They carried off the dishes, washed them, and put them away, and then went out onto the porch and sat together on a wooden bench that looked off toward the southwest. The night was warm and filled with smells of jasmine and evergreen, and somewhere off in the darkness a stream trickled. They sat without speaking for a while, listening to the silvery sound of the water. An owl flew by, its dark shape momentarily silhouetted by moonlight. From down in the village came the faint sound of laughter.
“It seems like a long time since we were at Graymark,” she said quietly. “A long time since everything that happened two years ago.”
Jair nodded, remembering. “I’ve thought often about you and your grandfather. I wondered how you were. I don’t know why I worried, though. You were fine before Brin and Rone found you. You’ve probably been fine since. Do you still have the moor cat?”
“Whisper? Yes. He keeps us both safe from the things we can’t keep safe from on our own.” She paused. “But maybe we aren’t as fine as you think, Jair. Things change. Both Grandfather and I are older. He needs me more; I need him less. Whisper goes away more often and comes back less frequently. The country is growing up around us. It isn’t as wild as it once was. There is a Dwarven village not five miles away and Gnome tribes migrate from the Wolfsktaag to the Ravenshorn and back again all the time.” She shrugged. “It isn’t the same.”
“What will you do when your grandfather is gone?”
She laughed softly. “That might never happen. He might live forever.” She sighed, gesturing vaguely with one slender hand. “Sometimes, I think about moving away from Hearthstone, of living somewhere else. I admit I want to see something of the larger world.”
“Would you come down into the Borderlands, maybe?” He looked over at her. “Would you come live here? You might like it.”
She nodded. “I might.”
She didn’t say anything else, so he went back to looking into the darkness, thinking it over. He would like having her here. He liked talking to her. He guessed that over time they might turn out to be good friends.
“I need you to come back with me,” she said suddenly, looking at him with unexpected intensity. “I might as well tell you so. It has more to do with me than with Grandfather. I am worn out by him. I hate admitting it because it makes me sound weak. But he grates on me the older and more difficult he gets. I don’t know if this business about the Ildatch is real or not. But I don’t think I can get to the truth of it alone. I’m being mostly selfish by coming here and asking you to come to Hearthstone with me. Grandfather is set on this happening. Just having you talk with him might make a difference.”
Jair shook his head doubtfully. “I barely know him. I don’t see what difference having me there would make to anything.”
She hesitated, then exhaled sharply. “My grandfather was there to help your sister when she needed it, Jair. I am asking you to return the favor. I think he needs you, whether the danger from the Ildatch is real or not. What’s bothering him is real enough. I want you to come back with me and help settle things.”
He thought about it a long time, making himself do so even though he already knew what he was going to say. He was thinking of what Garet Jax would do.
“All right, I’ll come,” he said finally.
Because he knew that this is what the Weapons Master would have done in his place.
He left a letter with the innkeeper for his parents, explaining where he was going, packed some clothes, and closed up the house. He already knew he would be in trouble when he returned, but that wasn’t enough to keep him from going. The innkeeper loaned him a horse, a steady, reliable bay that could be depended on not to do anything unexpected or foolish. Jair was not much for horses, but he understood the need for one here, where there was so much distance to cover.
It took them a week to get to Hearthstone, riding north out of Shady Vale and the Duln Forests, around the western end of the Rainbow Lake, then up through Callahorn along the Mermidon River to the Rabb Plains. They crossed the Rabb, following its river into the Upper Anar, then rode down through the gap between the Wolfsktaag Mountains and Darklin Reach, threading the needle of the corridor between, staying safely back from the edges of both. As they rode, Jair found himself pondering how different the circumstances were now from the last time he had come into the Eastland. Then, he had been hunted at every turn, threatened by more dangers than he cared to remember. It had been Garet Jax who had saved his life time and again. Now he traveled without fear of attack, without having to look over his shoulder, and Garet Jax was only a memory.
“Do you think we might have lived other lives before this one?” Kimber asked him on their last night out before reaching Hearthstone.
They were sitting in front of a fire in a grove of trees flanking the south branch of the Rabb, deep within the forests of Darklin Reach. The horses grazed contentedly a short distance off, and moonlight flooded the grassy flats that stretched away about them. There was a hint of a chill in the air this night, a warning of autumn’s approach.
Jair smiled. “I don’t think about it at all. I have enough trouble living the life I have without wondering if there were others.”
“Or if there will be others after this one?” She brushed at her long hair, which she kept tied back as they rode, but let down at night in a tumbled mass. “Grandfather thinks so. I guess I do, too. I think everything is connected. Lives, like moments in time, are all linked together, fish in a stream, swimming and swimming. The past coming forward to become the future.”
He looked off into the dark. “I think we are connected to the past, but mostly to the events and the people that shaped it. I think we are always reaching back in some way, bringing forward what we remember, sometimes for information, sometimes just for comfort. I don’t remember other lives, but I remember the past of this one. I remember the people who were in it.”
She waited a moment, then moved over to sit beside him. “The way you said that—are you thinking about what happened two years ago at Heaven’s Well?”
He shrugged.
“About the one you called the Weapons Master?”
He stared at her. “How did you know that?”
“It isn’t much of a mystery, Jair. You talked about no one else afterward. Only him, the one who saved you on the Croagh, the one who fought the Jachyra. Don’t you remember?”
He nodded. “I guess.”
“Maybe your connection with him goes farther back in time than just this life.” She lifted an eyebrow at him. “Have you thought about that? Maybe you were joined in another life as well, and that’s why he made such an impression on you.”
Jair laughed. “I think he made an impression on me because he was the best fighter I have ever seen. He was so . . .” He stopped himself, searching for the right word. “Indomitable.” His smile faded. “Nothing could stand against him, not even a Jachyra. Not even something that was too much for Allanon.”
“But I might still be right about past lives,” she persisted. She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “You can grant me that much, can’t you, Valeman?”
He could, that and much more. He wanted to tell her so, but didn’t know how without sounding foolish. He was attracted to her, and it surprised him. Having thought of her for so long as a little girl, he was having trouble accepting that she was now full grown. Such a transition didn’t seem possible. It confused his thinking, the past conflicting with the present. How did she feel about him, as changed in his own way as she was in hers? He wondered, but could not make himself ask.
In late afternoon of the following day, they reached Hearthstone. He had never been here before, but he had heard Brin describe the chimney-shaped rock so often that he knew at once what it was. He caught sight of it as they rode through the trees, a dark pinnacle overlooking a shallow, wooded valley. Its distinctive, rugged formation seemed right for this country, a land of dark rumors and strange happenings. Yet that was in the past, as well. Things were
different now. They had come in on a road, where two years before there had been no roads. They had passed the newly settled Dwarf village and seen the houses and heard the voices of children. The country was growing up, the wilderness pushed back. Change was the one constant in an ever-evolving world.
They reached the cottage shortly afterward. It was constructed of wood and timber with porches front and back, its walls grown thick with ivy and the grounds surrounding it planted with gardens and ringed with walkways and bushes. It had a well-cared-for look to it; everything was neatly planted and trimmed, a mix of colors and forms that were pleasing to the eye. It didn’t look so much like a wilderness cottage as a village home. Behind the house, a paddock housed a mare and a foal. A milk cow was grazing there as well. Sheds lined the back of the paddock, neatly painted. Shade trees helped conceal the buildings from view; Jair hadn’t caught even a glimpse of roofs on the ride in.
He glanced over at her. “Do you look after all this by yourself?”
“Mostly.” She gave him a wry smile. “I like looking after a home. I always have, ever since I was old enough to help do so.”
They rode into the yard and dismounted, and instantly Cogline appeared through the doorway. He was ancient and stick-thin beneath his baggy clothing, and his white hair stuck out in all directions, as if he might have just come awake. He pulled at his beard as he came up to them, his fingers raking the wiry hairs. His eyes were sharp and questioning, and he was already scanning Jair as if not quite sure what to make of him.
“So!” He approached with that single word and stood so close that the Valeman was forced to take a step back. He peered intently into Jair’s blue eyes, took careful note of his Elven features. “Is this him?”
“Yes, Grandfather.” Kimber sounded embarrassed.
“You’re certain? No mistake?”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
“Because he could be someone else, you know. He could beanybody else!” Cogline furrowed his already deeply lined brow. “Are you young Ohmsford? The boy, Jair?”
Jair nodded. “I am. Don’t you remember me? We met two years ago in the ruins of Graymark.”
The old man stared at him as if he hadn’t heard the question. Jair could feel the other’s hard gaze probing in a way that was not altogether pleasant. “Is this necessary?” he asked finally. “Can’t we go inside and sit down?”
“When I say so!” the other replied. “When I say I am finished! Don’t interrupt my study!”
“Grandfather!” Kimber exclaimed.
The old man ignored her. “Let me see your hands,” he said.
Jair held out his hands, palms up. Cogline studied them carefully for a moment, grunted as if he had found whatever it was he was looking for, and said, “Come inside, and I’ll fix you something to eat.”
They went into the cottage and seated themselves at the rough-hewn wooden dining table, but it was Kimber who ended up preparing a stew for them to eat. While she did so, directing admonitions at her grandfather when she thought them necessary, Cogline rambled on about the past and Jair’s part in it, a bewildering hodge-podge of information and observation.
“I remember you,” he said. “Just a boy, coming out of Graymark’s ruins with your sister, the two of you covered in dust and smelling of death! Hah! I know something of that smell, I can tell you! Fought many a monster come out of the netherworld, long before you were born, before any who live now were born and a good deal more who are long dead. Might have left the order, but didn’t lose the skills. Not a one. Never listened to me, any of them, but that didn’t make me give up. The new mirrors the old. You can’t disconnect science and magic. They’re all of a piece, and the lessons of one are the lessons of the other. Allanon knew as much. Knew just enough to get himself killed.”
Jair had no idea what he was talking about, but perked up on hearing the Druid’s name. “You knew Allanon?”
“Not when he was alive. Know him now that he’s dead, though. Your sister, she was a gift to him. She was the answer to what he needed when he saw the end coming. It’s like that for some, the gift. Maybe for you, too, one day.”
“What gift?”
“You know, I was a boy once. I was a Druid once, too.”
Jair stared at him, not quite knowing whether to accept this or not. It was hard to think of him as a boy, but thinking of him as a Druid was harder still. If the old man really was a Druid—not that Jair thought for a moment that he was—what was he doing here, out in the wilderness, living with Kimber? “I thought Allanon was the last of the Druids,” he said.
The old man snorted. “You thought a lot of things that weren’t so.” He shoved back his plate of stew, having hardly touched it. “Do you want to know what you’re doing here?”
Jair stopped eating in mid-bite. Kimber, sitting across from him, blinked once and said, “Maybe you should wait until he’s finished dinner, Grandfather.”
The old man ignored her. “Your sister thought the Ildatch destroyed,” he said. “She was wrong. Wasn’t her fault, but she was wrong. She burned it to ash, turned it to a charred ruin and that should have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. You want to sit outside while we have this discussion? The open air and the night sky make it easier to think things through sometimes.”
They went outside onto the front porch, where the sky west was turning a brilliant mix of purple and rose above the treetops and the sky east already boasted a partial moon and a scattering of stars. The old man took possession of the only rocker, and Jair and Kimber sat together on a high-backed wooden bench. It occurred to the Valeman that he needed to rub down and feed his horse, a task he would have completed by now if he had been thinking straight.
The old man rocked in silence for a time, then gestured abruptly at Jair. “Last month, on a night when the moon was full and the sky a sea of stars, beautiful night, I woke and walked down to the little pond that lies just south. I don’t know why, I just did. Something made me. I lay in the grass and slept, and while I slept, I had a dream. Only it was more a vision than a dream. I used to have such visions often. I was closer to the shades of the dead then, and they would come to me because I was receptive to their needs. But that was long ago, and I had thought such things at an end.”
He seemed to reflect on the idea for a moment, lost in thought. “I was a Druid then.”
“Grandfather,” Kimber prodded softly.
The old man looked back at Jair. “In my dream, Allanon’s shade came to me out of the netherworld. It spoke to me. It told me that the Ildatch was not yet destroyed, that a piece of it still survived. One page only, seared at the edges, shaken loose and blown beneath the stones of the keep in the fiery destruction of the rest. Perhaps the book found a way to save that one page in its death throes. I don’t know. The shade didn’t tell me. Only that it had survived your sister’s efforts and been found in the rubble by Mwellrets who sought artifacts that would lend them the power that had belonged to the Mord Wraiths. Those rets knew what they had because the page told them, a whisper that promised great things! It had life, even as a fragment, so powerful was its magic!”
Jair glanced at Kimber, who blinked at him uncertainly. Clearly, this was news to her as well. “One page,” he said to the old man, “Isn’t enough to be dangerous, is it? Unless there is a spell the Mwellrets can make use of?”
Cogline ran his hand through his wiry thatch of white hair. “Not enough? Yes, that was my thought, too. One page, out of so many. What harm? I dismissed the vision on waking, convinced it was a malignant intrusion on a peaceful life, a groundless fear given a momentary foothold by an old man’s frailness. But it came again, a second time, this time while I slept in my own bed. It was stronger than before, more insistent. The shade chided me for my indecision, for my failings past and present. It told me to find you and bring you here. It gave me no peace, not that night or after.”
He looked genuinely distressed now, as if the memory of the shade’s visit was a haunting of the
sort he wished he had never encountered. Jair understood better now why Kimber felt it so important to summon him. Cogline was an old man teetering on the brink of emotional collapse. He might be hallucinating or he might have connected with the shades of the dead, Allanon or not, but whatever he had experienced, it had left him badly shaken.
“Now that I am here, what am I expected to do?” he asked.
The old man looked at him. There was a profound sadness mirrored in his ancient eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t told.”
Then he looked off into the darkness and didn’t speak again.
“I’m sorry about this,” Kimber declared later. There was a pronounced weariness in her voice. “I didn’t think he was going to be this vague once he had the chance to speak with you. I should have known better. I shouldn’t have brought you.”
They were sitting together on the bench again, sipping at mugs of cold ale and listening to the night. They had put the old man to sleep a short while earlier, tucking him into his bed and sitting with him until he began to snore. Kimber had done her best to hasten the process with a cup of medicated tea.
He smiled at her. “Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you brought me. I don’t know if I can help, but I think you were right about not wanting to handle this business alone. I can see where he could become increasingly more difficult if you tried to put him off.”
“But it’s all such a bunch of nonsense! He hasn’t been out of his bed in months. He hasn’t slept down by the pond. Whatever dreams he’s been having are the result of his refusal to eat right.” She blew out a sharp breath in frustration. “All this business about the Ildatch surviving somehow in a page fragment! I used to believe everything he told me, when I was little and still thought him the wisest man in the world. But now I think that he’s losing his mind.”
Jair sipped at his ale. “I don’t know. He seems pretty convinced.”
She stared at him. “You don’t believe him, do you?”
“Not entirely. But it might be he’s discovered something worth paying attention to. Dreams have a way of revealing things we don’t understand right away. They take time to decipher. But once we’ve thought about it . . .”