“Have you lost your mind?” Coll whispered urgently in his ear. Stasas and Drutt had Padishar’s momentary attention, declaring that they, too, would go. “Par, this was our chance to get out!”
Par leaned close to him. “He’s doing this for me, don’t you see? I’m the one who wants to find the Sword! I can’t let Padishar take all the risks! I have to go!”
Colt shook his head helplessly. Morgan, with a wink at Par over Coll’s shoulder, cast his vote in favor of going as well. Coll just raised his hand wordlessly and nodded.
That left Damson. Padishar had his sharp gaze fixed on her, waiting. It suddenly occurred to Par that Padishar needn’t have asked who wanted to go with him; he simply could have ordered it. Perhaps in asking he was also testing. There was still a traitor loose. Padishar had told him earlier that he didn’t believe it was any of them—but he might have it in his mind to make sure.
“I will wait for you in the park,” Damson Rhee said, and everyone stared at her. She did not seem to notice. “I would have to disguise myself as a man in order to go in with you. That is one more risk you would be taking—and to what end? There is nothing I can offer by being with you. If there is trouble, I will be of better use to you on the outside.”
Padishar’s smile was immediately disarming. “Your thinking is correct as usual, Damson. You will wait in the park.”
It seemed to Par that he was a little too quick to agree.
Geysers exploded and died from the flat, gray surface of the lake, and the spray felt like bits of ice where it landed on Walker Boh’s skin.
“Tell me why you come here, Dark Uncle?” Allanon’s shade whispered.
Walker felt the chill burn away as his determination caught fire. “I need tell you nothing,” he replied. “You are not Allanon. You are only the Grimpond.”
Allanon’s visage shimmered and faded in the half-light, replaced by Walker’s own. The Grimpond emitted a hollow laugh. “I am you, Walker Boh. Nothing more and nothing less. Do you recognize yourself?”
His face went through a flurry of transformations—Walker as a child, as a boy, as a youth, as a man. The images came and went so quickly that Walker could barely register them. It was somehow terrifying to watch the phases of his life pass by so quickly. He forced himself to remain calm.
“Will you speak with me, Grimpond?” he asked.
“Will you speak with yourself?” came the reply.
Walker took a deep breath. “I will. But for what purpose should I do so? There is nothing to talk about with myself. I already know all that I have to say.”
“As do I, Walker. As do I.”
The Grimpond shrank until it was the same size as Walker. It kept his face, taunting him with it, letting it reveal flashes of the age that would one day claim it, giving it a beaten cast as if to demonstrate the futility of his life.
“I know why you have come to me,” the Grimpond said suddenly. “I know the private-most thoughts of your mind, the little secrets you would keep even from yourself. There need be, no games between us, Walker Boh. You are surely my equal in the playing of them, and I have no wish to do battle with you again. You have come to ask where you must go to find the Black Elfstone. Fair enough. I will tell you.”
Immediately, Walker mistrusted the shade. The Grimpond never volunteered anything without twisting it. He nodded in response, but said nothing.
“How sad you seem, Walker,” soothed the shade. “No jubilation at my submission, no elation that you will have what you want? Is it so difficult then to admit that you have dispensed with pride and self-resolution, that you have forsaken your lofty principles, that you have been won over after all to the Druid cause?”
Walker stiffened in spite of himself. “You misread matters, Grimpond. Nothing has been decided.”
“Oh, yes, Dark Uncle! Everything has been decided! Make no mistake. Your life weaves out before my eyes as a thread straight and undeviating, the years a finite number, their course determined. You are caught in the snare of the Druid’s words. His legacy to Brin Ohmsford becomes your own, whether you would have it so or not. You have been shaped!”
“Tell me, then, of the Black Elfstone,” Walker tried.
“All in good time. Patience, now.”
The words died away into stillness, the Grimpond shifting within its covering of mist. Daylight had faded into darkness, the gray turned black, the moon and stars shut away by the valley’s thick haze. Yet there was light where Walker stood, a phosphorescence given off by the waters beneath the air on which the Grimpond floated, a dull and shallow glow that played wickedly through the night.
“So much effort given over to escaping the Druids,” the Grimpond said softly. “What foolishness.” Walker’s face dissipated and was replaced by his father’s. His father spoke. “Remember, Walker, that we are the bearers of Allanon’s trust. He gave it to Brin Ohmsford as he lay dying, to be passed from one generation to the next, to be handed down until it was needed, sometime far, far in the distant future . . .”
His father’s visage leered at him. “Perhaps now?”
Images flared to life above him, borne on the air as if tapestries threaded on a frame, woven in the fabric of the mist. One after another they appeared, brilliant with color, filled with the texture and depth of real life.
Walker took a step back, startled. He saw himself in the images, anger and defiance in his face, his feet positioned on clouds above the cringing forms of Par and Wren and the others of the little company who had gathered at the Hadeshorn to meet with the shade of Allanon. Thunder rolled out of a darkness that welled away into the skies overhead, and lightning flared in jagged streaks. Walker’s voice was a hiss amid the rumble and the flash, the words his own, spoken as if out of his memory. I would sooner cut off my hand than see the Druids come again! And then he lifted his arm to reveal that his hand, indeed, was gone.
The vision faded, then sharpened anew. He saw himself again, this time on a high, empty ridgeline that looked out across forever. The whole world spread away below him, the nations and their Races, the creatures of land and water, the lives of everyone and everything that were. Wind whipped at his black robes and whistled ferociously in his ears. There was a girl with him. She was woman and child both, a magical being, a creature of impossible beauty. She stunned him with the intensity of her gaze, depthless black eyes from which he could not turn away. Her long, silver hair flowed from her head in a shimmering mass. She reached for him, needing his balance to keep her footing on the treacherous rock—and he thrust her violently away. She fell, tumbling into the abyss below, soundless as she shrank from sight, silver hair fading into a ribbon of brightness and then into nothing at all.
Again, the vision faded, then returned. He saw himself a third time, now in a castle fortress that was empty of life and gray with disuse. Death stalked him relentlessly, creeping through walls and along corridors, cold fingers probing for signs of his life. He felt the need to run from it, knew that he must if he were to survive—and yet he couldn’t. He stood immobile, letting Death approach him, reach for him, close about him. As his life ended, the cold filled him, and he saw that a dark, robed shape stood behind him, holding him fast, preventing him from fleeing. The shape bore the face of Allanon.
The visions disappeared, the colors faded, and the grayness returned, shifting sluggishly in the lake’s phosphorescent glow. The Grimpond brought its robed arms downward slowly, and the lake hissed and spit with dissatisfaction. Walker Boh flinched from the spray that cascaded down upon him.
“What say you, Dark Uncle?” the Grimpond whispered. It bore Walker’s pale face once more.
“That you play games still,” Walker said quietly. “That you show lies and half-truths designed to taunt me. That you have shown me nothing of the Black Elfstone.”
“Have I not?” The Grimpond shimmered darkly. “Is it all a game, do you think? Lies and half-truths only?” The laugh was mirthless. “You must think what you will, Walker Boh. But I
see a future that is hidden from you, and it would be foolish to believe I would show you none of it. Remember, Walker. I am you, the telling of who and what you are—just as I am for all who come to speak with me.”
Walker shook his head. “No, Grimpond, you can never be me. You can never be anyone but who you are—a shade without identity, without being, exiled to this patch of water for all eternity. Nothing you do, no game you play, can ever change that.”
The Grimpond sent spray hissing skyward, anger in its voice. “Then go from me, Dark Uncle! Take with you what you came for and go!” The visage of Walker disappeared and was replaced by a death’s head. “You think my fate has nothing to do with you? Beware! There is more of me in you than you would care to know!”
Robes flared wide, throwing shards of dull light into the mist. “Hear me, Walker! Hear me! You wish to know of the Black Elfstone? Then listen! Darkness hides it, a black that light can never penetrate, where eyes turn a man to stone and voices turn him mad! Beyond, where only the dead lie, is a pocket carved with runes, the signs of time’s passing. Within that pocket lies the Stone!”
The death’s head disappeared into nothingness, and only the robes remained, hanging empty against the fog. “I have given you what you wish, Dark Uncle,” the shade whispered, its voice filled with loathing. “I have done so because the gift will destroy you. Die, and you will end your cursed line, the last of it! How I long to see that happen! Go, now! Leave me! I bid you swift journey to your doom!”
The Grimpond faded into the mist and was gone. The light it had brought with it dissipated as well. Darkness cloaked the whole of the lake and the shore surrounding it, and Walker was left momentarily sightless. He stood where he was, waiting for his vision to clear, feeling the chill touch of the mist as it brushed against his skin. The Grimpond’s laughter echoed in the silence of his mind.
Dark Uncle came the harsh whisper.
He cast himself in stone against it. He sheathed himself in iron.
When his vision returned, and he could make out the vague shape of the trees behind him, he turned from the lake with his cloak wrapped close about him and walked away.
XXIII
Afternoon slid toward evening. A slow, easy rain fell on the city of Tyrsis, washing its dusty streets, leaving them slick and glistening in the fading light. Storm clouds brushed low against the trees of the People’s Park, trailing downward in ragged streamers to curl about the roughened trunks. The park was empty, silent save for the steady patter of the rain.
Then footsteps broke the silence, a heavy thudding of boots, and a Federation squad of six materialized out of the gray, cloaked and hooded, equipment packs rattling. A pair of blackbirds perched on a peeling birch glanced over alertly. A dog rummaging amid the garbage slunk quickly away. From a still-dry doorway, a homeless child huddled against the chill and peered out, caution mirrored in its eyes. No other notice was taken. The streets were deserted, the city hunkered down and unseeing in the damp, unpleasant gloom.
Padishar Creel took his little band across the circle of the Tyrsian Way and into the park. Wrapped against the weather, they were indistinguishable one from the other, one from anyone else. They had come all the way from their warehouse lair without challenge. They had barely seen another living thing. Everything was going exactly as planned.
Par Ohmsford watched the faint, dark outline of the Gatehouse appear through the trees and felt his mind fold in upon itself. He hunched his shoulders against the chill of the rain and the heat of the sweat that ran beneath his clothing. He was trapped within himself and yet at the same time able to watch from without as if disembodied. The way forward was far darker than the day’s light made it seem. He had stumbled into a tunnel, its walls round and twisting and so smooth he could not find a grip. He was falling, his momentum carrying him relentlessly toward the terror he sensed waiting ahead.
He was in danger of losing control of himself, he knew. He had been afraid before, yes—when Coll and he fled Varfleet, when the woodswoman appeared to confront them below the Runne, when Cogline told them what they must do, when they crossed the Rainbow Lake in night and fog with Morgan, when they fought the giant in the forests of the Anar, when they ran from the Gnawl in the Wolfsktaag, and when the Spider Gnomes and the girl-child who was a Shadowen seized him. He had been afraid when Allanon had come. But his fear then and since was nothing compared to what it was now. He was terrified.
He swallowed against the dryness he felt building in his throat and tried to tell himself he was all right. The feeling had come over him quite suddenly, as if it were a creature that had lain in wait along the rain-soaked streets of the city, its tentacles lashing out to snare him. Now he was caught up in a grip that bound him like iron and there was no way to break free. It was pointless to say anything to the others of what he was experiencing. After all, what could he say that would have any meaning—that he was frightened, even terrified? And what, did he suppose, were they?
A gust of wind shook the water-laden trees and showered him with droplets. He licked the water from his lips, the moisture cool and welcome. Coll was a bulky shape immediately ahead, Morgan another one behind. Shadows danced and played about him, nipping at his fading courage. This was a mistake, he heard himself whispering from somewhere deep inside. His skin prickled with the certainty of it.
He had a sense of his own mortality that had been missing before, locked away in some forgotten storeroom of his mind, kept there, he supposed, because it was so frightening to look upon. It seemed to him in retrospect as if he had treated everything that had gone before as some sort of game. That was ridiculous, he knew; yet some part of it was true. He had gone charging about the countryside, a self-declared hero in the mold of those in the stories he sang about, determined to confront the reality of his dreams, decided that he would know the truth of who and what he was. He had thought himself in control of his destiny; he realized now that he was not.
Visions of what had been swept through his mind in swift disarray, chasing one another with vicious purpose. He had caromed from one mishap to the next, he saw—always wrongly believing that his meddling was somehow useful. In truth, what had he accomplished? He was an outlaw running for his life. His parents were prisoners in their own home. Walker believed him a fool. Wren had abandoned him. Coll and Morgan stayed with him only because they felt he needed looking after. Padishar Creel believed him something he could never be. Worst of all, as a direct result of his misguided decision to accept the charge of a man three hundred years dead, five men were about to offer up their lives.
“Watch yourself,” he had cautioned Coll in a vain attempt at humor as they departed their warehouse concealment. “Wouldn’t want you tripping over those feet, duck’s weather or no.”
Coll had sniffed. “Just keep your ears pricked. Shouldn’t be hard for someone like you.”
Teasing, playing at being brave. Fooling no one.
Allanon! He breathed the Druid’s name like a prayer in the silence of his mind. Why don’t you help me?
But a shade, he knew, could help no one. Help could come only from the living.
There was no more time to think, to agonize over decisions past making, or to lament those already made. The trees broke apart, and the Gatehouse was before them. A pair of Federation guards standing watch stiffened as the patrol approached. Padishar never hesitated. He went directly to them, informed them of the patrol’s purpose, joked about the weather, and had the doors open within moments. In a knot of lowered heads and tightened cloaks, the little band hastened inside.
The men of the night watch were gathered about a wooden table playing cards, six of them, heads barely lifting at the arrival of the newcomers. The watch commander was nowhere to be seen.
Padishar glanced over his shoulder, nodded faintly to Morgan, Stasas, and Drutt, and motioned them to spread out about the table. As they did so, one of the players glanced up suspiciously.
“Who’re you?” he demanded.
> “Clean-up detail,” Padishar answered. He moved around behind the speaker and bent over to read his cards. “That’s a losing hand, friend.”
“Back off, you’re dripping on me,” the other complained.
Padishar hit him on the temple with his fist, and the man dropped like a stone. A second followed almost as fast. The guards surged to their feet, shouting, but the outlaws and Morgan felled them all in seconds. Par and Coll began pulling ropes and strips of cloth from their packs.
“Drag them into the sleeping quarters, tie and gag them,” Padishar whispered. “Make sure they can’t escape.”
There was a quick knock at the door. Padishar waited until the guards were dispatched, then cracked the peep window. Everything was fine, he assured the guards without, who thought they might have heard something. The card game was breaking up; everyone thought it would be best to start getting things in order.
He closed the window with a reassuring smile.
After the men of the night watch were secured in the sleeping quarters, Padishar closed the door and bolted it. He hesitated, then ordered the locks to the entry doors thrown as well. No point in taking any chances, he declared. They couldn’t afford to leave any of their company behind to make certain they were not disturbed.
With oil lamps to guide them, they descended through the gloom of the stairwell to the lower levels of the Gatehouse, the sound of the rain lost behind the heavy stone. The dampness penetrated, though, so chill that Par found himself shivering. He followed after the others in a daze, prepared to do whatever was necessary, his mind focused on putting one foot in front of the other until they were out of there. There was no reason to be frightened, he kept telling himself. It would all be over quick enough.
At the lower level, they found the watch commander sleeping—a new man, different from the one that had been waiting for them when they had tried to slip over the ravine wall. This one fared no better. They subdued him without effort, bound and gagged him, and locked him in his room.