“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 Horner 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 I 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 hands 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 Ohms-ford'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 Elf-stone. 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 tightened 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 …
But himself.
No! He almost screamed the word aloud. It bore the face of the thing he feared, the thing he struggled so hard to keep from himself. It was the terrifying possibility that had scratched and clawed around the edges of his self-imposed shield for as long as he could remember.
He would not take up the Druid cause!
Yet he was Brin Ohmsford's last descendent. He was bearer of the trust that had been left to her by Allanon. Not in your lifetime. Keep it safe for generations to come. One day it will be needed again. Words from the distant past, spoken by the Druid's shade after death, haunting, unfulfilled.
I haven't the magic! he wailed in desperation, in denial. Why should it be me? Why?
But he already knew. Need. Because there was need. It was the answer that Allanon had given to all of the Ohmsfords, to each of them, year after year, generation after generation. Always.
He wrestled with the specter of his destiny in the silence of his thoughts. The moments lengthened. Finally he heard Quickening say, “It grows dark, Walker Boh.”
He glanced up, saw the failing of the light as dusk approached. He climbed to his feet and peered south into the flats. The isthmus was empty. There was no sign of the Urdas.
“It's been too long,” he muttered and started for the stairs.
They descended quickly, emerged from the building, and began following the walkway south toward the city's edge. Shadows were already spreading into dark pools, the light chased west to the fringes of the horizon. The seabirds had gone to roost, and the pounding of the ocean had faded to a distant moan. The stone beneath their feet echoed faintly with their footsteps as if whispering secrets to break the silence.
They reached the fringe of the city and slowed, proceeding more cautiously now, searching the gloom for any signs of danger. There was no movement to be found. The mist curled its damp tendrils through vacant windows and down sewer grates, and there was a sense of a hidden presence at work. Ahead, the isthmus flats stretched out into the darkness, broken and ragged and lifeless.
They stepped clear of the building walls and stopped.
Carisman's body was slumped against a pillar of rock at the end of the street, pinned fast by a dozen spears. He had been dead for some time, the blood from his wounds washed away by the rain.
It appeared that the Urdas had gone back the way they had come.
They had taken Carisman's head with them.
Even children can be dangerous, Walker Boh thought bleakly. He reached over for Quickening's hand and locked it in his own. He tried to imagine what Carisman's thoughts had been when he realized his family had disowned him. He tried to tell himself that there was nothing he could have done to prevent it.
Quickening moved close to him. They stood staring at the dead tunesmith wordlessly for a moment more, then turned and walked back into the city.
24
They did not return to their normal place of concealment that night; it was already dusk when they departed the flats and the distance back through the city was too great to cover safely. Instead, they found a building close at hand, a low, squat structure with winding, narrow halls and rooms with doors opening through at both ends to provide a choice of escape routes if the Rake should appear. Settled deep within the stone interior of the building, shut away with barely enough light to see each other at arm's length, they ate their dinner of dried fruits and vegetables, stale bread, and a little water and tried to banish the ghost of Carisman from their presence. The dead tunesmith surfaced in memories, in unspoken words, and in the faint, soft roll of the ocean's distant waters. His face blossomed in the shadows they cast, and his voice whispered in the sound of their breathing. Walker Boh regarded Quickening without seeing her; his thoughts were of Carisman and of how he had let the tunesmith go when he could have stopped him from doing so. When Quickening touched him on the arm, he was barely aware of the pressure of her fingers. When she read his thoughts in the touch, he was oblivious. He felt drained and empty and impossibly alone.
Later, while she slept, he grew aware of her again. His self-reproach had exhausted itself, his sorrow had dried up; Carisman's shade was banished, consigned at last to the place and time in which it belonged. He sat in a box of darkness, the stone of the walls and ceiling and floor pressing in around him, the silence a blanket that would suffocate him, time the instrument by which he measured the approach of his own death. Could it be far away now for any of them? He watched the girl sleeping next to him, watched the rise and fall of her breast as she breathed, turned on her side, her face cradled in the crook of her arm, her silver hair fanned back in a sweep of brightness. He watched the slow, steady beat of her pulse along the slim column of her throat, searched the hollows of her face where the shadows draped and pooled, and traced the line of her body within the covering of clothes that failed to hide its perfection. She was a fragile bit of life whatever her magic, and he could not escape the feeling that despite the confidence she evidenced in her father and the command with which she had brought them north she was in peril. The feeling was elusive and difficult to credit, but it took life in his instincts and his prescience, born of the magic that he had inherited from Brin Ohmsfo
rd, magic that still ebbed and flowed within him as the tide of his belief in himself rose and fell. He could not disregard it. Quickening was at risk, and he did not know how to save her.
The night deepened and still he did not sleep. They were all at risk, of course. What he sensed of danger to the daughter of the King of the Silver River was possibly no more than what he sensed of danger to them all. It had caught up with Carisman. It would eventually catch up with Quickening as well. Perhaps what he feared was not that Quickening would die, but that she would die before she revealed the secrets she knew. There were many, he suspected. That she hid them so completely infuriated him. He was surprised at the anger his realization provoked. Quickening had brought him face to face with the darkest of his fears and then left him to stand alone against it. His entire life had been shadowed by his apprehension that Allanon's mysterious trust to the Ohmsfords, given over three hundred years ago to Brin and passed unused from generation to generation, might somehow require fulfillment by him. He had lived with the specter of it since childhood, aware of its existence as all of his family had been, finding it a ghost that would not be banished, that instead grew more substantial with the passing of the years. The magic of the Ohmsfords was alive in him as it had not been in his ancestors. The dreams of Allanon had come only to him. Cogline had made him his student and taught him the history of his art and of the Druid cause. Allanon had told him to go in search of the Druids and lost Paranor.
He shivered. Each step took him closer to the inevitable. The trust had been held for him. The phantom that had haunted him all these years had revealed a terrifying face.
He was to take the Black Elfstone and bring back Paranor.
He was to become the next Druid.
He could have laughed at the ridiculousness of the idea if he had not been so frightened of it. He despised what the Druids had done to the Ohmsfords; he saw them as sinister and self-serving manipulators. He had spent his life trying to rid himself of their curse. But it was more than that. Allanon was gone—the last of the real Druids. Cogline was gone—the last of those who had studied the art. He was alone; who was to teach him what a Druid must know? Was he to divine the study of magic somehow? Was he to teach himself ? And how many years would that take? How many centuries? If the magic of the Druids was required to combat the Shad-owen, such magic could not be drawn leisurely from the Histories and the tomes that had taught all the Druids who had gone before. Time did not permit it.