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 thought; 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 inside—everything, 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 us—a 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 Ell? 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,” be 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 of 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 I. 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 ar
ms 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 Elfstone 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. Sometimes 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.