“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 face deepened. “Bend close to me, Elf-girl.”
Wren hesitated, then leaned forward tentatively. The Addershag'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 Irrybis 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 friend 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'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 back door 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 ale 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.
23
When Walker Boh, Quickening, and Carisman left Morgan and Horner Dees, they traveled only a short distance 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 freshwater 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 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 dec
orated 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, startling 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.