by Terry Brooks
Eretria dismounted, handing the reins of her own horse to Wil. Wordlessly, she examined the sorrel, walking quickly about it, patting its flanks and neck to keep it calm. There were no marks on the animal, but it was sweating heavily. When she glanced again at Wil, Eretria’s dark face was uncertain.
“Something has happened. His horse would not stray.”
The Valeman nodded. He was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this.
Eretria climbed atop Cephelo’s horse and took up the reins. “We will go on a bit further,” she decided, but there was doubt in her voice.
Side by side, they rode along the ridge line, the wind whistling its eerie cry through the high rock and the trees of the forest. Overhead, the stars winked into view, pale white light shining down into the dark of the Wilderun.
Then something else appeared through the gloom, another shadow, this one black and squarish and motionless upon the trail. Valeman and Rover girl slowed, easing their horses ahead cautiously, uneasiness reflecting in their eyes. Gradually the shadow began to take shape. It was Cephelo’s wagon, the garish colors caught in the starlight. They rode closer, and uneasiness then turned to horror. The team of horses that had pulled the wagon was dead, twisted and broken, still locked in their leather and silverstudded traces. Several more of the animals lay close by and, with them, their riders, scattered on the trail like straw men, torn and crumpled, bright clothing stained with blood that seeped through the fabric to mix with the muddied earth.
Quickly Wil looked about, peering into the shadows of the forest, searching for some sign of the thing that had done this. Nothing moved. He glanced at Eretria. She sat rigid on her mount, the color draining from her face as she stared fixedly at the bodies on the trail. Her hands dropped slowly to her lap, and the reins slipped free. Wil dismounted, scooped up the fallen reins, and tried to hand them back to the frightened girl. When Eretria did not move to take them, he gripped her hands, placed the reins of both horses between her fingers, and forced them closed. She glanced down at him wordlessly.
“Wait here,” he ordered.
He walked toward the wagon, studying the twisted forms about him as he went. All lay dead, even the old woman who had driven the wagon, bodies broken like deadwood. The Valeman felt his skin crawl. He knew what had done this. One by one, he checked them until at last he found Cephelo. The big man was dead as well, his tall form stretched full length upon the ground, forest-green cloak shredded, angular features frozen with a look of horror. So ruined was his body that it was nearly impossible to recognize.
Wil bent down. Slowly he felt through the dead Rover’s clothing, searching for the Elfstones. He found nothing. Fear knotted his stomach. He had to find the Stones. Then he noticed Cephelo’s hands. The right hand clutched at the earth in a gesture that spoke of unbearable agony. The left was flung wide and closed into a fist. The Valeman took a deep breath and reached for the left. One by one he pried open the rigid fingers. Blue light winked from between them, and relief flooded through him. Embedded in the flesh of the palm lay the Elfstones. Cephelo had sought to use them as he had seen Wil do in the Tirfing, but the Stones had not responded to the Rover and he had died still clutching them.
The Valeman pulled them free of the dead man’s grip, wiped them on his tunic, and dropped them back into their leather pouch. Then he rose, listening to the shriek of the wind whistling through the ridge. Dizziness washed over him as the smell of death filled his nostrils. Only one thing could have done this. He remembered the Elven dead at the camp at Drey Wood and in the fortress of the Pykon. Only one thing. The Reaper. But how had it found them again? How had it trailed them all the way from the Pykon to the Wilderun?
He steadied himself and hastened back to Eretria. She still sat astride Cephelo’s horse, dark eyes bright with fear.
“Did you find him?” she asked in a whisper. “Cephelo?”
Wil nodded. “He’s dead. They’re all dead.” He paused. “I took back the Stones.”
She did not seem to hear him. “What kind of thing could do this, Healer? Some animal, maybe? Or the Witch Sisters, or …?”
“No.” He shook his head quickly. “No, Eretria, I know what did this. The thing that did this tracked Amberle and me all the way south from Arborlon. I thought that we had lost it on the other side of the Rock Spur, but somehow it has found us again.”
Her voice shook. “Is it a Devil?”
“A special kind of Devil.” He glanced back at the dead upon the trail. “They call it a Reaper.” He thought a moment. “It must have believed we were traveling with Cephelo. Perhaps the rain confused it. It followed after him and caught him here …”
“Poor Cephelo,” she murmured. “He played one game too many.” She paused and glanced back at him sharply. “Healer, this thing knows now that you did not come east with Cephelo. Where will it go next?”
Valeman and Rover girl stared wordlessly at each other. Both knew the answer.
At the rim of the Hollows, Amberle crouched within the shelter of the bushes where Wil had hidden her and listened to the sounds of the night. Darkness lay over the Wilderun like a shroud, deep and impenetrable, and the Elven girl sat locked within it, unable to see beyond the covering brush, hearing the creatures that prowled the gloom. Knowing that it would be dawn before Wil could return to her, she tried for a time to sleep. But sleep would not come; her ankle pained her and her mind crowded with thoughts of the Valeman and his quest, of her grandfather, of the dangers all about her. At last she gave it up. With her knees pulled up against her body, she hunched forward, determined that she would become as nearly as she could a part of the forest about her, still, motionless, and unseen.
For a time she succeeded. None of the forest creatures ventured near her, staying back within the deep woods, back from the rim of the Hollows. The Hollows themselves lay wrapped in a silence so profound that the Elven girl could hear it as clearly as she heard the sounds of the night. Once or twice something flew past her shelter, the quick flap of wings breaking the stillness briefly, then fading once more. Time slipped away, and she began to nod sleepily.
Then the chill swept through her suddenly, as if the warmth had been sapped from the air about her. She came awake and rubbed her arms briskly. The chill left and the heat of the summer night slipped back across her. Uncertain now, she glanced about her shelter. Everything was as it had been before; in the darkness nothing moved, nothing sounded. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes again. The chill came back. She waited this time before moving, keeping her eyes tightly shut, trying to trace the source of the chill. She discovered that it came from somewhere within herself. She did not understand. Cold, bitter cold, within her, pushing through her, numbing like the touch of … death.
Her eyes snapped wide. Instantly she understood. She was being warned—how she did not know—that something was going to kill her. Had she been anyone but who she was, she might have ignored the feeling as being nothing more than the workings of her imagination. But she was highly sentient; such feelings had come over her before and she knew better than to dismiss them. The warning was real. It was only the source that confused her.
She hunched forward in momentary indecision. Something was coming for her, something monstrous, something that would destroy her. She could not hide from it; she could not stand against it. She could only run.
Ignoring the pain in her ankle, she slipped from beneath the bushes, crouched down beyond them, and stared into the forest gloom. The thing that stalked her was close; she could sense its presence clearly now as it moved soundlessly through the night. She thought suddenly of Wil, and she wished desperately that he were there to help her. But Wil was not there. She must save herself and she must do so quickly.
There was only one place for her to go, one place that her stalker might not follow—the Hollows. She hobbled to their edge and stared down into the depthless black. Fear gripped her. The Hollows were as frightening to her as the thing behind. She steadied he
rself, green eyes sweeping across the black to the tower of Spire’s Reach. It was there that she must go. It was there that Wil would look for her.
She found a pathway leading down and started along it, easing carefully into the shadows. In moments, she was enveloped by the blackness; the light of the stars and moon were lost above the trees. Her child’s face tightened with determination, and she felt her way forward. She kept as still in her movements as she was able, and there was only the slight scraping of her boots on earth and rock to betray her passage. Below, there was only silence.
At last she was on the floor of the Hollows. She paused then, sitting back against a tree trunk, rubbing gingerly the injured ankle. It was badly swollen by now, aggravated by her decision to walk upon it. Sweat bathed her face as she stared upward into the gloom and listened. She heard nothing. No matter, she told herself. Whatever it was that sought her, it was up there still, searching. She had to get deeper into the Hollows. Her eyes had begun to adjust to the blackness; she could discern vaguely the shapes of trees and clumps of brush about her. It was time to go on.
She pushed herself up and hobbled ahead into the dark, trying to keep her weight off her injured ankle. Moving from one tree to the next, she rested a moment at each, listening anxiously to the deep silence. The pain was growing worse, a steady throb that seemed to intensify with each step forward. The muscles of her good leg had stiffened and cramped with the constant hobbling; already she was beginning to tire.
Finally she had to stop. Breathing heavily, she lowered herself to the ground beside a thicket and leaned back against the cooling earth. Carefully, she composed herself and tried to trace anew the source of the warning. For a moment nothing happened. Then the chill swept back across her, penetrating, biting. She caught her breath. The thing that sought her was within the Hollows.
She hauled herself back to her feet and went on, limping blindly through the gloom. At one point it occurred to her that she might be traveling in a circle, but she pushed the thought quickly from her mind. She fell constantly. Several times she went down so hard that she nearly blacked out. Each time she came to her knees gasping for breath, rose, and forced herself to go forward. The minutes slipped by until she lost all track of time. About her, the silence and the dark deepened.
At last she could go no further. She fell to her knees, the sound of her breathing harsh in her ears. Crying with frustration, she began to crawl. Rock and deadwood scraped at her hands and knees as she worked her way through the brush, her ankle throbbing with pain. She would not give up, she swore silently. The thing would not have her. She turned her thoughts to Wil. She saw in her mind the look that had crossed his face when she told him that she cared for him. She should not have said it, she knew. But she had wanted to tell him so badly at that moment; she had needed to tell him. It surprised her how much she had needed to tell him. And the wonder in his eyes …
She collapsed on her face, weeping. Wil! She whispered his name like a talisman to ward off the evil that stalked her through the blackness. Then she lifted herself and crawled on. Her mind wandered, and she seemed to sense the presence of other creatures about her, moving with her through the night, quick and all but soundless. Little people, she thought. But the thing, where was the thing? How close to her was it?
She crawled and crawled until her strength was gone entirely; then she lay down upon the forest earth. She was finished, she knew. She had nothing left to draw upon. Her eyes closed and she waited to die. A moment later, she slept.
She was still sleeping when the crooked wooden fingers of a dozen gnarled hands lifted her up and bore her away.
XLI
The Valeman and the Rover girl rode down the rock-strewn trail and off Whistle Ridge, the wind whistling past their ears. Into the blackness of the lower forest they flew, Rover silks whipping about their bodies as they bent low across their horses’ necks and peered blindly into the gloom. The trees quickly closed about them and the night sky disappeared. With reckless disregard for their lives, they rode on, trusting to the surefootedness of their mounts and to luck.
There was no discussion of this; they had no time for discussion. The instant that Wil realized that the Reaper would backtrack until it found the trail Amberle and he had taken south to the Hollows after parting company with the Rovers, his mind went blank to every thought but one—Amberle would be at the end of that trail, alone, injured, and unprotected. If he did not reach her before the Reaper did, she would die, and it would be his fault because it had been his decision to leave her. An image of the torn and broken bodies of the Rovers on the trail flashed in his mind. At that moment he forgot everything but his need to get to Amberle. Scrambling back atop his horse, he wheeled the animal about and galloped away.
Eretria gave chase immediately. She might have done otherwise. With Cephelo dead, she had no further need for the Valeman’s protection. She no longer belonged to anyone; she was her own person at last. She might have turned her horse about and ridden safely from the valley and the terrible thing that had killed Cephelo and the others. But Eretria did not even stop to consider this. She thought only of Wil, riding off without her, leaving her behind once more. Pride, stubbornness, and the strange attraction she felt for the Valeman flared within her. She could not permit him to do this to her again. Without hesitating, she went after him.
So began their race to save Amberle. Wil Ohmsford, riding as if he were a man possessed, quickly lost all track of where he was. Gloom and mist slipped about him as he came down off the ridge line into the deep forest, and he could barely make out the dark shapes of the trees at either side as he whipped past them. Yet he did not slow; he could not. He heard the sound of another horse following and realized that Eretria had come after him. He muttered a quick oath; did he not have enough to worry about already? But there was no time to concern himself with the Rover girl. He dismissed her from his thoughts and concentrated his efforts on finding the cutoff leading south.
Even so, he rode right past it. If Eretria had not called out to him, he might have kept riding east all the way to the mountains. Wheeling about in surprise, he charged back again. But now Eretria had taken the lead, spurring her mount forward into the darkness. More familiar than he with the trail, she galloped ahead, calling for him to follow. Surprised all over again, he gave chase.
It was a harrowing ride. The darkness was so thorough that even the sharp eyes of the Rover girl could barely pick out the pathway as it twisted through the forest night. Several times the horses almost went down, barely springing clear of gullies and fallen logs that lay across the narrow trail. But these were Rover horses, trained by the finest riders in the Four Lands, and they responded with a quickness and agility that brought a fierce cry from the lips of the Rover girl and left the Valeman breathless.
Then suddenly they were back upon the roadway that Amberle and Wil had followed south to the Hollows, with branches and vines slapping against them and muddied water splashing up from the deep puddles that had collected upon the trail. Without slowing, they turned south. The minutes slipped by.
At last they broke from the forest onto the rim of the Hollows, its black circle spread out before them like some bottomless pit in the earth. Reining in their horses sharply, they sprang to the ground, staring about at the forest gloom. Silence hung across the Hollows, deep and pervasive. Wil hesitated only a second, then began searching for the bushes in which he had hidden Amberle. He found them almost at once and pushed his way to their center. There was no one there. For an instant, he panicked. He groped about for some sign of what might have happened to the Elven girl, but there was nothing to be found. His panic increased. Where was she? He rose, backing from the bushes. Perhaps these were the wrong ones, he thought suddenly, and began to look about for others. He stopped almost at once. There were no others like them close enough to be seen. No, it was here that he had hidden her.
Eretria hurried up to him. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,�
� he whispered, his lean face sweating. “I can’t find her.”
He regained control of himself with an effort. Reason it through, he told himself. Either she fled or the Reaper took her. If she fled, where would she go? He looked at once to the Hollows. There, he decided—to Spire’s Reach or as close to it as she could get. What if she had been taken, what then? But she had not been taken, he realized, because there was no sign of a struggle. She would have fought back; she would have left him some sign. If she had fled, on the other hand, she would have been careful to leave nothing behind to show her pursuer that she had been there at all.
He took a deep breath. She must have fled. But then a new thought struck him. He was assuming in all of this that Amberle had fled from the Reaper. What if it had not been the Reaper, but something that had come out of the Hollows? His jaw locked in frustration. There was no way to tell. In this blackness, he could not hope to find a trail. Either he would have to wait until morning, when it might be too late to help Amberle, or …
Or he would have to use the Elfstones.
He was reaching for the pouch when Eretria’s hand gripped his arm sharply, causing him to jump in surprise.
“Healer!” she whispered. “Someone is coming!”
He felt his stomach knot sharply. For an instant he simply stood there, his gaze following the girl’s as it turned north up the trail they had just traveled. On its shadowed rut, something moved. Fear welled up within the Valeman. His hand fumbled within his tunic and lifted free the Elfstones. At his side, Eretria snatched from her boot a wicked-looking dagger. Together they faced the approaching shadow.
“Just hold on now!” A familiar voice called out to them.
