Her eyes snapped wide. Instantly she understood. She was being warned—how she did not know—that something was going to kill her. Had she been anyone but who she was, she might have ignored the feeling as being nothing more than the workings of her imagination. But she was highly sentient; such feelings had come over her before and she knew better than to dismiss them. The warning was real. It was only the source that confused her.
She hunched forward in momentary indecision. Something was coming for her, something monstrous, something that would destroy her. She could not hide from it; she could not stand against it. She could only run.
Ignoring the pain in her ankle, she slipped from beneath the bushes, crouched down beyond them, and stared into the forest gloom. The thing that stalked her was close; she could sense its presence clearly now as it moved soundlessly through the night. She thought suddenly of Wil, and she wished desperately that he were there to help her. But Wil was not there. She must save herself and she must do so quickly.
There was only one place for her to go, one place that her stalker might not follow—the Hollows. She hobbled to their edge and stared down into the depthless black. Fear gripped her. The Hollows were as frightening to her as the thing behind. She steadied herself, green eyes sweeping across the black to the tower of Spire’s Reach. It was there that she must go. It was there that Wil would look for her.
She found a pathway leading down and started along it, easing carefully into the shadows. In moments, she was enveloped by the blackness; the light of the stars and moon were lost above the trees. Her child’s face tightened with determination, and she felt her way forward. She kept as still in her movements as she was able, and there was only the slight scraping of her boots on earth and rock to betray her passage. Below, there was only silence.
At last she was on the floor of the Hollows. She paused then, sitting back against a tree trunk, rubbing gingerly the injured ankle. It was badly swollen by now, aggravated by her decision to walk upon it. Sweat bathed her face as she stared upward into the gloom and listened. She heard nothing. No matter, she told herself. Whatever it was that sought her, it was up there still, searching. She had to get deeper into the Hollows. Her eyes had begun to adjust to the blackness; she could discern vaguely the shapes of trees and clumps of brush about her. It was time to go on.
She pushed herself up and hobbled ahead into the dark, trying to keep her weight off her injured ankle. Moving from one tree to the next, she rested a moment at each, listening anxiously to the deep silence. The pain was growing worse, a steady throb that seemed to intensify with each step forward. The muscles of her good leg had stiffened and cramped with the constant hobbling; already she was beginning to tire.
Finally she had to stop. Breathing heavily, she lowered herself to the ground beside a thicket and leaned back against the cooling earth. Carefully, she composed herself and tried to trace anew the source of the warning. For a moment nothing happened. Then the chill swept back across her, penetrating, biting. She caught her breath. The thing that sought her was within the Hollows.
She hauled herself back to her feet and went on, limping blindly through the gloom. At one point it occurred to her that she might be traveling in a circle, but she pushed the thought quickly from her mind. She fell constantly. Several times she went down so hard that she nearly blacked out. Each time she came to her knees gasping for breath, rose, and forced herself to go forward. The minutes slipped by until she lost all track of time. About her, the silence and the dark deepened.
At last she could go no further. She fell to her knees, the sound of her breathing harsh in her ears. Crying with frustration, she began to crawl. Rock and deadwood scraped at her hands and knees as she worked her way through the brush, her ankle throbbing with pain. She would not give up, she swore silently. The thing would not have her. She turned her thoughts to Wil. She saw in her mind the look that had crossed his face when she told him that she cared for him. She should not have said it, she knew. But she had wanted to tell him so badly at that moment; she had needed to tell him. It surprised her how much she had needed to tell him. And the wonder in his eyes…
She collapsed on her face, weeping. Wil! She whispered his name like a talisman to ward off the evil that stalked her through the blackness. Then she lifted herself and crawled on. Her mind wandered, and she seemed to sense the presence of other creatures about her, moving with her through the night, quick and all but soundless. Little people, she thought. But the thing, where was the thing? How close to her was it?
She crawled and crawled until her strength was gone entirely; then she lay down upon the forest earth. She was finished, she knew. She had nothing left to draw upon. Her eyes closed and she waited to die. A moment later, she slept.
She was still sleeping when the crooked wooden fingers of a dozen gnarled hands lifted her up and bore her away.
41
The Valeman and the Rover girl rode down the rock-strewn trail and off Whistle Ridge, the wind whistling past their ears. Into the blackness of the lower forest they flew, Rover silks whipping about their bodies as they bent low across their horses’ necks and peered blindly into the gloom. The trees quickly closed about them and the night sky disappeared. With reckless disregard for their lives, they rode on, trusting to the surefootedness of their mounts and to luck.
There was no discussion of this; they had no time for discussion. The instant that Wil realized that the Reaper would backtrack until it found the trail Amberle and he had taken south to the Hollows after parting company with the Rovers, his mind went blank to every thought but one—Amberle would be at the end of that trail, alone, injured, and unprotected. If he did not reach her before the Reaper did, she would die, and it would be his fault because it had been his decision to leave her. An image of the torn and broken bodies of the Rovers on the trail flashed in his mind. At that moment he forgot everything but his need to get to Amberle. Scrambling back atop his horse, he wheeled the animal about and galloped away.
Eretria gave chase immediately. She might have done otherwise. With Cephelo dead, she had no further need for the Valeman’s protection. She no longer belonged to anyone; she was her own person at last. She might have turned her horse about and ridden safely from the valley and the terrible thing that had killed Cephelo and the others. But Eretria did not even stop to consider this. She thought only of Wil, riding off without her, leaving her behind once more. Pride, stubbornness, and the strange attraction she felt for the Valeman flared within her. She could not permit him to do this to her again. Without hesitating, she went after him.
So began their race to save Amberle. Wil Ohmsford, riding as if he were a man possessed, quickly lost all track of where he was. Gloom and mist slipped about him as he came down off the ridge line into the deep forest, and he could barely make out the dark shapes of the trees at either side as he whipped past them. Yet he did not slow; he could not. He heard the sound of another horse following and realized that Eretria had come after him. He muttered a quick oath; did he not have enough to worry about already? But there was no time to concern himself with the Rover girl. He dismissed her from his thoughts and concentrated his efforts on finding the cutoff leading south.
Even so, he rode right past it. If Eretria had not called out to him, he might have kept riding east all the way to the mountains. Wheeling about in surprise, he charged back again. But now Eretria had taken the lead, spurring her mount forward into the darkness. More familiar than he with the trail, she galloped ahead, calling for him to follow. Surprised all over again, he gave chase.
It was a harrowing ride. The darkness was so thorough that even the sharp eyes of the Rover girl could barely pick out the pathway as it twisted through the forest night. Several times the horses almost went down, barely springing clear of gullies and fallen logs that lay across the narrow trail. But these were Rover horses, trained by the finest riders in the Four Lands, and they responded with a quickness and agility that brought a fierce cry from the l
ips of the Rover girl and left the Valeman breathless.
Then suddenly they were back upon the roadway that Amberle and Wil had followed south to the Hollows, with branches and vines slapping against them and muddied water splashing up from the deep puddles that had collected upon the trail. Without slowing, they turned south. The minutes slipped by.
At last they broke from the forest onto the rim of the Hollows, its black circle spread out before them like some bottomless pit in the earth. Reining in their horses sharply, they sprang to the ground, staring about at the forest gloom. Silence hung across the Hollows, deep and pervasive. Wil hesitated only a second, then began searching for the bushes in which he had hidden Amberle. He found them almost at once and pushed his way to their center. There was no one there. For an instant, he panicked. He groped about for some sign of what might have happened to the Elven girl, but there was nothing to be found. His panic increased. Where was she? He rose, backing from the bushes. Perhaps these were the wrong ones, he thought suddenly, and began to look about for others. He stopped almost at once. There were no others like them close enough to be seen. No, it was here that he had hidden her.
Eretria hurried up to him. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered, his lean face sweating. “I can’t find her.”
He regained control of himself with an effort. Reason it through, he told himself. Either she fled or the Reaper took her. If she fled, where would she go? He looked at once to the Hollows. There, he decided—to Spire’s Reach or as close to it as she could get. What if she had been taken, what then? But she had not been taken, he realized, because there was no sign of a struggle. She would have fought back; she would have left him some sign. If she had fled, on the other hand, she would have been careful to leave nothing behind to show her pursuer that she had been there at all.
He took a deep breath. She must have fled. But then a new thought struck him. He was assuming in all of this that Amberle had fled from the Reaper. What if it had not been the Reaper, but something that had come out of the Hollows? His jaw locked in frustration. There was no way to tell. In this blackness, he could not hope to find a trail. Either he would have to wait until morning, when it might be too late to help Amberle, or…
Or he would have to use the Elfstones.
He was reaching for the pouch when Eretria’s hand gripped his arm sharply, causing him to jump in surprise.
“Healer!” she whispered. “Someone is coming!”
He felt his stomach knot sharply. For an instant he simply stood there, his gaze following the girl’s as it turned north up the trail they had just traveled. On its shadowed rut, something moved. Fear welled up within the Valeman. His hand fumbled within his tunic and lifted free the Elfstones. At his side, Eretria snatched from her boot a wicked-looking dagger. Together they faced the approaching shadow.
“Just hold on now!” A familiar voice called out to them.
Wil looked at Eretria and she at him. Slowly they lowered Elfstones and dagger. The voice belonged to Hebel. Eretria muttered something under her breath and moved to retrieve the horses, which had strayed back into the forest.
Down the trail trudged Hebel, the shaggy form of Drifter close at his heels. He wore leather woodsman’s garb and carried a sack strapped across his back, a long bow and arrows over one shoulder, and a hunting knife at his waist. He moved with a peculiar hunching motion, leaning heavily on a gnarled walking stick. As he came up to them, they could see that he was spattered from head to foot with mud.
“You nearly ran me down, you know!” he snapped. “Look at me! If I’d been foolish enough to stand any further out on the trail than I did when I hailed you back there, I’d be covered with hoof prints as well as mud! What do you think you are doing, riding about the forest like that? It’s black as six feet under out there and you ride about like it was broad daylight. Why didn’t you stop when I called out to you, for cat’s sake?”
“Well … because we didn’t hear you,” Wil answered in bewilderment.
“That’s because you weren’t listening like you should have been!” Hebel was not about to forgive them. He lurched right up to the Valeman. “Took me all day to get here—all day. Without a horse, I might point out. What took you so confounded long then? The way you were riding a minute ago, you could have been here and gone again half-a-dozen times!”
He caught sight of Eretria as she reappeared with the horses. “What are you doing here? Where is the Elfling girl? That thing didn’t get her, did it?”
Wil started. “You know about the Reaper?”
“Reaper? If that’s what it’s called, yes, I know about it. It came to my camp earlier today—just after you’d left. Looking for you, it appears now, though at the time I wasn’t sure. Never really saw the thing—just caught a glimpse. I think if I’d seen it close up, I’d be dead now.”
“I think so, too,” the Valeman agreed. “Cephelo and the others are. It caught up with them on Whistle Ridge.”
Hebel nodded soberly. “Cephelo was bound to come to that end sooner or later.” He glanced at Eretria. “Sorry, girl, but that’s the truth of it.” Then he turned back to Wil. “Now where’s the little Elfling?”
“I don’t know,” Wil answered him. “I had to go back …” He hesitated. “I had to go back for something I left behind with Cephelo. Amberle had injured her ankle, so I hid her in some bushes. I went back a different way than I had come or I would probably be dead as well. I found Eretria, or she found me, I guess; and after we saw what had happened to Cephelo, we came back here as fast as we could. But now Amberle is gone, and I can’t be sure what has happened to her. I can’t even be sure whether the Reaper has been here yet or is still tracking us.”
“It’s come and gone,” Hebel told him. “Drifter and I have been tracking it while it’s been tracking you. Lost the trail at the fork because the Reaper went east to Whistle Ridge while Drifter and I came south after you. But then the trail started up again further south. Thing must have cut through the wilderness. If it could do that, it’s dangerous, Elfling.”
“Ask Cephelo how dangerous it is,” Eretria muttered, glancing about at the forest shadows. “Healer, can we get out of here now?”
“Not until we find out what happened to Amberle,” Wil insisted.
Hebel tapped his arm. “Show me where you left the girl.”
Wil walked to the clump of bushes, with Eretria, the old man, and the dog trailing after, and pointed to the opening leading in. Hebel bent down, peered inside, and whistled Drifter to him. He spoke quietly to the dog, and the animal came forward, sniffed about, then moved over to the rim of the Hollows as the others watched.
“He has the scent, Drifter has.” Hebel grunted with satisfaction. Drifter stopped and growled softly. “She is down in the Hollows, Elfling. The Reaper is down there, too. Probably still tracking her. I’d have guessed as much.”
“Then we have to find her right away.” Wil started forward.
Hebel caught his arm. “No need to rush, Elfling. That’s the Hollows we’re talking about, remember? Nothing down there but the Witch Sisters and the things that serve them. Anything else sets one foot in the Hollows gets snatched right up—I know that from what Mallenroh told me sixty years ago.” He shook his head. “By now, the girl and the thing tracking her are keeping company with one of the Sisters—that or they’re dead.”
Wil went white. “Would the Witches kill them, Hebel?”
The old man seemed to think it over. “Oh, not the girl, I’d guess—not right away. The thing they would. And don’t think they couldn’t, Elfling.”
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Wil replied slowly. He gazed down into the blackness of the Hollows. “I do know this much—I am going down there and I am going to find Amberle. Right now.”
He started to say something to Eretria, but the Rover girl cut him short. “Don’t waste your breath, Healer. I’m going with you.”
The way she said it left little
room for argument. He glanced at Hebel.
“I’m coming, too, Elfling,” the old man announced.
“But you said yourself that no one should go into the Hollows,” Wil pointed out. “I don’t understand why you’re even here.”
Hebel shrugged. “Because it doesn’t matter where I am anymore, Elfling, and hasn’t for a long time. I’m an old man; I’ve done in this life the things I’ve wanted to do, been where I wanted to go, seen what I’ve wanted to see. Nothing left for me now—nothing except for maybe this one thing. I want to see what’s down there in those Hollows.”
He shook his head ruefully. “Thought about it for sixty years, off and on. Always told myself that one day I’d find out—like thinking about a deep pool; you always wonder what’s at the bottom.” He rubbed his bearded chin. “Well, a sane man wouldn’t waste his time with a thing like that, and I was a sane man when I was younger, though I guess some thought different. Now I’m tired of being sane, tired of just thinking about going down there instead of doing it. You made me decide. When you first told me what you intended, I thought to persuade you otherwise—just as I’d persuaded myself. I was certain that you would lose interest quick enough when you heard what I had to say. I was wrong. I saw that whatever it was that you were looking for was important enough that being afraid didn’t matter to you. So why should it matter so much to me, I thought? Then after that Reaper thing passed me by and left me knowing how close I’d come to dying, I realized it didn’t. All that really mattered was finding out about those Hollows. So I came after you. I decided that we should go looking together.”