by Terry Brooks
They crouched face to face, Elven King and Demon, both wounded, each waiting for the other to drop his guard. Once more, the Demon began to circle, blood trailing after it along the floor. Eventine Elessedil braced, turning to follow the Demon’s movement. He was covered with blood, and his strength was ebbing from him. Pain wracked his torn body. He knew that he could only last a few minutes more.
Abruptly the Changeling sprang at his throat. It happened so quickly that the King did not have time to do much more than tumble backward, arms raised before his face, sword held high. The Demon landed on top of him, bearing him to the floor, teeth and claws ripping. Eventine screamed in pain as the claws tore into his chest and the jaws closed about his forearm.
Then the doors to the manor house burst apart, locks splintering, hinges ripped from their fastenings. Shouts rang through the darkened entryway as it filled with armed men. In a haze of anguish, Eventine cried out. Someone had heard! Someone had come!
From atop the fallen King, the Changeling rose up, shrieking. In that instant it left its throat exposed. Eventine’s sword swept up, glittering. Back flew the Demon, head nearly severed from its body, its voice lost in a sudden gasp. As it fell, the King’s rescuers closed in about it, swords thrusting deep into its body.
The Changeling shuddered with the impact of the blows and died.
Eventine Elessedil staggered to his feet, sword still clutched within his hand, blue eyes hard and fixed. A numbing sensation spread through his body as he turned to find Ander reaching out for him. Then the King of the Elves tumbled downward, and the night closed in.
43
Like Mistress Death she came for the humans, taller even than Allanon, gray hair long and woven thick with nightshade, black robes trailing from her slender form, a whisper of silk in the deep silence of the Tower. She was beautiful, her face delicate and finely wrought, her skin so pale that she seemed almost ethereal. There was an ageless look to her, a timelessness, as if she were a thing that had always been and would forever be. The stick men fell back from her as she approached, the clicking of their wooden legs a faint rustle in the gloom. She passed them without a glance, her strange violet eyes never leaving the three who stood transfixed in her presence. Her hands stretched forth, small and fragile, their fingers curving as if to draw them close.
“Mallenroh!” Hebel whispered her name a second time, his voice expectant.
She stopped, her perfect features devoid of expression as she looked down upon the old man. Then she turned to Eretria and finally to Wil. The Valeman had gone so cold that he was shaking.
“I am Mallenroh,” she said, her voice soft and distant. “Why are you here?”
No one spoke, their eyes riveted on her. She waited a moment, then her pale hand passed before them.
“The Hollows are forbidden. No human is allowed. The Hollows are my home and within them I hold the power of life and death over all living things. To those who please me, I grant life. To those who do not, death. It has always been so. It will always be.”
She looked at each of them in turn, carefully this time, violet eyes reaching out to hold their own. Finally her gaze rested on Hebel.
“Who are you, old man? Why have you come to the Hollows?”
Hebel swallowed. “I was looking for … for you, I guess.” His words stumbled over one another. “I brought you something, Mallenroh.”
Her hand stretched forth. “What have you brought me?”
Hebel removed the sack he carried, lifted its flap and fumbled through its contents, searching. A moment later he withdrew a polished wooden figure, a statue carved from a piece of oak. It was Mallenroh, captured so perfectly that it seemed as if she had stepped from the carving into life. She took the wooden figure from the old man and examined it, her slender fingers running slowly over its polished surface.
“A pretty thing,” she said finally.
“It is you,” Hebel told her quickly.
She looked back at him, and Wil did not like what he saw. The smile she gave the old man was faint and cold.
“I know you,” she said, then paused as her eyes studied anew his leathered face. “Long ago it was, upon the rim of the Hollows, when you were still young. A night I gave you …”
“I remembered,” Hebel whispered, pointing quickly to the wooden figure. “I remembered … what you were like.”
At Hebel’s feet, Drifter crouched against the stone floor of the tower and whined. But the old man never heard him. He had lost himself completely in the Witch’s eyes. She shook her gray head slowly.
“It was a whim, foolish one,” she whispered.
Holding the statue, she stepped past him to where Eretria stood. The Rover girl’s eyes were wide and frightened as the Witch came up to her.
“What have you brought me?” Mallenroh’s question teased through the silence.
Eretria was speechless. Desperately she looked at Wil, then back again to Mallenroh. The Witch’s hand passed once before her eyes in a gesture that was both soothing and commanding.
“Pretty thing,” Mallenroh smiled. “Have you brought yourself?”
Eretria’s slender body shook. “I … no, I …”
“Do you care for this one?” Mallenroh pointed suddenly to Wil. She turned to face the Valeman. “He cares for someone else, I think. An Elven girl, perhaps? Is this so?”
Wil nodded slowly. Her strange eyes held his own, and her words reached out to him, bold and insistent.
“It is you who holds the magic.”
“Magic?” Wil stammered in reply.
Her hands slipped back within the black robes. “Show it to me.”
So compelling was her voice that before Wil Ohmsford knew what he had done, he had opened the hand that held the leather pouch. She nodded to him faintly.
“Show it to me,” she repeated.
Unable to help himself, the Valeman emptied the Elfstones from the pouch into his outstretched hand. Cupped within his palm, they glittered and flared. Mallenroh drew in her breath sharply, and one hand lifted toward them.
“Elfstones,” she said softly. “Blue for the Seeker.” Her eyes found Wil’s. “Shall they be your gift to me?”
Wil tried to speak, but the cold within him tightened and no words came from his lips. His hand locked before him, and he could not draw it back again. Mallenroh’s eyes looked deep into his own; what he saw there terrified him. She wanted him to know what she could do to him.
The Witch stepped back. “Wisp,” she called.
From the shadows sidled a small, furry-looking creature, like a Gnome in appearance, with the face of a wizened old man. Scurrying to Mallenroh’s side, the creature peered up at the cold face anxiously.
“Yes, Lady. Wisp serves only you.”
“There are gifts …” She smiled faintly, her voice trailing into silence.
Wordlessly, she handed Wisp the wooden statue of herself, then moved back to stand again before Hebel. Wisp hastened after, crouching down within the folds of her cloak.
“Old man,” she addressed Hebel, her pale face bending close to his own. “What would you have me do with you?”
Hebel seemed to have recovered his senses. His eyes were no longer distant as they glanced quickly at the Witch and then away again. “Me? I don’t know.”
Her smile was hard. “Perhaps you should stay here within the Hollows.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he insisted, as if he sensed somehow that the Witch would do with him as she pleased anyway. Then he looked up. “But the Elflings, Mallenroh. Help them. You could …”
“Help them?” she cut him short.
The old man nodded. “If you want me to stay, I will. There’s nothing else for me. But let them go. Give them the help they need.”
She laughed softly. “Perhaps there is something that you can do to help them, old man.”
“But I have done all that I can …”
“Perhaps not. If I told you there was something more that you might do, you w
ould be willing to do it, wouldn’t you?”
Her eyes fixed the old man. Wil saw that the Witch was toying with him.
Hebel looked uncertain. “I don’t know.”
“Of course you know,” she said softly. “Look at me.” His head lifted. “They are your friends. You want to help them, don’t you?”
The Valeman was frantic. Something was terribly wrong, but he could neither move nor speak to warn Hebel. He caught a glimpse of Eretria’s frightened face. She, too, sensed the danger.
Hebel sensed it as well. But he sensed, too, that he could not escape it. His eyes met those of the Witch. “I want to help them.”
Mallenroh nodded. “Then so you shall, old man.”
She reached to touch his face. Hebel saw in the Witch’s eyes what was to become of him. Drifter rose, teeth suddenly barred, but Hebel’s hand caught the back of the big dog’s neck and held him fast. The time for resistance was over. The Witch’s fingers stroked the old man’s bearded cheek gently, and his whole body seemed to go suddenly rigid. No! Wil tried to scream, but it was already too late. Mallenroh’s cloak enfolded both Hebel and Drifter, and they were lost from sight. The cloak remained wrapped about them for a moment, then slipped free. Mallenroh stood alone. In one hand she held a perfectly sculpted wooden carving of the old man and the dog.
“In this way shall you help them best.” She smiled coldly.
She handed the wooden figures to Wisp, who gathered them in. Then she turned to Eretria.
“Now what shall I do with you, pretty one?” she whispered.
Her hand lifted, and a single finger pointed. Eretria was forced to her knees, head bowed. The fingers curled back, and Eretria’s hands stretched out to the Witch in a gesture of submission. Tears streaked her face. Mallenroh watched without comment for a moment, then looked abruptly at Wil.
“Would you see her become a wooden statue as well?” Her voice had an edge to it that cut through the Valeman like a knife. Still he could not speak. “Or the Elven girl, perhaps? You know, of course, that I have her.”
She did not wait for the response she knew he could not give. She stepped forward, her tall figure bending down until her face was close before his own.
“I wish the Elfstones, and you shall give them to me. You shall give them, Elfling, for I know that if they are taken from you by force, they are useless.” Her violet eyes burned into him. “I would have their magic, do you understand? I know their worth far better than you. I am older than this world and its races, older than the Druids who played at Paranor with magics long since mastered by my sister and me. It is so with the Elfstones. Though I am not of Elven blood, yet my blood is the blood of all the races, and so I may command their power. Still, even I cannot break the law that calls their power into being. The Elfstones must be given freely. And so they shall.”
Her hand came close before his face, nearly touching it. “I have a sister, Elfling—Morag, she has named herself. For centuries we have lived within these Hollows, called the Witch Sisters, the last of our Coven. Once, long ago, she wronged me greatly, and I have never forgiven. I would have been rid of her except that our powers match so evenly that neither one nor the other of us may prevail. Ah, but the Elfstones are a magic that my sister does not possess, a magic that will enable me to put an end to her. Morag—odious Morag! Sweet, to see her made to serve me as these men of sticks! Sweet, to still that hateful voice! Oh, I have waited long to be rid of her, Elfling! Long!”
Her voice rose as she spoke until the words rang against the stones of the tower, echoing through the deep stillness. The beautiful, cold face moved back from the Valeman, the slender arms folding within the black robes. Wil Ohmsford could feel the sweat running down his body.
“The Elfstones shall be your gift to me,” she whispered. “My gift to you shall be your life and the lives of the women. Accept my gift. Remember the old man. Think of him before you choose.”
She stopped as the door to the tower slipped open to admit a handful of the stick men. They came to her in a scuttling of wooden legs, clustering about her. She bent low about them for a moment, then straightened, glancing coldly at Wil.
“You have brought a Demon into the Hollows,” she cried. “A Demon—after all these years! It must be found and destroyed. Wisp—his gift!”
The furry creature hastened forward and took from the helpless Valeman the pouch and the Elfstones. The wizened face glanced up at him, then withdrew behind the folds of Mallenroh’s cloak. The Witch lifted her hand, and Wil felt himself grow suddenly weak.
“Remember what you have seen, Elfling.” Her voice seemed distant now. “I hold the power of life and death. Choose wisely.”
She moved past him and disappeared through the open door. His strength began to fail, his vision to blur. At his side, Eretria collapsed on the tower floor.
Then he was also falling. The last thing he remembered was the feel of wooden fingers closing tight about his body.
44
Wil.” The sound of his name hung like an echo strayed in the black haze which enveloped him. The voice seemed to come from a great distance, floating downward through the dark to probe him in his sleep. He stirred sluggishly, feeling as if he were weighted and bound. With a great effort, he reached up from within himself, searching.
“Wil, are you all right?”
The voice belonged to Amberle. He blinked, forcing himself awake.
“Wil?”
She was cradling his head in her lap, her face bent close to his own, her long chestnut hair trailing down about him like a veil.
“Amberle?” he asked sleepily, pushing himself upright. Then he reached for her wordlessly and held her close against him.
“I thought I had lost you,” he managed.
“And I you.” She laughed softly, her arms tight about his neck. “You have been sleeping for hours, ever since they brought you here.”
The Valeman nodded into her shoulder, aware suddenly of the pungent smell of incense in the air. He realized it was the incense that was making him feel so groggy. Gently he released the Elven girl and looked about. They were enclosed by a windowless cell, black but for a single light that shone from within a glass container suspended from a ceiling chain, another of the lights that burned neither oil nor pitch and gave off no smoke. One wall of the cell was composed entirely of iron bars fastened vertically into the stone of the floor and ceiling. A single door opened through the bars, fastened in place by hinges on one side and a massive key lock on the other. Within the cell had been placed a pitcher of water, an iron basin, towels, blankets, and three straw-filled sleeping mats. On one of the mats lay Eretria, her breathing deep and even. Beyond the wall of iron bars was a passageway that ran to a set of stairs, then disappeared into blackness.
Amberle followed his gaze to the Rover girl. “I think she is all right—just sleeping. Until now, I have not been able to wake either of you.”
“Mallenroh,” he whispered, remembering. “Has she harmed you?”
Amberle shook her head. “She has barely spoken to me. In fact, I did not even know who it was that had taken me prisoner at first. The stick men brought me here, and I slept for a time. Then she came to me. She told me that there were others searching for me, that they would be brought to her as I had been brought. Then she left.” Sea-green eyes sought his own. “She frightens me, Wil—she is beautiful, but so cold.”
“She is a monster. How did she find you in the first place?”
Amberle paled. “Something chased me down into the Hollows. I never saw it, but I could feel it—something evil, searching for me.” She paused. “I ran for as long as I was able, then I crawled. Finally I just collapsed. The stick men must have found me and brought me to her. Wil, was it Mallenroh I sensed?”
The Valeman shook his head. “No. It was the Reaper.”
She stared at him wordlessly for a moment, then looked away. “And now it is here in the Hollows, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “The Witch
knows about it, though. She has gone to look for it.” He smiled grimly. “Maybe they will destroy each other.”
She did not smile back. “How did you manage to find me?”
He told her then everything that had happened since he had left her concealed in the bushes on the rim of the Hollows—the encounter with Eretria, the deaths of Cephelo and the Rovers, the recovery of the Elfstones, the flight back through the Wilderun, the meeting with Hebel and Drifter, the journey down into the Hollows, the discovery of the stick man, and the confrontation with Mallenroh. He finished by telling her what the Witch had done to Hebel.
“That poor old man,” she whispered, and there were tears in her eyes. “He meant no harm to her. Why did she do that to him?”
“She doesn’t care a whit about any of us,” the Valeman replied. “All that interests her are the Elfstones. She means to have them, Amberle. Hebel was just a convenient example for the rest of us—particularly me.”
“But you won’t give them to her, will you?”
He looked at her uncertainly. “If it means saving our lives, I will. We have to get out of here.”
The Elven girl shook her head slowly. “I don’t think that she will let us go, Wil—not even if you give her what she wants. Not after what you have told me about Hebel.”
He was silent a moment. “I know. But maybe we can bargain with her. She would agree to anything to get the Stones …” He stopped abruptly, listening. “Shhh. Someone is coming.”
They peered wordlessly through the bars of their cell into the darkness of the corridor beyond. There was a slight shuffling sound upon the stairs. Then a figure appeared within the fringe of their single light. It was Wisp.
“Something to eat,” he announced brightly, holding forth a tray with pieces of bread and fruit on it. Shuffling to the cell, he slipped the tray through a narrow slot in the bars at the base of the door.