by Terry Brooks
The voice of the Ildatch lashed out at her.
—Destroy him! Destroy him! You are the dark child—
But she did not destroy him. Lost in the weave of the images that swept through her and tapped deep into a wellspring of memories she had thought lost forever, she could feel the person that she had once been returning. That part of her which had been lost was being put back again. The ties of the magics that had bound her close began to loosen, drawing back and leaving her free.
The voice of the Ildatch was suddenly frantic.
—No! You must not release me! You must hold me close. You are the dark child—
Ah, but she was not! She felt it now, sensed it through the fabric of the lies that she had been persuaded to accept. She was not the dark child!
Jair’s face lifted before her as if from out of a deep fog. His familiar features blurred and then sharpened, and he was speaking softly to her.
“I love you, Brin. I love you.”
“Jair,” she whispered in reply.
“Do what you were sent here to do, Brin—what Allanon said you must. Do it quickly.”
One final time she brought the Ildatch high above her head. She was not the dark child nor was the book the servant that it had claimed to be. It had said that she would be master of its power, but it had lied. No living thing became master of the dark magic—only its slave. There could be no joining of flesh and blood to the magic, however well intentioned. In the end, any use of it must destroy the user. She saw it clearly now and felt a sudden panic spring from the book. It was alive and it could feel; let it, then! It would have subverted her; it would have drained her life from her as it had drained the lives of so many and turned her into a thing as dark and twisted as the walkers, the Skull Bearers before them, or the Warlock Lord himself. It would have set her loose upon the Four Lands and all who lived within them, to bring the darkness again…
With a heave, she threw the book from her. It struck the stone flooring of the tower with stunning force. The bindings shattered, breaking apart. Pages ripped and scattered.
Then Brin Ohmsford used the wishsong. It sounded hard and quick as it caught up the remnants of the book in its power and turned the Ildatch to impotent dust.
At the edge of the Croagh, on the cliffs below Graymark, Rone felt the clawed fingers of the Mord Wraiths release their grip as if stung by a fire they could not master. The cloaked forms drew back, writhing and twisting against the gray light of the slowly darkening sky. Their voices sounded as one in the sudden silence, a shriek of anguish and terror. All along the length of the Croagh leading down to the ledge where Rone had struggled to hold them, the Wraiths convulsed like shaken rag dolls.
“Rone!” Kimber screamed, pulling him clear of where the foremost of the black things stumbled blindly about.
Flames burst from out of Wraiths’ fingers and exploded from their cowled faces. Then, one after another, they disintegrated, falling apart like shattered earthen statues, crumbling and drifting to the stone of the ledge. In seconds, the Mord Wraiths were no more.
“Rone, what happened to them?” the girl whispered harshly, her stunned voice drifting in the stillness.
The highlander’s hands still clasped the pommel of the Sword of Leah as he came back to his feet, his head shaking slowly. Smoke and debris drifted in the air across the mountain face, swirling hazily about them. The battered form of Whisper appeared like a ghost out of its curtain.
“Brin,” Rone murmured softly in answer to Kimber’s question. He shook his head in disbelief. “It was Brin.”
And then he felt the first of the earth tremors ripple through the mountainside from the Maelmord.
Exhausted, Brin Ohmsford stared at the blackened stone of the tower floor where the remains of the Ildatch settled in a fine dust.
“Here is your dark child,” she whispered bitterly, tears streaking her face.
A deep shudder wracked the tower, rolling out of the earth and spreading through the aged walls. Stone and timber began to sag and crack, crumbling with the vibrations that wrenched at it. Brin’s head jerked up, her eyes blinking against the shower of silt and dust that rained down into her face.
“Jair …?” she tried to call to him.
But her brother was slipping from her, flesh and blood dissolving back into the hazy air, an apparition once more. A look of disbelief reflected in the Valeman’s face, and it seemed as if he were trying to tell her something. His shadowy form lingered a moment longer in the half-light of the tower’s gloom, and then he was gone.
Stricken, Brin stared after him. Great chunks of the tower’s stone began to fall about her, and she knew she could not stay. The dark magic of the Ildatch had come to an end, and everything it had made was dying.
“But I am going to live!” she whispered fiercely.
Gathering her cloak about her, she turned and ran from the empty room.
46
The silver light flared above the waters gathered in the basin of Heaven’s Well and an apprehensive Slanter stumbled back away once more. There was an explosion of shimmering brilliance, a radiance as intense and blinding as the cresting of the sun at dawn, reaching out through the fading of the night. It streaked through the cavern’s dark shadows, burst into shards of white fire, and was gone.
Wincing, Slanter looked back again at the stone basin. Standing worn and battered at its edge was Jair Ohmsford.
“Boy!” the Gnome cried, a mix of concern and relief in his voice as he rushed to meet the Valeman.
Jair slumped forward in exhaustion, and the other caught him about the waist. “I couldn’t bring her out, Slanter,” he whispered. “I tried, but the magic wasn’t strong enough. I had to leave her.”
“Here, here—just take a moment to catch your breath,” Slanter growled as the Valeman stumbled over his words. “Sit here by the basin.”
He eased Jair down against the stone wall, then knelt next to him. The Valeman’s eyes lifted. “I went down into the Maelmord, Slanter—or at least a part of me did. I used the third magic—the one that the King of the Silver River gave to me to help Brin. It took me into the light and then out of myself—as if there were two of me. I went down into the pit where the vision crystal had shown me Brin. She was there, in a tower, and she had the Ildatch. But it had changed her, Slanter. She had become something … terrible …”
“Easy, boy. Slow down, now.” The Gnome held his gaze. “Did you find a way to help her?”
Jair nodded, swallowing. “She was changed, but I knew that if I could just reach her, if I could touch her and she could touch me—then she would be all right. I used the wishsong to show her who she was, what she meant to me … to let her know that I loved her!” He was fighting back the tears. “And she destroyed the Ildatch—she turned it to dust! But when she did, the tower began to crumble, and something happened to the magic. I couldn’t stay with her. I couldn’t bring her back with me. I tried, but it happened so quickly. I couldn’t even manage to tell her what was happening! She just … disappeared, and I was back here again …”
He dropped his head between his knees, choking. Slanter gripped his shoulders with rough, gnarled hands and squeezed.
“You did the best you could for her, boy. You did everything you could. You can’t blame yourself for not being able to do more.” He shook his wizened face. “Shades, I don’t know how it is that you’re still alive! I thought you lost in the magic! I didn’t think I’d ever see you again!”
Then he hugged Jair impulsively to him and whispered. “You got more sand than I do, boy—a whole lot more!”
He pulled away then, embarrassed by his action, muttering something about no one really knowing what they were doing in all this confusion. He was about to say something more when the tremors began—a series of deep, heavy rumblings that shook the mountain to its core.
“What’s happening now?” he exclaimed, glancing back across his shoulder into the shadows that shrouded the passageway that had broug
ht them in.
“It’s the Maelmord,” Jair replied at once, pushing himself hurriedly back to his feet. The wound in his shoulder throbbed and ached as he straightened against the basin wall, and he clutched at the Gnome for support. “Slanter, we have to go back for Brin. She’s alone down there. We have to help her.”
The Gnome gave him a quick, fierce smile in reply. “Of course, we do, boy. You and me. We’ll get her out. We’ll go down into that black pit and we’ll find her! Now here, put your arm about my shoulders and hold on.”
With Jair clinging tightly to him, the Gnome began to retrace their steps back through the cavern toward the stairway that had brought them in. Dusk had settled down across the land, and the sun had slipped behind the rim of the mountains. Small slivers of the dying light fell through crevices in the rock to mingle with the twilight shadows as the two companions stumbled resolutely ahead. The tremors continued, slow and steady, a grim reminder that time was slipping from them. Chunks of rock and dirt showered down about them, forming a haze that hung like mist in the still evening air. There was a low rumbling in the distance like the thunder of an approaching storm.
Then they were clear of the cavern once more, passing from its darkened mouth onto the ledge that ran down to the Croagh. In the east, the moon and a scattering of stars were already visible in the velvet sky. Shadows lay in dappled patterns across the ledge face, closing about the last patches of fading light like inkstains spreading on new paper.
In the midst of the shadows and the half-light lay Garet Jax.
Stunned, Jair and Slanter came forward. The Weapons Master lay back against a gathering of rocks, his black-clad form torn and bloodied, the slender sword still gripped in one hand. His eyes were closed, as if he slept. Hesitating, Slanter knelt beside him.
“Is he dead?” Jair whispered, barely able to make himself speak the words.
The Gnome bent close for a moment, then drew back again. Slowly, he nodded. “Yes, boy—he’s dead. He finally found something that could kill him—something that was as good as he was.” There was grudging disbelief in his voice. “He looked hard enough and long enough to find it, didn’t he?”
Jair did not answer. He was thinking of the times the Weapons Master had saved his life, rescuing him when no one else could. Garet Jax, his protector.
He would have cried if he had been able, but there were no tears left to shed.
Slanter came to his feet and stood looking down at the still form. “Always wondered what it would be that would finally kill him,” the Gnome muttered. “Had to be something made of the dark magic, I guess. Couldn’t be anything made of this world. Not with him.”
He turned and glanced about apprehensively. “Wonder what’s become of the red thing?”
Tremors shook the mountain, and the rumbling rolled out of the valley. Jair barely heard it. “He destroyed it, Slanter. Garet Jax destroyed it. And when the Ildatch was shattered, the dark magic took it back.”
“Could have happened that way, I guess.”
“It did happen that way. This was the battle he had been seeking the whole of his life. It meant everything to him. He wouldn’t have lost it.”
The Gnome glanced over at him sharply. “You don’t know that for sure, boy. You don’t know that he was a match for that thing.”
Jair looked at him then and nodded. “Yes, I do, Slanter. I do. He was a match for anything. He was the best.”
There was a long moment of silence between them. Then the Gnome nodded, too. “Yes, I guess he was.”
Again the tremors shook the mountain, reverberating out of the deep rock. Slanter caught hold of Jair’s arm and gently turned him away. “We can’t stay, boy. We have to find your sister right away.”
Jair glanced back at the still form of the Weapons Master one final time and then forced his eyes away. “Good-bye, Garet Jax,” he whispered.
Together, Gnome and Valeman hastened to the stairway of the Croagh and started down.
Brin ran through the dim and misted tangle of the Maelmord, free at last of the tower of the Ildatch. Deep tremors wracked the valley floor, shudders that rippled to the peaks of the mountains all about. The dark magic was gone from the land, and with its passing the Maelmord could not survive. The rise and fall of its breathing and the hiss that had whispered of its unnatural life were stilled.
Where am I? Brin wondered frantically, her eyes casting through the gathering shadows. What has become of the Croagh?
She knew that she was hopelessly lost. She had been from the moment that she had fled the tower. Nightfall lay over the whole of the valley, and she was deep within a graveyard where all signs appeared as one and no path showed itself. Through the webbing of limbs and vines overhead, she could see the rim of the mountains that ringed the valley pit, but the stem of the Croagh lay wrapped in darkness against their backdrop. The Maelmord had become an impossible maze, and she was caught within it.
She was exhausted, her strength drained by prolonged use of the wishsong and by her long journey down into the pit. She was lost, and the magic no longer gave her sight. And all about her, the tremors continued to shake the valley floor, forewarning of the destruction of the Maelmord and everything caught within it. Only her spirit remained strong, and it was her spirit that kept her moving now in search of an escape.
The ground sank sharply beneath her feet, giving way with a suddenness that was frightening. Brin stumbled and nearly went down. The Maelmord was breaking up. It was crumbling beneath her, and she knew now that she would be carried with it.
She slowed to a weary halt, gasping for breath. It was pointless to go on. She was running to no purpose, blind and directionless. Even the vaunted magic of the wishsong, should she choose to use it, could not save her now. Why had Jair abandoned her? Why had he gone? Despair washed through her at the terrible sense of betrayal—despair and unreasoning anger. But she fought back against those feelings, knowing that they were senseless and unfair. Jair would not have left her unless he had been given no choice. Whatever had brought him to her had simply taken him back again.
Or perhaps what she had thought was Jair was not and what she had seen and felt had not even been real. Perhaps it had all been something that in her madness she had dreamed…
“Jair!” she screamed.
The echo of her voice broke against the rumblings of the earth and then was gone. The ground sank further beneath her.
Resolutely, stubbornly, she turned and went on. She no longer ran, too wearied to run further. Her dusky face hardened with determination, and she brushed everything from her mind but the need to put one foot before the other. She would not give up. She would go on. When she could no longer walk upright, she would crawl. But she would go on.
Then suddenly a shadow bounded from the tangled dark, huge, lean, and ghostly. It came toward her and she cried out in fright. A massive whiskered face rubbed against her body, and luminous blue eyes blinked in greeting. It was Whisper! She fell against the moor cat in grateful disbelief, crying openly, wrapping her arms about the shaggy neck. Whisper had come for her!
The moor cat turned and started away at once, drawing her with him. She fastened one hand in the ruff of his neck and stumbled after. They slipped through the maze of the dying jungle. All about them, the rumblings grew and tremors shook the earth. Rotted limbs began to crash down about them. Steam smelling rank and fetid geysered from cracks that split the hardened earth. Boulders and slides broke away from the cliffs that walled the valley close and came tumbling through the dark.
Yet somehow they reached the Croagh, its coiled length materializing abruptly out of the gloom, rising from the valley floor into the night. The giant cat bounded onto the stairway with Brin a step behind. The Valegirl scrambled upward, groping her way uncertainly as the rumblings intensified. Massive tremors rocked the Croagh, one following close upon another. Brin was thrown to her knees. Beneath her, the stone began to crack and split. Whole sections of the stairway were breaking off
and tumbling downward into the pit. Not yet! she screamed soundlessly. Not until I am free! Whisper’s deep roar lifted above the rumblings, and she struggled after the big cat. Below them, giant trees snapped apart like deadwood. The last of the failing twilight died as the sun slipped beneath the horizon and the whole of the land was wrapped in shadow.
And then the cliff ledge was before her again, and she stumbled onto it, crying out to the shadowy forms that closed about her. Arms reached for her, pulling her clear of the crumbling stairs, drawing her back from the precipice. Kimber was hugging and kissing her, her pixie face beaming with happiness and her eyes filled with tears. Cogline was muttering and grumbling, dabbing at her cheeks with a soiled cloth. And Rone was there, his lean, sun-browned face haggard and bruised, but his gray eyes were fierce with love. Whispering her name, he wrapped his arms about her and held her against him. It was then, finally, that she knew that she was safe.
Only moments later, Jair and Slanter came upon them, descending the Croagh from Heaven’s Well in their desperate search for Brin. There were astonished looks and exclamations of relief. Then Brin and Jair were clasping each other close once more.
