him carefully on the ground, brushed the dirt from his face,
and Quickening knelt next to him.  Her two hands reached out to take
his one.  She held it a moment, and his eyes flickered open.

Morgan drew back.  He had never seen Walker's eyes like this; they were
terrifying to look into, filled with dark madness.

"Don't let me die," the Dark Uncle whispered harshly.

The girl touched his face and he was instantly asleep.  Morgan took a
deep breath and let it out again slowly.  Walker Boh wasn 't asking for
help out of fear; he was asking out of rage.

They made camp beside the ruins of the cottage that night, backed into
the shelter of the trees as the light gave way to darkness.

Quickening had a fire built close to where Walker Boh lay sleeping and
she took up a position at his side and did not move.  Sometimes she
held his hand; sometimes she stroked him.  Morgan and Pe Ell were
forgotten.  She did not seem to have need of them or wish that they
intrude, so the Highlander built a second fire some distance away and
prepared dinner from the supplies they carried-bread, some dried meat,
cheese, and fruit.  He offered some to the girl, but she shook her head
and he moved away.  He ate alone.  Pe Ell took his food off into the
dark.

After a time Quickening lay down next to Walker Boh and went to sleep,
her body pressed close against his.  Morgan watched stone-faced, a
surge of jealousy sweeping through him at the thought that the Dark
Uncle should be so close to her.

He studied her face in the firelight, the curve of her body, the
softness of her.  She was so beautiful.  He could not explain the
effect she had on him; he did not think he could refuse her anything.

It wasn't that he had a reasonable hope that she felt for him as he did
for her-or even that she felt anything for him.  It was the need she
roused in him.  He should not have come with her once he had escaped
the prisons and made certain that Granny Elise and Auntie Jilt were
safe.  He should have gone after the Valemen, after Par and Coll
Ohmsford.  He had promised himself more than once while lying in the
darkness and filth of that Federation cell that if he ever got free, he
would.  Yet here he was, chasing off into the deep Anar after this
girl, searching out a talisman she said existed but hadn't once
described, caught up with the enigmatic Pe Ell and now Walker Boh.  It
baffled him, but he didn't question it.  He was there because he wanted
to be there.  He was there because the moment he had met Quickening he
had fallen hopelessly in love with her.

He watched her until it hurt, then forced himself to look away.

He was surprised when he saw Pe Ell standing back in the shadows at the
edge of the trees watching too.

He was surprised again moments later when the other man came over to
sit next to him by the fire.  Pe Ell made it seem the most natural
thing in the world, as if there had been no distance kept between them
before, as if they were companions and not strangers.  Hatchet-faced,
as lean as a wire's shadow, he was not much more than a gathering of
lines and angles that threatened to disappear in the dark.  He sat
cross-legged, his thin frame relaxed, hunched down, his mouth breaking
into a faint smile as he saw Morgan frown.  "You don't trust me," he
said.

"You shouldn't."

Morgan said, "Why not?"

"Because you don't know me and you never trust anyone you don't know.

You don't trust most of those you do either.

I 1 4 That's just the way it is.  Tell me, Highlander.  Why do you
think I'm here?"

"I don't know."

"I don't know either.  I would be willing to bet that it is the same
with you.  We're here, you and 1, because the girl tells us she needs
us, but we really don't know what she means.  It's just that we can't
bring ourselves to tell her no."  Pe Ell seemed to be explaining things
as much to himself as to Morgan.  He glanced Quickenin@s way briefly,
nodding.  "She's beautiful, isn't she?  How can you say no to someone
who looks like that?  But it's more, because she has something inside
as well, something special even in this world.  She has magic, the
strongest kind of magic.  She brings dead things back to life-like the
Gardens, like that one over there."

He looked back at Morgan.  "We all want to touch that magic, to feet it
through her.  That's what I think.  Maybe we can, if we're lucky.  But
if the Shadowen are involved in this, if there are things as bad as
that to be dealt with, why then we're going to have to look out for one
another.  So you don't have to trust me or me you-maybe we
shouldn't-but we have to watch each other's backs.  Do you agree?"

Morgan wasn't sure whether he did or not, but he nodded anyway.

What he thought was that Pe Ell didn't seem the kind who relied on
anyone to watch his back.  Or who watched anyone else's back either,
for that matter.

"Do you know what I am?"  Pe Ell asked softly, looking down into the
fire.  "I am a craftsman.  I get myself in and out of places without
anyone knowing.  I move things aside that don't want to be moved.  I
make people disappear."  He looked up.  "I have a little magic of my
own.  You do, too, don't you?"

Morgan shook his head, cautious.  "There's the man with the magic," he
offered, indicating Walker Boh.

Pe Ell smiled doubtfully.  "Doesn't seem to have done him much good
against the Shadowen."

"it might have kept him alive."

"Barely, it appears.  And what use is he to us with that arm?"

Pe Ell folded his hands carefully.  "Tell me.  What can he do with his
magic?"

Morgan didn't like the question.  "He can do a lot of what you do.

Ask him yourself when he's better."

"If he gets better."  Pe Ell stood up smoothly, an effortless motion
that caught Morgan by surprise.  Quick, the Highlander thought.

Much quicker than me.  The other was looking at him.

"I sense the magic in you, Highlander.  I want you to tell me about it
sometime.  Later, when we've traveled together a bit longer, when we
know each other a little better.  When you trust me.

He moved away into the shadows at the fire's edge, spread his blanket
on the ground, and rolled into it.  He was asleep almost at once.

Morgan sat staring at him for a moment, thinking it would be a long
time before he trusted that one.  Pe Ell smiled easily enough, but it
seemed that only his mouth wanted to participate in the act.  Morgan
thought about what the man had said about himself, trying to make sense
of it.  Get in and out of places without being seen?  Move things that
don't want to be moved?

Make people disappear?  What sort of double-talk was that?

The fire burned low and everyone around him slept.  Morgan thought
about the past for a moment, about his friends who were dead or
disappeared, about the inexorable flow of events that was dragging him
along in its wake.  Mostly he thought about the girl who said she was
the daughter of the King of the Silver River.  Quickening.  He wondered
about her.

What was she going to ask of him?

What was he going to be able to give?

WALKER BOH CAME AWAKE at sunrise, rising up from the black pit of his
unconsciousness.  His eyes blinked open to find the girl peering down
at him.  Her hands were on his face, her fingers cool and soft against
his skin, and it seemed that she drew him up with no more effort than
it would require to lift a feather.

"Walker Boh," she spoke his name gently.

She seemed strangely familiar to him although he was certain they had
never met.  He tried to speak and found he couldn't.

Something forbade it, a sense of wonder at the exquisite beauty of her,
at the feelings she invoked within him.  He found her like the earth,
filled with strange magic that was simple and complex at once, a vessel
of elements, of soil, air, and water, a part of everything that gave
life.  He saw her differently than Morgan Leah and Pe Ell, though he
couldn't know that yet.  He wa."  ." not drawn to her as a lover or a
protector; he had no wish to possess her.  Rather, there was an
affinity between them that transcended passion and need.  There were
bonds of imiiiediate understanding that united them as emotions never
could.

Walker recognized the existence of those bonds even without beiti able
to define them.  This girl was something of what he had struggled all
his life to be.  This girl was a reflection of his dreams.

"Look at me," she said.

His eyes locked on her.  She took her fingers from his face and moved
them to the shattered remnants of his arm, to the stone stump that hung
inert and lifeless from his shoulder.  Her fingers reached within his
clothing, stroking his skin, working their way to where the skin
hardened into stone.  He flinched at her touch, not wanting her to feel
the sickness in him, or to discover the corruption of his flesh.

But her fingers persisted; her eyes did not look away.

Then he gasped as everything disappeared in a white hot flash of
pain.

For an instant he saw the Hall of Kings again, the crypts of the dead,
the stone stab with its rune markings, the black hole beneath, and the
flash of movement as the Asphim struck.  After that he was floating,
and there were only her eyes, black and depthless, folding him in a
wave of sweet relief.  The pain disappeared, drawing out of him in a
red mist that dissipated into the air.  He felt a weight lift away from
him and he was at peace.

He might have slept for a time then; he was not certain.

When he opened his eyes again, the girl was there beside him, looking
down at him, and the dawn's light was faint and distant through the
tips of the trees.  He swallowed against the dryness in his mouth and
throat, and she gave him water to drink from a skin.  He was aware of
Morgan Leah staring openmouthed at him from one side, his lean brown
face a mask of disbelief.

There was another man next to him, one he didn't know, hardfaced and
cunning.  They had both been there when the girl I 1 7 found him, he
remembered.  What were they seeing now that so astonished them?

Then he realized that something was different.  His arm felt lighter,
freer.  There was no pain.  He used what little strength he had to
raise his head and look down at himself.  His clothes had been pulled
away from his shoulder, revealing pink, healed flesh where the stone
wreckage of his sickness had been removed.

His arm was gone.

So, too, was the poison of the Asphim.

What did he feel?  His emotions jumbled together within him.  He stared
at the girl and tried unsuccessfully to speak.

She looked down at him, serene and perfect.  "I am Quickening," she
said.  "I am the daughter of the King of the Silver River.  Look into
my eyes and discover me."

He did as he was told, and she touched him.  Instantly he saw what
Morgan Leah had seen before him, what Pe Ell had witnessed-the coming
of Quickening into Culhaven and the resurrection of the Meade Gardens
out of ash and dust.  He felt the wonder of the miracle and he knew
instinctively that she was who she claimed.  She possessed magic that
defied belief, magic that could salvage the most pitiful of life's
wreckage.  When the images were gone, he was struck again by the
unexplainable sense of kinship he felt for her.

"You are well again, Walker Boh," she told him.  "The sickness will
trouble you no more.  Steep now, for I have great need of YOU."

She touched him once and he drifted away.

HE AWOKE AGAIN at midday, ravenous with hunger, dry with thirst.

Quickening was there to give him food and water and to help him sit
up.

He felt stronger now, more the man he had been before his encounter
with the Asphim, able to think clearly again for the first time in
weeks.  His relief at being free of the poison of the Asphim, at simply
being alive for that matter, warred with his rage at what Rimmer Dall
and the Shadowen had done to Cogline and Rumor.  Just an old man and a
bothersome cat, he had called them.  He looked out across the clearing
at the devastation.  The girl did not ask him what had happened; she
merely touched him and knew.  All the images of that night's tragic
events returned in a flood of memories that left him shaking and close
to tears.  She touched him again, to comfort and reassure, but he did
not cry.  He would not let himself.  He kept his grief inside, walled
away behind his determination to find and destroy those responsible.

Quickening said to him, away from Morgan Leah and the one she named Pe
Ell, "You cannot give way to what you feel, Walker Boh.  If you pursue
the Shadowen now, they will destroy you.  You lack the wisdom and the
strength to overcome them.

You will find both only through me."

Then, before he could respond, she called the other two over, seated
them before her, and said, "I will tell you now of the need I have of
you."  She looked at them in turn and then seemed to look beyond.  "A
long time ago, in an age before Mankind, before the faerie wars, before
everything you know, there were many like my father.  They were the
first of the faerie creatures, given life by the Word, given dominion
over the land.

Theirs was a trust to preserve and protect, and while they could, they
did.  But the world changed with the fading of the faerie creatures and
the rise of Man.  The evolution of the world took away almost
everything that had existed in the beginning including those like my
father.  One by one, they died away, lost in the passing of the years
and the changes of the world.  The Great Wars destroyed many of them.

The Wars of the Races destroyed more.  Finally, there was only my
father, a legend by now, the faerie Lord they called the King of the
Silver River."

Her face lifted.  "Except that my father was not alone as he
believed.

There was another.  Even my father did not know of him at first,
believing that all his kindred had died out long ago, that he alone had
survived.  My father was wrong.  Another like himself still lived,
changed so markedly as to now be all but unrecognizable.  All of the
first faeries drew their magic from the elements of the land.  My
father's strength derived from the rivers and lakes, from the waters
that fed the earth.  He built his Gardens to nourish them, to give them
life, and draw life back again.  His brother, the one he did not know
had survived along with him, took his magic from the earth's stone.

Where my I 1 9 father found strength in fluidity and change, his
brother found strength in constancy and immutability."

She paused.  "His name is Uhl Belk.  He is the Stone King.

He had no name in the old days; none of my father's kindred did.

There was no need for names.  My father was given his name by the
people of the land; he did not ask for it.  Uhl Belk took his name out
of fear.  He took it because he felt that only in having a name could
he be certain of surviving.  A name implied permanency, he believed.

Permanency became everything for him.  All around him, the world was
changing, the old dying out, giving way to the new.  He could not
accept that he must change, for like the stone from which he drew his
strength, he was unyielding.  To survive, he embedded himself deeper in
the ways that had sustained him for so long, burrowing into the earth
on which he relied.  He hid while the Great Wars destroyed almost
everything.  He hid again when the wars of magic, the Wars of the
Races, threatened to do the same.  He took his name and wrapped himself
in stone.  Like my father, his world was reduced to almost nothing, to
a tiny bit of existence that was all his magic could protect.  He clung
to it desperately while the wars of Mankind raged through the centuries
and he waited for a measure of sanity to return.

"But, unlike my father, Uhl Belk put aside the trust that the Word had
given him.  He lost sight of his purpose in his struggle to survive; he
became convinced that simply to exist at whatever cost was all that
mattered.  His pledge to preserve and protect the land was forgotten;
his promise to care for the land's life lost meaning.  He hoarded and
built upon his magic with one thought in mind-that when he grew strong
enough he would make certain that his existence would never be
threatened by anything or anyone again."

Quickening's eyes glanced down and lifted again, filled with wonder.

"Uhl Belk is master of Eldwist, a finger of land far north and east
above the Charnal Mountains where the Eastland ends at the Tiderace.

After centuries of hiding, he has come forth to claim the world of Men
for his own.  He does this through his magic, which grows in strength
as he applies it.  He applies it indiscriminately to the land-the soil,
the waters, the trees, the creatures that take nourishment from them.

He turns everything Pe Ell's long, narrow face remained
expressionless.

"How are we supposed to do that?"  he asked.

"You will find a way," the girl said, looking at each of them in
turn.

"My father said you would, that you possess the means.

But it will take all three of you to succeed.  Each of you has the
magic that is required; we have not spoken of it, but it is so.

All three magics are needed.  All three of you must go."

"All three."  Pe Ell glanced doubtfully at Walker and Morgan.

"What is it that this Black Elfstone does?  What sort of magic does it
possess?"

Walker leaned forward to hear her answer, and Quickening's black eyes
fixed on him.  "it steals away the power of other magics.  It swallows
them up and makes them its own."

There was stunned silence.  Walker had never heard of such magic.

Even in the old Druid legends, there was no mention of it.  He thought
about the words contained in the Druid History that Cogline had brought
to him, the words that described how Paranor could be restored: Once
removed, Paranor shall remain lost to the world of men for the whole of
time, sealed away and invincible within its casting.  One magic alone
has the power to return it-that singular Elfstone which is colored
Black and was conceived by the faerie people of the old world in the
manner and form of all Elfstones, combining nev ertheless in one stone
alone the necessary properties of heart, mind, and body.

Whosoever shall have cause and right shall wield it to its proper
end.

He had memorized the words before hiding the book in a crevice in the
fireplace of the cottage before departing for the Hall of Kings.

The words explained something of how the Black Elfstone could be used
to bring back Paranor.  If Druid magic had sealed it away, the Black
Elfstone would negate the magic and restore the Keep.  Walker
frowned.

That seemed awfully easy.  Worse, the power of such a magic suggested
that once employed, nothing could defeat it.  Why would the Druids take
the chance that something so powerful would fall into the hands of an
enemy like Uhl Belk?

On the other hand, they had done what they could to protect it, he
supposed.  Almost no one could have retrieved it from the Hall of
Kings.  Or even known it was there.  How had the Stone King discovered
it, he wondered?

"If the Black Elfstone can take away other magics," Pe Ell said
suddenly, putting an end to Walker's musings, "how can anything
overcome it?  Our own magic, any magic, will be useless against it."

"Especially mine, since I don't have any," Morgan spoke up suddenly,
causing all of them to glance sharply at him.  "At least, not enough to
bother about."

"is there something you can do to help us against the Stone King?"

Walker asked.  "Can you make use of your own magic in some way?"

"No," the girl said, and they went silent, staring at her.  "My magic
is useless until you have regained possession of the Black Elfstone
from Uhl Belk.  Nor must he be allowed to discover who I am.

If he should, he would make a quick end of me.  I will go with you and
advise you when I can.  I will help if possible.  But I cannot use my
magic-not the smallest amount, not for even the shortest time."

"But you think that we can?"  Pe Ell demanded incredulously.

"The Stone King will find your magic of no consequence; he will not
feel threatened by you."

Pe Ell's face assumed such a black look that Walker was momentarily
distracted from wondering what it was that Quickening was hiding from
them.  He was certain now that she was hiding something.

Not lying to them, he didn't think that.  But there was definitely
something she wasn't telling them.  The problem was, he hadn't the
faintest idea what.

She said then, "There is another reason that you should help me."

Her eyes held them.  "All things are possible if you come with me.

Walker Boh.  I have driven the poison from your body and made you
well.

I have healed your arm, but I cannot make you whole again.  Come with
me in search of the Black Elfstone and you will find a way to do so.

Morgan Leah.  You would restore the magic of your shattered Sword.

Come with me.  Pe Ell.  You would seek out magic greater than that of
the Shadowen.  Come with me.  My father tells me that together you
possess the keys that will unlock all of these secrets.  My father
knows what is possible.  He would not lie."

Her face lifted toward them.  "The Four Lands and her people are
threatened by the Shadowen; but no more so than by Uhl Belk.  The means
of ending one threat shall be found through ending the other.  The
Black Elfstone is the talisman that shall enable the ending of both.  I
know you cannot yet understand that; I know I cannot explain it to
you.

I do not know how you shall fare in this quest.  But I shall go with
you, live or die with you, succeed or fail with you.  We shall be bound
forever by what happens."

As we are somehow bound already, Walker thought to himself and wondered
anew why the feeling persisted.

Silence crystallized about them.  No one wanted to break its shell.

There were questions yet unasked and answers yet ungiven; there were
doubts and misgivings and fears to be conquered.  A future that had
been settled for them all not a week gone now stretched ahead, a dark
and uncertain pathway that would take them where it chose.  Uhl Belk,
the Stone King, waited at the end of that path, and they were going to
seek him out.  It was already decided.  Without anyone having said so,
it was resolved.  Such was the strength of Quickening's magic, the
magic she exercised over the lives of others, a magic that not only
restored life to what was believed dead and gone but also liberated
hopes and dreams in the living.

It was like that now.

Morgan Leah was thinking what it would be like to have the Sword of
Leah restored to him.  He was remembering how it felt when its magic
was his to command.  Pe Ell was thinking what it would be like to have
possession of a weapon that no one could stand against.  He was
remembering how it felt when he used the Stiehl.  He was wondering if
this would be the same.

But Walker Boh was thinking not so much of himself as of the Black
Elfstone.  It remained the key to all the locked doors.

Could Paranor be restored; could the Druids be brought back again?

Allanon's charge to him, part of what must be done if the Shadowen were
to be destroyed.  And now, for the first time since the dreams had come
to him, he wanted them destroyed.

More, he wanted to be the one to do it.

He looked into Quickening's black eyes, and it seemed as if she could
read his thoughts.  A Druid trick.  A faerie gift.

And suddenly, shockingly, he remembered where he had seen her before.

HE WENT TO HER later that night to tell her.  It took him a long time
to decide to do so.  It would have been easier to say nothing because
in speaking he risked jeopardizing both his newfound friendship with
her and his participation in the journey to Eldwist.  But keeping
silent would have been the same as lying, and he could not bring
himself to do that.  So he waited until Morgan and Pe Ell were
slumbering, until the night was cloaked in blackness and time's passage
slowed to a crawl, and he rose soundlessly from beneath his blankets,
still aching and stiff from his ordeal, and crossed the fire-lit
clearing to where she waited.

As he passed the ruins of the cottage, he glanced over.  Earlier, while
it was still light, he had searched the smoldering ashes for the
missing Druid History.  He had found nothing.

Quickening was not asleep; he knew she wouldn't be.  She was sitting in
the shadow of a massive fir where the trees that ringed the clearing
were farthest from the sleepers.  He was still weak and could not go
far, but he did not wish to speak to her where the other two might
hear.  She seemed to sense this; she rose as he approached and went
with him wordlessly into the forest.  When they were a safe distance
away, she slowed and faced him.

"What would you tell me, Walker Bob?"  she asked and pulled him down
with her onto the cool matting of the woodland floor.

It took him a moment to speak.  He felt that odd kinship to her without
yet understanding why, and it almost changed his mind, making him
frightened of the words he had come to say and of the reaction they
would cause.

"Quickening," he said finally, and the sound of her name coming from
his lips stopped him anew.  He tightened his resolve.  "I was given a
book of the Druid Histories by Cogline before he died.  The book was
destroyed in the fire.  There was a passage in the book that said that
the Black Elfstone is a Druid magic and possesses the power to bring
back disappeared Para nor.  That is the charge I was given by the shade
of Allanon when I went to speak with him at the Hadeshorn some weeks
ago-to restore Paranor and the Druids to the Four Lands.  It was a
charge that Cogline urged me to accept.  He brought the Druid History
to me to convince me it could be done."

"I know this," she said softly.

Her black eyes threatened to swallow him up, and he forced himself to
look away.  "I doubted him," he continued, the words coming harder
now.

"I questioned his purpose in telling me, accused him of serving the
interests of the Druids.  I wanted nothing to do with any of them.

But my curiosity about the Black Elfstone persuaded me to pursue the
matter anyway, even after he was gone.  I decided to try to find out
where the Elfstone was hidden.  I went to see the Grimpond."

He looked up at her again and kept his gaze steady.  "I was shown three
visions.  All three were of me.  In the first I stood before the others
in the company that had journeyed to the Hadeshorn to meet with the
shade of Allanon and declared that I would sooner cut off my hand than
help bring back the Druids.

The vision mocked what I had said and showed me with my hand already
gone.  And now it is gone indeed.  My hand and my arm both."

His voice was shaking.  "The third vision is of no importance here.

But in the second vision I stood at the crest of a ridgeline that
looked out over the world.  A girl was with me.  She lost her balance
and reached for me.  When she did, I thrust her away, and she fell.

That girl, Quickening, was you."

He waited for her response, the silence filling the space between them
until it seemed to Walker as if nothing separated them.

Quickening did not speak.  She kept her eyes fixed on him, her features
swept clean of expression.

"Surely you know of the Grimpond!"  he exclaimed to her finally in
exasperation.

Then he saw her blink and realized that she had been thinking of
something else entirely.  "it is an exiled spirit," she said.

"One that riddles and ties, but speaks a measure of truth as well,
hiding it in devious ways.  It did so with the first vision.

My arm is gone.  I would not have the same thing happen with your
life!"

She smiled faintly then, just a trace of movement at the corners of her
mouth.  "You will not hurt me, Walker Boh.  Are you worried that you
must?"

"The vision," he repeated.

"The vision is that and nothing more," she interrupted gently.

"Visions are as much illusion as truth.  Visions tell us of
possibilities and do not speak in absolutes.  We are not bound by them;
they do not govern what is to be.  Especially those of a creature like
the Grimpond.  It teases with falsehoods; it deceives.  Do you fear it,
Walker Boh?  No, not you.  Nor 1. My father tells me what is to be and
that is enough.  You will bring no harm to me."

Walker's face felt pinched and tight.  "He might be mistaken in what he
says; he might not see everything that is to be."

Quickening shook her head, reached out her slim hand, and touched his
own.  "You will be my protector on this journey, Walker Boh-all three
of you, for as long as is necessary.  Do not worry.  I will be safe
with you."

Walker shook his head.  "I could remain behind Her hand lifted quickly
to his mouth and touched it as if to wipe away some new poison.

"No."  The word was sheathed in iron.  "I will be safe if you are with
me; I will be in danger only if you are not.  You must come."

He stared at her doubtfully.  "Can you tell me anything of what I am
expected to do?"

She shook her head.

"Or of the means by which I am to claim the Black Elfstone from Uhl
Belk?"

Again, no, firmly.

"Or even how I am to protect you when I have but one arm and ...

?"

"No."

He let his body sag; he was suddenly very weary.  The darkness was a
cloak of doubt and indecision that hung about him in suffocating
folds.

"I am half a man," he whispered.  "I have lost faith in who and what I
am, in the promises I made to myself, in the tasks I set myself.

I have been dragged about by Druid dreams and charges in which I do not
believe.  I have been stripped of my two closest friends, my home, and
my sense of worth.  I was the strongest of those who went to meet with
Allanon, the one the others relied upon; now I am the weakest, barely
able to stand on my own two feet.  I cannot be as quick as you to
dismiss the Grimpond's visionsl have been wrongly confident too many
times.  Now I must question everything."

"Walker Boh," she said.

He stared at her wonderingly as she reached out for him and brought him
to his feet.  "You will be strong again-but only if you believe."

She was so close he could feel the heat of her reaching out to him
through the cool night air.  "You are like me," she said quietly.  "You
have sensed as much already, though you fail to understand why it is
so.  It is because we are, before all other things, creatures of the
magic we wield.  The magic defines us, shapes us, and makes us who we
are.  For both of us, it is a birthright we cannot escape.  You would
protect me by telling me of this vision, by taking away the danger that
your presence poses if the vision should be true.  But, Walker Boh, we
are bound in such a way that despite any vision's telling we cannot
separate ourselves and survive.  Do you not feel it?  We musi: pick up
the thread of this trail that leads to Eldwist and Uhl Belk and the
Black Elfstone and follow it to its end.  Visions of what might be
cannot be allowed to deter us.  Fears of our future cannot be permitted
to intrude."

She paused.  "Magic, Walker Boh.  Magic governs my life's purpose, the
magic given to me by my father.  Can you say that it is any different
for you?"

It wasn't a question she put to him; it was a statement of fact, of
indisputable truth.  He took a deep breath.  "No," he acknowledged.

"I cannot."

"We can neither deny it nor run from it, can we?"

"No."

"We have this in common-this, and separate charges to find the Black
Elfstone and preserve the Four Lands, yours from the shade of Allanon,
mine from my father.  Beyond that, nothing matters.  All paths lead to
the Druid talisman."  She lifted her face into the faint trailers of
light that seeped downward through the trees from the starlit skies.

"We must go in search of it together, Walker Boh."

She was so positive in her statement, so certain of what she said.

Walker met her gaze, still filled with the doubts and fears she had
urged him to cast aside, but comforted now in her sense of purpose and
her strength of will.  Once he had possessed both in equal measure.

It made him ashamed and angry that he no longer did.  He remembered Par
Ohmsford's determination to do what was right, to find a use for his
ift of magic.  He thought of his own unspoken promise to the ghosts of
Cogline and Rumor.  He was still wary of the Grimpond's vision, but
Quickening was right.  He could not let it dissuade him from his
quest.

He looked at her and nodded.  A measure of determination returned.

"We will not speak of the Grimpond's vision again," he promised.

"Not until there is need," she replied.

She took him by the arm and led him back through the darkened forest to
sleep.

all OHMSFORD'S STRENGTH returned to him slowly.  Two weeks passed while
he lay bedded in the Mole's underground lair, a gaunt and motionless
skeleton draped in old linen, dappled by a mingling of shadows and
candlelight, and surrounded by the strange, changeless faces of the
Mole's adopted children.  Time had no meaning at first, for he was lost
to anything remotely connected with the real world.

Then the madness faded, and he began to come back to himself.

The days and nights took on definition.  Damson Rhee and the Mole
became recognizable.  The blur of darkness and light sharpened to
reveal the shapes and forms of the subterranean rooms in which he
rested.  The stuffed castoffs grew familiar once more, button noses and
eyes, thread-sewn mouths, worn cloth limbs and bodies.  He was able to
give them names.  Words assumed meaning out of idle talk.  There was
nourishment and there was sleep.

Mostly, though, there were the memories.  They tracked him through
sleep and waking alike, wraiths that hovered at the edge of his
thoughts, anxious to sting and bite.  There were memories of the Pit,
the Shadowen, Rimmer Dail, and the Sword of Shannara, but mostly of
Coll.

He could not forgive himself.  Coll was dead because of him-not simply
because he had struck the fatal blow, the killing stroke of his
wishsong's magic, not because he had failed to adequately protect his
brother from the packs of Shadowen that roamed the Pit while he was
engaged with Rimmer Dail, not for any of this, but because he had from
the first, from the moment they had fled Varfleet and the Seekers,
thought only of himself.

His need to know the truth about the wishsong, the Sword of Shannara,
the charges of Allanon, the purpose of the magicthis was what had
mattered.  He had sacrificed everything to discover that truth, and in
the end that sacrifice had included his brother.

Damson Rhee strove mightily to persuade him otherwise, seeing his
torment and instinctively recognizing its cause.

"He wanted to be there with you, Par," she would tell him, over and
over, her face bent close, her red hair tumbling down about her slender
shoulders, her voice soft and gentle.  "It was his choice.  He loved
you enough that it could not have been otherwise.  You did your best to
keep him from coming, to keep him safe.  But there was that in Coll
that would not be compromised.  A sense of what's right, what's
necessary.  He was determined to protect you from the dangers you both
knew waited.

He gave his life to keep you safe, don't you see?  Don't be so quick to
steal away what that sacrifice meant by insisting it was your fault.

There were choices and he made them.  He was strong-willed, and you
could not have changed his mind even had you tried harder than you
did.

He understood, Par.  He recognized the purpose and need in what you
do.

You believed that was true before; you must believe it now.

Coll did.  Don't let his death have been for nothing."

But Coll's death might have been for exactly that, he feared, and the
fear chased after him in his darkest thoughts.  Exactly what had his
brother's death accomplished?  What did he have to show for it?

The Sword of Shannara?  Yes, he had gained possession of the legendary
blade of his Eiven-blooded ancestors, the talisman the shade of Allanon
had sent him to find.

And what use was it?  It had failed utterly as a weapon against Rimmer
Dail, even after the First Seeker had revealed himself as a Shadowen.

If the Sword was a necessary magic as Allanon had claimed, why hadn't
it destroyed his greatest enemy?  Worse, if Dail were to be believed,
the Sword of Shannara could have been his simply for the asking.  There
was no need for their agonizing, destructive descent into the Pit-no
need, then, for the death of Coll.

And no purpose to it either if Rimmer Dall was right about one thing
more-that Par Ohmsford, like himself, was a Shadowen.  For if Par were
the very thing they were fighting to protect the Four Lands against
...

If Coll had died to save a Shadowen ...

Unthinkable?  He was no longer sure.

So the memories plagued him, bitter and terrible, and he was awash in a
slew of anguish and disbelief and anger.  He fought through that
morass, struggled to keep himself afloat, to breathe, to survive.  The
fever disappeared, the starkness of his emotions softened, the edges
dulled, and the aching of his heart and body scarred and healed.

He rose at the end of the two weeks' time, determined to lie about no
longer, and began to walk short distances within the Mole's dark
quarters.  He washed at the basin, dressed, and took his meals at the
table.  He navigated the lair end to end, doorway to doorway, testing
himself, feeling his way through his weakness.  He pushed back the
memories; he kept them carefully at bay.  He did so mostly through
simple motion.  Doing something, anything, helped to keep him from
dwelling so much on what was over and done.  He made note of the smells
and tastes that hung upon the trapped air.  He studied the texture of
the ruined furniture, of the various discards of the upper world, and
of the walls and floors themselves.  His resolution stiffened.  He was
alive and there was a reason for it.  He shifted in and out of the
candlelight and shadows, a ghost impelled by an inner vision.

Even when he was too tired to move about further he was reluctant to
rest.  He spent hours seated on the edge of his bed examining the Sword
of Shannara, pondering its mystery.

Why had it failed to respond to him when he had touched its blade to
Rimmer Dail?

" is it possible," Damson asked him at one point, her voice cautious,
"that you have been deceived in some way and that this is not the Sword
of Shannara?"

He thought carefully before he answered.  "When I saw it in the vault,
Damson, and then when I touched it, I knew it was the Sword.  I was
certain of it.  I have sung the story of it so many times, pictured it
so often.  There was no doubt in my mind."  He shook his head slowly.

"I still feel it to be so."

She nodded.  She was seated next to him on the bed, legs folded beneath
her, green eyes intense.  "But your anticipation of finding it might
have colored your judgment, Par.  You might have wanted it so badly
that you allowed yourself to be fooled."

"it might have happened like that, yes," he agreed.  "Then.

But now, as well?  Look at the blade.  See here.  The handle is worn,
aged-yet the blade shines like new.  Like Morgan's sword-magic protects
it.  And see the carving of the torch with its flame .  . ."

His enthusiasm trailed off with a sigh.  He saw the doubt mirrored in
her eyes.  "Yet it doesn't work, it's true.  It doesn't do a thing.

I hold it, and it seems right, what it should be-and it doesn't do
anything, give back anything, or let me feel even the slightest hint of
its magic.  So how can it be the Sword?"

"Counter-magic, 11 the Mole said solemnly.  He was crouched in a corner
of the room close to them, almost invisible in the shadows.  "A mask
that hides."  He stretched his face with his hands to change its
shape.

Par looked at him and nodded.  "A concealment of some kind.  Yes,
Mole.

It might be.  I have considered the possibility.

But what magic exists that is strong enough to suppress that of the
Sword of Shannara?  How could the Shadowen produce such a magic?

And if they could, why not simply use it to destroy the blade?

And shouldn't I be able to break past any countermagic if I am the
rightful bearer of the Sword?"

The Mole regarded him solemnly, voiceless.  Damson gave no reply.

"I don't understand," he whispered softly.  "I don't understand what's
wrong."

He wondered, too, at how willingly Rimmer Dall had let him depart with
the Sword.  If it were truly the weapon it was supposed to be, the
weapon that could destroy the Shadowen, Dall would surely not have let
Par Ohmsford have it.  Yet he had given it to the Valeman without
argument, almost with encouragement in fact, telling him instead that
what he had been told of the Shadowen and the Sword was a lie.

And then virtually proved it by demonstrating that the touch of the
Sword would not harm him.

Par wandered the Mole's quarters with the blade in hand, hefting it,
balancing it, working to invoke the magic that lay within.  Yet the
secret of the Sword of Shannara continued to elude him.

Periodically Damson left their underground concealment and went up into
the streets of Tyrsis.  It was odd to think of an entire city existing
just overhead, just beyond sight and sound, with people and buildings,
sunlight and fresh air.  Par longed to go with her, but she wisely
counseled against it.  He lacked strength yet for such an undertaking,
and the Federation was still searching.

A week after Par had left his sickbed and begun moving about on his
own, Damson returned with disquieting news.

"Some weeks ago," she advised, "the Federation discovered the location
of the Jut.  A spy in the outlaw camp apparently betrayed it.

An army was dispatched from Tyrsis to penetrate the Parma Key and lay
siege.  The siege was successful.  The Jut fell.  It was taken close to
the time, Par, when you escaped the Pit."  She paused.

"Everyone found there was killed."

Par caught his breath.  "Everyone?"

"So the Federation claims.  The Movement, it says, is finished."

There was momentary silence.  They sat at the Mole's long table
surrounded by his voiceless, unseeing children, saucers and cups set
before them.  It had become a midafternoon ritual.

"More tea, lovely Damson?"  the Mole asked softly, his furry face
poking up from the table's edge.  She nodded without taking her eyes
from Par.

Par frowned.  "You don't seem distressed by this," he responded
finally.

"I think it odd that it took weeks for word of this victory to reach
the city."

"So it isn't true, then?"

She bit into one of the crackers that the Mole had provided for them
and chewed.  "It may be true that the Jut was taken.

But I know Padishar Creel.  It doesn't seem likely that he would let
himself be trapped in his own lair.  He's much too clever for that.

More to the point, friends of the Movement here in the city with whom I
spoke tell me that line soldiers with the army claim they killed almost
no one, several dozen at most, and those were already dead when the
Jut's summit was breached.

What happened, then, to the others?  There were three hundred men in
that camp.  Besides, if the Federation really had Padishar Creel,
they'd spike his head atop the city gates to prove it."

"But there's no message from Padishar?"

She shook her head.

"And no word of Morgan or Steff or any of the others?"

She shook her head again.  "They've vanished."

"So."  He let the word hang.

She smiled ruefully.  They finished their tea without speaking.

The following day, his body stronger, his mind determined, Par again
announced that he wanted to go up into Tyrsis.  He had been shut away
long enough; he needed to see something of his own world again.

He needed to feel sunlight on his skin and breathe fresh air.

Besides, as long as he remained hidden away, nothing was being
accomplished.  It was time for him to do something.

Damson oh .  ected strongly, pointing out that he was not yet fully
recovered and that it was extremely dangerous for him to go anywhere.

The Federation knew who he was now; his description was everywhere.

After his escape from the Pit, Seekers had begun searching the lower
levels of the old palace and discovered the tunnels leading in.  Now
they were searching the tunnels as well.  There were miles of tunnel
and sewer to search, but the risk of discovery remained.  For now, it
was best to lie low.

In the end, they compromised.  Par would be allowed to go into the
tunnels close at hand as long as he was in the company of Damson or the
Mote.  He would not go aboveground, even for a moment.  He would go
where he was told and do what he was advised.  But at least he would be
out of his sick rooms.  Par agreed.

He began his exploration eagerly, studying the lay of the tunnels as he
trailed after Damson and the Mole, mapping it all out carefully in his
mind.  He tired quickly the first day and had to return early.

He was stronger the second and continued to improve.  He began to grow
comfortable with his understanding of how the tunnels and sewers wove
together-enough so that he believed he could find his way to the
surface on his own should the need arise.  The Mole advised him
cautiously, watched him with intense, glittery eyes, and nodded in
satisfaction.  Damson stayed close, her hands constantly touching him,
as if to shield against danger.  He smiled inwardly at their
protectiveness.

A week passed away.  He was much better now, almost completely
recovered.  More than a month had elapsed since he had been carried
beneath the city of Tyrsis and placed in hiding.  He thought constantly
of leaving, of picking up again the threads of his life.

At the same time he found himself wondering where he would begin.

IN THE END the decision was made for him.

It was late afternoon ten days after he had begun his exploration of
the tunnels surrounding the Mole's lair.  He was seated on the edge of
his bed, once again examining the Sword of Shannara.  Damson had gone
up to the city to see what news she could learn of Padishar and the
Federation.  The Mole was a furtive shadow as he passed from room to
room, straightening, arranging, and fussing with his possessions.

Teatime had come and gone without the girl, and the Mole was
unsettled.

Par might have been if he had allowed himself to dwell on the matter,
but as it was he was consumed with something else.  His memory of the
events surrounding the discovery of the Sword of Shannara and the death
of Coll was still incomplete, the fragments piecing themselves back in
place only intermittently as he recovered to form a complete picture.

Now and then a new piece would recall itself.  One did so now.

It had to do with the wishsong, actually.  He remembered all too
clearly how his magic had gathered within him, summoned on its own
almost, when Coll-the thing that had been Collthreatened him.  Then,
after Coll was gone and the others of the Shadowen in the Pit came for
him, the wishsong had given him a flaming Sword, a weapon unlike
anything the magic had ever produced.  It had destroyed the Shadowen
effortlessly.  For a few moments he had been possessed, infused with
fury and madness, driven beyond any semblance of reason.  He remembered
how that had felt.  But there was something more, something he had
forgotten completely until now.  When the Shadowen were destroyed and
he had reached down to retrieve the Sword of Shanna ra from where it
had fallen, the Sword had burned him-had scared his hand like fire.

And instantly his own magic had died, and he had been unable to summon
it again.

Why had the Sword of Shannara done that?  What had happened to produce
such a reaction?

He was pondering this, trying to make it fit with what little he knew
of the mystery of the Sword, when Damson burst through the entry to the
Mole's subterranean refuge, long hair disheveled, her breathing quick
and frightened.

"Federation soldiers!"  she announced, rushing up to Par, pulling him
to his feet.  "Dozens of them, hunting through the sewers, making a
thorough sweep!  Not at the palace, but here.  I barely slipped in
ahead of them.  I don't know if someone betrayed us or if I was simply
seen.  But they have found the entry down and they're coming!"  She
paused, steadying herself.  "If we stay, they will find us.  We have to
get out right away."

Par slung the Sword of Shannara over his shoulder and began shoving his
few possessions into a sling pack.  His thoughts scattered.

He had been anxious to leave, but not like this.

"Mole!"  Damson called out, and the furry fellow skittered quickly up
to her.  "You have to come with us.  They will find you as well."

But the Mole shook his head solemnly, and his voice was calm.

"No, beautiful Damson.  This is my home.  I will stay."

Damson knelt hurriedly.  "You can't do that, Mole.  You will be in
great danger.  These men will hurt you."

Par hurried over.  "Come with us, Mole.  Please.  It is our fault that
you are threatened."

The Mole regarded him quizzically.  "I chose to bring you here.  I
chose to care for you.  I did it for Damson-but for myself as well.  I
like you.  I like how you make ... lovely Damson feet."

Par saw Damson flush out of the corner of his eye and kept his gaze
focused on the Mole.  "None of that matters now.  What matters is that
we are your friends, and friends look out for one another.  You have to
come with us."

"I will not go back into the world above," the Mole insisted quietly.

"This is my home.  I must look out for it.  What of my children?  What
of Chalt and little Lida and Westra and Everlind?

Would you have me leave them?"

"Bring them, if you must!"  Par was growing desperate.

"We will help you find a new home," Damson added quickly.

But the Mole shook his head stubbornly.  "The world up there wants
nothing to do with any of us.  We do not belong there, lovely Damson.

We belong down here.  Do not worry for us.  We know these tunnels.

There are places to hide where we will never be found.  We will go to
them if we must."  He paused.

"You could come with us, both of you.  You would be safe."

Damson rose, her brow furrowed.  "It will be enough if you are safe
Mole.  We have brought too much danger already into your life.

Just promise me that you will go to one of these hiding places now.

Take your children and stay there until this hunt is finished and the
tunnels are safe again.  Promise me."

The Mole nodded.  "I promise, sweet Damson."

Damson flew to gather her own possessions, then joined Par at the
entryway.  The Mole stood looking at them from out of the shadows,
little more than a pair of glittering eyes lost in the jumble of
discarded goods and faint candlelight.

Damson shouldered her pack.  "Goodbye, Mole , she called softly, then
lowered her pack, walked to where he waited, and reached down to
embrace him.  When she returned to Par, she was crying.

owe you my life, Mole , Par told him.  "Thank you for everything you
have done for me."

One small hand lifted in a faint wave.

"Remember your promise!"  Damson warned almost angrily.

"Hide yourself!"

Then they were through the entry and into the tunnel beyond, slipping
soundlessly ahead.  Damson carried no torch, but instead produced one
of the strange stones that glowed when warmed by her hand.

She used its small, sure light to guide them, opening her fingers to
provide direction, closing them again to protect against discovery.

They moved swiftly away from the Mole's lair, down one tunnel and into
another, then up a metal ladder and into a pit.

From somewhere distant, they heard the sound of boots scraping.

Damson led Par away from the sound, along a tunnel that was dank and
slick with moisture.  Already the temperature was rising and the air
filling with sewer smells.  Rats skittered about in the dark recesses,
and water trickled along the crevices of the rock.  They wound their
way steadily through the maze.  Voices reached them once, unfocused,
indistinct.  Damson ignored them.

They arrived at a joining of several sewer ways, a ringed pit with
water collecting in a deep, shadowed well.  A central convergence, Par
thought.  He was breathing heavily, his strength failing already in the
face of this sudden activity.  The muscles of his legs and back ached,
and he stretched himself gingerly to relieve them.

Damson glanced back at him, concern mirrored in her eyes.

She hesitated, then guided him forward.

The voices rose again, closer now, coming from more than one
direction.

Torchlight flared behind them.  Damson took Par up another ladder and
into a tunnel that was so narrow they were forced to crawl to get
through.  Dampness and filth soaked into Par's clothing and clung to
his skin.  He forced himself to breathe through his mouth and then only
when he could hold his breath no longer.

They emerged at the beginning of a wider tunnel, this one trenched down
its middle so that there were stone walkways to either side of where
the sewer water flowed.  A pair of smaller tunnels intersected.

There was a flicker of torchlight in each.

Damson hurried on.  They rounded a bend and found torchlight waiting
ahead as well.  Damson stopped, shoving Par back against the rock
wall.

When she faced him, there was a hint of desperation in her eyes.

"The only way out," she whispered, her mouth close to his ear, "lies
ahead.  If we go back, we'll be trapped."

She stepped back so that she could see his response.  He glanced past
her to the lights, approaching rapidly now, and heard the thudding of
boots and the first hint of voices.  Fear welled within and threatened
to drown him.  It felt as if the Federation had been hunting him
forever; it seemed that the hunting would never stop.  So many times he
had escaped capture.  It could not go on.  Sooner or later his luck was
going to run out.  He had barely survived the Pit and the Shadowen.  He
was worn and sick at heart and he just wanted to be left alone.

But the Federation would never leave him alone; the cycle was
endless.

For an instant despair claimed him completely.  Then abruptly he
thought of Coll.  He remembered his vow that someone would pay for what
had become of his brother.  Anger replaced the despair instantly.  No,
he would not be taken prisoner, he swore silently.  He would not be
given over to Rimmer Dail.

He thought momentarily to summon the magic that had aided him in the
Pit, to call forth that fiery sword that would cut his enemies to
pieces.  He brushed the impulse aside.  It was too much power to face
again so soon and still with so little understanding.  Cunning, not
brute force, was needed here.  He remembered suddenly how he had
escaped from the Federation that night in the People's Park.  Pulling
Damson after him, he hastened to a shadowed niche in the tunnel wall
formed by the bracing.  Crouched in the darkness with the girl, he put
a finger to his lips and signaled for her to remain still.

The Federation soldiers approached, five strong, torches lifted to
provide sufficient light for their search, the metal of their weapons
glinting.  Par took a deep breath and slipped down within himself.  He
would have only one chance.  Just one.

He waited until they were almost upon them, then used the wishsong.  He
kept it tightly in check, taking no chances with what it might do,
carefully controlling its release.  He cast a net about the soldiers of
whispered warnings, a hint of something that disturbed the waters of
the sewer farther ahead, a shadowy movement.  He infused them with a
need to hurry if they were to catch it.

Almost as one, the soldiers broke into a run and hastened past without
looking.  The Valeman and the girl pressed back against the tunnel
rock, breathless.  In moments the soldiers were gone.

Slowly Damson and Par came back to their feet.  Then Damson reached out
impulsively and hugged the Valeman.  "You are well again, Par
Ohmsford," she whispered, and kissed him.  "This way, now.  We're
almost free."

They hurried down the passageway, crossed a confluent, and entered a
dry well.  The torches and boots and voices had receded into silence.

There was a ladder leading up.  Damson went first, pausing at the top
to push up against a trapdoor.  Twilight seeped through the crack.

She listened, peered about, then climbed through.  Par followed.

They stood within a shed, slat-walled and closed away.  A single door
led out.  Damson moved to it, opened it cautiously and with Par in tow
stepped out.

The city of Tyrsis rose around them, fortress walls, spiraled towers,
jumbled buildings of stone and wood.  The air was thick with smells and
sounds.  It was early evening, the day gone west, the city's people
turned homeward.  Life was slow and weary in the stillness of the
summer heat.  Overhead the sky was turning to black velvet, and stars
were beginning to spread like scattered bits of crystal.  A wondrously
bright full moon beamed cold white light across the world.

Par Ohmsford smiled, the aches forgotten, his fears momentarily behind
him.  He adjusted the weight of the Sword of Shannara across his
shoulders.  It felt good to be alive.

Damson reached over and took his hand, squeezing it gently.

Together they turned down the street and disappeared into the night.

UICKENING KEPT HER little company at Hearthstone for several days to
allow Walker Boh to regain his strength.

It returned quickly, the healing process augmented as much by the
girl's small touches and sudden smiles, by the very fact of her
presence, as by nature's hand.  There was magic all about her, an
invisible aura that surrounded her, that reached out to everything with
which she came in contact, and that restored and renewed with a
thoroughness and rapidity that was astounding.  Walker grew strong
again almost overnight, the effects of his poisoning gone into memory,
to some small extent at least joined by the pain of losing Cogline and
Rumor.  The haunted look disappeared from his eyes, and he was able to
put away his anger and his fear, to lock them in a small dark corner of
his mind where they would not disturb him and yet not be forgotten when
the time came to remember.  His determination returned, his confidence,
his sense of purpose and resolve, and he became more like the Dark
Uncle of old.  His magic aided him in his recovery, but it was
Quickening who provided the impetus, moment by moment, a warmth that
outshone the sun.

She did more.  The clearing where the cottage had stood became cleansed
of its scars and burns, and the signs of the battle with the Shadowen
slowly disappeared.  Grasses and flowers blossomed and filled the
emptiness, swatches of color and patches of fragrance that soothed and
comforted.  Even the ruins of the cottage settled into dust and at last
faded from view corn pletely.  It seemed that whenever she chose she
could make the world over again.

Morgan Leah began to talk to Walker when Pe Ell was not around, the
Highlander still uneasy, admitting to Walker that he was not certain
yet who the other really was or why Quickening had brought him along.

Morgan had grown since Walker had seen him last.  Brash and full of
himself when he had first come to Hearthstone, he seemed subdued now,
nore controlled, a cautious man without lacking courage, a
well-reasoned man.  Walker liked him better for it and thought that the
events that had conspired to separate him from the Ohmsfords and bring
him to Culhaven had done much to mature him.  The Highlander told
Walker what had befallen Par and Coll, of their joining Padishar Creel
and the Movement, their journey to Tyrsis and attempts to recover the
Sword of Shannara from the Pit, their battles with the Shadowen, and
their separation and separate escapes.  He told Walker of the
Federation assault on the Jut, Teel's betrayal, her death and Steff's,
and the outlaw's flight north.

"She gave us all away, Walker," Morgan declared when he had finished
his narrative.  "She gave up Granny and Auntie in Cuthaven, the Dwarves
working with the Resistance that she knew about, everyone.

She must have given Cogline up as well."

But Walker did not believe so.  The Shadowen had known of Cogline and
Hearthstone since Par had been kidnapped from the valley by Spider
Gnomes some months earlier.  The Shadowen could have come for Cogline
at any time, and they had not chosen to do so until now.  Rimmer Dail
had told Cogline before he killed him that the old man was the last who
stood against the Shadowen, and that meant that he believed Cogline had
become a threat.  More worrisome to him than how Rimmer Dail had found
them was the First Seeker's claim that the children of Shannara were
all dead.  Obviously he was mistaken about Walker, but what of Par and
Wren, the others of the Shannara line dispatched by the shade of
Allanon in search of those things lost and disappeared that would
supposedly save the Four Lands?  Was Rimmer Dail mistaken about them as
well or had they, too, gone the way of Cogline?  He hadn't the means to
discover the truth and he kept what he was thinking to himself.  There
was no point in saying anything to Morgan Leah, who was already
struggling with the imagined consequences of his decision to follow
after Quickening.

"I know I should not be here," he told Walker in confidence one
afternoon.  They were sitting within the shade of an aged white oak,
listening to and watching the songbirds that darted overhead.  "I kept
my word to Steff and saw to the safety of Granny Elise and Auntie
Jilt.

But this!  What of my promise to Par and Coll that I would protect
them?  I shouldn't be here; I should be back in Tyrsis looking for
them!"

But Walker said, "No, Highlander, you should not.  What good could you
do even if you found them?  How much help would you be against the
Shadowen?  You have a chance here to do something far more
important-indeed, a need, if Quickening is right in what she says.

Perhaps, too, you may find a way to restore the magic to your sword,
just as I may find a way to restore my arm.  Slim hopes for those of us
with pragmatic minds, yet hopes nevertheless.  We feel her need,
Highlander, and we respond to it; we are her children, aren't we?

I think we cannot dismiss such stirrings so easily.  For now at least,
we belong with her."

He had come to believe that, swayed by his midnight talk with
Quickening when he had told her of the Grimpond's vision and his fear
that it would come to pass, won over by her insistence and
determination that it would not.  Morgan Leah was no less thoroughly
bound, mesmerized by her beauty, chained by his longings, drawn to her
in ways he could not begin to understand but could not deny.  For each
of the three, the attraction to Quickening was different.  Morgan's was
physical, a fascination with the look and movement of her, with the
exquisite line and curve of her face and body, and with a loveliness
that transcended anything he had ever known or even imagined.  Walker's
was more ethereal, a sense of kinship with her born of their common
birthright of magic, an understanding of the ways in which she was
compelled to think and act because of it, a binding together through a
common chain of links where each link was a shared experience of
reasoning grown out of the magic's lure.

Pe Ell's purpose in coming was the most difficult to discern.

He called himself an artist, at various times of sleight-of-hand and
escape, but he was clearly something more.  That he was extremely
dangerous was no mystery to anyone, yet he kept any truths about
himself carefully concealed.  He seldom spoke to any of them, even to
Quickening, though he was as attracted to her as either Walker or
Morgan and looked after her as carefully as they.  But Pe Ell's
attraction was more that of a man for his possessions than a man for
his lover or a kindred spirit.  He seemed drawn to Quickening in the
way of a craftsman to some thing he has created and offers up as
evidence of his skill.  It was an attitude that Walker found difficult
to understand, for Pe Ell had been brought along in the same way as the
rest of them and had done nothing to make Quickening who or what she
was.

Yet the feeling persisted in him that Pe Ell viewed the girl as his own
and when the time was right he would attempt to possess her.

The days of the week played themselves out until finally Quickening
decided Walker was well enough to travel, and the company of four
departed Hearthstone.  Traveling afoot, for the country would permit
nothing better, they journeyed north through Darklin Reach and the
forests of the Anar along the western edge of Toffer Ridge to the Rabb,
crossed where the waters narrowed, and proceeded on toward the
Charnals.  Prog ress was slow because the country was heavily wooded,
choked with scrub and slashed by ravines and ridges, and they were
forced constantly to alter their direction of travel away from their
intended course to find passable terrain.  The weather was good,
however, warm days of sunshine and soft breezes, the summer's close, a
slow, lazy winding down of hours that made every day seem welcome and
endless.  There was sickness even this far north, wilting and poisoning
of the earth and its life, yet not as advanced as in the middle
sections of the Four Lands, and the smells and tastes, the sights and
sounds, were mostly fresh and new and unfouled.  Streams were clear and
forests green, and the life within both seemed unaffected by the
gathering darkness with which the Shadowen threatened to blanket every
thing.

Nights were spent camped in wooded clearings by ponds or JL streams
that provided fresh water and often fish for a meal, and there was talk
now and then between the men, even by Pe Ell.

It was Quickening who remained reticent, who kept herself apart when
the day's travel was completed, who secluded herself back in the
shadows, away from the firelight and the presence of the other three.

It wasn't that she disdained them or hid from them; it was more that
she needed the solitude.  The wall went up early in their travels, an
invisible distancing that she established the first night out and did
not relinquish after.  The three she had brought with her did not
question, but instead watched her and each other surreptitiously and
waited to see what would transpire.  When nothing did, thrown together
by her forced separation from them, they began to loosen up in each
other's presence and to speak.  Morgan would have talked in any case,
an open and relaxed youth who enjoyed stories and the company of
others.  It was different with Walker and Pe Ell, both of whom were by
nature and practice guarded and cautious.  Conversations frequently
became small battlegrounds between the two with each attempting to
discover what secrets the other hid and neither willing to reveal
anything about himself.  They used their talk as a screen, careful to
keep the conversation away from anything that really mattered.

They all speculated now and again on where they were going and what
they were going to do when they got there.  Those conversations ended
quickly every time.  No one would discuss what sort of magic he
possessed, though Walker and Morgan already had some idea of each
other's strengths, and no one would advance any plan of action for
retrieving the talisman.

They fenced with each other like swordsman, probing for strengths and
weaknesses, feinting with their questions and their suggestions, and
trying to discover what sort of iron fortified the others.  Walker and
Pe Ell made little progress with each other, and while it became clear
enough that Morgan was there because of the magic contained in the
Sword of Leah it was impossible to learn anything substantive with the
weapon shattered.  Pe Ell, particularly, asked questions over and over
again about what it was the Sword of Leah could do, what sort of
materials it could penetrate, and how much power it contained.

Morgan used all of his considerable talents to be both charming and
confusing with his answers and to give the impression that the magic
could do either anything or nothing.  Eventually, Pe Ell left him
alone.

The close of the first week of travel brought them north above the Anar
to the foothills leading into the Charnals where for days thereafter
they journeyed, always in the shadow of the mountains as they wound
their way northeast toward the Tiderace.  By now, they were beyond the
lands any of them knew.

Neither Morgan nor Pe Ell had ever been north of the Upper Anar, and
Walker had not gone farther than the lower regions of the Charnals.

In any case, it was Quickening who led them, seemingly unperturbed by
the fact that she knew less of the country than any of them, responding
to some inner voice that none of them could hear, to instincts that
none of them could feel.  She admitted that she did not know exactly
where she was going, that she could sense enough to lead them for now,
but that eventually they would have to cross the Charnals, and then she
would be lost as the mountains would prove unfathomable to her.

Eldwist lay beyond the Charnals, and they would have to have help in
finding it.

"Have you the magic for that, Walker?"  Pe Ell teased when she
finished, but Walker only smiled and wondered the same thing.

Rain caught up with them as the second week ended and followed them
relentlessly into the third, dampening their trail, their packs and
clothing, and their spirits.  Clouds massed overhead along the line of
the peaks and refused to budge, dark and persistent.  Thunder boomed
and lightning flashed against the wall of the mountains as if giants
were playing shadow games with their hands.  There were not many
travelers this far north; most of those they encountered were Trolls.

Few spoke and fewer still had anything useful to tell.  There were
several passes that led through the mountains a day or two ahead, all
of them beginning at a town high in the foothills called Rampling
Steep.

Yes, some of the passes led all the way east to the Tiderace.  No, they
had never heard of Eldwist.

"Makes you wonder if it really exists," Pe Ell muttered, persisting in
his role as agitator, a smile creasing his narrow face, cold and empty
and devoid of humor.  "Makes you think."

That night, two days short of the completion of their third week of
travel, he broached the subject in a manner that left no one in doubt
as to his feelings.  The rains were still failing, a gray haze that
chilled and numbed the senses, and tempers had grown short.

"This town, Rampling Steep," he began, an edge to his voice that
brought them all around in the stillness of the twilight, that's where
we lose any idea of where we're going, isn't it?"

He asked the question of Quickening, who made no response.

"We're lost after that, and I don't like being lost.  Maybe it's time
we talked a bit more about this whole business."

"What would you know, Pe Ell?"  the girl asked quietly, unperturbed.

"You haven't told us enough about what lies ahead," he said.

"I think you should.  Now."

She shook her head.  "You ask for answers I do not have to give.

I have to discover them as well."

"I don't believe that," he said, shaking his head for emphasis, his
voice low and hard.  Morgan Leah was looking at him with undisguised
irritation and Walker Bob was on his feet.  "I know something about
people, even ones who have the magic like yourself and I know when
they're telling me everything they know and when they're not.  You're
not.  You better do so."

"Or you might turn around and go back?"  Morgan challenged sharply.

Pe Ell looked at him expressionlessly.

"Why don't you do that, Pe Ell?  Why don't you?"

Pe Ell rose, his eyes flat and seemingly disinterested.  Morgan stood
up with him.  But Quickening stepped forward, coming swiftly between
them, moving to separate them without seeming to mean to do so, but as
if she sought only to face Pe Ell.  She stood before him, small and
vulnerable, silver hair swept back as she tilted her face to his.

He frowned and for a moment looked as if he felt threatened and might
lash out.  Whip-thin and sinewy, he curled back like a snake.

But she did not move, either toward him or away, and the tension slowly
went out of him.

"You must trust me," she told him softly, speaking to him as if he were
the only other person alive in all the world, holding him spellbound by
the force of her voice, the intensity of her black eyes, and the
closeness of her body.  "What there is to know of Uhl Belk and Eldwist,
I have told you.  What there is to know of the Black Elfstone, I have
told you.  As much, at least, as I am given to know.  Yes, there are
things I keep from you just as you keep things from me.  That is the
way of all living creatures, Pe Ell.  You cannot begrudge me my secrets
when you have your own.  I keep nothing back that will harm you.  That
is the best I can do."

The lean man stared down at her without speaking, everything closed
away behind his eyes where his thoughts were at work.

"When we reach Rampling Steep, we will seek help in finding our way,"
she continued, her voice still barely above a whisper, yet bell-clear
and certain.  "Eldwist will be known and someone will point the way."

And to the surprise of both Walker and Morgan Leah, Pe Ell simply
nodded and stepped away.  He did not speak again that night to any of
them.  He seemed to have forgotten they existed.

The following day they reached a broad roadway leading west into the
foothills and turned onto it.  The roadway wound ahead snakelike into
the light and then into shadow when the sun dropped behind the peaks of
the Charnals.  Night descended and they camped beneath the stars, the
first clear sky in many days.  They talked quietly as the evening meal
was consumed, a sense of balance restored with the passing of the
rains.  No mention was made of the previous night's events.  Pe Ell
seemed satisfied with what Quickening had told him, although she had
told him almost nothing.  It was the way in which she had spoken to
him, Walker thought on reflection.  It was the way she employed her
magic to turn aside his suspicion and anger.

They set out again early the following morning, traveling northeast
once more, the sunrise bright and warming.  By late afternoon they had
climbed high into the foothills, close against the base of the
mountains.  By sunset they had arrived at the town of Rampling Steep.

The light was nearly gone by then, a dim glow from behind the mountains
west that colored the skyline in shades of gold and silver.

Rampling Steep was hunkered down in a deep pool of shadows, cupped in a
shallow basin at the foot of the peaks where the forest trees began to
thin and scatter into isolated clumps between the ridges of mountain
rock.  The buildings of the town were a sorry bunch, ramshackle
structures built of stone foundations and wooden walls and roofs with
windows and doors all shuttered and barred and closed away like the
eyes of frightened children.  There was a single street that wound
between them as if looking for a way out.  The buildings of the town
crouched down on either side save for a handful of shacks and cottages
that were settled back on the high ground like careless sentries.

Everything was desperately in need of repair.

Boards from walls were broken and hung loose, roofing shingles had
slipped away, and porch fronts sagged and buckled.  Slivers of light
crept through cracks and crevices.  There were teams of horses hitched
to wagons pulled up close against the buildings, each looking a little
more ruined than the one before, and shadowed figures on two legs moved
between them like wraiths.

As the company drew nearer Walker saw that the figures were mostly
Trolls, great, hulking figures in the twilight, their barklike faces
impossible to read.  A few glanced at the four as they passed down the
roadway, but none bothered to speak or to give a second took.  The
sound of voices reached out to them now, disembodied grunts and
mutterings and laughter that the dilapidated walls could not keep in.

But despite the talk and the laughter and the movement of men, Rampling
Steep had an empty feet to it, as if it had long ago been abandoned by
the living.

Quickening took them up the roadway without pausing, glancing neither
left nor right, as sure of herself now as she had been from the
start.

Morgan followed no more than a step behind, staying close, keeping
watch, being protective although there was probably no need for him to
do so.  Pe Ell had drifted out to the right, distancing himself.

Walker trailed.

There was a series of ate houses at the center of Rampling Steep, and
it appeared that everyone had gathered there.  Music came from some,
and men lurched and swaggered through the doors, passing in and out of
the light in faceless anonymity.  A few women passed as well, worn and
hard looking.  Rampling Steep appeared to be a place of ending rather
than beginning.

Quickening took them into the first of the ale houses and asked the
keeper if he knew of someone who could guide them through the mountains
to Eldwist.  She asked the question as if there were nothing unusual
about it.  She was oblivious to the stir her presence caused, to the
stares that were directed at her from every quarter, and to the dark
hunger that lay behind a good many of the eyes that fixed upon her, or
at least she seemed to be.  Perhaps, Walker thought, as he watched her,
it was all simply of no consequence to her.  He saw that no one tried
to approach and no one threatened.  Morgan stood protectively at her
back, facing that unfriendly, rapacious gathering-as if one man could
make a difference if they should decide to do something-but it was not
the Highlander that deterred them or Walker or even the forbidding Pe
Ell.  It was the girl, a creature so stunning that like a thing out of
some wild imagining it could not be disturbed for fear it would prove
false.  The men gathered in the ale house watched, that crowd of
wild-eyed men, not quite believing but not willing to prove themselves
wrong.

There was nothing to be learned at the first ale house, so they moved
on to the next.  No one followed.  The scenario of the first ale house
was repeated at the second, this one smaller and closer inside, the
smoke of pipes and the smell of bodies thicker and more pungent.

There were Trolls, Gnomes, Dwarves, and Men in Rampling Steep, all
drinking and talking together as if it were the natural order of
things, as if what was happening in the rest of the Four Lands was of
no importance here.  Walker studied their faces dispassionately, their
eyes when their faces told him nothing, and found them secretive and
scared, the faces and eyes of men who lived with hardship and
disappointment yet ignored both because to do otherwise would mean they
could not survive.  Some seemed dangerous, a few even desperate.  But
there was an order to life in Rampling Steep as there was in most
places, and not much happened to disturb that order.  Strangers came
and went, even ones as striking as Quickening, and life went on
nevertheless.  Quickening was something like a failing star-it happened
a few times and you were lucky if you saw it but you didn't do anything
to change your life because of it.

They moved on to a third ale house and then a fourth.  At each ale
house, the answers to Quickening's questions were the same.  No one
knew anything of Eldwist and Uhl Belk and no one wanted to.  There were
maybe eight drinking houses in all along the roadway, most offering
beds upstairs and supplies from storerooms out back, a few doubling as
trading stations or exchanges.  Because Rampling Steep was the only
town for days in either direction that fronted the lower side of the
Charnals and because it was situated where the trails leading down out
of the mountains converged, a lot of traffic passed through, trappers
and traders mostly, but others as well.  Every ale house was filled and
most gathered were temporary or sometime residents on their way to or
from somewhere else.  There was talk of all sorts, of business and
politics, of roads traveled and wonders seen, of the people and places
that made up the Four Lands.  Walker listened without appearing to and
thought that Pe Ell was doing the same.

At the fifth ale house they visited-Walker never even noticed the
name-they finally got the response they were looking for.  The keeper
was a big, ruddy-complexioned fellow with a scarred face and a ready
smile, He sized up Quickening in a way that made even Walker
uncomfortable.  Then he suggested that the girl should take a room with
him for a few days, just to see if maybe she might like the town enough
to stay.  That brought Morgan Leah about with fire in his eyes, but
Quickening screened him away with a slight shifting of her body, met
the keeper's bold stare, and replied that she wasn't interested.

The keeper did not press the suggestion.  Instead, to everyone's
amazement in the face of the rejection he had just been handed, he told
her that the man she was seeking was down the street at the Skinned
Cat.  His name, he said, was Horner Dees.

They went back out into the night, leaving the keeper looking as if he
wasn't at all sure what he had just done.  The look was telling.

Quickening had that gift; it was the essence of her magic.  She could
turn you around before you realized it.  She could make you reveal
yourself in ways you had never intended.

She could make you want to please her.  It was the kind of thing a
beautiful woman could make a man do, but with Quickening it was
something far more than her beauty that disarmed you.

It was the creature within, the elemental that seemed human but was far
more, an embodiment of magic that Walker thought reflected the father
who had made her.  He knew the stories of the King of the Silver
River.

When you met him, you told him what he wished to know and you did not
dissemble.  His presence alone was enough to make you want to tell
him.

Walker had seen how Morgan and Pe Ell and the men in the ale houses
responded to her.  And he as well.  She was most certainly her father's
child.

They found the Skinned Cat at the far end of the town, tucked back
within the shadow of several massive, ancient shagbarks.  It was a
large, rambling structure that creaked and groaned simply from the
movement of the men and women inside and seemed to hang together mostly
out of stubbornness.  It was crowded as the others, but there was more
space to fill and it had been divided along its walls into nooks and
partitions to make it feel less barnlike.  Lights were scattered about
like distant friends reaching out through the gloom, and the patrons
were gathered in knots at the serving bar and about long tables and
benches.  Heads turned at their entrance as they had turned at the
other ale houses, and eyes watched.  Quickening moved to find the
keeper, who listened and pointed to the back of the room.  There was a
man sitting at a table there, alone in a shadowed nook, hunched over
and faceless, pushed away from the light and the crowd.

The four walked over to stand before him.

"Horner Dees," Quickening said in that silken voice.

Massive hands brought an ale mug slowly away from a bearded mouth and
back to the tabletop, and a large, shaggy head lifted.  The man was
huge, a great old bear of a fellow with the better part of his years
behind him.  There was hair all over him, on his forearms and the backs
of his hands, at his throat and on his chest, and on his head and face,
grown over him so completely that except for his eyes and nose his
features were obscured almost entirely.  It was impossible to guess how
old he was, but the hair was silver gray, the skin beneath it wrinkled
and browned and mottled, and the fingers gnarled like old roots.

"I might be," he rumbled truculently from out of some giant's cave.

His eyes were riveted on the girl.

"My name is Quickening," she said.  "These are my companions.  We
search for a place called Eldwist and a man named Uhl Belk.  We are
told you know of both."

"You were told wrong."

"Can you take us there?"  she asked, ignoring his response.

"I just said "Can you take us there?"  she repeated.

The big man stared at her without speaking, without moving, with no
hint of what he was thinking.  He was like a huge, settled rock that
had survived ages of weathering and erosion and found them to be little
more than a passing breeze.  "Who are you)" he asked finally.  "Who,
other than your name?"

Quickening did not hesitate.  "I am the daughter of the King of the
Silver River.  Do you know of him, Horner Dees?"

The other nodded slowly.  "Yes, I know him.  And maybe you are who you
say.  And maybe I am who you think.  Maybe I even know about Eldwist
and Uhl Belk.  Maybe I'm the only one who knows-the only one who's
still alive to tell about it.

Maybe I can even do what you ask and take you there.  But I don't see
the point.  Sit."

He gestured at a scattering of empty chairs, and the four seated
themselves across the table from him.  He looked at the men in turn,
then his eyes returned to the girl.  "You don't took as if you're
someone who doesn't know what they're doing.  Why would you want to
find Uhl Belk?"

Quickenin@s black eyes were fathomless, intense.  "Uhl Belk stole
something that doesn't belong to him.  It must be returned."

Horner Dees snorted derisively.  "You plan to steal it back, do you?

Or just ask him to return it?  Do you know anything about Belk?

I do."

"He stole a talisman from the Druids."

Dees hesitated.  His bearded face twitched as he chewed on something
imaginary.  "Girl, nobody who goes into Eldwist ever comes out again.

Nobody except me, and I was just plain lucky.

There's things there that nothing can stand against.  Belk, he's an old
thing, come out of some other age, full of dark magic and evil.

You won't ever take anything away from him, and he won't ever give
anything back."

"Those who are with me are stronger than Uhl Belk," Quickening said.

"They have magic as well, and theirs will overcome his.  My father says
it will be so.  These three," and she named them each in turn, "will
prevail."

As she spoke their names, Horner Dees let his eyes shift to identify
each, passing over their faces quickly, pausing only once-so briefly
that Walker wasn't sure at first that there had been a pause at all-on
Pe Elf.

Then he said, "These are men.  Uhl Belk is something more.

You can't kill him like an ordinary man.  You probably can't even find
him.  He'll find you and by then it will be too late."

He snapped his fingers and sat back.

Quickening eyed him momentarily across the table, then reached out
impulsively and touched the table's wooden surface.

Instantly a splinter curled up, a slender stem forming, leafing out and
finally flowering with tiny bluebells.  Quickening's smile was as
magical as her touch.  "Show us the way into Eldwist, Horner Dees," she
said.

The old man wet his lips.  "it will take more than flowers to do in
Belk," he said.

"Perhaps not," she whispered, and Walker had the feeling that for a
moment she had gone somewhere else entirely.

"Wouldn't you like to come with us and see?"

Dees shook his head.  "I didn't get old being stupid," he said.

He thought a moment, then sat forward again.  "It was ten years ago
when I went into Eldwist.  I'd found it some time before that, but I
knew it was dangerous and I wasn't about to go in there alone.  I kept
thinking about it though, wondering what was in there, because finding
out about things is what I do.  I've been a Tracker, a soldier, a
hunter, everything there is to be, and it all comes down to finding out
what's what.  So I kept wondering about Eldwist, about what was in
there, all those old buildings, all that stone, everywhere you
looked.

I went back finally because I couldn't stand not knowing anymore.

I took a dozen men with me, lucky thirteen of us.  We thought we'd find
something of value in there, a place as secret and old as that.  We
knew what it was called; there's been legends about it for years in the
high country, over on the other side of the mountains where some of us
had been.  The Trolls know it.  It's a peninsula-just a narrow strip of
land, all rock, jutting out into the middle of the Tiderace.  We went
out there one morning, the thirteen of us.  Full of life.  By dawn of
the next day, the other twelve were dead, and I was running like a
scared deer!"

He hunched his shoulders.  "You don't want to go there," he said.

"You don't want anything to do with Eldwist and Uhl Belk."

He picked up his mug, drained it, and slammed it down purposefully.

The sound brought the keeper immediately, a fresh drink in hand, and
away again just as quickly.  Dees never looked at him, his eyes still
fixed on Quickening.  The evening was wearing on toward midnight by
now, but few among the alehouse customers had drifted away.

They clustered as they had since sunset, since long before in some
cases, their talk more liquid and disjointed than earlier and their
posture more relaxed.

Time had lost its hold on them momentarily, victims of all forms of
strife and misadventure, refugees huddled within the shelter of their
intoxication and their loose companionship.  Dees was not one of them;
Walker Boh doubted that he ever would be.

Quickening stirred.  "Horner Dees," she said, saying his name as if she
were examining it, a young girl trying on an old man's identity.

"if you do nothing, Uhl Belk will come for you."

For the first time, Dees looked startled.

"In time, he will come," Quickening continued, her voice both gentle
and sad.  "He advances his kingdom beyond what it was and it grows more
swiftly with the passing of time.  If he is not stopped, if his power
is not lessened, sooner or later he will reach you."

"I'll be long dead," the old man said, but he didn't sound sure.

Quickening smiled, magical once again, something perfect and
wondrous.

"There are mysteries that you will never solve because you will not
have the chance," she said.  "That is not the case with Uhl Belk.  You
are a man who has spent his life finding out about things.

Would you stop doing so now?  How will you know which of us is right
about Uhl Belk if you do not come with us?  Do so, Horner Dees.

Show us the way into Eldwist.  Make this journey."

Dees was silent for a long time, thinking it through.  Then he said, "I
would like to believe that monster could be undone by something .  He
shook his head.  "I don't know."

"Do you need to?"  the girl asked softly.

Dees frowned, then smiled, a great, gap-toothed grin that wreathed his
broad face in weathered lines.  "Never have," he said and laughed.

The grin disappeared.  "This is a hard walk we I re talking about, not
some stroll across the street.  The passes are tough going any time of
the year and once we're over and beyond, we'll be on our own.  No help
over there.  Nothing but Trolls, and they don't care spit about
outsiders.  Nothing to help us but us.  Truth is, none of you look
strong enough to make it."

"We might be stronger than you think," Morgan Leah said quietly.

Dees eyed him critically.  "You'll have to be," he said.  "A lot
stronger."  Then he sighed.  "Well, well.  Come to this, has it?

Me, an old man, about to go out into the far reaches one more time."

He chuckled softly and looked back at Quickening.  "You have a way
about you, I'll say that.  Talk a nut right out of its shell.  Even a
hard old nut like me.  Well, well."

He shoved his chair back from the table and came to his feet.  He was
even bigger standing than he had been sitting, like some pitted wall
that refused to fall down even after years of enduring adverse
weather.

He stood before them, hunched over and hoary looking, his big arms
hanging loose, and his eyes squinting as if he had just come into the
light.

"All right, I'll take you", he announced, leaning forward to emphasize
his decision, keeping his voice low and even.  "I'll take you because
it's true that I haven't seen everything or found all the answers and
what's life for if not to keep trying-even when I don't believe that
trying will be enough.  You meet me back here at sunrise, and I'll give
you a list of what you need and where to find it.  You do the
gathering, I'll do the organizing.

We'll give it a try.  Who knows?  Maybe some of us will even make it
back."

He paused and looked at them as if seeing them for the first time.

There was a hint of laughter around the edges of his voice as he said,
"Won't it be a good joke on Belk if you really do have the stronger
magic?"

Then he eased his way out from behind the table, shambled across the
room and out the door, and disappeared into the night.

ORNER DEES WAS as good as his word, meeting them early the next morning
to direct preparations for the journey that would take them across the
Charnals and into Eldwist.  He met them at the door of the rooming
house on which they had finally settled for their night's lodgings, a
creaky two-storied rambler that in former times had been first a
residence then later a store, and without bothering to explain how he
had found them provided a list of supplies they would need and
directions on where to obtain them.  He was even more rumpled and
bearish seeming than he had been the previous night, wider than the
door he stood before and hunched over like some sodden jungle shrub.

He muttered and grumbled, and his instructions were delivered as if he
were suffering from too much drink.  Pe Ell thought him a worthless
sot, and Morgan Leah found him just plain unpleasant.

Because they could see that Quickening expected it, they accepted their
instructions wordlessly.  A little of Horner Dees went a long way.  But
Walker Boh saw something different.  To begin with, he had worried
enough the previous night about Dees to take Quickening aside after the
old man's departure and suggest to her that maybe this wasn't the man
they were looking for.  After all, what did they know about Dees beyond
what he had told them?  Even if he actually had gone into Eldwist, that
was ten years ago.  What if he had since forgotten the way?  What if he
remembered just enough to get them hopelessly lost?  But Quickening had
assured him in that way she had of dispelling all doubt that Horner
Dees was the man they needed.  Now, as he listened to the old Tracker,
he was inclined to agree.  Walker had made a good many journeys in his
time and he understood the kinds of preparations that were required.

It was clear that Dees understood as well.  For all of his gruff talk
and his grizzled look, Horner Dees knew what he was doing.

The preparation time passed quickly.  Walker, Morgan, and Pe Ell
gathered together the foodstuffs, bedding, canvases, ropes, climbing
tools, cooking implements, clothing, and survival gear that Dees had
sent them to find.  Dees himself arranged for pack animals, shaggy
mules that could carry the heavy loads they would need and weather the
mountain storms.  They brought everything to an old stable situated at
the north end of Rampling Steep, a building that seemed to serve Dees
as both workshop and home.  He lived in the tack room and when he
wasn't issuing orders or checking on their efforts to carry them out he
kept himself there.

Quickening was even more reclusive.  When she wasn't with them, which
was most of the time, they had no idea where she was.  She seemed to
drift in the manner of an errant cloud, more shadow than substance.

She might have walked the woodlands away from the town, for she would
have been more comfortable there.  She might have simply hidden away.

Wherever she went, she disappeared with the completeness of the sun at
day's end, and they missed her as much.  Only when she returned did
they feel warmed again.  She spoke to them each day, always singly,
never together.  She gave them a measure of herself, some small
reassurance that they could not quite define but not mistake either.

Had she been someone else, they would have suspected her of game
playing.  But she was Quickening, the daughter of the King of the
Silver River, and there was no time or wish or even need for games in
her life.  She transcended such behavior and while they did not fully
understand her and sensed hat perhaps they never would, they were
convinced that deception and betrayal were beyond her.  Her presence
alone kept them together, bound them to her so that they would not turn
away.

She was incandescent, a creature of overpowering brilliance, so magical
that they were as captivated by her as they would have been by a
rainbow's arc.  She caused them to look for her ev erywhere.  They
watched for her to appear and when she did found themselves beguiled
anew.  They waited for her to speak to them, to touch them, for even
the briefest look.  She spun them in the vortex of her being, and even
as they found themselves spellbound they yearned for it to go on.  They
watched each other like hawks, uncertain of their roles in her plans,
of their uses, and of their needs.  They fought to learn something of
her that would belong only to them and they measured the time they
spent with her as if it were gold dust.

Yet they were not entirely without doubts or misgivings.  In the
secrecy of their most private thoughts they still worriedabout her
wisdom in selecting them, about her foresight in the quest they had
agreed to undertake, and about whether wanting to be near her was
sufficient reason for them to go on.

Pe Ell's ruminations were the most intense.  He had come on this
journey in the first place because the girl intrigued him, because she
was different from the others he had been sent to kill, because he
wanted to learn as much about her as he could before he used the
Stiehl, and because he wanted to discover, too, if this talisman of
which she spoke, this Black Elfstone, was as powerful as she believed
and if so whether he could make it his own.  It had annoyed him when
she had insisted on bringing along the brash Highlander and the tall,
pate one-armed man.

He would have preferred that they go alone, because in truth he
believed that he was all she would need.  Yet he had held his tongue
and remained patient, convinced that the other two would cause him no
problem.

But now there was Horner Dees to contend with as well, and there was
something about this old man that bothered Pe Elf.  It was odd that
Dees should trouble him like this; he seemed a worthless old coot.  The
source of his discomfort, he supposed, was the fact that he was
beginning to feet crowded.  How many more did the girl intend to add to
their little company?  Soon, he would be stumbling over cripples and
misfits at every turn, none of them worth even the small effort it
would eventually require to eliminate them.  Pe Ell was a loner; he did
not like groups.  Yet the girl persisted in swelling their number and
all for a rather vague purpose.  Her magic seemed almost limitless; she
could do things no one else could, not even him.  He was convinced that
despite her protestations to the contrary her magic was sufficient to
guide them into Eldwist.  Once there, she had no need of anyone but
him.  What was the purpose then of including the others?

Two nights earlier, just before the rains had ended, Pe Ell had
confronted her out of frustration and discontent, intending to force
from her the truth of the matter.  Quickening had turned him aside
somehow, calmed him, stripping him of his determination to unmask
her.

The experience had left him perplexed at the ease with which she had
manipulated him, and for a time afterward he had thought simply to kill
her and be done with it.  He had discovered her purpose, hadn't he?

Why not do as Rimmer Dail had advised and be finished with this
business, forget the Black Elfstone, and leave these fools to chase
after it without him?  He had decided to wait.  Now he was glad he
had.

For as he considered the irritating presence of Dees and the others, he
began to think that he understood their purpose.

Quickening had brought them to serve as a diversion, nothing more.

After all, what other service could they provide?  One's strength was
contained in a broken sword, the other's in a broken body.  What were
such paltry magics compared to that of the Stiehl?  Wasn't he the
assassin, the master killer, the one whose magic could bring down
anything?  That was most certainly why she had brought him.  She had
never said as much, but he knew it was so.  Rimmer Dail had been wrong
to think she would not recognize what he was.  Quickening, with her
formidable insight and intuition, would not have missed such an obvious
truth.  Which was why she had brought him, of coursewhy she had come to
him before any of the others.  She needed him to kill Belk; he was the
only one who could.  She needed the magic of the Stiehl.  The others,
Dees included, were so much kindling to be thrown into the fire.  In
the end, she would have to depend on him.

Morgan Leah, if Pe Ell had bothered to ask him, might have agreed.

He was the youngest and despite his brash attitude the most insecure.

He was still closer to being a boy than a grown man, a fact he was
forced to admit to himself if to no one else.

He had traveled fewer places and done fewer things.  He knew less about
practically everything.  Almost the whole of his life had been spent in
the Highlands of Leah, and although he had found ways to make
occupation of his homeland unpleasant for the Federation officials who
sought to govern, he had done little else of note.  He was hopelessly
in love with Quickening and he had nothing to offer her.  The Sword of
Leah was the weapon she needed in her quest for the Black Elfstone, the
talisman whose magic could defeat Uhl Belk.  Yet the sword had lost the
better part of its magic when it had shattered against the runemarked
doors leading from the Pit, and what remained was insufficient and
worse, unpredictable.  Without it, he did not see how he would@ be of
much use in this business.  Perhaps Quickening was right when she said
he might regain the Sword's magic if he went with her.  But what would
happen if she were threatened before then?  Who among them would
protect her?  He had only a shattered sword.  Walker Boh, without his
arm, seemed less formidable than he had before, a man in search of
himself.  Horner Dees was old and gray.  Only Pe Ell, with his still
secret magic and enigmatic ways, seemed capable of defending the
daughter of the King of the Silver River.

Nevertheless Morgan was determined to continue the quest.

He was not entirely certain why.  Perhaps it was pride, perhaps a
stubborn refusal to give up on himself.  Whatever it was, it kept alive
a dim hope that somehow he would prove useful to this strange and
wondrous girl he had fallen in love with, that he would somehow be able
to protect her against whatever threatened, and that with time and
patience he would discover a way to restore the magic to the Sword of
Leah.  He worked diligently at the tasks Horner Dees gave him to aid in
outfitting the little company for its journey north, trying a little
harder most times than the others.  He thought of Quickening
constantly, playing with images of her in his mind.  She was a gift, he
knew.  She was the possibility of everything he had always hoped might
one day be.  It was more than the fact that she was beautiful, or the
look or feel or way of her, or that she had rescued him from the
Federation prisons or restored the Meade Gardens to the Dwarves of
Culhaven.  It was what he sensed lay between them, an intangible bond
different than that linking her to the others.  It was there when she
spoke to him, when she called him by his first name as she did not do
with the others.

It was there in the way she looked at him.  It was something incredibly
precious.

He made up his mind that he would not let it go, whatever it was,
whatever it might turn out to be.  It became, to his surprise and even
his joy, the most important thing in his life.

Walker Boh had hold of something as well, but it was not as easily
identifiable.  As with Morgan's determination to love and Pe Ell's to
kill, there was a bond that linked him to Quickening.  There was that
strange kinship between them, that sharing of magics that gave them
insights into each other no one else possessed.  Like the Highlander
and the assassin, he believed his relationship with her different than
that of the others, more personal and important, more lasting.  He did
not feel love for her as Morgan did and he had no wish to possess her
like Pe Ell.  What he needed was to understand her magic because in
doing so he was convinced he would come to understand his own.

The dilemma lay in determining whether or not this was a good idea.  It
was not enough that his need was compelling; the deaths of Cogline and
Rumor had made it that.  He knew that he needed to understand the magic
if he were to destroy the Shadowen.  But he was frightened still of the
consequences of such knowledge.  With the magic, there was always a
price.  He had been intrigued with it since he had discovered he
possessed it-and frightened of it as well.  Fear and curiosity had
pulled him in two directions all his life.  It had been so when his
father had told him of his legacy, when he had struggled unsuccessfully
to make his home with the people of Shady Vale, when Cogline had come
to him and offered to teach him how the magic worked, and when he had
learned of the existence of the Black Elfstone from the pages of the
Druid History and known that the charge given him by the shade of
Allanon might be fulfilled.

It was always the same.  It was so now.

He had worried for a time that he had lost the magic entirely, that it
had been destroyed by the poison of the Asphim.

But with the healing of his arm, his sense of himself had returned and
with it an awareness that the magic had survived.  He had tested it on
this journey in little ways.  He knew it was there, for example, when
something within him reacted to Quickening's presence, to the way she
used her own magic to bind Morgan and Pe Ell and himself to her, and to
the effect she had on others.  It was there, too, in the way he sensed
things.  He had caught the hesitation in the look Horner Dees gave Pe
Ell-just a hint of recognition.  He could feel the interaction between
the members of the company and Quickening, a sense of the feelings that
lay just beneath the surface of the looks and words they exchanged.  He
had insight, intuition, and foreknowledge in some cases.

There was no doubt.  The magic was still there.

Yet it was weakened and no longer the formidable weapon it had once
been.  That gave Walker pause.  Here was an opportunity to move away
from its influence, from the shadow it cast upon his life, from the
legacy of Brin Ohmsford and the Druids, and from everything that had
made him the Dark Uncle.  If he did not probe, there would be no
hurt.

The magic would lie dormant, he believed, if it were not stirred.  If
left alone, it might let him break free.

But without it the Shadowen would be left free as well.  And what
purpose would it serve to make this journey into Eldwist and confront
Uhl Belk if he did not intend to employ the magic?

What use would he ever make of the Black Elfstone?

So they prowled within cages of their own making, Walker Bob and Morgan
Leah and Pe Ell, suspicious cats with sharp eyes and hungry looks,
their minds made up as to what they would do in the days that lay ahead
and at the same time still quizzing themselves to make certain.  They
kept each other's company without ever getting close.

Supplies were gathered and packs assembled, and the time passed
quickly.  Horner Dees seemed satisfied, but he was the only one.  The
other three chafed against the constraints of their uncertainty,
impatience, and doubt despite their resolve to do otherwise, and
nothing they could do or think would relieve them.  There was a
darkness that lay ahead, building upon itself like a stormcloud, and
they could not see what waited beyond.  They could see it rising up
before them like a wall, a coming together of event and circumstance,
an explosion of magic and raw strength, a revelation of need and
purpose.  Black and impenetrable, it would seek to devour them.

When it did, they sensed, not everyone would survive.

THREE DAYS LATER they departed Rampling Steep.  They went out at
sunrise, the skies thick with clouds that scraped against the mountains
and shut away the light.  The smell of rain was in the air, and the
wind was sharp and chill as it swept down off the peaks.  The town
slept as they climbed away from it, hunkered down against the dark like
a frightened animal, closed and still.  A few forgotten oil lamps
burned on porches and through the cracks of windows, but the people did
not stir.  As Walker Boh passed into the rocks he looked back
momentarily at the cluster of colorless buildings and was reminded of
locust shells, hollow and abandoned and fascinatingly ugly.

The rain began at midday and continued for a week without stopping.  At
times it slowed to a drizzle but never quit com pletely.

The clouds remained locked in place overhead, thunder rumbled all
about, and lightning flashed in the distance.  They were cold and wet,
and there was nothing they could do to relieve their discomfort.  The
foothills were forested lower down, but bare at the higher
elevations.

The wind swept over them unhindered and without the sun's warmth
remained frost-edged and chill.  Horner Dees set a steady pace, but the
company could not travel rapidly while afoot and with mules in tow, and
prog ress was slow.  At night they slept beneath canvas shelters that
kept the rain off and were able to strip away their wet clothing and
wrap themselves in blankets.  But there was no wood for a fire and the
dampness persisted.  They woke cramped and cold each morning, ate
because it was necessary, and pressed ahead.

The foothills gave way to mountains after several days, and the path
became less certain.  The trail they had been following, broad and
clear before, disappeared completely.  Dees took them into a maze of
ridges and defiles, along the rims of broad slides, and around massive
boulders that would have dwarfed the buildings of Rampling Steep.  The
slope steepened dangerously, and they were forced to watch their
footing at every turn.  The clouds swept downward, filling the air with
clinging moisture that sought to envelop them, that twisted about the
rocks like some huge, substanceless worm, its skin a damp ooze.

Thunder crashed, and it seemed as if they were at its center.

Rain de scended in torrents.  They lost sight of everything that lay be
hind, and they could not discern what waited ahead.

L l@

Without Dees to guide them, they would have been lost.

The Charnals swallowed them as an ocean would a stone.  Everything
looked the same.  Cliffs were impassable walls through the mist and
rain, canyons dropped into vast chasms of black emptiness, and the
mountains spread away in a seemingly endless huddle of snowcapped
peaks.  It was so cold their skin grew numb.  At times the rain turned
to sleet and even to snow.  They wrapped themselves in great cloaks and
heavy boots and trudged on.  Through it all Horner Dees remained steady
and certain, a great shaggy presence they quickly learned to rely
upon.

He was at home in the mountains, comfortable despite the forbidding
climate and terrain, at peace with himself.  He hummed as he went, lost
in private reveries of other times and places.

He paused now and then to point something out that they would not have
otherwise seen, determined that nothing should be missed.  That he
understood the Charnals was clear from the beginning; that he loved
them soon became apparent.  He spoke freely of that love, of the mix of
wildness and serenity he found there, and of their vastness and
permanency.  His deep voice rumbled and shook as if filled with the
tremors of the storms and the wind.  He told stories of what life was
like in the Charnals and he gave them a part of himself in the
telling.

He gained no converts, however-except, perhaps, for Quickening, who as
usual gave no indication of what she was thinking.  The other three
simply grumbled now and again, kept a studied silence the rest of the
time, and fought a hopeless battle to ignore their discomfort.  The
mountains would never be their home; the mountains were simply a
barrier they needed to get past.  They labored stoically and waited for
the journey to come to an end.

It did not do so.  Instead it went on rather as if it were a lost dog
searching for its master, the scent firmly in mind, yet distracted by
other smells.  The rains diminished and finally passed, but the air
stayed frosty, the wind continued to buffet them, and the mountains
stretched on.  The men, the girl, and the animals trudged forward,
shoved and pushed by the weather and the land.  Midway through the
second week Dees said they were starting down, but there was no way of
knowing if that were true; nothing in the rocks and scrub about them
indicated it was so.  Wherever they looked, the Charnals were still
there.

Twelve days out they were caught in a snowstorm high in a mountain pass
and nearly died.  The storm came on them so quickly that even Dees was
caught by surprise.  He quickly roped them together and because there
was no shelter to be found in the pass he was forced to take them
through.  The air became a sheet of impenetrable white and everything
about them disappeared.  Their feet and hands began to freeze.  The
mules broke away in terror when part of the slope slid away, braying
and stumbling past the frantic men until they tumbled over the
Mountainside and were lost.  Only one was saved, and it carried no
food.

They found shelter, survived the storm, and pushed on.  Even Dees, who
had shown himself to be the most durable among them, was beginning to
tire.  The remaining mule had to be destroyed the next day when it
stepped in a snow-covered crevice and broke its leg.  The heavy weather
gear had been lost, and they were reduced to backpacks which contained
a meager portion of food and water, some rope, and not much else.

That night the temperature plummeted.  They would have frozen if Dees
had not managed to find wood for a fire.  They sat huddled together all
night, pushed close to the flames, rubbing their hands and feet,
talking to stay awake, afraid if they didn't they would die in their
sleep.  It was an odd tableau, the five of them settled back within the
rocks, crouched close together about the tiny blaze, still wary of one
another, protective of themselves, and forced to share space and time
and circumstance.  Yet the words they spoke revealed them, not so much
for what was said as for how and when and why.  It drew them together
in a strange sort of way, bonding them as not much else could, and
while the closeness that developed was more physical than emotional and
decidedly limited in any case, it at least left them with a sense of
fellowship that had been missing before.

The weather improved after that, the clouds breaking up and drifting
on, the sun returning to warm the air, and the snow and rain
disappearing at last.  The Charnals began to thin ahead of them, and
there was no mistaking the fact that they had begun their descent.

Trees returned, a scattering at first, then whole groves, and finally
forests for as far as the eye could see, spilling down into distant
valleys.  They were able to fish and hunt game for food, to sleep in
warm arbors, and to wake dry and rested.  Spirits improved.

Then, fifteen days out of Rampling Steep, they arrived at the Spikes.

THEY STOOD FOR a long time on a ridgeline and looked down into the
valley.  It was nearing midday, the sun bright, the air warm and sweet
smelling.  The valley was broad and deep and shadowed by mountains that
rose about it on either side.  It was shaped like a funnel, wide mouth
at the south end and narrow at the north where it disappeared into a
line of distant hills.

Trees grew thick upon its floor, but down its middle a jagged ridgeline
rose, and the trees there had suffered a blight that had left them
stripped of their foliage, bare trunks and branches jutting upward like
the hackles on the back of a cornered animal.

Like spikes, Morgan Leah thought.

He glanced at Horner Dees.  "What's down there?"  he asked.

His attitude toward the old Tracker had changed during the past two
weeks.  He no longer thought of him as an unpleasant old man.  It had
taken him longer than Walker Boh, but he had come to recognize that
Dees was a thorough professional, better at what he did than anyone the
Highlander had ever encountered.

Morgan would have liked to be just half as good.  He had begun paying
attention to what the old man said and did.

Dees shrugged.  "I don't know.  It's been ten years since I passed this
way."  Dees, for his part, liked Morgan's enthusiasm and willingness to
work.  He liked the fact that Morgan wasn't afraid to learn.  He
narrowed his brows thoughtfully as he returned the other's glance.

"I'm just being careful, Highlander."

They studied the valley some more.

"Something is down there," Pe Ell said quietly.

No one disputed him.  Pe Ell had remained the most secretive among
them, yet they knew enough of him by now to trust his instincts.

"We have to pass this way," Dees said finally, "or skirt the mountains
on one side or the other.  If we do that, we'll lose a week's time."

They continued their vigil for long moments without speaking, thinking
the matter through separately, until finally Horner Dees said, "Let's
get on with it."

They worked their way downward, discovering a pathway that led directly
toward the center of the valley and the barren ridge.  They moved
quietly, Dees leading, Quickening behind him, Morgan, Walker, and Pe
Ell bringing up the rear.  They passed out of sunlight into shadow, and
the air turned cool.  The valley rose up to meet them and for a time
swallowed them up.

Then the trail lifted onto the ridgeline, and they found themselves in
the midst of the blighted trees.  Morgan studied the lifeless skeletons
for a time, the blackening of the bark, the wilting of leaves and buds
where there were any to be seen at all, and turned instinctively to
look at Walker.  The Dark Uncle's pale, drawn face lifted, and the hard
eyes stared back at him.

They were both thinking the same thing.  The Spikes had been sickened
in the same way as the rest of the land.  The Shadowen were at work
here, too.

They crossed a band of sunlight that had slipped through a break in the
peaks and then dipped downward into a hollow.  It was abnormally still
there, a pool of silence that magnified the sound of their footsteps as
they worked their way ahead.  Morgan had grown increasingly edgy,
reminded of his encounter with the Shadowen on the journey to Culhaven
with the Ohmsfords.  His nose tested the air for the rank smell that
would warn of the other's presence, and his ears strained to catch even
the smallest sound.  Dees moved ahead purposefully, Quickening's long
hair a slender bit of silver trailing after.  Neither exhibited any
sign of hesitation.  Yet there was tension in all of them; Morgan could
feel it.

They passed out of the hollow and back onto the open ridge.

For a time they were high enough above the trees that Morgan could see
the valley from end to end.  They were more than halfway through now,
approaching the narrow end of the funnel where the mountains split
apart and the trees thinned with the beginning of the hills beyond.

Morgan's edginess began to dissipate and he found himself thinking of
home, of the Highlands of Leah, and of the countryside he had grown up
in.  He missed the Highlands, he realized-much more than he would have
expected.  It was one thing to say that his home no longer belonged to
him because the Federation occupied it; it was another to make himself
believe it.  Like Par Ohmsford, he lived with the hope that things
might one day change.

The trail dipped downward again and another hollow appeared, this one
shaggy with brush and scrub that had filled the gaps left with the
passing of the trees.  They moved into it, shoving their way past
brambles and stickers, angling for the open spaces where the trail
wound ahead.  Shadows lay thick across the hollow as the light began to
creep westward.  The forests about them formed a wall of dark
silence.

They had just entered a clearing at the center of the hollow when
Quickening suddenly slowed.  "Stand still," she said.

They did so instantly, looking first at her, then at the brush all
about them.  Something was moving.  Figures began to detach themselves,
breaking their concealment, moving into the light.

There were hundreds of them-small, squat creatures with hairy, gnarled
limbs and bony features.  They looked as if they had grown out of the
scrub, so like it were they, and it was only the short pants and
weapons that seemed to separate the two.  The weapons were
formidable-short spears and strangely shaped throwing implements with
razor edges.  The creatures held them threateningly as they advanced.

"Urdas," Horner Dees said quietly.  "Don't move."

No one did, not even Pe Ell who was crouched in much the same way as
the creatures who menaced him.

"Who are they?"  Morgan asked of Dees, at the same time backing
protectively toward Quickening.

"Gnomes," the other said.  "With a little Troll thrown in.  No one has
ever been sure of the exact mix.  You don't find them anywhere south of
the Charnals.  They're Northianders as much as the Trolls.

Tribal like the Gnomes.  Very dangerous."

The Urdas were all about them now, closing off any chance of escape.

They had thickly muscled bodies with short, pow erful legs and long
arms, and their faces were blunt and expressionless.  Morgan tried to
read something of what they might be thinking in their yellow eyes, but
failed.

Then he noticed that they were all looking at Quickening.

"What do we do?"  he asked Dees in an anxious whisper, worried now.

Dees shook his head.

The Urdas moved to within a dozen feet of the company and stopped.

They did not threaten; they did not speak.  They simply stood there,
watching Quickening for the most part, but waiting as well.

Waiting for what?  Morgan asked himself silently.

And at almost the same moment the brush parted, and a golden-haired man
stepped into view.  Instantly the Urdas dropped to one knee, heads
bowed in recognition.  The goldenhaired man looked at the five
beleaguered members of the surrounded company and smiled.

"The King has come," he said brightly.  "Long live the King."

OULD YOU LAY down your weapons, please?"  the man called out to them
cheerfully.  'Just put them on the ground in front of you.  Don't
worry.  You can pick them up again in a moment."

He sang:

Nothing given freely is ever given up.

It will be given back to you Through others' love and trust.

The five from Rampling Steep stared at him.

"Please?"  he said.  "it will make things so much easier if you do."

Dees glanced at the others, shrugged, and did as he was asked.

Neither Walker nor Quickening carried any weapons.

Morgan hesitated.  Pe Ell didn't move at all.

"This is only for the purpose of demonstrating your friendship," the
man went on encouragingly.  "if you don't lay down your weapons, my
subjects won't allow me to approach.  I'll have to keep shouting at you
from over here."

He sang:

"High, low, wherever we may go, I'll have to keep on shouting out to
you."

Morgan, after a sharp glance from Dees, complied.  It was hard to tell
what Pe Ell might have done if Quickening hadn't turned to him and
whispered, "Do as he says."  Pe Ell hesitated even then before
unstrapping his broadsword.  The look on his hard face was
unmistakable.  The broadsword notwithstanding, Morgan was willing to
bet that Pe Ell still had a weapon concealed on him somewhere.

"Much better," the stranger announced.  "Now step back a pace.

There!"  He beckoned, and the Urdas came quickly to their feet.

He was a man of average height and build, his movements quick and
energetic, and his clean-shaven face handsome beneath his long blond
hair.  His blue eyes twinkled.  He gestured at the Urdas and then at
the weapons on the ground.  The oddlooking creatures muttered agreeably
and heads began to nod.

He sang again, a short piece that the Urdas seemed to recognize, his
voice full and rich, his handsome face beaming.  When he finished, the
circle parted to let him pass.  He came directly up to Quickening,
bowed low before her, took her hand in his own and kissed it.  "My
lady," he said.

He sang: 'Five travelers crossedfield and stream And Eastlandforests
wide.

They crossed the Charnal Mountain range To gain the Nortbland side.

Tra-la-la-diddie-oh-day.

Five travelers camefrom afa r And entered Urda Land.

They braved the dangers of the Spikes To meet King Carisman.

Tra-la-la-diddie-oh-day."  He bowed to Quickening again.  "That is my
name, Lady.

Carisman.  And yours?"

Quickening gave it to him and those of her companions as well.

She seemed unconcerned that he knew.  "Are you indeed a king?"  she
asked.

Carisman beamed.  "Oh, yes, Lady.  I am king of the Urdas, lord of all
those you now survey and many, many more.  To be honest, I did not seek
out the job.  It was thrust upon me, as they say.  But come now.

Time enough to tell that tale later.

Pick up your weapons-carefully, of course.  We mustn't alarm my
subjects; they are very protective of me.  I shall take you to my
palace and we shall talk and drink wine and eat exotic fruits and
fishes.  Come now, come.  It shall be a royal feast!"

Dees tried to say something, but Carisman was gone as swiftly as a
feather caught by the wind, dancing away, singing some new song, and
beckoning them to follow.  The Tracker, Morgan, and Pe El] retrieved
their weapons and with Walker and Quickening in tow, started after.

Urdas surrounded them on all sides, not pressing in on them, but
staying uncomfortably close nevertheless.  The odd creatures did not
speak, but merely gestured to one another, their eyes shifting from
Carisman to the travelers, inquisitive and cautious.  Morgan returned
the gaze of those closest and tried a smile.  They did not smile
back.

The gathering went down off the Spikes into the forested valley below,
west of the ridgeline where the shadows were deepest.  There was a
narrow trail that wound through the trees, and the procession followed
it dutifully, Carisman in the lead, singing as he went.

Morgan had encountered some odd characters in his time, but Carisman
struck him as odder than most.

He could not help wondering why anyone, even the Urdas, would make this
fellow their king.

Dees had dropped back a pace to walk with him, and he asked the old
Tracker.  "As I said, a tribal folk.  Superstitious, like most
Gnomes.

Believe in spirits and wraiths and other nonsense.

"But Carisman?"  Morgan questioned.

Dees shook his head.  "I admit I can't figure it.  Urdas usually don 't
want anything to do with outlanders.  This one seems goofy as a
week-old loon, but he's obviously found some way of gaining their
respect.  I never heard of him before this.  Don't think anyone has."

Morgan peered over the heads of the Urdas at the prancing Carisman.

"He seems harmless enough."

Dees snorted.  "He probably is.  Anyway, it isn't him you have to worry
about."

They worked their way west toward the wall of the moun tains, daylight
fading rapidly now, dusk spreading until the whole of the forestiand
was enveloped.  Morgan and Dees continued to exchange comments, but the
other three kept their thoughts to themselves.

Walker and Pe Ell were gaunt shadows, Quickening a burst of sunlight.

The Urdas filtered out about them, appearing and disappearing in the
heavy brush, strung out ahead, behind, and to either side.

Carisman's words had suggested that they were guests, but Morgan
couldn't shake the feeling that they were really prisoners.

After a little more than a mile, the trail ended at a clearing in which
the village of the Urdas was settled.  A stockade had been built to
protect the village from raiders, and its gates opened now to let the
hunters and those they shepherded pass through.  A sea of women,
children, and old people waited within, bony faced and staring, their
voices a low, inaudible buzz.  The village consisted of a cluster of
small huts and opensided shelters surrounding a lodge constructed of
notched logs and a shingled roof.  Trees grew inside the stockade,
shading the village and providing supports for treeways and lifts.

There were wells scattered about and smokehouses for curing meat.

The Urdas, it appeared, had at least rudimentary skills.

The five from Rampling Steep were taken to the main lodge and led to a
platform on which a rough-hewn chair draped with a garland of fresh
flowers was situated.  Carisman seated himself ceremoniously and
beckoned his guests to take their places next to him on mats.  Morgan
and the others did as they were asked, keeping a wary eye on the Urdas,
a large number of whom entered as well and took seats on the floor
below the platform.

When everyone was settled, Carisman came to his feet and sang some
more, this time in a tongue that Morgan found impossible to identify.

When he was finished, a handful of Urda women began to bring out
platters of food.

Carisman sat down.  "I have to sing to get them to do anything," he
confided.  "it is so tedious sometimes."

"What are you doing here anyway?"  Horner Dees asked bluntly.

"Where did you come from?"

"Ah," Carisman said with a sigh.

He sang: "There was a young tunesmitb from Rampling, Who felt it was
time to take wing.

He decided to hike, North into the Spikes, To the Urdas, who made him
their king!"

He grimaced.  "Not very original, I'm afraid.  Let me try again."

He sang: "Come hither, myfellows, and lady, come nigb, There are worlds
to discover moren what meets the eye.

Far reaches to travel and people to see, Wonders to gaze on and lives
for to lead, A million adventures to try.

Come hither, my fellows, and lady, come nigb, A tunesmitb's a man who
must sing for to fly.

He searches the byways for songs telling truth, Seeks out bidden
meanings and offers of proof, Of the reasons for being alive.

Come hither, my fellows, and lady, come nigb, For life's to be found in
the rivers and skies.

In the forests and mountains that lie far away, In the creatures that
frolic and gambol and play, And beg me my songs to apply."

"Considerably better, don't you think?"  he asked them, blue eyes
darting from one face to the next, anxiously seeking their approval.

"A tunesmith, are you?"  Dees grunted.  "From Rampling Steep?"

"Well, by way of Rampling Steep.  I was there a day or so once several
years back."  Carisman looked sheepish.  "The rhyme works, so I use
it."  He brightened.  "But a tunesmith, yes.  All my life.  I have the
gift of song and the wit to make use of it.  I have talent."

"But why are you here, Carisman?"  Quickening pressed.

Carisman seemed to melt.  "Lady, chance has brought me to this place
and time and even to you.  I have traveled the better part of the Four
Lands, searching out the songs that would give wings to my music.

There is a restlessness in me that will not let me stay in any one
place for very long.  I have had my chances to do so, and even ladies
who wished to keep methough none was as beautiful as you.  But I keep
moving.  I wandered first west, then east, and finally north.  I passed
through Rampling Steep and found myself wondering what lay beyond.

Finally I set out across the mountains to see."

"nd survived?"  Horner Dees asked incredulously.

'Just barely.  I have a sense of things; it comes from my music, I
think.  I was well provisioned, for I had traveled in rough country
before.  I found my way by listening to my heart.  I had the good
fortune of encountering favorable weather.  When I was finally
across-exhausted and close to starving, I admit-I was found by the
Urdas.  Not knowing what else to do, I sang for them.  They were
enchanted by my music and they made me their king."

"Enchanted by limericks and snippets of rhyme?"  Dees refused to let go
of his skepticism.  "A bold claim, Carisman Carisman grinned
boyishly.

"Oh, I don't claim to be a better man than any other."

He sang: "No matter bow bigb or lofty the tbrone, What sits on it is
the same as your own."

He brushed the matter aside.  "Eat now, you must be very hungry after
your journey.  There is as much food and drink as you want.  And tell
me what brings you here.  No one from the Southland ever comes this far
north-not even the trappers.  I never see anyone except Trolls and
Gnomes.  What brings you?"

Quickening told him that they were on a quest, that they had come in
search of a talisman.  It was more than Morgan would have revealed, but
it seemed to matter little to Carisman, who did not even bother asking
what the talisman was or why they needed it but only wanted to know if
Quickening could teach him any new songs.  Carisman was quick and
bright, yet his focus was quixotic and narrow.  He was like a child,
inquisitive and distracted and full of the wonder of things.  He seemed
to genuinely need approval.  Quickening was the most responsive, so he
concentrated his attention on her and included the others in his
conversation mostly by implication.  Morgan listened disinterestedly as
he ate, then noticed that Walker wasn't listening at all, that he was
studying the Urdas below the platform.  Morgan began studying them as
well.  After a time he saw that they were seated in carefully defined
groups, and that the foremost group consisted of a mixed gathering of
old and young men to whom all the others deferred.  Chiefs, thought
Morgan at once.  They were talking intently among themselves, glancing
now and then at the six seated on the platform, but otherwise ignoring
them.  Something was being decided, without Carisman.

Morgan grew nervous.

The meat ended and the empty plates were carried away.

There was a sustained clapping from the Urdas, and Carisman rose to his
feet with a sigh.  He sang once more, but this time the song was
different.  This time it was studied and intricate, a finely wrought
piece of music filled with nuances and subtleties that transcended the
tune.  Carisman's voice filled the lodge, it soared and swept aside
everything that separated it from the senses, reaching down through the
body to embrace and cradle the heart.  Morgan was astounded.  He had
never been so affected-not even by the music of the wishsong.  Par
Ohmsford could capture your feeling for and sense of history in his
song, but Carisman could capture your soul.

When the tunesmith was finished, there was utter silence.

Slowly he sat down again, momentarily lost in himself, still caught up
in what he had sung.  Then the Urdas began thumping their hands on
their knees approvingly.

Quickening said, "That was beautiful, Carisman."

"Thank you, Lady," he replied, sheepish again.  "I have a talent for
more than limericks, you see."

The silver-haired girl looked suddenly at Walker.  "Did you find it
beautiful, Walker Boh?"

The pale face inclined in thought.  "it makes me wonder why someone who
possesses such abilities chooses to share them with so few."  The dark
eyes fixed Carisman.

The tunesmith squirmed uncomfortably.  "Well."  The words suddenly
would not seem to come.

"Especially since you said yourself that there is a restlessness in you
that will not allow you to stay in one place.  Yet you stay here among
the Urdas."

Carisman looked down at his hands.

"They will not let you leave, will they?"  Walker said quietly.

Carisman looked as if he would sink into the earth.  "No," he admitted
reluctantly.  "For all that I am, a king notwithstanding, I remain a
captive.  I am allowed to be king only so long as T I sing my songs.

The Urdas keep me because they believe my song is magic."

"And so it is," Quickening murmured so softly that only Morgan, seated
next to her, heard.

"What about us?"  Dees demanded sharply.  He shifted his bulk
menacingly.  "Are we captives as well?  Have you brought us here as
guests or prisoners, King Carisman?  Or do you even have a say in the
matter?"

"Oh, no!"  the tunesmith exclaimed, clearly distraught.  "I mean, yes,
I have a say in the matter.  And, no, you are not prisoners.  I need
only speak with the council, those men gath ered there below us."

He pointed to the group that Walker and Morgan had been observing
earlier.  Then he hesitated as he caught the black look on Pe Ell's
face and came hurriedly to his feet.  "I shall speak to them at once.

If need be, I shall sing.  A special song.  You shall not remain here
any longer than you wish, I promise.  Lady, believe me, please.

Friends."

He rushed from the platform and knelt next to the members of the Urda
council, addressing them earnestly.  The five who waited to discover
whether they were guests or prisoners looked at one another.

"I don't think he can do anything to help us," Horner Dees muttered.

Pe Ell edged forward.  "If I put a knife to his throat they will
release us quick enough."

I 8 0 TERRY BROOKS

"Or kill us on the spot , Dees replied with a hiss.  The two glared at
each other.

"Let him have his chance," Walker Bob said, looking calmly at the
assemblage.  His face was unreadable.

"Yes," Quickening agreed softly.  "Patience."

They sat silently after that until Carisman returned, detaching himself
from the council, stepping back onto the platform to face them.

His face told them everything.  "I ... I have to ask you to stay the
night," he said, struggling to get the words out, discomforted beyond
measure.  "The council wishes to ... debate the matter a bit.

Just a formality, you understand.  I simply require a little time .

.

."

He trailed off uncertainty.  He had positioned himself as far as
possible from Pe Ell.  Morgan held his breath.  He didn't think the
distance separating the two offered the tunesmith much protection.  He
found himself wondering, almost in fascination, what Pe Ell would do,
what he could in fact do against so many.

He would not find out on this occasion.  Quickening smiled reassuringly
at Carisman and said, "We will wait."

They were taken to one of the larger huts and given mats and blankets
for sleeping.  The door was closed behind them, but not locked.  Morgan
didn't think it mattered either way.  The hut sat in the center of the
village, and the village was enclosed by the stockade and filled with
Urdas.  He had taken the trouble of asking Dees about the strange
creatures during dinner.  Dees had told him that they were a tribe of
hunters.  The weapons they carried were designed to bring down even the
swiftest game.  Two-legged intruders, he said, would not prove much of
a challenge.

Pe Ell stood looking out through chinks in the hut's mud walls.

"They are not going to let us leave," he said.  No one spoke.  "it
doesn't matter what that play-king says, they'll try to keep us.  We
had better get away tonight."

Dees sat back heavily against one wall.  "You make it sound as if
leaving were an option."

Pe Ell turned.  "I can leave whenever I choose.  No prison can hold
me."

He said it so matter-of-factly that the others, save Quick ening, just
stared at him.  Quickening was looking off into space.

"There is magic in his song," she said.

Morgan remembered her saying something like that before.

"Real magic?"  he asked.

"Close enough to be called so.  I do not understand its source; I am
not even certain what it can do.  But a form of magic nevertheless.

He is more than an ordinary tunesmith."

"Yes , Pe Ell agreed.  "He is a fool."

"We might think you one as well if you persist in suggesting we can get
out of here without him," Horner Dees snapped.

Pe Ell wheeled on him.  There was such rage in his face that Dees came
to his feet much more quickly than Morgan would have thought
possible.

Walker Boh, a dark figure at the hut's far end, turned slowly.  Pe Ell
seemed to consider his options, then stalked to where Quickening stood
looking at him from beside Morgan.  It was all the Highlander could do
to stand his ground.

Pe Ell's black look dismissed him with barely a flicker of a glance and
fell instead on the girl.

"What do we need any of them for?"  he whispered, his voice a hiss of
fury.  "I came because you asked me to; I could easily have chosen
otherwise."

"I know that," she said.

"You know what I am."  He bent close, his gaunt face hawk like above
her, his lean body taut.  "You know I have the magic you need.  I have
all the magic you need.  Be done with them.

Let us go on alone."

Around him, the room seemed to have turned to stone the others frozen
into statues that could only observe and never act.

Morgan Leah's hand moved a fraction of an inch toward his sword, then
stopped.  He would never be quick enough, he knew.  Pe Ell would kill
him before he could pull the blade clear.

Quickening seemed completely unafraid.  "It is not yet time for you and
1, Pe Ell," she whispered back, her voice soothing, cool.  Her eyes
searched his.  "You must wait until it is."

Morgan did not understand what she was saying and he was reasonably
certain that Pe Ell didn't either.  The narrow face pinched and the
hard eyes flickered.  He seemed to be deciding something.

"My father alone has the gift of foresight," Quickening said softly.

"He has foreseen that I shall have need of all of you when we find Uhl
Belk.  So it shall be-even though you might wish it otherwise, Pe
El].

Even though."

Pe El] shook his head slowly.  "No, girl.  You are wrong.  It shall be
as I choose.  Just as it always is."  He studied her momentarily, then
shrugged.  "Nevertheless, what difference does it make?  Another day,
another week, it shall all come out the same in the end.  Keep these
others with you if you wish.  At least for now.

He turned and moved away by himself, settling into a darkened corner.

The others stared after him in silence.

NIGHT DESCENDED and the village of the Urdas grew quiet as its
inhabitants drifted off to sleep.  The five from Rampling Steep huddled
within the darkened confines of their shelter, separated from each
other by the privacy of their thoughts.  Horner Dees slept.  Walker Boh
was a shapeless bundle in the shadows, unmoving.  Morgan Leah sat next
to Quickening, neither speaking, eyes closed against the faint light of
moon and stars that penetrated from without.

Pe Ell watched them all and raged silently against circumstance and his
own stupidity.

What was wrong with him, he wondered bleakly?  Losing his temper like
that, exposing himself, nearly ruining his chance of accomplishing what
he had set out to do.  He was always in control.  Always!  But not this
time, not when he was giving way to frustration and impatience,
threatening the girl and all of her precious charges as if he were some
schoolboy bully.

He was calm now, able to analyze what he had done, to sift through his
emotions and sort out his mistakes.  There were many of both.  And it
was the girl who was responsible, who undid him each time, he knew.

She was the bane of his existence, an irritation and an attraction
pulling him in opposite directions, a creature of beauty and life and
magic that he would never understand until the moment he killed her.

His yearning to do so grew stronger all the time, and it was becoming
increasingly difficult to restrain.  Yet he knew he must if he expected
to gain possession of the Black Elfstone.  The difficulty was in
knowing how to withstand his obsession for her in the meantime.  She
incensed him, enflamed him, and left him twisted inside like fine
wire.

Everything that seemed obvious and uncomplicated to him appeared to be
just the opposite to her.  She insisted on having these fools accompany
them-the one-armed man, the Highlander, and the old Tracker.

Sbades!

Useless foils!

How much longer would he have to tolerate them?

He felt the anger begin again and moved quickly to quell it.

Patience.  Her word, not his-but he had better try it on for size.

He listened to the sounds of the Urdas without, the guards, more than a
dozen of them, crouched down in the darkness about the hut.  He
couldn't see them, but he could feel their presence.  His instincts
told him they were there.  There was no sign of the tunesmith yet-not
that it made any difference.  The Urdas weren't about to set them
free.

So many intrusions on what really matters!

His sharp eyes fixed momentarily on Dees.  That old man.

He was the worst of the lot, the hardest to figure out.  There was
something about him ...

He caught himself again.  Be patient.  Wait.  Events would undoubtedly
continue to conspire to force him to do otherwise, but he must overcome
them.  He must remain in control.

Except that it was so difficult here.  This was not his country, these
were not his people, and the familiarity of surroundings and behavior,
of people and customs that he had always been able to rely upon before
was missing here.  He was scaling a cliff he had never seen before and
the footing was treacherous.

Perhaps staying in control this time would prove impossible.

He shook his head uneasily.  The thought stayed with him and would not
be dispelled.

IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT when Carisman reappeared.  Quickening brought
Morgan awake with a touch of her hand to his cheek.  He came to his
feet and found the others already standing.  The door unlatched and
opened, and the tunesmith slipped inside.

"Ah, you are awake.  Good."  He moved at once to stand next I 8 4 t(@
Quickening, hesitant to speak, uncertain in their presence, like a boy
forced to confess something he would prefer to keep "What has the
council decided, Carisman?"  Quickening 1)iodded him gently, taking his
arm and bringing him about to t,i@--e her.

The tunesmith shook his head.  "Lady, the best and the worst, im
afraid."  He glanced at the others.  "All of you are free to When you
choose."  He turned back to Quickening.  "Except Morgan remembered at
once the way the Urdas had looked ,It Quickening, recalling their
fascination with her.  "Why?"  he (I(-manded heatedly.  "Why isn't she
released as well?"

Carisman swallowed.  "My subjects find her beautiful.  They think she
may be magic, like myself.  They ... wish her to in,irry me.

"Well now, this is an inventive tale!"  Horner Dees snapped, In@
bristled face screwing up in disbelief.

Morgan seized Carisman by the tunic front.  "I have seen the wlty you
look at her, tunesmithi This is your idea!"

"No, no, I swear it is not!"  the other cried in dismay, his lilindsome
face contorted in horror.  "I would never do such a thing!

The Urdas "The Urdas couldn't care less about "Let him go, Morgan,"
Quickening said, interrupting, her voice low and steady.

Morgan released his grip and stepped back instantly.  "He speaks the
truth," she said.  "This is not his doing."

Pe Ell had shoved forward like a knifeblade.  "it doesn't matter whose
doing it is."  His eyes fixed Carisman.  "She goes with US.

Carisman's face went pale, and his eyes shifted anxiously from one
determined face to the next.  "They won't let her," he whispered, his
gaze dropping.  "And if they don't, she will end up like me."

He sang: "Long ago, in times gone by, there was a fair, fair maiden.

She wandered fields and forest glens, With all the world her baven.

A migbty Lord a fancy took, demanded that she wed him.

When she refused, be took her home, And locked her in his dungeon.

She pined away for what she'd lost, a life beyond her prison.

She promised everything she owned, If she could have her freedom.

A fairy imp her plea did bear and quickly broke the door in.

Yet freed her not as she bad asked, But claimed her his possession.

The moral is: If you offer to give up everything, Be prepared to keep
nothing.

Horner Dees threw up his hands in exasperation.  "What is it you are
trying to say, Carisman?"  he snapped.

"That your choices often undo you.  That seeking everything sometimes
costs you everything."  It was Walker Boh who an swered.

"Carisman thought that in becoming a king he would find freedom and has
instead found only shackles."

"Yes," the tunesmith breathed, sadness flooding his finely chiseled
features.  "I don't belong here any more than Quickening.  If you would
take her when you go, then you must take me as well!"

"No!"  Pe Ell cried instantly.

"Lady," the tunesmith begged.  "Please.  I have been here for almost
five years now-not just several as I claimed.  I am caged as surely as
that maiden in my song.  If you do not take me with you, I shall be
kept captive until I die!"

Quickening shook her head.  "It is dangerous where we go, Carisman.

Far more dangerous than it is here.  You would not be safe."

Carisman's voice shook.  "It doesn't matter!  I want to be free!"

"No!"  Pe Ell repeated, circling away like a cat.  "Think, girl!

El Yet another fool to burden us?  Why not an army of them, then?

Shades!"

Morgan Leah was tired of being called a fool and was about to say so
when Walker Boh caught him firmly by the arm and shook his head.

Morgan frowned angrily, but gave way.

"What do you know of the country north, Carisman?"  Hor ner Dees asked
suddenly, his bulk backing the tunesmith away.

"Ever been there?"

Carisman shook his head.  "No.  It doesn't matter what's there.

It is away from here."  His eyes darted furtively.  "Besides, you have
to take me.  You can't get away if I don't show you how."

That stopped them.  Everyone turned.  "What do you mean?"

Dees asked cautiously.

"I mean that you will be dead a dozen times over without my help," the
tunesmith said.

He sang: "Sticks and stones will break your bones, But only if the
spears don't.

Tbere's traps and snares placed everywhere, And none to warn if I
don't.

Fiddle-de-diddle-de-de."  Pe Ell had him by the throat so quickly that
no one else had time to intervene.  "You'll tell everything you know
before I'm (lone with you or wish you had!"  he threatened furiously.

But Carisman held steady, even forced back as he was, the Hard eyes
inches from his own.  "Never," he gasped.  "Unless ...

you agree ... to take me with you."

His face lost all its color as Pe Ell's hand tightened.  Morgan lind
Horner Dees glanced uncertainly at each other and then at (Quickening,
hesitating in spite of themselves.  It was Walker Boh @@,ho stepped
in.

He moved behind Pe Ell and touched him in a iiianner they could not
see.  The gaunt man jerked back, his face i igid with surprise.  Walker
was quickly by him, his arm coming ,about Carisman and lifting him
away.

Pe Ell whirled, cold rage in his eyes.  Morgan was certain he @,as
going to attack Walker, and nothing good could come of that.

But Pe Ell surprised him.  Instead of striking out, he simply stared at
Walker a moment and then turned away, his face suddenly an
expressionless mask.

Quickening spoke, diverting them.  "Carisman," she said.  "Do you know
a way out of here?"

Carisman nodded, swallowing to speak.  "Yes, Lady."

"Will you show it to us?"  you agree to take me with you, yes."  He was
bargaining now, but he seemed confident.

"Perhaps it would be enough if we helped you escape the village?"

"No, Lady.  I would lose my way and they would bring me back again.  I
must go to wherever it is that you are going-far away from here.

Perhaps," he said brightly, "I may turn out to be of some use to
you."

Wben pigs fly, Morgan thought uncharitably.

Quickening seemed undecided, strange for her.  She looked questioningly
at Horner Dees.

"He's right about the Urdas bringing him back," the old Tracker
agreed.

"Us, too, if we aren't quick enough.  Or smart enough."

Morgan saw Pe Ell and Walker Boh glaring at each other from opposite
corners of the hut-harsh, dark wraiths come from exacting worlds, their
silent looks full of warning.  Who would survive a confrontation
between those two?  And how could the company survive while they were
at such odds?

Then suddenly an idea occurred to him.  "Your magic, Quickening!"  he
burst out impulsively.  "We can use your magic to escape!  You can
control all that grows within the earth.  That is enough to make the
Urdas give way.  With or without Carisman, we have your magic!"

But Quickening shook her head and for an instant she seemed almost to
dissolve.  "No, Morgan.  We have crossed the Charnals into the country
of Uhl Belk, and I cannot use my magic again until after we find the
talisman.  The Stone King must not discover who I am.  If I use the
magic, he will know."

The hut went silent again.  "Who is the Stone King?"  Carisman asked,
and they all looked at him.

"I say we take him," Horner Dees said finally, bluff and to the point
as always.  His bulky figure shifted.  "if he really can get us out of
here, that is."

"Take him," Morgan agreed.  He grinned.  "I like the idea of having a
king on our side as well-even if all he can do is make up songs.

Quickening glanced at the silent antagonists behind her.

Pe Ell shrugged his indifference.  Walker Boh said nothing.

"We will take you, Carisman," Quickening said, "though I am afraid to
guess what this choice might cost you."

Carisman shook his head emphatically.  "No price is too great, Lady, I
promise you."  The tunesmith was elated.

Quickening moved toward the door.  "The night flies.  Let us hurry."

Carisman held up his hand.  "Not that way, Lady."

She turned.  "There is another?"

"Indeed."  He was beaming mischievously.  "As it happens, I am standing
on it."

HE SPIKES AND the lands surrounding were filled with tribes of Urdas
and other species of Gnomes and Trolls.

Since they were all constantly at war with one another, they kept their
villages fortified.  A lot of hard lessons had been learned over the
years, and one of them was that a stockade needed more than one way
out.  Carisman's bunch had dug tunnels beneath the village that opened
through hidden trapdoors into the forests beyond.  If the village were
threatened by a prolonged siege or by an army of overwhelming numbers,
the inhabitants still had a means of escape.

One of the entrances to the tunnels that lay inside the village was
under the floor of the hut in which the five from Rampling Steep had
been placed.  Carisman showed them where it lay' buried a good foot
beneath the earthen floor, sealed so tightly by weather and time that
it took Horner Dees and Morgan working together to pull it free.  It
had clearly never seen use and perhaps been all but forgotten.  In any
case, it was a way out and the company was quick to seize upon it.

I would feet better about this if we had a light," Dees muttered as he
stood looking down into the blackness.

"Here," Walker Bob whispered impatiently, moving forward to take his
place.  He slipped down into the blackness where the walls of the
tunnel shielded his actions and made a snapping motion with his
fingers.  Light blazed up about his hand, an aura of brightness that
had no visible source.  The Dark Uncle has at least a little of his
magic left, Morgan thought.

"Carisman, is there more than one passage down here?"

Walker's voice sounded hollow.  The tunesmith nodded.  "Then stay close
to me and tell me how we are to go."

They dropped into the hole one by one, Carisman following Walker,
Quickening and Morgan after them, Dees and Pe Ell last.  It was black
in the tunnel, even with Walker's light, and the air was close and full
of earth smells.  The tunnel ran in a straight line, then branched in
three directions.  Carisman took them right.  It branched again, and
this time he took them left.

They had gone far enough, Morgan thought, that they must be beyond the
stockade walls.  Still the tunnel continued.  Tree roots penetrated its
walls, tangling their arms and feet, slowing their progress.  At times
the roots grew so thick that they had to be severed to permit
passage.

Even when the passageway was completely clear, it was hard for Horner
Dees to fit through.  He grunted and huffed and pushed ahead
determinedly.  Other tunnels intersected and passed on.  Dirt and silt
from their movements began to choke the air, and it grew hard to
breathe.

Morgan buried his face in his tunic sleeve and would not allow himself
to think about what would happen if the tunnel walls collapsed.

After what seemed an impossibly long time they slowed and then stopped
altogether.  "Yes, this is it," Morgan heard Carisman say to Walker.

He listened as the two struggled to free the trapdoor that sealed them
in.  They labored in wordless silence, unting, digging, and shifting
about in the cramped space.  Morgr gan and the others crouched down in
the blackness and waited.

It took them almost as long to loosen the trapdoor as it had to
navigate the tunnel.  When it finally fell back, fresh air rushed in
and the six scrambled up into the night.  They found themselves in a
heavily wooded glen, the limbs of the trees grown so thick overhead
that the sky was masked almost completely.

They stood wordlessly for a moment, breathing in the clean air, and
then Dees pushed forward.  "Which way to the Spikes?"  he whispered
anxiously to Carisman.

Carisman pointed and Dees started away, but Pe Ell reached out
hurriedly and yanked him back.  "Wait!"  he warned.  "There will be a
watch!"

He gave the old Tracker a withering look, motioned them all down and
melted into the trees.  Morgan sank back against the trunk of a massive
fir, and the others became vague shadows through the screen of its
shaggy limbs.  He closed his eyes wearity.  It seemed days since he had
rested property.  He thought about how good it would feel to steep.

But a touch on his shoulder brought him awake again almost
immediately.

"Easy, Highlander," Walker Boh whispered.  The tall man slid down next
to Morgan, dark eyes searching his own.

"You tread on dangerous ground these days, Morgan Leah.  You had better
watch where you step."

Morgan blinked.  "What do you mean?"

Walker's face inclined slightly, and Morgan could see the lines of
tension and strain that creased it.  "Pe El].  Stay away from him.

Don't taunt him, don't challenge him.  Have as little to do with him as
you can.  If he chooses, he can strike you down faster than a snake in
hiding."

The words were spoken in a whisper that was harsh and chilling in its
certainty, a brittle promise of death.  Morgan swallowed what he was
feeling and nodded.  "Who is he, Walker?

Do you know?"

The Dark Uncle glanced away and back again.  "Sometimes I am able to
sense things by touching.  Sometimes I can learn another's secrets by
doing nothing more than brushing up against him.  It happened that way
when I took Carisman away from Pe Ell.  He has killed.  Many times.

He has done so intentionally rather than in self-defense.  He enjoys
it.  I expect he is an assassin."

A pale hand reached up to hold a startled Morgan in place.

"Listen, now.  He conceals a weapon of immense power beneath his
clothing.  The weapon he carries is magic.  It is what he uses to
kill."

"Magic?"  Morgan's voice quivered in surprise despite his effort to
keep it steady.  His mind raced.  "Does Quickening know?"

"She chose him, Highlander.  She chose us all.  She told us we
possessed magic.  She told us our magic was needed.  Of course, she
knows."

Morgan was aghast.  "She deliberately brought an assassin?  Is this how
she plans to regain the Black Elfstone?"

Walker stared fixedly at him.  "I think not," he said finally.

"But I can't be sure."

Morgan slumped back in disbelief.  "Walker, what are we doing here?

Why has she brought us?"  Walker did not respond.

"I don't know for the life of me why I agreed to come.  Or maybe I
do.

I am drawn to her, I admit; I am enchanted by her.  But what sort of
reason is that?  I shouldn't be here.  I should be back in Tyrsis
searching for Par and Coll."

"We have had this discussion," Walker reminded him gently.

"I know.  But I keep questioning myself.  Especially now.

Pe Ell is an assassin; what do we have to do with such a man?

Does Quickening think us a I the same?  Does she think we are all
killers of other men?  Is that the use to which we are to be put?  I
cannot believe it!"

"Morgan."  Walker spoke his name to calm him, then eased back against
the tree until their heads were almost touching.

Something in the way the Dark Uncle's body was bent reminded Morgan for
a moment of how broken he had been when they had found him amid the
ruins of his cottage at Hearthstone.

"There is more to this than what you know," Walker whispered.

"Or 1, for that matter.  I can sense things but not see them clearly.

Quickening has a purpose beyond what she reveals.  She is the daughter
of the King of the Silver River-do not forget that.

She has forbidden insight.  She has magic that transcends any that we
have ever seen.  But she is vu nerable as well.  She must walk a
careful path in her quest.  I think that we are here in part, at least,
to see that she is able to keep to that path."

Morgan thought it over a moment and nodded, listening to the stillness
of the night about them, staring out through the boughs of the old fir
at the shadowy figures beyond, picking out Quickening's slim, ethereal
form, a slender bit of movement that the night might swallow with no
more than a slight shifting f the light.

Walker's voice tightened.  "I have been shown a vision of her-a vision
as frightening as any I have ever experienced.  The vision told me that
she will die.  I warned her of this before we left Hearthstone; I told
her that perhaps I should not come.  But she insisted.  So I came."  He
glanced over.  "It is the same with all of us.  We came because we knew
we must.  Don't try to understand why that is, Morgan.

Just accept it."

Morgan sighed, lost in the tangle of his feelings and his needs,
wishing for things that could never be, for a past that was lost and a
future he could not determine.  He thought of how far things had gone
since the Ohmsfords had come to him in Leah, of how different they all
now were.

Walker Boh rose, a rustle of movement in the silence.  "Remember what I
said, Highlander.  Stay away from Pe Ell."

He pushed through the curtain of branches without looking back.

Morgan Leah stared after him.

PE ELL WAS gone a long time.  When he returned, he spoke only to Horner
Dees.  "It is safe now, old man," he advised softly.

"Lead on."

They departed the glen wordlessly, following Carisman as he led them
back toward the ridgeline, a silent procession of wraiths in the forest
night.  No one challenged them, and Morgan was certain that no one
would.  Pe Ell had seen to that.

It was still dark when they again caught sight of the Spikes.

They climbed to the crest of the ridgeline and turned north.

Dees moved them forward at a rapid pace, the pathway clear, the spine
of the land bare and open to the light of moon and stars, empty save
where the skeletal trees threw the spindly shadow of their trunks and
branches crosswise against the earth like spiders' webs.  They followed
the Spikes through the narrow end of the valley's funnel and turned
upward into the hills beyond.  Daybreak was beginning to approach, a
faint lightening of the skies east.  Dees moved them faster still.  No
one had to bother asking why.

By the time the sun crested the mountains they were far enough into the
hills that they could no longer see the valley at all.  They found a
stream of clear water and stopped to drink.

Sweat ran down their faces and their breathing was labored.

"Look ahead," Horner Dees said, pointing.  A line of peaks jutted into
the sky.  "That's the north edge of the Charnals, the last we have to
cross.  There's a dozen passes that lead over and the Urdas can't know
which one we will take.  It's all rock up there, hard to track
anything."

"Hard for you, you mean," Pe Ell suggested unkindly.  "Not necessarily
hard for them."

"They won't go out of their mountains."  Dees ignored him.

"Once we're across, we'll be safe."

They hauled themselves back to their feet and went on.  The sun climbed
into the cloudless sky, a brilliant ball of white fire that turned the
earth beneath into a furnace.  It was the hottest Morgan could remember
it being since he had left Culhaven.

The hills rose toward the mountains, and the trees began to give way to
scrub and brush.  Once Dees thought he saw something moving in the
forestiands far behind them, and once they heard a wailing sound that
Carisman claimed was Urda horns.  But midday came and went, and there
was no sign of pursuit.

Then clouds began to move in from the west, a large threatening bank of
black thunderheads.  Morgan slapped at the gnats that flew against his
sweat-streaked face.  There would be a storm soon.

They stopped again as midafternoon approached, exhausted from their
flight and hungry now as well.  There was little to eat, just some
roots and wild vegetables and fresh water.  Horner Dees went off to
scout ahead, and Pe Ell decided to backtrack to a bluff that would let
him study the land behind.  Walker sat by himself.  Carisman began
speaking with Quickening again about his music, insistent upon her
undivided attention.  Morgan studied the tunesmith's handsome features,
his shock of blond hair, and his uninhibited gestures and was
annoyed.

Rather than show what he was feeling, the Highlander moved into the
shade of a spindly pine and faced away.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the clouds pushed up against the
mountains.  The sky was a peculiar mix of sunshine and darkness.

The heat was still oppressive, a suffocating blanket as it pressed down
against the earth.  Morgan buried his face in his hands and closed his
eyes.

Both Horner Dees and Pe Ell were back quickly.  The former advised that
the passage that would take them across the last of the Charnals lay
less than an hour ahead.  The latter reported that the Urdas were after
them in force.

"More than a hundred," he announced, fixing them with those hard,
unreadable eyes.  "Right on our heels."

They resumed their march at once, pressing ahead more quickly, a sense
of urgency driving them now that had not been present before.  No one
had expected the Urdas to catch up with them this fast, certainly not
before they were across the mountains.  If they were forced to stand
and fight here, they knew, they were finished.

They worked their way upward into the rocks, scrambling through huge
fields of boulders and down narrow defiles, struggling to keep their
footing on slides that threatened to send them careening away into
jagged, bottomless fissures.  The clouds scraped over the mountain
peaks and filled the skies from horizon to horizon.  Heavy drops of
rain began to fall, spattering against the earth and their heated
skin.

Darkness settled over everything, an ominous black that echoed with the
sound of thunder as it rolled across the empty, barren rock.

Dusk was approaching, and Morgan was certain they would be caught in
the mountains at nightfall, a decidedly unpleasant prospect.  His
entire body ached, but he forced himself to keep going.  He glanced
ahead to Carisman and saw that the tunesmith was in worse shape,
stumbling and falling regularly, gasping for breath.

Fighting back against his own exhaustion, he caught up with the other
man, put an arm about him, and helped him to go on.

They had just gained the head of the pass that Dees had been
shepherding them toward when they caught sight of the Urdas.  The
rugged, shaggy creatures appeared out of the rocks behind them, still
more than a mile off, but charging ahead as if maddened, screaming and
crying out, shaking their weapons with an unmistakable promise of what
they would do with those they were pursuing when they finally caught up
with them.  The company, after no more than a moment's hesitation, fled
into the pass.

The pass was a knife cut that sliced upward through the cliffs, a
narrow passageway filled with twists and turns.  The company spread
out, snaking its way forward.  The rain began to fall in earnest now,
turning from a slow spattering into a heavy downpour.  The footing
became slippery, and tiny streams began to flow down out of the rocks,
cutting away at the earth beneath their feet.  They passed from the
shadow of the cliffs and found themselves on a barren slope that angled
left into a high-walled defile that was as black as night.  Wind blew
across the slope in frenzied gusts that sent silt flying into their
faces.

Morgan let go of Carisman and brought his cloak across his head to
protect himself.

It required a tremendous effort to gain the defile, the wind beating
against them so hard that they could progress only a little at a
time.

As they reached the darkened opening, the Urdas reappeared, very close
now, come that last mile all too quickly.

Darts, lances, and the razor-sharp throwing implements whizzed through
the air, falling uncomfortably close.  Hurriedly the company charged
into the passageway and the protection of its walls.

Here, the rain descended in torrents and the light was almost
extinguished.  Jagged rock edges jutted out from the floor and walls of
the narrow corridor and cut and scraped them as they passed.  Time
slowed to a standstill in the howl of wind and the roll of the thunder,
and it seemed as if they would never get free.  Morgan moved ahead to
be with Quickening, determined to see that she was protected.

When they finally worked their way clear of the defile, they found
themselves standing on a ledge that ran along a seam midway down a
towering cliff face that dropped away into a gorge through which the
waters of the Rabb raged in a churning, white-foamed maelstrom.  Dees
took them onto the ledge without hesitation, shouting something back
that was meant to be encouraging but was lost in the sound of the
storm.  The line spread out along the broken seam, Dees in the lead,
Carisman, Quickening, Morgan, and Walker Boh following, and Pe Ell
last.

The rain fell in sheets, the wind tore at them, and the sound of the
river's rush was an impenetrable wall of sound.

When the foremost of the Urdas appeared at the mouth of the defile, no
one saw.  It wasn't until their weapons began to shatter against the
rocks about the fleeing company that anyone realized they were there.

A dart nicked Pe Ell's shoulder and spun him about, but he kept his
footing and struggled on.  The others began to advance more quickly,
trying desperately to distance themselves from their pursuers,
hastening along the ledge, booted feet slipping and sliding
dangerously.  Morgan glanced back and saw Walker Bob turn and throw
something into the storm.  Instantly the air flared with silver
light.

Darts and lances that were hurled into the brightness fell harmlessly
away.  The Urdas, frightened by the Dark Uncle's magic, fell back into
the defile.

Ahead, the ledge broadened slightly and sloped downward.

The far side of the mountains came into view, a sweeping stretch of
forested hills that ran into the distance until it disappeared into a
wall of clouds and rain.  The Rabb churned below, cutting back on
itself, rushing eastward through the rocks.  The trail followed its
bend, some fifty feet above its banks, the barren rock giving way to
the beginnings of earth and scrub.

Morgan looked around one final time and saw that the Urdas were not
following.  Either Walker had frightened them off, or Horner Dees had
been right about them not leaving their mountains.

He turned back.

In the next instant the entire cliff face was rocked with tremors as
parts of it gave way under the relentless pounding of the wind and
rain.  The trail in front of him, an entire section of earth and rock,
disappeared completely and took Quickening with it.  She fell back
against the slope, grasping.  But there was nothing to hold on to, and
she began to slide in a cloud of silt and gravel toward the river.

Carisman, directly in front of her, almost went, too, but managed to
throw himself forward far enough to clutch a tangle of roots from some
mountain scrub and was saved.

Morgan was directly behind.  He saw that Quickening could not save
herself and that there was no one who could reach her.

He didn't hesitate.  He jumped from the crumbling trail into the gap,
hurtling down the Mountainside after her, the trailing shouts of his
companions disappearing almost instantly.  He struck the waters of the
Rabb with jarring force, went under, and came up again gasping in shock
at the cold.  He caught a flash of Quickening I s silver hair bobbing
in a shower of white foam a few feet away, swam to her, seized her
clothing, and drew her to him.

Then the current had them both, and they were swept away.

T WAS ALL that Morgan Leah could do to keep himself and Quickening
afloat in the churning river, and while he might have considered trying
to swim for shore if he had been unencumbered he gave no thought of
doing so here.  Quickening was awake and able to lend some assistance
to his effort, but it was mostly Morgan's strength that kept them away
from the rocks and out of the deep eddies that might have pulled them
down.  As it was, the river took them pretty much where it chose.  It
was swollen by the rains and overflowing its banks, and its surface
waters were white with foam and spray against the darkness of the skies
and land.  The storm continued to rage, thunder rumbling down the
canyon depths, lightning flashing against the distant peaks, and the
rains failing in heavy sheets.  The cliff face they had tumbled down
disappeared from view almost immediately and with it their
companions.

The Rabb twisted and turned through the mountain rocks, and soon they
lost any sense of where they were.

After a time a tree that had been knocked into the river washed by and
they caught hold of it and let it carry them along.  They were able to
rest a bit then, clutching the slippery trunk side by side, doing what
they could to protect their bodies from the rocks and debris, searching
the river and the shoreline for a means to extract themselves.  They
did not bother trying to speak; they were too exhausted to expend the
effort and the river would likely have drowned out their words in any
case.

They simply exchanged glances and concentrated on staying together.

Eventually the river broadened, tumbling down out of the peaks into the
hill country north, emptying into a forested basin where it pooled
before being swept into a second channel that carried it south again.

There was an island in the center of the basin, and the tree they were
riding ran aground against it, spinning and bumping along its banks.

Morgan and Quickening shoved away from their make-do raft and stumbled
wearily ashore.  Exhausted, their clothing hanging in tatters, they
crawled through weeds and grasses for the shelter of the trees that
grew there, a cluster of hardwoods dominated by a pair of monstrous old
elms.  Streams of water eddied and pooled on the ground about them as
they fought their way along the istand's rainsoaked banks, and the wind
howled around their ears.  Lightning struck the mainland shore nearby
with a thunderous crack, and they flattened themselves while the
thunder rolled past.

At last they gained the trees, grateful to discover that it was
comparatively dry beneath the canopy of limbs and sheltered against the
wind.  They stumbled to the base of the largest of the elms and
collapsed, sprawling next to each other on the ground, gasping for
breath.  They lay without moving for a time, letting their strength
return.  Then, after exchanging a long look that conveyed their
unspoken agreement to do so, they pulled themselves upright against the
elm's rough trunk and sat shoulder to shoulder, staring out into the
rain.

"Are you all right?"  Morgan asked her.

It was the first thing either of them had said.  She nodded
wordlessly.

Morgan checked himself carefully for injuries, and finding none, sighed
and leaned back-relieved, weary, cold, and unexplainably hungry and
thirsty, too, despite being drenched.  But there was nothing to eat or
drink, so there was no point in thinking about it.

He glanced over again.  "I don't suppose you could do anything about a
fire, could you?"  She shook her head.  "Can't use magic of any kind,
huh?  Ah, well.  Where's Walker Bob when you need him?"  He tried to
sound flippant and failed.  He sighed.

She reached over and let her hand rest on his, and it warmed him
despite his discomfort.  He lifted his arm and placed it about her
shoulders, easing her close, It brought them both some small measure of
warmth.  Her silver hair was against his cheek, and her smell was in
his nostrils, a mix of earth and forest and something else that was
sweet and compelling.

"They won't find us until this storm ends," she said.

Morgan nodded.  "if then.  There won't be any trail to follow.

Just the river."  He frowned.  "Where are we, anyway?  North or south
of where we went into the river?"

"North and east," she advised.

"You know that?"

She nodded.  He could feet her breathing, the slight movement of her
body against him.  He was shivering, but having her close like this
seemed to make up for it.  He closed his eyes.

"You didn't have to come after me, she said suddenly.  She sounded
uncomfortable.  "I would have been all right."

He tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn.  "I was due for a bath."

"You could have been hurt, Morgan."

"Not me.  I've already survived attacks by Shadowen, Federation
soldiers, Creepers, and other things I'd just as soon forget about.  A
fall into a river isn't going to hurt me."

The wind gusted sharply, howling through the branches of the trees, and
they glanced skyward to listen.  When the sound died away, they could
hear the rush of the river again as it pounded against the shoreline.

Morgan hunched down within his sodden clothing.  "When this storm blows
itself out, we can swim to the mainland, get off this island.

The river is too rough to try it now.  And we're too tired to make the
attempt in any case.  But that's all right.

We're safe enough right here.  Just a little damp."

He realized that he was talking just to be doing something and went
still again.  Quickening did not respond.  He could almost feel her
thinking, but he hadn't a clue as to what she was thinking about.

He closed his eyes again and let his breathing slow.  He wondered what
had become of the others.  Had they managed to make it safely down that
trail or had the collapse of the ledge trapped Walker and Pe Ell on the
upper slope?  He tried to envision the Dark Uncle and the assassin
trapped with each other and failed.

It was growing dark now, dusk chasing away what little light remained,
and shadows began to spread across the island in widening black
stains.

The rains were slowing, the sounds of thunder and wind receding in the
distance, and the storm was beginning to pass.  The air was not cooling
as Morgan had expected, but instead was growing warm again, thick with
the smells of heat and humidity.  Just as well, he thought.  They were
too cold as it was.  He thought about what it would feel like to be
warm and dry again, to be secluded in his hunting lodge in the
Highlands with hot broth and a fire, seated on the floor with the
Ohmsfords, swapping lies of what had never been.

Or seated perhaps with Quickening, saying nothing because speaking
wasn't necessary and just being together was enough, just touching
...

The ache of what he was feeling filled him with both longing and
fear.

He wanted it to continue, wanted it to be there always, and at the same
time he did not understand it and was certain that it would betray
him.

"Are you awake?"  he asked her, anxious suddenly for the sound of her
voice.

"Yes," she replied.

He took a deep breath and breathed out slowly.  "I have been thinking
about why I'm here," he said.  "Wondering about it since Culhaven.  I
haven't any magic anymore-not really.  All I ever had was contained in
the Sword of Leah, and now it's broken and what magic remains is small
and probably won't be of much help to you.  So there's just me, and I
.

. ."  He stopped.  "I just don't know what it is that you expect of me,
I guess."

"Nothing," she answered softly.

"Nothing?"  He could not keep the incredulity from his voice.

"Only what you are able and wish to give," she answered vaguely.

"But I thought that the King of the Silver River said .  He stopped.

"I thought that your father said I was needed.  Isn't that what you
said?  That he told you we were needed, all of us?"

"He did not say what it was that you were to do, Morgan.

He told me to bring you with me in my search for the talisman and that
you would know what to do, that we all would."  She lifted away
slightly and turned to look at him.  "if I could tell you more, I
would."

He scowled at her, frustrated with the evasiveness of her answers, with
the uncertainty he was feeling.  "Would you?"

She almost smiled.  Even rain-streaked and soiled by the river's
waters, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

He tried to speak and failed, He simply sat there, mute and staring.

"Morgan," she said softly.  "My father sees things that are hidden from
all others.  He tells me what I must know of these things, and I trust
him enough to believe that what he tells me is enough.  You are here
because I need you.  It has something to do with the magic of your
Sword.  I was told by my father and told you in turn that you will have
a chance to make the Sword whole again.  Perhaps then it will serve us
both in a way we cannot foresee."

"An e E ?"  e presse , etermine now to now everything.

"Pe Ell?"

"Walker says he is an assassin-that he, too, carries a weapon of magic,
a weapon that kills."

She studied him for a long moment before she said, "That is true."

"And he is needed, too?"

"Morgan."  His name was spoken as a caution.

"Tell me.  Please."

Her perfect features lowered into shadow and lifted again, filled with
sadness.  "Pe Ell is needed.  His purpose, as yours, must reveal
itself."

Morgan hesitated, trying to decide what to ask next, desperate to learn
the truth but unwilling to risk losing her by crossing into territory
in which he was not welcome.

His face tightened.  "I would not like to think that I had been brought
along for the same reason as Pe Ell," he said finally.  "I am not like
him."

"I know that," she said.  She hesitated, wrestling with some inner
demon.  "I believe that each of you-Walker Boh included-is here for a
different reason, to serve a different purpose.  That is my sense of
things."

He nodded, anxious to believe her, finding it impossible not to do
so.

He said, "I just wish I understood more."

She reached up and touched his cheek with her fingers, letting them
slide down his jaw to his neck and lift away again.  "it will be all
right," she said.

She lay back again, folding into him, and he felt his frustration and
doubt begin to fade.  He let them go without a fight, content just to
hold the girl.  It was dark now, daylight gone into the west night
settled comfortably over the land.  The storm had moved east, and the
rains had been reduced to mist.  The clouds were still thick overhead
but empty now of thunder, and a blanket of stillness lay across the
land as if to cover a child preparing for sleep.  In the invisible
distance the Rabb continued to churn, a sullen, now sluggish flow that
lulled and soothed with its wash.  Morgan peered into the night without
seeing, finding its opaque curtain lowered to enclose him, to wrap
about him as if an invisible shroud.  He breathed the clean air and let
his thoughts drift free.

"I could eat something," he mused after a time.  "If there were
anything to eat."

Quickening rose without speaking, took his hands in hers, and pulled
him up after her.  Together, they walked into the darkness, picking
their way through the damp grasses.  She was able to see as he could
not and led the way with a sureness that defied him.  After a time she
found roots and berries that they could eat and a plant that when
property cut yielded fresh water.

They ate and drank what they found, crouched silently next to each
other, saying nothing.  When they were finished, she took him out to
the riverbank where they sat in silence watching the Rabb flow past in
the dim, mysterious half-light, a murky sheen of movement against the
darker mainland.

A light breeze blew into Morgan's face, filled with the rich scent of
flowers and grasses.  His clothes were still damp, but he was no longer
chilled.  The air was warm, and he felt strangely light-headed.

"it is like this sometimes in the Highlands," he told her.

"Warm and filled with earth smells after a summer storm, the nights so
long you think they might never end and wish they wouldn't."

He laughed.  "I used to sit up with Par and Coll Ohmsford on nights
like this.  I'd tell them that if a man wished hard enough for it, he
could just ... melt into the darkness like a snowflake into skin, just
disappear into it, and then stay as long as he liked."

He glanced over to judge her reaction.  She was still beside him, lost
in thought.  He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms
around them.  A part of him wanted to melt into this night so that it
would go on forever, wanted to take her with him, away from the world
about them.  It was a foolish wish.

"Morgan," she said finally, turning.  "I envy you your past.  I have
none."

He smiled.  "Of course you "No," she interrupted him.  "I am an
elemental.  Do you know what that means?  I am not human.  I was
created by magic.  I was made from the earth of the Gardens.  My
father's hand shaped me.  I was born full-grown, a woman without ever
having been a child.  My purpose in being has been determined by my
father, and I have no say in what that purpose is to be.  I am not
saddened by this because it is all I know.  But my instincts, my human
feelings, tell me there is more, and I wish that it were mine as it has
been yours.  I sense the pleasure you take in remembering.  I sense the
joy."

Morgan was speechless.  He had known she was magic, that she possessed
magic, but it had never occurred to him that she might not be ... He
caught himself.  Might not be what?  As real as he was?  As human?  But
she was, wasn't she?  Despite what she thought, she was.

She felt and looked and talked and acted human.  What else was there?

Her father had fashioned her in the image of humans.  Wasn't that
enough?  His eyes swept over her.  It was enough for him, he decided.

It was more than enough.

He reached out to stroke her hand.  "I admit I don't know anything
about how you were made, Quickening.  Or even anything about
elementals.  But you are human.  I believe that.  I would know if you
weren't.  As for not having any past, a past is nothing more than the
memories you acquire, and that's something you're doing right now,
acquiring memories-even if they're not the most pleasant in the
world."

She smiled at the idea.  "The ones of you will always be pleasant,
Morgan Leah," she said.

He held her gaze.  Then he leaned forward and kissed her, just a brief
touching of their lips, and lifted away.  She looked at him through
those black, penetrating eyes.  There was fear mirrored there, and he
saw it.

"What frightens you?"  he asked.

She shook her head.  "That you make me feet so much."

He felt himself treading on dangerous ground, but went forward
nevertheless.  "You asked me before why I came after you when you
fell.

The truth is, I had to.  I am in love with you."

Her face lost all expression.  "You cannot be in love with me," she
whispered.

He smiled bleakly.  "I'm afraid I have no choice in the matter.

This isn't something I can help."

She looked at him for a long time and then shuddered.  "Nor can I help
what I feel for you.  But while you are certain of your feelings, mine
simply confuse me.  I do not know what to do with them.  I have my
father's purpose to fulfill, and my feelings for you and yours for me
cannot be allowed to interfere with that."

"They don't have to," he said, taking her hands firmly now.

"They can just be there."

Her silver hair shimmered as she shook her head.  "I think not.

Not feelings such as these."

He kissed her again and this time she kissed him back.  He breathed her
in as if she were a flower.  He had never felt so certain about
anything in his life as how he felt about her.

She broke the kiss and drew away.  "Morgan," she said, speaking his
name as if it were a plea.

They rose and went back through the damp grasses to the sheltering
trees, to the elm where they had waited out the storm earlier, and sank
down again by its roughened trunk.  They held each other as children
might when frightened and alone, protecting against nameless terrors
that waited just beyond the bounds of their consciousness, that stalked
their dreams and threatened their sleep.

"My father told me as f left the Gardens of my birth that there were
things he could not protect me against," she whispered.  Her face was
close against Morgan's, soft and smooth, her breath warm.  "He was not
speaking of the dangers that would threaten me-of Uhl Belk and the
things that live in Eldwist or even of the Shadowen.  He was speaking
of this."

Morgan stroked her hair gently.  "There isn't much of anything that you
can do to protect against your feelings."

"I can close them away, she answered.

He nodded.  "if you must.  But I will tell you first that I am not
capable of closing my feelings away.  Even if my life depended on it, I
could not do so.  It doesn't make any difference who you are or even
what you are.  Elemental or something else.

I don't care how you were made or why.  I love you, Quickening.  I
think I did from the first moment I saw you, from the first words you
spoke.  I can't change that, no matter what else you ask of me.  I
don't even want to try."

She turned in his arms, and her face lifted to find his.  Then she
kissed him and kept on kissing him until everything around them
disappeared.

WHEN THEY WOKE the next morning the sun was cresting the horizon of a
cloudless blue sky.  Birds sang and the air was warm and sweet.

They rose and walked to the riverbank and found the Rabb slow-moving
and placid once more.

Morgan Leah looked at Quickening, at the curve of her body, the wild
flow of her silver hair, the softness of her face, and the smile that
came to his face was fierce and unbidden.  "I love you," he
whispered.

She smiled back at him.  "And I love you, Morgan Leah.  I will never
love anyone again in my life the way I love you."

They plunged into the river.  Rested now, they swam easily the distance
that separated the island from the mainland.  On gaining the far shore,
they stood together for a moment looking back, and Morgan fought to
contain the sadness that welled up within him.  The island and their
solitude and last night were lost to him except as memories.

They were going back into the world of Uhl Belk and the Black
Elfstone.

They walked south along the river's edge for several hours before
encountering the others.  It was Carisman who spied them first as he
wandered the edge of a bluff, and he cried out in delight, summoning
the rest.  Down the steep slope he raced, blond hair flying, handsome
features flushed.  He skidded the last several yards on his backside,
bounded up, and raced to intercept them.  Throwing himself at
Quickening's feet, he burst into song.

He sang: Found are the sheep who have strayed from the fold, Saved are
the lambs from the wolves and the cold, Wandering far, they have yet
found their way, Now, pray we all, they are here for to stay.

Tra-la-la, tra-la-la, tra-la-la!"

It was a ridiculous song, but it made Morgan smile nevertheless.

In moments, the others had joined them as well, gaunt Pe Ell, his dark
anger at having lost Quickening giving way to relief that she had been
found again; bearish Horner Dees, gruffly trying to put the entire
incident behind them; and the enigmatic Walker Boh, his face an
inscrutable mask as he complimented Morgan on his rescue.  All the
while, an exuberant Carisman danced and sang, filling the air with his
music.

When the reunion finally concluded the company resumed its journey,
moving away from the Charnals and into the forestiands north.

Somewhere far ahead, Eldwist waited.  The sun climbed into the sky and
hung there, brightening and warming the lands beneath as if determined
to erase all traces of yesterday's storm.

Morgan walked next to Quickening, picking his way through the slowly
evaporating puddles and streams.  They didn't speak.

They didn't even look at each other.  After a time, he felt her hand
take his.

At her touch, the memories flooded through him.

HEY WALKED NORTH for five days through the country beyond the Charnals,
a land that was green and gently rolling, carpeted by long grasses and
fields of wildflowers, dotted by forests of fir, aspen, and spruce.

Rivers and streams meandered in silver ribbons from the mountains and
bluffs, pooling in lakes, shimmering in the sunlight like mirrors, and
sending a flurry of cooling breezes from their shores.  It was easier
journeying here than it had been through the mountains; the terrain was
far less steep, the footing sure, and the weather mild.

The days were sun-filled, the nights warm and sweet smelling.  The
skies stretched away from horizon to horizon, broad and empty and
blue.

It rained only once, a slow and gentle dampening of trees and grasses
that passed almost unnoticed.

The spirits of the company were high; anticipation of what lay ahead
was tempered by renewed confidence and a sense of well-being.

Doubts lay half-forgotten in the dark grottos to which they had been
consigned.  There was strength and quickness in their steps.  The
passage of the hours chipped away at uncertain temperaments with slow,
steady precision and like a stonecutter's chisel etched and shaped
until the rough edges vanished and only the smooth surface of agreeable
companionship remained.

Even Walker Boh and Pe Ell called an unspoken truce.  It could never be
argued reasonably that they showed even the remotest inclination toward
establishing a friendship, but they kept apart amiably enough, each
maintaining a studied indiffer ence to the other's presence.  As for
the remainder of the company, constancy was the behavioral norm.

Horner Dees continued reticent and gruff, Carisman kept them all
entertained with stories and songs, and Morgan and Quickening feinted
and boxed with glances and gestures in a lovers' dance that was a
mystery to everyone but them.  There was in all of them, save perhaps
Carisman, an undercurrent of wariness and stealth.

Carisman, it seemed, was incapable of showing more than one face.

But the others were circumspect in their dark times, anxious to keep
their doubts and fears at bay, hopeful that some mix of luck and
determination would prove sufficient to carry them through to the
journey's end.

The beginning of that end came the following day with a gradual change
in the character of the land.  The green that had brightened the
forests and hills south began to fade to gray.

Flowers disappeared.  Grasses withered and dried.  Trees that should
have been fully leafed and vibrant were stunted and bare.

The birds that had flown in dazzling bursts of color and song just a
mile south were missing here along with small game and the larger
hoofed and horned animals.  It was as if a blight had fallen over
everything, stripping the land of its life.

They stood at the crest of a rise at midmorning and looked out over the
desolation that stretched away before them.

"Shadowen," Morgan Leah declared darkly.

But Quickening shook her silvery head and replied, "Uhl -Belk."

It grew worse by midday and worse still by nightfall, It was bad enough
when the land was sickened; now it turned completely dead.  All trace
of grasses and leaves disappeared.  Even the smallest bit of scrub
disdained to grow.  Trunks lifted their skeletal limbs skyward as if
searching for protection, as if beseeching for it.  The country
appeared to have been so thoroughly ravaged that nothing dared grow
back, a vast wilderness gone empty and stark and friendless.  Dust rose
in dry puffs from their boots as they stalked the dead ground, the
earth's poisoned breath.  Nothing moved about them, above them, beneath
them-not animals, not birds, not even insects.  There was no water.

The air had a flat, metallic taste and smell to it.  Clouds began to
gather again, small wisps at first, then a solid bank that hung above
the earth like a shroud.

They camped that night in a forest of deadwood where the air was so
still they could hear each other breathe.  The wood would not burn, so
they had no fire.  Light from a mix of elements in the earth reflected
off the ceiling of clouds and cast the shadows of the trees across
their huddled forms in clinging webs.

"We'll be there by nightfall tomorrow," Horner Dees said as they sat
facing each other in the stillness.  "Eldwist."

Dark stares were his only reply.

Uhl Belk's presence became palpable after that.  He huddled next to
them there in the fading dusk, slept with them that night, and walked
with them when they set out the following day.  His breath was what
they breathed, his silence their own.  They could feel him beckoning,
reaching out to gather them in.  No one said so, but Uhl Belk was
there.

By midday, the land had turned to stone.  It was as if the whole of it,
sickened and withered and gone lifeless, had been washed of every color
but gray and in the process petrified.  It was all preserved perfectly,
like a giant piece of sculpture.

Trunks and limbs, scrub and grasses, rocks and eartheverything as far
as the eye could see had been turned to stone.

It was a starkly chilling landscape that despite its coldness radiated
an oddly compelling beauty.  The company from Rampling Steep found
itself entranced.  Perhaps it was the solidity that drew them, the
sense that here was something lasting and enduring and somehow
perfectly wrought.  The ravages of time, the changing of the seasons,
the most determined efforts of man-it seemed as if none of these could
affect what had been done here.

Horner Dees nodded and the members of the company went forward.

A haze hung about them as they walked across this tapestry of frozen
time, and it was only with difficulty that they were able, after
several hours, to distinguish something else shimmering in the
distance.  It was a vast body of water, as gray as the land they passed
through, blending into its bleakness, a backdrop merging starkly into
earth and sky as if the transition were meaningless.

They had reached the Tiderace.

Twin peaks came into view as well, jagged rock spirals that lifted
starkly against the horizon.  It was apparent that the peaks were their
destination.

Now and again the earth beneath them rumbled ominously, tremors
reverberating as if the land were a carpet that some giant had taken in
his hands and shaken.  There was nothing about the tremors to indicate
their source.  But Horner Dees knew something.  Morgan saw it in the
way his bearded face tightened down against his chest and fear slipped
into his eyes.

After a time the land about them began to narrow on either side and the
Tiderace to close about, and they were left with a shrinking corridor
of rock upon which to walk.  The corridor was taking them directly
toward the peaks, a ramp that might at its end drop them into the
sea.

The temperature cooled, and there was moisture in the air that clung to
their skin in faint droplets.  Their booted feet were strangely
noiseless as they trod the hard surface of the rock, climbing steadily
into a haze.  Soon they became a line of shadows in the approaching
dusk.  Dees led, ancient, massive, and steady.  Morgan followed with
Quickening, the tall Highlander's face lined with wariness, the girl's
smooth and calm.  Handsome Carisman hummed beneath his breath while his
gaze shifted about him as rapidly as a bird's.

Walker Bob floated behind, pate and introspective within his long
cloak.  Pe Ell brought up the rear, his stalker's eyes seeing
everything.

The ramp began to break apart before them, an escarpment out of which
strange rock formations rose against the light.  They might have been
carvings of some sort save for the fact that they lacked any
recognizable form.  Like pillars that had been hewn apart by weather's
angry hand over thousands of years, they jutted and angled in bizarre
shapes and images, the mindless visions of a madman.  The company
passed between them, anxious in their shadow, and hurried on.

They arrived finally at the peaks.  There was a rift between them, a
break so deep and narrow that it appeared to have been formed by some
cataclysm that had split apart what had once been a single peak to form
the two.  They loomed to either side, spirals of rock that thrust into
the clouds as if to pin them fast.

Beyond, the skies were murky and misted, and the waters of the Tiderace
crashed and rumbled against the rocky shores.

Horner Dees moved ahead and the others followed until all had been
enveloped in shadows.  The air was chill and unmoving in the gap, and
the distant shrieks of seabirds echoed shrilly.

What sort of creatures besides those of the sea could possibly live
here?  Morgan Leah wondered uneasily.  He drew his sword.

His whole body was rigid with tension, and he strained to catch some
sign of the danger he sensed threatening them.  Dees was hunched
forward like an animal at hunt, and the three behind the Highlander
were ghosts without substance.  Only Quickening seemed unaffected, her
head held high, her eyes alert as she scanned the rock, the skies, the
gray that shrouded everything.

Morgan swallowed against the dryness in his throat.  What is it that
waits for us?

The walls of the break seemed to join overhead, and they were left
momentarily in utter blackness with only the thin line of the
passageway ahead to give them reassurance that they had not been
entombed.  Then the walls receded again, and the light returned.  The
rift opened into a valley that lay cradled between the peaks.  Shallow,
rutted, choked with the husks of trees and brush and with boulders many
times the size of any man, it was an ugly catchall for nature's refuse
and time's discards.  Skeletons lay everywhere, vast piles of them, all
sizes and shapes, scattered without suggestion of what creatures they
might once have been.

Horner Dees brought them to a halt.  "This is Bone Hollow," he said
quietly.  "This is the gateway to Eldwist.  Over there, across the
Hollow, through the gap in the peaks, Eldwist begins."

The others crowded forward for a better look.  Walker Boh stiffened.

"There's something down there."

Dees nodded.  "Found that out the hard way ten years ago," he said.

"It's called a Koden.  It's the Stone King's watchdog.  You see it?"

They looked and saw nothing, even Pe Elf.  Dees seated himself
ponderously on a rock.  "You won't either.  Not until it has you.  And
it won't matter much by then, will it?  You could ask any of those poor
creatures down there if they still had tongues and the stuff of life to
use them."

Morgan scuffed his boot on a piece of deadwood as he listened.

The deadwood was heavy and unyielding.  Stone.  Morgan looked at it as
if understanding for the first time.  Stone.  Everything underfoot,
everything surrounding them, everything for as far as the eye could
see-it was all stone.

"Kodens are a kind of bear," Dees was saying.  "Big fellows, live up in
the cold regions north of the mountains, keep pretty much to
themselves.  Very unpredictable under any conditions.

But this one?"  He made his nod an enigmatic gesture.  "He's a
monster."

"Huge?"  Morgan asked.

"A monster," Dees emphasized.  "Not just in size, Highlander.

This thing isn't a Koden anymore.  You can recognize it for what it's
supposed to be, but just barely.  Belk did something to it.

Blinded it, for one thing.  It can't see.  But its ears are so sharp it
can hear a pin drop."

"So it knows we are here," Walker mused, edging past Dees for a closer
look at the Hollow.  His eyes were dark and introspective.

"Has for quite a while, I'd guess.  It's down there waiting for us to
try to get past."

"if it's still there at all," Pe Ell said.  "It's been a long time
since you were here, old man.  By now it might be dead and gone.

Dees looked at him mildly.  "Why don't you go on down there and take a
took?"

Pe Ell gave him that lopsided, chilling smile.

The old Tracker turned away, his gaze shifting to the Hollow.

"Ten years since I saw it and I still can't forget it," he whispered.

He shook his grizzled head.  "Something like that you don't ever
forget."

"Maybe Pe Ell is right; maybe it is dead by now," Morgan suggested
hopefully.  He glanced at Quickening and found her staring fixedly at
Walker.

"Not this thing," Dees insisted.

"Well, why can't we see it if it's all that big and ugly?"

Carisman asked, peering cautiously over Morgan's shoulder.

Dees chuckled.  His eyes narrowed.  "You can't see it because it looks
like everything else down there-like stone, all gray and hard, just
another chunk of rock.  Look for yourself.  One of those mounds, one of
those boulders, something that's down there that doesn't look like
anything-that's it.  Just lying there, perfectly still.  Waiting."

"Waiting," Carisman echoed.

He sang: "Down in the valley, the valley of stone.

The Koden lies waiting amid shattered bone.

Amid all its victims, Witbin its gray borne, The Koden lies waiting to
make you its own."

"Be still, tunesmith," Pe Ell said, a warning edge to his voice.

He scowled at Dees.  "You got past this thing before, if we're to
believe what you tell us.  How?"

Dees laughed aloud.  "I was lucky, of course!  I had twelve other men
with me and we just walked right in, fools to the last.  It couldn't
get us all, not once we started running.  No, it had to settle for
three.  That was going in.  Coming out, it only got one.  Of course,
there were just two of us left by then.  I was the one it missed."

Pe Ell stared at him expressionlessly.  "Like you said, old man-lucky
for you."

Dees rose, as bearish as any Koden Morgan might have imagined, sullen
and forbidding when he set his face as he did now.  He faced Pe Ell as
if he meant to have at him.  Then he said, "There's all sorts of
luck.

Some you've got and some you make.  Some you carry with you and some
you pick up along the way.  You're going to need all kinds of it
getting in and out of Eldwist.  The Koden, he's a thing you wouldn't
want to dream about on your worst night.  But let me tell you
something.  After you see what else is down there, what lies beyond
Bone Hollow, you won't have to worry about the Koden anymore.  Because
the dreams you'll have on your worst nights after that will be
concerned with other things!"

Pe Ell's shrug was scornful and indifferent.  "Dreams are for
frightened old men, Horner Dees."

Dees glared at him.  "Brave words now."

"I can see it, " Walker Bob said suddenly.

His voice was soft, almost a whisper, but it silenced the others
instantly and brought them about to face him.  The Dark Uncle was
staring out across the broken desolation of the Hollow, seemingly
unaware that he had spoken.

"The Koden?"  Dees asked sharply.  He came forward a step.

"Where?"  Pe Ell asked.

Walker's gesture was obscure.  Morgan looked anyway and saw nothing.

He glanced at the others.  None of them appeared to be able to find it
either.  But Walker Bob was paying no attention to any of them.  He
seemed instead to be listening for something.

"If you really can see it, point it out to me," Pe Ell said finally,
his voice carefully neutral.

Walker did not respond.  He continued to stare.  "It feels .

he began and stopped.

"Walker?"  Quickening whispered and touched his arm.

The pale countenance shifted away from the Hollow at last and the dark
eyes found her own.  "I must find it," he said.  He glanced at each of
them in turn.  "Wait here until I call for you."

Morgan started to object, but there was something in the other man's
eyes that stopped him from doing so.

Instead, he watched silently with the others as the Dark Uncle walked
alone into Bone Hollow.

THE DAY WAS STILL, the air windless, and nothing moved in the ragged
expanse of the Hollow save Walker Boh.  He crossed the broken stone in
silence, a ghost who made no sound and left no mark.  There were times
in the past few weeks when he had thought himself little more.  He had
almost died from the poison of the Asphim and again from the attack of
the Shadowen at Hearthstone.  A part of him had surely died with the
loss of his arm, another part with the failure of his magic to cure his
sickness.  A part of him had died with Cogline.  He had been empty and
lost on this journey, compelled to come by his rage at the Shadowen,
his fear at being left alone, and his wish to discover the secrets of
Uhl Belk and the Black Elfstone.  Even Quickening, despite ministering
to his needs, both physical and emotional, had not been strong enough
to give him back to himself.  He had been a hollow thing, bereft of any
sense of who and what he was supposed to be, reduced to undertaking
this quest in the faint hope that he would discover his purpose in the
world.

And now, here within this vast, desolate stretch of land, where fears
and doubts and weaknesses were felt most keenly, Walker Boh thought he
had a chance to come alive again.

It was the presence of the Koden that triggered this hope.

Until now the magic had been curiously silent within him, a worn and
tired thing that had failed repeatedly and at last seemed to have given
up.  To be sure, it was there still to protect him when he was
threatened, to frighten off the Urdas when they came too close, to
deflect their hurled weapons.  Yet this was a poor and sorry use when
he remembered what it had once been able to do.  What of the empathy it
had given him with other living things?  What of his sense of emotions
and thoughts?  What of the knowledge that had always just seemed to
come to him?

What of the glimpses of what was to be?  All of these had deserted him,
gone away as surely as his old world, his life with Cogline and Rumor
at Hearthstone.  Once he had wished it would be so, that the magic
would disappear and he would be left in peace, a man like any other.

But it had become increasing y c ear to him on this journey, his sense
of who and what he was heightened by the passing of Cogline and his own
physical and emotional devastation, that his wish had been foolish.

He would never be like other men, and he would never be at peace
without the magic.  He could not change who and what he was; Cogline
had known that and told him so.  On this journey he had discovered it
was true.

He needed the magic.

He required it.

Now he would test whether or not he could still call it his own.

He had sensed the presence of the Koden before Pe Ell had.  He had
sensed what it was before Horner Dees had described it.  Amid the
strewn rock, hunched down and silent, it had reached out to him as
creatures once had when he ap proached.  He could feel the Koden call
to him.  Walker Boh was not certain of its purpose in doing so, yet
knew he must respond.

It was more than the creature's need that he was answering; it was also
his own.

He moved directly through the jumble of boulders and petrified wood to
where the Koden waited.  It had not moved, not even an inch, since the
company had arrived.  But Walker knew where it lay concealed
nevertheless, for its presence had brought the magic awake again.  It
was an unexpected, exhilarating, and strangely comforting experience to
have the power within him stir to life, to discover that it was not
lost as he had believed, but merely misplaced.

Or suppressed, he chided harshly.  Certainly he had worked hard at
denying it even existed.

Mist curled through the rocks, tendrils of white that formed strange
shapes and patterns against the gray of the land.  Far distant, beyond
and below the peaks and the valley they cradled, Walker could hear the
crash of the ocean waters against the shoreline, a dull booming that
resonated through the silence.

He slowed, conscious now that the Koden was just ahead, unable to
dispel entirely his apprehension that he was being lured to his doom,
that the magic would not protect him, and he would be killed.  Would it
matter if he was?  he wondered suddenty.  He brushed the thought
away.

Within, he could feel the magic burning like a fire stoked to life.

He came down from between two boulders into a depression, and the Koden
rose up before him, cat-quick.  It seemed to materialize out of the
earth, as if the dust that lay upon the rock had suddenly come together
to give it form.  It was huge and old and grizzled, three times his own
size, with great shaggy limbs and ragged yellow claws that curled down
to grip the rock.  It lifted onto its hind legs to show itself to him,
and its twisted snout huffed and opened to reveal a glistening row of
teeth.  Sightless white eyes peered down at him.

Walker stood his ground, his life a slender thread that a single swipe
of one huge paw could sever.  He saw that the Koden's head and body had
been distorted by some dark magic to make the creature appear more
grotesque and that the symmetry of shape that had once given grace to
its power had been stripped away.

Speak to me, thought Walker Boh.

The Koden blinked its eyes and dropped down so close that the huge
muzzle was no more than inches from the Dark Uncle's face.  Walker
forced himself to meet the creature's empty gaze.

He could feel the hot, fetid breath.

Tell me, he thought.

There was an instant's time when he was certain that he was going to
die, that the magic had failed him entirely, that the Koden would reach
out and strike him down.  He waited for the claws to rend him, for the
end to come.  Then he heard the creature answer him, the guttural
sounds of its own language captured and transformed by the magic.

Help me, the Koden said.

A flush of warmth filled Walker.  Life returned to him in a way he
found difficult to describe, as if he had been reborn and could believe
in himself again.  A flicker of a smile crossed his face.  The magic
was still his.

He reached out slowly with his good arm and touched the Koden on its
muzzle, feeling beneath his fingertips more than the roughness of its
hide and fur, finding as well the spirit of the creature that was
trapped beneath.  The Dark Uncle read its history in that touch and
felt its pain.  He stepped close to study its massive, scarred body, no
longer frightened by its size or its ugliness or its ability to
destroy.  It was a prisoner, he sawfrightened, angered, bewildered, and
despairing in the manner of all prisoners, wanting only to be free.

"I will make you so," Walker Boh whispered.

He looked to discover how the Koden was bound and found nothing.

Where were the chains that shackled it?  He circled the beast, testing
the weight and texture of the air and earth.  The great head swung
about, seeking to follow him, the eyes fixed and staring.  Walker
completed his circuit and stopped, frowning.  He had found the
invisible lines of magic that the Stone King had fashioned and he knew
what it would take to set the creature free.  The Koden was a prisoner
of its mutation.  It would have to be changed back into a bear again,
into the creature it had been, and the stigma of Uhl Belk's touch
cleansed.

But Walker hadn't the magic for that.  Only Quickening possessed such
power, magic strong enough to bring back the Meade Gardens out of the
ashes of the past, to restore what once was, and she had already said
she could not use her magic again until the Black Elfstone was
recovered.  Walker stood looking at the Koden helplessly, trying to
decide if there were anything he could do.  The beast shifted to face
him, its great, ragged bulk a shimmer of rock dust against the
landscape.

Walker reached out once more, and his fingers rested on the Koden's
muzzle.  His thoughts became words.  Let us pass, and we will find a
way to set you free.

The Koden stared out at him from the prison of its ruined body,
sightless eyes hard and empty.  Go, it said.

Walker lifted his hand away long enough to beckon his companions
forward, then placed it back again.  The others of the company came
hesitantly, Quickening in the lead, then Morgan Leah, Horner Dees,
Carisman, and Pe Ell.  He watched them pass without comment, his arm
outstretched, his hand steady.

He caught a glimpse of what was in their eyes, a strange mix of
emotions, understanding in Quickenin@s alone, fear and awe and
disbelief in the rest.  Then they were past.  They walked from the
rubble of Bone Hollow to the break in the cliffs beyond which they
turned to wait for him.

Walker took his hand away and saw the Koden tremble.  Its mouth gaped
wide, and it appeared to cry out soundlessly.  Then it wheeled away
from him and lumbered down into the rocks.

"I won't forget," the Dark Uncle called after it.

The emptiness he felt made him shiver.  Pulling his cloak close, he
walked from the Hollow.

MORGAN AND THE OTHERS, all but Quickening, asked Walker Boh when he
reached them what had happened.  How had he managed to charm the Koden
so that they could pass?  But the Dark Uncle refused to answer their
questions.  He would say only that the creature was a prisoner of the
Stone King's magic and must be freed, that he had given his promise.

"Since you made the promise, you can worry about keeping it," Pe Ell
declared irritably, anxious to dismiss the matter of the Koden now that
the danger was behind them.

"We'll have trouble enough keeping ourselves free of the Stone King's
magic," Horner Dees agreed.

Carisman was already skipping ahead, and Morgan suddenly found himself
facing Walker Boh with no reply to give.  It was Quickening who spoke
instead, saying, "If you gave your promise, Walker Boh, then it must be
kept."  She did not, however, say how.

They turned away from Bone Hollow and passed into the break that opened
out through the peaks to the Tiderace.  The passage was shadowed and
dark in the fading afternoon light, and a chill, rough-edged wind blew
down off the slopes of the cliffs above, thrusting into them like a
giant hand, shoving them relentlessly ahead.  The sun had dropped into
the horizon west, caught in a web of clouds that turned its light
scarlet and gold.

The smell of salt water, fish, and kelp filled the air, sharp and
pungent.

Morgan glanced back once or twice at Walker Boh, still amazed at how he
had been able to keep the Koden from attacking them, to walk right up
to it as he had and touch it without coming to harm.  He recalled the
stories of the Dark Uncle, of the man before he had suffered the bite
of the Asphim and the loss of Cogline and Rumor, the man who had taught
Par Ohmsford not to be frightened of the power of the Elven magic.

Until now, he had thought Walker Boh crippled by the Shadowen attack on
Hearthstone.  He pursed his lips thoughtfully.

Perhaps he had been wrong.  And if wrong about Walker, why not wrong
about himself as well?  Perhaps the Sword of Leah could be made whole
again and his own magic restored.

Perhaps there was a chance for all of them, just as Quickening had
suggested.

The defile opened suddenly before them, the shadows which had caged
them brightened into gray, misty light, and they peeked through a
narrow window in the cliffs.  The Tiderace spread away below in an
endless expanse, its waters roiling and white-capped as they churned
toward the shoreline.  The company moved ahead, back into the
shadows.

The trail they followed began to descend, to twist and turn through the
rocks, damp and treacherous from the mist and the ocean spray.  The
walls split apart once more, this time forming ragged columns of stone
that permitted brief glimpses of sky and sea.

Underfoot, the rock was loose, and it felt as if everything was on the
verge of breaking up.

Then they turned onto a slide so steep that they were forced to descend
sitting and found themselves in a narrow passageway that curled ahead
into a tunnel.  They stooped to pass through, for the tunnel was filled
with jagged rock edges.  At its far end, the walls fell away, and the
tunnel opened onto a shelf that lifted toward the sky.  The company
moved onto the shelf, discovered a pathway, and climbed to where it
ended at a rampart formed of stone blocks.

They stood at the edge of the rampart and looked down.

Morgan felt his stomach lurch.  From where they stood, the land dropped
away to a narrow isthmus that jutted into the sea.  Connected to the
isthmus was a peninsula, broad and ragged about the edges, formed all
of cliffs against which the waters of the Tiderace pounded
relentlessly.  Atop the cliffs sat a city of towering stone
buildings.

The buildings were not of this time, but of the old world, of the age
before the Great Wars destroyed the order of things and the new races
were born.  They rose hundreds of feet into the air, smooth and
symmetrical and lined with banks of windows that yawned blackly against
the gray light.  Everything was set close together, so that the city
had the look of a gathering of monstrous stone obelisks grown out of
the rock.  Seabirds wheeled and circled about the buildings, crying out
mournfully in the failing light.

"Eldwist," Horner Dees announced.

Far west, the sun was sinking into the waters of the sea, losing its
brightness and its color with the coming of night, the scarlet and gold
fading to silver.  The wind howled down off the cliffs behind them in a
steady crescendo, and it felt as if even the pinnacle of rock on which
they stood was being shaken.

They huddled together against its thrust and the fall of night and
watched raptly as Eldwist turned black with shadow.  The wind howled
through the city as well, down the canyons of its streets, across the
drops of its cliffs.  Morgan was chilled by the sound of it.  Eldwist
was empty and dead.  There was only its stone, hard and unyielding,
unchanging and fixed.

Horner Dees called out to them over the sound of the wind as he turned
away.  He led them back to where a set of steps had been carved into
the cliff face to lead downward to the city.

The steps ran back against the wall, angling through the crevices and
nooks, twisting once more into shadow.  Night closed about as they
descended, the sun disappearing, the stars winking into view in a sky
that was clear and bright.  Moonlight reflected off the Tiderace, and
Morgan could see the stark, jutting peaks of the city lifting off the
rocks.  Mist rose in gauzy trailers, and Eldwist took on a surrealistic
look-as if come out of time and legend.  The seabirds flew away, the
sound of their cries fading into silence.  Soon there was only the roll
of the waves as they slapped against the rocky shores.

At the base of the stairs they found an alcove sheltered by the
rocks.

Horner Dees brought them to a halt.  "No sense in trying to go
farther," he advised, sounding weary.  The wind did not reach them
here, and he talked in a normal tone of voice.

"Too dangerous to try to go in at night.  There's a Creeper down there
. . ."

"A Creeper?"  Morgan, who had been examining bits of grass and shrub
that were perfectly preserved in stone, looked up sharply.

"Yes, Highlander," the other continued.  "A thing that sweeps the
streets of the city after dark, gathering up any stray bits and pieces
of living refuse .  . ."

A rumbling within the earth cut short the rest of what he was about to
say.  The source of the rumbling was Eldwist, and the members of the
company turned quickly to look.  The city stood framed against the
night sky, all black save for where the light reflected off the
stone.

It was larger and more forbidding when viewed from below, Morgan
thought as he peered into its shadows.  More impenetrable ...

Something huge surged out of the dark recesses he searched, a thing of
such monstrous size as to give the momentary illusion that it dwarfed
even the buildings.  It rose from between the monoliths as if kindred,
all bulk and weight, but long and sinewy like a snake as well, stone
blocks turned momentarily liquid to reshape and re-form.  Then jaws
gaped wide-Morgan could see the jagged edge of the teeth clearly
against the backdrop of the moon-and they heard a horrifying cry, like
a strangled cough.

The earth reverberated with that cry, and the members of the company
from Rampling Steep dropped into a protective crouch-all but
Quickening, who remained erect, as if she alone were strong enough to
withstand this nightmare.

A second later it was gone, dropping away as quickly and smoothly as it
had come, the rumble of its passing hanging faintly in the air.

"That was no Creeper," Morgan whispered.

"And it wasn't here ten years ago either," a white-faced Horner Dees
whispered back.  "I'd bet on it."

"No," Quickening said softly, turning to face them now.  Her companions
came slowly to their feet.  "it is newly born," she said, "barely five
years old.  It is still a baby."

"A baby!"  Morgan exclaimed incredulously.

Quickening nodded.  "Yes, Morgan Leah.  It is called the Maw Grint."

She smiled sadly.  "It is Uhl Belk's child."

HE SIX THAT FORMED the company from Rampling Steep spent the remainder
of the night huddled in the shelter of the cliffs, crouched silently in
the darkness, hidden away from the Maw Grint and whatever other horrors
lay in wait within Eldwist.  They built no fire-indeed, there was no
wood to be gathered for one-and they ate sparingly of their meager
food.  Food and water would be a problem in the days to come since
there was little of either to be found in this country of stone.  Fish
would become the staple of their diet; a small stream of rainwater that
tumbled down off the rocks behind would quench their thirst.  If the
fish proved elusive or the stream dried up, they would be in serious
trouble.

No one slept much in the aftermath of the Maw Grint's appearance.

For a long while no one even tried.  Their uneasiness was palpable as
they waited out the night.  Quickening used that time to relate to the
others what she knew of the Stone King's child.

"My father told me of the Maw Grint when he sent me forth from his
Gardens," she began, her black eyes distant as she spoke, her silver
hair gleaming brightly in the moonlight.  They sat in a half-circle,
their backs settled protectively against the rocks, their eyes shifting
warily from time to time toward the forbidding shadow of the city.  All
was silent now, the Maw Grint disappeared as mysteriously as it had
come, the seabirds gone to roost, and the wind faded away.

Quickening's voice was carefully hushed.  "As I am the child of the
King of the Silver River, so the Maw Grint is the child of Uhl Belk.

Both of us were made by the magic, each to serve a father's needs.  We
are elementals, beings of earth's life, born out of the soil and not of
woman's flesh.  We are much the same, the Maw Grint and I."

It was such a bizarre statement that it was all Morgan Leah could do to
keep from attacking it.  He refrained from doing so only because there
was nothing to be gained by voicing an objection and diverting the
narration from its intended course.

"The Maw Grint was created to serve a single purpose," Quickening went
on.  "Eldwist is a city of the old world, one which escaped the
devastation of the Great Wars.  The city and the land on which it is
settled mark the kingdom of Uhl Belk, his haven, his fortress against
all encroachment of the world beyond.  For a while, they were enough.

He was content to burrow in his stone, to remain secluded.  But his
appetite for power and his fear of losing it were constant
obsessions.

In the end, they consumed him.  He became convinced that if he did not
change the world without, it would eventually change him.

He determined to extend his kingdom south.  But to do so he would have
to eave the sa ety of E dwist, an that was unacceptable.  Like my
father, his magic grows weaker the farther he travels from its
source.

Uhl Belk refused to take such a risk.

Instead, he created the Maw Grint and sent his child in his place.

"The Maw Grint," she whispered, "once looked like me.  It was human in
form and walked the land as I do.  It possessed a part of its father's
magic as I do.  But whereas I was given power to heat the land, the Maw
Grint was given power to turn it to stone.  A simple touching was all
it took.  By touching it fed upon the earth and all that lived and grew
upon it, and everything was changed to stone.

"But Uhl Belk grew impatient with his child, for the transformation of
the lands surrounding was not proceeding quickly enough to suit him.

Surrounded by the waters of the Tiderace, which his magic could not
affect, he was trapped upon this finger of land with only the way south
open to him and only the Maw Grint to widen the corridor.  The Stone
King infused his child with increasingly greater amounts of his own
magic, anxious for quicker and more extensive results.  The Maw Grint
began to change form as a result of the infusions of power, to
transform itself into something more adaptable to what its father
demanded.  It became molelike.  It began to tunnel into the earth,
finding that change came quicker from beneath than above.  It grew in
size as it fed and changed again.  It became a massive slug, a
burrowing worm of immense proportions."

She paused.  "it also went mad.  Too much power, too quickly fed, and
it lost its sanity.  It evolved from a thinking, reasoning creature to
one so mindless that it knew only to feed.  It swept into the land
south, burrowing deeper and deeper.  The land changed quickly then, but
the Maw Grint changed more quickly yet.  And then one day Uhl Belk lost
control of his child completely."

She glanced at the dark silhouette of the city and back again.

"The Maw Grint began to hunt its father when it was not feeding off the
land, aware of the power that the Stone King possessed and eager to
usurp it.  Uhl Belk discovered that he had fashioned a two-edged
sword.

On the one hand, the Maw Grint was tunneling into the Four Lands and
changing them to stone.  On the other, it was tunneling beneath Eldwist
as well, searching for a way to destroy him.  So powerful had the Maw
Grint grown that father and son were evenly matched.  The Stone King
was in danger of being dispatched by his own weapon."

"Couldn't he simply change his son back again?"  Carisman asked,
wide-eyed.  "Couldn't he use the magic to restore him to what he
was?"

Quickening shook her head.  "Not by the time he thought to do
anything.

By then it was too late.  The Maw Grint would not let itself be
changed-even though, my father tells me, a part of it realized the
horror of what it had become and longed for re ease.  That part, it
seems, was too weak to act."

"So now it burrows the earth and sorrows over its fate," the tunesmith
murmured.

He sang: "Made in the sbape of humankind, To serve the Stone King's
dark design, The Maw Grint tunnels 'neatb the land, A horror wrougbt by
father's band, Become a monster out of need, Witb no true hope of being
freed, It bunts."

"Hunts, indeed," Morgan Leah echoed.

"Hunts us, probably."

Quickening shook her head.  "it isn't even aware that we exist,
Morgan.

We are too small, too insignificant to catch its attention.

Until we choose to use magic, of course.  Then it will know."

There was a studied silence.  "'What was it doing when we saw it
tonight?"  Horner Dees asked finally.

"Crying out what it feels-its rage, frustration, hatred, and
madness."

She paused.  "Its pain."

"Like the Koden, it is a prisoner of the Stone King's magic," Walker
Bob said.  His sharp eyes fixed the girl.  "And somehow Uhl Belk has
managed to keep that magic his own, hasn't he?"

"He has gained possession of the Black Elfstone," she replied.

"He went out from Eldwist long enough to steal it from the Hall of
Kings and replace it with the Asphim.  He took it back into his keep
and used it against his child.  Possession of the Eiven magic shifted
the balance of power back to Uhl Belk.  Even the Maw Grint was not
powerful enough to defeat the Stone."

"A magic that can negate the power of other magics," Pe El] recited
thoughtfully.  "A magic that can turn them to its own use.

"The Maw Grint still threatens its father, but it cannot overcome the
Elfstone.  It lives because Uhl Belk wishes it to continue feeding on
the land, to continue transforming living matter to stone.  The Maw
Grint is a useful, if dangerous, slave.  By night, it tunnels the
earth.  By day, it sleeps.  Like the Koden, it is blind-made so by the
magic and the nature of what it does, burrowing within darkness, seldom
seeing light."  She looked again toward the city.  "it will probably
never know we are here if we are careful."

"So all we have to do is to steal the Elfstone."  Pe El] smiled.

"Steal the Elfstone and let father and son feed on each other.

Nothing complicated about it, is there?"  He glanced sharply at
Quickening.  "is there?"

She met his gaze without flinching, but did not answer.

Pe Ell's smile turned cold as he leaned back into the shadows.

There was a moment of strained silence, and then Morgan said to Horner
Dees, "What about this Creeper you mentioned?"

Dees was looking sullen as well.  He leaned forward ponderously, his
eyes narrowed suspiciously.  "Maybe the girl can tell you more about it
than me," he answered quietly.  "I've a feeling there's a great deal
she knows and isn't telling."

Quickening's face was devoid of expression, coldly perfect as she faced
the old Tracker.  "I know what my father told me, Horner Dees-nothing
more."

"King of the Silver River, Lord of the Gardens of Life," Pe Ell growled
from the shadows.  "Keeper of dark secrets."

"As you say, there is a Creeper in the city of Eldwist," Quickening
went on, ignoring Pe Ell, her eyes on Dees.  "Uhl Belk calls it the
Rake.  The Rake has been there for many years, a scavenger of living
things serving the needs of its master.  It comes out after dark and
sweeps the streets and walkways of the city clean.  We will have to be
careful to avoid it when we go i n.

"I've seen it at work," Dees grunted.  "it took half a dozen of us on
the first pass ten years ago, another two shortly after.  It's big and
quick."  He was remembering now, and his anger at Quickening seemed to
dissipate.  He shook his head doubtfully.

"I don't know.  It hunts you out, finds you, finishes you.  Goes into
the buildings if it needs to.  Did then, anyway."

"So it would be wise for us to find the Black Elfstone quickly,
wouldn't it?"  Pe Ell whispered.

They fell silent then, and after a few moments drifted away from each
other into the shadows.  They spent the remainder of the night
attempting to sleep.  Morgan dozed, but never for long.

Walker was seated at the edge of the rocks watching the city when the
Highlander nodded off and was still there when he woke.  They were all
tired and disheveled-all but Quickening.

She stood fresh and new in the weak light of the morning sun rise, as
beautiful as in the moment of their first meeting.  Morgan found
himself disturbed by the fact.  In that way, certainly, she was
something more than ordinary.  He watched her, then looked quickly away
when she turned toward him, afraid she would see.  It bothered him to
think that there might be differences between them after all and,
worse, that those differences might be substantial.

They ate breakfast with the same lack of interest with which they had
eaten dinner the night before.  The land was a stark and ominous
presence that watched them through hidden eyes.

Fog hung across the peninsula, rising from the cliffs on which the city
rested to the peaks of the tallest towers, giving the impression that
Eldwist sat within the clouds.  The seabirds had returned, gulls,
puffins, and terns, wheeling and calling out above the dark waters of
the Tiderace.  A dampness had settled into the air with dawn's coming,
and the water beaded on the faces of the six.

Having been warned by Dees of what lay ahead, they gathered rainwater
from pools high in the rocks, wrapped what little food they still
possessed against the wet, and set out to cross the isthmus.

It took them longer than they expected.  The distance was short, but
the path was treacherous.  The rock was crisscrossed with crevices, its
surface broken apart by ancient upheavals, damp and slick beneath their
feet from the ocean's constant pounding.  The wind gusted sharply,
blowing spray in their faces, chilling their skin.  Progress was
slow.

The sun remained a hazy white ball behind the low-hanging clouds, and
the land ahead was filled with shadows.  Eldwist rose before them, a
cluster of vague shapes, dark and forbidding and silent.

They watched it grow larger as they neared, rising steadily into the
bleak skies, the sound of the wind echoing mournfully through its
canyons.

Sometimes, as they walked, they could feet a rumbling beneath their
feet, far distant, but ominously familiar.  Apparently the Maw Grint
didn't always sleep during the daylight hours.

Midday neared.  The isthmus, which had been so narrow at points that
the rock dropped away to either side of where they walked into dark
cauldrons and whirlpools, broadened finally onto the peninsula and the
outskirts of the city.  The cliffs on which Eldwist had been built
lifted before them, and the company was forced to climb a broad
escarpment.  Winding through a jumble of monstrous boulders along a
pathway littered with loose stone, with their feet constantly sliding
out from under them, they struggled resolutely ahead.

It took them the better part of two hours to gain the heights.

By then the sun was already arcing west.

They paused to catch their breath at the city's edge, standing together
at the end of a stone street that ran between rows of towering,
vacant-windowed buildings and narrowed steadily until it disappeared
into mist and shadow.  Morgan Leah had never seen a city such as this
one, the buildings flat and smooth, all constructed of stone, all
symmetrically arranged like squares on a checkerboard.

Broken rock littered the street, but beneath the rubble he could see
the hard, even surface.  It seemed as if it ran on forever, as if it
had no end, a long, narrow corridor that disappeared only when the mist
grew too thick for the eye to penetrate.

They began to walk it, a slow and cautious passage, spreading out along
its corridor, listening and watching like cats at hunt.  Other streets
bisected it from out of the maze of tall buildings, these in turn
disappearing right and left into shadow.

There were no protective walls about Eldwist, no watchtowers or
battlements or gates, only the buildings and the streets that fronted
them.  There appeared to be nothing living there.  The streets and
buildings came and went as the company pressed deeper, and the only
sounds were those of the ocean and the wind and the seabirds.  The
birds flew overhead, the only sign of movement, winging their way past
the caps of the buildings, down into the streets, across intersections
and catwalks.  Some roosted on the windowledges high overhead.  After a
time, Morgan saw that some of those he had believed roosting had been
turned to stone.

Much of the debris that lay strewn about had once been something other
than stone although most of it was not unrecognizable.

Odd-looking poles stood at every street corner, and it was possi e to
surmise that these might have once been some form of lamps.  The
carcass of a monstrous carriage lay on its side against one building, a
machine whose bones had been stripped of their flesh.  Scattered pieces
of engines had survived time and weather, gear wheels and cylinders,
flywheels and tanks.  All had turned to stone.  There were no growing
things, no trees or shrubs, or even the smallest blade of grass.

They looked inside a few of the buildings and found the rooms cavernous
and empty.  Stairways ran upward into the stone shells, and they
climbed one set all the way to the top so that they could took out
across Eldwist and orient themselves.

It was impossible to tell much, even as little as where the city began
and ended.  Clouds and mist obscured everything, revealing only
glimpses of facings and roofs in a sea of swirling gray.

They did sight an odd dome at Eldwist's center, a structure unlike the
tall obelisks that formed the balance of the city, and they chose to
explore it next.

But coming down again into the streets they lost their sense of
direction and turned the wrong way.  They walked for the better part of
an hour before deciding they had made a mistake; then they were forced
to climb the stairs of another building in order to regain their
bearings.

While they were doing so, the sun set.  None of them had been paying
any attention to how quickly the daylight had been fading.

When they emerged from their climb they were stunned to find the city
in darkness.

"We'd better find a place to hide right now," Horner Dees admonished,
glancing around uneasily.  "The Rake will be out soon if it isn't
already.  It if finds us unprotected He didn't have to finish the
thought.  For a moment they stared wordlessly at one another.  None of
them had bothered looking for a nighttime shelter.

Then Walker Boh said, "There was a small building several streets back
with no windows on the lower levels, a small entry, a maze of corridors
and rooms inside-like a warren."

"Safe enough for the moment," Pe Ell muttered, already heading down the
street.

They began to backtrack through the city.  It was so dark by now that
they could barely find their way.  The buildings loomed to either side
in a wall made more solid by the thickening of the mist.  The seabirds
had again gone to roost, and the sound of ocean and wind had faded into
a distant lull.  The city was uncomfortably still.

Beneath them, the stone shell of the earth rumbled and shook.

"Something's awake and hungry," Pe Ell murmured and smiled coldly at
Carisman.

The, tunesmith laughed nervously, his handsome face white and drawn.

He sang: Slip away, slip away, slip away home, Run for your bedcovers,
no more to roam, Steal away quick from the things of the night, Keep
yourself bidden and well out of sight."

They crossed an intersection that was flooded with pale moonlight that
had found a break in the clouds and was streaming down in a splash of
white fire.  Pe Ell stopped abruptly, bringing the rest of them up
short as well, listened for a moment, shook his head, and moved on.

The rumbling beneath them came and went, sometimes close, sometimes
far, never in one spot at any given time, seemingly all around.  Morgan
Leah peered ahead through mist and shadows.  Was this the same street
they had been on before?  It didn't look quite the same ...

There was a loud click.  Pe Ell, still in the lead, catapulted
backward, careening into Horner Dees and Quickening, who were closest,
the force of his thrust knocking them both from their feet.  They
tumbled down in a heap, inches from the edge of a gaping hole that had
opened in the street.

"Get back against the buildings!"  he snapped, leaping to his feet and
sweeping Quickening up with him as he raced from the chasm's edge.

The others were only a step behind.  Another section of the street gave
way, this one behind them, falling with a crash into blackness.

The rumbling beneath crescendoed into a roar that deafened them, and
they could hear the passing of something massive below.  Morgan
crouched deep within a shadowed alcove, pressed up against the stone
wall, fighting to keep from screaming against his fear.  The Maw
Grint!

He saw Horner Dees next to him, his bearded face all but invisible as
it turned away into the shadows.  The thunder of the monster moving
below peaked and then began to fade.  Seconds later, it was gone.

The members of the little company came out of hiding then, one after
another, white-faced and staring.  They moved cautiously into the
street, then started violently as the holes in the streets closed up
again, the fallen sections lifting smoothly back into place.

"Trapdoors!"  Pe Ell spat.  There was fear and loathing in his face.

Morgan caught sight of something white in his hand, a knife of some
sort, its metal bright and shining.  Then it was gone.

Pe Ell released Quickening from his grasp and turned away from them,
moving back along the street, this time staying well up on the walkways
that fronted the buildings.  Wordlessly, eyes darting from one pool of
shadows to the next, the others followed.  They hastened down the
walkway in single file, crossed the next intersection the same way, and
hurried on.  The rumbling sounded again, but far away now.  The streets
about them were quiet and empty once more.

Morgan Leah was still shaking.  Those trapdoors had been placed there
either to snare intruders or to let the Maw Grint into the city.

Probably both.  He swallowed against the dryness in his throat.

They had been careless back there.  They had better not be so again.

A heavy wall of mist blocked the way forward.  Pe Ell hesitated as they
approached it, then stopped.  He looked back at Walker Boh, his eyes
hard and penetrating.  Some unspoken communication passed between them,
a shared look that Morgan found almost feral.  Walker glanced right.

Pe Ell, after a moment's hesitation, turned that way.

They walked ahead, slowly now, listening to the silence again.

The mist was all about them, fallen out of the clouds, seeped up from
the stone, and come out of nowhere to envelop them.  They moved with
their hands stretched out to brush against the walls of the buildings
for reassurance.  Pe Ell was studying the path ahead carefully, aware
now that the city was probably one vast collection of traps, that any
part of the stone could drop away beneath their feet without warning.

Ahead, the mist began to clear.

Morgan thought he heard something, then decided he hadn't heard it,
that he had sensed it instead.  What?

They emerged from the shadow of the building next to them and the
answer was waiting.  The Rake stood in the center of the street, a
huge, splay-legged metal monster with dozens of tentacles and feelers,
pincers that gaped from its maw, and a whiplike tail.  It was a Creeper
like the one the outlaws of the Movement had faced at the Jut,
comprised of metal and flesh, a hybrid nightmare of machine and
insect.

Except that this one was much bigger.

And much quicker.  It came for them so fast that it was almost upon
them before they had begun to scatter.  Its wide, bent legs skittered
like a centipede's.  Tentacles swept out in a flurry of movement, the
sound of metal scraping against stone a horrid rasp.  The tentacles
caught Dees and Carisman almost instantly, wrapping about them as they
tried to flee.  Pe Ell shoved Quickening across the walkway toward an
open doorway, feinted as if to rush the monster, then darted away.

Morgan drew his sword and would have attacked, having lost all sense of
what he was doing at the thought of Quickening in danger, when Walker
Bob caught hold of him and threw him back against the wall.

"Get inside!"  The Dark Uncle cried, motioning toward a set of massive
stone doors that gaped open.

Then Walker Bob threw back his cloak and his single arm came up.

The Rake was almost on top of him when the arm lowered and a sheet of
white light ignited.  Morgan shrank back against the wall, blinded.

He heard a harsh shriek and realized it was the Creeper.  His vision
cleared enough to see the creature's metal arms windmilling violently
and caught a glimpse of Carisman and Horner Dees running from it.  Then
he was seized in an iron grip and thrust back through the black opening
of the doorway.

It was Pe Ell who had yanked him inside.  Quickening was already
there.

The white light of Walker's magic still burned through the darkness
without, and they could hear the Rake thrashing against the building,
the force of its attack so violent that stone chips were scattered
everywhere.  Walker burst into view, Carisman and Horner Dees running
before him, stunned but freed.  They stumbled across the floor and
fell, then regained their feet instantly as the Rake tore the giant
entry doors from their hinges, ripped the stone facing apart and shoved
inside.

There was a broad staircase leading upward behind them, and they bolted
for it.  The Rake came after them, staggering slightly.  If Walker's
magic had done nothing else, it had momentarily disoriented the
beast.

Its tentacles lashed out wildly in an effort to snare its prey.  The
six dashed up the stairs.  A single whiplash movement from below
brought one arm across the steps before them, but Pe Ell's strange
knife flashed into view, slicing across the arm and all but severing
it.  The arm withdrew.  They raced upward, springing from one landing
to the next, fleeing without looking back.

Finally, at a landing ten floors up, Walker brought them to a ragged
halt.  Behind them there was only silence.  They stood in a knot, their
breathing ragged as they listened.

"Perhaps it's given up, " Carisman whispered, sounding hope ful.

"Not that thing," Horner Dees replied, his voice a muffled rasp as he
fought to catch his breath.  "That thing won't ever quit.  I've seen
what it can do."

Pe Ell thrust forward.  "Since you claim to know so much about it, tell
us what it might do here!"  he snarled.

Dees shook his bearish head obstinately.  "I don't know.  We never made
it as far as the buildings last time."  Then he shuddered.

"Shades!  I can still feel those arms coming tight about me!"  He
glanced sideways at Quickening.  "I should never have let you talk me
into coming back here!"

"Hsssst!"  Walker Bob was standing at the top of the stairs, he started
to say and Pe Ell was next to him in a moment, crouched next to the
stair railing.  Suddenly he jerked upright.  "It's outside!"  he
snarled and whirled about.

The once-glassed floor-to-ceiling latticework shattered into pieces
across the landing as the Rake clawed its way in.  Morgan was aghast.

While the company had looked for it to come up the stairs, the Rake had
climbed the wall!

head cocked.  "There's something stopped.

For a second time, it almost had them.  Tentacles whipped across the
small space and knocked most of them from their feet.  Pe Ell was too
quick for it, however, and the strange knife materialized in his hand,
shredding the nearest arm.  The Creeper flinched away, then came for
him.  But the diversion had given Walker Boh time to act.  A fistful of
Cogline's black powder appeared in his hand.  He threw it at the beast
and fire exploded forth.

The company raced up the stairs once more-one floor, two, three.

Behind them, the Creeper thrashed against the fire.

Then everything went still.  They could no longer hear it; but they all
knew where it was.  There were openings through the walls on each floor
where the windows had fallen away over the years.  The Creeper could
attack through any of them.  It would keep coming after them, and
sooner or later it would have them.

"We'll have to stand and fight!"  Morgan cried out to the others,
snatching free his broadsword.

"Do that and we'll all die, Highlander!"  Horner Dees shouted back.

Then Pe Ell brought them up short, lunging ahead and wheeling to face
them.  "Back down those stairs, the bunch of you!  Now!  Stay close and
I'll see you out of this!"

No one stopped to argue, not even Walker.  They retraced their steps in
a rush, descending in leaps and bounds, eyes on the window openings at
each floor.  Two flights down they caught a glimpse of the Rake as it
pulled itself level with the frame.  Tentacles snaked out, failing
short.  As they darted away, they could hear the monstrous thing
reverse itself against the stone and start after them.

Another three flights, still far from the ground, Pe Ell brought them
to a halt once more.  "Here!  This is the spot!"  He pushed them down a
long, high-ceilinged corridor.  Behind them, the Rake gained the
landing and lumbered swiftly in pursuit.

The creature seemed to elongate as it came, changing the shape of its
body to allow it access.  Morgan was terrified.  This Creeper could
adapt to any situation.  Narrow passageways and long climbs were not
nearly enough to stop it.

At the end of the corridor was an enclosed catwalk that crossed over to
another building.  "Get across as fast as you can!"

Pe Ell snapped.

Morgan and the others did as they were told.  But the Highlander
despaired of escape this way.  Narrow as the catwalk might be, it would
not stop the Rake.

He reached the other side and turned with the others.

Pe Ell was kneeling at the far end of the walk where it joined to the
other building and sawing at the stone bracing with his strange
knife.

Morgan stared.  Had Pe Ell lost his mind?  Did he actually think his
knife-any knife-could cut through stone?

The Rake was almost on top of him before he was back on his feet.

Cat-quick, he darted across the walk.  He reached them just as the Rake
eased into view, snakelike now as it entered the narrow tunnel
opening.

And then the impossible happened.  The bracing that Pe Ell had been
sawing snapped and gave way.  The catwalk lurched downward, held
momentarily, then collapsed completely beneath the weight of the
Rake.

Down it plunged to the street, shattering into fragments, dust and
debris rising to mix with the mist and the night.

The six from Rampling Steep stared downward, waiting.

Then they heard somethings scraping movement, the sound of metal on
stone.

"It's not dead!"  Dees whispered in horror.

They stepped back hurriedly from the opening and slipped down to the
ground floor, exiting from a door on the far side of the building onto
the street.  With Pe Ell and Walker in the lead, they made their way
silently through the dark.  Behind them, they could hear the Creeper
beginning to search again.

Less than five blocks away they came upon the building Walker Boh had
been seeking, a squat, virtually windowless bunker.  They entered with
anxious backward glances and peered about.  It was indeed a warren, a
maze of rooms and corridors with several sets of stairs and half a
dozen entries.  They climbed four stories, settled themselves in a
central room away from any windows, and crouched down to wait.

The minutes passed and the Rake did not appear.  An hour came and
went.

They ate a cold meal and settled back.  No one slept.

In the silence, their breathing was the only sound.

TOWARD DAWN, Morgan Leah grew restless.  He found himself thinking of
Pe Ell's knife, a blade that could cut through stone.

The knife intrigued him.  Like Pe Ell's presence on this journey, it
was an unsolved mystery.  The Highlander took a deep breath.

Despite Walker's warning to stay clear of the man, he decided to see
what he could learn.  Climbing to his feet he moved to the darkened
corner where the other sat with his back to the wall.  He could see Pe
Ell's eyes track him as he approached.

"What do you want?"  Pe Ell asked coldly.

Morgan crouched down in front of him, hesitating in spite of his
resolve.  "I was curious about your knife," he admitted after a
moment.

Their voices were barely audible whispers in the stillness.  In the
darkened room, no one else could hear.

Pe Ell's smile was cold.  "You are, are you?"

"We all saw what it did."

Pe Ell had the knife out instantly, the blade held inches from Morgan's
nose.  Morgan held his breath and did not move.  "The only thing you
need to know about this," Pe Ell swore, "is that it can kill you before
you can blink.  You.  Your one-armed friend.

Anyone."

Morgan swallowed hard.  "Even the Stone King?"  He forced the question
out, angry with himself for being frightened.

The blade disappeared back into the shadows.  "Let me tell you
something.  The girl says you have magic about you.  I don't believe
it.  You have nothing.  One-arm is the only one among you who has
magic, and his magic doesn't do anything!  It doesn't kill.  He doesn't
kill.  I can see it in his eyes.  None of you matters in this business,
whether you know it or not.  You're nothing but a pack of fools."

He jabbed at Morgan with his finger.  "Don't get in my way,
Highlander.

Any of you.  And don't expect me to save you the next time that Creeper
comes hunting.  I'm all done with the lot of you."  He withdrew his
hand scornfully.  "Now get away from me.

Morgan retreated wordlessly.  He glanced briefly at Walker as he went,
ashamed he had ignored the other's warning about Pe Ell.  It was
impossible to tell if the Dark Uncle had been watching.  Dees and
Carisman were asleep.  Quickening was a faceless, barely
distinguishable shadow.

Morgan sat cross-legged in a corner by himself, seething.  He had
learned nothing.  All he had done was humiliate himself.  His mouth
tightened.  One day he would have the use of his sword again.  One day
he would find a way to make it whole and recapture its magic-just as
Quickening had said he would.

Then he would deal with Pe Ell.

He made himself a promise of it.

HE COMPANY EMERGED from its concealment at daybreak.  Clouds masked the
skies over Eldwist from horizon to horizon, morning's arrival bleak and
gray.  A faint brightening of the damp, misty air was the best that
dawn could manage, and night's shadows merely retreated into the city's
alcoves and nooks to await their mistress' return.

There was no sign of the Rake.  The six from Rampling Steep scanned the
gloom cautiously.  The buildings rose about them, massive and silent.

The streets stretched away, canyons of stone.

The only sounds were the howl of the wind, the crashing of the ocean,
and the cries of the high-flying seabirds.  The only movements were
their own.

"As if it were never here," Horner Dees muttered as he shouldered his
way past Morgan.  "As if it were all a dream."

They began the search again for Uhl Belk.  Rain fell through a curtain
f smoky mist that tasted and smelled of the sea, and they were soaked
through in minutes.  A damp sheen settled across the stone walkways and
streets, the walls of the buildings, the rubble and debris, a coating
that mirrored the gloom and the shadows and played tricks with the
light.  The wind blew in sharp gusts, darting out of hiding at corners
and alleyways, racing down the city's corridors with shrieks of
delight, chasing itself endlessly.  The morning wore on, a slow
grinding of gears in some vast machine that could only be heard in the
mind and felt in the wearing of the spirit.  Time stole from them, they
sensed.  Time was a thief.

They found no trace of the Stone King.  The city was vast and filled
with hiding places, and even if they were sixty instead of six a
thorough search could take weeks.  None of them had any idea where to
look for Uhl Belk or, worse, any idea what he looked like.  Even
Quickening could offer no help.  Her father had not told her how the
Stone King might appear.  Did he look as they did?  Was he human in
form?  Was he large or small?

Morgan asked these questions as they trudged through the gloom, keeping
well back on the walkways, close to the building walls.  No one knew.

They were searching for a ghost.

Midday passed.  The buildings and streets of the city came and went in
an endless procession of obelisks and gleaming black ribbons.

The rain lessened, then increased.  Thunder rumbled overhead, slow and
ominous.  The six ate a cold meal and drank a little in the dank,
shadowed entry of one of the buildings while the rain turned into a
downpour that flooded the streets with several inches of churning
water.  They peered outside and watched as the water gathered and
flowed in small rivers to Stone drains that swallowed it up.

They resumed walking when the rainfall lessened again and shortly
afterward came upon the strange dome they had seen from the top of the
building they had climbed the previous day.

It sat amid the stone spires, a monstrous shell, its surface pitted and
worn and cracked.  They walked its circumference, searched for an
entry, and found none.  There were no doors, no stairs, no windows, nor
openings of any kind.  There were alcoves and niches and insets of
varying sizes and shapes that gave its armor a sculpted look, but no
way in or out.  There were no footholds or ladders that would allow
them to climb to its top.  It was impossible to determine what it might
have been used for.  It sat there in the gloom and damp and defied
them.

Mindful of time's rapid passing after yesterday's debacle, they
returned early to their shelter.  No one had much to say.  They sat in
the growing darkness, mostly apart from each other, mostly silent, and
kept their thoughts to themselves.

There had been no sign of either the Maw Grint or the Rake that day.

Nightfall brought them both out.  They heard the Rake first, a
skittering of metal legs on the stone street below, passing by without
stopping as they held their collective breath.  The Maw Grint came
later, the sound of its approach a low rumbling that quickly became a
roar.  The monster burst forth, howling as it rose into the night.  It
was uncomfortably close; the stone of the building in which they hid
shook with its cry.  Then, just as quickly as it had come, it was gone
again.

No one made any attempt to try to catch a glimpse of it.  Everyone
stayed carefully put.

They slept better that night, perhaps because they were growing used to
the city's night sounds, perhaps because they were so exhausted.  They
posted a watch and took turns standing it.  The watch proved
uneventful.

For three days afterward they continued their search.  Fog and mist and
rain hunted with them, persistent and unwelcome, and the city haunted
their dreams.  Eldwist was a stone forest filled with shadows and
secrets, its towering buildings the trees that hemmed them in and
closed them about.  But unlike the green, living forests of the lands
south the city was empty and lifeless.

The girl and the men could form no affinity with Eldwist; they were
trespassers here, unwanted and alone.  Everything about the world in
which they hunted was hard and unyielding.  There were no recognizable
signs, no familiar markings, and no changes in color or shape or smell
or taste that would reveal to them even the smallest clue.  There was
only the enigma of the stone.

It began to affect the little company despite its resolve.

Conversation diminished, tempers grew short, and there was a growing
uncertainty as to what they were about.  Horner Dees became more sullen
and taciturn, his skills as a Tracker rendered useless, his experience
from ten years previous used up.  Pe Ell continued to distance himself,
his eyes suspicious, his movements furtive and tense, a prowling cat at
the edges of a jungle determined not to be brought to bay.  Carisman
quit singing almost completely.  Morgan Leah found himself jumping at
the smallest sound and was preoccupied with thoughts of the magic he
had lost when the Sword of Leah had shattered.  Walker Bob was a
voiceless ghost, pale and aloof, floating through the gloom as if at
any moment he might simply fade away.

Even Quickening changed.  It was barely perceptible, a faint blurring
of her exquisite beauty, an odd shading of her voice and movements, and
a vague weariness in her eyes.  Morgan, -A

ever aware of what the girl was about, thought that he alone

could tell.

But once, as they paused in their search in the shadow of a carriage
husk, Walker Boh eased down beside the Highlander and whispered, "This
city consumes us, Morgan Leah.  Can you feel it?  It has a life beyond
what we understand, an extension of the Stone King's will, and it feeds
on us.  The magic is all about.

if we do not find Uhl Belk soon, we will be in danger of being
swallowed up entirely.  Do you see) Even Quickening is affected."

And she was, of course.  Walker drifted away again, and Morgan was left
to wonder to what end they had been brought here.

So much effort expended to reach this place and it all seemed for
nothing.  They were being drained of life, sapped of energy and purpose
and will.  He thought to speak of it to Quickening, but changed his
mind.  She knew what was happening.  She always did.  When it was time
to do something, she would do it.

But it was Walker Boh who acted first.  The fourth day of their hunt
for the Stone King had concluded in the same manner as the previous
three, without any of them having found even the smallest trace of
their quarry.  They were huddled in the shadows of their latest
shelter; Pe Ell had insisted they change buildings in an effort to
avoid discovery by the Rake, who still hunted them each night.  They
had not eaten a hot meal or enjoyed a fire's warmth since their arrival
in Eldwist, and their water supply was in need of replenishing.

Footsore and discouraged, they sat mired in silence.

"We need to search the tunnels beneath the city," the Dark Uncle said
suddenly, his soft voice distant and cold.

The others looked up.  "What tunnels?"  Carisman wearily asked.

The tunesmith, less fit than the others, was losing strength.

"The ones that honeycomb the rock beneath the buildings," Walker
answered.  "There are many of them.  I have seen the stairways leading
down from the streets."

Bearish Horner Dees shook his shaggy head.  "You forget.

The Maw Grint is down there."

"Yes.  Somewhere.  But it is a huge, blind worm.  It won't even know of
us if we're careful.  And if the Maw Grint hides within the earth,
maybe the Stone King hides there as well."

Morgan nodded.  "Why not?  They might both be worms.

Maybe both are blind.  Maybe neither likes the light.  Goodness knows,
there will be little enough of it down there.  I think it is a good
idea."

"Yes," Quickening agreed without looking at any of them.

Pe Ell stirred in the shadows and said nothing.  The others muttered
their assent.  The darkness of their refuge went quickly still again.

That night Quickening slept next to Morgan Leah, something she had not
done since their arrival in Eldwist.  She came to him unexpectedly and
burrowed close, as if she feared something would attempt to steal her
away.  Morgan reached around and held her for a time, listening to the
sound of her breathing, feeling the pulse of her body against his
own.

She did not speak.

After a time, he fell asleep holding her.  When he awoke, she was gone
again.

At dawn they departed their shelter and entered the catacombs beneath
the city.  A stairwell leading down from the building next to the one
in which they were housed placed them on the first level.

Other stairs ran deeper into the rock, spiraling down black holes of
stone into emptiness.  The tunnels on the first level were shaped from
stone blocks and rails sat on beds of stone and cross ties as they
disappeared into the dark.  All had been turned to stone.  There was no
light beneath the city, so Walker Boh used one of Cogline's powders to
coat the head of a narrow wedge of stone and create a firebrand.  They
moved ahead into the tunnels, following the line of the rails as they
wound through the darkness.  The rails passed platforms and other
stairs leading up and down, and the tunnels branched and diverged.  The
air smelled musty, and loose stone crunched beneath their feet.  After
a time they came upon a giant carriage that lay upon its side, its
wheels grooved to fit the rails, but broken and splintered now and
fused to the axle and body by the magic's transformation.  Once this
carriage had ridden the rails, propelled in some mysterious way,
carrying people of the old world from building to building, and from
street to street.

The members of the company paused momentarily to gaze upon the wreck,
then hurried on.

There were other carriages along the way, once an entire chamber full
of them, some still seated upon the rails, some fallen and smashed
along the way.  There were piles of debris fallen by the rails that
could not be identified and bits and pieces of what had been iron
benches on the platforms they passed.

Once or twice they ascended the stairs back to the streets of the city
to regain their bearings before going down again.  Below, far from
where they walked, they could hear the rumble of the Maw Grint.

Farther down still there was the sound of the ocean.

After several hours of exploring the network of tunnels without
encountering any sign of the Stone King, Pe Ell brought them up
short.

"This is a waste of time," he said.  "There's nothing to be found at
this level.  We need to go farther down."

Walker Boh glanced at Quickening, then nodded.  Morgan caught sight of
the looks on the faces of Carisman and Horner Dees and decided the same
look was probably on his own.

They descended to the next level, winding down the stairwell into a
maze of sewers.  The sewers were empty and dry, but there was no
mistaking what they had once been.  The pipes that formed them were
more than twenty feet high.  Like everything else, they had been turned
to stone.  The company began following them, the light of Walker's
makeshift torch a silver flare against the black, and the sound of
their boots thudding harshly in the stillness.  Not more than a hundred
yards from where they had entered the sewers, a giant hole had been
torn in the side of the stone pipe, shattering it apart as if it were
paper.  Something massive had burrowed through the rock and out again,
something so huge that the sewer pipe had been no more than a blade of
grass in its path.

From down the black emptiness of the burrowed tunnel came the rumble of
the Maw Grint.  The company crossed quickly through the rubble-strewn
opening and continued on.

For two hours they wandered the sewers beneath the city, searching in
vain for the lair of the Stone King.  They twisted and wound about, and
soon any sense of direction was irretrievably lost.  There were fewer
stairs leading up from this level, and many of them were nothing more
than ladders hammered into the walls of drains.  They came across the
borrowings of the Maw Grint several times in the course of their hunt,
the massive, jagged openings ripping upward through the earth and then
disappearing down into it again, chasms of blackness large enough to
swallow whole buildings.  Morgan Leah stared into those chasms,
realized they must honeycomb the peninsula rock, and wondered why the
entire city didn't simply collapse into them.

Shortly after midday they stopped to rest and eat.  They found a set of
steps leading up to the first level and climbed to where an abandoned
platform offered a set of battered stone benches.  Seated there,
Walker's odd torch planted in the rubble so that its light spilled over
them like a halo, they stared wordlessly into the shadows.

Morgan finished before the others and moved over to where a thin shaft
of daylight knifed down a stairwell leading to the streets of the
city.

He seated himself and stared upward, thinking of better times and
places, wondering despondently if he would ever find them again.

Carisman came over to sit beside him.  "it would be nice to see the sun
again," the tunesmith mused and smiled faintly as Morgan glanced
over.

"Even for just a moment."

He sang: "Darkness is for bats and cats and frightened little mice,
It's not for those of us who find the sunsbine ratber nice, So stay
awayfrom Eldwist's murk and take this good advice, Go someplace wbere
your skin is warm instead of cold as ice."

He grinned rather sadly.  "Isn't that a terrible piece of doggerel?  It
must be the worst song I've ever composed."

"Where did you come from, Carisman?"  Morgan asked him.

"I mean, before the Urdas and Rampling Steep.  Where is your home?"

Carisman shook his head.  "Anywhere.  Everywhere.  I call wherever I am
my home, and I have been most places.  I have been traveling since I
was old enough to walk."

"Do you have a family?"

"No.  Not that I know about."  Carisman drew his knees up to his chest
and hugged them.  "If I am to die here, there is no one who will wonder
what has become of me."

Morgan snorted.  "You're not going to die.  None of us are.

Not if we're careful."  The intensity of Carisman's gaze made him
uncomfortable.  "I have a family.  A father and mother back in the
Highlands.  Two younger brothers as well.  I haven't seen them now in
weeks."

Carisman's handsome face brightened.  "I traveled the Highlands some
years back.  It was beautiful country, the hills all purple and silver
in the early light, almost red when the sun set.

It was quiet up there, so still you could hear the sound of the birds
when they called out from far away."  He rocked slightly.

"I could have been happy there if I had stayed."

Morgan studied him a moment, watched him stare off into space, caught
up in some inner vision.  "I plan to go back when were done with this
business," he said.  "Why don't you come home with me?"

Carisman stared at him.  "Would that be all right?  I would like
that."

Morgan nodded.  "Consider it done.  But let's not have any more talk
about dying."

They were silent for a moment before Carisman said, "Do you know that
the closest thing I ever had to a family was the Urdas?  Despite the
fact that they kept me prisoner, they took care of me.  Cared about me,
too.  And I cared about them.  Like a family.  Strange."

Morgan thought about his own family for a moment, his father and mother
and brothers.  He remembered their faces, the sound of their voices,
the way they moved and acted.  That led him to think of the Valemen,
Par and Coll.  Where were they?  Then he thought of Steff, dead several
weeks now, already becoming a memory, fading into the history of his
past.  He thought of the promise he had made to his friend-that if he
found a magic that could aid the Dwarves in their struggle to be free
again, he would use it-against the Federation-against the Shadowen.  A
rush of determination surged through him and dissipated again.  Maybe
the Black Elfstone would prove to be the weapon he needed.  If it could
negate other magics, if it were indeed powerful enough to bring back
disappeared Paranor by counteracting the spell of magic that bound it
...

"They liked the music, you know, but it was more than just that,"
Carisman was saying.  "I think they liked me as well.  They were a lot
like children in need of a father.  They wanted to hear all about the
world beyond their valley, about the Four Lands and the peoples that
lived there.  Most of them had never been anywhere beyond the Spikes.

I had been everywhere."

"Except here," Morgan said with a smile.

But Carisman only looked away.  "I wish I had never come here," he
said.

The company resumed its search of the sewers of Eldwist and continued
to find them empty of life.  They discovered nothing-not the smallest
burrowing rodent, not a bat, not even the insects that normally thrived
underground.  There was no sign of Uhl Belk.  There was only the stone
that marked his passing.

They wandered for several hours and then began to retrace their
steps.

Daylight would be gone shortly, and they had no intention of being
caught outside when the Rake began its nocturnal scavenging.

"it may be, however, that it doesn't come down into the tunnels, "
Walker Boh mused.

But no one wanted to find out, so they kept moving.  They followed the
twisting catacombs, recrossed the borrowings of the Maw Grint, and
pushed steadily ahead through the darkness.

Grunting and huffing were the only sounds to be heard.  Tension lined
their faces.  Their eyes reflected their discouragement and
discontent.

No one spoke.  What they were thinking needed no words.

Then Walker brought them to a sudden halt and pointed off into the
gloom.  There was an opening in the tunnel, one that they had somehow
missed earlier, smaller than the sewers and virtually invisible in the
dimness.  Walker crouched down to peer inside, then disappeared into
the dark.

A moment later he returned.  "There is a cavern and a stair well
leading down," he reported.  "it appears there is yet another set of
tunnels below.

They followed him through the opening to the chamber beyond, a cave
whose walls and floors were studded with jagged projections and rent
with deep clefts.  They found the stairwell and looked down into its
gloom.  It was impossible to see anything.  They exchanged uneasy
glances.  Wordlessly, Walker moved to the head of the stairs.  Holding
the makeshift torch out in front of him, he started down.  After a
moment's hesitation, the others followed.

The stairs descended a long way, ragged and stick with moisture.

The smell of the Tiderace was present here, and they could hear the
trickle of seawater in the blackness.  When they reached the end of the
stairs, they found themselves standing in the middle of a broad, high
tunnel in which the rock was crystallized and massive stone icicles
hung from the ceiling in clusters, dripping water into black pools.

Walker turned right, and the company moved ahead.  The dampness chilled
the air to ice, and the six pulled their cloaks tightly about them for
warmth.  Echoes of their footsteps reverberated through the stone
corridor, chasing the silence.

Then suddenly there was something else, a sort of squealing that
reminded Morgan Leah of a rusted iron lever being shifted after a long
period of disuse.  The members of the company stopped as one at its
sound and stood in the faint silver glow of the torchlight,
listening.

The squealing continued; it was coming from somewhere behind them.

"Come," Walker Bob said sharply and began hurrying ahead.

The others hastened after, spurred on by the unexpected urgency in his
voice.  Walker had recognized something in the sound that they had
not.

Morgan glanced over his shoulder as he went.  What was back there?

They crossed a shallow stream of water that tumbled from a fissure in
the rock wall, and Walker turned, motioning the rest of them past.

The squealing sound was deafening now and coming closer.  The Dark
Uncle passed the torch to Morgan wordlessly, then lifted his arm and
threw something into the black.

A white fire flared to life, and the tunnel behind them was suddenly
filled with light.

Morgan gasped.  There were rats everywhere, a churning, scrambling mass
of furred bodies.  But these rats were giants, grown to three and four
times their normal size, all claws and teeth.  Their eyes were white
and sightless, like everything else the company had encountered in
Eldwist, and their bodies were sleek with the dampness of the sea.

They looked ravenous.  And maddened.  They poured out of the rocks and
came for the men and the girl.

"Run!"  Walker cried, snatching the torch back from Morgan.

And run they did, charging frantically through the darkness with the
sound of the squealing chasing after them in gathering waves,
struggling to keep at the edges of the torchlight as they fought to
escape the horror that pursued.  The tunnel rose and fell in ragged
slopes, and the rocks cut and scraped at them.

They fell repeatedly, scrambled up again, and ran on.

A ladder!  That was all that Morgan Leah could think.  We've got to
find a ladder!

But there was none.  There were only the rock walls, the streams and
pools of seawater, and the rats.  And themselves, trapped.

Then from somewhere ahead came a new sound, the booming of waves
against a shoreline, the pounding of the ocean against land.

They broke from the blackness of the tunnel into a faint, silvery
brightness and staggered to a ragged halt.  Before them a cliff dropped
sharply into the Tiderace.  The ocean churned and swirled below,
crashing into the rocks, foaming white as it spilled over them.  They
were in an underground cavern so massive that its farthest reaches were
lost in mist and shadow.  Daylight spilled through clefts in the rock
where the ocean had breached the wall.  Other tunnels opened into the
cavern as well, black holes far to the right and left.  All were
unreachable.  The cliffs to either side were impassable.  The drop
below led to the rocks and the roiling sea.  The only way left was back
the way they had come.

Through the rats.

The rats were almost on top of the company now, their squeals rising up
to overwhelm the thunder of the ocean's waters, their masses filling
the lower half of the tunnel as they bit and clawed ahead.

Morgan yanked out his broadsword, knowing even as he did so how futile
the weapon would be.  Pe Ell had moved to one side, clear of the
others, and his strange silver knife was in his hand.  Dees and
Carisman were backed to the edge of the drop, crouched as if to jump.

Quickening stepped forward beside Morgan, her beautiful face strangely
calm, her hands steady on his arm.

Then Walker Boh cast aside his torch and hurled a fistful of black
powder into the horde of rats.  Fire exploded everywhere, and the first
rank was incinerated.  But there were hundreds more behind that one,
thousands of churning dark bodies.  Claws scraped madly on the rocks,
seeking to find a grip.  Teeth and sightless eyes gleamed.  The rats
came on.

"Walker!"  Morgan cried out desperately and shoved Quickening behind
him.

But it wasn't the Dark Uncle who responded to Morgan's plea, or Pe Ell,
or Horner Dees, or even Quickening.  It was Carisman, the tunesmith.

He rushed forward ' pushing past Morgan and Quickening, coming up
beside Walker just as the rats burst through the tunnel opening onto
the narrow ledge.  Lifting his wondrous voice, he began to sing.  It
was a song that was different than any they had ever heard; it scraped
like the rub of metal on stone, shrieked like the tearing of wood, and
broke through the thunder of the ocean and the squeal of the rats to
fill the cavern with its sound.

"Come to me!"  Quickening cried out to the rest of them.

They bunched close at once, even Pe Ell, flattening themselves against
one another as the tunesmith continued to sing.

The rats poured out of the tunnel and swept toward them in a wave of
struggling bodies.  But then the wave split apart, flowing to either
side of the tunesmith, passing by without touching any of them.

Something in Carisman's song was turning them away.

They twisted to either side, a churning mass.  Onward they scrambled,
heedless of everything, whether fleeing or being called it was
impossible to tell, and tumbled into the sea.

Moments later, the last of them had been swallowed up or swept away.

Carisman went still, then collapsed into Morgan's arms.  The Highlander
propped him up, and Quickening wiped cold seawater onto his face with
the sleeve of her tunic.  The others glanced about breathlessly,
cautiously, scanning the dark tunnel opening, the empty rock, the
waters of the sea.

"it worked," Carisman whispered in surprise as his eyes fluttered open
again.  "Did you see?  It worked!"  He struggled up and seized
Quickening jubilantly by the arms.  "I'd read something about it once,
or heard about it maybe, but I had never thought I would ... I mean, I
had never tried such a thing before!  Never!  It was a cat song,
Lady!

A cat song!  I didn't know what else to do, so I made those horrid
rodents think we were giant cats!"

Everyone stared in disbelief.  Only then did Morgan Leah appreciate how
truly miraculous their escape had been.

ITH THE DESTRUCTION of the rats, they were able to n retrace their
steps through the tunnel that had brought them to the underground
cavern, climb back into the sewers of Eldwist, climb from there to the
level of tunnels above, and finally reach the streets of the city.  It
was already growing dark, and they hurried quickly through the
descending gloom to gain the safety of their nighttime refuge.

They only just succeeded.  The Rake appeared almost at once, an
invisible presence beyond the walls of the building, its armored legs
scraping across the stone below, searching for them still.  They sat
huddled silently in the dark listening to it hunt until it had gone.

Walker said he thought the creature could track by smell, only the rain
and the number of trails they had left was confusing it.  Sooner or
later it would figure out where they were hiding.

Exhauste d and aching and shaken by what had befallen them, they ate
their dinner in silence and went quickly off to sleep.

The next morning Pe Ell, who following their escape from the tunnels
had descended into a mood so black that no one dared approach him,
announced that he was going out on his own.

"There are too many of us stumbling about to ever find anything," he
declared, his voice calm and expressionless, his narrow face
unreadable.  He spoke to Quickening, as if only she mattered.  "if
there truly is a Stone King, he knows by now that we are here.  This is
his city; he can hide in it forever if he chooses.  The only way to
find him is to catch him off guard, sneak up on him, and surprise
him.

There will be none of that if we continue to hunt like a pack of
dogs."

Morgan started to intervene, but Walker's fingers closed about his arm
like iron bands.

Pe Ell glanced around.  "The rest of you can keep bumbling about as
long as you wish.  But you'll do it without me.  I've spent enough time
shepherding you around.  I should have gone off on my own from the
first.  If I had, this business would be finished by now."  He turned
back to Quickening.  "When I have found Uhl Belk and the Black
Elfstone, I will come back for you."  He paused, meeting her gaze
squarely.  "if you are still alive."

He strode past them contemptuously and disappeared down the hall.

His boots thudded softly on the stairs and faded into silence.

Horner Dees spit.  "We're well rid of that one," he muttered.

"He is correct, though , Walker Boh said, and they all turned to look
at him.  "in one respect at least.  We must divide ourselves up into
groups if we are ever to complete this search.  The city is too large,
and we are too easy to avoid while we stay together."

"Two groups then," Dees agreed, nodding his shaggy head.

"No one goes out alone."

"Pe Ell doesn't seem worried about hunting alone," Morgan noted.

"He's a predator, sure enough," Dees replied.  He looked at Quickening
speculatively.  "How about it, girl?  Does he have any chance of
finding Belk and the Elfstone on his own?"

But Quickening only said, "He will return .

They seated themselves to work out a strategy, a method by which the
city could be searched from end to end.  The buildings ran mostly north
of where they were concealed, so it was decided to divide Eldwist in
two with one group taking the east half and the other the west.  The
search would concentrate on the buildings and streets, not the
tunnels.

If nothing were found aboveground, they would change their approach.

"Pe Ell may be wrong when he says that the Stone King must know we are
here," Quickening said in closing.  She brought her slender fingers up
in a quick, birdlike movement.  "We are insignificant in his eyes, and
he may not yet have even noticed us.  We are the reason he keeps the
Rake in service.  Besides, the Maw Grint occupies his time."

"How do we divide ourselves up?"  Carisman asked.

"You will go with me," Quickening answered at once.  "And Walker
Boh."

Morgan was surprised.  He had expected her to choose him.

The disappointment he felt cut deeply.  He started to dispute her
choice, but her black eyes fixed him with such intensity that he went
instantly still.  Whatever her reasons for making this decision, she
did not want it questioned.

"That leaves you and me, Highlander," Horner Dees grunted and clapped
one heavy hand on Morgan's shoulder.  "Think we can manage to
disappoint Pe Ell and keep our skins whole?"

His sudden laugh was so infectious that Morgan found himself smiling in
response.  "I'd bet on it," he replied.

They gathered up their gear and went down into the street.

Sheets of gloom draped the buildings, hung from skies thick with clouds
and mist.  The air was damp and chill, and their breath exhaled in a
haze of white.  They wished each other well and began moving off in
separate directions, Morgan and Horner Dees going west, Quickening,
Walker, and Carisman east.

"Take care of yourself, Morgan," Quickening whispered, her exquisite
face a mix of shadow and light beneath the sweep of her silver hair.

She touched him softly on the shoulder and hurried after Walker Boh.

"Tra-la-la-la, a-hunting we will go!"  Carisman sang merrily as they
disappeared.

Rain began to fall in a steady drizzle.  Morgan and Horner Dees slogged
ahead with their cloaks pulled tightly about their shoulders and their
heads bent.  They had agreed that they would follow the street to its
end, until they were at the edge of the city, then turn north to track
the peninsula's shoreline.  There had been little enough found within
the core of the city; perhaps there was something outside-particularly
if the Stone King's magic was ineffective against water.  They kept to
the walkways and glanced cautiously down the darkened corridors of the
sidestreets they passed.  Rainwater collected on the city's stone skin
in puddles and streams, shimmering darkly in the gloom.  Seabirds
huddled in nooks and crevices, waiting out the storm.  In the shadows,
nothing moved.

It was nearing midmorning when they reached the Tiderace, the land
ending in cliffs which dropped hundreds of feet into the sea.  Craggy
outcroppings of rock rose out of the churning waters, worn and
pitted.

Waves crashed against the cliffs, the sound of their pounding mixing
with the wind as it swept off the water in a rising howl.

Morgan and Dees melted back into the shelter of the outer buildings,
seeking to protect themselves.

Rain and ocean spray soaked them quickly through, and they were soon
shivering beneath their clothes.  For two hours they skirted the city's
western boundaries without finding anything.

By midday, when they stopped to eat, they were disgruntled and worn.

"There's nothing to be found out here, Highlander," Dees observed,
chewing on a bit of dried beef-his last.  'Just the sea and the wind
and those confounded birds, shrieking and calling like madwomen."

Morgan nodded without answering.  He was trying to decide whether he
could eat a seabird if he had to.  Their food supplies were almost
exhausted.  Soon they would be forced to hunt.

What else was there besides those birds?  Fish, he decided firmly.

The birds looked too rangy and tough.

"You miss the Highlands?"  Dees asked him suddenly.

"Sometimes."  He thought about his home and smiled faintly.

"All the time."

"Me, too, and I haven't seen them in years.  Thought they were the most
beautiful piece of work nature ever made.  I liked how they made me
feel when I was in them."

"Carisman said he liked it there, too.  He said he liked the quiet."

"The quiet.  Yes, I remember how quiet it was in those hills."

They had found shelter in a building's shadowed entry.  The big man
shifted himself away from a widening stain where the rain had trickled
down the wall and collected on the steps where they were seated, backs
to the wall, facing out into the weather.

He leaned forward.  "Let me tell you something," he said softly.

"I know this fellow, Pe Ell."

Morgan looked over, intrigued.  "From where?"

"From before.  Long before.  Almost twenty years.  He was just a kid
then; I was already old."  Dees chuckled darkly.  "Some kid.  A killer
even then.  An assassin right from the beginningas if that was what he
was born to be and he couldn't ever be anything else but."  He shook
his grizzled head.  "I knew him.  I knew it was bad luck if you crossed
him."

"Did you?"

"Cross him?  Me?  No, not me.  I know well enough who to stand up to
and who to back away from.  Always have.  That's how I've stayed
alive.

Pe El] is the kind who once he takes a dislike to you will keep coming
till you're dead.  Doesn't matter how long it takes him or how he gets
the job done.  He'll just keep at it."  He pointed at Morgan.

"You better understand something.  I don't know what he's doing here.

I don't know why the girl brought him.  But he's no friend to any of
you.  You know what he is?  He's a Federation assassin.  Their best, in
fact.  He's Rimmer Dall's favorite boy."

Morgan froze, the blood draining from his face.  "That can't be."

"Can and is," Dees said emphatically.  "Unless things have changed from
how they used to be, and I doubt they have."

Morgan shook his head in disbelief.  "How do you know all this,
Horner?"

Horner Dees smiled, a wide, hungry grin.  "Funny thing about that.

I remember him even though he doesn't remember me.  I can see it in his
eyes.  He's trying to figure out what it is I know that he doesn't.

Have you seen the way he looks at me?  Trying to figure it out.

Been too long, I guess.  He's killed too many men, has too many faces
in his past to remember many of them.

Me, I been gone a long time.  I don't have so many ghosts to worry
about."  He paused.  "Truth is, Highlander, I was one of them
myself."

"One of them?"  Morgan asked quietly.

The other gave a sharp laugh, like a bark.  "I was with the
Federation!

I tracked for them!"

As quick as that Morgan Leah's perception of Horner Dees changed.

The big, bearish fellow was no longer just a gruff, old Tracker whose
best days were behind him; he was no longer even a friend.

Morgan started to back away and then realized there was nowhere to back
to.

He reached for his broadsword.

"Highlander!"  Dees snapped, freezing him.  The big man clenched one
massive fist, then relaxed it.  "Like I said, that was long ago.  I
been gone from those people twenty years.  Settle back.  You haven't
any reason to fear me."

He placed his hands in his lap, palms up.  "Anyway, that's how I came
to see the Highlands, believe it or not-in the service of the
Federation.  I was tracking Dwarf rebels for them, hunting the Rainbow
Lake and Silver River country.  Never found much.  Dwarves are like
foxes; they go to ground quick as a wink when they know they're being
hunted."  He smiled unexpectedly.  "I didn't try very hard in any
case.

It was a worthless sort of job."

Morgan released his grip on the broadsword and sat back again.

"I was with them long enough to find out about Pe Ell," the other went
on ' and now his eyes were distant and troubled.  "I knew most of what
was happening back then.  Rimmer Dail had me slated to be a Seeker.

Can you imagine?  Me?  I thought that wolf's head stuff was nonsense.

But I learned about Pe Ell while Dail was working on me.

Saw him come and go once, when he didn't know it.  Dail arranged for me
to see because he liked putting one over on Pe Ell.  It was a sort of
game with the two of them, each trying to show up the other.

Anyway, I saw him and heard what he did.  A few others heard things,
too.

Everyone knew to stay away from him."

He sighed.  just a little while after that, I quit the bunch of them.

Left when no one was looking, came north through the Eastland, traveled
about until I reached Rampling Steep, and decided that was where I'd
live.  Away from the madness south, the Federation, the Seekers, all of
it."

"All of it?"  Morgan repeated doubtfully, still trying to decide what
to make of Horner Dees.  "Even the Shadowen?"

Dees blinked.  "What do you know of the Shadowen, Morgan Leah?"

Morgan leaned forward.  Windblown mist had left Horner's face damp and
shining, and droplets of water clung to his hair and beard.  "I want to
know something from you first.  Why are you telling me all this?"

The other's smile was strangely gentle.  "Because I want you to know
about Pe Ell, and you can't know about him without knowing about me.  I
like you, Highlander.  You remind me a little of myself when I was your
age-kind of reckless and headstrong, not afraid of anything.

I don't want there to be secrets about me that might come out in a bad
way.  Like if Pe Ell should remember who I am.  I want you for a friend
and ally.  I don't trust anyone else."

Morgan studied him wordlessly for a moment.  "You might do better with
someone else."

"I'll chance it.  Now, how about it?  I've answered your question.

You tell me how you know about the Shadowen."

Morgan drew up his knees and hugged them to his chest, making up his
mind.  Finally, he said, "My best friend was a Dwarf named Steff.

He was with the Resistance.  The woman he loved was a Shadowen, and she
killed him.  I killed her."

Horner Dees arched his eyebrows quizzically.  "I was given to
understand that nothing but magic could kill those things."

Morgan reached down and drew out the shattered end of the Sword of
Leah.  "There was magic in this Sword once," he said.  "Allanon put it
there himself-three hundred years ago.  I broke it during a battle with
the Shadowen in Tyrsis before the start of all this.  Even so, there
was still enough magic left to avenge Steff and save myself."  He
studied the blade speculatively, hefted it, waited in vain to feel its
warmth, then looked back at Dees.  "Maybe there's still some.  Anyway,
that's why Quickening brought me along.  This Sword.  She said there
was a chance it could be restored."

Horner Dees frowned.  "Are you to use it against Belk then?"

"I don't know," Morgan admitted.  "I haven't been told anything except
that it could be made whole again."  He slipped the broken blade back
into its scabbard.  "Promises," he said and sighed.

"She seems like the kind who keeps hers," the other observed after a
moment's thought.  "Magic to find magic.  Magic to prevail over
magic.

Us against the Stone King."  He shook his head.  "It's too complicated
for me.  You just be sure you remember what I said about Pe Ell.  You
can't turn your back on him.

And you mustn't go up against him either.  You leave that to me.

"You?"  Morgan declared in surprise.

"That's right.  Me.  Or Walker Boh.  One-armed or not, he's a match for
Pe Ell or I've misjudged him completely.  You concentrate on keeping
the girl safe."  He paused.  "Shouldn't be too hard, considering how
you feel about each other."

Morgan flushed in spite of himself.  "It's mostly me that's feeling
anything," he muttered awkwardly.

"She's the prettiest thing I've ever seen," the old man said, smiling
at the other's discomfort.  "I don't know what she is, human or
elemental or what, but she can charm the boots right off you.  She
looks at you, that face softens, she speaks the way she does, and
you'll do anything for her.  I should know.  I wasn't ever going to
come back to this place and here I am.  She's done it to all of us."

Morgan nodded.  "Even to Pe Ell.  He's as much hers as the rest of
us."

But Dees shook his head.  "I don't know, Highlander.  You look careful
next chance you get.  He's hers, but he isn't.  She walks a fine line
with that one.  He could turn quick as a cat.

That's why I tell you to look after her.  You remember what he is.

He's not here to do us any favors.  He's here for himself.

Sooner or later, he'll revert to form."

"I think so, too," Morgan agreed.

Dees gave a satisfied smirk.  "But it won't be so easy for him now,
will it?  Because we'll be watching."

They packed up, tightened their cloaks against the weather, and stepped
back out into the downpour.  They continued to follow the shoreline as
the afternoon lengthened, reaching the northernmost point of the
peninsula without finding anything, and turned back again into the
city.  The rain finally ended, changing to a fine mist that hung like
smoke against the gray sky and buildings.  The air warmed.

Shadows yawned and stretched in alleyways and nooks like waking
spirits, and steam rose off the streets.

From somewhere underground the rumble of the Maw Grint sounded, a
distant thunder that shook the earth.

"I'm beginning to think we're not ever going to find anything," Horner
Dees muttered at one point.

They followed the dark corridors of the streets and searched the brume
that lay all about, the doorways and windows that gaped open like
mouths in search of food, and the flat, glistening walkways and
passages.  Everywhere the city lay abandoned and dead, stripped of life
and filled with hollow, empty sounds.  It walled them away with its
stone and its silence; it wrapped about them with such persistence that
despite memory and reason it seemed that the world beyond must have
fallen away and that Eldwist was all that remained.

They grew weary with the approach of evening; the sameness of their
surroundings dulled their senses and wore against their resistance.

They began to stray a bit, to wander closer to the walkway's edge, to
look upward more often at the stone heights that loomed all about, and
to give themselves over to a dangerous and persistent wish that
something-anything-would happen.  Their boredom was acute, their sense
of being unable to change or affect the things about them maddening.

They had been in Eldwist almost a week.  How much longer would they be
forced to remain?

Ahead, the street deadended.  They rounded the corner of the building
they were following and discovered that the street widened into a
square.  At the square I s center was an odd depression with steps
leading down on all sides to a basin from which a statue rose, a winged
figure with streamers and ribbons trailing from its body.

Almost without thinking, they turned into the square, beguiled by its
look, so different from anything else they had seen.  A park, they
thought to themselves without speaking.  What was it doing here?

They were halfway across the street when they heard the catch that
secured the trapdoor beneath them release.

They had no chance of saving themselves.  They were standing in the
center of the door when it dropped, and they plunged into the void
beneath.  They fell a long way, struck the side of a chute, and began
to slide head-downward.  The chute was rough, its surface littered with
loose rock that cut and bit into their faces and hands.  They clawed
frantically in an attempt to slow their descent, heedless of the
pain.

Boots and knees dug ini hands and fingers grasped.  The slide broadened
and its slope ecreased.  They quit rolling, flattened themselves in a
spreadeagle position, and came to a grinding halt.

Morgan lifted his head gingerly and peered about.  He lay facedown on a
slab of rock that stretched so far away into the shadows on either side
that he could not see its end.  Loose rock lay upon the slide like a
carpet, bits and pieces of it still tumbling away.  There was a faint
glimmer of light from somewhere above, a narrow shaft that sought in
vain to penetrate the gloom, so thin that it barely reached to where
Morgan lay.  He forced himself to look down.  Horner Dees lay some
twenty feet below him on his right, sprawled on his back with his arms
and legs thrown wide, unmoving.  Farther down, like a giant, hungry
mouth, was a chasm of impenetrable blackness.

Morgan swallowed against the dust in his throat.  "Horner?"  he
whispered hoarsely.

"Here," the other said, his voice a faint rasp.

"Are you all right?"

There was a grunt.  "Nothing broken, I think."

Morgan took a moment to look about.  All he could see was the slide,
the shaft of light above, and the chasm below.  "Can you move?"  he
called down softly.

There was silence for a moment, then the sound of rocks clattering away
into the dark.  "No," the reply came.  "I'm too fat and old,
Highlander.  If I try to get up to you, I'll start sliding and won't be
able to stop."

Morgan heard the strain in his voice.  And the fear.  Dees was
helpless, laying on that loose rock like a leaf on glass; even the
slightest movement would send him spinning away into the void.

Me, too, if I make any attempt to help, the Highlander thought
darkly.

Yet he knew that he had to try.

He took a deep breath and brought his hand up slowly to his mouth.

A shower of loose rock rattled away, but his body stayed in place on
the slide.  He brushed at the silt on his lips and closed his eyes,
thinking.  There was a rope in his backpack, a thin, strong coil, some
fifty feet of it.  His eyes opened again.

Could he find a way to fasten it to something and haul himself up?

A familiar rumbling shook the earth, rising from below, shaking the
carpet of rock about him so that small showers of it slid into the
abyss.  There was a thunderous huffing and a great, long sigh as if an
enormous amount of air was being released.

Morgan Leah glanced down, cold to the bone.  In the depths below, right
beneath where they hung, the Maw Grint lay sleeping.

Morgan looked up again quickly.  His breath came in short, frantic
gasps, and he had to struggle to overcome an almost overpowering urge
to claw his way out of there as fast as he could.  The Maw Grint.  That
close.  It was huge beyond belief; even his vague glimpse of it had
been enough to tell him that.

He couldn't begin to guess how much of it there was, where it began and
ended, how far it stretched away.

He gripped at the rock until his hands hurt, fighting back against his
fear and nausea.  He had to get out of there!  He had to find a way!

Almost without thinking about what he was doing, he reached beneath his
stomach and began working free the broken remains of the Sword of
Leah.

It was a slow, agonizing process, for he was unable to lift up without
fear of beginning his slide down again.  And now, more than he had ever
wanted anything, he did not want that.

"Don't try to move, Horner!"  he called down softly, his voice dry and
rough.  "Stay where you are!"

There was no response.  Morgan inched the Sword of Leah clear of its
scabbard and out from under him, bringing it level with his face.

The polished metal surface of the broken blade glittered brightly in
the faint light.  He pushed it above his head with one hand, then
reached up with the other until he could grip it firmly with both.

Turning the jagged end of the blade downward, he began to slide it into
the rock.  He felt it bite into the stone slab beneath.

Please!  he begged.

Jamming the Sword of Leah into the stone, he hauled himself up.

The blade held, and he pulled his face level with its handle.

Bits of rock fell away beneath him, tumbling and sliding into the
void.

The Maw Grint did not stir.

Morgan freed the Sword, reached upward to jam it into the rock again,
gripped it with every ounce of strength he possessed, and pulled
himself level once more.  He closed his eyes and lay next to it
panting, then felt a rush of heat surge through his body.  The magic?

He opened his eyes quickly to see, searching the Sword's gleaming
length.  Nothing.

Holding himself in place with one hand, he used the other to dive into
his pack and secure the length of rope and a grappiing hook.  A handful
of cooking implements and a blanket wo worked free in the process and
fell onto the chute.  Ignoring them, the Highlander slipped the rope
about his waist and shoulders and tied it in a harness.

"Horner!"  he whispered.

The old Tracker looked up, and Morgan threw the rope to him.  It fell
across his body, and he seized it with both hands.

He started to slip almost immediately, swinging over until he was
beneath Morgan.  Then the rope went taut, catching him.

The shock to Morgan's body was staggering, an immense, wrenching weight
that threatened to pull him down.  But he had both hands fastened once
more on the Sword of Leah, and the blade held firm.

"Cljmb to me!"  he whispered down harshly.

Horner Dees began to do so, slowly, torturously, hand over hand up the
rope and the slide.  As he passed the cooking implements and blanket
that had fallen from Morgan's pack, he kicked them free, and they
tumbled farther down in a shower of rock.

This time the Maw Grint coughed and came awake.

It grunted, a huffing sound that reverberated against the stone
walls.

It lifted itself, its massive body thudding against the walls of the
tunnel in which it slept, shaking the earth violently.  It rolled and
pitched and began to move.  Morgan hung on to the pommel of his sword,
and Dees clung to the slender rope, both gritting their teeth against
the strain on muscle and bone.  The Maw Grint shook itself, and Tracker
and Highlander could hear a spraying sound and then a hiss of steam.

The Maw Grint slid away into the black and the sound of its passing
faded.  Morgan and Dees looked down cautiously.

An odd, greenish stain was working its way up the stone of the chute,
just visible at the far edge of the shaft of light several dozen feet
below Dees.  It glistened darkly and steamed like a fire advancing
through brush.  They watched as it reached the blanket that had fallen
from Morgan's pack.  When it touched it, the rough wool turned
instantly to stone.

Horner Dees began climbing again at once, a furious assault on the
loose stone of the slide.  When he was almost to Morgan, the Highlander
stopped him, beckoned for slack on the rope, and began his own ascent,
jamming the sword blade down into the rock, pulling himself up, jamming
and pulling, over and over again.

They went on that way for what seemed an endless span of time.

Daylight beckoned them, drawing them like a beacon toward the surface
of the city and safety.  Sweat ran down Morgan's face and body until he
was drenched in it.  His breathing grew labored, and his entire body
was wracked with pain.  It grew so bad at one point that he thought he
must quit.  But he could not.  Below, the stain continued to advance,
the poison given off by the Maw Grint's body solidifying everything in
its path.  The blanket went first, then the handful of cooking
implements that hadn't fallen into the abyss.  Soon there was nothing
left save Morgan and Horner Dees.

And it was gaining steadily on them.

They struggled on, hauling themselves upward foot by foot.

Morgan's mind closed down on his thoughts like an iron lid on a trunk
of useless relics, and all of his efforts became concentrated on the
climb.  As he labored, he felt the heat spread through him once more,
stronger this time, more insistent.  He could feet it turning inside
him like an auger, boring and twisting at the core of his being.

It reached from head to heels and back again, from fingers to toes,
through the muscles and bone and blood, until it was all he knew.

At some point-he never knew exactly when-he looked at the Sword of Leah
and saw it glowing as bright as day, the white fire of its magic
burning through the shadows.  Still there, he thought in furious
determination.  Still mine!

Then suddenly there was a ladder, rungs lining the walls of the chute
above him, rising up from the darkness of their prison toward the
fading daylight and the city.  The light, he saw, came from a narrow
airshaft.  He scrambled toward it, jamming, hauling, releasing,
starting all over again.  He heard Horner Dees calling to him from
below, his hoarse voice almost a sob, and looked down long enough to
see the poison of the Maw Grint inches from the old Tracker's boots.

He reached down impulsively with one hand and calling on a strength he
didn't know he possessed, hauled upward on the rope, pulling Dees
clear.

The other kicked and scrambled toward him, bearded face a mask of dust
and sweat.  Morgan's hand released the rope and closed over the
bottommost rung of the ladder.  Dees continued to climb, digging his
boots into the loose stone.  The light was failing quickly now, gone
gray already, slipping rapidly into darkness.  Below, the Maw Grint's
muffled roar shook the earth.

Then they were both on the ladder, scrambling upward, feet and hands
gripping, bodies pressing against the stone.  Morgan jammed the Sword
of Leah back into his belt, safely in place.

Still magic!

They burst from the airshaft into the street and fell on the walkway in
exhaustion.  Together, they crawled to the doorway of the nearest
building and collapsed in the cool of its shadows.

"I knew ... I was right ... in wanting you for a friend," Horner Dees
gasped.

He reached over, this great bearish man, and pulled the Highlander
close.  Morgan Leah could feet him shake.

E ELL SPENT the day sleeping.

After he walked out on Quickening and the others of the little company
from Rampling Steep he went directly to a building less than a block
away that he had chosen for himself two days earlier.  Rounding the
corner of the building so that he was out of sight of anyone who might
be watching, he entered through a side door, climbed the stairs one
floor, followed the hallways to the front of the building, and turned
into a large, well-lighted chamber with windows that ran almost floor
to ceiling and opened on the street below and the buildings across, one
of which was where his oncecompanions were presently hiding, He
permitted himself a brief smile.  They were such a pack of fools.

Pe Ell had a plan.  He believed, as Quickening did, that the Stone King
was hidden somewhere in the city.  He did not believe the others of the
company would find him even if they searched from now until next
summer.  He alone could do so.

Pe Ell was a hunter by instinct and experience; the others were
something less-each to a varying degree, but all hopeless.  He had not
tied when he told them he would be better off on his own.  He would.

Horner Dees was a Tracker, but a Tracker's skills were useless in a
city of stone.  Carisman and Morgan Leah had no skills worth talking
about.  Quickening disdained the use of her magic-maybe with good
reason, although he wasn't convinced of that yet.  The only one who
might have been useful to him was Walker Boh.  But the man with one arm
was his most dangerous enemy, and he did not want to have to worry
about watching his back.

His plan was simple.  The key to finding Uhl Belk was the Rake.

The Creeper was the Stone King's house pet, a giant watchdog that kept
his city free of intruders.  He turned it loose at night, and it swept
the streets and buildings clean.  What it missed one night, it went
after the next.  But only at night, not during the day.  Why was
that?

Pe Ell asked himself.  And the answer was obvious.  Because like
everything else that served the Stone King, willingly or not, it could
not see.  It hunted by using its other senses.  The night was its
natural ally.  Daylight might even hinder it.

Where did it go during the day?  Pe Ell then asked.  Again, the answer
seemed obvious.  Like any house pet, it went back to its master.

That meant that if Pe Ell could manage to follow the Rake to its
daytime lair he had a good chance of finding the Stone King.

Pe Ell thought he could do so.  The night was his ally as well; he had
done most of his own hunting in the dark.  His own senses were as sharp
as those of the Creeper.  He could hunt the Rake as easily as the Rake
could hunt him.  The Rake was a monster; there was no point in thinking
he stood a chance against such a beast in a face-to-face confrontation,
even with the aid of the Stiehl.  But Pe Ell could be a shadow when he
chose, and nothing could bring him to bay.  He would take his chances;
he would play cat and mouse with the Rake.  Pe Ell was feeling many
things, but fear wasn't one of them.  He had a healthy respect for the
Creeper, but he was not frightened of it.  After all, he was the
smarter of the two.

Come nightfall, he would prove it.

So he slept the daylight hours away, stretched out of sight just
beneath the windows where he could feel the faint, hazy sunlight on his
face and hear the sounds of anyone or anything passing in the street
below.

When it grew dark, the shadows cooling the air to a damp chill, the
light fading away, he rose and slipped down the stairs and out the
door.  He stood listening in the gloom for a long time.  He had not
heard the others of the company return from their daytime hunt; that
was odd.  Perhaps they had come into their shelter through another
door, but he thought he would have heard them nevertheless.  For a
moment he considered stealing in for a quick look, but abandoned the
idea almost immediately.  What happened to them had nothing to do with
him.

Even Quickening no longer mattered as much.  Now that he was away from
her, he discovered, she had lost something of her hold over him.

She was just a girl he had been sent to kill, and kill her he would if
she was still alive when he returned from his night's hunt.

He would kill them all.

The cries of the seabirds were distant and mournful in the evening
stillness, faint whimpers carried on the ocean wind.  He could hear the
dull pounding of the waters of the Tiderace against Eldwist's shores
and the low rumble of the Maw Grint somewhere deep beneath the city.

He could not hear the Creeper.

He waited until it was as black as it would get, the skies obscured by
clouds and mist, the gloom settled down about the buildings, spinning
shadow webs.  He had listened to and identified all of the dark's
sounds by then; they were as familiar as the beating of his pulse.  He
began to move, just another shadow in the night.  He slipped down the
streets in quick, cautious dartings that carried him from one pool of
darkness to the next.

He did not carry any weapon but the Stiehl, and the Stiehl was safely
sheathed within the covering of his pants.  The only weapons he needed
right now were instinct and stealth.

He found a juncture of streets where he could crouch in wait within a
deeply shadowed entry that opened out of a tunnel stairwell and gave
him a clear view of everything for almost two blocks.  He settled
himself back against the stone centerpost and waited.

Almost immediately, he began thinking of the girl.

Quickening, the daughter of the King of the Silver Rivershe was a
maddening puzzle who stirred such conflicting feelings within him that
he could barely begin to sort them out.  It would have been better
simply to brush them all aside and do as Rimmer Dail had said he
must-kill her.  Yet he could not quite bring himself to do so.  It was
more than defiance of Dail and his continued attempts to subvert him to
the Shadowen cause, more than his determination that he would handle
matters in his own way; it was the doubt and hesitation she roused in
him, the feeling that somehow he wasn't as much in control of matters
as he believed, that she knew things about him he did not.

Secrets-she was a harborer of so many.  If he killed her, those secrets
would be lost forever.

He pictured her in his mind as he had done for so many nights during
their journey north.  He could visualize the perfection of her
features, the way the light's movement across her face and body made
every aspect seem more stunning than the one before.  He could hear the
music in her voice.  He could feel her touch.  She was real and
impossible at once: an elemental by her own admission, a thing made of
magic, yet human as well.

Pe Ell was a man whose respect for life had long since been deadened by
his killings.  He was a professional assassin who had never failed.  He
did not understand losing.  He was a wall that could not be breached;
he was unapproachable by others save for those brief moments he chose
to tolerate their presence.

But Quickening-this strange, ephemeral girl-threatened all of that.

She had it in her, he believed, to ruin everything he was and in the
end to destroy him.  He didn't know how, but he believed it was so.

She had the power to undo him.  He should have been anxious to kill her
then, to do as Rimmer Dail had asked.  Instead, he was intrigued.

He had never encountered anyone until now who he felt might threaten
him.  He wanted to rid himself of that threat; yet he wanted to get
close to it first.

He stared out into the streets of Eldwist, down the corridors between
the silent, towering buildings, and into the tunnels of endless gloom,
unbothered by the seeming contradiction in his wants.  The shadows
reached out to him and drew him close.

He was as much at home here as he had been at Southwatch, a part of the
night, the emptiness, the solitude, the presence of death and absence
of life.  How little difference there was, he marveled, between the
kingdoms of Uhl Belk and the Shadowen.

He relaxed.  He belonged in the anonymity of darkness.

It was she and those who stayed with her that required the light.

He thought of them momentarily.  It was a way to pass the time.

He pictured each as he had pictured Quickening and considered the
potential of each as a threat to him.

Carisman.  He dismissed the tunesmith almost immediately.

Horner Dees.  What was it about that old man that bothered him so?

He hated the way the bearish Tracker looked at him, as if seeing right
through skin and bone.  He reflected on it momentarily, then shrugged
it away.  Dees was used up.  He wielded no magic.

Morgan Leah.  He disliked the Highlander because he was so obviously
Quickening's favorite.  She might even love him in her own way,
although he doubted she was capable of real feeling-not her-not the
elemental daughter of the King of the Silver River.  She was simply
using him as she was using them all, her reasons her own, carefully
concealed.  The Highlander was young and rash and probably would find a
way to kill himself before he became a real problem.

That left Walker Boh.

As always, Pe Ell took an extra measure of time to ponder him.

Walker Boh was an enigma.  He had magic, but he didn't seem comfortable
using it.  Quickening had practically raised him from the dead, yet he
seemed almost uninterested in living.

He was preoccupied with matters of his own, things that he kept hidden
deep down inside, secrets as puzzling as those of the girl.

Walker Boh had a sense of things that surprised Pe Ell; he might even
be present.  Once, some years ago, Pe Ell had heard of a man who lived
in the Eastland and could commune with animals and read the changes in
the Lands before they came to pass.  This man, perhaps?  He was said to
be a formidable opponent; the Gnomes were terrified of him.

Pe Ell rocked forward slowly and clasped his hands together.

He would have to be especially careful of One-arm, he knew.  Pe Ell
wasn't frightened of Walker Boh, but neither was Walker Boh frightened
of him.

Yet.

The minutes drifted away, the night deepened, and the streets remained
empty and still.  Pe Ell waited patiently, knowing the Rake would
eventually come as it had come each night, searching for their hiding
place, seeking them out, and determined to exterminate them as it had
been trained to do.  Tonight would be no exception.

He let himself consider for a time the implications of having
possession of a magic like the Black Elfstone-a magic that could negate
all other magics.  Once he had it in his grasp-as he eventually
would-what would he do with it?  His narrow, sharp features crinkled
with amusement.  He would use it against Rimmer Dall for starters.  He
would use it to negate Dall's own magic.  He would slip into
Southwatch, find the First Seeker, and put an end to him.  Rimmer Dall
had grown more annoying than useful; Pe Ell no longer cared to tolerate
him.  It was time to sever their partnership once and for all.  After
that, he might use the talisman against the rest of the Shadowen,
perhaps make himself their leader.  Except that he really didn't want
anything to do with them.  Better, perhaps, simply to eliminate them
allor as many as he could reach.  He smiled expectantly.  That would be
an interesting challenge.

He leaned back contentedly in the shadows of his shelter.

He would have to learn how to use the magic of the Elfstone first, of
course.  Would that prove difficult?  Would he have to rely on
Quickening to instruct him?  Would he have to find a way to keep her
alive awhile longer?  He shivered with anticipation.  The solution
would present itself when it was time.  For now, he must concentrate on
gaining possession of the Elfstone.

Almost an hour passed before he finally heard the approach of the
Rake.

The Creeper came from the east, its metal legs scraping softly on the
stone as it slipped through the gloom.  It came right toward Pe Ell,
and the assassin melted back into the darkness of the stairwell until
his eyes were level with the street.

The creature looked enormous from this angle, its immense body balanced
on iron-encased legs, its whiplike tail curled and ready, and its
tentacles outstretched and sweeping the damp air like feelers.

Steam rose from its iron shell, the heat of its body reacting to the
cool air, condensation forming and dripping onto the street.  It sent
its tentacles snaking into doorways and windows, along the gutters
below the walkways, down the sewers, and into the wrecks of the ancient
skeletons of the toppled stone carriages.  For an instant Pe Ell
thought the beast would spy him out, but then something caught the
Creeper's attention and it scuttled past and disappeared into the
night.

Pe Ell waited until he could just barely hear it, then slipped from his
hiding place in pursuit.

He tracked the Rake for the remainder of the night, down streets and
alleyways, through the foyers and halls of massive old buildings, and
along the edges of the cliffs that bounded the city west and north.

The Creeper went everywhere, a beast at hunt, constantly on the move.

Pe Ell stalked it relentlessly.  Most of the time he could only hear
it, not see it.  He had to be very sure he did not get too close.

If he did, the creature would sense his presence and come after him.

Pe Ell made himself a part of the shadows, just another piece of an
endless stone landscape, a thing of vapor and nonbeing that not even
the Rake could detect.  He kept on the walkways and close to the
building walls, avoided the streets and their maze of trapdoors, and
stayed clear of any open spaces.  He did not hurry; he kept his pace
steady.

Playing cat and mouse required a careful exercise of patience.

And then suddenly, near dawn, the Rake disappeared.  He had glimpsed it
only minutes earlier as it skittered away down a street in the central
section of the city, rather close to where the others of the company
were hiding.  He could hear its legs and tentacles scrape, its body
turn, and then there was nothing.

Silence.  Pe Ell slowed, stopped, and listened.  Still there was
nothing.  He moved ahead cautiously, following a narrow alleyway until
it emerged into a street.  Still concealed within the shadows of the
alleyway, he peered out.  Left, the street tunneled into the gloom past
rows of buildings that stretched skyward, flat faced and unrevealing.

Right, the street was bisected by a cross street and bracketed by twin
towers with huge, shadowed foyers that disappeared into complete
blackness.

Pe Ell searched the street both ways, listened again, and began to
fume.  How could he have lost it so suddenly?  How could it have just
disappeared?

He was aware again of a brightening of the air, a hint of the suns
pending emergence into the world beyond the clouds and mist and gloom
of Eldwist.  It was daybreak.  The Rake would go into hiding now.

Perhaps it already had.  Pe Ell frowned, then scanned the impenetrable
shadows of the buildings across the way.  Was that its hiding place, he
wondered?

He started from his own concealment for a look when that sixth sense he
relied upon so heavily warned him what was happening.  The Rake was in
hiding all right, but not for the reason he had first imagined.  It was
in hiding because it was setting a trap.  It knew the intruders were
still loose in the city, somewhere close.  It knew they would have to
kill it or it would kill them.  So on the chance that they had
followed, it had set a trap.  It was waiting now to see if anything
fell into it.

Pe Ell felt a rush of cold determination surge through him as he shrank
back into the gloom of the alleyway.  Cat and mouse, that's all it
was.

He smiled and waited.

Long minutes passed and there was only silence.  Pe Ell continued to
wait.

Then abruptly the Rake emerged from the shadows of the building across
the street to the left, dancing almost gracefully into view, body
poised.  Pe Ell held his breath as the monster tested the air, turning
slowly about.  Satisfied, it moved on.  Pe Ell exhaled slowly and
followed.

It was growing brighter now, and the night air evolved into a sort of
gray haze that reflected the dampness so that it became even more
difficult to see what lay ahead.  Yet Pe Ell did not slow, relying on
his hearing to warn him of any danger, always conscious of the sound of
the Rake moving ahead.  It was no longer worrying about pursuit.  Its
night's work was finished; it was headed home.

To the lair of the Stone King, Pe Ell thought, impatient for the first
time since his hunt had begun.

He caught up with the Rake as it slowed before a flat-sided building
with a shadowed alcove thirty feet high and twice that across.

The Rake's feelers probed the stone at the top of the alcove, and a
section of the wall within swung silently away, lifting into the
gloom.

Without a backward glance, the Rake slipped through the opening.

When it was inside, the wall swung back into place.

Got you!  Pe Ell thought fiercely.

Nevertheless, he stood where he was for almost an hour afterward,
waiting to see if anything else would happen, making certain that this
was not another trap.  When he was sure that it was safe, he emerged
and darted along the edge of the buildings, following the walkways
until he stood before the hidden entry.

He took a long time to study it.  The stone facing was flat and
smooth.

He could trace the seams of the opening from within the frame of the
alcove, but he would never have noticed the door without first knowing
it was there.  Far above him, just visible against the gray of the
stone, he could detect a kind of lever.  A release, he thought
triumphantly.  A way in.

He stood there for a while longer, thinking.  Then he moved away,
searching the buildings across the street for a hiding place.

Once safely concealed, he would sit down and figure out a way to trip
that lever.  Then he would sleep again until it was dark.

When night came, he would wake and wait for the Rake to go out.

When it did, he would go in.

IGHT LAY ACROSS the Westland in a humid, airless pall, the heat of the
day lingering with sullen determination long after the sun's fiery ball
had disappeared into the horizon.  Darkness disdained to offer even the
smallest measure of relief, empty of cool breezes, devoi-d-of any
suggestion of a drop in the temperature.  The day's swelter was rooted
in the earth, a stubborn presence that would not be dispelled,
breathing fire out of its concealment like an underground dragon.

Insects buzzed and hummed and flew in erratic, random bursts.

Trees were heat-ravaged giants, drooping and exhausted.

A full moon crawled across the southern horizon, gibbous and shimmering
against the haze.  The only sounds that broke the stillness were those
dredged from the throats of hunted creatures an instant before their
hunters silenced them forever.

Even on the hottest of nights, the game of life and death played on.

Wren Ohmsford and the big Rover Garth turned their horses down the
rutted trail that led into the town of Grimpen Ward.

It had taken them a week to journey there from the Tirfing, navigating
hidden passes of the Irrybis that only the Rovers knew, following the
trails of the Wilderun north and west, shying well clear of the
treacherous Shroudslip, winding at last over Whistle Ridge and down
into the dank mire of the Westland's most infamous lair.

When there was nowhere else to run or hide, it was said, there was
always Grimpen Ward.  Thieves, cutthroats, and mis fits of all sorts
came to the outlaw town to find refuge.  Walled away by the Irrybis and
the Rock Spur, swallowed up by the teeming jungle of the Wilderun,
Grimpen Ward was a haven for renegades of every ilk.

It was also a deathtrap from which few escaped, a pit of vipers preying
on one another because there was no one else, devouring their own kind
with callous indifference and misguided amusement, feeding in a frenzy
of need and boredom.

Of those who came to Grimpen Ward seeking to stay alive, most ended up
disappointed.

The town grew visible through the trees, and Wren and Garth slowed.

Lights burned through the window glass of buildings b@c with grime,
their shutters sagging and broken, their walls and roofs and porches so
battered and ravaged by time and neglect that they seemed in immediate
danger of collapse.

Doors stood ajar in a futile effort to dispel the heat trapped
within.

Laughter broke sharply against the forest silence, rough, forced,
desperate.  Glasses clinked and sometimes shattered.  Now and again, a
scream sounded, solitary and disembodied.

Wren glanced at Garth and then signed, We'll leave the horses bidden
here.  Garth nodded.  They turned their mounts into the trees, rode
them some distance from the road until a suitable clearing was found,
and tethered them in a stand of birch.

"Softly," Wren whispered, fingers moving.

They worked their way back to the roadway and continued down.

Dust rose from beneath their boots and settled in a dark sheen on their
faces.  They had been riding all day, a slow journey through impossible
heat, unable to force the pace without risking the health of their
horses.  The Wilderun was a morass of midsummer dampness and decay, the
wood of the forests rotting into mulch, the ground soft and yielding
and treacherous, the streams and drinking pools dried or poisoned, and
the air a furnace that parched and withered.  No matter how terrible
the heat might be in other parts of the Four Lands, it was always twice
as bad here.  A stagnant, inhospitable cesspool, the Wilderun had long
been regarded as a place to which the discards of the population of the
Four Lands were welcome.

Bands of Rovers frequently came to Grimpen Ward to barter and trade.

Accustomed to the vagaries and treacheries of Men, outsiders themselves
from society, branded outlaws and troublemakers everywhere, the Rovers
were right at home.  Even so they traveled in tight-knit families and
relied on strength of numbers to keep themselves safe.

Seldom did they venture into Grimpen Ward alone as Wren and Garth were
doing.

A chance encounter with a small family of coin traders had persuaded
the girl and her giant protector to accept the risk.

just a day after Garth's unsuccessful attempt to backtrack and trap
their shadow, they had come upon an old man and his sons and their
wives traveling north out of the passes, returning from a journey
through the pit.  Eating with them, sharing tales, Wren had asked
simply out of habit if any among them knew of the fate of the Westland
Elves, and the old man had smiled, broken toothed and wintry, and
nodded.

"Not me, girl, you understand," he had rasped softly, chewing at the
end of the pipe he smoked, his gray eyes squinting against the light.

"But at the Iron Feather in Grimpen Ward they be an old woman that
does.  The Addershag, she's called.  Haven't spoke to her myself, for I
don't frequent the ale houses of the Ward, but word has it the old
woman knows the tale.  A seer, they say.  Queer as sin, maybe mad."

He'd leaned into the fire's glow.  "They's making use of her someway, I
hear.  A pack of them snakes.  Making her give them secrets to take
others' money."  He shook his head.  "We stayed clear."

Later, they had talked it over, Wren and Garth, when the family was
asleep and they were left alone.  The reasons to stay out of the
Wilderun were clear enough; but there were reasons to go in as well.

For one, there was the matter of their shadow.  It was back there
still, just out of view and reach, carefully hidden away like the
threat of winter's coming.  They could not, catch it and despite all
their efforts and skill they could not shake it.

It clung to them, a trailing spider's web floating invisibly in their
wake.  The Wilderun, they reflected, might be less to its taste and
might, with a bit of luck, bring it to grief.

For another, of course, there was the indisputable fact that this was
the first instance since Wren had started asking about the Elves that
she had received a positive response.  It seemed unreasonable not to
test its merit.

So they had come, just the two of them, defying the odds, determined to
see what sort of resolution a visit to Grimpen Ward would bring.  Now,
a week's journey later, they were about to find out.

They passed down through the center of the town, eyes quick but
thorough in their hunt.  Ate houses came and went, and there was no
Iron Feather.  Men lurched past them, and a handful of women, tough and
hard all, reeking of ale and the stale smell of sweat.  The shouts and
laughter grew louder, and even Garth seemed to sense how frantic they
were, his rough face grim-set and fierce.  Several of the men
approached Wren, drunken, unseeing, anxious for money or pleasure,
blind to the danger that mirrored in Garth's eyes.  The big Rover
shoved them away.

At a juncture of cross-streets, Wren caught sight of a cluster of
Povers working their way back toward their wagons at the end of an
unlit road.  She hailed them down and asked if they knew of the Iron
Feather.  One made a face and pointed.  The band hurried off without
comment.  Wren and Garth continued on.

They found the ale house in the center of Grimpen Ward, a sprawling
ramshackle structure framed of splitting boards and rusting nails, the
veranda fronting painted a garish red and blue.  Wide double doors were
tied open with short lengths of rope; within, a crush of men sang and
drank against a long bar and about trestle benches.  Wren and Garth
stepped inside, peering through the haze of heat and smoke.  A few
heads turned; eyes stared momentarily and looked away again.  No one
wanted to meet Garth's gaze.  Wren moved up to the bar, caught the
attention of the server, and signaled for ale.  The server, a
narrow-faced man with sure, steady hands brought the mugs over and
waited for his money.

"Do you know a woman called the Addershag?"  Wren asked him.

Expressionless, the man shook his head, accepted his money, and walked
away.  Wren watched him stop and whisper something to another man.  The
man slipped away.  Wren sipped at her mug, found the ale unpleasantly
warm, and moved down the serving bar, repeating her question as she
went.  No one knew of the Addershag.  One grinned, leered, and made an
un imaginative suggestion.  Then he saw Garth and hurried off.

Wren continued on.  A second man reached out at her, and she flicked
his arm away.  When he reached again, she brought the heel of her hand
into his face so hard he was knocked unconscious.  She stepped around
him, anxious to be done with this business.  It was dangerous to
continue on, even with Garth to protect her.

She reached the end of the serving bar and slowed.  At the very back of
the room a group of men occupied a table in the shadows.

One-of them beckoned, waited until he was certain she had seen, then
beckoned again.  She hesitated, then moved forward, pushing through the
crowd, Garth at her back.  She came up to the table and stopped when
she was just out of reach of the men seated there.  They were a rough
bunch-dirty, unshaven, their skin the color of paste, their eyes
ferretlike and dangerous.  Ale mugs sat before them, sweating.

The man who had beckoned said, "Who is it you're looking for, girl?"

"A seer called the Addershag, she answered and then waited, certain
that he already knew who she was looking for and probably where she
would look.

"What do you want with her?"

"I want to ask her about the Elves."

The man snorted.  "There aren't any Elves."

Wren waited.

The man eased forward in his chair.  He was thick-featured, and his
eyes were empty of feeling.  "Suppose I decided to help you.  Just
suppose.  Would you do something for me in turn?"

The man studied her face a moment and grinned insolently.

"Not that.  I just want you to talk to her for me, ask her something.

I can tell what you are by your clothes.  You're a Rover.

See, the Addershag is a Rover, too."  He paused.  "Didn't know that,
did you?  Well, she doesn't feel like talking to us, but she might feel
different about you, one of her own."  His gaze on her was hard and
sullen.  All pretense was gone now, the game under way.  "So if I take
you to her, then you have to ask a question or two for me.

That a deal?"

Wren knew already that the man was planning to kill her.  It was simply
a question of how and when he and his friends would try.  But she also
knew he might really be able to take her to the Addershag.

She weighed the risks and rewards momentarily, then said, "Agreed.

But my friend goes with me."

"Whatever you say."  The man smirked.  "Course, my friends 90, too.  So
I'll feet safe.  Everyone goes."

Wren looked at the man appraisingly.  Heavyset, muscular, an
experienced cutthroat.  The others the same.  If they got her in a
tight place ...

"Garth," she said, looking back at him.  She signed quickly, screening
her movements from the men at the table.  Garth nodded.  She turned
back to the table.  "I'm ready."

The speaker rose, the others with him, an anxious, hungrylooking
bunch.

There was no mistaking what they were about.

The speaker began ambling along the rear wall toward a door leading
out.  Wren followed, cautious, alert.  Garth was a step behind; the
remainder of the table trailed.  They passed through the door into an
empty hall and continued toward a back entrance.  The sounds of the ale
house disappeared abruptly as the door closed.

The man spoke over his shoulder.  "I want to know how she reads the
gaming cards like she does.  How she reads the dice roll.  I want to
know how she can see what the players are thinking."  He grinned.

"Something for you, girl; something for me.  I have to make a living,
too."

He stopped unexpectedly before a side door, and Wren tensed.  But the
man ignored her, reaching into his pocket to extract a key.  He
inserted it in the lock and twisted.  The lock released with a click
and the door swung open.  There were stairs beyond leading down, The
man groped inside and brought forth an oil lamp, lit it, and handed it
to Wren.

"She's in the cellar," he said, motioning through the door.

"That's where we're keeping her for the moment.  You talk to her.

Take your friend if you want.  We'll wait here."  His smile was hard
and unpleasant.  "Just don't come back up without something to trade
for my helping you out.  Understand?"

The men with him had crowded up behind them, and the reek of them
filled the narrow hall.  Wren could hear the ragged sound of their
breathing.

She moved close to the speaker and put her face inches from his own.

"What I understand is that Garth will remain here with you."  She held
his gaze.  'Just in case."

He shrugged uncomfortably.  Wren nodded to Garth, indicating the door
and the gathering of men.  Then holding the lamp before her, she
started down the steps.

It was a shadowy descent.  The stairway wound along a dirt wall shored
up with timbers, the earth smell thick and pungent.

It was cooler here, if only marginally.  Insects skittered from
underfoot@\"Strands of webbing brushed her face.  The steps angled left
along a second wall and ended.  The cellar opened up before her in the
lamplight.

An old woman sat slumped against the far wall, almost lost in the
gloom.  Her body was a dried husk, and her face had withered into a
maze of lines and furrows.  Ragged white hair tumbled down about her
frail shoulders, and her gnarled hands were clasped before her.  She
wore a cloth shift and old boots.

Wren approached and knelt before her.  The ancient head lifted,
revealing eyes that were milky and fixed.  The old woman was blind.

Wren placed the oil lamp on the floor beside her.  "Are you the seer
they call the Addershag, old mother?"  she asked softly.

The staring eyes blinked and a thin voice rasped, "Who wishes to
know?

Tell me your name."

"My name is Wren Ohmsford."

The white head tilted, shifting toward the stairway and the door
above.

"Are you with them?"

Wren shook her head.  "I'm with myself.  And a companion.

Both of us are Rovers."

Aged hands reached out to touch her face, exploring its lines and
hollows, scraping along the girl's skin like dried leaves.  Wren did
not move.  The hands withdrew.

"You are an Elf."

"I have Eiven blood."

"An Elf!"  The old woman's voice was rough and insistent, a hiss
against the silence of the ale house cellar.  The wrinkled face cocked
to one side as if reflecting.  "I am the Addershag.  I am the seer of
the future and what it holds, the teller of truths.

What do you wish of me?"

Wren rocked back slightly on the heels of her boots.  "I am searching
for the Westland Elves.  I was told a week ago that you might know
where to find them-if they still exist."

The Addershag cackled softly.  "Oh, they exist, all right.

They do indeed.  But it's not to everyone they show them selves-to none
at all in many years.  Is it so important to you, Elf-girl, that you
see them?  Do you search them out because you have need of your own
kind?"  The milky eyes stared un seeing at Wren's face.  "No, not
you.

Despite your blood, you're a Rover before everything, and a Rover has
need of no one.

Yours is the life of the wanderer, free to travel any path you choose,
and you glory in it."  She grinned, nearly toothless.

"Why, then?"

"Because it is a charge I have been given-a charge I have chosen to
accept," Wren answered carefully.

"A charge, is it?"  The lines and furrows of the old woman's Ell face
deepened.  "Bend close to me, Elf-girl."

Wren hesitated, then leaned forward tentatively.  The Ad dershag's
hands came up again, the fingers exploring.  They passed once more
across Wren's face, then down her neck to her body.  When they touched
the front of the girl's blouse, they jerked back as if burned and the
old woman gasped.  "Magic!

she howled.

Wren started, then seized the other's wrists impulsively.

"What magic?  What are you saying?"

But the Addershag shook her head violently, her lips clamped shut, and
her head sunk into her shrunken breast.  Wren held her a moment longer,
then let her go.

"Elf-girl," the old woman whispered then, "who sends you in search of
the Westland Elves?"

Wren took a deep breath against her fears and answered, "The shade of
Allanon."

The aged head lifted with a snap.  "Allanon!"  She breathed the name
like a curse, "So!  A Druid's charge, is it?  Very well.

Listen to me, then.  Go south through the Wilderun, cross the lrrybis
and follow the coast of the Blue Divide.  When you have reached the
caves of the Rocs, build a fire and keep it burning three days and
nights.  One will come who can help you.  Do you understand?"

"Yes , Wren replied, wondering at the same time if she really did.

Rocs, did the old woman say?  Weren't they supposed to have been a form
of giant coastal bird?

"Beware, Elf-girl," the other warned, a stick-thin hand lifting.

"I see-danger ahead for you, hard times, and treachery and evil beyond
imagining.  My visions are in my head, truths that haunt me with their
madness.  Heed me, then.  Keep your own counsel, girl.  Trust no
one!"

She gestured violently, then slumped back again, her blind gaze fixed
and hard.  Wren glanced down the length of her body and started.

The Addershag's worn dress had slipped back from her boots to reveal an
iron chain and clamp fastened to her leg.

Wren reached out and took the aged hands in her own.  "Old mother," she
said gently.  "Let me get you free of this place.  My riend and I can
help you, if you'll let us.  There is no reason for you to remain a
prisoner."

"A prisoner?  Ha!"  The Addershag lurched forward, teeth bared like an
animal at bay.  "What I look and what I am are two very different
things!"

"But the chain .  . ."

"Holds me not an instant longer than I wish!"  A wicked smile creased
the wrinkled face until its features almost disappeared.

"Those men, those fools-they take me by force and chain me in this
cellar and wait for me to do their bidding!"  Her voice lowered.  "They
are small, greedy men, and all that interests them is the wealth of
others.  I could give them what they want; I could do their bidding and
be gone.  But this is a game that interests me.  I like the teasing of
them.  I like the sound of their whining.  I let them keep me for a
time because it amuses me.

And when I am done being entertained, Elf-girl, when I tire of them and
decide again to be free, why ... this!"

Her stick hands freed themselves, then twisted sharply before Wren's
eyes and were transformed into writhing snakes, tongues darting, fangs
bared, hissing into the silence.  Wren jerked away, shielding her
face.

When she looked again, the snakes had disappeared.

She swallowed against her fear.  "Were ... they real?"  she asked
thickly, her face flushed and hot.

The Addershag smiled with dark promise.  "Go, now," she whispered,
shrinking back into the shadows.  "Take what I told you and use it as
you will.  And guard yourself closely, Elf-girl.

Beware."

Wren hesitated, pondering whether she should ask answers to the rush of
questions that flooded through her.  She decided against it.

She picked up the oil lamp and rose.  "Goodbye, old mother," she
said.

She went back through the darkness, squinting into the light of the oil
lamp to find the stairs, feeling the sightless gaze of the Addershag
follow after her.  She climbed the steps swiftly and slipped back
through the cellar doorway into the ale house hall.

Garth was waiting for her, facing the knot of men who had come with
them from the front room.  The sounds of the ale house filtered through
the closed door beyond, muffled and raucous.  The eyes of the men
glittered.  She could sense their hunger.

" What did the old woman tell you?"  the leader snapped.

Wren lifted the oil lamp to shed a wider circle of light and shook her
head.  "Nothing.  She doesn't know of the Elves or if she does, she
keeps it to herself.  As for gaming, she won't say a word about that
either."  She paused.  "She doesn't seem any kind of a seer to me.  I
think she's mad."

Anger reflected in the other man I s eyes.  "What a poor liar YOU are,
girl."

Wren's expression did not change.  "I'll give you some good advice,
cutthroat.  Let her go.  It might save your life."

A knife appeared in the other's hand, a glint of metal come out of
nowhere.  "But not yours He didn't finish because Wren had already
slammed the oil lamp onto the hallway floor before him, shattering the
glass, spilling the oil across the wood, exploding the flames
everywhere.  Fire raced across the wooden planks and up the walls.

The speaker caught fire, shrieked, and stumbled back into the unwilling
arms of his fellows.  Garth and Wren fled the other way, reaching the
backdoor in seconds.  Shoulder lowered, Garth hammered into the wooden
barrier and it flew from its hinges as if made of paper.  The girl and
the big Rover burst through the opening into the night, howls of rage
and fear chasing after them.  Down between the buildings of the town
they raced, swift and silent, and moments later emerged back onto the
main street of Grimpen Ward.

They slowed to a walk, glanced back, and listened.  Nothing.

The shouts and laughter of the ate houses nearest them drowned out what
lay behind.  There was no sign of fire.  There was no indication of
pursuit.

Side by side, Wren and Garth walked back up the roadway in the
direction they had come, moving through the revelers, the heat and the
gloom, calm and unhurried.

"We're going south to the Blue Divide," Wren announced as they reached
the edge of the town, signing the words.

Garth nodded and made no response.

Swiftly they disappeared into the night.

HEN WALKER BOH, Quickening, and Carisman left Mor gan and Horner Dees,
they traveled only a short ths tance east through the darkened streets
of Eldwist before slowing to a halt.  Walker and the girl faced each
other.  Neither had said anything about stopping; it was as if they had
read each other's mind.  Carisman looked from one face to the other in
confusion.

"You know where the Stone King is hiding," Quickening said.  She made
it a statement of fact.

"I think I do," Walker answered.  He stared into the depthless black
eyes and marveled at the assurance he found there.  "Did you sense that
when you chose to come with me?"

She nodded.  "When he is found, I must be there."

She didn't explain her reasoning, and Walker didn't ask.  He glanced
into the distance, trying futilely to penetrate the gloom, to see
beyond the mist and darkness, and to find something of what he was
meant to do.  But there was nothing to be found out there, of course.

The answers to his questions lay somewhere within.

"I believe the Stone King hides within the dome," he said quietly.

"I suspected as much when we were there several days ago.  There appear
to be no entrances, yet as I touched the stone and walked about the
walls I sensed life.  There was a presence that I could not explain.

Then, yesterday, when we were beneath the earth, trapped in that
underground cavern, I again sensed that presence-only it was above us
this time.  I took a quick calculation when we emerged from the
tunnels.  The dome is seated directly above the cavern."

He stopped momentarily and glanced about.  "Eldwist is the creation of
its master.  Uhl Belk has made this city of the old world his own,
changing to stone what wasn't already, expanding his domain outward
symmetrically where the land allows it.  The dome sits centermost, a
hub in a wheel of streets and buildings, walls and wreckage."

His pale face turned to meet hers.  "Uhl Belk is there."

He could almost see the life brighten in her eyes.  "Then we must go to
meet him," she said.

They started off again, following the walkway to the end of the block
and then turning abruptly north.  Walker led, keeping them carefully
back from the streets, against the walls of the buildings, clear of the
open spaces, and away from the danger of trapdoors.

Neither he nor Quickening spoke; Carisman hummed softly.  They watched
the gloom like hawks, listened for strange sounds, and smelled and
tasted the damp, stale air warily.  A brief rain caught up with them
and left them shedding water from their cloaks and hoods, their feet
chilled within their boots.

Walker Boh thought of home.  He had done so increasingly of late,
driven by the constant, unrelenting pressure of being hemmed about by
the city's stone and darkness to seek out something of what had once
been pleasant and healing.  For a time he had sought to banish all
thoughts of Hearthstone; its memories cut at him like broken glass.

The cottage that he had adopted as his home had been burned to the
ground in the battle with the Shadowen.  Cogline and Rumor had died
there.  He had barely escaped dying himself, and keeping his life had
cost him his arm.  He had once believed himself invulnerable to the
intrusions of the outside world.  He had been vain and foolish enough
to boast that what lay beyond Hearthstone presented no danger to him.

He had denied the dreams that Allanon had sent him from the spirit
world, the pleas that Par Ohmsford had extended for his help, and in
the end the charge he had been given to go in search of Paranor and the
Druids.  He had encased himself in imaginary walls and believed himself
secure.  When those walls began collapsing, he had found that they
could not be replaced and those things he had thought secure were
lost.

Yet there were older memories of Hearthstone that transcended the
recent tragedies.  There were all those years when he had lived in
peace in the valley, the seasons when the world outside did not intrude
and there was time enough for everything.  There were the smells of
flowers, trees, and fresh water springs; the sounds of birds in early
spring and insects on warm summer nights; the taste of dawn on a clear
autumn morning; the feeling of serenity that came with the setting sun
and the fall of night.  He could reach back beyond the past few weeks
and find peace in those memories.  He did so now because they were all
he had left to draw on.

Yet even his strongest memories provided only a momentary haven.

The harsh inevitabilities of the present pressed in about him and would
not be banished.  He might escape for brief moments into the past, into
the world that had sheltered him for a time before he was swept away by
the tide of events he had sought foolishly to ignore.

Escape miht soothe and strengthen the spirit, but it was transitory and
unresolving.  His mind darted away into his memories only to find the
past forever beyond his reach and the present forever at hand.  He was
struggling with his life, he discovered.  He was adrift, a castaway
fighting to keep afloat amid the wreckage of his confusion and doubt.

He could almost feel himself sinking.

They reached the dome at midmorning and began their search.

Working together, not willing to separate if there was any chance at
all that the Stone King waited within, they began to explore the dome's
surface, walking its circumference, feeling along its walls, and
searching even the ground it sat upon.  It was perfectly formed,
although its ageing shelf was pitted and cracked, rising several
hundred feet into the air at its peak, spreading from wall to wall
several hundred feet more.  Depressions that had the look of giant
thumbprints decorated the dome's peak along its upper surface, laid
open like the petals of a flower, separated by bands of stone that
curved downward to the foundation.  Niches and alcoves indented its
walls at ground level, offering no way inside, leading nowhere.

Sculpted designs marked its stone, most of them almost completely worn
away by time's passage, no longer decipherable, the runes of a world
that had long since passed away.

"I can feel a presence still," Walker Boh said, slowing, folding his
cloak about him.  He glanced skyward.  It was raining again, a slow,
persistent drizzle.  "There's something here.  Something."

Quickening stood close beside him.  "Magic," she whispered.

He stared at her, surprised that she had been so quick to recognize a
truth that had eluded him.  "It is so," he murmured.

His hand stretched forth, searching.  "All about, in the stone
itself."

"He is here," Quickening whispered.

Carisman stepped forward and stroked the wall tentatively.

His handsome brow furrowed.  "Why does he not respond?

Shouldn't he come out long enough to see what we want?"

"He may not even know we are here.  He may not care."

Quickening's soft face lifted.  "He may even be sleeping."

Carisman frowned.  "Then perhaps a song is needed to wake him up!"

He sang: "Awake, awake, oh aged King of Stone, Comefortbfrom your
enfolding lair, We wait without, a worn and tired band, So lacking in
all hope and care.

Awake, awake, oh aged King of Stone, Be not afraid of what we bring,
'Tis nothing more than finite spirit, A measure of the song I sing.

Awake, awake, oh aged King of Stone, You who have seen all passing
time, Sbare with us weak and mortal creatures, The trutbs and secrets
of A4ankind."  His song ended, and he stood looking expectantly at the
broad expanse of the dome.  There was no response.  He glanced at
Quickening and Walker and shrugged.  "Not his choice of music,
perhaps.

I shall think of another."

They moved away from the dome and into the shelter of an entry in a
building that sat adjacent.  Seating themselves with their backs to the
wall so that they could look out at the dome, they pooled from their
backpacks a collection of old bread and dried fruit for their lunch.

They ate silently, staring out from the shadows into the gray rain.

"We are almost out of food," Walker said after a time.  "And water.  We
will have to forage soon."

Carisman brightened.  "I shall fish for us.  I was a very good
fisherman once-although I only fished for pleasure.  It was a pleasing
way to pass the time and compose.  Walker Boh, what did you do before
you came north?"

Walker hesitated, surprised by the question, unprepared to give an
answer.  What did he do?  he asked himself.  "I was a caretaker," he
decided finally.

"Of what?"  Carisman pressed, interested.

"Of a cottage and the land about it," he said softly, remembering.

"Of an entire valley and all the creatures that lived within it,"
Quickening declared, her eyes drawing Carisman's.  "Walker Boh
preserved life in the manner of the Elves of old.  He gave of himself
to replenish the land."

Walker stared at her, surprised once again.  "It was a poor effort," he
suggested awkwardly.

"I will not permit you to be the judge of that," the girl replied.

"it is for others to determine how successful you have been in your
work.  You are too harsh in your criticism and lack the necessary
distancing to be fair and impartial."  She paused, studying him, her
black eyes calm and reasoning.  "I believe it will be judged that you
did all that you could."

They both knew what she was talking about.  Walker was strangely warmed
by her words, and once again he experienced that sense of kinship.  He
nodded without responding and continued to eat.

When they had finished their meal they stood facing the dome once more,
debating what approach to take next.

"Perhaps there is something to be seen from above," Quickening
suggested.  "An opening through the top of the dome or an aberration in
the stone that would suggest a way in."

Walker glanced about.  There was an ornate building less than a block
distant that opened at its top into a beiltower and gave a clear view
of the dome below.  They crossed to it cautiously, forever wary of
trapdoors, and gained its entrance.

Sculptures of winged angels and robed figures decorated its walls and
ceilings.  They moved inside cautiously.  The central chamber was vast,
the glass of its windows long disintegrated, the furnishings turned to
dust.  They found the stairway leading to the belitower and began to
climb.  The stairs had fallen away in spots, and only the bracing
remained.  They maneuvered along its spans, working their way upward.

Floors came and went, most'ragged with holes and cluttered with debris,
all turned to stone," their collapse preserved in perfect relief.

They gained the belitower without difficulty and walked to the windows
facing out.  The city of Eldwist spread away on all sides, misted and
gray, filled with the shadows of daylight's passing and night's
approach.  The rain had diminished, and the buildings rose like stone
sentries across the span of the peninsula.  The clouds had lifted
slightly, and the choppy slate surface of the Tiderace and the ragged
cliffs of the mainland beyond the isthmus could be seen in snatches
through gaps in the lines of stone walls.

The dome sat directly below them, as closed and unrevealing at its top
as it had been at its bottom.  There was nothing to see, no hint of an
opening, no suggestion of a way in.  Nonetheless, they studied it for
some time, hoping to discover something they had missed.

In the midst of their study a horn sounded, startling them.

"Urdasi" Carisman cried.

Walker and Quickening looked at each other in surprise, but Carisman
had already dashed to the south window of the tower and was peering in
the direction of the isthmus and the cliffs leading down.

"It must be them; that is their call!"  he shouted, excitement and
concern reflecting in his voice.  He shaded his eyes against the glare
of the dampened stone.  "There!  Do you see them?"

Walker and Quickening hastened to join him.  The tunesmith was pointing
to where the stairway descending the cliffs from the overlook was
barely visible through the mist.  There were glimpses of movement to be
seen on the stairs, small, hunched figures crouched low as if to hide
even from the shadows.  Urdas, Walker recognized, and they were coming
down.

"What is it that they think they are doing!"  Carisman exclaimed,
obviously upset.  "They cannot come here!"

The Urdas faded into a patch of fog and were lost from view.

Carisman wheeled on his companions, stricken.  "If they are not
stopped, they will all be killed!"

"The Urdas are no longer your responsibility, Carisman," Walker Boh
declared softly.  "You are no longer their king."

Carisman looked unconvinced.  "They are children, Walker!

They have no understanding of what lives down here.  The Rake or the
Maw Grint, either one will destroy them.  I can't imagine how they
slipped past the Koden .  . ."

"In the same way as Horner Dees did ten years ago," Walker cut him
short.  "With a sacrifice of lives.  And still they come ahead.  They
are not as worried about themselves, it appears, as you are.

Carisman wheeled on Quickening.  "Lady, you've seen the way they react
to things.  What do they know of the Stone King and his magic?

If they are not stopped .  . ."

Quickening seized his arms and held them.  "No, Carisman.

Walker Boh is right.  The Urdas are dangerous to you now as well."

But Carisman shook his head vehemently.  "No, Lady.  Never to me.

They were my family before I abandoned them."

"They were your captors!"

"They cared for me and protected me in the only way they knew how.

Lady, what am I to do?  They have come here to find me!  Why else would
they be taking such a risk?  I think they have never come so far away
from home.  They are here because they think you stole me away.

Can I abandon them a second time, this time to die for a mistake that I
can prevent them from making?"  Carisman pulled free, slowly, gently.

"I have to go to them.  I have to warn them."

"Carisman The tunesmith was already backing toward the belitower
stairs.  "I have been an orphan of the storm all of my life, blown from
one island to the next, never with family or home, always in search of
somewhere to belong and someone to belong to.

The Urdas gave me what I have of both, little as it may seem to you.  I
cannot let them die needlessly."

He turned and started quickly down the stairs.  Quickening and Walker
exchanged wordless glances and hurried after.

They caught up with him on the street below.  "We'll come with you
then," Walker said.

Carisman whirled about at once.  "No, no, Walker!  You cannot show
yourselves to them!  If you do, they might think I am threatened by
you-perhaps even that I am a prisoner!  They might attack, and you
could be hurt!  No.  Let me deal with them.  I know them; I can talk
with them, explain what has happened, and turn them back before it is
too late."  His handsome features crinkled with worry.  "Please,
Walker?  Lady?"

There was nothing more to be said.  Carisman had made up his mind and
would not allow them to change it.  As a final concession they demanded
that they be allowed to accompany him at least as far as was reasonable
to assure that they would be close at hand in case of trouble.

Carisman was reluctant to agree even to that much, concerned that he
was taking them away from work that was more important, that he was
delaying their search for the Stone King.  Both Quickening and Walker
refused to argue the point.  They walked in silence, single file along
the walkways, down the tunneled streets, traveling south through the
city.  He would meet the Urdas at the city's south edge, Carisman told
them, sweeping back his blond hair, squaring himself for his
encounter.

Walker found him odd and heroic at once, a strange parody of a man
aspiring to reality yet unable quite to grasp it.  Give thought to what
you are doing, he begged the tunesmith at one point.

But Carisman's answering smile was cheerfully beguiling and filled with
certainty.  He had done all the thinking he cared to do.

When they neared the boundaries of the city, the rocky flats of the
isthmus peeking through the gaps in the buildings, Carisman brought
them to a halt.

"Wait for me here," he told them firmly.  Then he made them promise not
to follow after him.  "Do not show yourselves; it will only frighten
the Urdas.  Give me a little time.  I am certain I can make them
understand.  As I said, my friends-they are like children."

He clasped their hands in farewell and walked on.  He turned at one
point to make certain they were doing as he had asked, then waved back
to them.  His handsome face was smiling and assured.  They watched the
mist curl about him, gather him up, and finally cause him to
disappear.

Walker glanced at the buildings surrounding them, chose a suitable one,
and steered Quickening toward it.  They entered, climbed the stairs to
the top floor, and found a room where a bank of windows gaped open to
the south.  From there they could watch the Urdas approach.

The gnarled figures were strung out along the isthmus, making their way
cautiously past the crevices and ruts.  There were perhaps twenty of
them, several obviously injured.

They watched until the Urdas reached the edge of the city and
disappeared into the shadow of the buildings.

Walker shook his head.  "I find myself wishing we had not agreed to
this.  Carisman is almost a child himself.  I cannot help thinking he
would have been better off not coming with us at all."

"He chose to come," Quickening reminded him.  Her face tilted into the
light, out of a striping of shadows.  "He wanted to be free, Walker
Boh.  Coming with us, even here, was better than staying behind."

Walker glanced through the windows a final time.  The stone of the
isthmus flats and the streets below glistened with the damp, empty and
still.  He could hear the distant thunder of the ocean, the cries of
the seabirds, and the rushing of the wind down the cliffs.  He felt
alone.

"I wonder sometimes how many like Carisman there are," he said
finally.

"Orphans, as he called himself.  How many left to roam the land, made
outcasts by Federation rule, their magic not the gift it was intended
to be, but a curse they must disguise if they would keep their
lives."

Quickening seated herself against the wall and studied him.

"A great many, Walker Boh.  Like Carisman.  Like yourself."

He eased down beside her, folding his cloak about him, lifting his pale
face toward the light.  "I was not thinking of myself."

"Then you must do so," she said simply.  "You must become aware.

He stared at her.  "Aware of what?"

"Of the possibilities of your life.  Of the reasons for being who you
are.  If you were an elemental, you would understand.

I was given life for a specific purpose.  It would be terrifying to
exist without that purpose.  Is it not so for you?"

Walker felt his face tighten.  "I have purpose in my life."

Her smile was unexpected and dazzling.  "No, Walker Boh, you do not.

You have thrust from you any sense of purpose and made yourself an
outcast twice over-first, for having been born with the legacy of Brin
Ohmsford's magic, and second, for having fallen heir to her trust.

You deny who and what you are.

When I healed your arm, I read your life.  Tell me this is not so.

He took a deep breath.  "Why is it that I feel we are so much alike,
Quickening?  It is neither love nor friendship.  It is something in
between.  Am I joined to you somehow?"

"it is our magic, Walker Bob."

"No," he said quickly.  "it is something more."

Her beautiful face masked all traces of the emotion that flickered in
her eyes.  "It is what we have come here to do."

"To find the Stone King and take back from him the stolen Black
Elfstone.  Somehow."  Walker nodded solemnly.  "And for me, to regain
the use of my arm.  And for Morgan Leah, to regain the magic of the
Sword of Leah.  All somehow.  I have listened to your explanations.  Is
it true that you have not been told how any of this is to be
accomplished?  Or are there secrets that you hide from us as Pe Ell
charges?"

"Walker Boh," she said softly.  "You turn my questions into your own
and ask of me what I would ask of you.  We both keep something of the
truth at bay.  It cannot be so for much longer.  I will make a bargain
with you.  When you are ready to confront your truth, I shall confront
mine."

Walker struggled to understand.  "I no longer fear the magic I was born
with," he said, studying the lines of her face, tracing

THE DRUID OF SHANNARA

its curves and angles as if she were in danger of disappearing before
he could secure a memory of her.  "I listened once to my nephew Par
Ohmsford admonish me that the magic was a gift and not a curse.  I
scorned him.  I was frightened of the impli cations of having the
magic.  I feared He caught himself, an iron grip that tightened on his
voice and thoughts instantly.  A shadow of something terrifying had
shown itself to him, a shadow that had grown familiar to him over the
years.  It had no face, but it spoke with the voices of Allanon and
Cogline and his father and even himself.  It whis pered of history and
need and the laws of Mankind.  He thrust it away violently.

Quickening leaned forward and with gentle fingers touched his face.  "I
fear only that you will continue to deny yourself", she whispered.

"Until it is too late."

"Quickening .  . ."

Her fingers moved across his mouth, silencing him.  "There is a scheme
to life, to all of its various happenings and events, to everything we
do within the time allotted to us.  We can understand that scheme if we
let ourselves, if we do not become frightened of knowing.  Knowledge is
not enough if there is not also acceptance of that knowledge.  Anyone
can give you knowl edge, Walker Boh, but only you can learn how to
accept it.

That must come from within.  So it is that my father has sent me to
summon you and Pe Ell and Morgan Leah to Eldwist; so it is that the
combination of your magics shall free the Black Elfstone and begin the
heating process of the Lands.  I know that this is to be.  In time, I
shall know how.  But I must be ready to accept its truths when that
happens.  It is so as well for you.

"I will .  . ."

"No, you will not be ready, Walker," she anticipated him, "if you
continue to deny truths already known to you.  That is what you must
realize.  Now speak no more of it to me.  Only think on what I have
said."

She turned away.  It was not a rebuff; she did not intend it that
way.

It was a simple breaking off, an ending of talk, done not to chastise
but to allow him space in which to explore him self.  He sat staring at
her for a time, then turned introspective He gave himself over to the
images her words conjured.  He It found himself thinking of other
voices in other times, of the world he had come from with its false
measure of worth, its fears of the unknown, its subjugation to a
government and rules it did not wish to comprehend.  Bring back the
Druids and Paranor, Allanon had charged him.  And would that begin a
changing back of the world, of the Four Lands, into what they had
been?

And would that make things better?  He doubted, but he found his doubts
founded more in a lack of understanding than in his fears.  What was he
to do?  He was to recover the Black Elfstone, carry it to disappeared
Paranor, and somehow, in some way, bring back the Keep.

Yet what would that accomplish?  Cogline was gone.  All of the Druids
were gone.  There was no one ...

But himself.

No!  He almost screamed the word aloud.  It bore the face of the thing
he feared, the thing he struggled so hard to keep from himself.

It was the terrifying possibility that had scratched and clawed around
the edges of his self-imposed shield for as long as he could
remember.

He would not take up the Druid cause!

Yet he was Brin Ohmsford's last descendent.  He was bearer of the trust
that had been left to her by Allanon.  Not in your lifetime.

Keep it safe for generations to come.  One day it will be needed
again.

Words from the distant past, spoken by the Druid's shade after death,
haunting, unfulfilled.

I baven't the magic!  he wailed in desperation, in denial.  Why should
it be me?  Why?

But he already knew.  Need.  Because there was need.  It was the answer
that Allanon had given to all of the Ohmsfords, to each of them, year
after year, generation after generation.  Always.

He wrestled with the specter of his destiny in the silence of his
thoughts.  The moments lengthened.  Finally he heard Quickening say,
"it grows dark, Walker Boh."

He glanced up, saw the failing of the light as dusk approached.

He climbed to his feet and peered south into the flats.  The isthmus
was empty.  There was no sign of the Urdas.

"It's been too long," he muttered and started for the stairs.

They descended quickly, emerged from the building, and began following
the walkway south toward the city's edge.  Shad ows were already
spreading into dark pools, the light chased west to the fringes of the
horizon.  The seabirds had gone to roost, and the pounding of the ocean
had faded to a distant moan.  The stone beneath their feet echoed
faintly with their footsteps as if whispering secrets to break the
silence.

They reached the fringe of the city and slowed, proceeding more
cautiously now, searching the gloom for any signs of danger.  There was
no movement to be found.  The mist curled its damp tendrils through
vacant windows and down sewer grates, and there was a sense of a hidden
presence at work.  Ahead, the isthmus flats stretched out into the
darkness, broken and ragged and lifeless.

They stepped clear of the building walls and stopped.

Carisman's body was slumped against a pillar of rock at the end of the
street, pinned fast by a dozen spears.  He had been dead for some time,
the blood from his wounds washed away by the rain.

It appeared that the Urdas had gone back the way they had come.

They had taken Carisman's head with them.

Even children can be dangerous, Walker Boh thought bleakly.  He reached
over for Quickening's hand and locked it in his own.  He tried to
imagine what Carisman's thoughts had been when he realized his family
had disowned him.  He tried to tell himself that there was nothing he
could have done to preventit.

Quickening moved close to him.  They stood staring at the dead
tunesmith wordlessly for a moment more, then turned and walked back
into the city.

HEY DID NOT RETURN to their normal place of concealment that night; it
was already dusk when they departed the flats and the distance back
through the city was too great to cover safely.  Instead, they found a
building close at hand, a low, squat structure with winding, narrow
halls and rooms with doors opening through at both ends to provide a
choice of escape routes if the Rake should appear.

Settled deep witgin the stone interior of the building, shut away with
barely enough light to see each other at arm's length, they ate their
dinner of dried fruits and vegetables, stale bread, and a little water
and tried to banish the ghost of Carisman from their presence.

The dead tunesmith surfaced in memories, in unspoken words, and in the
faint, soft roll of the ocean's distant waters.  His face blossomed in
the shadows they cast, and his voice whispered in the sound of their
breathing.  Walker Boh regarded Quickening without seeing her; his
thoughts were of Carisman and of how he had let the tunesmith go when
he could have stopped him from doing so.  When Quickening touched him
on the arm, he was barely aware of the pressure of her fingers.  When
she read his thoughts in the touch, he was oblivious.  He felt drained
and empty and impossibly alone.

Later, while she slept, he grew aware of her again.  His self-reproach
had exhausted itself, his sorrow had dried up; Carisman's shade was
banished, consigned at last to the place and time in which it
belonged.

He sat in a box of darkness, the stone of the walls and ceiling and
floor pressing in around him, the silence a blanket that would
suffocate him, time the instrument by which he measured the approach of
his own death.  Could it be far away now for any of them?

He watched the girl sleeping next to him, watched the rise and fall of
her breast as she breathed, turned on her side, her face cradled in the
crook of her arm, her silver hair fanned back in a sweep of
brightness.

He watched the slow, steady beat of her pulse along the slim column of
her throat, searched the hollows of her face where the shadows draped
and pooled, and traced the line of her body within the covering of
clothes that failed to hide its perfection.

She was a fragile bit of life whatever her magic, and he could not
escape the feeling that despite the confidence she evidenced in her
father and the command with which she had brought them north she was in
peril.  The feeling was elusive and difficult to credit, but it took
life in his instincts and his prescience, born of the magic that he had
inherited from Brin Ohmsford, magic that still ebbed and flowed within
him as the tide of his belief in himself rose and fell.  He could not
disregard it.  Quickening was at risk, and he did not know how to save
her.

The night deepened and still he did not sleep.  They were all at risk,
of course.  What he sensed of danger to the daughter of the King of the
Silver River was possibly no more than what he sensed of danger to them
all.  It had caught up with Carisman.

It would eventually catch up with Quickening as well.  Perhaps what he
feared was not that Quickening would die, but that she would die before
she revealed the secrets she knew.  There were many, he suspected.

That she hid them so completely infuriated him.  He was surprised at
the anger his realization provoked.

Quickening had brought him face to face with the darkest of his fears
and then left him to stand alone against it.  His entire life had been
shadowed by his apprehension that Allanon's mysterious trust to the
Ohmsfords, given over three hundred years ago to Brin and passed unused
from generation to generation, might somehow require fulfillment by
him.  He had lived with the specter of it since childhood, aware of its
existence as all of his family had been, finding it a ghost that would
not be banished, that instead grew more substantial with the passing of
the years.  The magic of the Ohmsfords was alive in him as it had not
been in his ancestors.  The dreams of Allanon had come only to him.

Cogline had made him his student and taught him the history of his art
and of the Druid cause.  Allanon had told him to go in search of the
Druids and lost Paranor.

He shivered.  Each step took him closer to the inevitable.

The trust had been held for him.  The phantom that had haunted him all
these years had revealed a terrifying face.

He was to take the Black Elfstone and bring back Paranor.

He was to become the next Druid.

He could have laughed at the ridiculousness of the idea if he had not
been so frightened of it.  He despised what the Druids had done to the
Ohmsfords; he saw them as sinister and selfserving manipulators.

He had spent his life trying to rid himself of their curse.  But it was
more than that.  Allanon was gonethe last of the real Druids.

Cogline was gone-the last of those who had studied the art.  He was
alone; who was to teach him what a Druid must know?  Was he to divine
the study of magic somehow?  Was he to teach himself?  And how many
years would that take?  How many centuries?  If the magic of the Druids
was required to combat the Shadowen, such magic could not be drawn
leisurely from the Histories and the tomes that had taught all the
Druids who had gone before.  Time did not permit it.

He clenched his teeth.  It was foolish to think that he could become a
Druid, even if he were willing, even if he wished it, even if the
specter he had feared so for all these years turned out to be
himself.

Foolish!

Walker's eyes glittered as he searched the shadows of the room for an
escape from his distress.  Where were the answers that he needed?

Did Quickening hide those answers?  Were they a part of the truths she
concealed?  Did she know what was to become of him?  He started to
reach for her, intending to shake her awake.  Then he caught himself
and drew back.  No, he reasoned.  Her knowledge was as small and
imperfect as his own.

With Quickening, it was more a sensing of possibilities, a divining of
what might be, a prescience like his own.  It was a part of the reason
he felt her to be kindred; there was that sharing of abilities and uses
of the magics they wielded.  He forced his thoughts to slow and his
mind to open and he gazed upon her as if his eyes might swallow her
up.

He felt something warm T and generous touch him, her sleep presence,
unbidden and re vealed.  It reminded him of his mother's when he was
small and still in need of her reassurance and comfort.  She was in
some way a rendering of his future self.  She opened him up to the
possibilities of what he might be.  He saw the colors of his life, the
textures and the patterns that might be woven, and the styles that
might be tried.  He was cloth to be cut and shaped, but he lacked the
tools and understanding.  Quickening was doing what she could to give
him both.

He dozed then for a time, still upright against the chamber wall, his
legs and arms folded tightly together against his body, his face tilted
forward into his cloak.  When he came awake again, Quickening was
looking at him.  They studied each other wordlessly for a moment, each
searching the other's eyes, seeking out some reading of the other's
needs.

"You are afraid, Walker Bob," the girl said finally.

Walker almost smiled.  "Yes, Quickening.  I have been afraid forever.

Afraid of this-of what is happening now-all of my life.  I have run
from it, hidden from it, wished it away, begged that it would
disappear.  I have fought to contain it.  Exercising a strict and
unyielding control over my life was the technique that seemed to work
best.  If I could dictate my own fate, then it could have no power over
me.  The past would be left for others; the present would belong to
me."

He let his legs unfold and straightened them gingerly before him.

"The Druids have affected the lives of so many of the Ohmsfords, of the
children of Shannara, for generations.  We have been used by them; we
have been made over to serve their causes.  They have changed what we
are.  They have made us slaves of the magic rather than simply
wielders.  They have all tered the composition of our minds and bodies
and spirits; they have subverted us.  And still they are not
satisfied.

Look at what they expect of us now!  Look at what is expected of me!

I am to transcend the role of slave and become master.  I am to take up
the Black Elfstone-a magic I do not begin to understand.  I am to use
it to bring back lost Paranor.  And even that is not enough.

I am to bring back the Druids as well.  But there are no Druids.

There is only me.  And if there is only me, then .  . ."

He choked on the words.  His resolve faltered.  His patience failed
him.  His anger returned, a raw and bitter echo in the silence.

"Tell me!"  he begged, trying to contain his urgency.

"But I do not know, " she whispered.

"You must!"

"Walker .  . ."

There were tears in his eyes.  "I cannot be what Allanon wants me to
be-what he demands that I be!  I cannot!"  He took a quick, harsh
breath to steady himself.  "Do you see, Quickening?  If I am to bring
back the Druids by becoming one, if I must because there is no other
way that the Races can survive the Shadowen, must I then be as they
once were?  Must I take control of the lives of those I profess to
help, those others who are Ohmsfords, Par and Coll and Wren?  For how
many generations yet to come?  If I am to be a Druid, must I do this?

Can I do anything else?"

"Walker Boh."  When she spoke his name her voice was soft and
compelling.  "You will be what you must, but you will still be
yourself.  You are not trapped in some spider's web of Druid magic that
has predetermined your life, that has fated you to be but one way and
one way only.  There is always a choice.  Always.

He had the sudden sense that she was talking of something else
completely.  Her perfect face strained against some inner torment, and
she paused to reshape it, chasing quickly the furrows and lines.  "You
are frightened of your fate without knowing what it is to be.  You are
paralyzed by doubts and misgivings that are of your own making.  Much
has happened to you, Dark Uncle, and it is enough to make any man
doubt.  You have lost loved ones, your home, a part of your body and
spirit.  You have seen the specter of a childhood fear take form and
threaten to become real.  You are far from everything you know.  But
you must not despair."

His eyes were haunted.  "But I do.  I am adrift, Quickening.  I feel
myself slipping away completely."

She reached out her hand and took his own.  "Then cling to me, Walker
Bob.  And let me cling to you.  If we keep hold of each other, the
drifting will stop."

She moved against him, her silver hair spilling across his dark cloak
as her head lowered into his chest.  She did not speak, but simply
rested there, still holding his hand, her warmth mixing with his own.

He lowered his chin to her hair and closed his eyes.

He slept then, and there were no dreams or sudden wakings, only a
gentle cradling by soft, invisible threads that held him firm.  His
drifting ceased, just as she had promised it would.  He was no longer
plagued by troubling and uncertain visions; he was left at peace.  Calm
enfolded him, soothing and comforting.

It had a woman's hands, and the hands belonged to Quickening.

He woke again at daybreak, easing from the chilly stone floor to his
feet as his eyes adjusted to the thin gray light.  From beyond the maze
of rooms and corridors that buffered him from the outside world, he
could hear the soft patter of rain.  Quickening was gone.  Vaguely
worried, he searched until he found her standing at a bank of windows
on the north wall, staring out into the haze.  The stone buildings and
streets shimmered wetly, reflecting their own images in grotesque
parody, mirroring their deadness.  Eldwist greeted the new day as a
corpse, sightless and stiff.  It stretched away into the distance, rows
of buildings, ribbons of streets, a symmetry of design and construction
that was flat and hard and empty of life.  Walker stood next to
Quickening and felt the oppressiveness of the city close about him.

Her black eyes shifted to find his own, her mane of silver hair the
sole brightness in the gloom.  "I held you as tightly as I could,
Walker Boh," she told him.  "Was it enough?"

He took a moment to answer.  The stump of his missing arm ached and the
joints of his body were stiff and slow to respond.

He felt himself to be a large shell in which his spirit had shriveled
to the size of a pebble.  Yet he was strangely resolved.

"I am reminded of Carisman," he said finally, "determined to be free at
any cost.  I would be free as well.  Of my fears and doubts.

Of myself.  Of what I might become.  That cannot be until I have
learned the secret of the Black Elfstone and the truth behind the
dreams of the shade of Allanon."

Quickening's faint smile surprised him.  "I would be free, too," she
said softly.  She seemed anxious to explain, then looked quickly
away.

"We must find Uhl Belk," she said instead.

They departed their shelter and went out into the rain.  They walked
the silent streets of Eldwist north through the shadows and gloom,
hunched within the protection of their forest cloaks, lost in their
private thoughts.

Quickening said, "Eldwist is a land in midwinter waiting for spring.

She is layered in stone as other parts of the earth at times are
layered in snow.  Can you feel her patience?  There are seeds planted,
and when the snow melts those seeds can be brought to bloom."

Walker wasn't sure what she was talking about.  "There is only stone in
Eldwist, Quickening.  It runs deep and long, from shore to shore, the
length and breadth of the peninsula.  There are no seeds here, nothing
of the woodlands or the fields, no trees, no flowers, no grasses.  Only
Uhl Belk and the monsters that serve him.  And us."

"Eldwist is a lie," she said.

"Whose lie?"  he asked.  But she wouldn't answer.

They followed the street for close to an hour, keeping carefully to the
walkways, listening for the sound of anything moving.  Except for the
steady patter of the rain, there was only silence.  Even the Maw Grint
slept, it seemed.  Water pooled and was channeled into streams, and it
swept down the gutters in sluggish torrents that eddied and splashed
and washed away the silt and dust the wind had blown in.

The buildings watched in mute and indifferent testimony, unfeeling
sentinels.  Clouds and mist mixed and descended to wrap them about,
easing steadily downward until they scraped the earth.  Things began to
disappear, towers first, then entire walls, then bits and pieces of the
streets themselves.  Walker and Quickening felt a changing in the
world, as if a presence had been loosed.  Phantasms came out to play,
dark shadows risen from the earth to dance at the edges of their
vision, never entirely real, never quite completely formed.  Eyes
watched, peering downward from the heights, staring upward through the
stone.  Fingers brushed at their skin, droplets of rain, trailers of
mist, and something more.  Walker let himself become one with what he
was feeling, an old trick, a blending of self with external sensations,
all to gain a small measure of insight into the origin of what was
unseen.  He could

A

sense a presence after a time, dark, brooding, ancient, a thing of vast
power.  He could hear it breathing.  He could almost see its eyes.

"Walker," Quickening whispered.

A figure appeared out of the haze before them, cloaked and hooded as
they were and uncomfortably close.  Walker stepped in front of
Quickening and stopped.  The figure stopped as well.

Wordlessly, they faced each other.  Then the clouds shifted, changing
the slant of the light, the shadows re-formed, and a voice called out
uncertainly.  "Quickening?"

Walker Bob started forward again.  It was Morgan Leah.

They clasped hands on meeting, and Quickening hugged the sodden and
disheveled Highlander close, kissing his face passionately.  Walker
watched without speaking, already aware of the attraction shared by the
two, surprised that Quickening would allow it to be.  He watched the
way her eyes closed when Morgan held her and thought he understood.

She was letting herself feel because it was all still new.  She was no
older than the time of her creation, and even if her father had given
her human feelings she would not have experienced them firsthand until
now.  He felt an odd twinge of sadness for her.  She was trying so hard
to live.

"Walker."  Morgan moved over to him, one arm still wrapped about the
girl.  "I've been searching everywhere.  I thought something had
happened to you as well."

He told them what had befallen Horner Dees and himself, how they had
been snared by the trapdoor and tumbled onto the slide, and how they
had found themselves confronted by the horror of the Maw Grint
slumbering directly below.  His eyes were fierce and bright as he
struggled to describe how he had somehow managed to release the magic
of the Sword of Leah once again, magic he had feared lost.  With its
aid they had escaped.  They had taken refuge for the night close by,
then made their way at dawn to where they had left the others of the
little company.  But the building had been empty and there had been no
sign of anyone's return.  Worried for Quickeningfor all of them, he
hastened to add-he had left Dees to keep watch for them in case they
returned and gone hunting alone.

"Horner Dees was prepared to come as well, but I refused to allow it.

The truth is, he would never move again if he could arrange it-at least
not until it was time to leave this place."  The Highlander smiled
broadly.  "He's had enough of Eldwist and its traps; he wants the ale
house at Rampling Steep again!"  He paused then, looking past them
speculatively.  "Where's Carisman?"

It was their turn to speak, and Quickening did so, her voice steady and
strangely comforting as she related the events that had led to the
death of the tunesmith.  Even so, Morgan Leah's face was lined with
despair and anger by the time she had finished.

"He never understood anything, did he?"  the Highlander said, the
emotions he was holding inside threatening to choke him.  "He just
never understood!  He thought his music was a cure for everything.

Shades!"

He looked away a moment, shielding his expression, hands clasped on his
hips defiantly, as if stubbornness might somehow change what had
happened.  "Where do we go now?"  he asked finally.

Walker glanced at Quickening.  "We believe that Uhl Belk hides within
the dome," the girl spoke for him.  "We were looking for a way in when
the Urdas appeared.  We are returning to continue the search."

Morgan turned, his face set.  "Then I am coming with you.

Horner will be better off resting right where he is.  We can rejoin him
at nightfall."  The look he gave them was almost defiant.

"That's the way it should be anyway.  Just the three of us."

"Come if you wish, Morgan," Quickening soothed, and Walker nodded
without comment.

They resumed walking, three rain-soaked figures nearly lost in the mist
and shadows.  Walker led, a lean and white-faced ghost against the
gloom, leader now because Quickening had moved a step back to be with
Morgan, content to follow.  He hunched his narrow shoulders against the
weather, felt the bite of the wind as it gusted momentarily, and felt
the emptiness inside threaten to engulf him.  He reached into that
emptiness and tried to secure some part of his magic, a strength he
could rely upon.  It eluded him, like a snake in flight.  He peered
ahead through the thin curtain of the rain and watched the shadows
chase after the light.  The specter of his fate leered at him, a faint
shimmer in a pool of water, a wisp of fog in a doorway, a darkening of
stone where the dampness reflected like a mirror.

In each instance, it wore the face of Allanon.

The street ended, and the dark bulk of the dome lifted before them like
the shell of some sleeping crustacean.  The three stepped down off the
walkway and crossed to stand before it, dwarfed by its size.

Walker stared at the dome without speaking, aware that Morgan and
Quickening were waiting on him, conscious that something else was
waiting on him as well.  It.  The presence he had sensed before was
back again, stronger here, readier, more assured.  And watching.

Silently watching.  Walker did not move.  He felt eyes all around him,
as if there were nowhere he might run that he could not be seen.

The stone of the city was a hand that cradled him yet might close
without warning to crush out his life.  The presence wanted him to know
that.

It wanted him to know how insignificant he was, how futile his quest,
and how purposeless his life.  It bore down on him, pressed about like
the mist and rain.  Go home, he heard it whisper.  Leave while you
can.

He did not leave.  He did not even step away.  He had faced enough
threats in his time, enough dark things that roamed the land, to know
when he was being tested.  The effort was not a crushing one; it was
teasing and fey, as if designed to insinuate an opposite effect than
the one indicated.  Don't really leave, it seemed to say.  Just
remember that you were asked.

Walker Boh stepped forward to where the wall was broadest between the
bands of stone.  Death brushed up against him, a soft sprinkle of rain
caught in the wind.  It was odd, but he sensed Cogline close beside
him, the old man's ghost risen from the ashes of Hearthstone, come to
watch his student practice the craft he had taught him, come perhaps to
judge how well he performed.  You will never be free of the magic, he
could hear the other say.  He stared momentarily at the pitted, worn
surface of the wall, watching the rainwater snake downward along its
irregular paths, silver streamers that glistened like strands of
Quickening's hair.  He reached down again within himself for the magic
and this time fastened on it.  He drew its strength about him like
armor, banded himself with it as if to match the stone of the shell
before him, then reached out with his one remaining hand and pressed
his fingers to the wall.

He felt the magic rise within him, flowing hot like fire, extending
from his chest to his arm to the tips of his fingers to ...

There was a shudder, and the stone before him drew back, flinching away
as if human flesh that had been burned.  There was a long, deep groan
that was the sound of stone grating on stone and a thin shriek as if a
life had been pressed between.

Quickening crouched like a startled bird, her silver hair flung back,
her eyes bright and strangely alive.  Morgan Leah drew out the
broadsword strapped across his back in a single swift motion.

The wall before them opened-not as a door would swing wide or a panel
lift, but as a cloth torn asunder.  It opened, stretched wide from
foundation to apex, a mouth that sought to feed.  When it was twenty
feet across, it stopped, immobile once more, the stone edges smooth and
fixed, imbued with the look of a doorway that had always been there and
clearly belonged.

A way in, thought Walker Boh.  Exactly what they had come searching
for.

Quickening and Morgan Leah stood beside him expectantly.

He did not took at either of them.  He kept his eyes focused on the
opening before him, on the darkness within, on its sea of impenetrable
shadows.  He searched and listened, but nothing revealed itself.

Still, he knew what waited.

Carisman's voice sang softly in his mind.  Come rigbt in, said the
spider to the fly.

With the girl and the Highlander flanking him, Walker Boh complied.

HADOWSEN VELOPED THEM almost immediately, layers of darkness that began
less than a dozen feet inside the opening t o the dome and entirely
concealed everything that lay beyond.  They slowed on Walker's lead,
waiting for their eyes to adjust, listening to the hollow echoes of
their booted feet fade into the silence.  Then there was only the sound
of their breathing.  Behind them, the faint gray daylight was a slender
thread connecting them to the world without, and an instant later it
was severed.  Stone grated on stone once more, and the opening that had
admitted them disappeared.  No one moved to prevent it from happening;
indeed, they had all expected as much.  They stood together in the
silence that followed, each conscious of the reassuring presence of the
others, ach straining to hear the sound of any foreign movement, each e
waiting for some small measure of sight to return.  The sense of
emptiness was complete.  The interior of the dome had the feel of a
monstrous tomb in which nothing living had walked in centuries.  The
air had a stale and musty smell, devoid of any recognizable scents, and
it was cold, a bone-biting chill that entered through the mouth and
nostrils and worked its way instantly to the pit of the stomach and
lodged there.  They began to shiver almost immediately.  Even in the
impenetrable darkness it seemed to Walker Boh that he could see the
clouding of his breath.

The seconds dragged by, heartbeats in the unbroken stillness.  The
three waited patiently.  Something would happen.

Someone would appear.  Unless they had been brought into the dome to be
killed, Walker speculated in the silence of his thoughts.  But he
didn't think that was the case.  In fact, he no longer believed as he
had in the beginning that there was any active effort being made to
eliminate them.  The character of their relationship with Eldwist
suggested on close study that the city functioned in an impersonal way
to rid itself of intruders, but that it did not exert any special
effort if it immediately failed.

Eldwist did not rely on speed; it relied on the law of averages.

Sooner or later intruders would make a mistake.  They would grow
incautious and either the trapdoors or the Rake would claim them.

Walker was willing to wager that Quickening had guessed right, that
until very recently the Stone King hadn't even been aware of their
presence-or if he had, hadn't bothered himself about it.  It wasn't
until Walker had used magic against the shell of his enclosure that he
had roused himself.

Not even using magic against the Rake had made any difference to him.

But now, Walker believed, he was curious-and that was why they had been
brought inside ...

Walker caught himself.  He had missed something.  Nothing was going to
happen if they just stood there in the darkness, not if they waited all
that day and all the next.  The Stone King had brought them inside for
a reason.  He had brought them inside to see what they would do.

Or, perhaps, could do.

He reached out with his good arm to grip first Morgan and then
Quickening and bent their heads gently to press close against his
own.

"Whatever happens, Quickening," he whispered, speaking only to the
girl, his voice so soft it was barely audible, "remember your vow to do
nothing to reveal that you have any use of the magic."

Then he released them, stepped away, brought up his hand, snapped his
fingers, and sparked a single silver flame to life.

They looked about.  They were standing in a tunnel that ran forward a
short distance to an opening.  Holding the flame before him, Walker led
them forward.  When they reached the tunnel's end, he extinguished the
flame, summoned his magic a se( ond time, and sent a scattering of
silver fire into the darkness.

Walker inhaled sharply.  The shower of light flew into the unknown,
soaring through the shadows, chasing them as it went, and rising until
everything about them lay revealed.  They stood at the entrance to a
vast rotunda, an arena ringed by row upon row of seats that lifted away
into the gloom.  The roof of the dome stretched high overhead, its
rafters of stone arcing downward from peak to foundation.

Lines of stairs ran upward to the rows of seats, and railings encircled
the arena.  The arena and stands, like the rafters, were stone, ancient
and worn by time, hard and flat against the darkness that cloaked
them.

A string of shadowed tunnels similar to the one that had admitted them
opened through the stands, black holes that burrowed and disappeared.

At the very center of the arena stood a massive stone statue,
rough-hewn and barely recognizable, of a man hunched over in thought.

Walker let the fire settle in place, its light extending.  The dome was
vast and empty, silent save for the sound of their footfalls, seemingly
bereft of any life but their own.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw
Morgan start forward and reached out quickly to hold him back.

Quickening moved over to take the Highlander's arm protectively in her
own.  Walker's gaze swept the arena, the black tunnels that opened onto
it, the stands that surrounded it, the rafters and ceiling, and then
the arena again.

He stopped when he reached the statue.  Nothing moved.  But there was
something there.  He could feel it, more strongly now than before, the
same presence he had sensed when he had stood without.

He started forward, slowly, cautiously.  Morgan and Quickening
trailed.

He was momentarily in command of matters now, Quickening's deference in
some way become an acknowledgment of her need.  She was not to use
magic.  She was to rely on him.  He discovered an unexpected strength
of resolution in the fact that he had made her dependent on him.  There
was no time now for drifting, for self-doubts and fears, or for the
uncertainties of who and what he was meant to be.  A fiery
determination burned through him.  It was better this way, he realized,
better to be in command, to accept responsibility for what was to
happen.  It had always been that way.  At that moment he understood for
the first time in his life that it always would.

The statue loomed directly before them, a massive chunk of stone that
seemed to defy the light Walker had evoked to defuse the darkness.

The thinker faced away from them, a gnarled and lumpish form, kneeling
half-seated and halfslumped, one arm folded across his stomach, the
second closed to a fist and cocked to brace his chin.  It might have
been intended that there be a cloak thrown about him or he might simply
have been covered with hair; it was impossible to discern.

There was no writing on the base he rested upon; indeed, it was a
rather awkward pedestal that seemed to join the legs of the statue to
the dome's floor as if the rock had simply melted away once upon a
distant time.

They reached the statue and began to circle it.  The face came slowly
into view.  It was a monster's face, ravaged and pocked, a mass of
protuberances and knots, all misshapen in the manner of a sculpture
partially formed and then abandoned.

Eyes of stone stared blankly from beneath a glowering brow.

There was horror written in the statue's features; there were demons
captured in the shaping that could never be dislodged.

Walker glanced away uneasily to search again the dome's shadows.

The silence winked back at him.

Suddenly Quickening stopped, freezing in place like a startled deer.

"Walker," she whispered, her voice a low hiss.

She was looking at the statue.  Walker wheeled catlike to follow her
gaze.

The eyes of the statue had shifted to fix on him.

He heard Morgan's blade clear its sheath in a rasp of metal.

The statue's misshapen head began moving, the stone grating eerily as
it shifted, not breaking off or cracking, but rearranging somehow, as
if become both solid and liquid.  The grating echoed through the hollow
shelf of the dome like the shifting of massive mountain boulders in a
slide.  Arms moved and shoulders followed.  The torso swiveled, the
stone rubbing and grinding until the short hairs on Walker's neck were
rigid.

Then it spoke, mouth opening, stone rubbing on stone.

-Who are you Walker did not reply, so astonished at what he was seeing
that he could not manage to answer.  He simply stood there,
dumbfounded.  The statue was alive, a thing of stone, frighten ingly
shaped by a madman's hand, lacking blood and flesh, yet somehow
alive.

In the next instant he realized what he was seeing and even then he
could not speak the creature's name.  It was Quickening who spoke for
him.

"Uhl Belk " she whispered.

-Who are you Quickening stepped forward, looking tiny and insignificant
in the shadow of the Stone King, her silver hair swept back.

"I am called Quickening," she replied.  Her voice, surprisingly strong
and steady, reverberated through the stillness.

"These are my companions, Walker Boh and Morgan Leah.  We have come to
Eldwist to ask you to return the Black Elfstone."

The head shifted slightly, stone crackling and grinding.

-The Black Elfstone belongs to me "No, Uhl Belk.  It belongs to the
Druids.  You stole it from them.  You stole it from the Hall of Kings
and brought it into Eldwist.  Now you must give it back."

There was a long pause before the Stone King spoke again.

-Who are you "I am no one."

-Have you magic to use against me "No."

-What of these others, do they have magic "Only a little.  Morgan Leah
once had use of a sword given him by the Druids which possessed the
magic of the Hadeshorn.

But it is broken now, the blade shattered, and its magic failed.

Walker Boh once had the use of magic he inherited from his ancestors,
from the Eiven house of Shannara.  But he lost the use of most of that
magic when he suffered damage to his arm and his spirit.

He has yet to gain it back.  No, they have no magic that can harm
you."

Walker was so astonished he could barely credit what he was hearing.

In a matter of seconds, Quickening had undone them completely.  She had
revealed not only what it was that they had come to find but also that
they lacked any reasonable chance of gaining possession of it.  She had
admitted that they were virtually powerless against this spirit
creature, that they were unable to force it to comply with their
demands.  She had removed even the possibility that they might run a
bluff.  What was she thinking?

Uhl Belk was apparently wondering the same thing.

-1 am to give up the Black Elfstone simply because you ask me to do so,
give it up to three mortals of finite lives, a girl with no magic, a
one-armed man, and a swordsman with a broken blade "It is necessary,
Uhl Belk."

-1 determine what is necessary in the Kingdom of Eldwist; I am the law
and the power that enforces that law; there is no right but mine and
therefore no necessity but mine; who would dare say no to me; not any
of you; you are as insignificant as the dust that blows across the
surface of my skin and washes into the sea He paused.

-The Black Elfstone is mine Quickening did not respond this time, but
simply continued to stare into the Stone King's scarred eyes.  Uhl
Belk's massive body shifted again, moving as if mired in quicksand, the
stone grinding resolutely, a wheel of time and certainty given the skin
of substance.

-You He pointed to Walker, a finger straightening.

-The Asphim claimed a part of you; I can sense its stink pon your body;
yet somehow you still live; are you a Druid"No," Quickening answered
instantly.  "He is a messenger of the Druids, sent by them to recover
the Black Elfstone.  His Eiven magic saved him from the poison of the
Asphim.  His claim to the Black Elfstone is the rightful one, granted
him by the Druids."

-The Druids are all dead Quickening said nothing, waiting for the Stone
King, standing fearlessly beneath him.  A sudden movement of one
massive arm and she would be crushed.  She seemed unconcerned.

Walker glanced quickly at Morgan, but the Highlander's eyes were on the
face of Uhl Belk, transfixed by the ugliness of it, hypnotized by the
power he saw there.  He wondered what he was expected to do.

Anything?  He wondered suddenly what he was doing there at all.

Then the Stone King spoke again, a slow rasping in the silence.

-1 have been alive forever and I will live on long after you are dust;
I was created by the Word and I have survived all that were given life
with me save one and that one will soon be gone as well; I care nothing
for the world in which I exist save for the preservation of that over
which I was given dominioneternal stone; it is stone that weathers all
things, that is unchanging and fixed and therefore as close to
perfection as life can achieve; I am the giver of stone to the world
and the architect of what is to become; I use all necessary means to
see that my purpose is fulfilled; therefore I took the Black Elfstone
and made it mine The dome echoed with his words, and then the echoes
died away into silence.  The shadows were lengthening already as
Walker's light began slowly to fail, the magic fading.  Walker felt the
futility of what they were about.  Morgan's sword arm had lowered
uselessly to his side; what purpose was there in trying to employ a
weapon of iron against something as ancient and immutable as this?

Only Quickening seemed to believe there was any hope.

-The Druids were as nothing compared to me; their precautions to hide
and protect their magic were futile; I left the Asphim to show my
disdain for what they had attempted to do; they were believers in the
laws of nature and evolution, foolish purveyors of the creed of change;
they died and left nothing; stone is the only element of the earth's
body that endures, and I shall live in that stone forever "Constant,"
Quickening whispered.

-Yes "Eternal.  -Yes "But what of your trust, Uhl Belk?  What of
that?

You have disdained to be that which you were created-a balancing force,
a preservationist of the world as it was created to be."  Her voice was
low and compelling, a web weaving images that seemed to take form and
shimmer in the dead air before her.  "I was told your story.

You were given life to preserve life; that was the trust given you by
the Word.  Stone preserves nothing of life.

You were not instructed to transform, yet you have taken it upon
yourself to subvert everything, to alter forever the composition of
life upon the land, to change living matter to stoneall this to create
an extension of who and what you are.  And look what it has done to
you."

She braced herself against the anger already forming on the Stone
King's brow.  "Give back the Black Elfstone, Uhl Belk.  Let us help you
become free again."

The massive stone creature shifted on his bed of rock, joints grating,
the sounds cracking through the arena as if some invisible audience
sought to respond.  Uhl Belk spoke, and his voice had a new and
frightening edge to it.

-You are more than you pretend to be; I am not deceived; yet it does
not matter; I care nothing for who you are or what you want; I admitted
you to me so that I might examine you; the magic with which you touched
me caught my attention and made me curious as to who you might be; but
I need nothing from you; I need nothing from any living thing; I am
complete; think of me as the land on which you walk and you as the
tiniest of fleas that live upon me; if you should become a bother I
will eliminate you in an instant; if you should survive this day you
will probably not survive another The great brow knitted, and the
gnarled face re-formed its ridges and lines.

-What am I if not the whole of your existence; look about you and I am
everything you see; look where you stand within Eldwist and I am
everything you touch; I have made myself so; I have made myself one
with the land I create; I am free of all else and shall ever be
Suddenly Walker Boh understood.  Uhl Belk wasn't a living thing in the
conventional sense of the words.  He was a spirit in the same way as
the King of the Silver River.  He was more than the statue that
crouched before them.  He was everything they walked upon; he was the
entire Kingdom of Eldwist.  The stone was his skin, he had said-a part
of his living self.  He had found a way to infuse himself into
everything he created, ensuring his permanency in a way that nothing
else could.

But that meant he was a prisoner as well.  That was why he didn't rise
to greet them or come hunting for them or involve himself directly in
any way in what they were about.  That was why his legs were sunk down
into the stone.  Mobility was beyond him, an indulgence meant for
lesser creatures.  He had evolved into something greater; he had
evolved into his own world.  And it held him trapped.

"But you are not free, are you?"  Quickening questioned boldly, as if
reading Waiker's thoughts.  "if you were, you would give us the Black
Elfstone, for you would have no real need of it."  Her voice was hard
and insistent.  "But you cannot do that, can you, Uhl Belk?  You need
the Black Elfstone to stay alive.

Without it, the Maw Grint would have you."

-No "Without it, the Maw Grint would destroy you."

-No "Without it -No A stone fist crashed downward, barely missing the
girl, shattering a portion of the ground next to her, sending jagged
cracks along its surface for a hundred yards in every direction.

The Stone King shuddered as if stricken.

"The Maw Grint is your child, Uhl Belk," Quickening continued, ramrod
straight before him, as if it were she who had the size and the power
and not the Stone King.  "But your child does not obey you."

-You know nothing; the Maw Grint is an extension of me, as is
everything in Eldwist an extension of me; it has no life except what I
would give; it serves my purpose and no other, turning the lands
adjoining and all that live within them to stone, the permanency of
myself The girl's black eyes were bright and quick.  "And the Black
Elfstone?"

The Stone King's voice was resonant with some strange mix of emotions
that refused to be identified.

-The Black Elfstone allows The jagged mouth ground closed and the Stone
King hunched down into himself, limbs and body knotting together as
though they might disappear into a single massive rock.

"Allows?"  Quickening breathed softly.

The flat, empty eyes lifted.

-Watch The word reverberated like a splitting of the Stone King's
soul.

Rock grated and ground once more, and the wall of the dome behind them
parted.  Gray, hazy daylight spilled through as if to flee the steady
curtain of rain that fell without.  Clouds and mist drifted past,
bending and twisting about the buildings that loomed beyond, cloaking
them as if they were a gathering of frozen giants set patiently at
watch.  An eerie wall burst from the Stone King's mouth and it filled
the emptiness of the city with a sound like a thin sheet of metal
vibrating in the wind.  It rose and died quickly, but its echo lingered
as if it would last forever.

-Watch They heard the Maw Grint before they saw it, its approach
signaled by a rumble deep beneath the city's streets that rose steadily
as the creature neared, a low growl building to a roar that jolted
everything and brought the three from Rampling Steep to their knees.

The Maw Grint burst into view, shattering apart the stone that was Uhl
Belk's skin, splitting it wide just beyond the wall of the dome, just
without the opening through which they stared wide-eyed and helpless.

They could see the Stone King flinch with pain.  The Maw Grint rose and
seemed to keep rising, a leviathan of impossible size that dwarfed even
the buildings themselves, swaying like a snake, a loathsome cross
between burrowing worm and serpent, as black as pitch with foul liquid
oozing from a rock-encrusted body, eyeless, headless, its mouth a
sucking hole that seemed intent on drinking first the rain and then the
air itself.  It shot into view with a suddenness that was terrifying
and filled the void of the dome's opening like a wave of darkness that
would collapse it completely.

Walker Boh went cold with disbelief and horror.  The Maw Grint wasn't
real; it was impossible even to imagine such a thing.

For the first time in his life he wanted to run.  He watched Morgan
Leah stagger back and drop to his knees.  He watched Quickening freeze
in place.  He felt himself lose strength and only barely managed to
keep from failing.  The Maw Grint writhed against the skyline, a great
spineless mass of black ooze that nothing could withstand.

IN

Yet the Stone King did not waver.  A thick, gnarled hand lifted, the
one that had cradled his chin when they had thought him a statue, and
the fingers slowly began to open.  Light burst forth-yet it was light
the like of which none of them had ever seen.  It sprayed in all
directions at first and did not illuminate in the manner of ordinary
light but instead turned everything it touched dark.

This is not light, Walker Boh realized as he fought to hold back a
flood of sensations that threatened to overwhelm him.

This is the absence of light!

Then the fingers of the Stone King spread wide, and they could see what
he held.  It was a perfectly formed gemstone, its center as black and
impenetrable as night.  The stone glittered as it reflected the thin
streamers of gray daylight and let not even the smallest trace pass
within.  It looked tiny cradled in Uhl Belk's massive stone palm, but
the darkness it cast stretched away into the farthest corners of the
dome, into the deepest recesses, seeking out and enveloping the whole
of Walker's scattered luminescence so that in a matter of seconds the
only light remaining came from the rent in the dome's stone skin.

Walker Bob felt his own magic stir within him in recognition.

They had found the Black Elfstone.

Uhl Belk cried out then, a thundering howl that rose above even the
sounds of the Maw Grint's coming, of the wind and the rain and the sea
far beyond, and he thrust the Black Elfstone before him.  The blackness
gathered and tightened into a single band that shot forward to strike
the Maw Grint.  The Maw Grint did not resist.  Instead, it simply hung
there, transfixed.  It shuddered-pained and pleasured both somehow,
wracked with feelings that the humans crouched before it could only
imagine.  It twisted, and the blackness twisted in response.  The
blackness spread, widening, flowing out, then back again, until the
Stone King was enveloped as well.  They could hear him groan, then sob,
again with feelings that were mixed in some veiled way, not clearly
defined and not meant to be.  The Effstone's magic joined them, father
and son, monsters each, a substanceless lock that bound them as surely
as iron chains.

What is happening?  Walker Boh wondered.  What is the magic doing to
them?

Then the nonfight disappeared, a line of shadow fading, steadily
dissipating like ink soaking into and through white netting, the air
brightening until the daylight returned and the link between the Stone
King and the Maw Grint had vanished.

The Maw Grint sank from sight, oozing back into the earth.

The hole that it had made closed after it, the stone knitting into
place, as smooth and hard as before, leaving the street whole again,
creating the illusion that nothing at all had happened.  The rain
washed away all traces of the creature's coming, streams of water
loosening the greenish film of poison secreted from its body and
carrying it from sight.

Uhl Belk's fingers closed once more about the Black Elfstone, his eyes
lidded, his face transformed in a way that Walker could not describe,
as if he had been made over somehow, created anew.  Yet he was more
frightening looking than ever, his features harsher, less human, and
more a part of the rock that encased him.  He withdrew the Effstone,
his hand clasping it tightly to his body.  His voice tumbled.

-Do you see They did not, not even Quickening.  The puzzlement in her
dark eyes was evident.  They stood mute before the Stone King, all
three, feeling tiny and uncertain.

"What has happened to your Uhl Belk?"  the girl asked finally.

Rain hammered down, and the wind ripped through the dome's rent.

-Go The massive pitted head began to turn away, the stone grating
ominously.

"You must give us the Black Elfstone!"  Quickening shouted.

-The Black Elfstone is mine "The Shadowen will take it from you-just as
you took it from the Druids!"

Uhl Belk's voice was weary, disinterested.

-The Shadowen are children; you are all children; you do not concern
me; nothing that you do can harm or affect me; look at me; I am as old
as the world and I shall last as long; you shall be gone in the blink
of an eye; take yourselves out of my city; if you remain, if you come
to me again, if I am disturbed by you in any way, I shall summon the
Rake to dispose of you and you shall be swept away at once The floor
rippled beneath them, a shudder that sent them tumbling backward toward
the opening in the wall.  The Stone King had flinched the way an animal
would in an effort to shed itself of some bothersome insect.

Walker Bob rose, pulling Quickening back with him, beckoning to
Morgan.

There was nothing to be gained by staying.  They would not have the
Black Elfstone this day-if indeed ever.  Uhl Belk was a creature
evolved far beyond any other.  He was right; what could they do that
would harm or affect him?

Yet Quickening seemed unconvinced.  "It is you who shall be swept
away!"  she shouted as they backed through the opening into the
street.

She was shaking.  "Listen to me, Uhl Belk!"

The craggy face was turned again into shadow, the massive shoulders
hunched down, the thinker's pose resumed.  There was no response.

Standing outside in the rain they watched the wall seal over, the skin
knit, the rent fade away as if it had never been.  In moments the dome
was an impenetrable shell once more.

Morgan moved to place his hands on Quickening's shoulders.  The girl
seemed unaware of him, a thing of stone herself.

The Highlander leaned close and began whispering.

Walker Bob moved away from them.  When he was alone, he turned once
again to face Uhl Belk's haven.  A fire consumed him and at the same
time he felt detached.  He was there and he was not.  He realized that
he no longer knew himself.  He had become an enigma he could not
solve.

His thoughts tightened like a cinched cord.  The Stone King was an
enemy that none of them could defeat.  He was not simply ruler of a
city; he was the city itself.  Uhl Belk had become Eldwist.  He was a
whole world, and no one could change an entire world.  Not Allanon or
Cogline or all of the Druids put together.

Rain streamed down his face.  No one.

Yet he already knew that he was going to try.

E ELL HAD CHANGED his mind twice before finally settling the matter.

Now he slipped down the darkening street and ducked into the doorway of
the building in which the others had concealed themselves with his
misgivings comfortably stowed.  Rain dripped from his cloak, staining
the stone of the stairs he followed, tracking his progress in a steady,
meandering trail.  He paused at the landing to listen, heard nothing,
and went on.  The others were probably out searching.  There or not, it
made no difference to him.  Sooner or later, they would return.  He
could wait.

He passed down the hallway without bothering to conceal his approach
and stalked through the doorway of their hiding place.  At first glance
the room appeared empty, but his instincts warned him instantly that he
was being watched and he stopped a dozen feet through.  Shadows dappled
the room in strange patterns, clustered about haphazardly as if stray
children chased inside by the weather.  The patter of the rain sounded
steadily in the silence as Pe Ell stood waiting.

Then Horner Dees appeared, slipping noiselessly from the shadows of a
doorway to one side, moving with a grace and ease that belied his bulky
frame.  He was scratched and bruised and his clothing was torn.

He looked as if some animal had gotten hold of him.  He fixed Pe Ell
with his grizzled look, as rough and suspicious as ever, an ageing bear
come face to face with a familiar enemy.

"You constantly amaze me," Pe Ell said, meaning it, still curious about
this troublesome old man.

Dees stopped, keeping his distance.  "Thought we'd seen the last of
you," he growled.

"Did you, now?"  Pe Ell smiled disarmingly, then moved across the room
to where a collection of withered fruits sat drying in a makeshift
bowl.  He picked one up and took a bite.

It was bitter tasting, but edible.  "Where are the others?"

"Out and about," Dees answered.  "What difference does it make to
you?"

Pe Ell shed his damp cloak and seated himself.  "None.  What happened
to you?"

"I fell down a hole.  Now what do you want?"

Pe Ell's smile stayed in place.  "A little help."

It was difficult to tell if Horner Dees was surprised or not; he
managed to keep his face from showing anything but seemed at a
momentary loss for a response.  He hunched down a few inches, as if
settling himself against an attack, studied Pe Ell wordlessly, then
shook his head.

"I know you, Pe Ell," he declared softly.  "I remember you from the old
days, from the time you were just beginning.  I was with the Federation
then, a Tracker, and I knew you.  Rimmer Dal] had plans for me as well;
but I decided not to go along with them.  I saw you once or twice, saw
you come and go, heard the rumors about you."  He paused.

"I just want you to know."

Pe Ell finished the fruit and tossed the pit aside.  He wasn't sure how
he felt about this unexpected revelation.  He guessed it really didn't
matter.  At least now he had an inkling of what it was that bothered
him so about Dees.

"I don't remember you," he said finally.  "Not that it matters."

The hatchet face inclined away from the light.  'Just so we understand
each other, Rimmer Dall's plans for me didn't work out quite as he
expected either.  I do what I choose.  I always have."

Dees rugged face nodded.  "You kill people."

Pe Ell shrugged.  "Sometimes.  Are you frightened?"

The other man shook his head.  "Not of you."

"Good.  Then if we've finished with that topic of conversation, let's
move back to the other.  I need a little help.  Care to lend me
some?"

Horner Dees stood mute a moment, then moved over to seat himself.

He settled down with a grunt and stared at Pe Ell without speaking,
apparently assessing the offer.  That was fine with Pe Ell.

He had thought the matter through carefully before coming back,
weighing the pros and cons of abandoning his plan of entering the
Rake's shelter alone, of seeking assistance in determining whether or
not the Stone King hid within.  He had nothing to hide, no intention to
deceive.  It was always best to take a straightforward approach when
you could.

Dees stirred.  "I don't trust you."

Pe Ell laughed tonelessly.  "I once told the Highlander he was a fool
if he did.  I don't care if you trust me; I'm not asking for your
trust.  I'm asking for your help."

Dees was intrigued despite himself.  "What sort of help?"

Pe Ell hid his satisfaction.  "Last night I tracked the Rake to its
lair.  I watched it enter, saw where it hides.  I believe it likely
that where the Rake hides, the Stone King hides as well.  When the Rake
goes out tonight to patrol the streets of the city, I intend to go in
for a look."

He shifted forward, bringing Dees into the circle of his confidence.

"There is a catch that releases a door through which the Rake passes.

If I trip it, I should be able to go in.  The trouble is, what if the
door closes behind me?  How will I get out?"

Dees rubbed his bearded chin, digging at the thick whiskers as though
they itched.  "So you want someone to watch your back for you."

"It seems like a good idea.  I had planned to go in alone, to confront
the Stone King, kill him if need be, and take the Stone.

That's still my plan, but I don't want to have to worry about the Rake
crawling up my back when I'm not watching."

"so you want me to watch for you."

"Afraid?"

"You keep asking that.  Fact is, I should be asking you.  Why should
you trust me?  I don't like you, Pe Ell.  I'd be just as happy if the
Rake would get you.  That makes me a poor choice for this job, don't
you think?"

Pe Ell unfolded his legs and stretched his lean body back against the
wall.  "Not necessarily.  You don't have to like me.  I don't have to
like you.  And I don't.  But we both want the same thing-the Black
Elfstone.  We want to help the girl.  Doesn't seem likely either of us
can do much alone-although I have a better chance than you do.  The
point is, if you give your word that you will keep watch for me, I
think that's what you'll do.

Because your word means something to you, doesn't it?"

Dees laughed dryly.  "Don't tell me you're about to make a plea to my
sense of honor.  I don't think I could stomach that."

Pe Ell quit smiling.  "I have my own code of honor, old man, and it
means every bit as much to me as yours does to you.  If I give my word,
I keep it.  That's more than most can say.  I'm telling you I'll watch
out for you if you watch out for me-just until this business is
finished.  After that, we each go back to watching out for
ourselves."

He cocked his head.  "Time is slipping away.  We have to be in place by
sunset.  Are you coming or not?"

Horner Dees took a long time to answer.  Pe Ell would have been
surprised and suspicious if he had not.  Whatever else Dees was, he was
an honest man, and Pe Ell was certain he would not enter into an
arrangement he did not think he could abide by.

Pe Ell trusted Dees; he wouldn't have asked the old man to watch his
back if he didn't.  Moreover, he thought Dees capable, the best choice
of all, in some ways, not inexperienced like the Highlander or flighty
like Carisman.  Nor was he unpredictable like Walker Bob.  Dees was
nothing more nor less than what he appeared to be.

"I told the Highlander about you," Dees announced, watching.

"He's told the others by now."

Pe Ell shrugged once more.  "I don't care about that."  And he
didn't.

Dees hunched his heavy frame forward, squinting into the faint gray
light.  "If we get possession of the Stone, either of us, we bring it
back to the girl.  Your word."

Pe Ell smiled in spite of himself.  "You would accept my word, old
man?"

Dees' features were hard and certain.  "if you try to break it, I'll
find a way to make you sorry you did."

Pe Ell believed him.  Horner Dees, for all of being old and used up,
for the weathered look of him and the wear of the years, would be a
dangerous adversary.  A Tracker, a woodsman, and a hunter, Dees had
kept himself alive for a long time.  He might not be Pe Ell's equal in
a face-to-face confrontation, but there were other ways to kill a
man.

Pe Ell smiled inwardly.

Who should know better than he?

Pe Ell reached out his hand and waited for the old man to take it.

"We have a bargain," he said.  Their hands tightened, held momentarily
and broke.  Pe Ell came to his feet like a cat.

"Now let's be off."

They went out the door of the room and down the stairs again, Pe Ell
leading.  The gloom without had thickened, the darkness growing
steadily as nightfall approached.  They hunched their cloaked shoulders
against the rain and started away.  Pe Ell's thoughts drifted to his
bargain.  It had been an easy one to make.  He would return the
Elfstone to the girl because not to do so would be to risk losing her
completely and to face an eternity of being tracked by all of them.

Never leave your enemies alive to follow after you, he thought.

Better to kill them when you had the chance.

DAYLIGHT WAS FADING rapidly by the time Walker, Morgan, and Quickening
approached the building Pe Ell and Horner Dees had vacated less than an
hour earlier.  The rain was failing steadily, a dark curtain that
shaded the tall, sornber buildings of the city, that masked away the
skies and the mountains and the sea.

Morgan walked with his arm protectively encircling the girl's
shoulders, his head lowered to hers, two shadowed and hooded figures
against the mist.  Walker stayed apart, leaving them to each other.  He
saw how Quickening leaned into the Highlander.

She seemed to welcome his embrace, an uncharacteristic response.

Something had happened to her during the confrontation with the Stone
King that he had missed, and he was only now beginning to make sense of
what it was.

A thick stream of rainwater clogged the gutter ahead, blocking the
walkway's end like a moat, and he was forced to move outside and around
it.  He was leading still, choosing their path, his cloaked form
darkened by rain and gloom.  A wraith, perhaps, he thought.  A
Grimpond, he corrected.  He had not thought of the Grimpond for a long
time, the memory too painful to retrieve from the corner of his mind to
which he had confined it.  Iti;was the Grimpond with its twisted
riddles who had led him to the Hall of Kings and his encounter with the
Asphim.  It was the Grimpond who had cost him his arm, his spirit, and
something of what he had been.  Wounded in body and spirit-that was how
he saw himself.  It would make the Grimpond glad if it knew.

He lifted his face momentarily and let the rain wash over it, cooling
his skin.  He hadn't thought it possible to be so hot in such dank
weather.

It was the Grimpond's visions, of course, that haunted himthe three
dark and enigmatic glimpses of the future, not accurate necessarily,
lies twisted into half-truths, truths shaded by lies, but real.  The
first had already come to pass; he had sworn he would cut off his hand
before he would take up the Druid cause and that was exactly what he
had done.  Then he had taken up the cause anyway.

Ironic, poetic, terrifying.

The second vision was of Quickening.  The third ...

His good hand clenched.  The truth was, he never got beyond thinking
about the second.  Quickening.  In some way, he would fail her.  She
would reach out to him for help, he would have the chance to save her
from falling, and he would let her die.  He would stand there and watch
her tumble away into some dark abyss.  That was the Grimpond's
vision.

That was what would come to pass unless he could find a way to prevent
it.

He had not, of course, been able to prevent the first.

Disgust filled him, and he banished his memory of the Grimpond back to
the distant corner from which it had been set loose.  The Grimpond, he
reminded himself, was itself a lie.  But, then, wasn't he a lie as
well?  Wasn't that what he had become, so determined to keep himself
clear of Druid machinations, so ready to disdain all use of the magic
except that which served to sustain his own narrow beliefs, and so
certain that he could be master of his own destiny?  He had lied to
himself repeatedly, deceived himself knowingly, pretended all things,
and made his life a travesty.  He was mired in his misconceptions and
pretenses.  He was doing what he had sworn he would never do-the work
of the Druids, the recovery of their magic, the undertaking of their
will.  Worse, he was committed to a course of action which could only
result in his destructions confrontation with the Stone King to take
back the Black Elfstone.  Why?

He was clinging to this course of action as if it were the only thing
that would stop his drifting, as if it were all that was left that
would keep him from drowning, the only choice that remained.

Surely it was not.

He peered through the damp at the city and realized again how much he
missed the forestlands of Hearthstone.  It was more than the city's
stone, its harsh and oppressive feel, its constant mist and rain.

There was no color in Eldwist, nothing to wash clean his sight, to
brighten and warm his spirit.  There were only shadings of gray, a
blurring of shadows layered one upon another.  He felt himself in some
way a mirror of the city.  Perhaps Uhl Belk was changing him just as he
changed the land, draining off the colors of his life, reducing him to
something as hard and lifeless as stone.  How far could the Stone King
reach?  he wondered.  How deep into your soul?  Was there any limit?

Could he stretch his arms out all the way to Darklin Reach and
Hearthstone?  Could he find a human heart?  In time, probably.  And
time was nothing to a creature that had lived so long.

They crossed to the front entry of their after-dark refuge and began to
climb the stairs.  Because Walker led, he saw the stains of rainwater
preceding him on the stone steps that his own trailing dampness masked
to those following.  Someone had entered and gone out again recently.

Horner Dees?  But Dees was supposedly already there and waiting for
their return.

They moved down the maze of hallways to the room which served as their
base of operations.  The room was empty.  Walker's eyes swept the trail
of dampness to the shadows of the doors exiting through each wall; his
ears probed the quiet.  He crossed to where someone had seated himself
and eaten.

His instincts triggered unexpectedly.

He could almost smell Pe Ell.

"Horner?  Where are you?"  Morgan was peering into other rooms and
corridors, calling for the old Tracker.  Walker met Quickening's gaze
and said nothing.  The Highlander ducked out momentarily, then back in
again.  "He said he would wait right here.  I don't understand."

"He must have changed his mind," Walker offered quietly.

Morgan looked unconvinced.  "I think I'll take a took around."

He went out the door they had come through, leaving the Dark Uncle and
the daughter of the King of the Silver River staring at each other in
the gloom.

"Pe Ell was here," she said, her black eyes locked on his.

He let the fire of her gaze warm him; he felt that familiar sense of
kinship, of shared magics.  "I don't sense a struggle," he said.

"There is no blood, no disruption."

Quickening nodded soberly and waited.  When he didn't speak further,
she crossed to stand before him.  "What are you thinking, Walker
Bob?"

she asked, discomfort in her eyes.  "What have you been thinking all
the way back, so lost within yourself ?"

Her hands reached out to take his arm, to hold it tight.  Her face
lifted and the silver hair tumbled back, bathed in the weak gray
light.

"Tell me."

He felt himself laid bare, a thin, rumpled, battered life with barely
enough strength remaining to keep from crumbling entirely.  The ache in
him stretched from his severed limb to his heart, physical and
emotional both, an all-encompassing wave that threatened to sweep him
away.

"Quickening."  He spoke her name softly, and the sound of it seemed to
steady him.  "I was thinking you are more human than you would
admit."

Puzzlement flashed across her perfect features.

He smiled, sad, ironic.  "I might be a poor judge of such things, less
responsive than I should be, a refugee from years of growing up a boy
with no friends and few companions, of living alone too much.  But I
see something of myself in you.  You are frightened by the feelings you
have discovered in yourself.  YOU admit to possessing the human
emotions your father endowed you with when he created you, but you
disdain to accept what you perceive to be their consequences.  You love
the Highlander-yet you try to mask it.  You shut it away.  You despise
Pe Ell-yet you play with him as a lure would a fish.  You grapple with
your emotions, yet refuse to acknowledge them.  You work so hard to
hide from your feelings."

Her eyes searched his.  "I am still learning."

"Reluctantly.  When you confronted the Stone King, you were quick to
state what had brought you.  You told him everything; you hid
nothing.

There was no attempt at deception or ruse.  Yet when Uhl Belk refused
your demand-as you surely knew he would-you grew angry, almost .  .

."

He searched for the word.  "Almost frantic," he finished.  "It was the
first time I can remember when you allowed your feelings to surface
openly, without concern for who might witness them."

He saw a flicker of understanding in her eyes.  "Your anger was real,
Quickening.  It was a measure of your pain.  I think you wanted Uhl
Belk to give you the Black Elfstone because of something you believe
will happen if he does not.  Is that so?"

She hesitated, torn, then let her breath escape slowly, wearily.

"Yes."

"You believe that we will gain the Effstone.  I know that you do.

You believe it because your father told you it would be so."

"Yes."

"But you also believe, as he told you, that it will require the magics
of those you brought with you to secure it.  No amount of talking, no
manner of persuasion, will convince Uhl Belk to give it up.

Yet you felt you had to try."

Her eyes were stricken.  "I am frightened Her voice caught.

He bent close.  "Of what?  Tell me."

Morgan Leah appeared in the doorway.  He slowed, watched Walker Boh
draw back from Quickening, and completed his entrance.  "Nothing," he
said.  "No sign of Horner.  It's dark out now; the Rake will be
about.

I'll have to postpone any search until tomorrow."  He came up to them
and stopped.  "Is something wrong?"  he asked quietly.

"No," said Quickening.

"Yes," said Walker.

Morgan stared.  "Which is it?"

Walker Boh felt the shadows of the room close about, as if darkness had
descended all at once, intending to trap them there.

They stood facing one another across a void, the Highlander, the Dark
Uncle, and the girl.  There was a sense of having reached an expected
crossroads, of now having to choose a path which offered no return, of
having to make a decision from which there was no retreat.

"The Stone King .  Quickening began in a whisper.

"We're going back for the Black Elfstone," Walker Boh finished.

BAP,FLY A MILF AWAY, at a window two floors up in a building fronting
the lair of the Rake, Pe Ell and Horner Dees waited for the Creeper to
emerge.  They had been in position for some time, settled carefully
back in the shadows with the patience of experienced hunters.

The rain had stopped finally, turned to mist as the air cooled and
stilled.  A thin vapor rose off the stone of the streets in wisps that
curled upward like snakes.  From somewhere deep underground came the
faint rumble of the Maw Grint awakening.

Pe Ell was thinking of the men he had killed.  It was strange, but he
could no longer remember who they were.  For a time he had kept count,
first out of curiosity, later out of habit, but eventually the number
had grown so large and the passing of time so great that he simply lost
track.  Faces that had been clear in the beginning began to merge and
then to fade altogether.

Now it seemed he could remember only the first and the last clearly.

The fact that his victims had lost all sense of identity was
disconcerting.  It suggested that he was losing the sharpness of mind
that his work required.  It suggested that he was losing interest.

He stared into the blackness of the night and felt an unfamiliar
weariness engulf him.

He forced the weariness away irritably.  It would be different, he
promised himself, when he killed the girl.  He might forget the faces
of these others from Rampling Steep, the onearmed man, the Highlander,
the tunesmith, and the old Tracker; after all, killing them was nothing
more than a matter of necessity.  But he would never forget
Quickening.

Killing her was a matter of pride.  Even now he could visualize her as
clearly as if she was seated next to him, the soft curve and sweep of
the skin over her bones, the tilting of her face when she spoke, the
way her eyes drew you in, the weave and sway of her hands when they
moved.  Surely she was the most wondrous of creatures, spellbinding in
a way that defied explanation.  Hers was the magic of the King of the
Silver River and therefore as old as the beginning of life.  He wanted
to drink in that magic when he killed her; he believed he could.  Once
he had done so, she would be a part of him, living inside, a presence
stronger than even the most indelible memory, stirring within him as
nothing else could.

Horner Dees shifted softly beside him, relieving cramped muscles.

Still wrapped in his private thoughts, Pe Ell did not glance over.

He kept his eyes fixed on the flat surface of the hidden entry across
the street.  The shadows that cloaked it re.mained still and
unmoving.

What would happen when he slid the blade of the Stiehl into her body?

he wondered.  What would he see in those depthless black eyes?

What would he feel?  The anticipation of the moment burned through him
like fire.  He had not thought of killing her for some time, waiting
because he had no other choice if he was to secure the Black Elfstone,
letting events take matters where they would.  But the moment was close
now, he believed.

Once he had gained entry into the lair of the Rake, once he had
discovered the hiding place of the Stone King, once he had secured
possession of the Black Elfstone and disposed of Horner Dees ...

He jerked upright.

Despite his readiness he was startled when across the way the stone
panel lifted and the Rake emerged.  He quickly dispensed with all
further thoughts of Quickening.  The Creeper's dark body glimmered
where thin streamers of starlight managed to penetrate the blanket of
clouds and reflect off the plates of armor.  The monster stepped
through the entry, then paused momentarily as if something had alarmed
it.  Feelers lifted and probed the air tentatively; the whiplike tail
curled and snapped.

The two in hiding shrank lower into the shadows.  The Creeper remained
motionless a moment longer, then, apparently satisfied, reached back
and triggered the release overhead.  The stone ir panel slid silently
into place.  The Rake turned and scuttled away into the mist and gloom,
its iron legs scraping the stone like trailing chains.

Pe Ell waited until he was certain it was gone, then motioned for
Horner Dees to follow him.  Together they slipped down to the street,
crossed, and stood before the Rake's lair.  Dees pro duced the rope and
grappling hook he was carrying and flung them toward a stone
outcropping that projected above the secret entry.  The grappling hook
caught with a dull clank and held.

Dees tested the rope, nodded, and passed the end to Pe Ell.

Pe Ell climbed effortlessly, hand over hand, until he was level with
the release.  He triggered it, and the entry panel began to lift.

Pe Ell dropped down quickly and with Horner Dees beside him, watched
the black cave of the building's interior open into view.

Cautiously, they edged forward.

The entry ran back into deep shadow.  Faint gray light slipped through
the building's upper windows, seeped downward through gaps in the
ruined floors, and illuminated small patches of the blackness.

There was no sound from within.  There was no movement.

Pe Ell turned to Dees.  "Watch the street," he whispered.

"Whistle if there's trouble."

He moved into the blackness, fading into it as comfortably as if he
were one of its shadows.  He was immediately at home, confident within
its cloaking, his eyes and ears adjusting to its sweep.  The walls of
the building were bare and worn with age, damp in places where the rain
had seeped through the mortar and run down the stone, tall and rigid
against the faint light.  Pe Ell slipped ahead, picking his way slowly,
cautiously, waiting for something to show itself.  He sensed nothing;
the building seemed empty.

Something crunched underfoot, startling him.  He peered down into the
blackness.  Bones littered the floor, hundreds of them, the remains of
creatures the Rake had gathered in its nightly sweeps and carried back
to its lair to consume.

The entry turned down a vast corridor to a larger hall and ended.

No doors opened in, no passageways led out.  The hall had once been an
inner court and rose hundreds of feet through the building to a domed
ceiling speckled with strange light pat terns and the slow movement of
shadows thrown by the clouds.

The hall was silent.  Pe Ell stared about in distress.  He knew at once
that there was nothing to discover-not the Stone King, not the Black
Elfstone.  He had guessed wrong.  Anger and disappointment welled up
within him, forcing him to continue his search even after he knew it
was pointless.  He started toward the far wall, scanning the mortared
seams, the lines of floor and ceiling, desperate to find something.

Then Horner Dees whistled.

At almost the same moment Pe Ell heard the soft scrape of metal on
stone.

He wheeled instantly and darted back through the darkened hall.

The Rake had returned.  There was no reason for it to have done so
unless it had detected them.  How?  His mind raced, clawing back the
layers of confusion.  The Rake was blind, it relied on its other
senses.  It could not have seen them.  Could it have smelled them?  He
had his answer instantly.  Their scent about the doorway had alerted
it; that was why it had paused.

It had pretended to go out, waited, then circled back.

Pe Ell raged at his own stupidity.  If he didn't get out of there at
once, he would be trapped.

He burst into the darkened entry just in time to discover that he was
too late.  Through the raised door he caught a glimpse of the Rake
rounding the corner of the building across the way, moving as fast as
its metal legs would carry it toward its lair.  The rope and Horner
Dees were gone.  Pe Ell melted into the darkest section of one wall,
sliding forward soundlessly.

He had to reach the entrance and get past the Creeper before it
triggered the release.  If he failed, he would be caught in the
creature's lair.  Even the Stiehl would not be enough to save him
then.

The Rake rumbled up to the opening, iron claws rasping, and tentacles
lashing out against the stone walls, beginning its probe within.  Pe
Ell slipped the Stiehl free of its sheath and crouched down against the
dark.  He would have to be quick.

He was oddly calm, the way he was before a kill.  He watched the
monster fill the opening and start to move through.

At once he was up and running.  The Rake sensed him instantly, its
instincts even keener than Pe Ell's.  A tentacle lashed m out and
caught him, inches from the door.  The Stiehl whipped up, severing the
limb, freeing the assassin once more.  The Rake wheeled about,
huffing.

Pe El] tried to run, but there were snaking arms everywhere.

Then the grappling hook shot out of the darkness behind the advancing
Creeper, wrapping about its back legs.  The rope securing it went taut,
and the monster was jerked backward.  Its limbs flailed, and its claws
dug in.  For a moment its attention was diverted.  That moment was
enough.  Pe Ell was past it in a split second, racing into the street,
darting to safety.  Almost immediately Horner Dees was running beside
him, his bearish form laboring from the strain.  Behind them, they
heard the rope snap and the Rake start after in pursuit.

"Here!"  Dees yelled, pulling Pe Ell left into a gaping doorway.

They ran through an entry, up several flights of stairs, down a hall,
and out onto a back ramp that crossed to another building.  The Creeper
lumbered behind, smashing everything that blocked its way.  The men
hastened into the building at the end of the ramp and down a second set
of stairs to the street again.

The sounds of pursuit were beginning to fade.  They slowed, rounded a
corner, peered cautiously down the empty street, then followed the
walkway south several blocks to where a cluster of smaller buildings
offered an impassable warren into which they quickly crept.

Safe within, they slid down wearily, backs to the wall, side by side,
breathing heavily in the stillness.

"I thought you'd run," Pe Ell said, gasping.

Dees grunted, shook his head.  "I would have, but I gave my word.

What do we do now?"

Pe Ell's body steamed with sweat, but deep inside a cold fury was
building.  He could still feel the Rake's tentacle wrapped about his
body.  He could still feel it beginning to squeeze.  He experienced
such revulsion that he could barely keep from screaming aloud.

Nothing had ever come so close to killing him.

He turned to Horner Dees, watched the rough, bearded face furrow, the
eyes glitter.  Pe Ell's voice was chilly with rage.  "You can do what
you wish, old man," he whispered.  "But I'm going back and kill that
thing."

ORGAN LEAH WAS appalled.  "What do you mean we're going back?"  he
demanded of Walker Boh.  He was not just appalled; he was terrified.

"Who gave you the right to decide anything, Walker?  Quickening is
leader of this company, not you!"

"Morgan," the girl said softly.  She tried to take his hand, but he
stepped quickly away.

"No.  I want this settled.  What's going on here?  I leave the room for
just a moment, just long enough to make sure Horner isn't ...

and when I come back I find you close enough to .  . ."

He choked on the words, his brown face flushing as the impact of what
he was saying caught up with him.  "I .  . ."

"Morgan, listen to me," Quickening finished.  "We have to recover the
Black Elfstone.  We have to."

The Highlander's fists clenched helplessly.  He was aware of how
foolish he looked, how young.  He made a studied effort to contro
himself f. "if we go back there, Quickening, we will be killed.  We
didn't know what we were up against before; now we do.  Uhl Belk is too
much for us.  We all saw the same thinga creature changed into
something only vaguely human, armored in stone, and capable of brushing
us aside like we were nothing.  He's part of the land itself!  How do
we fight something like that?  He'll swallow us whole before we have a
chance even to get close!"

He forced his breathing to slow.  "And that's only if he doesn't call
the Maw Grint or the Rake first.  We,\ an't stand up to them let alone
him.  Think about it, will you?  What if he chooses to use the Elfstone
against us!  Then what do we do-you without any magic at all that you
can use, me with a broken sword that's lost most of its magic, and
Walker with ... I don't know, what?  With what, Walker?  What are
you?"

The Dark Uncle was unfazed by the attack, his pale face expressionless,
his eyes steady as they fixed on the Highlander.

"I am what I always was, Morgan Leah."

"Less an arm!"  Morgan snapped and regretted it immediately.

"No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that."

"But it is true," the other replied quietly.

Morgan looked away awkwardly for a moment, then back again.  "Look at
us," he whispered.  "We're barely alive.  We've trekked all the way to
the end of the world and it's just about finished us.  Carisman's
already dead.  Maybe Horner Dees as well.

We're beaten up.  We look like scarecrows.  We haven't had a bath in
weeks, unless you want to count getting rained on.  We're dressed in
rags.  We've been running and hiding so long we don't know how to fight
anymore.  We're caught in this gray, dismal world where all we see is
stone and rain and mist.  I hate this place.  I want to see trees and
grass and living things again.  I don't want to die here.  I especially
don't want to die when there is no reason for it!

And that's exactly what will happen if we go looking for the Stone
King.  Tell me, Walker, what chance do we have?"

To his surprise, Walker Boh said, "A better chance than you think.

Sit down a minute and listen."

Morgan hesitated, suspicion mirrored in his eyes.  Then Slowly he sat,
his anger and frustration momentarily spent.  He allowed Quickening to
move next to him again, to wrap her arms about him.  He let the heat of
her body soak through him.

Walker Boh crossed his legs before him and pulled his dark cloak
close.

"It is true that we appear to be little more than beggars off some
Southland city street, that we have nothing with which to threaten Uhl
Belk, that we are as insignificant to him as the smallest insects that
crawl upon the land.  But that appearance may be an illusion we can
use.  It may give us the chance we need to defeat him.  He sees us as
nothing.  He does not fear us.  He disdains to worry about us at all.

It is possible that he has already forgotten us.  He believes himself
invulnerable.  Perhaps we can use that against him."

The dark eyes were intense.  "He is not what he believes, Highlander.

He has evolved beyond the spirit creature he was born, beyond anything
he was intended to be.  I believe he has evolved even beyond the King
of the Silver River.  But his evolution has not been a natural one.

His evolution has been brought about by his usage of the Black
Elfstone.  It is ironic, but the Druids protected their magic better
than Uhl Belk realizes.  He thinks that he stole it easily and uses it
without consequence.  But he is wrong.  Just by calling up the
Elfstone's magic, he is destroying himself."

Morgan Leah stared.  "What are you talking about?"

"Listen to him, Morgan," Quickening cautioned, her soft face bent
close, her dark eyes expectant.

"I did not understand before today what it was that the Black Elfstone
was intended to do," Walker Bob continued, hurrying now, anxious to
complete his explanation.  "I was given the Druid History by Cogline
and told to read it.  I learned that the Black Elfstone existed and
that its purpose was to release Paranor from its spell and return it to
the world of men.  I learned from Quickening that the Black Elfstone's
magic was conceived to negate the effects of other magics-thus the
magic that seated away Paranor could be dispelled.

Such power, Highlander!  How could such power exist?  I kept wondering
if it was possible, and if possible, why the Druids-who were so careful
in such matters-took no better precautions to protect against its
misuse.  After all, the Black Elfstone was the only magic that could
restore their Keep, that could initiate the process that would restore
them to power.  Would they let that magic slip away so easily?  Would
they allow it to be utilized by others, even a creature as powerful as
Uhl Belk?

"I knew, of course, that they would not.  But how could they prevent
it?  Today I discovered the answer to that question.  I watched the
Stone King summon the Maw Grint; I watched what passed between father
and son.  Did you see it?  When Uhl Belk invoked the power of the
Stone, there was a binding of the two, a bringing together.  The magic
was a catalyst.  But what did it do?  I wondered.  It seemed to give
life to them both.  It was clearly addictive; they reveled in its
use.

The magic of the Black Elfstone was stronger than their own in the
moment of its release.  It was so strong that they could not resist
what it was doing to them; in fact, they welcomed its coming."

He paused, and his voice lowered to a guarded whisper, The room's
shadows cloaked them like conspirators.  "This is what I believe must
happen when the magic is invoked.  Yes, it negates whatever magic it is
directed against, just as the Druid History suggests, just as
Quickening was told by her father.  It confronts and steals away that
magic's power.  But it must do more.  It cannot simply cause the magic
to disappear.  It cannot take a magic and change it into air.

Something must happen to that magic.  The laws of nature require it.

What it does, I believe, is to absorb and transfer the effects of that
other magic to the user of the Stone.  When Uhl Belk turns the Black
Elfstone on the Maw Grint he takes his child's magic and makes it his
own; he takes the poison that transforms the land and its creatures to
stone and alters himself as well.  That is why he has evolved as he
has.  And perhaps even more important than that, each time he siphons
off a part of the Maw Grint's magic, Uhl Belk is brought close again
for a few moments to the son he created.

Using the Black Elfstone to share the Maw Grint's magic has given them
a bond they could not otherwise enjoy.  They hate and fear each other,
but they need each other as well.  They feed on each other, a giving
and taking that only the Black Elfstone can facilitate.  It is as close
as they can come to a father/ son relationship.  It is the only bond
they can share."

He hunched forward.  "But it is killing Uhl Belk.  It is changing him
to stone entirely.  In time, he will disappear into the stone that
encases him.  He will become like any other statueinanimate.  He is
doing it to himself without even realizing it.

That is the way the Elfstone works; that is why he was able to steal it
so easily.  The Druids didn't care.  They knew that anyone using it
would suffer the consequences eventually.  Magic cannot be absorbed
without consequence.  Uhl Belk is addicted to that magic.  He needs the
feeling of transformation, of adding to his stone body, to his land, to
his kingdom of self.  He could not stop now even if he tried."

"But how does this help us?"  Morgan asked, impatient once more.

He hunched forward curiously, caught up in the possibilities that
Walker's explanation offered.  "Even if you're right, what difference
does it make?  You're not suggesting that we simply wait until Uhl Belk
kills himself, are you?"

Walker Bob shook his head.  "We haven't time enough for that.  The
process may take years.  But Uhl Belk is not as invulnerable as he
believes.  He has become largely dependent on the Black Elfstone,
cocooned within his stone keep, changed mostly to stone himself,
interested not so much in what is happening about him as in the feeding
he requires so that his mutation can continue.  He is largely
stationary.  Did you watch him when he tried to move?  He cannot change
positions quickly; he is welded to the rock of the floor.  His magic is
old and unused; most of what he does relates to feeding himself through
use of the Stone.

Fear of losing the Black Elfstone, of being deprived of his source of
feeding, and of being left to the questionable mercy of his maddened
child dominates his thinking.  He has crippled himself with his
obsessions.  That gives us a chance to defeat him."

Morgan studied the other's face wordlessly for several long moments,
thinking the matter through in spite of his reluctance to believe there
was any possibility of succeeding, conscious of Quickening's eyes on
him as he did so.  He had always believed in Walker Boh's ability to
reason matters through when others could not.

He was the one who had suggested Par and Coll Ohmsford go to their
uncle when they needed advice in dealing with the dreams of Allanon.

He was frightened by what the Dark Uncle was suggesting, but not so big
a fool as to discount it entirely.

Finally he said, "Everything you say may be so, Walker, but you have
forgotten something.  We still have to get inside the dome to have any
chance of overcoming Uhl Belk.  And he's not going to invite us in a
second time.  He's already made that clear.

Since we haven't been able to find a way in on our own, how are we
supposed to get close enough to do anything?"

Walker folded his hands before him thoughtfully.  "Uhl Belk made a
mistake when he admitted us to the dome.  I was able to sense things
that were hidden from me before, when I was forced to stand without.  I
was able to divine the nature of his fortress keep.  He has settled
himself above that cavern where the rats cornered us while we were
searching the tunnels be neath the city.  He places the Tiderace
between himself and the Maw Grint's underground lair.  But he
miscalculated in doing so.

The constant changing of the tide has worn and eroded portions of the
stone on which he rests."

The Dark Uncle's eyes narrowed.  "There is an opening that leads into
the dome from beneath."

ANOTHER PAIR OF EYES narrowed as well, these in disbelief as Horner
Dees weighed the implications of Pe Ell's words in the dark silence of
the building in which the two men were crouched.

"Kill it?"  he questioned finally, unable to keep himself from
repeating the other's words.  "Why would you want to do that?"

"Because it's out there!"  Pe Ell snapped impatiently, as if that
explained everything.

His stare challenged the Tracker, daring him to object.  When Dees did
not respond, Pe Ell bent forward like a hawk at hunt.  "How long have
we been in this city, old man-a week, two?  I can't even remember
anymore.  It seems as if we've been here forever!  One thing I do
know.

Ever since we arrived, that thing has been hunting us.  Every night,
everywhere we go!  The Rake, sweeping up the streets, cleaning up the
garbage.  Well, I've had enough!"

He was stiff with rage, fighting back against the memory of that iron
tentacle wrapped about him, struggling to control his revulsion.

When he killed, it was quick and clean.  Not a slow squeezing, not a
death that choked and strangled.  And nothing ever touched him.

Nothing ever got close.

Not until now.

His failure to find the Stone King in the Rake's lair hadn't done
anything to improve his disposition either.  He had been certain that
he would find Uhl Belk and the Black Elfstone.  Instead, he had almost
succeeded in getting himself killed.

His knife-blade face was set and raw with feeling.  "I won't be hunted
anymore.  A Creeper can die like anything else."  He paused.

"Think about this.  Once it's dead, maybe the Stone King will show
himself.  Maybe he'll come out to see what killed his watchdog.  Then
we'll have him!"

Horner Dees did not look convinced.  "You're not thinking straight."

Pe Ell flushed.  "Are you frightened once more, old man?"

"Of course.  But that doesn't have anything to do with the matter.

The fact is, you're supposed to be a professional killer, an
assassin.

You don't kill without a reason and never without being sure that the
odds are in your favor.  I don't see any evidence of that here."

"Then you're not looking hard enough!"  Pe Ell was furious.

"You already have the reason!  Haven't you been listening?  It doesn't
have to be money and it doesn't have to be someone else's idea!

Do you want to find Uhl Belk or not?  As for the odds, I'll find a way
to change them!"

Pe Ell rose and wheeled away momentarily to face the dark.

He shouldn't care one way or the other what this old man thoughti it
shouldn't matter in the least.  But somehow, for some reason, it did,
and he refused to give Dees the satisfaction of thinking he was somehow
misguided.  He hated to admit that Horner Dees might have saved his
life, even that he might have helped him escape.  The old man was a
thorn in his side that needed removing.  Dees had come out of his past
like a ghost, come out of a time he had thought safely buried.  No one
alive should know who he was or what he had done save Rimmer Dall.  No
one should be able to talk about him.

He found suddenly that he wanted Horner Dees dead almost as much as he
wanted to dispose of the Rake.

Except that the Rake was the more immediate problem.

He turned back to the old Tracker.  "I've wasted enough time on you,"
he snapped.  "Go back to the others.  I don't need your help."

Horner Dees shrugged.  "I wasn't offering it."

Pe Ell started for the door.

'Just out of curiosity," Dees called after him, rising now as well,
"how do you plan to kill it?"

"What difference does it make to you?"  Pe Ell called over his
shoulder.

"You don't have a plan, do you?"

Pe Ell stopped dead in the doorway, seized by an almost overpowering
urge to finish off the troublesome Dees here and now.

After all, why wait any longer?  The others would never know.  His hand
dropped through the crease in his pants to close about the Stiehl.

"Thing is," Horner Dees said suddenly, "you can't kill the Rake even if
you manage to get close enough to use that blade of yours."

Pe Ell's fingers released.  "What do you mean?"

"I mean that even if you lay in wait for the thing, say you drop on it
from above or sneak up on it from underneath-not likely, but say that
you do-you still can't kill it quick enough."

The sharp eyes glittered.  "Oh, you can cut off a tentacle or two,
maybe sever a leg, or even put out an eye.  But that won't kill it.

Where do you stab it that will kill it, Pe Ell?  Do you know?

I don't.  Before you've taken two cuts, the Rake will have you.

Damage the thing?  A Creeper builds itself right back again, finds
spare pieces of metal and puts what it's lost back in place."

Pe Ell smiled-mean, sardonic, empty of warmth.  "I'll find a way.

Dees nodded.  "Sure you will."  He paused deliberately, his bearish
frame shifting, changing his weight from one foot to the other.

In the near darkness, he seemed like a piece of the wall breaking
loose.  "But not without a plan."

Pe Ell looked away in disgust, shook his head, then looked back
again.

He'd spent too much time trudging about this dismal city, this tomb of
stone and damp.  He'd been fighting too long to keep from being
swallowed up in its belly.  That coupled with prolonged exposure to
Quickening's magic had eroded his instincts, dulled the edge of his
sharpness, and twisted the clearness of his thought.  He was at a point
where the only thing that mattered was getting back to where he had
started from, to the world beyond Eldwist, and to the life that he had
so fully controlled.

But not without the Black Elfstone.  He would not give it up.

And not without Quickening's life.  He would not give that up either.

Meanwhile, Horner Dees was trying to tell him something.

It never hurt to listen.  He made himself go very still
insideeverything, right down to his thoughts.  "You have a plan of your
own, don't you?"  he whispered.

"I might."

"I'm listening."

"Maybe there's something to what you say about killing the Rake.

Maybe that will bring Belk out of hiding.  Something has to be
tried."

The admission came grudgingly.

"I'm still listening."

"It'll take the two of us.  Same agreement as before.  We look out for
each other until the matter's done.  Then it's every man for himself.

Your word."

"You have it."

Horner Dees shuffled forward until he was right in front of Pe Ell,
much closer than Pe Ell wanted him, wheezing like he'd run a mile,
grinning through his shaggy beard, big hands knotting into fists.

"What I think we ought to do," he said softly, "is drop the Rake down a
deep hole."

MORGAN LEAH STARED at Walker Boh wordlessly for a moment, then shook
his head.  He was surprised at how calm his voice sounded.  "It won't
work.  You said yourself that the Stone King isn't just a moving
statue; he's made himself a part of the land.

He's everything in Eldwist.  You saw what he did when he finally
decided to let us into the dome and then after, when he summoned the
Maw Grint.  He just split the rock wall apart.  His own skin, Walker.

Don't you think he'll know if we try to climb through that same skin
from beneath?  Don't you think he'll be able to feel it?  What do you
think will happen to us then?  Squish!"

Morgan made a grinding motion with his palms.  A dark flush crept into
his face; he found that he was shaking.

Walker's expression never changed.  "What you suggest is possible, but
unlikely.  Uhl Belk may be the heart and soul of the land he has
created, but he is also, like it, a thing of stone.  Stone feels
nothing, senses nothing.  Uhl Belk would not have even discovered we
were here if he had been forced to rely on his external senses.  It was
our use of magic that alerted him.  There may remain enough of him that
is human to detect intruders, but he relies principally on the Rake.

If we can avoid using magic we can enter the dome before he knows what
we are about."

Morgan started to object, then cut himself short.  Quickening was
clutching his arm so hard it hurt.  "Morgan," she whispered urgently.

"We can do it.  Walker Boh is right.  This is our chance."

"Our chance?"  Morgan looked down at her, fighting to keep his balance
as the black eyes threatened to drown him, finding her impossibly
beautiful all over again.  "Our chance to do what, Quickening?"  He
forced his gaze away from her, fixing on Walker.

"Suppose that you are right about all this, that we can get into the
dome without Belk knowing it.  What difference does it make?  What are
we supposed to do then?  Use our broken magics, the three of usa
weaponless girl, a one-armed man, and a man with half a sword?

Aren't we right back where we started with this conversation?"

He ignored Quickening's hands as they pulled at him.  "I won't pretend
with you, Walker.  You can see what I'm thinking.  You can with
everyone.  I'm terrified.  I admit it.  If I had the Sword of Leah
whole again, I would stand a chance against something like Uhl Belk.

But I don't.  And I don't have any innate magic like you and Par.

I just have myself.  I've stayed alive this long by accepting my
limitations.  That's how I was able to fight the Federation officials
who occupy my homeland; that's how I managed to survive against
something far bigger and stronger.  You have to pick and choose your
battles.  The Stone King is a monster with monsters to command, and I
don't see how the three of us can do anything about him."

Quickening was shaking her head.  "Morgan .  . ."

"No," he interrupted quickly, unable to stop himself now.

"Don't say anything.  Just listen.  I have done everything you asked.

I have given up other responsibilities I should have fulfilled to come
north with you in search of Eldwist and Uhl Belk.

I have stayed with you to find the Black Elfstone.  I want you to
succeed in what your father has sent you to do.  But I don't know how
that can happen, Quickening.  Do you?  Can you tell me?"

She moved in front of him, her face lifting.  "I can tell you that it
will happen.  My father has said it will be so."

"With my magic and Walker's and Pe Ell's.  I know.  Well, then, what of
Pe El]?  Isn't he supposed to go with us?  Don't we need him if we are
to succeed?"

She hesitated before giving her answer.  "No.  Pe Ell's magic will be
needed later."

"Later.  And your own?"

"I have no magic until you recover the Elfstone."

"So it is left to Walker and me."

"Yes."

"Somehow."

"Yes."

Walker Boh stepped forward impatiently, his pale face hard.

"Enough, Highlander.  You make it sound as if this were some mystical
process that required divine intervention or the wisdom of the dead.

There is nothing difficult about what we are being asked to do.

The Stone King holds the Black Elfstone; he must be made to give it
up.

We must sneak through the floor of the dome and surprise him.  We must
find a way to shock him, to stun him, to do something that will make
him release his grip on the Stone, then snatch it from him.  We don't
have to stand against him in battle; we don't have to slay him.

This isn't a contest of strength; it is a contest of will.  And
cleverness.

We must be more clever than he."

The Dark Uncle's eyes burned.  "We have not come all this way, Morgan
Leah, just to turn around and go back again.  We knew there were no
answers to be given to our questions, that we would have to find a way
to do everything that was required.

We have done so.  We need do so only one time more.  If we don't, the
Elfstone is lost to us.  That means that the Four Lands are lost as
well.  The Shadowen have won.  Cogline and Rumor died for nothing.

Your friend Steff died for nothing.  Is that what you wish?  Is that
your intent?  Is it, Morgan Leah?"

Morgan pushed past Quickening and seized the front of the other's
cloak.  Walker seized his in turn.  For an instant they braced each
other without speaking, Morgan's face contorted with rage, Walker's
smooth and intense.

"I am frightened, too, Highlander," Walker Boh said softly.

"I have fears that go far beyond what we are being asked to do here.  I
have been charged by the shade of Allanon with using the Black Elfstone
to bring back Paranor and the Druids.  If using the Elfstone on the Maw
Grint turns Uhl Belk to stone, what will using it on disappeared
Paranor do to me?"

There was a long, empty silence in which the question hung skeletal and
forbidding against the dark of the room.  Then Walker whispered, "it
doesn't matter, you see.  I have to find out."

Morgan let the other's cloak slip from his fingers.  He took a slow
step back.  "Why are we doing this?"  he whispered in reply.

"Why?"

Walker Boh almost smiled.  "You know why, Morgan Leah.

Because there is no one else."

Morgan laughed in spite of himself.  "Brave soldiers?  Or fools?"

"Maybe both.  And maybe we are just stubborn."

"That sounds right."  Morgan sighed wearily, pushing back the
oppressiveness of the dark and damp, fighting through his sense of
futility.  "I just think there should be more answers than there
are."

Walker nodded.  "There should.  Instead, there are only reasons and
they will have to suffice."

Morgan's mind spun with memories of the past, of his friends missing
and dead, of his struggle to stay alive, and of the myriad quests that
had taken him from his.  home in the Highlands and brought him at last
to this farthest corner of the world.  So much had happened, most of it
beyond his control.  He felt small and helpless in the face of those
events, a tiny bit of refuse afloat in the ocean, carried on tides and
by whim.  He was sick and worn; he wanted some form of resolution.

Perhaps only death was resolution enough.

"Let me speak with him," he heard Quickening say.

Alone, they knelt at the center of the room in shadow, facing each
other, their faces so close that Morgan could see his reflection in her
dark eyes.  Walker had disappeared.  Quickening's hands reached out to
him, and he let her fingers come to rest on his face, tracing the line
of his bones.

"I am in love with you, Morgan Leah," she whispered.  "I want you to
know that.  It sounds strange to me to say such a thing.  I never
thought I would be able to do so.  I have fears (if my own, different
from yours and Walker Boh's.  I am afraid of being too much alive."

She bent forward and kissed him.  "Do you understand what I mean when I
say that?  An elemental gains life not out of the love of a man and a
woman for each other but out of magic's need.  I was created to serve a
purpose, my father's purpose, and I was told to be wary of things that
would distract me.  What could distract me more, Morgan Leah, than the
love I have for you?  I cannot explain that love.  I do not understand
it.  It comes from the part of me that is human and surfaces despite my
efforts to deny it.  What am I to do with this love?  I tell myself I
must disdain it.  It is ...

dangerous.  But I cannot give it up because the feeling of it gives me
life.  I become more than a thing of earth and water, more than a bit
of clay made whole.  I become real."

He kissed her back, hard and determined, frightened by what she was
telling him, by the sound of the words, by the implications they
carried.  He did not want to hear more.

She broke away.  "You must listen to me, Morgan.  I had thought to keep
to my father's path and not to stray.  His advice seemed sound.

But I find now that I cannot heed it.  I must love you.  It does not
matter what is meant for either of us; we are not alive if we do not
respond to our feelings.  So it is that I will love you in every way
that I am able; I will not be frightened any longer by what that
means."

"Quickening .  . ."

"But," she said hurriedly, "the path remains clear before us
nevertheless and we must follow it, you and 1. We have been shown where
it leads, and we must continue to its end.  The Stone King must be
overcome.  The Black Elfstone must be recovered.  You and I and Walker
Boh must see that these things are done.  We must, Morgan.  We must."

He was nodding as she spoke, helpless in the face of her persistence,
his love for her so strong that he would have done anything she asked
despite the gravest reservations.  The tears started in his eyes, but
he forced them back, burying his face in her shoulder, hugging her
close.  He combed her silver hair with his fingers; he stroked the
curve of her back.  He felt her slim arms go around him, and her body
tremble.

"I know," he answered softly.

He thought then of Steff, dying at the hands of the girl he had loved,
thinking her something she was not.  Would it be so with him?

he wondered suddenly.  He thought, too, of the promise he had once made
his friend, a promise they had all made, Par and Coll and he, that if
any of them found a magic that would help free the Dwarves, they would
do what they could to recover it and see that it was used.

Surely the Black Effstone was such a magic.

He felt a calm settle through him, dissipating the anger and
foreboding, the doubt and uncertainty.  The path was indeed laid out
for him, and he had never had any choice but to follow it.

"We'll find a way," he whispered to her and felt her own tears dampen
his cheek.

STANDING IN THE BLACKNESS of the room beyond, Walker Boh looked back at
the lovers as they embraced and felt the warmth of their closeness
reach out to him like a lost child's tiny hands.

He turned away.  There could be no such love for him.  He felt an
instant's remorse and brushed it hastily aside.  His future was a
shining bit of certainty in the darkness of his present.  Some times
his prescience revealed a cutting edge.

He moved soundlessly through the building until he reached an open
window high above the street and looked down into the roil of mist and
gloom.  The world of Eldwist was a maze of stone obstructions and
corridors that glared back at him through a hard, wet sheen.  It was
harsh and certain and pointless and it reminded him of the direction of
his life.

Yet now, at last, his life might become something more.

One puzzle remained.  The Highlander had touched on it, brushed by it
in his effort to understand how it was that they could stand against a
being with the power of Uhl Belk.  The puzzle had been with them since
the beginning of their journey, a constant presence, and an enigma that
refused to be revealed.

The puzzle was Quickening.  The daughter of the King of the Silver
River, created out of the elements of the Garden, given life out of
magic-she was a riddle of words in another tongue.  She had been sent
to bring them all into Eldwist.  But wouldn't a summons have done the
job as well?  Or even a dream?  Instead the King of the Silver River
had sent a living, breathing bit of wonder, a creature so beautiful she
defied belief.

Why?  She was here for a reason, and it was a reason beyond that which
she had revealed.

Walker Boh felt a dark place inside shiver with the possibilities.

What was it that Quickening had really been sent to do?

ow, T DAWN THE THREE LEFT their concealment and went down into the
streets.  The rain had ceased to fall, the clouds had lifted above the
peaks of the buildings, and the light was gray and iron hard.  Silence
wrapped the bones of Eldwist like a shroud, the air windless, unmisted,
and empty.  Far distant, the ocean was a faint murmur.  Their footfalls
thudded dully and receded into echoes that seemed to hang like whispers
against the skies.  Unsuccessfully, they searched the city for life.

There was no sign of either Horner Dees or Pe Ell.

The Rake had retreated to its daylight ]air.  The Maw Grint slept
within the earth.  And in his domed fortress, Uhl Belk was a dark
inevitability awaiting confrontation.

Yet Walker Boh was at peace.

He strode before Morgan and Quickening, surprised at the depth of his
tranquility.  He had given so much of himself to the struggle to
understand and control the purpose of his life, bat tung with the twin
specters of legacy and fate.  Now all that was cast aside.  Time and
events had rushed him forward to this moment, an implacable whirlwind
that would resolve the pur pose of his life for him.  His meeting with
the Stone King would settle the matter of who and what he was.  Either
he merited the charge that the shade of Allanon had given him or he did
not.

Either he was meant to possess the Black Elfstone and bring back
Paranor and the Druids or he was not.  Either he would survive Uhl Belk
or he would not.  He no longer questioned that his doubt must give way
to resolution; he did not choose to mire -A len -M himself further in
the "what ifs" that had plagued him for so long.  Circumstance had
placed him here, and that was enough.

Whether he lived or died, he would finally be free of the past.

Was the Shannara magic alive within him, strong beyond the loss of his
arm to the poison of the Asphim, powerful enough to withstand the fury
of the Stone King?  Was the trust Allanon had given to Brin Ohmsford
meant for him?  He would find out.

Knowledge, he thought with an irony that he could not ignore, was
always liberating.

Morgan Leah was less certain.

Half-a-dozen steps back, his hand clasped in Quickening's, the
Highlander was a fragile shell through which fears and misgivings
darted like trapped flies.  In contrast to Walker Bob, he already knew
far too much.  He knew that Walker was not the Dark Uncle of old, that
the myth of his invincibility had been shattered along with his arm,
and that he was swept along on the same tide of prophecies and promises
as the rest of them.

He knew that he himself was even less able, a man without a whole
weapon, bereft of the magic that had barely sustained him through
previous encounters with far lesser beings.  He knew that there were
only the two of them, that Quickening could not intervene, that she
might share their fate but could not affect it.  He could say that he
understood her need to gain possession of the Black Elfstone, her
belief in her father's promises, and her confidence in them-he could
speak the words.  He could pray that they would find some way to
survive what they were undertaking, that some miracle would save
them.

But the fears and the misgivings would not be captured by words and
prayers; they would not be allayed by false hope.  They darted within
like startled deer, and he could feet the beating of his heart in
response to their flight.

What would he do, he wondered desperately, when the Stone King turned
those empty eyes on him?  Where would he find his strength?

He glanced covertly at Quickening, at the lines and shadows of her
face, and at the darkly reassuring glitter of her eyes.

But Quickening walked beside him without seeing.

They passed down the empty streets toward the heart of the city,
stalking like cats along the stone ribbon of the walkways, their backs
to the building walls.  They could almost feel the earth beneath them
pulse with the Stone King's life; they could almost hear the sound of
his breathing through the hush.  An old god, a spirit, a thing of
incomprehensible power-they could feel his eyes upon them.  The minutes
slipped away, and the streets and buildings came and went with a
sameness that whispered of ages come and gone and lives before their
own that had passed this way without effect.  An oppressive certainty
settled down about them, an unspoken voice, a barely remembered face, a
feathered touch, all designed to persuade them of the futility of their
effort.  They felt its presence and reacted, each differently, each
calling up what defenses could be found.  No one turned back.  No one
gave way.  Locked together by their determination to make an end of
this nightmare, they continued on.

In the east, dawn's faint gray light brightened to a chilly silver mist
that mingled with the clouds and left the city crystallized.

They caught their first glimpse of the dome shortly after and when
Walker Boh, still leading, pressed them back into the shadows of the
building they followed as if afraid the dome could see.  He took them
back along the walkway and down a secondary street, then over and down
another, winding this way and that, twisting about through the maze.

They slid along the dampness like a trail of water seeking its lowest
level and never slowed.  Their path meandered, but the dome drew closer
beyond the walls that concealed them.

Finally Walker stopped, head lifting within the cowl of his dark cloak
as if to sniff the air.  He was lost within himself, casting about in
the darkness of his mind, the magic working to lead him to where his
eyes could not see.  He started out again, taking them across a street,
down an alleyway and out again, down another street to where a building
entry opened onto a set of broad stairs.  The stairs took them into the
earth beneath the building, a dark and engulfing descent into a
cavernous chamber where dozens of the ancient carriages of the old
world sat resting on their stone tracks.  Massive hulks, broken apart
by time R and age, the carriages gave the chamber the look of a
honeyard.

Light fell across the carcasses in narrow stripes, and dust motes
decorated the air in a thin, choking haze.

The stairs went farther down, and the three continued their descent.

They entered an anteroom with a circular portal set in the far wall,
stepped through hesitantly, and found themselves back in the city's
sewers.  The sewers burrowed in three directions into the darkness,
catacombs wrapped in silence and the smell of dead things.

Walker's good hand lifted and silver light wrapped about it.  He paused
once more, as if testing the air.

Then he took them left.

The tunnel swallowed them effortlessly, its stone walls mas sive and
impenetrable, threatening to hold them fast forever.

Silence was a stealthy, invisible watcher.  They heard nothing of the
Maw Grint-not a rumble, not even the tremor of its breathing.

Eldwist had the feel of a tomb once more, deserted of life, a haven for
the dead.  They stretched ahead in a line, Walker leading, Quickening
next, and Morgan last.  No words were ex changed, no glances.  They
kept their eyes on the light that Walker held forth, on the rock of the
tunnel floor they followed, and on the movement of the shadows they
cast.

Walker slowed, then stopped.  His lighted hand moved to one side, then
the other.  A faint glimmer caught the outline of a dark opening in the
wall left and stairs beyond.

Once again they started down, following damp, stick, rough ened steps
through a wormhole in the earth.  They began to smell the Tiderace,
then to hear the faint roar of its waters against Eldwist's shore.

They listened closely, guardedly for the squealing of the rats, but it
did not come.  When they reached the end of these stairs, Walker took
them right into a narrow gap studded with stone projections honed
razor-sharp by nature and time.  They moved slowly, inching their way
along, hunched up close to each other to keep within the circle of the
light.

The dampness spread up the walls before them, a dark stain, Things
began moving in the light, skittering away.  Morgan caught a glimpse of
what they were.  Sea life, he recognized in surprise.  Tiny black
crabs.  Were they far enough down from Uhl Belk that such things could
live?  Were they close enough to the water?

Then they emerged once more into the subterranean cavern that lay
beneath the city.  Rock walls circled away from the ledge on which they
stood and the ocean crashed wildly into the rocks below.  Mist churned
overhead, draping the cavern's farthest reaches with curtains of
white.

Daylight brightened the shadows where the rocks were cleft to form
small, nearly colorless rainbows against the mist.

The ledge ran away to either side, dipping, climbing, jagged and
uneven, disappearing into rock and shadow.  Walker Boh cast both ways,
feeling for the presence he knew he would find, sensing the pulse of
its magic.  His eyes lifted toward the unseen.

Uhl Belk.

"This way," he said quietly, turning left.

Then the rumble of the Maw Grint's waking sounded, elevating from a
stir to a roar, and the whole of Eldwist shook with fury.

THE PLAN WAS SIMPLE, but then simple plans were the ones that usually
worked best.  The only trouble with this one, thought Pe Ell as he
stood in the shadows of the building across from the Rake's lair, was
that he was the one taking all the chances while Horner Dees remained
safe and sound.

The plan, of course, had been the old man's.

Like Quickening, Walker, and Morgan Leah, they had gone out at dawn,
slipping from their refuge back to the streets, greeting the cheerless
gray light with squinted eyes and suspicious frowns.  A brief exchange
of glances and they had been off, going first to the Rake's lair, then
tracing the route that Pe Ell would lure the Creeper down.

When Dees had satisfied himself that Pe Ell had memorized it, they
hooked the old man's harness in place, checked the leverage on the
makeshift pulley, and parted company.

Pe Ell had backtracked to the Rake's lair, and now there he stood,
waiting.

Stealth and speed were what he would need, first the one, then the
other, and not too much of either-an assassin's tools.

He listened to the silence for a long time, judging the distance he
must cover and measuring the retreat he would make.

There would be no one to help him escape this time if things went
wrong.  His narrow face turned this way and that, lifted into the smell
of the sea and the stone, knifed against the mist, sifted through the
instincts that warned him the Creeper was still awake.

He smiled his cold, empty smile.  The anger was gone.  The anticipation
of killing calmed him like Quickening's touch, soothed him, and gave
him peace.  He was still and settled within himself, everything ready,
in place, as sharp as the edge of the Stiehl and as certain.

Noiselessly, he crossed the street to the door of the lair.  He carried
the grappling hook and rope firmly in hand.  Standing before the door,
he tossed the hook skyward to wrap about the same stone projection they
had used the previous night.  The grappling hook caught with a sharp
clang and held.  Pe Ell backed away, waiting.  But the door remained
closed.  The Rake had either not heard or was preparing itself for
whatever would happen next.  Pe Ell had hoped that the noise of the
hook would bring the beast out and save him the trouble of making the
climb.  But he knew that was asking too much.

He took a deep breath.  This was where the plan became really
dangerous.

He stepped forward, grasped the rope that dangled from the grappling
hook, and began to climb.  He went swiftly, hand over hand, strong
enough that he did not require the use of his legs.

Once up, he gripped the release that triggered the hidden entry to the
lair, yanked violently on it, and immediately dropped away, skinning
down the rope like a cat.  The door was already coming up when he
struck the ground.  There was a whisper of sound from within, and he
sprang back instantly.  A tentacle barely missed catching him,
whistling past his feet.  The Rake was already moving, lumbering
forward, a nest of tentacles outstretched and grasping.

In another instant the door to the lair was completely up.

The Creeper rushed forth, skittering madly, wildly, heedless of the
fact that it was no longer night.  Enraged by Pe Ell's invasion, it
gave immediate pursuit.  The assassin raced away, darting just ahead of
the maddened beast, racing into the shadows of the alleyway across the
street.  The Creeper followed, faster than Pe Ell had expected.  For an
instant he wondered if he had misjudged his chances.  But there was no
time to ponder the matter now, and the doubts evaporated in a surge of
determination that propelled him forward.

Down the alleyway he ran and out into the adjoining street.

He skidded to a halt.  Careful of the traps, he thought.  Careful you
don't get caught in one yourself.  That was what they had planned for
the Rake, the old man and he-a long drop down a deep hole, a drop into
the bowels of Eldwist.  If he could stay alive that long.

The Creeper crashed through the entry of the building next to him,
choosing its own route now, almost catching him by surprise.  He barely
eluded the closest tentacles, knife thin as he twisted away, gone
almost before the beast could track him.  He darted along the
building's edge, the Rake in pursuit.  The iron that armored the
creature clanked and grated, thudded and scraped.  He could feel the
size of the thing looming over him, an avalanche waiting to fall.  He
went through one building, through a second, and emerged another street
over.  Close now, just two blocks more.  But the beast?  He turned,
searching.

He could hear it coming, but the sound seemed to project from
everywhere at once.  Where ... ?

Out from the shadows of a darkly recessed entry the Creeper tore, iron
arms slamming into the earth inches from Pe Ell as the assassin leaped
free.  Pe Ell howled in fury and dismay.

So quick!

He wanted to turn and fight, to see the monster react to the cold iron
of the Stiehl as he slashed its body to ribbons.  He wanted tore the
Creeper die.  Instead he ran once more, racing along the stone paths of
the city, down the streets, along the building walls, through shadows
and gray light, a wisp of something darker than night.

Tentacles rustled and slithered after him, catching at doors and
windowframes, tearing them apart, leaving showers of stone dust
scattered in their wake.  The massive body hammered and careened, and
the legs tore at the walk.

The Rake seemed to pick up speed, coming faster still.  If daylight
bothered it, if blindness inhibited it, it showed nothing of it here.

Pe Ell could feel its rage as if it were palpable.

The chase took them down another street and around a final

ON

THE DRUID OF SHANNARA corner.  Pe Ell could sense that he was losing
ground.  Ahead, the street deadended at a stone park.  A basin of steps
led down to a statue of a winged figure with streamers and ribbons
trailing from its body-and to a trap, the same trap that had snared the
old man and the Highlander days before.

Horner Dees was waiting, secured in his harness, standing at the edge
of the hidden door, bait for the trap.  Pe Ell leaped sideways to a
walkway and picked up speed as the Rake rounded the corner behind him,
tentacles whipping.  He went past Horner Dees on the fly, caught a
glimpse of his rough face, pale beneath the heavy beard, and sprang
onto the wall where the lines securing the harness were laid.  He
pulled them taut, hoisting Dees out over the hidden pit.  He heard the
Creeper rumble into the street, heard Horner Dees yell.  The Rake
became aware of the old man, deviated direction slightly, and
charged.

Dees tried to backpedal in spite of himself as the juggernaut bore down
on him, metal parts shrieking.

Then the trapdoor dropped open, and the monster began to fall.  It
tumbled wildly down the stone ramp, its armored body rasping.  It had
been so eager to reach the Tracker that it had forgotten where it
was.

Now it was caught, sliding away, disappearing from view.  Pe Ell howled
with delight.

But suddenly the tentacles lashed out and began snaring stone
projections-a corner of the basin stairs, a section of a crumbling
wall, anything within reach.  The sliding stopped.  Dust rose into the
air, obscuring everything.  Pe Ell hesitated, forgetting momentarily to
pull in on the harness that secured Dees.

Then he heard the old man scream.  Yanking frantically on the ropes, he
found they would not move.  Something was pulling from the other end,
something far stronger than himself.  He had waited too long.  The Rake
had Horner Dees.

Pe Ell never hesitated.  He wasn't thinking of his promise; keeping his
word had never much concerned him.  He simply reacted.  He dropped the
ropes, leaped from the wall, and raced through the basin park into the
street.  He saw the old Tracker sliding across the stone toward the
edge of the drop, hands grasping and feet kicking, a tentacle wrapped
about his stout body.  He caught up with Horner Dees just as the old
man was about to be pulled from view.  One slice of the Stiehl severed
the tentacle that bound him; a second severed the ropes of the
harness.

"Run!"  he screamed, shoving the bulky form away.

A tentacle snaked about him, trying to pin his arms fast.  He twisted,
the Stiehl's blade glowing white with magic, and the tentacle dropped
away.  Pe Ell raced left, cutting at the tentacles that secured the
Rake, severing its hold.  There was dust everywhere, rising into the
gray light, mingling with the mist until it was uncertain where
anything lay.  Pe Ell was moving on instinct.  He darted and skipped
through the tangle of arms, hacked at each, heard the scraping begin
again, and the sliding resume.

Then there was a rush of metal and flailing arms and the Rake was
gone.

It dropped into the chute and fell, tumbling down into the chasm.  Pe
Ell smothered his elation, racing back the way he had come, searching
for Dees.  He found him crawling weakly along the basin stairs.  "Get
up!"  he cried, hauling him to his feet in a frenzied lunge, propelling
him ahead.

The earth behind them exploded, the street shattering apart, stone
fragments flying everywhere.  The two men stumbled and fell and turned
to look.

The remaining pieces of Horner Dees' plan tumbled into place.

Out of the depths of Eldwist rose the Maw Grint, awakened by the impact
of the Rake's fall, aroused and angered.  The monster roared and shook
itself as it lifted skyward, worm body glistening, all ridges and
scales, so huge that it blocked even the faint gray daylight.  The Rake
dangled from its mouth, turning to stone as the poison coated it, its
struggles beginning to lessen.

The Maw Grint held it firm a moment, then tossed it as a dog might a
rat.  The Rake flew through the air and struck the side of a
building.

The wall collapsed with the impact, and the Rake shattered into
pieces.

Back down into the tunnels slid the Maw Grint, its thunder already
fading to silence.  Clouds of dust settled in its wake, and the light
brightened to slate.

Impulsively Pe Ell reached out and locked hands with Horner Dees.

Their labored breathing was the only sound in the stillness that
followed.

Len UNDERGROUND, IN THE CAVERN beneath the Stone King's fortress dome,
the rumble of the Maw Grint's waking disappeared into the pounding of
the Tiderace against Eldwist's rocky shores.

Morgan Leah's sun-browned face lifted to peer through the mists.

"What happened?"  he whispered.

Walker Boh shook his head, unable to answer.  He could still feel the
tremors in the earth, lingering echoes of the monster's fury.

Something had caused it to breach-something beyond normal waking.

The creature's response had been different than when the Stone King had
summoned it, more impatient, more intense.

"is it sleeping again?"  the Highlander pressed, anxious now, concerned
with being trapped.

"Yes."

"And him?"  Morgan pointed into the mists.  "Does be know?"

Uhl Belk.  Walker probed, reaching through the layers of rock in an
effort to discover what might be happening.  But he was too far away,
the stone too secure to be penetrated by his magic.  Not unless he used
his touch, and if he did that the Stone King would be warned.

"He rests still," Quickening answered unexpectedly.  She came forward
to stand next to him, her face smooth and calm, her eyes distant.  The
wind rushed into her silver hair and scattered it about her face.  She
braced against its thrust.  "Be at ease, Morgan.  He does not sense the
change."

But Walker sensed it, whatever it was, just as the girl had.

Barely perceptible yet, but the effects were beginning to reach and
swell.  It was something beyond the passing of time and the erosion of
rock and earth.  The wind whispered it, the ground echoed with it, and
the air breathed it.  Born of the magic, the daughter of the King of
the Silver River and the Dark Uncle had both felt its ripple.  Only the
Highlander was left unaware.

Walker Boh felt a rough, unexpected urgency clutch at him.  Time was
slipping away.

"We have to hurry," he said at once, starting away again.

"Quickly, now.  Come."

He took them left down the rocky outcropping of the ledge, across its
ragged, slippery surface.  They inched along with their backs to the
wall, the ledge no more than several feet wide in places, the ocean's
spray redampening its surface with each newly broken wave.

Beyond where they stood the cavern spread away like some vast hidden
world, and it seemed as if they could feel the eyes of its invisible
inhabitants peering out at them.

The ledge ended at a cave that burrowed into darkness.

Walker Boh lifted the magic of his silver light to the black and a
staircase appeared, winding away, circling upward into the rock.

With Quickening and Morgan following shadowlike, the Dark Uncle began
to climb.

HEN MORGAN LEAH was a boy he often played in the crystal-studded caves
that lay east of the city.  The caves had been formed centuries
earlier, explored and forgotten by countless generations, their stone
floors worn smooth by the passing of time and feet.  They had survived
the Great Wars, the Wars of the Races, the intrusions of living
creatures of all forms, and even the earth fires that simmered just
beneath their surface.  The caves were pockets of bright luminescence,
their ceilings thick with stalactites, floors dotted with pools of
clear water and darkly shadowed sinkholes, and their chambers connected
by a maze of narrow, twisting tunnels.  It was dangerous to go into the
caves; there was a very high risk of becoming lost.  But for an
adventure-seeking Highland boy like Morgan Leah, any prospect of risk
was simply an attraction.

He found the caves when he was still very small, barely old enough to
venture out on his own.  There were a handful of boys with him when he
discovered an entrance, but he was the only one brave enough to venture
in.  He went only a short distance that day, intimidated more than a
little; it seemed a very real possibility that the caves ran to the
very center of the earth.  But the lure of that possibility was what
called him back in the end, and before long he was venturing ever
farther.  He kept his exploits secret from his parents, as did all the
boys; there were restrictions enough on their lives in those days.  He
played at being an explorer, at discovering whole worlds un known to
those he had left behind.  His imagination would soar when he was
inside the caves; he could become anyone and anything.  Often he went
into them alone, preferring the freedom he felt when the other boys
were not about to constrict the range of his playacting, for their
presence imposed limits he was not always prepared to accept.  Alone,
he could have things just as he wished.

It was while he was alone one day, just after the anniversary of the
first year of his marvelous discovery, that he became lost.

He was playing as he always played, oblivious of his progress,
confident in his ability to find his way back because he had done so
every time before, and all of a sudden he didn't know where he was.

The tunnel he followed did not appear familiar; the caves he
encountered had a different, foreign look; the atmosphere became
abruptly and chillingly unfriendly.  It took him a while to accept that
he was really lost and not simply confused, and then he simply stopped
where he was and waited.  He had no idea what it was that he was
waiting for at first, but after a time it became clear.  He was waiting
to be swallowed.  The caves had come alive, a sleeping beast that had
finally roused itself long enough to put an end to the boy who thought
to trifle with it.  Morgan would remember how he felt at that moment
for the rest of his life.  He would remember his sense of despair as
the caves transformed from inanimate rock into a living, breathing,
seeing creature that wrapped all about him, snakelike, waiting to see
which way he would try to run.  Morgan did not run.  He braced himself
against the beast, against the way it hunched down about him.  He drew
the knife he carried and held it before him, determined to sell his
life dearly.  Slowly, without realizing what he was doing, he
disappeared into the character he had played at being for so many
hours.  He became someone else.  Somehow that saved him.  The beast
drew back.

He walked ahead challengingly, and as he did so the strangeness slowly
vanished.  He began to recognize something of where he was, a bit of
crystallization here, a tunnel's mouth there, something else, something
more, and all of a sudden he knew where he was again.

When he emerged from the caves it was night.  He had been lost for
several hours-yet it seemed only moments.  He went home thinking that
the caves had many disguises to put on, but that if you looked hard
enough you could always recognize the face beneath.

He had been a boy then.  Now he was a man and the beliefs of boyhood
had long since slipped away.  He had seen too much of the real world.

He knew too many hard truths.

Yet as he climbed the stairs that curled upward through the rock walls
of the cavern beneath Eldwist he was struck by the similarity of what
he felt now and what he had felt then, trapped both times in a stone
maze from which escape was uncertain.

There was that sense of life in the rock, Uhl Belk's presence, stirring
like a pulse in the silence.  There was that sense of being spied upon,
of a beast awakened and set at watch to see which way he would try to
run.  The weight of the beast pressed down upon him, a thing of such
size that it could not be measured in comprehensible terms.  A
peninsula, a city and beyond, an entire world-Fldwist was all of these
and Uhl Belk was Eldwist.  Morgan Leah searched in vain for the
disguise that had fooled him as a boy, for the face that he had once
believed hidden beneath.

If he did not find it, he feared, he would never get free.

They ascended in silence, those who had come from Rampling Steep, the
only ones left who could face the Stone King.

Morgan was so cold he was shivering, and the cold he felt derived from
far more than the chill of the cavern air.  He could feel the sweat
bead along his back, and his mind raced with thoughts of what he would
do when the stairs finally came to an end and they were inside the
dome.  Draw his sword, the one of ordinary metal, yet whole?

Attack a thing that was nearly immortal with only that?  Draw his
shattered talisman, a stunted blade?  Attack with that?  What?  What
was it that he was expected to do?

He watched Quickening move ahead of him, small and delicate against
Walker Boh's silver light, a frail bit of flesh and blood that might in
a single sweep of Uhl Belk's stone hand scatter back into the elements
that had formed it.  Quickening gone-he tried to picture it.

Fears assailed him anew, darts that pierced and burned.  Why were they
doing this?  Why should they even try?

Walker slipped on the mist-dampened steps and grunted in pain as he
struck his knee.  They slowed while he righted himself, and Morgan
waited for Uhl Belk to stir.  Hunter and hunted-but which was which?

He wished he had Steff to stand beside him.  He wished for Par
Ohmsford, for Padishar Creel.

He wished for any and all of them, for even some tiny part of them to
appear.  But wishing was useless.  None of them were there; none of
them would come.  He was alone.

With this girl he loved, who could not help.

And with Walker Bob.

An unexpected spark of hope flashed inside the Highlander.

Walker Bob.  He stared at the cloaked figure leading them, onearmed,
escaped from the Hall of Kings, risen from the ashes of Hearthstone.  A
cat with many lives, he thought.  The Dark Uncle of old, evolved
perhaps from the invincible figure of the legends, but a miracle
nevertheless, able to defy Druids, spirits, and the Shadowen and live
on.  Come here to Eldwist, to fulfill a destiny promised by the shade
of Allanon or to die-that was what Walker Boh had elected to do.

Walker, who had survived everything until now, Morgan reminded himself,
was not a man who could be killed easily.

So perhaps it was not intended that the Dark Uncle be killed this time
either.  And perhaps-just perhaps-some of that immortality might rub
off on him.

Ahead, Walker slowed.  A flick of his fingers and the silver light
vanished.  They stood silently in the dark, waiting, listening.  The
blackness lost its impenetrability as their eyes adjusted, and their
surroundings slowly took shape-stairs, ceiling, and walls, and beyond,
an opening.

They had reached the summit of their climb.

Still Walker kept them where they were, motionless.  When Morgan
thought he could stand it no longer, they started ahead once more,
slowly, cautiously, one step at a time, shadows against the gloom.  The
steps ended and a corridor began.  They passed down its length,
invisible and silent save for their thoughts which seemed to Morgan
Leah to hang naked and screaming and bathed in light.

When the corridor ended they stopped again, still concealed within its
protective shadow.  Morgan stepped forward for an anxious look.

The Stone King's dome opened before them, vast and hazy and as silent
as a tomb.  The stands that circled the arena stretched away in
symmetrical, stair-step lines, a still life of shadows and half-light
that lifted to the ceiling, its highest levels little more than a vague
suggestion against the aged stone.  Below, the arena was flat and hard
and empty of movement.  The giant form of Uhl Belk crouched at its
center, turned away so that only a shading of the rough-hewn face was
visible.

Morgan Leah held his breath.  The silence of the dome seemed to whisper
the warnings that screamed inside his head.

Walker Boh moved back to stand beside him, and the pale, hollowed face
bent close so that the other's mouth was at his ear.  "Circle left.

I'll go right.  When I strike him, be ready.  I shall try to cause him
to drop the Stone.  Seize hold of it if he does.

Then run.  Don't look back.  Don't hesitate.  Don't stop for
anything."

The other's hand seized his wrist and held it.  "Be swift,
Highlander.

Be quick."

Morgan nodded voicelessly.  For an instant Quickenin@s black eyes met
his own.  He could not read what he saw there.

Then Walker was gone, slipping from the mouth of the corridor into the
arena, moving to his right along the front wall of the stands into the
gloom.  Morgan followed, turning left.  He pushed aside his dread and
gave himself over to the Dark Uncle's command.  He passed across the
stone like a wraith, quick and certain, finding a surprising
reassurance simply from being in motion.  But his fear persisted, a
cornered beast within his skin.  Shadows seemed to circle about him as
he went, and the dome's silence hissed at him in his mind, a voiceless
snake.  His eyes fixed on the bulky form at the arena's center; he
found himself searching for even the smallest movement.  There was
none.  Uhl Belk was carved stone against the gray, still and fixed.

Quick, now, thought Morgan as he went.  Quick as light.  He saw Walker
at the far side of the arena, a lean and furtive figure, nearly
invisible in the gloom.  Another few moments, he thought.

And then ...

Quickening.

He suddenly realized that in his haste to obey Walker he had forgotten
about the girl.  Where was she?  He stopped abruptly, casting about for
her without success, scanning the risers, the tunnels, the shadows that
issued from everywhere.

He felt something drop in his chest.  Quickening!

Then he saw her-not safely concealed or well back from where they
crept, but fully revealed, striding out from the corridor into the
arena directly toward the massive figure of Uhl Belk.  His breath
caught sharply in his throat.  What was she doing?

Quickening!

His cry was silent, but the Stone King seemed to hear, responding with
an almost inaudible grunt, stirring to life, lifting away from his
crouch, beginning to turn ...

Brilliant white light flared across the canopy of the dome, so blinding
that for an instant even Morgan had to look away.

It was as if the sun had exploded through the clouds, the gray haze,
the stone itself, to set fire to the air imprisoned there.

Morgan saw Walker Boh with his single arm raised, thrust out from his
dark robes, the magic bursting from his fingers.  Uhl Belk howled in
surprise, his massive body shuddering, arms raising to shield his eyes,
his stone parts grinding with the effort.

Walker Boh leaped forward then, a shadow against the light, charging at
the Stone King as the latter flailed ponderously at the painful
brightness.  Again his good arm raised, thrusting forth.

An entire bag of Cogline's volatile black powder flew at Uhl Belk and
exploded, hammering into the Stone King.  Bits and pieces of the ragged
body shattered into fragments.  Fire burned along his arm to where his
fist clenched the Black Elfstone.

But still he held the talisman fast.

And suddenly Morgan Leah found that he could not move.

He was frozen where he stood.  Just as had happened at the Jut when the
Creeper had gained the heights under cover of darkness and the outlaws
of the Movement had gone to meet its attack, he found himself
paralyzed.  All his fears and doubts, all his misgivings and terrors
descended on him.  They seized him with their clawed fingers and bound
him up as surely as if he had been wrapped in chains.  What could he
do?  How could he help?  His magic was lost, his Sword blade
shattered.

He watched helplessly as Uhl Belk began to turn, to fight past Walker
Boh's assault, and to brush back his magic.  The Dark Uncle renewed his
attack, but this time he struck without the element of sur prise to aid
him and the Stone King barely flinched.  Already the brightness of
Walker's false sun was beginning to fade and the gray of the dome's
true light to return.

Walker Boh's words echoed tauntingly in Morgan's ears.

Be swift, Higblander.  Be quick.

Morgan fought through his immobility and wrenched free from its
scabbard the broadsword he wore strapped to his back.

But his fingers refused to hold it; his hands would not obey.  The
broadsword slipped away, tumbling to the arena floor with a hollow
clang.

The Stone King's breath hissed as one monstrous hand swept out to seize
Walker Boh and crush the life from him.  The Dark Uncle had gotten too
close; there was no chance for him to escape.  Then suddenly he was
gone, reappearing first as two images, then four, and then countless
more-Jair Ohmsford's favorite trick, three centuries ago.

The Stone King grabbed at the images, and the images evaporated at his
touch.  The true Walker Boh sprang at the monster, scattered new fire
into his face, and slid nimbly away.

The Stone King howled in rage, clawed at his face, and shook himself
like an animal seeking to rid itself of flies.  The whole of the arena
shuddered in response.  Fissures opened in jagged lines across the
floor, the stands buckled and snapped, and a shower of dust and debris
descended from the ceiling.

Morgan lost his footing and fell, the impact of the stone jarring him
to his teeth.

He felt pain, and with the coming of that pain the paralyzing chains
fell away.

The Stone King's fist came up, and the fingers of his hand began to
open.  The nonlight of the Elfstone seeped through, devouring what
remained of Walker Boh's fading magic.  The Dark Uncle threw up a
screen of fire to slow the magic's advance, but the nonlight enveloped
it in a wave of blackness.

Walker stumbled backward toward the shadows, chased by the nonlight,
harried by the fissures and the cracking of stone.

Another few seconds and he would be trapped.

Then Quickening caught fire.

There was no other way to explain it.  Morgan watched it happen and
still couldn't believe what he was seeing.  The daughter of the King of
the Silver River, less than twenty feet away from Uhl Belk by now,
standing exposed and unprotected beneath his shadow, elevated like a
creature made of air, until she was level with the giant's head, then
burst into flames.  The fire was golden and pure, its blaze a cloaking
of light, flaring all along her body and limbs, leaving her illuminated
as if by the midday sun.  She was, in that instant, more beautiful than
Morgan had ever seen her, radiant and flawless and exquisite beyond
belief.  Her silver hair lifted away from her, feathering outward
against the fire, and her eyes glistened black within the gold.

She hung there revealed, all wondrous, impossible magic come to life.

She is trying to distract him, Morgan realized in disbelief.  She is
giving herself away, revealing who she is, in an effort to distract
bimfrom us!

The Stone King turned at the unexpected flaring of light, his already
crumpled face twisting until his features virtually ceased to exist.

The slash of his mouth gaped at the sight of her and his voice sounded
in anguish.

-You Uhl Belk forgot about Walker Boh.  He forgot about the Dark
Uncle's magic.  He forgot about everything but the burning girl.  In a
frenzy of grinding stone limbs and joints, he struggled to reach her,
surging up against the stone floor that welded him fast, grappling
futilely for her, then in desperation bringing the hand that cupped the
Black Elfstone to bear against her.  His voice was a terrifying moan
become a frenzied roar.  The earth shuddered with the urgency of his
need.

Morgan acted then, finally, desperately, even hopelessly.

Surging back to his feet, his eyes fastened on Quickening and on the
monster who sought to destroy her, he attacked.  He went without
thought, without reason, driven by need and armored in determination he
had not thought he could ever possess.  He raced into the haze of dust
and debris, leaping past the fissures and drops, speeding as if he were
carried on the strong autumn winds of his homeland.  One hand dropped
to his waist, and he pulled forth the shattered blade of his ancestors,
the jagged remnant of the Sword of Leah.

Though he was not aware of it, the sword shone white with magic.

He screamed the battle cry of his homeland.  "Leah!  Leah!"

He reached the Stone King just as the other became aware of his
presence and the hard, empty eyes began to turn.  He sprang onto a
massive bent leg, vaulted forward, seized the arm that extended the
Black Elfstone, and drove the shattered blade of the Sword of Leah deep
into its stone.

Uhl Belk screamed, not in surprise or anger this time, but in
terrifying pain.  White fire burst from the shattered blade into the
Stone King's body, lines of flame that penetrated and scared.

Morgan stabbed Uhl Belk again and yet again.  The stone hands trembled
and clutched, and the stricken monster shuddered.

The Black Elfstone tumbled from his fingers.

Instantly Morgan yanked free his Sword and scrambled down in an effort
to retrieve it.  But the Stone King's damaged arm blocked his way,
swinging toward him like a hammer.  He dodged wildly, desperate to
escape its sweep, but it clipped him anyway and sent him tumbling back,
arms and legs flying.  He barely managed to keep hold of his weapon.

He caught a brief glimpse of Quickening, an oddly clear vision, her
face bright even though the magic of her fire had faded.  He caught a
snatch of dark motion as Walker Boh appeared next to her out of the
shadows.  Then he struck the wall, the force of the blow knocking the
breath from him, jamming the joints of his body so that he thought he
had broken everything.  Even so, he refused to stay down.  He staggered
back to his feet, dazed and battered, determined to continue.

But there was nothing more to do.  As quickly as that, the battle was
ended.  Walker Bob had gained possession of the fallen Elfstone.

He braced the Stone King, the Druid talisman clutched menacingly in his
raised hand.  Quickening stood beside him, returned to herself, the
magic she had summoned gone again.

As his vision slowly cleared, as his sense of balance restored itself,
Morgan saw her again in his mind, all on fire.  He was still astonished
at what she had done.  Despite her vow she had used the magic, revealed
herself to Uhl Belk, and risked everything to give them a chance to
survive.

The questions whispered at him then, insidious tricksters.

Had she known that he would come to save her?

Had she known what his Sword would do?

The gloom of the dome's interior returned again with the fading of the
magic, cloaking Uhl Belk's massive form in shadow.

The Stone King faced them from a cloud of swirling dust, his body
sagging as if melted by the heat of his efforts to defend himself,
still joined to the stone of Eldwist in the chaining that had undone
him.  Try as he might, he had not been able to rise and break free.  By
choosing to become the substance of his kingdom he had rendered himself
virtually immobile.  His face was twisted into something
unrecognizable, and when he spoke there was horror and madness
reflected in his voice.

-Give the Elfstone back to me They stared up at him, the three from
Rampling Steep, and it seemed none of them could find words to speak.

"No, Uhl Belk," Walker Boh replied finally, his own voice strained from
the effort of his battle.  "The Elfstone was never yours in the first
place.  It shall not be given back to you now."

-1 shall come for you then; I shall take it from you"You cannot move
from where you stand.  You have lost this battle and with it the
Elfstone.  Do not think to try and steal it back."

-it is mine The Dark Uncle did not waiver.  "It belongs to the
Druids."

Dust geysered from the ravaged face as the creature's breath exploded
in a hiss of despair.

-There are no Druids The accusation died away in a grating echo.

Walker Bob did not respond, his face chiseled with emotions that seemed
to be tearing him apart from within.  The Stone King's arms rose in a
dramatic gesture.

-Give the Black Elfstone back to me, human, or I shall command Eldwist
to crush the life from you; give the talisman back now or see yourself
destroyed "Attack me or those with me," Walker Boh said, "and I shall
turn the Elfstone's magic against this city!  I shall summon power
enough to shatter the stone casing that preserves it and turn it and
you to dust!  Do not threaten further, Uhl Belk!  The power is no
longer yours!"

The silence that followed was profound.  The Stone King's hand closed
into a fist and the sound of grinding rose out of it.

-You cannot command me, human; no one canWalker's response was
immediate.  "Release us, Uhl Belk.  The Black Elfstone is lost to
you."

The statue straightened with a groan, and the sound of its voice was
thick with weeping.

-it will come for me; the Maw Grint will come; my son, the monster I
have made will descend upon me, and I shall be forced to destroy it;
only the Black Elfstone kept it at bay; it will see me old and wearied
and believe me without strength to defend against its hunger; it shall
try to devour meDepthless hard eyes fixed on Quickening.

-Child of the King of the Silver River, daughter of he who was my
brother once, give thought to what you do; you threaten to weaken me
forever if you steal away the Stone; the Maw Grint's life is no less
dear to me than your own to your father; without him there can be no
expansion of my land, no fulfillment of my trust; who are you that you
should be so quick to take what is mine; are you completely blind to
what I have made; there is in the stone of my land a changeless beauty
that your father's Gardens will never have; worlds may come and go but
Eldwist will remain; it would be better for all worlds to be SO; your
father believes himself right in what he does, but his vision of life
is no clearer than my own; am I not entitled to do what I see is right
as the Word has given me to see right "You subvert what you touch, Uhl
Belk," the girl whispered.

-And you do not; your father does not; all who live within nature do
not; can you pretend otherwise Quickening's frail form eased a step
closer to the giant, and the light that had radiated from her before
flared anew.

"There is a difference between nurturing life and making it over," she
said.  "it was to nurture that you were charged when given your
trust.

You have forgotten how to do so."

The Stone King's hand brushed at the particles of light that floated
from her body, an unconscious effort to shield himself.

But then he drew his hand back sharply, the intake of his breath harsh
with pain.

-No The word was an anguished cry.  He straightened, caught by some
invisible net that wrapped him and held him fast.

-Oh, child; I see you now; I thought that in the Maw Grint I had
created a monster beyond all belief; but your father has done worse in
you The rough voice gasped, choked as if it could not make the words
come further.

-Child of change and evolution, you are the ceaseless, quicksilver
motion of water itself; I see in truth what you have been sent to do; I
have indeed been stone too long to have missed it; I should have
realized when you came to me that you were madness; I am mired in the
permanency I sought and have been as blind as those who serve me; the
end of my life is written out before me by the scripting of my own hand
"Uhl Belk " Quickening whispered the name as if it were a prayer.

-How can you give what has been asked after tasting so much Morgan did
not understand what the Stone King was talking about.  He glanced at
Quickening and started in surprise.  Her face was stricken with guilt,
a mirror of the hidden secrets that he had always suspected but never
wanted to believe she kept.

The Stone King's voice was a low hiss.

-Take yourself from me, child; go into the world again and do what you
must to seal all our fates; your victory over me must seem hollow and
bitter when the price demanded for it is made so dear Walker Boh was
staring as well, his mouth shaped with a frown, his brow furrowed.

He did not seem to understood what Uhl Belk was saying either.

Morgan started to ask Quickening what was happening and hesitated,
unsure of himself.

Then Uhl Belk's head jerked up with a sharp crack.

-Listen The earth began to shudder, a low rumbling that emanated from
deep within, rising to the surface in gathering waves of sound.

Morgan Leah had heard that rumble before.

- It comes The Maw Grint.

Walker began backing away, yelling at Morgan and Quick ening to
follow.

He shouted at the Stone King, "Release us, Uhl Belk, if you would save
yourself!  Do so now!  Quickly!"

Walker's arm lifted, threatening with the fist that held the Black
Elfstone.  Uhl Belk barely seemed to notice.  His face had become more
haggard, more collapsed than ever, a parody of human features, a
monster's face grown hideous beyond thought.

The giant's voice hissed like a serpent's through the roar of the Maw
Grint's approach.

-Flee, fools There was no anger in the voice-only frustration and
emptiness.  And something more, Morgan Leah thought in amazement.

There was hope, just a glimmer of it, a recognition beyond the
Highlander's understanding, a seeing of some possibility that
transcended all else.

A section of the dome's massive wall split apart directly behind them,
stone blocks grinding with the movement, gray daylight spilling
through.

-Flee Morgan Leah broke for the opening instantly, chased by demons he
did not care to see.  He felt, rather than saw, the Stone King watch
him go.  Quickening and Walker followed.

They gained the opening in a rush and were through, running from the
fury of the Maw Grint's coming, racing away into the gloom.

T APPEARED THAT the Maw Grint had gone mad.

Twice before the three who fled had observed the monster's coming, once
when it had surfaced as they stood on the overlook above the city and
once when it had been summoned by Uhl Belk.  There hadn't been a day
since they had arrived in Eldwist that they hadn't heard the creature
moving through the tunnels below them, astir at the coming of each
sunset to prowl with the dark.  Each time its approach had been
prefaced with the same unmistakable deep, low rumbling of the earth.

Each time the city had trembled in response.

But there had never been anything like this.

The city of Eldwist was like a beast shaking itself awake from a bad
dream.  Towers and spires rocked and trembled, shedding bits and pieces
of loose stone amid a shower of choking dust.

The streets threatened to buckle, stone cracking in jagged fissures,
trapdoors dropping away as their catches released, supports and
trestles snapping apart.  Whole stairways leading downward to the
tunnels crumbled and disappeared, and skybridges connecting one
building to another collapsed.  Against a screen of gray haze and
clouds Eldwist shimmered like a vanishing mirage.

Racing to escape the Stone King's dome, Walker Boh barely gained the
closest walkway before the tremors drove him to his knees.  He pitched
forward, his outstretched arm curling against his body to protect his
hold on the Black Elfstone.  He took the force of the fall on his
shoulder, a sharp, jarring blow, and kept skidding.  He struck the wall
of the building ahead of him, and the breath left his body.

For a moment he was stunned, bright pinpricks of light dancing before
his eyes.  When his vision cleared he saw Quickening and Morgan
sprawled in the street behind him, knocked from their feet as well.

He rose with an effort and started away again, yelling for them to
follow.  As he watched them struggle up, his mind raced.

He had threatened Uhl Belk with the Black Elfstone by saying that he
would invoke its magic against the city if they were not released.

The threat had been an idle one.  He could not use the Elfstone that
way without destroying himself.  It was fortunate for them all that Uhl
Belk still did not understand how the Druid magic worked.

Even so they were not free yet.  What would they do if the Maw Grint
came after them?  There was every reason to believe that it would.  The
magic of the Black Elfstone had provided a link between father and son,
spirit lord and monster, that Walker Boh had broken.  The Maw Grint
already sensed that break; it had awakened in response.  Once it
discovered that the Elfstone was gone, that the Stone King no longer
had possession of it, what was to prevent the beast from giving
chase?

Walker Boh grimaced.  There wasn't any question as to how such a chase
would end.  He couldn't use the Black Elfstone on the Maw Grint
either.

A stone block large enough to bury him crashed into the street a dozen
feet ahead, sending the Dark Uncle sprawling for the second time.

Quickening darted past, her beautiful face oddly stricken, and raced
away into the gloom.  Morgan appeared, reached down as he caught up
with Walker, and hauled him back to his feet.  Together they ran on,
sidestepping through the gathering debris, dodging the cracks and
fissures.

"Where are we going?"  the Highlander cried out, ducking his head
against the dust and silt.

Walker gestured vaguely.  "Out of the city, off the peninsula, back up
on the heights!"

"What about Horner Dees?"

Walker had forgotten the Tracker.  He shook his head.  "If we can find
him, we'll take him with us!  But we can't stop to look!  There isn't
time!"  He shoved the Elfstone into his tunic and reached out to grasp
the other as they ran.  "Highlander, stay close to Quickening.

This matter is not yet resolved!  She is in some danger!"

Morgan's eyes were white against his dust-streaked face.

"What danger, Walker?  Do you know something?  What was Uhl Belk
talking about back there when he spoke about her victory being hollow,
about the price she was paying?  What did he mean?"

Walker shook his head wordlessly.  He didn't know-yet sensed at the
same time that he should, that he was overlooking something obvious,
forgetting something important.  The street yawned open before them, a
trapdoor sprung.  He yanked the Highlander aside just in time, pulling
him clear, propelling him back onto the walkway.  The roaring of the
Maw Grint was fading slightly now, falling back as the Stone King's
fortressed dome receded into the distance.

"Catch up to her, Highlander!"  Walker yelled, shoving him ahead.

"Keep an eye out for Dees!  We'll meet back at the building where we
hid ourselves from the Rake!"  He glanced over his shoulder and back
again, shouting, "Careful, now!  Watch yourself!"

But Morgan Leah was already gone.

PE ELL AND HORNER DEES HAD only just reached the building to which the
others now fled when the tremors began.  Their battle with the Rake
completed, they had come in search of the remainder of the company from
Rampling Steep, each for his own reasons, neither sharing much of
anything with the other.  The truce they had called had ended with the
destruction of the Rake, and they watched each other now with careful,
suspicious eyes.

They whirled in surprise as the rumbling began to build, deeper and
more pronounced than at any time before.  The city shuddered in
response.

"Something's happened," Horner Dees whispered, his bearded face
lifting.  "Something more."

"It's come awake again," Pe Ell cried with loathing.  When they had
left the Maw Grint it was sunk back down into the earth and gone
still.

The street on which they faced shook with the impact of the creature's
rising.

Pe El] gestured.  "Look upstairs.  See if anyone is there."

Dees went without argument.  Pe Ell stood rooted on the walk while the
city's tremors washed over him.  He was taut and hard within himself,
the battle with the Rake still alive inside, driving through him like
the rushing of his blood.  Things were coming together now; he could
sense the coalescing of events, the weaving of the threads of fate of
the five from Rampling Steep.  It would be over soon, he sensed.  It
would be finished.

Horner Dees reappeared at the building entry.  "No one."

"Then wait here for their return," Pe Ell snapped, starting quickly
away.  "I'll look toward the center of the city."

"Pe Ell!"

The hatchet face turned.  "Don't worry, old man.  I'll be back."

Perhaps, he added to himself.

He darted into the gloom, leaving the ageing Tracker to call uselessly
after him.  Enough of Horner Dees, he thought bitterly.

He was still rankled by the fact that he had saved the bothersome
Tracker from the Rake, that he had acted on instinct rather than using
common sense, that he had risked his life to save a man he fully
intended to kill anyway.

On the other hand his plans for Dees and the other fools who had come
with Quickening were beginning to change.  He could feel those plans
settling comfortably into place even now.

Everything always seemed much clearer when he was moving.

It was all well and good to anticipate the event, but circumstances and
needs evolved, and the event did not always turn out as expected, the
coming about of it not always as foreseen ' Pe Ell revised his earlier
assessment of the necessity of killing his companions.  Quickening, of
course, would have to die.  He had already promised Rimmer Dall that he
would kill her.  More important, he had promised himself.  Quickening's
fate was unalterable.  But why bother with killing the others?  Unless
they got in his way by trying to interfere with his plans for the girl,
why expend the effort?  If he somehow managed to gain possession of the
Black Elfstone there was no possible harm they could cause him.  And
even if he was forced to abandon that part of his plan-as it now
appeared he would have to-the old Tracker, the one-armed man, the
Highlander, and the tunesmith offered no threat to him.  Even if they
escaped Eldwist to follow him he had little to fear.  How would they
find him?  And what would they do if they did?

No, he need not kill them-though he would, he added, almost as an
afterthought, if the right opportunity presented itself.

The tremors continued, long and deep, the growl of the earth protesting
the coming of the monster worm.  Pe Ell darted this way and that along
the empty walkways, down streets littered with debris and past
buildings weakened by ragged, wicked cracks that scarred their smooth
surface.  His sharp eyes searched the shadows for movement, seeking
those who had come with him or even perhaps some sign of the elusive
Stone King.  He hadn't given up completely on the Black Elfstone.

There was still a chance, he told himself.  Everything was coming
together, caught in a whirlpool.  He could feel it happening ...

Out of the haze before him raced Quickening, silver hair flying as she
ran, her reed-thin body a quicksilver shadow.

Pe Ell moved to intercept her, catching her about the waist with one
arm before she realized what was happening.  She gasped in surprise,
stiffened, and then clung to him.

"Pe Ell," she breathed.

There was something in the way she spoke his name that surprised him.

It was a measure of fear mingled with relief, an odd combination of
dismay and satisfaction.  He tightened his grip instinctively, but she
did not try to break away.

"Where are the others?"  he asked.

"Coming after me, escaped from Uhl Belk and the Maw Grint."  Her black
eyes fixed on him.  "It is time to leave Eldwist, Pe Ell.  We found the
Stone King and we took the Black Elfstone away from him-Morgan, Walker
Boh, and I."

Pe Ell fought to stay calm.  "Then we are indeed finished with this
place."  He glanced past her into the gloom.  "Who has the Elfstone
now?"

"Walker Boh," she replied.

Pe Ell's jaw tightened.  It would have to be Walker Boh, of course.  It
would have to be him.  How much easier things would be if the girl had
the Stone.  He could kill her now, take it from her, and be gone before
any of them knew what had happened.

The one-armed man seemed to stand in his way at every turn, a shadowy
presence he could not quite escape.  What would it take to be rid of
him?

He knew, of course, what it would take.  He felt his plans begin to
shift back again.

"Quickening!"  a voice called out.

It was the Highlander.  Pe Ell hesitated, then made up his mind.

He clamped his hand about Quickening's mouth and hauled her into the
shadows.  Surprisingly, the girl did not struggle.  She was light and
yielding, almost weightless in his arms.  It was the first time he had
held her since he had carried her from the Meade Gardens.  The feelings
she stirred within him were distractingly soft and pleasant, and he
forced them roughly aside.

Later for that, he thought, when he used the Stiehl ...

Morgan Leah burst into view, pounding along the walkway, shouting for
the girl, searching.  Pe Ell held Quickening close and watched the
Highlander run past.  A moment later, he was gone.

Pe Ell released his hand from the girl's mouth, and she turned to face
him.  There was neither surprise nor fear in her eyes now; there was
only resignation.  "It is almost time for us, Pe Ell," she whispered.

A flicker of doubt tugged at his confidence.  She was looking at him in
that strange way she had, as if he were transparent to her, as if
everything about him were known.  But if everything were known, she
would not be standing there so calmly.  She would be attempting to
flee, to call after the Highlander, or to do something to save
herself.

The rumbling beneath the city increased, then faded slightly, a warning
of the slow, inevitable avalanche bearing down on them.

"Time for us to do what?"  he managed hesitantly, unable to break away
from her gaze.

She did not answer.  Instead she glanced past him, her black eyes
searching.  He turned to stare with her and watched the dark form of
Walker Boh materialize from out of the haze of dust and gray light.

Unlike the Highlander, the Dark Uncle had seen them.

Pe Ell swung the girl in front of him and unsheathed the Stiehl from
its hiding place, the blade gleaming bright with the magic.  The
one-armed man slowed perceptibly, then came on.

"Pe Ell," he whispered softly, as if the name itself were venomous.

"Stand back from me, Walker Boh," Pe Ell ordered.  The other stopped.

"We've seen enough of each other to know what we are capable of
doing.

No need to test it.  Better that we part now and go our separate
ways.

But first give me the Stone."

The tall man stood without moving, seemingly without life, eyes fixed
on the assassin and his hostage.  He appeared to be weighing
something.

Pe Ell's smile was sardonic.  "Don't be foolish enough to think you
might be quicker than me."

"We might neither of us be quick enough to survive this day.  The Maw
Grint comes."

"It will find me gone when it does.  Give me the Black Elfstone."

"if I do so, will that be enough to satisfy you?"  the other asked
quietly, his gaze intense, as if trying to read Pe Ell's thoughts.

Like the girl, Pe Ell thought.  Two of a kind.  "Pass it to me," he
commanded, ignoring the question.

"Release Quickening."

Pe Ell shook his head.  "When I am safely away.  Then I promise that I
will set her free."  Free, forever.

They stood staring at each other wordlessly for a moment, hard looks
filled with unspoken promises, with visions of possibilities that were
dark and forbidding.  Then Walker Boh reached down into his tunic and
brought forth the Stone.  He held it out in his palm, dark and
glistening.  Pe Ell smiled faintly.

The Elfstone was as black as midnight, opaque and depthless, seamless
and unflawed.  He had never seen anything like it before.  He could
almost feel the magic pulsing within.

"Give it to me," he repeated.

mm Walker Boh reached down to his belt and worked free a leather pouch
marked with brilliant blue runes.  Carefully he used the fingers of his
solitary hand to maneuver the Stone into the pouch and pull the
drawstrings tight.  He looked at Pe Ell and said, "You cannot use the
Black Elfstone, Pe Ell.  If you try, the magic will destroy you."

"Life is filled with risks," Pe Ell replied.  Dust churned in the air
about them, sifted by a faint sea breeze.  The stone of the city
shimmered, swept up in the earth's distant rumble, wrapped in a gauze
of mist and clouds.  "Toss it to me," he ordered.

"Gently."

He used the hand with the Stiehl to keep tight hold of Quickening.

The girl did not stir.  She waited passively, her slen der body pressed
against him, so compliant she might have been sleeping.  Walker held
out the pouch with the Black Elfstone and carefully lobbed it.  Pe Ell
caught it and shoved it into his belt, securing the strings to his
buckle.

"Magic belongs to those who are not afraid to use it," he offered,
smiling, backing cautiously away.  "And to those who can keep it."

Walker Boh stood rock-still against the roiling dust and tremors.

"Beware, Pe Ell.  You risk everything."

"Don't come after me, Walker Boh," Pe Ell warned darkly.

"Better for you if you remain here and face the Maw Grint."

With Quickening securely in his grasp he continued to move away,
following the line of the walkway until the other man vanished into the
haze.

u WALKER BOH REMAINED MOTIONLESS, staring after the disap pearing Pe
Ell and Quickening.  He was wondering why he had given up the Black
Elfstone so easily.  He had not wanted to, had resolved not to in fact,
and had been prepared instead to attack Pe Ell, to go to the girl's
rescue-until he looked into her eyes and saw something there that
stopped him.  Even now he wasn't sure what it was that he had seen.

Determination, resig nation, some private insight that transcended his
own-something.

Whatever it was, it had changed his mind as surely as if she had used
her magic.

His head lowered and his dark eyes narrowed.

Had she, he wondered, used her magic?

He stood lost in thought.  A light dusting of water sprinkled his
face.

It was beginning to rain again.  He looked up, remembering where he
was, what he was about, and hearing again the thunder caused by the
movement of the Maw Grint beneath the city, feeling the vibration of
its coming.

Cogline's voice was a whisper in his ear, reminding him gently to
understand who he was.  He had always wondered before.  Now he thought
he knew.

He summoned his magic, feeling it rise easily within him, strong again
since his battle with the Stone King, as if that confrontation had
freed him of constraints he had placed upon himself.  It gathered at
the center of his being, whirling like a great wind.  The rune markings
on the pouch in which the Black Elfstone rested would be its guide.

With barely a lifting of his head he sent it winging forth in search of
Pe Ell.

Then he followed after.

PE ELL RAN, dragging Quickening behind him.  She came without
resisting, moving obediently to keep pace, saying nothing, asking
nothing, her eyes distant and calm.  He glanced back at her only once
and quickly turned away again.  What he saw in those dark eyes bothered
him.  She was seeing something that he could not, something old and
immutable, a part of her past or her future-he wasn't sure which.  She
was an enigma still, the one secret he had not yet been able to
solve.

But soon now he would, he promised himself.  The Stiehl would give him
an answer to what she hid.  When her life was fading from her she would
stand revealed.  There would be no secrets then.  The magic would not
permit it.  Just as it had been with all the others he had killed,
there would be only truth.

He felt the first drops of rain strike his heated face.

He darted left along a cross street, angling away from the direction
Morgan Leah had gone and Walker Boh would follow.

There was no reason to give them any chance of finding him.

He would slip quickly from the city onto the isthmus, cross to the
stairs, gain the heights of the overlook, and then with time and
privacy enough to take full advantage of the moment he would kill
her.

Anticipation washed through him.  Quickening, the daughter of the King
of the Silver River, the most wondrous magical creature of all, would
be his forever.

Yet the flicker of doubt continued to burn within him.  What was it
that bothered him so?  He searched for the answer, pausing briefly as
he remembered what she had said about needing their magics, the magics
of all three-the Highlander, Walker Boh, and himself.  All three were
required, the King of the Silver River had proclaimed.  That was why
she had recruited them, persuaded them to come, and kept them together
through all the anger and mistrust.  But it had been Walker Boh and the
Highlander alone who had discovered the hiding place of Uhl Belk and
secured the Black Elfstone.  He had done nothing-except to destroy the
Rake.  Was that the use for which his magic had been intended?  Was
that the reason for his coming?  It didn't seem enough somehow.  It
seemed there should be something more.

Pe Ell slid through the murk of Eldwist's deepening morning, holding
the girl close to him as he went, thinking to himself that this whole
journey had been a puzzle with too many missing pieces.  They had come
in search of the Stone King-yet the others not Pe Ell, had found him.

They had come to retrieve the Black Elfstone-yet the others, not Pe
Ell, had done so.  The magic of the Stiehl was the most deadly magic
that any of them possessed-yet what purpose had it served?

Uneasiness stole through him like a thief, draining his elation at
having both Quickening and the Stone.

Something was wrong and he didn't know what it was.  He should feet in
control of things and he did not.

They passed back onto a roadway leading south, winding their way down
between the buildings, passing through the haze, two furtive shadows
fleeing into light.  Pe Ell slowed now, beginning to tire.  He peered
through the thin curtain of rain that hung before him, blinking
uncertainty.  Was this the way he had intended to come?  Somehow, he
didn't think so.  He glanced right, then left.  Wasn't this street the
one he had been trying to avoid?  Confusion filled him.  He felt
Quickening's eyes on him but would not allow himself to meet her
gaze.

He steered them down another sidestreet and crossed to a broad plaza
dominated by a tiered basin encircled by benches, some crumbling and
split, and the remains of poles from which flags had once flown.

He was working his way left toward an arched passageway between the
buildings, intent on gaining the open street beyond, a street that
would take him directly to the isthmus, when he heard his name
called.

He whirled, pulling the girl close, the blade of the Stiehl coming up
to her throat.

Morgan Leah stood across the plaza from him, a lean and dangerous
figure.  Pe Ell stared.  How had the Highlander found him?  It was
chance, he quickly decided.  Nothing more.  Dismay grappled with
anger.

Any misfortune that resulted from this encounter must not be his.

The Highlander did not appear to know what was happening.  "What are
you doing, Pe Ell?"  he shouted through the orest of broken poles.

"What I wish!"  Pe Ell responded, but there was a weariness in his
voice that surprised him.  "Get away, Highlander.  I have no wish to
hurt you.  I have what I came for.  Your one-armed friend has given me
the Elfstone-here, in this pouch at my belt!

I intend to keep it!  If you wish the girl to go free, stand away!"

But Morgan Leah did not move.  Haggard-looking and worn, just a boy
really, he seemed both lost and unresolved.  Yet he refused to give
way.  "Let her go, Pe Ell.  Don't hurt her."

His plea was wasted, but Pe Ell managed a tired nod.  "Go back,
Highlander.  Quickening comes with me."

Morgan Leah seemed to hesitate momentarily, then started forward.

For the first time since he had seized her, Pe Ell felt Quickening
tense.  She was worried for the Highlander, he realized.  Her concern
enraged him.  He pulled her back and brought the Stiehl against her
throat, calling to the other man to stop.

And then suddenly Walker Boh appeared as well, materializing out of the
gloom, close by Morgan Leah.  He stepped forward unhurriedly and
grasped the Highlander's arm, pulling him back.  The Highlander
struggled, but even with only one arm the other man was stronger.

"Think what you are doing, Pe Ell!"  Walker Bob called out, and now
there was anger in his voice.

How had the big man caught up to him so quickly?  Pe Ell felt a twinge
of uneasiness, a sense that for some unexplainable reason nothing was
going right.  He should have been clear of this madness by now, safely
away.  He should have had time to savor his victory, to speak with the
girl before using the Stiehl, to see how much he could learn of her
magic.  Instead he was being harried unmercifully by the very men he
had chosen to spare.  Worse, he was in some danger of being trapped.

"Get away from me!"  he shouted, his temper slipping, his control
draining away.  "You risk the girl's life by continuing this chase!

Let me leave now or she dies!"

"Let her go!"  the distraught Highlander screamed again.  He had fallen
to his knees, still firmly in the grip of the one-armed man.

Behind Pe Ell, still too far away to make any difference but closing on
him steadily, came Horner Dees.  The assassin was now ringed by his
enemies.  For the first time in his life he was trapped, and he sensed
a hint of panic setting in.  He jerked Quickening about to face the
burly Tracker.  "Out of my way, old man!"  he bellowed.

But Horner Dees simply shook his head.  "I don't think so, Pe Ell.

I've backed away from you enough times.  I've a stake in this business,
too.  I've given at least as much of myself as you.

Besides, you've done nothing to earn what you claim.  You simply seek
to steal.  We know who and what you are, all of us.  Do as Morgan Leah
says.  Let the girl go."

Walker Boh's voice rose.  "Pe Ell, if the Shadowen sent you to steal
the Elfstone, take it and go.  We won't stop you."

"The Shadowen!"  Pe Ell laughed, fighting to contain his rage.

"The Shadowen are nothing to me.  I do for them what I wish and nothing
more.  Do you think I came all this way because of them?  You are a
fool!"

"Then take the Elfstone for yourself if you must."

The rage broke free.  Caution disappeared in a red mist.  "if I must!

Of course, I must!  But even the Elfstone isn't the real reason I
came!"

"Then what is, Pe Ell?"  Walker Boh asked tightly.

"She is!"  Pe Ell yanked Quickening around once more, lifting her
exquisite face above the point of his knife.  "Look at her, Walker Boh,
and tell me that you don't desire her!  You cannot, can you?  Your
feelings, mine, the Highlander's-they're all the same!  We came on this
journey because of her, because of the way she looked at us and made us
feel, because of the way she wove her magic all about us!  Think of the
secrets she hides!

Think of the magic she conceals!  I came on this journey to discover
what she is, to claim her.  She has belonged to me from the first
moment of her life, and when I am finished here she shall belong to me
always!  Yes, the Shadowen sent me, but it was my choice to come-my
choice when I saw what she could give me!  Don't you see?  I came to
Eldwist to kill her!"

The air went still suddenly, the tremors and the thunder fading into a
vague and distant moan, leaving the assassin's words sharp and clear
against the silence.  The stone of the city caught their sound and held
the echo within its walls, a long, endless reverberation of dismay.

" I have to discover what she is," Pe Ell whispered, trying vainly to
explain now, unable to think what else to do, stunned that he had been
foolish enough to reveal so much, knowing they would never let him go
now.  How had he managed to lose control of matters so completely?

"I have to kill her," he repeated, the words sounding harsh and
bitter.

"That is how the magic works.  It reveals all truths.  In taking life,
it gives life.  To me.  Once the killing is done, Quickening shall be
mine forever."

For an instant no one spoke, stunned by the assassin's revelation.

Then Horner Dees said slowly, deliberately, "Don't be stupid, Pe Ell.

You can't get away from all of us.  Let her go."

It was uncertain then exactly what happened next.  There was an
explosion of shattered rock as the Maw Grint broke free of the tunnels
and reared skyward against the buildings of the city somewhere close to
where the Stone King hid within his fortressed dome.  The monster rose
like a bloated snake, swaying against the shroud of mist and damp,
huffing as if to catch its breath, as if the air were being sucked from
it.  Pe Ell started, feeling the earth begin to shudder so violently
that it seemed Eldwist would be shaken apart.

Then Quickening broke free, slipping from his grasp as if she were made
of air.  She turned to him, disdaining to run, standing right against
him, her hands gripping the arm that held the Stiehl, her black eyes
shackling him as surely as if he were chained.  He could not move; he
just stood there, frozen in place.  He saw the symmetry of her face and
body as if seeing it for the first time; he marveled at the perfection
of her, at beauty that lay not just upon the surface of her wondrous
form, but ran deep within.  He felt her press forward-or did he?  Which
was it?  He saw her mouth open with surprise and pain and relief.

He glanced down then and saw that the handle of the Stiehl was flush
against her stomach, the blade buried in her body.  He could not
remember stabbing her, yet somehow he had.  Confusion and disbelief
surged through him.  How had this happened?  What of his plan to kill
her where and when he chose?

What of his intention to savor the moment of her dying?  He looked
quickly into her eyes, desperate to snare what was trapped there and
about to be set free, anxious to capture her magic.  He looked, and
what he saw filled him with rage.

Pe Ell screamed.  As if seeking to hide what he had discovered, he
stabbed her again and again, and each time it was a frantic, futile
attempt to deny what he was seeing.  Quickening's body jerked in
response, but her gaze remained steady, and the visions shimmering in
her eyes remained fixed.

Pe Ell understood at last, and with understanding came a horror against
which he had no defense.  His thoughts collapsed, tumbling into a
quagmire of despair.  He shoved himself free of the girl and watched
her slump to the street in a slow, agonizing fall, her black eyes never
leaving him.  He was aware of Morgan Leah crying out in fury, of Walker
Boh racing forward, and of Horner Dees charging at him from the rear.

They did not matter.  Only the girl did.  He stepped away, shaking with
a cold that threatened to freeze him in place.  Everything he had hoped
for had been stolen from him.  Everything he had wanted was lost.

What have I done?

He wheeled about and began to run.  His cold turned abruptly to fire,
but the words buzzed within his mind, a nest of hornets with sharp and
anxious stingers.

What have I done?

He darted past Horner Dees with a quickness born of fear and despair,
gone so fast that the old Tracker had no chance of stopping him.  The
stone street shuddered and quaked and was slick with rain, but nothing
could slow his flight.  Gloom shrouded him with its gray, friendless
mantle, and he shrank to a tiny figure in the shadow of the city's
ancient buildings, a speck of life caught up in a tangle of magic far
older and harsher than his own.  He saw Quickening's face before him.

He felt her eyes watching as the Stiehl entered her body.

He heard her sigh with relief.

Pe Ell fled through Eldwist as if possessed.

ORGAN LEAH WAS the first to reach Quickening.  He broke free of Walker
with a strength that surprised the other, raced across the empty plaza
as she tumbled to the stone, and caught her up almost before she was
done failing.  He knelt to hold her, turned her ashen face into his
chest, and began whispering her name over and over again.

Walker Boh and Horner Dees hurried up from opposite sides, bent close
momentarily, then exchanged a sober glance.

The entire front of Quickening's shirt was soaked with her blood.

Walker straightened and peered through the gloom in the direction Pe
Ell had gone.  The assassin was already out of sight, gone into the
maze of buildings and streets, fled back toward the isthmus and the
cliffs beyond.  Walker remembered the look he had seen on the other's
face-a look filled with horror, disbelief, and rage.  Killing
Quickening clearly hadn't given him what he had been looking for.

"Walker!"

Morgan Leah's voice was a plea of desperation.  Walker glanced down.

"Help her!  She's dying!"

Walker looked at the blood on her clothes, at the collapsed, broken
body, at the face with its long hair spilled across the lovely features
like a silver veil.  She's dying.  He whispered the words in the
silence of his mind, marveling first that such a thing could be and
second that he hadn't recognized much sooner its inevitability.  He
stared at the girl, as helpless and despairing as the Highlander, but
beginning as well to catch a glimmer of understanding into the reason
that it was happening.

"Walker, do something!"  Morgan repeated, urgent, stricken.

"Highlander," Horner Dees said in response, taking hold of his shoulder
gently.  "What would you have him do?"

"What do you think I would have him do?  Use his magic!

Give her the same chance she gave him!"

Walker knelt.  His voice was calm, low.  "I can't, Morgan.  I haven't
the magic she needs."  He reached out to touch the side of her throat,
feeling for a pulse.  It was there, faint, irregular.

He could see her breathing.  "She must do what she can to save
herself."

Morgan stared at him momentarily, then began talking again to
Quickening, urging her to wake, to speak to him.  His words were
jumbled, desperate, filled with need.  The girl stirred sluggishly in
response.

Walker looked again at Horner Dees.  The old man shook his head
slowly.

Then Quickening's eyes opened.  They were clear and frightened, filled
with pain.  "Morgan," she whispered.  "Pick me up.

Carry me out of the city."

Morgan Leah, though he clearly thought to do otherwise, did not argue
the matter.  He lifted her effortlessly, carrying her as if she were
weightless.  He held her close against himself, infusing her with his
warmth, whispering down to her as he went.  Walker and Dees trailed
after wordlessly.  They moved across the plaza and into the street down
which Pe Ell had fled.

"Stay back on the walkways," Walker cautioned hurriedly, and Morgan was
quick to comply.

They had gone only a short distance when the earth began to rumble
anew.  All of Eldwist shook in response, the buildings cracking and
splitting, shards of stone and clouds of dust tumbling down.  Walker
glanced back toward the heart of the city.

The Maw Grint was moving again.  Whatever the outcome of its
confrontation with Uhl Belk, it had clearly decided on a new course of
action.  Perhaps it had put an end to its parent.  Perhaps it had
simply concluded that the Black Elfstone was more important.  In any
case, it was coming straight for them.  Disdaining the use of its
underground tunnels, it surged down the streets of Eldwist.  Walls
shattered and collapsed with its passing.  The poison of its body spit
wickedly.  The air about it shimmered and steamed.

Those who remained of the company from Rampling Steep began to run
southward toward the isthmus, fighting to keep their balance as the
earth beneath them shuddered and quaked.

Trapdoors sprang open all about, jarred loose by the tremors, and the
debris of the crumbling buildings littered the pathway at every turn.

Behind them, the Maw Grint huffed and grunted with the urgency of its
movements and came on.  Despite having to carry Quickening, Morgan set
an exhausting pace, and neither Walker nor Horner Dees could maintain
it.  The old Tracker had already fallen fifty paces back by the time
they broke clear of the city, his breathing short and labored, his
bulky form lurching as he struggled to keep up.  Walker was between the
two, his own chest constricting with pain, his legs heavy and weak.

He yelled once at Morgan to slow him down, but the Highlander was deaf
to him, the whole of his attention focused on the girl.  Walker glanced
back at Dees, at the trembling of the buildings where the Maw Grint
passed, closer to them now than before, at the shadow the monster cast
against the graying light.  He did not think they would escape.

He could not help reflecting on how ironic it was that they were going
to be killed for something they no longer even had.

The moments lengthened impossibly as they fled, receding into the
pounding of their boots on the stone.  The waves crashed against the
shores of the isthmus to either side, the spray washing across their
heated faces.  The rocks grew slippery, and they stumbled and tripped
as they ran.  The clouds darkened, and it began to rain again.  Walker
thought again of the look on Pe Ell's face when he had stabbed
Quickening.  He revised his earlier assessment.  What he had seen there
was surprise.  Pe El] hadn't been ready for her to die.  Had he even
wanted to use the Stiehl?  There was something in the movements of the
two immediately before the stabbing that was troubling.  Why hadn't
Quickening simply run?  She had been free of him for an instant, yet
had turned back.  Into the blade?  Deliberately?  Walker shiv ered.

Had she done more than stand there and wait?  Had she actually shoved
herself against Pe Ell?

His jumbled thoughts seemed to crystallize, freezing to ice.

Shades!  Was that why Pe Ell had been summoned?  Pe Ell, the assassin
with magic in his weapon, magic that nothing could withstand-was that
why he was there?

Ahead of him, Morgan Leah reached the base of the cliffs and the
pathway leading up from the isthmus.  Without slowing, he began to
climb.

Behind them, the Maw Grint appeared, its monstrous head thrusting into
view through the ruined buildings, lifting momentarily to test the air,
then surging ahead.  It oozed through the walls of the city like
something without bones.  It filled the whole of the isthmus with its
bulk, hunching its way forward, a juggernaut of impossible size.

Walker scrambled up the pathway toward the summit of the cliffs, Horner
Dees still lagging behind.  He forced his thoughts of Quickening and Pe
Ell aside.  They made no sense.  Why would Quickening want Pe Ell to
kill her?  Why would she want to die?  There was no reason for any of
it.  He tried to concentrate on what he would do to slow the advance of
the Maw Grint.

He glanced back once more, watching the massive slug-thing work its way
across the rock.  Could he collapse the isthmus beneath it?

No, the rock was too deep.  The cliffs on top of it, then?  No, again,
it would simply tunnel its way free.  Water would slow it, but all the
water was behind them in the Tiderace.  Nothing of Walker's magic or
even Cogline's was strong enough to stop the Maw Grint.

Running away was their only choice, and they could not run for long.

He reached the summit of the cliffs and found Morgan Leah waiting.

The Highlander knelt gasping for breath on the ramp that overlooked the
peninsula and Eldwist, his head lowered.  Quickening was cradled in his
arms, her eyes open and alert.  Walker crossed to them and stopped.

Quickening's face was chalk white.

Morgan Leah's eyes lifted.  "She won't use her magic," he whispered in
disbelief.

Walker knelt.  "Save yourself, Quickening.  You have the power.

She shook her head.  Her black eyes glistened as they found Morgan's.

"Listen to me," she said softly, her voice steady.  "I love you.  I
will always love you and be with you.  Remember that.

Remember, too, that I would change things if I could.  Now set me down
and rise."

Morgan shook his head.  "No, I want to stay with you She touched him
once on the cheek with her hand, and his voice trailed off, the
sentence left hanging.  Wordlessly, he laid her on the ground and
backed away.  There were tears running down his face.

"Take out your Sword, Morgan, and sheath it in the earth.

Do so now."

Morgan drew out the Sword of Leah, gripped it in both hands, and jammed
it into the rock.  His hands remained tightly fixed about the hilt
momentarily, then released.

He looked up slowly.  "Don't die, Quickening," he said.

"Remember me," she whispered.

Horner Dees lumbered up beside Walker, panting.  "What's going on?"  he
asked, bearded face close, rough voice hushed.

"What's she doing?"

Walker shook his head.  Her black eyes had shifted to find his.

"Walker," she said, calling him.

He went to her, hearing the sounds of the Maw Grint advancing below,
thinking they must run again, wondering like Dees what it was that she
intended.  He knelt beside her.

"Help me up," she said, her words quick and hurried, as if she sought
to give voice to them while she still could.  "Walk me to the edge of
the cliffs."

Walker did not question what she asked.  He put his arm about her waist
and lifted her to her feet.  She sagged against him weakly, her body
shuddering.  He heard Morgan cry out in protest, but a sudden glance
from the girl silenced him.  Walker held her up to keep her from
failing as he maneuvered her slowly toward the drop.  They reached the
edge and stopped.

Below, the Maw Grint hunched across the rock of the isthmus, an obscene
cylinder of flesh, body rippling and poison oozing down.  It was more
than halfway to them now, its monstrous bulk steaming, the trail of its
poison stretched back across the causeway to the city.

Eldwist rose raggedly against the skyline, towers broken off, buildings
split apart, walls crumbled and shattered.  Dust and mist formed a
screen against the dampness of the rain.

The dome where the Stone King made his lair stood intact.

Quickening turned and her face lifted.  For an instant she was
beautiful once more, as alive as she had been when she had brought
Walker back from the dead, when she had restored his life and driven
the poison of the Asphim from his body.  Walker caught his breath
seeing her so, blinking against the momentary illusion.  Her dark eyes
fixed him.

"Dark Uncle," she whispered.  "When you leave this place, when you go
back into the world of the Four Lands, take with you the lessons you
have learned here.  Do not fight against yourself or what you might
be.

Simply consider your choices.

Nothing is predetermined, Walker.  We can always choose."

She reached up then and touched his face, her fingers cool against his
cheek.  Images flooded through him, her thoughts, her memories, and her
knowledge.  In an instant's time, she revealed herself completely,
showing him the secrets she had kept hidden so carefully during the
whole of their journey, the truth of who and what she was.  He cried
out as if he had been burned, staggered by what he saw.  He clutched
her tightly to him, and his pale face lowered into her hair in
dismay.

Both Morgan and Horner Dees started forward, but Walker shouted for
them to stand where they were.  They stopped, hesitant, uncertain.

Walker half-turned, still holding Quickening against him, his face an
iron mask of concentration.  He understood now; he understood
everything.

"Walker."  She spoke his name again.  Her hand brushed him one final
time, and a single image appeared.

It was the Grimpond's second vision.

Her eyes lifted to his.  "Let me fall," she said softly.

He saw the vision clearly, himself standing at the summit of these
cliffs with the Four Lands stretched out below and Quickening beside
him, her black eyes beseeching as he shoved her away.

Here.  Now.  The vision come to pass.

He started to shake his head no, but her eyes stopped him, her gaze so
intense it was threatening.

"Goodbye, Walker," she whispered.

He released her.  He held her in the circle of his arm for just an
instant more, then spun her away over the precipice.  It was almost as
if someone else was responsible, someone hidden inside himself, a being
over which reason could not prevail.  He heard Horner Dees gasp,
horror-stricken.  He heard Morgan scream out in disbelief.  They rushed
at him in a frenzy, grasped him roughly, and held him as Quickening
tumbled away.  They watched her fall, a small bundle of cloth with her
silver hair streaming out behind her.  They watched her shimmer.

Then, incredibly, she began to disintegrate.  She came apart at the
edges first, like fraying cloth, bits and pieces scattering away.

Mute, awestruck, the three at the edge of the precipice stared downward
as she disappeared.  In seconds she was no more, her body turned to a
dust that sparkled and shone as it was caught by the wind.

Below, the Maw Grint ceased its advance, its head lifting.

Perhaps it knew what was about to happen; perhaps it even understood.

It made no effort to escape, waiting patiently as the dust that had
been Quickening settled over it.  It shuddered then, cried out once,
and began to shrink.  It withered rapidly, its bulk shriveling away,
disappearing back into the earth until nothing remained.

The dust blanketed the isthmus next and the rock began to change,
turning green with grass and moss.  Shoots sprang to life, vibrant and
bright.  The dust swept on, reaching the peninsula and Eldwist, and the
transformation continued.  Centuries of Uhl Belk's dark repression were
undone in moments.  The stone of the city crumbled-walls, towers,
streets, and tunnels all collapsing.  Everything gave way before the
power of Quickening's magic, just as it had at the Meade Gardens in
Cuthaven.  All that had existed before the Stone King had worked his
change was brought to life again.  Rocks shifted and reformed.  Trees
sprang up, gnarled limbs filled with summer leaves that shone against
the gray skies and water.  Patches of wildflowers bloomed, not in
abundance as in Culhaven, for this had always been a rugged and
unsettled place, but in isolated pockets, vibrant and rich.  Sea
grasses and scrub swept over the broken rock, changing the face of the
land back into a coastal plain.  The air came alive again, filled with
the smell of growing things.  The deadness of the land's stone armor
faded into memory.  Slowly, grudgingly, Eldwist sank from view,
swallowed back into the earth, gone into the past that had given it
birth.

When the transformation was complete, all that remained of Eldwist was
the dome in which the Stone King had entombed himself-a solitary gray
island amid the green of the land.

"THERE WAS NOTHING we could do to save her, Morgan," Walker Boh
explained softly, bent close to the devastated Highlander to make
certain he could hear.  "Quickening came to Eldwist to die."

They were crouched down together at the edge of the cliffs, Horner Dees
with them, speaking in hushed voices, as if the silence that had
settled over the land in the aftermath of Quickening's transformation
was glass that might shatter.  Far distant, the roar of the Tiderace
breaking against the shoreline and the cries of seabirds on the wing
were faint and momentary.  The magic had worked its way up the cliffs
now and gone past them, cleansing the rock of the Maw Grint's poison,
giving life back again to the land.  Island breezes gusted at the
clouds, forming breaks, and sunshine peeked through guardedly.

Morgan nodded wordlessly, his head purposefully lowered, his face
taut.

Walker glanced at Horner Dees, who nodded encouragingly.

"She let me see everything, Highlander, just before she died.

She wanted me to know, so that I could tell you.  She touched me on the
cheek as we stood together looking down at Eldwist, and everything was
revealed.  All the secrets she kept hidden from us.  All of her
carefully guarded mysteries."

He shifted a few inches closer.  "Her father created her to counteract
the magic of Uhl Belk.  He made her from the elements of the Gardens
where he lived, from the strongest of his magic.  He sent her to
Eldwist to die.  In a sense, he sent a part of himself.  He really had
no other choice.  Nothing less would be sufficient to overcome the
Stone King in his own domain.

And Uhl Belk had to be overcome there because he would never leave
Eldwist-could not leave, in fact, although he didn't know it.  He was
already a prisoner of his own magic.  The Maw Grint had become Uhl
Belk's surrogate, dispatched in his stead to turn the rest of the Four
Lands to stone.  But if the King of the Silver River waited for the
monster to get close enough to confront, it would have grown too huge
to stop."

His hand came up to rest on Morgan's shoulder.  He felt the other
flinch.  "She selected each of us for a purpose, Highlander-just as she
said.  You and I were chosen to regain possession of the Black
Elfstone, stolen by Belk from the Hall of Kings.  The problem
Quickening faced, of course, was that her magic would not work while
Uhl Belk controlled the Elfstone.

As long as he could wield the Druid magic, he could siphon off her own
magic and prevent the necessary transformation from taking place.

He would have done so instantly if he had discovered who she was.

He would have turned her to stone.  That was why she couldn't use her
magic until the very last."

"But she changed the Meade Gardens simply by touching the earth!"

Morgan protested, his voice angry, defiant.

"The Meade Gardens, yes.  But Eldwist was far too monstrous to change
so easily.  She could not have done so with a simple touching.

She needed to infuse herself into the rock, to make herself a part of
the land."  Walker sighed.  "That was why she chose Pe El].  The King
of the Silver River must have known or at least sensed that the
Shadowen would send someone to try to stop Quickening.  It was no
secret who she was or how she could change things.  She was a very real
threat.  She had to be eliminated.  A Shadowen, it appears now, would
lack the necessary means.  So Pe El] was sent instead.  Pe El] believed
that his purpose was a secret, that killing Quickening was his own
idea.

It wasn't.  Not ever.  It was hers, right from the beginning.  It was
the reason she sought him out, because her father had told her to do
so, to take with her to Eldwist the man and the weapon that could
penetrate the armor of her magic and allow her to transform."

"Why couldn't she simply change by willing it?"

"She was alive, Morgan-as human as you and 1. She was an elemental, but
an elemental in human guise.  I don't think she could be anything else
in life.  It was necessary for her to die before she could work her
magic on Eldwist.  No ordinary weapon could kill her; her body would
protect her against common metals.  It required magic equal to her own,
the magic of a weapon like the Stiehl-and the hands and mind of an
assassin like Pe Ell."

Walker's smile was brief, tight.  "She summoned us to help her-because
she was told to and because we were needed to serve a purpose, yes-but
because she believed in us, too.  If we had failed her, any of us, even
Pe El], if we had not done what she knew we could do, Uhl Belk would
have won.  There would have been no transformation of the land.  The
Maw Grint would have continued its advance and Uhl Belk's kingdom would
have continued to expand.  Combined with the onslaught of the Shadowen,
everything would have been lost."

Morgan straightened perceptibly, and his eyes finally lifted.

"She should have told us, Walker.  She should have let us know what she
had planned."

Walker shook his head gently.  "No, Morgan.  That was exactly what she
couldn't do.  We would not have acted as we did had we known the
truth.

Tell me.  Wouldn't you have stopped her?  You were in love with her,
Highlander.  She knew what that meant."

Morgan stared at him tight-lipped for a moment, then nodded
reluctantly.  "You're right.  She knew."

"There wasn't any other way.  She had to keep her purpose in coming
here a secret."

"I know.  I know."  Morgan's breathing was ragged, strained.

"But it hurts anyway.  I can almost believe she isn't gone, that she
will find a way to come back somehow."  He took a deep breath.  "I need
her to come back."

They were silent then, staring off in separate directions,
remembering.

Walker wondered momentarily if he should tell the other of the
Grimpond's vision, of how he had spoken of that vision with Quickening
yet she had brought him anyway, of how she must have known from the
first how it would end yet had come nevertheless so that her father's
purpose in creating her could be fulfilled.  He decided against it.

The Highlander had heard enough of secrets and hidden plans.  There was
nothing to be gained by telling him any more.

"What's become of Belk, do you think?"  Horner Dees'rough voice broke
the silence.  "Is he still down there in that dome?

Still alive?"

They looked as one over the cliff edge to where the last vestige of
Eldwist sat amid the newborn green of the peninsula, closed about and
secretive.

"I think a fairy creature like Uhl Belk does not die easily," Walker
answered, his voice soft, introspective.  "But Quickening holds him
fast, a prisoner within a shell, and the land will not be changed to
his liking again any time soon."  He paused.  "I think Uhl Belk might
go mad when he understands that."

Morgan reached down tentatively and touched a patch of grass as if
searching for something.  His fingers brushed the blades gently.

Walker watched him for a moment, then rose.  His body ached, and his
spirits were dark and mean.  He was starved for real food, and his
thirst seemed unquenchable.  His own odyssey was just beginning, a trek
back through the Four Lands in search of Pe El] and the stolen Black
Elfstone, a second confrontation to discover who should possess it, and
if he survived all that, a journey to recover disappeared Paranor and
the Druids ...

His thoughts threatened to overwhelm him, to drain the last of his
strength, and he shoved them away.

"Come, Highlander," Horner Dees urged, reaching down to take Morgan's
shoulders.  "She's gone.  Be glad we had her for as long as we did.

She was never meant to live in this world.  She was meant for a better
use.  Take comfort in the fact that she loved you.  That's no small
thing."

The big hands gripped tight, and Morgan allowed himself to be pulled to
his feet.  He nodded without looking at the other.

When his eyes finally lifted, they were hard and fixed.  "I'm going
after Pe El]."

Horner Dees spat.  "We're all going after him, Morgan Leah.

All of us.  He won't get away."

They took one final look down from the heights, then turned and began
walking toward the defile that led back into the mountains.  They had
gone only a few steps when Morgan stopped suddenly, remembering, and
looked over to where he had left the Sword of Leah.  The sword was
still jammed into the rocks, its shattered blade buried from sight.

Morgan hesitated a moment, almost as if thinking to leave the weapon
where it was, to abandon it once and for all.  Then he stepped over and
fastened his hands on the hilt.  Slowly, he began to pull.

And kept pulling, far longer than he should have needed to.

The blade slid free.  Morgan Leah stared.  The Sword of Leah was no
longer broken.  It was as perfect as it had been on the day it had been
given to him by his father.

"Highlander!"  Horner Dees breathed in astonishment.

"She spoke the truth," Morgan whispered, letting his fingers slide
along the blade's gleaming surface.  He looked at Walker,
incredulous.

"How?"

"Her magic," Walker answered, smiling at the look on the other's
face.

"She became again the elements of the earth that were used by her
father to create her, among them the metals that forged the blade of
the Sword of Leah.  She remade your talisman in the same way she remade
this land.  It was her final act, Highlander.  An act of love."

Morgan's gray eyes burned fiercely.  "in a sense then, she's still with
me, isn't she?  And she'll stay with me as long as I keep possession of
the Sword."  He took a deep breath.  "Do you think the Sword has its
magic back again, Walker?"

"I think that the magic comes from you.  I think it always has."

Morgan studied him wordlessly for a moment, then nodded slowly.

He sheathed his weapon carefully in his belt.  "I have my Sword back,
but there is still the matter of your arm.  What of that?  She said
that you, like the blade, would be made whole again."

Walker thought carefully a moment, then pursed his lips.

indeed."  With his good hand, he turned Morgan gently toward the
defile.  "I am beginning to think, Highlander," he said softly, "that
when she spoke of becoming whole, she was not referring to my arm, but
to something else altogether."

Behind them, sunlight spilled down across the Tiderace.

HER EYES!

They stared down at Pe El] from the empty windows of the buildings of
Eldwist, and when he was free of the city they peered up from the
fissures and clefts of the isthmus rock, and when he was to the cliffs
they peeked out from behind the misted boulders of the trail leading
up.  Everywhere he ran, the eyes followed.

What have I done?

He was consumed with despair.  He had killed the girl, just as he had
intended; he had gained possession of the Black Elfstone.

Everything had gone exactly as planned.  Except for the fact that the
plan had never been his at all-it had been hers from the beginning.

That was what he had seen in her eyes, the truth of why he was here and
what he had been summoned to do.  She had brought him to Eldwist not to
face the Stone King and retrieve the Black Elfstone as he had believed;
she had brought him to kill her.

Sbades, to kill her!

He ran blindly, stumbling, sprawling, clawing his way back to his feet,
torn by the realization of how she had used him.

He had never been in control.  He had merely deluded himself into
thinking he was.  All of his efforts had been wasted.  She had
manipulated him from the first-seeking him out in Culhaven knowing who
and what he was, persuading him to come with them while letting him
think that he was coming because it was his choice, and keeping him
carefully away from the others, turning him this way and that as her
dictates required, using him!  Why?  Why had she done it?  The question
scared like fire.  Why had she wanted to die?

The fire gave way to cold as he saw the eyes wink at him from left and
right and all about.  Had it even been his choice at the end to stab
her?  He couldn't remember making a conscious decision to do so.

It had almost seemed as if she had impaled herself-or made his hand
move forward those few necessary inches.  Pe Ell had been a puppet for
the daughter of the King of the Silver River all along; perhaps she had
pulled the strings that moved him one final time-and then opened her
eyes to him so that all her secrets could be his.

HE TUMBLED TO THE GROUND when he reached the head of the cliff path,
flinging himself into a cleft between the rocks, huddling down, burying
his gaunt, ravaged face in his arms, wishing he could hide, could
disappear.  He clenched his teeth in fury.  He hoped she was dead!  He
hoped they were all dead!

Tears streaked his face, the anger and despair working through him,
twisting him inside out.  No one had ever done this to him.

He could not stand what he was feeling!  He could not tolerate it!

He looked up again, moments later, longer perhaps, aware suddenly that
he was in danger, that the others would be coming in pursuit.  Let them
come!  he thought savagely.  But no, he was not ready to face them
now.

He could barely think.  He needed time to recover himself.

He forced himself back to his feet.  All he could think to do was run
and keep running.

He reached the defile leading back through the cliffs, away from the
ramp and any view of that hated city.  He could feel tremors rock the
earth and hear the rumble of the Maw Grint.

Rain washed over him, and gray mist descended until it seemed the
clouds were resting atop the land.  Pe Ell clutched the leather bag
with its rune markings and its precious contents close against his
chest.  The Stiehl rested once again in its sheath on his hip.

He could feel the magic burning into his hands, against his thigh,
hotter than he had ever felt it, fire that might never be quenched.

What had the girl done to him?  What had she done?

He fell, and for a moment was unable to rise.  All the strength had
left him.  He looked down at his hands, seeing the blood that streaked
them.  Her blood.

Her face flashed before him out of the gloom, bright and vibrant, her
silver hair flung back, her black eyes ...

Quickening!

He managed to scramble back to his feet and ran faster still, slipping
wildly, trying to fight against the visions, to regain his composure,
his self-control.  But nothing would settle into place, everything was
jumbled and thrown about, madness loosed within him like a guard dog
set free.  He had killed her, yes.  But she had made him do it, made
him!  All those feelings for her, false from the start, her creations,
her twisting of him!

Bone Hollow opened before him, filled with rocks and emptiness.

He did not slow.  He ran on.

Something was happening behind him.  He could feet a shifting of the
tremors, a changing of the winds.  He could feel something cold
settling deep within.  Magic!  A voice whispered teasing, insidious.

Quickening comes for you!  But Quickening wa's dead!  He howled out
loud, pursued by demons that all bore her face.

He stumbled and fell amid a scattering of bleached bones, shoved
himself back to his knees, and realized suddenly where he was.

Time froze for Pe Ell, and a frightening moment of insight blossomed
within.

The Koden!

Then, abruptly, it had him, its shaggy limbs enfolding him, its body
smelling of age and decay.  He could hear the whistle of its breath in
his ear and could feel the heat of it on his face.

The closeness of the beast was suffocating.  He struggled to catch a
glimpse of it and found he could not.  It was there, and at the same
time it wasn't.  Had it somehow become invisible?  He tried to reach
for the handle of the Stiehl, but his fingers would not respond.

How could this be happening?

He knew suddenly that he was not going to escape.  He was only mildly
surprised to discover that he no longer cared.

An instant later, he was dead.

ESS THAN AN HOUR LATER the last three survivors of the company from
Rampling Steep made their way into Bone Hollow and found Pe Ell's
body.

It lay midway through, sprawled loose and uncaring upon the earth,
lifeless gaze fixed upon the distant sky.  One hand clutched the
rune-marked leather bag that contained the Black Elfstone.  The Stiehl
was still in its sheath.

Walker Boh glanced about curiously.  Quickening's magic had worked its
way through Bone Hollow, changing it so that it was no longer
recognizable.  Saw grass and jump weed grew everywhere in tufts that
shaded and softened the hard surface of the rock.  Patches of yellow
and purple wildflowers bent to find the sun, and the bones of the dead
had faded back into the earth.

Nothing remained of what had been.

"Not a mark on him," Horner Dees muttered, his rough face creased
further by the frown that bent his mouth, his voice wondering.  He
moved forward, bent down to take a close look, then straightened.

"Neck might be broke.  Ribs crushed.  Something like that.  But nothing
that I can see.  A little blood on his hands, but that belongs to the
girl.  And look.  Koden tracks all around, everywhere.  It had to have
caught him.  Yet there's not a mark on his body.  How do you like
that?"

There was no sign of the Koden.  It was gone, disappeared as if it had
never been.  Walker tested the air, probed the silence, closed his eyes
to see if he could find the Koden in his mind.

No.  Quickening's magic had set it free.  As soon as the chains that
bound it were broken, it had gone back into its old world, become
itself again, a bear only, the memories of what had been done to it
already fading.  Walker felt a deep sense of satisfaction settle
through him.  He had managed to keep his promise after all.

',Look at his eyes, will you?"  Horner Dees was saying.  "Look at the
fear in them.  He didn't die a happy man, whatever it was that killed
him.  He died scared."

"It must have been the Koden," Morgan Leah insisted.  He hung back from
the body, unwilling to approach it.

Dees glanced pointedly at him.  "You think so?  How, then?

What did it do, hug him to death?  Must have done it pretty quick if it
did.  That knife of his isn't even out of its case.  Take a look,
Highlander.  What do you see?"

Morgan stepped up hesitantly and stared down.  "Nothing," he
admitted.

'Just as I said."  Dees sniffed.  "You want me to turn him over, look
there?"

Morgan shook his head.  "No."  He studied Pe Ell's face a moment
without speaking.  "it doesn't matter."  Then his eyes lifted to find
Walker's.  "I don't know what to feel.  Isn't that odd?

I wanted him dead, but I wanted to be the one who killed him.

I know it doesn't matter who did it or how it happened, but I feel
cheated somehow.  As if the chance to even things up had been taken
away from me."

"I don't think that's the case, Morgan," the Dark Uncle re plied
softly.  "I don't think the chance was ever yours in the first
place."

The Highlander and the old Tracker stared at him in sur prise.

"What are you saying?"  Dees snapped.

Walker shrugged.  "If I were the King of the Silver River and it was
necessary for me to sacrifice the life of my child to an assassin's
blade, I would make certain her killer did not escape."

He shifted his gaze from one face to the other and back again.

"Perhaps the magic that Quickening carried in her body was meant to
serve more than one purpose.  Perhaps it did."

There was a long silence as the three contemplated the pros In pect.

"The blood on his hands, you think?"  Horner Dees said finally.

"Like a poison?"  He shook his head.  "Makes as much sense as anything
else."

Walker Bob reached down and carefully freed the bag with the Black
Elfstone from Pe Ell's rigid fingers.  He wiped it clean, then held it
in his open palm for a moment, thinking to himself how ironic it was
that the Elfstone would have been useless to the assassin.  So much
effort expended to gain possession of its magic and all for nothing.

Quickening had known.  The King of the Silver River had known.  If Pe
Ell had known as well, he would have killed the girl instantly and been
done with the matter.  Or would he have remained anyway, so captivated
by her that even then he would not have been able to escape?

Walker Boh wondered.

"What about this?"  Horner Dees reached down and unstrapped the Stiehl
from around Pe Ell's thigh.  "What do we do with it?"

"Throw it into the ocean," Morgan said at once.  "Or drop it into the
deepest hole you can find."

It seemed to Walker that he could hear someone else speaking, that the
words were unpleasantly familiar ones.  Then he realized he was
thinking of himself, remembering what he had said when Cogline had
brought him the Druid History out of lost Paranor.  Another time,
another magic, he thought, but the dangers were always the same.

"Morgan," he said, and the other turned.  "If we throw it away, we risk
the possibility that it will be found again-perhaps by someone as
twisted and evil as Pe Ell.  Perhaps by someone worse.  The blade needs
to be locked away where no one can ever reach it again."  He turned to
Horner Dees.  "if you give it to me, I will see that it is."

They stood there for a moment without moving, three worn and ragged
figures in a field of broken stone and new green, measuring one
another.  Dees glanced once at Morgan, then handed the blade to
Walker.

"I guess we can trust you to keep your word as well as anyone," he
offered.

Walker shoved the Stiehl and the Elfstone into the deep pockets of his
cloak and hoped it was so.

THEY WALKED SOUTH the remainder of the day and spent their first night
free of Eldwist on a barren, scrub-grown plain.  A day earlier, the
plain had been a part of Uhl Belk's kingdom, infected by the poison of
the Maw Grint, a broken carpet of stone.  Even with nothing more than
the scrub to brighten its expanse, it felt lush and comforting after
the deadness of the city.  There was little to eat yet, a few roots and
wild vegetables, but there was fresh water again, the skies were star
filled, and the air was clean and new.  They made a fire and sat up
late, talking in low voices of what they were feeling, remembering in
the long silences what had been.

When morning came they awoke with the sun on their faces, grateful
simply to be alive.

They traveled down again through the high forests and crossed into the
Charnals.  Horner Dees took them a different way this time, carefully
avoiding dead Carisman's tribe of Urdas, journeying east of the
Spikes.

The weather stayed mild, even in the mountains, and there were no
storms or avalanches to cause them further grief.  Food was plentiful
again, and they began to regain their strength.  A sense of well-being
returned, and the harshest of their memories softened and faded.

Morgan Leah spoke often of Quickening.  It seemed to help him to speak
of her, and both Walker and Horner Dees encouraged him to do so.

Sometimes the Highlander talked as if she were still alive, touching
the Sword he carried, and gesturing back to the country they were
leaving behind.  She was there, he insisted, and better that she were
there than gone completely.

He could sense her presence at times; he was certain of it.  He smiled
and joked and slowly began to return to himself.

Horner Dees became his old self almost as quickly, the haunted look
fading from his eyes, the tension disappearing from his face.  The
gruffness in his voice lost its edge, and for the first time in weeks
the love he bore for his mountains began to work its way back into his
conversation.

Walker Boh recovered more slowly.  He was encased in an iron shell of
fatalistic resignation that had stripped his feelings nearly bare.

He had lost his arm in the Hall of Kings.  He had lost Cogline and
Rumor at Hearthstone.  He had nearly lost his life any number of
times.

Carisman was dead.  Quickening was dead.  His vow to refuse the charge
that Allanon had given him was dead.  Quickening had been right.

There were always choices.  But sometimes the choices were made for
you, whether you wanted it so or not.  He might have thought not to be
ensnared by Druid machinations, to turn his life away from Brin
Ohmsford and her legacy of magic.  But circumstances and conscience
made that all but impossible.  His was a destiny woven by threads that
stretched back in time hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, and he
could not be free of them, not entirely, at least.  He had thought the
matter through since that night in Eldwist when he had agreed to return
with Quickening to the lair of the Stone King in an effort to recover
the Black Elfstone.

He knew that by going he was agreeing that if they were successful he
would carry the talisman back into the Four Lands and attempt to
restore Paranor and the Druids-just as Allanon had charged him.

He knew without having to speak the words what that meant.

Make whatever choice you will, Quickening had advised.

But what choices were left to him?  He had determined long ago to
search out the Black Elfstone-perhaps from the moment he had first
discovered its existence while reading the Druid History; certainly
from the time of the death of Cogline.  He had determined as well to
discover what its magic would doand that meant testing Allanon's charge
that Paranor and the Druids could be restored.  He might argue that he
had been considering the matter right up until the moment Eldwist had
met its end.  But he knew the truth was otherwise.  He knew as well
that if the magic of the Black Elfstone was everything that had been
promised, if it worked as he believed, then Paranor would be
restored.

And if that happened, then the Druids would come back into the Four
Lands.

Through him.

Beginning with him.

And that reality provided the only choice left to him, the one he
believed Quickening had wanted him to make-the choice of who he would
be.  If it was true that Paranor could be restored and that he must
become the first of the Druids who would keep it, then he must make
certain he did not lose himself in the process.  He must make certain
that Walker Boh sur vived-his heart, his ideas, his convictions, his
misgivingseverything he was and believed.  He must not evolve into the
very thing he had struggled so hard to escape.  He must not, in other
words, turn into Allanon.  He must not become like the Druids of
old-manipulators, exploiters, dark and secretive conjurers, and hiders
of truths.  If the Druids must return in order to preserve the Races,
in order to ensure their survival against the dark things of the world,
Shadowen or whatever, then he must make them as they should be-a better
order of Men, of teachers, and of givers of the power of magic.

That was the choice he could still make-a choice he must make if he
were to keep his sanity.

It took them almost two weeks to reach Rampling Steep, choosing the
longer, safer routes, skirting any possibility of danger, sheltering
when it was dark, and emerging to travel on when it was light.  They
came on the Mountainside town toward midday, the skies washed with a
gray, cloudy haze left by a summer shower that suggested spun cotton
pulled apart by too-anxious hands.  The day was warm and humid, and the
buildings of the town glistened like damp, squat toads hunched down
against the rocks.  The three travelers approached as strangers, seeing
the town anew, the first since Eldwist.  They slowed as one as they
entered the solitary street that navigated the gathering of taverns,
stables, and trading stores to either side, pausing to look back into
the mountains they had descended, watching momentarily as the runoff
from the storm churned down out of the cliffs into gullies and streams,
the sound a distant rush.

"Time to say goodbye," Horner Dees announced without preliminaries and
stuck out his hand to Morgan.

Morgan stared.  There had been no talk of his leaving until now.

"You're not coming on with us?"

The old Tracker snorted.  "I'm lucky to be alive, Highlander.

Now you want me to come south?  How far do you expect me to push
things?"

Morgan stammered.  "I didn't mean "Fact is, I shouldn't have gone with
you the first time."  The other cut him short with a wave of one big
hand.  "it was the girl who talked me into it.  Couldn't say no to
her.

And maybe it was the sense of having left something behind when I fled
the Stone King and his monsters ten years ago.  I had to go back to
find it again.  So here I am, the only man to have escaped Eldwist and
Uhl Belk twice.  Seems to me that's enough for one old man.

"You would be welcome to come with us, Horner Dees," Walker Bob assured
him, taking Morgan's part.  "You're not as old as you pretend and twice
as able.  The Highlander and his friends can use your experience."

" Yes, Horner," Morgan agreed hurriedly.  "What about the Shadowen?  We
need you to help fight them.  Come with us."

But the old Tracker shook his bearish head stubbornly.

"Highlander, I'll miss you.  I owe you my life.  I look at you and see
the son I might have had under other circumstances.  Now isn't that
something to admit?  But I've had enough excitement in my life and I'm
not anxious for any more.  I need the dark quiet of the ale houses.  I
need the comforts of my own place."

He stuck out his hand once again.  "Who's to say that won't change
though?  So.  Some other time, maybe?"

Morgan clasped the hand in his own.  "Any time, Horner."

Then, forsaking the hand, he embraced the old man.  Horner Dees hugged
him back.

The journey went swiftly after that, time slipping away almost
magically, the days and nights passing like quicksilver.

Walker and Morgan came down out of the Charnals into the foothills
south and turned west along their threshold toward the Rabb.  They
forded the north branch of the river and the land opened into
grasslands that stretched away toward the distant peaks of the Dragon's
Teeth.  The days were long and hot, the sun burning out of cloudless
skies as the intemperate weather of the mountains was left behind.

Sunrise came early, and daylight stayed late, and even the nights were
warm and bright.  The pair encountered few travelers and no Federation
patrols.  The land grew increasingly infected by the Shadowen sickness,
dark patches that hinted at the spread of the disease, but there was no
sign of the carriers.

At week's end, the Dark Uncle and the Highlander reached the south
entrance to the Jannisson Pass.  It was nearing noon, and the pass
stretched away through the juncture of the cliffs of the Dragon's Teeth
and the Charnals, a broad empty corridor leading north to the
Streleheim.  It was here that Padishar Creel had hoped to rally the
forces of the Southland Movement, the Dwarf Resistance, and the Trolls
of Axhind and his Kelktic Rock in an effort to confront and destroy the
armies of the Federation.

The wind blew gently across the flats and down through the pass, and no
one stirred.

Morgan Leah cast about wearily, a resigned look on his face.

Walker stood silently beside him for a moment, then put his hand on the
other's shoulder.  "Where to now, Highlander?"  he asked softly.

Morgan shrugged and smiled bravely.  "South, I suppose, to Varfleet.

I'll try to make contact with Padishar, hope that he's found Par and
Coll.  If that fails, I'll go looking for the Valemen on my own."  He
paused, studying the other's hard, pale face.  "I guess I know where
you're going," Walker nodded.  "To find Paranor."

Morgan took a deep breath.  "I know this isn't what you wanted,
Walker."

"No, it isn't."

"I could come with you, if you'd like."

"No, Highlander, you've done enough for others.  It is time to do
something for yourself."

Morgan nodded.  "Well, I'm not afraid, if that's what you're
thinking.

I have the magic of the Sword of Leah again.  I might be of some
use."

Walker's fingers tightened on the other's shoulder and then dropped
away.  "I don't think anyone can help me where I'm going.  I think I
have to help myself as best I can.  The Elfstone will likely be my best
protection."  He sighed.  "Strange how things work out.  If not for
Quickening, neither of us would be doing what he is or even be who he
is, would he?  She's given us both a new purpose, a new face, maybe
even a new strength.

Don't forget what she gave up for you, Morgan.  She loved you.

I think that in whatever way she is able she always will."

"I know."

"Horner Dees said you saved his life.  You saved my life as well.

If you hadn't used the sword, even broken as it was, Uhl Belk would
have killed me.  I think Par and Coll Ohmsford could ask for no better
protector.  Go after them.  See that they are well.  Help them in any
way you can."

"I will."

They clasped hands and held tight for a moment, eyes locked.

"Be careful, Walker," Morgan said.

Walker's smile was faint and ironic.  "Until we meet again, Morgan
Leah."

Then Walker turned and walked into the pass, angling through sunlight
into shadow as the rocks closed about.  He did not look back.

FoP, THE REMAINDER OF that day and the whole of the one following
Walker Boh traveled west across the Streleheim, skirting the dark,
ancient forests that lay south, cradled by the peaks of the Dragon's
Teeth.  On the third day he turned down, moving into the shadowed
woods, leaving the plains and the sunshine behind.  The trees were
massive, towering sentinels set at watch like soldiers waiting to be
sent forth into battle, thick trunks grown close in camaraderie, and
limbs canopied against the light.

These were the forests that for centuries past had sheltered the
Druid's Keep against the world beyond.  In the time of Shea Ohmsford
there had been wolves set at watch.  Even after, there had been a wall
of thorns that none could penetrate but Allanon himself.  The wolves
were gone now, the wall of thorns as well, and even the Keep itself.

Only the trees remained, wrapped in a deep, pervasive silence.

Walker navigated the trails as if he were a shadow, passing soundlessly
through the sea of trunks, across the carpet of dead needles, lost in
the roil of his increasing indecision.  His thoughts of what he was
about to do were jumbled and rough-edged, and whispers of uncertainty
that he had thought safely put to rest had risen to haunt him once
again.  All his life he had fought to escape Brin Ohmsford's legacy;
now he was rushing willingly to embrace it.  His decision to do so had
been long in coming and repeatedly questioned.

It had resulted from an odd mix of circumstance, conscience, and
deliberation.  He had given it as much thought as he was capable of
giving and he was convinced that he had chosen right.  But the prospect
of its consequences was terrifying nevertheless, and the closer he came
to discovering them, the deeper grew his misgivings.

By the time he arrived at the heart of the forests and the bluff on
which Paranor had once rested, he was in utter turmoil.

He stood for a long time staring upward at the few stone blocks that
remained of what had once been the outbuildings, at the streaking of
red light across the bluff's crest where the sunset cast its heated,
withering glow.  In the shimmer of the dying light he could imagine it
was possible to see Paranor rise up against the coming night, its
parapets sharply defined and its towers piercing the sky's azure crown
like spears.  He could feel the immensity of the Keep's presence, the
sullen bulk of its stone.

He could touch the life of its magic, waiting to be reborn.

He built a fire and sat before it, awaiting the descent of night.

When it was fully dark, he rose and walked again to the bluff's edge.

The stars were pinpricks of brightness overhead, and the woods about
him were anxious with night sounds.  He felt foreign and alone.

He stared upward once more at the crest of the rise, probing from
within with his magic for some sign of what waited.  Nothing revealed
itself.

Yet the Keep was there; he could sense its presence in a way that
defied explanation.

The fact that his magic failed to substantiate what he already knew
made him even more uneasy.  Bring back lost Paranor and the Druids,
Allanon had said.  What would it take to do so?

What beyond possession of the Black Elfstone?  There would be more, he
knew.  There would have to be.

He slept for a few hours, though sleep did not come easily, a frail
need against the whisper of his fears.  He lay awake at first, his
resolve slipping away, eroded and breached.  The trappings of a
lifetime's mistrust ensnared him, working free of the restraints under
which he had placed them, threatening to take control of him once
again.  He forced himself to think of Quickening.  What must it have
been like for her, knowing what she was expected to do?  How frightened
she must have been!  Yet she had sacrificed herself because that was
what was needed to give life back to the land.  He took strength in
remembering her courage, and after a time the whispers receded again,
and he fell asleep.

It was already daybreak when he awoke, and he washed and ate quickly,
woodenly, anxious in the shadow of what waited.

When he was done he walked again to the base of the bluff and stared
upward.  The sun was behind him, and its light spilled down upon the
bluff's barren summit.  Nothing had changed.

No hint of what had been or what might be revealed itself.

Paranor remained lost in time and space and legend.

Walker stepped away, returning to the edge of the trees, safely back
from the bluff.  He reached into the deep pockets of his cloak and
lifted free the pouch that contained the Black Elfstone.  He stared
blankly at it, feeling the weight of its power press against him.  His
body was stiff and sore; his missing arm ached.  His throat was as dry
as autumn leaves.  He felt the insecurities, doubts, and fears begin to
rise within him, massing in a wave that threatened to wash him away.

Quickly, he dumped the Elfstone into his open palm.

He closed his hand instantly, frightened to look into its dark light.

His mind raced.  One Stone, one for all, one for heart, mind, and
body-made that way, he believed, because it was the antithesis of all
the other Elfstones created by the creatures of the old world of
faerie, a magic that devoured rather than expended, one that absorbed
rather than released.  The Elfstones that Allanon had given to Shea
Ohmsford were a talisman to defend their holder against whatever dark
magic threatened.  But the Black Elfstone was created for another
reason entirely-not to defend, but to enable.  It was conceived for a
single purposeto counteract the magic that had been called forth to
spirit away the Druid's Keep, to bring lost Paranor out of limbo
again.

It would do so by consuming that magic-and transferring it into the
body of the Stone's holder-himself.  What that would do to him, Walker
could only imagine.  He knew that the Stone's protection against misuse
lay in the fact that it would work the same way no matter who wielded
it and for what purpose.  That was what had destroyed Uhl Belk.

His absorption of the Maw Grint's magic had turned him to stone.

Walker's own fate might be similar, he believed-yet it would also be
more complex.  But how?  If use of the Black Elfstone restored Paranor,
then what would be the consequence of transference to himself of the
magic that bound the Keep?

Wbosoever sball have cause and right sball wield it to its proper
end.

Himself.  Yet why?  Because Allanon had decreed that it must be so?

Had Allanon told the truth?  Or simply a part of the truth?  Or was he
gamesplaying once more?  What could Walker Boh believe?

He stood there, solitary, filled with indecision and dread, wondering
what it was that had brought him to this end.  He saw his hand begin to
shake.

Then suddenly, unexpectedly, the whispers broke through his defenses in
a torrent and turned to screams.

No!

He brought the Black Elfstone up almost without thinking, opened his
hand, and thrust the dark gem forth.

Instantly the Elfstone flared to life, its magic a sharp tingling
against his skin.  Black light-the nonlight, the engulfing darkness.

Wbosoever.  He watched the light gather before him, building on
itself.

Sball have cause and rigbt.  The backlash of the ma ' gic rushed
through him, shredding doubt and fear, silencing whispers and screams,
filling him with unimaginable power.  Sball wield it to its proper
end.

Now!

He sent the black light hurtling forth, a huge tunnel burrowing through
the air, swallowing everything in its path, engulfing substance and
space and time.  It exploded against the crest of the empty bluff, and
Walker was hammered back as if struck a blow by an invisible fist.

Yet he did not fall.  The magic rushed through him, bracing him,
wrapping him in armor.  The black light spread like ink against the
sky, rising, broadening, angling first this way, then that, channeling
itself as if there were runners to be followed, gutters down which it
must flow.  It began to shape.  Walker gasped.  The light of the Black
Elfstone was etching out the lines of a massive fortress, its parapets
and battlements, and its towers and steeples.  Walls rose and gates
appeared.  The light spread higher against the skies, and the sunlight
was blocked away.  Shadows cast down by the castle enveloped Walker
Bob, and he felt himself disappear into them.

Something inside him began to change.  He was draining away.  No,
rather he was filling up!  Something, the magic, was washing through.

The other, he thought, weak before its onslaught, helpless and suddenly
terrified.  It was the magic that encased lost Paranor being drawn down
into the Elfstone!

And into him.

His jaw clenched, and his body went rigid.  I will not give way!

The black light flooded the empty spaces of the image atop the bluff,
coloring it, giving it first substance and then lifeParanor, the
Druid's Keep, come back into the world of men, returned from the dark
half-space that had concealed it all these years.  It rose up against
the sky, huge and forbidding.  The Black Elfstone dimmed in Walker's
hand; the nonlight softened and then disappeared.

Walker's hoarse cry ended in a groan.  He fell to his knees, wracked
with sensations he could not define and riddled with the magic he had
absorbed, feeling it course through him as if it were his blood.

His eyes closed and then slowly opened.  He saw himself shimmering in a
haze that stole away the definition of his features.  He looked down in
disbelief, then felt himself go cold.  He wasn't really there
anymore!

He had become a wraith!

He forced his terror aside and climbed back to his feet, the Black
Elfstone still clutched in his hand.  He watched himself move as if he
were someone else, watched the shimmer of his limbs and body and the
shadings that overlapped and gave him the appearance of being
fragmented.  Sbades, what has been done to me!  He stumbled forward,
scrambling to gain the bluff, to reach its crest, not knowing what else
to do.  He must gain Paranor, he sensed.  He must get inside.

The climb was long and rugged, and he was gasping for breath by the
time he reached the Keep's iron gates.  His body reflected in a
multitude of images, each a little outside of the others.  But he could
breathe and move as a normal man; he could feel as he had before.  He
took heart from that, and hastened to reach Paranor's gates.  The stone
of the Keep was real enough, hard and rough to his touch-yet
forbidding, too, in a way he could not immediately identify.  The gates
opened when he leaned into them, as if he had the strength of a
thousand men and could force anything that stood before him.

He entered cautiously.  Shadows enfolded him.  He stood in a well of
darkness, and there was a whisper of death all about.

Then something moved within the gloom, detached, and took shape-a
four-legged apparition, hulking and ominous.  It was a moor cat, black
as pitch with luminous gold eyes, there and not there, like Walker
himself.

Walker froze.  The moor cat looked exactly like ...

Behind the cat, a man appeared, old and stooped, a translucent ghost,
shimmering.  As the man drew near, his features became recognizable.

"At last you've come, Walker," he whispered in an anxious, hollow
voice.

The Dark Uncle felt the last vestiges of his resolve fade away.

The man was Cogline.

HE KING OF THE SILVER PIVER sat in the Gardens that were his sanctuary
and watched the sun melt into the western horizon.  A stream of clear
water trickled across the rocks at his feet and emptied into a pond
from which a unicorn drank, and a breeze blew softly through the
maidenhair, carrying the scent of lilacs and jonquils.  The trees
rustled, their leaves a shimmer of green, and birds sang con tented
day-end songs as they settled into place in preparation for the coming
of night.

Beyond, in the world of Men, the heat was sullen and unyielding against
the fall of darkness, and a pall of weariness draped the lives of the
people of the Four Lands.

So must it be for now.

The eyes that could see everything had seen the death of his child and
the transformation of the land of the Stone King.

The Maw Grint was no more.  The city of Eldwist had gone back into the
earth, returned to the elements that had created it, and the land was
green and fertile again.  The magic of his child was rooted deep, a
river that flowed invisibly about the solitary dome in which Uhl Belk
was imprisoned.  It would be long before his brother could emerge into
the light again.

Iridescent dragonflies buzzed past him without slowing and disappeared
into the twilight's glow.

Elsewhere, the battle against the Shadowen went on.  Walker Boh had
invoked the magic of the Black Elfstone, as Allanon had charged him,
and the Druid's Keep had been summoned out of the mists that had hidden
it for three centuries.  What would the Dark Uncle make, the King of
the Silver River wondered, of what he found there?  West, where the
Elves had once lived, Wren Ohmsford continued her search to discover
what had become of them-and, more important, though she did not yet
realize it, what would become of herself.  North, the brothers Par and
Coll Ohmsford struggled toward each other and the secrets of the Sword
of Shannara and the Shadowen magic.

There were those who would help and those who would betray, and all of
the wheels of chance that Allanon had set in motion could yet be
stopped.

The King of the Silver River rose and slipped into the waters of the
pond momentarily, reveling in the cool wetness, letting himself become
one with the flow.  Then he emerged and passed down the Garden
pathways, through stands of juniper and hemlock onto a hillock of
centauries and bluebells that reflected gold about the edges of their
petals with the day's fading light.  He paused there, staring out again
into the world beyond.

His daughter had done well, he reflected.

But the thought was strangely bleak and empty.  He had created an
elemental out of the life of his Gardens and sent that elemental forth
to serve his needs.  She had been nothing to him-a daughter in name
only, a child merely by designation.

She had been only a momentary reality, and he had never in tended that
she be anything more.

Yet he missed her.  Shaping her as he did, breathing his life into her,
he had brought himself too close.  The human feelings they had shared
would not dissolve as easily as their human forms.  She should have
meant nothing to him, now that she was gone.  Instead, her absence
formed a void he could not seem to fill.

Quickening.

A child of the elements and his magic, he repeated.  He would do the
same again-yet perhaps not so readily.  There was some thing in the
ways of the creatures of the mortal Races that en dured beyond the
leaving of the flesh.  There was a residue of their emotions that
lingered.  He could still hear her voice, see her face, and feel the
touch of her fingers against him.  She was gone from him, yet
remained.

Why should it be so?

He sat there as darkness cloaked the land and wondered at himself.

HERE ENDS BOOK TWO of The Heritage of Sbannara.  Book Three, The Elf
Queen of Sbannara, will reveal more of the mystery of Cogline and
Paranor and chronicle the efforts of Wren Ohmsford to discover what has
become of the missing Westland Elves.

The End.

....................................

Terry Brooks was born in Illinois in 1944.  He received his
undergraduate degree from Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, where he
majored in English Literature, and his graduate degree from the School
of Law at Washington & Lee University, Lexington, Virginia.  He was a
practicing attorney until recently; he has now retired to become a
full-time author.

A writer since high school, he published his first novel, The Sword of
Sbannara, in 1977 and the sequels The Elfstones of Sbannara in 1982 and
The Wisbsong of Sbannara in 1985.

Magic Kingdom for Sale-Sold!  began a best-selling new series for him
in 1986.  Brooks presently lives in the Northwest.

