by Terry Brooks
They went up through the mountain passageways to the cellars that lay below Graymark like the Wraiths they shunned. With the aid of torches they found stored in a niche at the tunnel entrance, they crept through the gloom and the silence to the bowels of the fortress keep. Slanter led them, his rough yellow face bent close to the light, his black eyes bright with fear. He went quickly and purposefully, and only the eyes betrayed what he might wish hidden of himself. But Jair saw it, recognized it, and found that it mirrored what lurked now within himself.
He, too, was afraid. The anticipation that had earlier given him such strength of purpose was gone. Fear had replaced it, wild and barely controlled, racing through him and turning his skin to ice. Strange, fragmented thoughts filled his mind as he worked his way ahead with the others through the tunnel rock, his nostrils thick with the smell of musted air and his own sweat—thoughts of his home in the Vale, of his family scattered across the lands, of friends and familiar things left behind and perhaps lost, of the shadow things that hunted him, of Allanon and Brin, and of what they had come to this dark place and time to do. All jumbled and ran together like colors mixed in water, and there was no sense to be made of any of them. It was the fear that made his thoughts scatter so, and he tightened his mind and his resolve against it.
The passageways wound upward for a long time, crossing and recrossing, a puzzle maze that seemed to lack beginning or end. Yet Slanter did not pause, but led them steadily on until at last they came in sight of a broad, ironbound doorway fastened to the rock. They came up to it and stopped, as silent, as the tunnels through which they had come. Jair crouched down with the others as Slanter put one ear to the door and listened. In the stillness of his mind, he could hear the beat of his body’s pulse.
Slanter rose and nodded once. Carefully, he lifted the latch that held the door closed, fixed his hands on the iron handle and pulled. The door swung open with a low groan. A stairway rose before them, disappearing beyond the circle of their torchlight into blackness. They began to climb, with Slanter leading them once more. A step at a time, slow and cautious, they made their way up the stairwell. Gloom and silence deepened and wrapped them close about. The stairwell ended, opening upward through a stone block floor. The soft scrape of someone’s boot on the stairs echoed harshly through the darkness above, disappearing far away into the silence. Jair swallowed against what he was feeling. It was as if there was nothing up there but the dark.
Then they were clear of the stairs and within the gloom. Voiceless, they stood close about the opening and peered into the gloom, torches held forth. The light could not penetrate to walls or ceiling, but there was a clear sense of a chamber so huge that they were dwarfed by it. They could discern at the edges of their torchlight the shadowed outline of crates and barrels. The wood was dry and rotting, its iron bindings rusted. Cobwebs lay over everything, and the floor was thick with dust.
But in the carpet of the dust, splayed footprints marked the passing of something that was clearly not human. It had not been all that long since whatever it was had ventured down into the lower levels of Graymark, Jair thought chillingly.
Slanter beckoned them ahead. The members of the little company moved into the gloom, groping their way forward from the open stairwell, the dust stirring beneath their boots and rising in soft clouds to mix with the light of their torches in a hazy glare. Mounds of stores and discarded provisions appeared and were left behind. Still the chamber ran on.
Then suddenly the entire floor rose half a dozen steps to a new level and stretched away from there into darkness. They went up the stairs in a knot, walked ahead twenty yards or so, and passed into a monstrous, arched corridor. Iron doors, barred and sealed, appeared on either side as they pushed forward. Blackened torch stubs sat within their iron racks, chains lay in piles against the walls, and multilegged insects scurried from the light to the seclusion of the gloom. A stench hindered breathing and choked the senses, emanating in waves from the cellar stone.
The corridor ended at yet another stairway, this one curling upward like a snake coiled. Slanter paused, then began to climb. The others followed. Twice the stairway wound back upon itself, then opened into another corridor. They followed this new passageway several dozen yards to where it branched in two directions. Slanter took them right. The passageway ended a short distance farther on at a closed iron door. The Gnome tested the latch, tugged futilely, and shook his head. There was concern on his face as he turned to the others. Clearly he had hoped to find it open.
Garet Jax pointed back down the corridor, the unasked question in his eyes. Could they backtrack and go the other way? Slanter shook his head slowly, the answer in his eyes. The Gnome did not know.
They hesitated a moment longer, eyes locked. Then Slanter pushed past, motioning for the others to follow. He led them back down the passageway to where it divided. This time he took them left. The second corridor wound farther than the first, passing stairwells, niches cloaked in shadow, and numerous doors, all closed and barred. Several times the Gnome paused, undecided, then continued on. The minutes slipped away, and Jair began to grow increasingly uneasy.
Then at last the passageway ended, this time at a pair of massive iron doors so huge that Slanter was forced to reach upward to seize the handles. They gave with surprising ease, and the door on the right swung silently in. The members of the little company peered through guardedly. Another chamber lay beyond, huge and cluttered with stores. But the gloom dissipated somewhat here, chased by a thin, gray light that slipped downward through tiny slits in the walls that were cut close against the chamber’s high ceiling.
Slanter gestured toward the slits, then to the far wall of the chamber where a second pair of iron doors stood closed. The others understood. They were within Graymark’s outer walls.
With Slanter in the lead, they passed cautiously into the room. No dust lay upon these floors; no cobwebs draped its crates and barrels. The stench still hung upon the air, stifling and rank, but it now seemed carried as much from without as held by the closure of the walls. Jair wrinkled his nose in distaste. The smell might well kill them before the dark things found them out. It was as bad as . . .
Something scraped softly in the shadows to one side. Garet Jax whirled, daggers in both hands, crying out in warning to the others.
Too late. Something huge, black, and winged seemed to explode out of the shadows. It rose against the half-light, its leathered body spreading outward like some monstrous bat. Teeth and claws gleamed, a flash of ivory, and a fierce shriek broke from its throat. It was on them so quickly that there was no time to defend against it. It flew at them in a rush, swept past the leaders, and came at Helt. It caromed into the giant Borderman, winged limbs flailing, and its shriek turned to a frightening hiss. Helt staggered back with a howl, then got both hands on the black thing, and thrust it from him violently, flinging it across the room into a pile of stores.
Garet Jax leaped forward, and the daggers flew from his hands, pinning the thing to the wooden crates.
Slanter had reached the far end of the room and wrenched wide one of the iron doors. “Get out!” he howled.
They raced swiftly from the chamber, one after the other, until all were clear. Slanter shoved the open door closed with a grunt and threw the iron bolts into their fastenings. Shaking, he collapsed back against the door.
“What was that?” Foraker gasped, his black-bearded face shiny with sweat and his heavy brows knit fiercely.
The Gnome shook his head. “I don’t know. Something the walkers made of the dark magic—some sentinel, perhaps.”
Helt was down on one knee, his face buried in his hands. Blood seeped through his fingers in small trickles of scarlet.
“Helt!” Jair whispered and started forward. “Helt, you’re hurt . . .”
The Borderman lifted his head slowly. Angry slashes crisscrossed his face. One eye was swollen and already beginning to close. He dabbed at the wounds with his tunic sleeve and motioned the V
aleman back. “No, they’re just scratches. Nothing bad.”
But he was wincing with pain. He came to his feet with an effort, bracing himself against the wall. There was an uneasy look in his eyes.
Slanter had moved away from the door and was glancing about furtively. They were at the center of a narrow corridor that ran to a pair of closed doors at one end and to a stairway opening to daylight at the other.
“This way!” he beckoned, moving quickly toward the light. “Hurry—before something else finds us!”
They started after him, all save Helt, who was still leaning against the passage wall. Jair glanced back and slowed. “Helt?” he called.
“Hurry on, Jair.” The big man was still dabbing blood from his face. Then he pushed himself off the wall and started after. “Go on, now. Stay close to the others.”
Jair did as he was asked, conscious that the Borderman was following and conscious, too, that Helt was having difficulty doing so. There was something very wrong with him.
They reached the end of the corridor and went up the stairs in a rush. The eerie stillness of the fortress was broken by the sound of other feet and voices, jumbled, distant and indistinct. The shriek of the winged thing had given warning that there were intruders within the keep. Jair’s mind raced wildly as he bounded up the long stairway with the others. He must remember that he had the wishsong for protection—that he could use it effectively only if he remembered to keep his head . . .
Something hissed past his face, and he stumbled and went down. An arrow shattered on the stairway wall. Helt was next to him at once, pulling him up again. Arrows flew all about them as Gnome Hunters appeared in the corridor below and on parapets above. The companions were within Graymark’s walls, but their enemies knew it now and were converging. Scrambling to the top of the stairs, Jair wheeled right after the others along a line of battlements that overlooked a broad inner courtyard and a maze of towers and fortifications. Gnomes appeared from everywhere, weapons in hand, yelling wildly. A handful lay crumpled on the battlements ahead, brought down by Garet Jax as the black-clad Weapons Master cleared the way forward. The six darted along the battlements to a tower stairwell where Slanter brought them to a halt.
“The drop-gate—there!” He pointed across the courtyard to an iron-barred portcullis that stood raised over an arched entry leading through a massive, stone block wall. “Quickest way for us to reach the Croagh!” His yellow face grimaced as he fought for breath. “Gnomes will realize what we’re about in a moment. When they do, they’ll bring down the gate to trap us. But if we can get there first, we can use the gate to cut them off instead!”
Garet Jax nodded, oddly calm in the midst of the moment’s fury. “Where is the wheelhouse and winch?”
Slanter pointed again. “Beneath the gates—this side. We’ll have to jam the wheel!”
Shouts and cries broke from all about them. In the courtyard below the Gnomes began to come together.
Garet Jax straightened. “Quick, then—before they are too many for us.”
The little company raced down the tower stairwell, Slanter leading. At the lower end, they crossed through an anteway, dark and closed, to a single door that opened into the courtyard. All across the yard, Gnome Hunters turned to face them.
“Shades!” Slanter gasped.
They broke for the gate in a rush.
Brin Ohmsford climbed slowly to her feet, one hand resting lightly on Whisper’s massive head. The cavern was still again, empty of life. She stood for a moment at the center of the stone bridge and looked across the chasm to where daylight brightened the tall, arched alcove leading out. She rubbed Whisper’s head gently, conscious of the welts and angry furrows left from his terrible battle with the black things, feeling the hurt that he had suffered.
“No more,” she whispered softly.
Then she turned forward. She left the bridge quickly, without looking back, and began to cross the cavern floor toward the alcove. Whisper went with her, padding silently behind, saucer blue eyes gleaming. Without turning, she knew that he was there. Cautiously, she scanned the creviced rock for signs of the black things or other horrors wrought by the dark magic, but there were none. Only she and the cat remained.
Minutes later she reached the alcove with its high, smooth walls sculpted from the stone and carved with the intricate designs she had seen earlier. She paid them little heed, moving at once to the opening and to the daylight beyond. She had only one objective now.
The opening passed away behind her and she stood once more in sunlight. It was midafternoon, the sun gone westward toward the treeline, its brightness dimmed by mist and clouds that floated shroudlike across the whole of the sky above. She was on a ledge overlooking a deep valley surrounded by a cluster of barren, ragged peaks. There was an odd, dreamlike tone to the setting of mountains, clouds, and mist. The whole of the valley was bathed in a shimmering, leaden cast. She looked slowly about and then upward behind her. There, balanced upon the rock above, was a solitary, dismal fortress. Graymark. Winding down from its heights and from far above that, beyond where she could see, was the stone stairway of the Croagh. It wound past her ledge, touched briefly, then spiraled down into the valley.
It was upon the valley that her gaze at last came to rest. A deep, shadowed bowl, it fell away from the light until its lower depths were lost in misted gloom. The Croagh wound down into this darkness, into a mass of trees, vines, scrub, and choking brush, grown so thick that the light could not penetrate. This forest was a twisted and knotted wilderness and it seemed to have neither beginning nor end, but to be contained in its rampant growth only by the rock walls of the peaks.
Brin stared. It was from here that the hissing sound came, the one that she had heard earlier in the sewers. It was like a breathing. She squinted against the glare of the gray half-light. Had she seen . . . ?
In the bowl of the valley, the forest moved.
“You are alive!” she said softly and hardened herself against what that realization made her feel.
She stepped far out onto the ledge, to the very edge where the stem of the Croagh joined to it. Crude stairs had been cut into the rock, and she stared down their length to where they disappeared at a bend in the stone. Then she looked past again to the valley below.
“Maelmord, I am come to you,” she whispered.
Then she turned back to Whisper. She knelt beside him and rubbed his ears tenderly. Her smile was sad and gentle. “You must go no farther with me, Whisper. Even though your mistress sent you to keep me safe, you must go no farther. You must stay here and wait for her to come to you. Do you understand?”
The cat’s luminous eyes blinked and he rubbed against her. “Protect my way back again, if you would protect me at all,” she told him. “Perhaps it will not be as the Grimpond has foretold—that I shall die here. Perhaps I will come back again. Keep the way safe for me, Whisper. Keep your mistress and my friends safe. Do not let them follow. Wait, and when I have done what I must, I will come back to you if I am able. I promise you that I will.”
Then she sang to the cat, using the wishsong not to persuade or to deceive this time, but to explain. In images that would carry to the moor cat’s mind, she let him feel what she wished and made him understand what it was that she must do. When she was done, she leaned forward and hugged the big cat close for a moment, nestling her face in the coarse fur and feeling the warmth of the beast seep through her, taking from that warmth a measure of new strength.
She rose and stepped back. Slowly Whisper sank down on his haunches and forepaws until he was stretched out facing her. She nodded and smiled. He was taking up guard of her path down. He would do as she wished.
“Good-bye, Whisper,” she told him and stepped upon the Croagh.
The stench that had risen from the chasm behind her rose anew from the steamy depths of the valley below. She ignored it, gazing out momentarily over the cliffs to where the light of the sun brightened above the horizon. She thought of Alla
non then and wondered if he could see her—if perhaps he might in some way be with her.
Then she took a deep breath to steady herself and started down.
XLI
As one, the six who had come from Culhaven broke from the shelter of the tower door and raced into the courtyard beyond. Screams of warning rose up about them, and the Gnomes converged from every quarter.
At the center of the maelstrom, Jair watched the battle unfold with curious detachment. Time fragmented, and his sense of being slipped from him. Hemmed close about by the friends who sought to protect him, he floated in their midst, voiceless and ephemeral, a ghost that none could see. Earth, sky, and the whole of the world beyond these walls were lost, along with all else that had ever been or would ever be. There was only now and the faces and the forms of those who fought and died in that yard.
Garet Jax led the charge, darting through the Gnomes that rushed to bar his passage, swift and fluid as he killed them. He was like a black-clad dancer, all grace, power, and seemingly effortless motion. Gnome Hunters, gnarled and worn from countless battles, threw themselves in front of him with frenzied determination, their weapons hacking and cutting with lethal force. They might as well have been trying to contain quicksilver. None could touch the Weapons Master, and those who came close enough to try found in him the black shadow of death come to claim their lives.
The others of the company fought beside him, no less driven in their purpose and only a shade less deadly. Foraker flanked him on one side, the Dwarfs black-bearded face ferocious as he swung the great double-edged axe and attackers scattered with howls of dismay. Edain Elessedil flanked him on the other, a slender sword flicking snakelike and a long knife parrying counterblows. Slanter stayed close behind them all, long knives in both hands, a hunted look in his black eyes. Helt brought up the rear, a giant shield, his wounded face bleeding again and frightening to look at, a great pike snatched from an attacker thrusting and cutting all who tried to slip past his guard.
