Morgan Leah was tired of being called a fool and was about to say so when Walker Boh caught him firmly by the arm and shook his head. Morgan frowned angrily, but gave way.
“What do you know of the country north, Carisman?” Horner Dees asked suddenly, his bulk backing the tunesmith away. “Ever been there?”
Carisman shook his head. “No. It doesn’t matter what’s there. It is away from here.” His eyes darted furtively. “Besides, you have to take me. You can’t get away if I don’t show you how.”
That stopped them. Everyone turned. “What do you mean?” Dees asked cautiously.
“I mean that you will be dead a dozen times over without my help,” the tunesmith said.
He sang:
“Sticks and stones will break your bones,
But only if the spears don’t.
There’s traps and snares placed everywhere,
And none to warn if I don’t.
Fiddle-de-diddle-de-de.”
Pe Ell had him by the throat so quickly that no one else had time to intervene. “You’ll tell everything you know before I’m done with you or wish you had!” he threatened furiously.
But Carisman held steady, even forced back as he was, the hard eyes inches from his own. “Never,” he gasped. “Unless…you agree…to take me with you.”
His face lost all its color as Pe Ell’s hand tightened. Morgan and Horner Dees glanced uncertainly at each other and then at Quickening, hesitating in spite of themselves. It was Walker Boh who stepped in. He moved behind Pe Ell and touched him in a manner they could not see. The gaunt man jerked back, his face rigid with surprise. Walker was quickly by him, his arm coming about Carisman and lifting him away.
Pe Ell whirled, cold rage in his eyes. Morgan was certain he was going to attack Walker, and nothing good could come of that. But Pe Ell surprised him. Instead of striking out, he simply stared at Walker a moment and then turned away, his face suddenly an expressionless mask.
Quickening spoke, diverting them. “Carisman,” she said.
“Do you know a way out of here?”
Carisman nodded, swallowing to speak. “Yes, Lady.”
“Will you show it to us?”
“If you agree to take me with you, yes.” He was bargaining now, but he seemed confident.
“Perhaps it would be enough if we helped you escape the village?”
“No, Lady. I would lose my way and they would bring me back again. I must go to wherever it is that you are going—far away from here. Perhaps,” he said brightly, “I may turn out to be of some use to you.”
When pigs fly, Morgan thought uncharitably.
Quickening seemed undecided, strange for her. She looked questioningly at Horner Dees.
“He’s right about the Urdas bringing him back,” the old Tracker agreed. “Us, too, if we aren’t quick enough. Or smart enough.”
Morgan saw Pe Ell and Walker Boh glaring at each other from opposite corners of the hut—harsh, dark wraiths come from exacting worlds, their silent looks full of warning. Who would survive a confrontation between those two? And how could the company survive while they were at such odds?
Then suddenly an idea occurred to him. “Your magic, Quickening!” he burst out impulsively. “We can use your magic to escape! You can control all that grows within the earth. That is enough to make the Urdas give way. With or without Carisman, we have your magic!”
But Quickening shook her head and for an instant she seemed almost to dissolve. “No, Morgan. We have crossed the Charnals into the country of Uhl Belk, and I cannot use my magic again until after we find the talisman. The Stone King must not discover who I am. if I use the magic, he will know.”
The hut went silent again. “Who is the Stone King?” Carisman asked, and they all looked at him.
“I say we take him,” Horner Dees said finally, bluff and to the point as always. His bulky figure shifted. “If he really can get us out of here, that is.”
“Take him,” Morgan agreed. He grinned. “I like the idea of having a king on our side as well—even if all he can do is make up songs.”
Quickening glanced at the silent antagonists behind her. Pe Ell shrugged his indifference. Walker Boh said nothing.
“We will take you, Carisman,” Quickening said, “though I am afraid to guess what this choice might cost you.”
Carisman shook his head emphatically. “No price is too great, Lady, I promise you.” The tunesmith was elated.
Quickening moved toward the door. “The night flies. Let us hurry.”
Carisman held up his hand. “Not that way, Lady.”
She turned. “There is another?”
“Indeed.” He was beaming mischievously. “As it happens, I am standing on it.”
XV
The Spikes and the lands surrounding were filled with tribes of Urdas and other species of Gnomes and Trolls. Since they were all constantly at war with one another, they kept their villages fortified. A lot of hard lessons had been learned over the years, and one of them was that a stockade needed more than one way out. Carisman’s bunch had dug tunnels beneath the village that opened through hidden trapdoors into the forests beyond. If the village were threatened by a prolonged siege or by an army of overwhelming numbers, the inhabitants still had a means of escape.
One of the entrances to the tunnels that lay inside the village was under the floor of the hut in which the five from Rampling Steep had been placed. Carisman showed them where it lay, buried a good foot beneath the earthen floor, sealed so tightly by weather and time that it took Horner Dees and Morgan working together to pull it free. It had clearly never seen use and perhaps been all but forgotten. In any case, it was a way out and the company was quick to seize upon it.
“I would feel better about this if we had a light,” Dees muttered as he stood looking down into the blackness.
“Here,” Walker Boh whispered impatiently, moving forward to take his place. He slipped down into the blackness where the walls of the tunnel shielded his actions and made a snapping motion with his fingers. Light blazed up about his hand, an aura of brightness that had no visible source. The Dark Uncle has at least a little of his magic left, Morgan thought.
“Carisman, is there more than one passage down here?” Walker’s voice sounded hollow. The tunesmith nodded. “Then stay close to me and tell me how we are to go.”
They dropped into the hole one by one, Carisman following Walker, Quickening and Morgan after them, Dees and Pe Ell last. It was black in the tunnel, even with Walker’s light, and the air was close and full of earth smells. The tunnel ran in a straight line, then branched in three directions. Carisman took them right. It branched again, and this time he took them left. They had gone far enough, Morgan thought, that they must be beyond the stockade walls. Still the tunnel continued. Tree roots penetrated its walls, tangling their arms and feet, slowing their progress. At times the roots grew so thick that they had to be severed to permit passage. Even when the passageway was completely clear, it was hard for Horner Dees to fit through. He grunted and huffed and pushed ahead determinedly. Other tunnels intersected and passed on. Dirt and silt from their movements began to choke the air, and it grew hard to breathe. Morgan buried his face in his tunic sleeve and would not allow himself to think about what would happen if the tunnel walls collapsed.
After what seemed an impossibly long time they slowed and then stopped altogether. “Yes, this is it,” Morgan heard Carisman say to Walker. He listened as the two struggled to free the trapdoor that sealed them in. They labored in wordless silence, grunting, digging, and shifting about in the cramped space. Morgan and the others crouched down in the blackness and waited.
It took them almost as long to loosen the trapdoor as it had to navigate the tunnel. When it finally fell back, fresh air rushed in and the six scrambled up into the night. They found themselves in a heavily wooded glen, the limbs of the trees grown so thick overhead that the sky was masked almost completely.
They stoo
d wordlessly for a moment, breathing in the clean air, and then Dees pushed forward. “Which way to the Spikes?” he whispered anxiously to Carisman.
Carisman pointed and Dees started away, but Pe Ell reached out hurriedly and yanked him back. “Wait!” he warned. “There will be a watch!”
He gave the old Tracker a withering look, motioned them all down and melted into the trees. Morgan sank back against the trunk of a massive fir, and the others became vague shadows through the screen of its shaggy limbs. He closed his eyes wearily. It seemed days since he had rested properly. He thought about how good it would feel to sleep.
But a touch on his shoulder brought him awake again almost immediately. “Easy, Highlander,” Walker Boh whispered. The tall man slid down next to Morgan, dark eyes searching his own.” You tread on dangerous ground these days, Morgan Leah. You had better watch where you step.”
Morgan blinked. “What do you mean?”
Walker’s face inclined slightly, and Morgan could see the lines of tension and strain that creased it. “Pe Ell. Stay away from him. Don’t taunt him, don’t challenge him. Have as little to do with him as you can. If he chooses, he can strike you down faster than a snake in hiding.”
The words were spoken in a whisper that was harsh and chilling in its certainty, a brittle promise of death. Morgan swallowed what he was feeling and nodded. “Who is he, Walker? Do you know?”
The Dark Uncle glanced away and back again. “Sometimes I am able to sense things by touching. Sometimes I can learn another’s secrets by doing nothing more than brushing up against him. It happened that way when I took Carisman away from Pe Ell. He has killed. Many times. He has done so intentionally rather than in self-defense. He enjoys it. I expect he is an assassin.”
A pale hand reached up to hold a startled Morgan in place. “Listen, now. He conceals a weapon of immense power beneath his clothing. The weapon he carries is magic. It is what he uses to kill.”
“Magic?” Morgan’s voice quivered in surprise despite his effort to keep it steady. His mind raced. “Dees Quickening know?”
“She chose him, Highlander. She chose us all. She told us we possessed magic. She told us our magic was needed. Of course, she knows.”
Morgan was aghast. “She deliberately brought an assassin? Is this how she plans to regain the Black Elfstone?”
Walker stared fixedly at him. “I think not,” he said finally.
“But I can’t be sure.”
Morgan slumped back in disbelief. “Walker, what are we doing here? Why has she brought us?” Walker did not respond. “I don’t know for the life of me why I agreed to come. Or maybe I do. I am drawn to her, I admit; I am enchanted by her. But what sort of reason is that? I shouldn’t be here. I should be back in Tyrsis searching for Par and Coll.”
“We have had this discussion,” Walker reminded him gently.
“I know. But I keep questioning myself. Especially now. Pe Ell is an assassin; what do we have to do with such a man? Does Quickening think us all the same? Does she think we are all killers of other men? Is that the use to which we are to be put? I cannot believe it!”
“Morgan.” Walker spoke his name to calm him, then eased back against the tree until their heads were almost touching. Something in the way the Dark Uncle’s body was bent reminded Morgan for a moment of how broken he had been when they had found him amid the ruins of his cottage at Hearthstone. “There is more to this than what you know,” Walker whispered. “Or I, for that matter. I can sense things but not see them clearly. Quickening has a purpose beyond what she reveals. She is the daughter of the King of the Silver River—do not forget that. She has forbidden insight. She has magic that transcends any that we have ever seen. But she is vulnerable as well. She must walk a careful path in her quest. I think that we are here in part, at least, to see that she is able to keep to that path.”
Morgan thought it over a moment and nodded, listening to the stillness of the night about them, staring out through the boughs of the old fir at the shadowy figures beyond, picking out Quickening’s slim, ethereal form, a slender bit of movement that the night might swallow with no more than a slight shifting of the light.
Walker’s voice tightened. “I have been shown a vision of her—a vision as frightening as any I have ever experienced. The vision told me that she will die. I warned her of this before we left Hearthstone; I told her that perhaps I should not come. But she insisted. So I came.” He glanced over. “It is the same with all of us. We came because we knew we must. Don’t try to understand why that is, Morgan. Just accept it.”
Morgan sighed, lost in the tangle of his feelings and his needs, wishing for things that could never be, for a past that was lost and a future he could not determine. He thought of how far things had gone since the Ohmsfords had come to him in Leah, of how different they all now were.
Walker Boh rose, a rustle of movement in the silence. “Remember what I said, Highlander. Stay away from Pe Ell.”
He pushed through the curtain of branches without looking back. Morgan Leah stared after him.
Pe Ell was gone a long time. When he returned, he spoke only to Horner Dees. “It is safe now, old man,” he advised softly. “Lead on.”
They departed the glen wordlessly, following Carisman as he led them back toward the ridgeline, a silent procession of wraiths in the forest night. No one challenged them, and Morgan was certain that no one would. Pe Ell had seen to that.
It was still dark when they again caught sight of the Spikes. They climbed to the crest of the ridgeline and turned north. Dees moved them forward at a rapid pace, the pathway clear, the spine of the land bare and open to the light of moon and stars, empty save where the skeletal trees threw the spindly shadow of their trunks and branches crosswise against the earth like spiders’ webs. They followed the Spikes through the narrow end of the valley’s funnel and turned upward into the hills beyond. Daybreak was beginning to approach, a faint lightening of the skies east. Dees moved them faster still. No one had to bother asking why.
By the time the sun crested the mountains they were far enough into the hills that they could no longer see the valley at all. They found a stream of clear water and stopped to drink. Sweat ran down their faces and their breathing was labored.
“Look ahead,” Horner Dees said, pointing. A line of peaks jutted into the sky. “That’s the north edge of the Charnals, the last we have to cross. There’s a dozen passes that lead over and the Urdas can’t know which one we will take. It’s all rock up there, hard to track anything.”
“Hard for you, you mean,” Pe Ell suggested unkindly. “Not necessarily hard for them.”
“They won’t go out of their mountains.” Dees ignored him. “Once we’re across, we’ll be safe.”
They hauled themselves back to their feet and went on. The sun climbed into the cloudless sky, a brilliant bail of white fire that turned the earth beneath into a furnace. It was the hottest Morgan could remember it being since he had left Culhaven. The hills rose toward the mountains, and the trees began to give way to scrub and brush. Once Dees thought he saw something moving in the forestlands far behind them, and once they heard a wailing sound that Carisman claimed was Urda horns. But midday came and went, and there was no sign of pursuit.
Then clouds began to move in from the west, a large threatening bank of black thunderheads. Morgan slapped at the gnats that flew against his sweat-streaked face. There would be a storm soon
They stopped again as midafternoon approached, exhausted from their flight and hungry now as well. There was little to eat, just some roots and wild vegetables and fresh water. Horner Dees went off to scout ahead, and Pe Ell decided to backtrack to a bluff that would let him study the land behind. Walker sat by himself. Carisman began speaking with Quickening again about his music, insistent upon her undivided attention. Morgan studied the tunesmith’s handsome features, his shock of blond hair, and his uninhibited gestures and was annoyed. Rather than show what he was feeling, the Highlander
moved into the shade of a spindly pine and faced away.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the clouds pushed up against the mountains. The sky was a peculiar mix of sunshine and darkness. The heat was still oppressive, a suffocating blanket as it pressed down against the earth. Morgan buried his face in his hands and closed his eyes.
Both Homer Dees and Pe Ell were back quickly. The former advised that the passage that would take them across the last of the Charnals lay less than an hour ahead. The latter reported that the Urdas were after them in force.
“More than a hundred,” he announced, fixing them with those hard, unreadable eyes. “Right on our heels.”
They resumed their march at once, pressing ahead more quickly, a sense of urgency driving them now that had not been present before. No one had expected the Urdas to catch up with them this fast, certainly not before they were across the mountains. If they were forced to stand and fight here, they knew, they were finished.
They worked their way upward into the rocks, scrambling through huge fields of boulders and down narrow defiles, struggling to keep their footing on slides that threatened to send them careening away into jagged, bottomless fissures. The clouds scraped over the mountain peaks and filled the skies from horizon to horizon. Heavy drops of rain began to fall, spattering against the earth and their heated skin. Darkness settled over everything, an ominous black that echoed with the sound of thunder as it rolled across the empty, barren rock. Dusk was approaching, and Morgan was certain they would be caught in the mountains at nightfall, a decidedly unpleasant prospect. His entire body ached, but he forced himself to keep going. He glanced ahead to Carisman and saw that the tunesmith was in worse shape, stumbling and falling regularly, gasping for breath. Fighting back against his own exhaustion, he caught up with the other man, put an arm about him, and helped him to go on.
They had just gained the head of the pass that Dees had been shepherding them toward when they caught sight of the Urdas. The rugged, shaggy creatures appeared out of the rocks behind them, still more than a mile off, but charging ahead as if maddened, screaming and crying out, shaking their weapons with an unmistakable promise of what they would do with those they were pursuing when they finally caught up with them. The company, after no more than a moment’s hesitation, fled into the pass.