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 might 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 shell 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,
Come forth from 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,
Share with us weak and mortal creatures,
The truths and secrets of Mankind.”
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 belltower 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 belltower 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 belltower 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, starting them.
“Urdas!” 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 Homer 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 belltower 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 1 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 bands 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 Boh.”
“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 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 implications of having the magic. I feared…”
He caught himself, an iron grip that tight
ened 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 whispered 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 knowledge, 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 healing 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 himself. He sat staring at her for a time, then turned introspective. He gave himself over to the images her words conjured. He 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…