Jair slipped away again, cloaked in a whisper of invisibility. He was beginning to despair. Would nothing help Brin? Would nothing bring her back? What was he to do? Frantically, he tried to recall the words spoken to him by the old man: Throw the vision crystal after, and the answer will be shown you. But what answer had he seen? He had tried everything he could think to try. He had used the wishsong to create every illusion he knew how to create. What was left?
He stopped himself. Illusion!
Not illusion—but reality!
And suddenly he had his answer.
Red fire exploded all about Rone, deflecting from the blade of his sword as he stood against the Mord Wraiths’ frightening assault. The walkers crouched on the stone stairway of the Croagh, a line of dark forms winding down out of the cliffs and fortress above, shrouded in smoke and mist against the gray backdrop of the dying afternoon sky. Half a dozen arms lifted and the flames hammered at the highlander, staggering him with their force. Kimber crouched behind him, shielding her face and eyes from the heat and flying rock. Whisper screamed in hatred from beneath the shadow of the stairs, lunging at the black figures as they sought to break past.
“Cogline!” Rone bellowed in desperation, fire and smoke swirling all about him as he sought the old man.
Slowly the Mord Wraiths worked their way closer. There were too many; the power of the dark magic was too great. He could not stand against them all.
“Cogline! For cat’s sake!”
A cloaked form broke toward him from the shadows above, fire spewing from both hands. Rone swung the blade about frantically, catching the arc of flame and deflecting it. But the walker was almost on top of him, the sound of its voice a sudden hiss that rose above the explosion. Then Whisper hurtled from his shelter, caught the black thing and bore it away. Moor cat and Wraith tumbled into a fountain of flame and smoke and vanished from view.
“Cogline!” Rone screamed one final time.
Abruptly the old man appeared, crooked and bent, shambling out of the billowing smoke with his white hair flying. “Stand, outlander! I’ll show the black ones fire that will truly burn!”
Howling as if gone mad, he flung a handful of crystals into the midst of the Mord Wraiths. They glittered like pieces of obsidian as they tumbled down among the dark forms and were caught in the streaks of red fire. Instantly they exploded, and white-hot flames flared skyward in a burst of blinding light. Thunder rocked the mountainside, and whole sections of the Croagh flew apart, carrying the dark forms of the Mord Wraiths with them.
“Burn, you black things!” Cogline shrilled with glee.
But the walkers were not so easily dispatched. Dark shadows, they swept back through the haze of debris and smoke, and the red fire erupted from their fingers. Cogline screamed as the fire reached him and disappeared. Flames encircled Rone and the girl he sheltered, and the walkers came for them in a rush. Sounding the battle cry of his ancestors, the highlander swung the ebony blade into their midst. Two shattered instantly, turned to ash, but the others came on. Clawed fingers closed about the sword and bore him back.
Then they were all about him.
Worn by the strain that the magic’s flow caused within her body and confused by the conflicting emotions that wracked her, Brin stood before the altar on the dais that housed the Ildatch, the book clasped tightly to her. The light failed within the tower room, and the air hung thick with dust and silt. The thing was still out there, the thing that taunted her so, the thing that had taken the form of her brother Jair. Though she sought to find it and destroy it, she could not seem to do so. The magics within her were somehow incomplete—as if for some reason they would not blend. They were one, she knew—the book and she. They were joined. The voice still whispered to her that it was so—whispered of the power that belonged to them both. Why was it so difficult then for her to bring that power to bear?
—You fight it, dark child. You resist it. Give yourself over—
Then the air exploded about her, the magic of the one she hunted bursting through dust and half-light, and dozens of images of her brother filled the chamber. All about her the images appeared, slipping through the haze toward the dais, calling out her name. She staggered away, stunned. Jair! Are you truly here? Jair . . . ?
—They are evil, dark child. Destroy them. Destroy—
Obedient to the voice of the Ildatch, though she recognized still from somewhere deep within that it was wrong, she lashed out with her magic, the sound of the wishsong filling the cavernous room. One by one, the images disintegrated before her eyes, and it was as if she were killing Jair over and over again, destroying him anew with each image shattered. But still the images came, those that remained closing the gap between them, reaching for her, touching . . .
Then she screamed. There were arms about her, arms of flesh and blood, warm and alive, and Jair was before her, holding her close. He was real, not imagined, but a living being, and he spoke to her through the wishsong. Images filled her mind, images of who they had been and who they were, of childhood and beyond—all that had been in their lives and all that now was. Shady Vale was there, the clustered buildings of the community in which she had grown, the clapboard dwellings mingled with stone cottages and thatched-roof huts, and the people settled back at day’s close for an evening meal and the small pleasures that come with a joining together of family and friends. The inn was filled with laughter and small talk, bright with candle and oil light. Her home showed, its walks and hedges folded in shadow, the aged trees colored by autumn’s touch and ablaze with fading streaks of sunlight. Her father’s strong face was smiling in reassurance, her mother’s dark hand reaching to stroke her cheek. Rone Leah was there, and her friends, and . . . One by one the supports that had been stripped from her and so ruthlessly crushed were put back again. The images flooded through her, clear, sweet, and strangely cleansing, filled with love and reassurance. Weeping, Brin collapsed into her brother’s embrace.
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.
XLVI
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 brought 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.”