by Terry Brooks
«No, it will keep hunting us,” the Elf agreed. «But it won’t catch us like that a second time. It was waiting for us at Drey Wood because it knew we were coming I don’t know how it knew, but it did.» He glanced at the Valeman, but Wil said nothing. «In any case, it won’t know where we are now. If it expects to find us again, it will have to track us. That might have been done easily enough if we had stayed within the forestland, but it will be very difficult here. It will have to determine first where we left the River; that alone could take days. Then it will have to follow us into the Brakes. But the Brakes swallow you up without a trace; this marsh hides tracks ten seconds after you’ve made them. And we’ve got Katsin, who was born in this country and has crossed the Brakes before. The Demon, however powerful it may be, is in strange country. It will have to hunt by instinct alone. That gives us a very definite edge.»
Wil Ohmsford did not agree. Allanon had thought that the Demons would not track him when he fled Paranor. But they did. The Valeman had thought they would not find him again once Amberle and he were carried to the far shores of the Rainbow Lake by the King of the Silver River. But again they did. Why should it be any different this time? The Demons were creatures of another age; their powers were the powers of another age. Allanon had said that himself. He had said as well that the one who led them was a sorcerer. Would it be so difficult for them to track a handful of Elven Hunters, a young girl, and a Valeman?
Still, there was nothing to be done about it, the Valeman knew. If the Reaper could track them in the Brakes, it would track them anywhere. Crispin had made the right decision. The Elven Hunters possessed considerable skill; perhaps that would be enough to see them safely through.
The Valeman was far more concerned about another unpleasant possibility, and since their encounter with the Reaper at Drey Wood he had been able to think of little else. The Reaper had known that they were coming to that Elven outpost. It had to have known, because it had lain in wait for them. Crispin was right about that. But there was only one way it could have known — it must have been told by the spy concealed within the Elven camp, the spy whom Allanon had worked so carefully to deceive. And if the Demons, knew of their plan to travel south to the Elven outpost at Drey Wood, then how much more about this journey did they know? It was altogether possible, the Valeman realized, that they knew everything.
It was a chilling possibility, one that he would have preferred not to consider further, but which seemed more and more plausible as he weighed the facts. Allanon had been certain that there was a spy within the Elven camp. Somehow the spy had managed to overhear their conversation in Eventine’s study. He could not conceive of how that could have been accomplished, but he was certain that it had. Drey Wood had been mentioned; that would account for the Reaper. But the Wilderun had also been mentioned. That meant that the Demons knew exactly where they were going after Drey Wood; and if the Demons knew that, then regardless of the route the little company chose to follow or the deceptions they chose to employ to elude would–be pursuers, chances were excellent that when the company arrived at the Wilderun there would be Demons waiting for them.
The thought lingered with Wil Ohmsford all that day as the little company slogged through the marshy tangle of the Brakes. Thorny brush and saw grass cut them at every passing, mist turned their clothing damp and chill, and mud and foul–smelling water seeped through their boots and filled their nostrils with its stench. They walked separate and apart from each other, speaking little, eyes peering guardedly through rain and swirling haze as the land passed away about them in a changeless wash of gray. By nightfall, they were exhausted. They made their camp in a sparse outcropping of brush that grew up against a low rise. There was too much risk in a fire, so they wrapped themselves, in blankets that were damp with the lowland’s chill and ate their food cold.
The Elven Hunters finished quickly and prepared to stand watch in shifts. Wil had just completed his own small meal of dried meat and fruit, washed down with a little water, when Amberle came over and huddled down beside him, her child’s face peering out at him from within the folds of the blanket she had pulled up about her head. Stray locks of chestnut hair fell loosely over her eyes.
«How are you holding up?» he inquired.
«I’m fine.» She had the look of a lost waif. «I need to talk.»
«I’m listening.»
«I have been thinking about something all day.» He nodded wordlessly.
«The Reaper was waiting for us at Drey Wood,” she said quietly. She hesitated. «You realize what that means?»
He said nothing. He knew what was coming next. It was as if she had read his mind.
«That means that it knew we were coming.» She spoke the words he was thinking. «How could that have happened?»
He shook his head. «It just did.»
That was the wrong answer, and he knew it. Her face flushed.
«Just as the Demons found us at Havenstead? Just as they found Allanon at Paranor? Just as they seem to find us everywhere we go?» Her voice stayed low, but there was anger in it now. «What kind of a fool do you think I am, Wil?»
It was the first time that she had ever used his given name, and it startled him so that for a moment he simply stared at her. There was hurt and suspicion in her eyes, and he saw that he must either tell her what Allanon had directed him to keep secret or lie to her. It was an easy decision to make. He told her about the spy. When he had finished, she shook her head reprovingly.
«You should have told me before now.»
«Allanon asked me not to,” he tried to explain. «He thought that you already had enough to worry about.»
«The Druid does not know me as well as he thinks. Anyway, you should have told me.»
He no longer felt like arguing the point. He nodded in agreement.
«I know. I just didn’t.»
They were silent for a moment. One of the Elves on Watch appeared, wraithlike, out of the mist, then disappeared into it again. Amberle stared after him, then glanced over at Wil. Her voice floated out of the folds of her hood, her face masked in shadow.
«I’m not angry. Really, I’m not.»
He smiled faintly. «Good. This marsh is dismal enough as it is.»
«I would have been angry if you had not told me the truth just now.»
«That was why I told you.»
She let the matter drop. «If this spy overheard what was said in my grandfather’s study that night before we left Arborlon, then the Demons know where we are going, don’t they?»
«I imagine so,” he replied.
«That means they know about Safehold as well; they know everything the Ellcrys told the Chosen, because Allanon repeated it to us. They have as much chance of finding the Bloodfire as we do.»
«Maybe not.»
«Maybe not?»
«We have the Elfstones,” he pointed out, wondering as he did so if it made any difference that they did. After all, he did not really know if he could use the Stones again. The thought depressed him.
«Who could have gotten close enough to hear what we were saying?» She frowned and looked at him.
He shook his head wordlessly. He had been wondering that, too.
«I hope that my grandfather is all right,” she murmured after a minute.
«I would guess that he is better off than we are.» Wil sighed. «At least he has someplace warm to sleep.»
He hunched his knees up to his chest, trying to find an extra bit of warmth. Amberle moved with him, shivering with the cold. He let her settle close against him, bundled in her coverings.
«I wish this were finished,” she whispered distantly, almost as if she were saying it to herself.
The Valeman grimaced. «I wish it had never begun.»
She turned her head to look at him. «As long as we are wishing, I wish you would be honest with me after this. No more secrets.»
«No more secrets,” he promised.
They were quiet after that. A few moments later, Amberle’s head
slipped down against his shoulder and she was asleep. The Valeman did not disturb her. He left her that way and stared, out into the dark, thinking of better times.
For the next two days, the little company trudged through the gloom of the Matted Brakes. It rained most of the time, a steady drizzle interspersed with heavy showers that drenched further an already sodden earth and left the travelers cold and miserable. Mist hung overhead and swirled thick across ridge tops and still, marshy lakes. The sun remained screened by banks of stormclouds, and only a faint lightening of the sky for several hours near midday gave any indication of its passing. At night, there was only the impenetrable dark.
Travel was slow and arduous. In single file, they worked their way across the tangle of the Brakes, through bramble thickets that sword blades could barely hack apart, past bogs that bubbled wetly and sucked from sight everything that came within their grasp, and around lakes of green slime axed evil smells. Deadwood littered the ground, mingling with pools of surface water and twisting roots. The vegetation had a gray cast to it that muted its green and left the whole of the land looking sick and wintry. What lived within the Brakes stayed hidden, though faint sounds skittered and lurched in the stillness, and shadows slipped like wraiths through the rain and the gloom.
Then, shortly before noon on the third day, they arrived at a massive body of stagnant water, choked with roots and deadwood that protruded like the earth’s broken bones from amid a covering of lily pads rippling gently with the rainfall. The shores of the lake were massed thick with bramble runs and scrub as far as the eye could see. Mist rolled across the surface of the water in a deep haze, and there was no sign of the far shore.
It was apparent immediately that any attempt at circling the lake would require several hours of backtracking to escape the heavy brush. There was only one other alternative open to them, and they took it. Katsin led them, as he had for most of their journey through the Brakes, with the other four Elven Hunters split in pairs so that two walked before Wil and Amberle and two followed. Cutting through the scrub that blocked their passage, they stepped onto a narrow bridge of earth and roots that jutted out from the shoreline and disappeared into the mist. If they were lucky, the bridge would span to the far shore.
They proceeded cautiously, picking their way along the uneven course, carefully staying back from the mire that lay to either side. The mist closed about them almost at once, and the land behind faded into it.. The minutes slipped away. Rain blew sharply into their faces, caught on a sudden gust of wind. Then the mist cleared unexpectedly, and they saw that their bridge dropped away into the lake not a dozen yards ahead. Beyond lay a huge mound of earth encrusted with rock and vegetation. The far shore of the lake was nowhere to be seen. They had reached a dead end.
Crispin started forward for a closer look at what lay beyond the mound of earth, but Katsin’s hand came up sharply in warning. He glanced back quickly at the others of the little company, placing a finger to his lips. Then he pointed to the mound; his hand moving to a long ridge that curved downward into the lake. At its tip, steam rose in small jets from two ragged holes that protruded from just above the water line.
Breathing holes!
Wordlessly, Crispin motioned them back. Whatever it was that lay sleeping out there, he had no intention of disturbing it.
But he was too late. The creature had sensed them. Its bulk heaved up suddenly out of the lake, showering them with stagnant water. It huffed loudly as yellow eyes snapped open from beneath the covering of lily pads and vines. Writhing feelers flared from its mud–covered body, and abroad, flat snout swung toward them, jaws gaping wide in hunger. It hung suspended above the lake for an instant, then sank quietly beneath the water and was gone.
Wil Ohmsford had only a glimpse of the monstrous thing. Then he was fleeing through the mist behind Ped and Cormac, pulling Amberle with him, struggling to keep his footing on the rutted path. He heard Katsin, Dilph and Crispin coming up quickly behind him and risked a quick glance back to see if the creature had followed them. In the same moment that he looked back, his foot caught and he went down, dragging Amberle with him.
The fall saved both their lives. Out of the mist rose the creature, massive jaws sweeping across the narrow bridge before them like a fisherman’s net. Cries of terror sounded from Ped and Cormac as the thing caught them up and pulled them into the lake. The huge bulk settled downward into the water and disappeared.
Wil froze in horror, staring fixedly into the mist where the monstrous thing had gone. Then Crispin leaped forward, catching Amberle up over his shoulder and sprinting for the safety of the shore. Katsin snatched up Wil before the Valeman could think to act on his own and followed. Dilph raced after them, short sword drawn. In seconds, they were stumbling back through the wall of scrub and bramble. Far back from the water’s edge, they collapsed in the muddied earth, their breathing heavy in the stillness as they listened for the sounds of any pursuit. There were none. The creature was gone.
But now they were only five.
Chapter Twenty–Four
Nightfall drifted down across the Westland in gossamer sheets of gray dusk, and the chill of evening settled into the forestland. The clouds which had masked the summer sky for nearly seven days began to break apart so that thin strips of blue glimmered brightly in the fading sunlight. In the west, the horizon turned scarlet and purple, the glow falling softly across the rain–drenched woodlands.
From beneath the smudge of haze that shrouded the Matted Brakes appeared the five who remained of the little company from Arborlon, surfacing like lost souls out of the netherworld. Haggard and worn, their hands and faces covered with welts and bruises, their clothing soiled and torn and hanging damply from their bodies, they had the look of beggars. Only their weapons suggested that they were something more. Trudging wearily through the last row of thicket, past the last clump of bramble, they scrambled up a small rise of loose rock and scrub and came to a ragged halt before the twin towers of the Pykon.
It was an awesome, spectacular sight. Straddling the broad channel of the Mermidon as the river wound its way eastward toward the grasslands of Callahorn, the Pykon formed a natural gateway into the sprawling, humpbacked mountain range the Elves had named the Rock Spur. The Pykon stood solitary and aloof, twin pinnacles of rock towering into the skyline like massive sentinels set guard over the land below. Ridge lines and crevices scarred the surface in a maze of creases and splits that shadowed the stone cliffs like the lines on an oldster’s seamed face. A pine forest grew at the north base of the peaks, thinning as the slope grew steeper, until all that remained was scrub and wildflowers that spotted the dark rock with brilliant dabs of color. Higher up, pockets of snow and ice glistened dazzling white.
Crispin held a hurried conference. In their meanderings through the tangle of the Brakes, they had drifted further eastward than he had intended, coming out here rather than at the edge of the Rock Spur. It might seem logical that they should skirt the Pykon, then travel upriver along the Mermidon until it intersected the Rock Spur. But the entire journey would have to be made on foot, and it would take them at least two days more to get that far. Worse, they would risk leaving a trail that could be followed. The Elf Captain thought that he had a better alternative. Nestled deep within the Pykon, bridging a massive split in the near peek, was an Elven fortress that had stood abandoned since the Second War of the Races. Crispin had been there once years ago, and if he could find it again, there were passages leading from that ancient stronghold downward throuhh the mountain rock to the Mermidon where it split apart the twin peaks. There were docks on the river and a boat as well, perhaps, or if not, there would be wood enough to construct one. From there, the Mermidon flowed eastward for several miles, but then doubled back on itself to where the Rock Spur bordered on the impenetrable mire of the Shroudslip. If they were to utilize the river as their means of travel, the journey could be completed in half the time it would take them if they went on foot — a day — perh
aps less than a day. There was another reason for going this way, the Elf Captain added. The river would hide all trace of their passing.
This last argument decided them,. None of them had forgotten the encounter with the Reaper at Drey Wood. The Demon would still be searching for them, and anything they might do to thwart that hunt must be tried. It was quickly agreed that it would be best to follow Crispin’s advice.
Without wasting any further time, they began the climb onto the Pykon. They passed quickly through the scattered pines that grew at the base of the near peak, reaching the lower slopes as the afternoon sun dipped down behind the forest horizon and night descended. A half–moon began to brighten in the east and clusters of stars winked into view against the deep blue of the sky, lighting the way for the five as they hiked upward onto the rock. It was a still, peaceful night, filled with sweet smells carried from the forest on a gentle south wind. A pathway was found, broad, well–trodden, twisting its way through clumps of boulders and past craggy drops, winding steadily upward into the shadow of the mountain. Behind them, the forestland began to drop away, revealing the dark vista of the Brakes as they spread northward below them toward the thin line of the Rill Song.
It was nearing midnight when the Elven fortress at last came into view. The great stronghold sat back within a deep crevice, a twisting maze of parapets, towers, and bulwarks rising up darkly against the moonlit stone of the cliffs. A long, winding stairway ran up the slope to a gaping entry in the castle’s outer wall. Ironbound wooden doors, weathered and split with age, their hinges rusted fast, stood open against the night. Watchtowers perched like squat beasts of prey atop massive stone– block walls, their narrow windows black and vacant. Spikes protruded from the crest of the parapets; high within the cluster of peaked turrets, chains that had once carried the standards of the Elven Kings clanged sharply against iron poles. From somewhere above the fortress, deep within the mountain’s crags, sounded the piercing cry of a night bird, its shriek rising until it matched the shrill pitch of the wind, hanging momentarily, then fading into echo.