by Terry Brooks
Wil understood. “Let’s hope that we both find what we are looking for.”
“Well, maybe I can be of some help to you.” The old man shrugged. “This is Mallenroh’s end of the Hollows. She might remember me, Elfling.” For an instant his thoughts wandered, then he glanced at Wil. “Drifter can track for as long as it’s needed.” He whistled. “Take us down, dog. Go, boy.”
Drifter disappeared over the rim of the Hollows. Eretria stripped saddles and bridles from the horses and slapped them sharply to send them galloping back through the forest. Then she joined Wil and the old man. In a line, they started down into the Hollows.
“Won’t have to rely on Drifter very long,” Hebel declared firmly. “Mallenroh—she’ll find us quick enough.”
If that were so, Wil found himself thinking, then he hoped that she would find Amberle as well.
Amberle came awake in the darkness of the Hollows forest. It was the slight swaying, jostling motion of being carried that awoke her, and for an instant she panicked. Gnarled fingers held her fast, locked tightly about her arms and legs, her body, even her neck and head—fingers so rough they felt as if they were made of wood. Her first reaction was to want to break free, but she resisted it with a desperate effort and forced herself to remain still. Whatever had her did not yet know she was awake. If she were to have any advantage at all, it lay in this. For the moment, at least, she must continue to feign sleep and learn what she could.
She had no idea how long she had slept. It might have been minutes or hours or even longer. She thought, though, that it was still the same night. Logic told her it must be. She thought, too, that whatever it was that had her, it was not the thing that had pursued her into the Hollows. Had that thing found her, it would simply have killed her. This, therefore, must be something else. The old man, Hebel, had told Wil and her that the Hollows were the private domain of the Witch Sisters. Perhaps it was one of them that had her.
She felt somewhat better, having reasoned that much through, and she relaxed a bit, trying to make out something of the terrain through which she was moving. It was difficult to do this; the trees shut away even the smallest trace of stars and moon, leaving everything shrouded in deepest night. Were it not for the familiar woodland smells, she might not have known there was a forest about. The silence was intense. The few sounds were distant and brief, cries that came from the wilderness beyond the Hollows.
Yet there was another sound, she corrected herself, a sort of skittering noise like the chafing of limbs in a breeze—except that there was no breeze, and the sound came from beneath her, not from above. Whatever it was that carried her was making the noise.
The minutes slipped by. She thought briefly of Wil, trying to imagine what he might do in her place. That made her smile in spite of herself. Who could tell what wild stunt Wil might try in such a situation? Then she wondered if she would ever see him again.
Her muscles were beginning to cramp, and she decided to see if she could do something to ease the discomfort without giving herself away. Experimentally she stretched her legs, pretending to stir in her sleep, testing the fingers that held her. They moved with her, but did not release. So much for that.
The sound of running water reached her, growing stronger with each passing second. She could smell it now, fresh and scented with wildflowers—a stream that twisted and churned in the quiet of the forest. Then it was beneath her, and the rustle of the sticks and the night sounds faded in its rush. Footsteps echoed hollowly on wooden planks, and she knew she had been carried over a bridge. The gurgle of the stream faded slightly. Chains clanked and rumbled as if being gathered in, and there was a dull thud. Something had closed behind, a door—a very heavy door. An iron bar and locks snapped into place. She heard them clearly. Night air washed about her as before, but it carried with it the unmistakable smell of stone and mortar. Fear welled up within her once more. She was inside a walled area, a courtyard perhaps, being taken, she now believed, to some sort of confinement, and if she did not break free at once, she would not break free at all. Yet the fingers that constrained her showed not the slightest hint of loosening, and there were many of them. It would take a tremendous effort to wrench free, and she did not believe that she had that kind of strength left in her. Besides, she thought dismally, even if she were to break free, where would she go?
Ahead, another door opened, creaking slightly. Still no light came to her; there was nothing but blackness all about.
“Pretty thing,” a voice said suddenly, and the Elven girl started with surprise.
She was carried ahead. Behind her, the door closed and the smells of the forest disappeared. She was inside—but inside of what? Twisting and turning, her captors carried her along passageways that smelled damp and musty; yet there was another odor, a kind of incense, a perfume. The Elven girl breathed it deeply and it left her head in a momentary spin.
Then at last there was a light, suddenly, unexpectedly, glimmering just ahead from within a tall archway. Amberle blinked at the unfamiliar brightness, her eyes still accustomed to the dark. She was carried through the archway and down a winding stairs. The light blinked above her, fell behind momentarily, then followed after, weaving and bobbing against the dark.
Her forward motion stopped. She felt herself being lowered onto a thick, woven matting, and the wooden fingers slipped free. She raised herself up on her elbows and squinted toward the light. It hung there before her for just an instant, then retreated slowly behind a wall of iron bars. A door swung shut and the light was gone.
But just before it disappeared, the Elven girl caught a glimpse of her captors, their slender forms outlined clearly in the white glow. They appeared to be made out of sticks.
On the floor of the Hollows, Wil called a halt. It was so black that he could barely see his hand in front of his face; he could not see Hebel or Eretria at all, nor they him. If they attempted to proceed under these conditions, they would soon become separated and hopelessly lost. He waited a few moments for his vision to sharpen. It did, but only slightly. The Hollows remained a dim, barely perceptible mass of shadows.
It was Hebel who came up with a plan to resolve their difficulty. Whistling Drifter to him, he produced a length of rope from the sack he carried, and bound one end to the dog; the rest he fastened about his waist and to the waists of the Valeman and the Rover girl. Thus tied, they could follow after one another without risk of separation. The old man tested the line, then spoke softly to Drifter. The big dog started ahead.
It seemed to Wil as if they walked the Hollows for hours, stumbling through an endless maze of trees and brush, nearly blind in the impenetrable blackness, trusting to the instincts of the dog that led them. They did not talk to one another at all, moving through the forest as silently as they could, all too conscious of the fact that somewhere within that same forest the Reaper prowled. Wil had never felt quite so helpless as he did then. It was bad enough that he could see almost nothing; it was worse knowing that the Reaper was down there with him. He thought constantly of Amberle. If he were frightened, what must it be like for her? His fear made him ashamed. He had no right to be afraid, not when she was the one who was alone and unprotected, and he was the one who had left her that way.
Yet the fear stayed with him. To ward it off, he clutched the pouch with the Elfstones in one hand, grasping it firmly, as if having it there might somehow protect him against whatever hid within the forest night. Yet deep within, the feeling persisted that the Elfstones would not protect him, that their power was lost to him and he could not get it back again. It made no difference what Amberle had told him or what he had told himself. The feeling lacked reason or purpose; it was simply there—haunting, malignant, terrifying. The power of the Elfstones was no longer his.
He was still trying to shake the feeling when the rope before him went suddenly slack. He almost stumbled over Hebel, who had come to a complete stop. Eretria bumped up against him, and the three stood bunched together, peering ahea
d into the gloom.
“Drifter’s found something,” the old man whispered to Wil.
Dropping to his knees, he worked his way forward to where Drifter was sniffing the ground, Wil and Eretria following close behind. He patted the dog soothingly and felt along the earth for a time, then rose.
“Mallenroh.” He spoke her name softly. “She’s got the Elfling girl.”
“Are you sure?” Wil whispered back.
The old man nodded. “Has to be. That Reaper thing’s somewhere else now. Drifter doesn’t smell it anymore.”
Wil did not understand how Hebel could be certain of all this, especially when it was so impossibly black, but there was no point in arguing the matter.
“What do we do now?” he asked anxiously.
“Keep going.” Hebel grunted. “Drifter—go, boy.”
The dog started ahead once more, the three humans trailing after. The minutes slipped away, and gradually the forest began to lighten. At first Wil thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, but finally he realized that night was fading and a new day had begun. Trees and brush began to take shape about him, the dimness sharpening slowly as the sun slipped its faint glow through the forest roof. Ahead, the shaggy black form of Drifter became visible for the first time since they had descended from the Hollows rim, head lowered to the trail as he sniffed his way along the damp earth.
Then abruptly the big head lifted and the dog stopped. The humans stopped with him, startled looks on their faces. Before them stood the strangest creature that any of them had ever seen. It was a man made of sticks—two arms, two legs and a body all of sticks, gnarled roots curling out from the ends of the arms and legs to form fingers and toes. It had no head. It faced them—or at least they thought it faced them since the roots that formed its fingers and toes appeared to point in their direction. Its slender body swayed slightly as if it were a sapling caught in a sudden wind. Then it turned and walked back into the forest.
Hebel glanced quickly at the other two. “I told you. That’s Mallenroh’s work.”
Beckoning hurriedly to them, he started after the creature. Wil and Eretria looked doubtfully at each other, then followed. Wordlessly, the little procession trudged ahead into the gloom, weaving and twisting through the maze of the forest. After a time, other stick men like the first began to appear about them, headless, gnarled things, noiseless but for the slight skittering sound they made as they walked. Almost before the humans knew it, there were dozens of the creatures ringing them, trailing like ghosts through the shadows.
“I told you,” Hebel kept whispering back to the Valeman and the Rover girl, his leathered face intense.
Then abruptly the forest thinned. Before them stood a solitary tower, its dark turret rising up into the trees that grew about it. It sat atop a small knoll, a nearly windowless keep, its stone aged, worn, and grown thick with vines and moss. The knoll had become an island, encircled by a stream that flowed from somewhere back in the forest, wending its way down in a series of drops and turns before meandering off into the trees to their left. A low wall ringed the tower, built close to the bank of the stream; where it faced them, a drawbridge stood open and empty, chains hanging limply from small watch houses at either side, a heavy wooden bridgehead spanning the waters beneath. All about the rise and the tower grew massive oaks, ancient trees whose boughs interwove and shut away the morning sky, leaving the isle, like the rest of the Hollows, draped in deepest shadow.
The stick man they had followed stopped. It turned about slightly, as if its headless form would ascertain whether or not they were there. Then it began walking toward the drawbridge. Hebel limped after it without hesitating, Drifter at his side. Wil and Eretria hung back a moment, less certain than the old man that they ought to go further. The tower was a forbidding structure; they knew that they should not set foot within its walls, knew that they had already gone much farther than they should. But the Valeman sensed somehow that it was here he would find Amberle. He looked back at Eretria, and they started forward.
Down to the edge of the stream the little band went, following the silent stick man, its brethren all about them. Except for the sounds of their movements and the flow of the stream, the forest lay wrapped in silence. The stick man stepped onto the bridgehead and walked across, fading from sight in the shadow of the gate. The men, the girl, and the dog passed over the bridge behind it, Wil and Eretria casting apprehensive glances at the massive black tower beyond.
Then they were beneath the gate. The stick man reappeared before them, standing now just beyond the shadowed arch. In a line, they moved forward, watching as it started once more toward the tower. They had barely walked clear of the gateway when they heard the sudden sound of chains creaking and groaning. Behind them, the drawbridge lifted and sealed against the wall.
Now there was no turning back. In a knot, they walked to the tower. The stick man was waiting, standing within a high alcove that sheltered a pair of broad, ironbound wooden doors. One door stood open. The stick man stepped through and was gone. Wil stared upward at the massive stone face of the tower, then reached into his tunic and brought forth the pouch that contained the Elfstones. With the others, he stepped through the doorway into blackness.
For an instant no one moved, standing just within the entry, peering blindly into the gloom. Then the door swung shut behind them, locks snapping into place. Light flared from within a glass-enclosed lamp that hung suspended from above, its glow white and soft, neither from burning oil nor pitch, but something that gave off no flame as it burned. All about stood the stick men, their gnarled shadows cast upon stone walls, swaying gently in the light.
From the gloom behind them, a woman appeared, cloaked all in black and trailing long streamers of crimson nightshade.
“Mallenroh,” Hebel whispered, and Wil Ohmsford felt the air about him turn to ice.
42
The second day of the battle for Arborlon belonged to Ander Elessedil. It was a day of blood and pain, of death and great courage. All during the night the Demon hordes had continued to ferry their brethren across the waters of the Rill Song, singly and in groups, until, for the first time since their break from the Forbidding, the whole of their army was gathered to strike, massed at the base of the Carolan from cliff face to riverbank, stretched north and south as far as the eye could see, awesome and terrible and endless in number. At dawn, they attacked the city. Up against the walls of the Elfitch they rushed, wave upon wave, maddened and howling with hate. Up against the heights they surged, scrambling onto the sheer rock, clawing their way through a hail of arrows. Onward they came, like a wave that would sweep across the defenders who waited and leave them buried.
It was Ander Elessedil who made the difference. It was as if on that day he became at last the King his father had been, the King who had led the Elves against the armies of the Warlock Lord those fifty years past. Gone was the weariness and the disillusion. Gone was the doubt that had haunted him since Halys Cut. He believed again in himself and in the determination of those who fought with him. It was an historic moment, and the Elven Prince became its focal point. Gathered about him were the armies of four races, battle standards flying in the morning wind. Here were the silver war eagles and spreading oak of the Elves, the gray and crimson slash of the Free Corps, and the black horses of the Old Guard; there flew the forest greens of the Dwarf Sappers split by the twist of the Silver River, and the hammer and twin blue mountains of the Rock Trolls of the Kershalt. Never before had they flown as one. In the history of the Four Lands the races had never before been united in a common cause, to form a common defense, and to serve a common good. Troll and Dwarf, Elf and Man—the humans of the new world stood together against an evil from ancient times. For that single, wondrous day, Ander Elessedil became the spark that gave them all life.
He was everywhere at once, from the rim of the bluff to the gates of the Elfitch, sometimes on horseback, sometimes afoot, always where the fighting was the heaviest. Chai
n mail gleaming, Ellcrys staff held high, he stood foremost among the defenders of the city against the Demons who rushed to slay him. Wherever he went, the cry went up and the defenders rallied. Always outnumbered, always pressed, still the Elven Prince and his comrades-at-arms threw back their attackers. Ander Elessedil was something more than human that day, fighting with such ferocity that it seemed as if nothing could stand against him. Time after time, the Demons sought to pull him down, recognizing quickly that this single man was the heart of the Elven defense. Time after time, it seemed as if they would succeed, ringing Ander in a swarm of raging black bodies. But each time he fought his way free. Each time, the Demons were driven back.
It was a day of heroes, for all of the defenders of Arborlon were inspired by the courage of the Elven Prince. Eventine Elessedil stood with his son and fought bravely, his very presence lending heart to the Elves about him. Allanon was there as well, his cloaked form standing head and shoulders above the armored men about him as the blue fire arced from his fingers into the midst of the raging Demons. Twice the Demons broke through the gates of the third ramp, and twice the Rock Trolls under the command of Amantar drove them back again. Stee Jans and the men of the Free Corps broke a third assault, counterattacking with such savagery that they swept the Demons all the way back to the second ramp and for a time threatened to retake its gates. Elven cavalry and Dwarf Sappers repulsed sally after sally along the rim of the Carolan, throwing back scores of Demons who managed to scale the cliff face and threaten to flank the defenders on the Elfitch.
But it was Ander who led them, Ander who gave them renewed strength when it seemed that they could stand no longer, Ander who rallied them at every point. When the day at last was ended and darkness began to fall, the Demons were forced to withdraw once more, slipping back into the forests below the heights, shrieking with rage and frustration. For yet a second day, the defenders of Arborlon had held. It was Ander Elessedil’s finest hour.