Release me!
She could not stop it. The magic exploded out of her. Responding instinctively to her needs, it swept through the dark and the damp like a hammer, slamming into the Graumth, striking it with such force that the creature was lifted off its crooked legs and thrown back against the rock of the tunnel walls. The result was instantaneous and devastating. The Graumth didn’t merely collapse on impact, it shattered. Armor plates, legs, and body parts flew everywhere until all that remained were bits and pieces that twitched with slow jerking motions in the faint light of Weka Dart’s flickering torch.
Then the magic simply faded until no trace of it remained.
Drained of her strength and stunned by her body’s response to the magic’s implacable surge, Grianne Ohmsford sank to her knees. The wishsong had come out of her with more power than she had ever experienced. It was as if she had been storing it away for weeks on end, had accumulated and hoarded it, waiting for just that moment to set it free. The wishsong had been put to the test countless times over the years, but she had never seen it respond that way.
What had happened to make it do so?
Weka Dart was standing before her, wizened face bright with un restrained exultation and wild–eyed glee. Holding out the torch in a kind of salute, he bent his head in crude submission.
« Straken Queen,” he whispered, the awe in his voice unmistakable. «Yours is the greatest power. Yours is the supreme magic. I bow to you. I salute you. You have no equal.»
She closed her eyes against what she was feeling and made no response. She did not pretend to know if the extent of her power was as vast as it appeared. But she knew without question that it was strong enough to have revealed their presence to the Straken Lord, and that he would be there quickly enough to test it for himself.
Eleven
When the rune–carved length of the darkwand began to glow, Pen could sense a shift in place and time almost immediately. It was an odd feeling, a suggestion of movement that felt like a small tremor in the earth coupled with a subtle progression of light toward dark. He knew immediately that the magic was in play and the darkwand was responding to his silent plea for help. There was nothing earthshaking about it, nothing overtly dramatic or astounding, just a hint of things being altered.
He had time to glance once at Khyber, who faced the opening where the doors to the Ard Rhys’s sleeping chamber had stood before she collapsed them, her body rigid with concentration, her arms lifted and her fingers extended to meet whatever challenge might appear. He regretted abandoning her to so many enemies—hated himself for it, after everything she had done for him—but there was no time or way to act on it. She had accepted the consequences of her fate by agreeing to bring him there, knowing what must happen. What he could do best for her was what he could do best for them both: cross over into the Forbidding, find the Ard Rhys, and bring her back into the Four Lands.
It happened quickly after that. The runes caught fire beneath his fingers and the staff turned bright with their glow. Then the glow was all around him, enveloping him, shutting him away from his surroundings. The room and Khyber disappeared. He closed his eyes, hands tightening on the staff, praying that he would be strong enough to do what was needed.
A giant fist clutched his body, and all the air disappeared from his lungs. He gasped in response, trying to breathe, fighting to keep from choking.
Then he was standing in a twilit clearing of wintry grasses and barren earth surrounded by sparse woods and a deeply clouded sky. Paranor was gone. The world of the Four Lands was gone. Nothing he was looking at reminded him of home. Except, perhaps, for the bleaker places he had visited, like the Slags or the Klu. He stared blankly for a moment, making the comparisons, measuring the differences in his head, looking slowly about as he did so.
What struck him first was how dark things were. It didn’t seem to be nightfall, but the sun was nowhere to be seen, the brightness of the overcast sky like a pale reflection off clouded waters. The trees and grasses were washed of color, their greens muted and dulled. He peered into the distance. There wasn’t much to see, the woods fading into shifting walls of mist, the sky and earth coming together miles away in a grayish haze, the mountains stark and barren, the woods skeletal and empty looking. He could not imagine what lived there. He had the feeling that whatever did spent most of the time hunkered down and watchful.
He had a feeling that here you were either pursuer or pursued, hunter or prey.
I hate this world already,he thought.
He was grasping the darkwand so tightly that his hands hurt. He loosened his grip on the staff and forced himself to take a few deep breaths to stay calm. He had made the crossing; the magic of the staff had done its job, bringing him out of the Four Lands and into the Forbidding. He could scarcely believe it, and in truth he might not have if everything did not look and feel exactly right for what the Forbidding should be. Despite the oppressiveness of his surroundings, he felt an odd sense of relief, as if the hardest part of the task given him by the King of the Silver River were finished. But he knew that wasn’t so, that the hardest part lay ahead. He had accomplished much since he had left Patch Run. He had crossed half the Four Lands to find the darkwand and bring it back to Paranor. He had endured hardships and privations of a sort few survived. He had escaped his enemies time and again.
But just staying alive in this dark place would take all the strength he had and then some.
He finished scanning his surroundings, found nothing useful, stood for a moment longer, and then sat down to gather his thoughts. He wondered briefly about his parents. There was no way for them to know what had happened to him unless Khyber managed to reach them. At least they were free of Paranor and the Druids. They would not be tricked again by Shadea a’Ru and her minions. He was still bothered by the fact that the King of the Silver River had failed to warn them, as he had promised he would. Unless they had ignored that warning, of course, and had determined to help him no matter what the risk. His mother would think like that. His mother would brave anything for him.
As would any of his friends and companions on this journey, he thought. As all of them had. He found himself missing them desperately—steady Tagwen, brave Kermadec, resourceful Khyber, and even the truculent Atalan. But most of all he missed Cinnaminson. Just thinking of her made him ache in a way nothing else ever had. He tried to picture her as he remembered her best—free and alive, smiling at him on the decks of theSkatelow, reaching out to take his hand. He tried not to think of where she was and what had become of her. But he couldn’t quite manage it.
He compressed his lips in a tight line and forced himself to think instead of other things. He was alone for the moment, at least until he found his aunt, and there was nothing he could do to change that. He hoped the others were all right, that they had found ways to escape their predicaments, but wondering if they had was just another dead end in his thinking.
What he must think about was finding his aunt, the Ard Rhys, and bringing her home safe.
He started as sudden heat flooded through his palms. The runes of the darkwand were glowing, turning the staff warm. He got to his feet quickly and looked around, wondering if the staff were warning him of hidden danger. But he sensed nothing. He stared down at the staff once more, but the runes had dimmed and the wood gone cool.