He wheeled back again. “But not you, Kimber. Can’t have you out and about in that country. Walkers and all are too dangerous. You stay here and keep the home.”
Kimber gave him a hopeless look. “He still thinks of me as a child. I am the one who should worry for him.”
“Ha! You don’t have to worry for me!” Cogline snapped.
Kimber smiled indulgently, her pixie face calm. “Of course I have to worry for you. I love you.” She turned to Brin. “Brin, you have to understand something. Grandfather never leaves the valley anymore without me. He requires the use of my eyes and my memory from time to time. Grandfather, don’t be angry with what I say, but you know that sometimes you are forgetful. Besides, Whisper will not always do what you tell him. He will disappear on you when you least want him to, if you try to go alone.”
Cogline frowned. “Stupid cat does that, all right.” He glanced down at Whisper, who blinked back at him sleepily. “Waste of my time trying to teach him differently. Very well, I suppose we’ll all have to go. But you keep out of harm’s way, girl. Leave that part to me.”
Brin and Rone exchanged hurried glances.
Kimber turned to them. “It is settled then. We can leave at dawn.”
The Valegirl and the highlander stared at each other in disbelief. What was happening? As if it were the most natural thing in the world, it had just been decided that a girl barely more than Brin’s age, a half-crazed old man, and a sometimes disappearing cat would retrieve for them the missing Sword of Leah from some creatures they had labeled as Spider Gnomes and then afterward guide them into the mountains of the Ravenshorn and Graymark! Gnomes and walkers and other dangerous beings would be all about—beings whose power had destroyed the Druid Allanon—and the old man and the girl were acting as if none of that really made any difference at all.
“Kimber, no,” Brin said finally, not knowing what else to say. “You can’t go with us.”
“She’s right,” Rone agreed. “You can’t even begin to understand what we’ll be up against.”
Kimber Boh looked at each of them in turn. “I understand better than you think. I told you before—this land is my home. And grandfather’s. We know its dangers and we understand them.”
“You don’t understand the walkers!” Rone exploded. “What can the two of you do against the walkers?”
Kimber held her ground. “I don’t know. Much the same as you, I’d guess. Avoid them.”
“And what if you can’t avoid them?” Rone pressed. “What then?”
Cogline snatched a leather bag belted at his waist and held it forth.
“Give them a taste of my magic, outlander! Give them a taste of a fire they know nothing about at all!”
The highlander frowned doubtfully and looked at Brin for help. “This is crazy!” he snapped.
“Do not be so quick to dismiss my grandfather’s magic,” Kimber advised, with a reassuring nod to the old man. “He has lived in this wilderness all of his life and survived a great many dangers. He can do things you might not expect of him. He will be of great help to you. As will Whisper and I as well.”
Brin shook her head. “I think this is a very bad idea, Kimber.”
The girl nodded her understanding. “You will change your mind, Brin. In any case, you really don’t have a choice. You need Whisper to track. You need grandfather to guide you. And you need me to help them do that.”
Brin started to object once more, then stopped. What was she thinking? They had come to Hearthstone in the first place because they needed someone to guide them through Darklin Reach. There was only one man who could do that, and that man was Cogline. Without Cogline, they might wander the wilderness country of the Anar for weeks—weeks that they did not have. Now that they had found him and he was offering them the help they so desperately needed, here she was trying to refuse it!
She hesitated. Perhaps she had good reason for doing so. Kimber appeared to her as a girl whose heart was greater than her strength. But the fact remained that Cogline was unlikely to go anywhere without her. Did Brin, then, have the right to put her concern for Kimber above the dictates of the trust which she had been given by Allanon?
She did not think so.
“I believe the matter is decided,” Kimber said softly.
Brin looked at Rone one final time. The highlander shook his head in helpless resignation.
Brin turned back and smiled wearily. “I guess it is,” she agreed and hoped against reason that it had been decided correctly.
35
They departed Hearthstone at dawn of the following day and journeyed northeast through the forestland toward the dark rise of Toffer Ridge. Travel was slow, as it had been during their trek north to the Grimpond. The whole of the wilderness beyond the valley between the Ravenshorn and the Rabb was a treacherous maze of craggy ravines and drops that could cripple the unwary. With packs strapped tightly across their backs and weapons secured about their waists, Brin, Rone, Kimber Boh, and Cogline wound their way cautiously ahead on a warm, sweet-smelling autumn day filled with sound and color. Only occasionally visible, the shadowy form of Whisper kept pace in the trees about them. The members of the little company felt rested and alert, much more so than they should have, since their discussion of the previous night had not ended until early morning. They knew that lack of sleep would catch up with them eventually, but for now, at least, they were filled with the tension and excitement of their quest, and all traces of weariness were easily brushed aside.
Not so easily dismissed, however, were Brin’s feelings of uncertainty about taking along Kimber and Cogline. The decision had been made, the pledge given, and the journey begun—yet still the uncertainty that had troubled her from the first would not subside. Some doubts and fears would have been there in any case, she supposed, fostered by her knowledge of the dangers that lay ahead and by the haunting prophecies of the Grimpond. But such doubts and fears would have been for her and for Rone—Rone, whose determination to stand with her in this was so strong that she had finally accepted that he would never be persuaded to leave her. The doubts and fears would not have been, as they were now, for the old man and the girl. All of their reassurances notwithstanding, the Valegirl still thought neither strong enough to survive the power of the dark magic. How could she see it otherwise? It made no difference that they had lived all these years within the wilderness of the Anar, for the dangers they would face now were not dangers made of this world and time. What magics or lore could they hope to employ that would turn aside the Mord Wraiths when the walkers were next encountered?
It frightened Brin to think of the power of the Mord Wraiths being turned against the girl and the old man. It frightened her more than anything that she could imagine might happen to her. How could she live with the knowledge that she had permitted them to come on this journey, if it were to end in their deaths?
And yet Kimber seemed so certain of herself and of her grandfather. There was neither fear nor doubt in her mind. There was only her self-assurance, determination, and that unshakable sense of obligation toward Brin and Rone that motivated her in what she had undertaken to do for them.
“We are friends, Brin, and friends do for each other what they see needs to be done,” the girl had explained in the late hours of the previous night when all talk had drifted into weary whispers. “Friendship is a thing sensed inwardly as much as a thing pledged openly. One feels friendship and becomes bound by it. It was this that drew Whisper to me and gained me his loyalty. I loved him as he loved me, and each of us sensed that in the other. I have sensed it with you as well. We are to be friends, all of us, and if we are to be friends, then we must share both good and bad in our friendship. Your needs become mine.”
“That’s a very beautiful sentiment, Kimber,” she had replied. “But what if my needs are too great, as they are in this instance? What if my needs are too dangerous to share?”
“All the more reason that they must be shared.” Kimber had smiled so
mberly. “And shared with friends. We must help each other if the friendship is to mean anything at all.”
There really wasn’t much to be said after that. Brin might have argued that Kimber barely knew her, that she was owed no obligation, and that this quest she had been given was hers alone and not the responsibility of the girl and her grandfather. But such arguments would have meant nothing to Kimber, who saw so clearly the relationship between them as one of equals, and whose sense of commitment was such that there could be no compromise.
The journey wore on and the day slipped past. It was a savage timberland through which they passed, a rugged mass of towering black oaks, elms, and gnarled hickories. Their lofty, twisted limbs stretched wide like giants’ arms. Through the bones of the forest roof, skeletal and stripped of their leaves, the sky shone deep crystal blue, with sunshine streaming down to brighten the woodland shadows with friendly patches of light. Yet the sunlight was but a brief daytime visitor to this wilderness. Here, only the shadows belonged—pervasive, impenetrable, filled with a subtle hint of hidden dangers, of things unseen and unheard, and of a phantom life that came awake only when the light was completely gone and the forestland lay wrapped in blackness. That life lay waiting, concealed silently within the darkened heart of these woodlands, a cunning and hateful force that resented the intrusion of these creatures into its private world and would snuff them out as a wind would a candle’s small flame. Brin sensed its presence. It whispered softly in her mind, worming past the slender thread of confidence lent her by the presence of those who traveled with her, warning her that when nightfall came again, she must be very careful.
Then the sun began to drop below the western skyline and dusk to settle over the land. The dark line of Toffer Ridge loomed before them, a rugged and uneven shadow, and Cogline took them through a twisting pass that breached its wall. They walked in silence, fatigue now beginning to slip through them. Insect sounds filled the darkness, and high above them, lost in the tangle of the great trees, night birds sent forth their shrill calls. Ridgeline and wilderness forest tightened about them, closing them away in the darkened pass. The air, warm all day, grew hot and unpleasant, and its smell turned stale. That hidden life which waited within the woodland shadows came awake and rose up to look about…
Abruptly, the timber broke apart before them, sloping sharply downward through the ridgeline into a vast, featureless lowland shrouded in mist and lighted in eerie glow by stars and a strange, pale orange gibbous moon that hung at the edge of the eastern horizon. Sullen and dismal, the sprawling bottomland was little more than a shadowed black mass of stillness that seemed to open into the earth like some bottomless canyon where Toffer Ridge slipped away into the mist.
“Olden Moor,” Kimber whispered softly.
Brin stared down at the moor in watchful silence. She could feel it staring back.
Midnight came and went, and time slowed until it seemed to cease all passage. A hint of wind fluttered enticingly across Brin’s dust-streaked face and faded away. She looked up expectantly, but there was nothing more. The heat returned, harsh and oppressive. She felt as if she had been shut within a furnace, its unseen fires snatching from her aching lungs the very air she needed to survive. In the bottomland, the autumn night gave nothing back of its cooling promise. Sweat soaked Brin’s clothing through, ran down her body in distracting rivulets, and coated her worn countenance with a silver gray sheen. Muscles cramped and knotted wearily. Though she shifted about frequently in an effort to relieve the discomfort, she quickly found there were no new positions to be tried. The ache simply followed. Swarms of gnats buzzed annoyingly, drawn by the moisture from her body, biting at her face and hands as she brushed at them uselessly. All about her, the air reeked of rotting wood and stagnant water.
Crouched in the concealing shadows of a clump of rocks with Rone, Kimber, and Cogline, she stared downward along the base of the ridgeline to where the camp of the Spider Gnomes lay settled at the edge of Olden Moor. A jumble of makeshift huts and burrows, the camp stretched between the base of Toffer Ridge and the darkness of the moor. A scattering of fires burned in its midst, their sullen, ragged light barely penetrating the gloom. The crooked, bent shadows of the camp’s inhabitants passed through the muted glare. The Spider Gnomes, their strange and grotesque bodies covered with gray hair, were naked to the elements as they skittered about in the withered long grass on all fours, hunched and faceless. Large groups of them gathered at the edge of the moor, shielded from the mist by the flames as they chanted dully into the night.
“Calling to the dark powers,” Cogline had informed his companions hours earlier, after first bringing them to this hiding place. “A tribal people, the Gnomes—the Spider folk more so than any. Believe in spirits and dark things that rise from other worlds with the change of seasons. Call to them for their own strength, do the Gnomes—hoping at the same time that strength doesn’t turn against them. Ha! Superstitious stuff!”
But the dark things were real sometimes, however, Cogline told them. There were things within Olden Moor as dark and terrible as those that inhabited the forests of the Wolfsktaag—things born of other worlds and lost magics. They were called Werebeasts. They lived within the mists, creatures of dreadful shapes and forms that preyed upon body and mind, snaring mortal beings weaker than they and draining away their lives. The Werebeasts were not imaginary, Cogline admitted grimly. It was against their coming that the Spider Gnomes sought to protect themselves—for the Spider Gnomes were the Werebeasts’ favorite food.
“Now, with the autumn’s change to winter, the Gnomes come down to the moor to call out against the rise of the mists.” The old man’s voice had been a harsh whisper. “Gnomes think the winter won’t come or the mists stay low if they don’t. A superstitious folk. Come here like this each fall for nearly a month, whole camps, whole tribes of them—just migrate down off the ridge. Call out to the dark powers day and night so that the winter will keep them safe and keep the beasts away.” He grinned secretively and winked. “Works, too. Werebeasts feed off them for that whole month, you see. Eat enough to carry them through the winter. No need to go onto the ridge after that!”
Cogline had known where the Spider people would be found. With the fall of night, the little group had traveled north along the base of the ridgeline until the Gnome camp had been sighted. Then, as they hunched down within the concealment of the rocks, Kimber Boh had explained what must happen next.
“They will have your sword with them, Rone. A sword such as that, pulled from the waters of the Chard Rush, will be considered a talisman sent to them by their dark powers. They will set it before them, hoping it will shield them from the Werebeasts. We must discover where it is housed and then steal it back from them.”
“How will we do that?” Rone had asked quickly. He had talked of little else for the whole of their journey there. The lure of the sword’s power had claimed him once more.
“Whisper will track it,” she had replied. “If given your scent, he can follow it to the sword, however well concealed. Once he has found it, he will return to lead us in.”
So Whisper had been given the highlander’s scent and dispatched into the night. He had gone soundlessly, fading into the shadows, lost from view almost instantly. The four from Hearthstone had been waiting ever since for his return, crouched down in the humid dark and the fetid dampness of the bottomland, listening and watching. The moor cat had been gone a very long time.
Brin closed her eyes against the weariness that seeped through her and tried to block the sound of the Gnomes chanting from her mind. A dull, empty monotone, it went on ceaselessly. Several times, while she listened, there had been screams from close to the mists—shrill, quick, and horror-stricken. Almost at once, though, they had ceased. Still the chanting went on…
A monstrous shadow detached itself from the dark right in front of her, and she started to her feet with a small cry.
“Hush, girl!” Cogline yanked her down again, one
bony hand slipping tightly across her mouth. “It’s only the cat!”
Whisper’s massive head materialized then, luminous blue eyes winking lazily as he padded up to Kimber. The girl bent down to wrap her arms about him, stroking him gently, whispering in his ear. For several moments she spoke with the moor cat, and the cat nuzzled and rubbed up against her. Then she turned back to them, excitement dancing in her eyes.
“He has found the sword, Rone!”
Instantly Rone was beside her. “Take me to where it can be found, Kimber!” he begged. “We will have a weapon then with which to face the walkers and any other dark thing that might serve them!”
Brin fought back against the bitterness that welled up suddenly within her. Rone has forgotten already what little good the sword did him in Allanon’s defense, she thought. He was consumed by his need for it.
Cogline called them close, while Kimber spoke a quick word to Whisper. Then they began their descent into the camp of the Gnomes. They crept down off the rise on which they had hidden, crouched low against the shadow of the ridgeline. Light from the distant fires barely touched them here, and they slipped swiftly ahead. Warnings nudged Brin Ohmsford’s restless mind, whispering to her that she must turn back, that nothing good lay this way. Too late, she whispered back. Too late.
The camp drew closer. In the gradual brightening of the fires, the Spider Gnomes grew more distinct, crouched forms creeping about the huts and burrows like the insects for which they were named. They were loathsome things to look upon, all hair and sharp ferret eyes, bent and crooked forms drawn from some best-forgotten nightmare. Dozens of them slipped about, emerging from and then disappearing into the gloom, chittering in a language less than human. All the while, they continued to gather before the wall of mist and chant in hollow, toneless cadence.