“Kodens are a kind of bear,” Dees was saying. “Big fellows, live up in the cold regions north of the mountains, keep pretty much to themselves. Very unpredictable under any conditions. But this one?” He made his nod an enigmatic gesture. “He’s a monster.”
“Huge?” Morgan asked.
“A monster,” Dees emphasized. “Not just in size, Highlander. This thing isn’t a Koden anymore. You can recognize it for what it’s supposed to be, but just barely. Belk did something to it. Blinded it, for one thing. It can’t see. But its ears are so sharp it can hear a pin drop.”
“So it knows we are here,” Walker mused, edging past Dees for a closer look at the Hollow. His eyes were dark and introspective.
“Has for quite a while, I’d guess. It’s down there waiting for us to try to get past.”
“If it’s still there at all,” Pe Ell said. “It’s been a long time since you were here, old man. By now it might be dead and gone.”
Dees looked at him mildly. “Why don’t you go on down there and take a look?”
Pe Ell gave him that lopsided, chilling smile.
The old Tracker turned away, his gaze shifting to the Hollow. “Ten years since I saw it and I still can’t forget it,” he whispered. He shook his grizzled head. “Something like that you don’t ever forget.”
“Maybe Pe Ell is right; maybe it is dead by now,” Morgan suggested hopefully. He glanced at Quickening and found her staring fixedly at Walker.
“Not this thing,” Dees insisted.
“Well, why can’t we see it if it’s all that big and ugly?” Carisman asked, peering cautiously over Morgan’s shoulder.
Dees chuckled. His eyes narrowed. “You can’t see it because it looks like everything else down there—like stone, all gray and hard, just another chunk of rock. Look for yourself. One of those mounds, one of those boulders, something that’s down there that doesn’t look like anything—that’s it. Just lying there, perfectly still. Waiting.”
“Waiting,” Carisman echoed.
He sang:
“Be still, tunesmith,” Pe Ell said, a warning edge to his voice. He scowled at Dees. “You got past this thing before, if we’re to believe what you tell us. How?”
Dees laughed aloud. “I was lucky, of course! I had twelve other men with me and we just walked right in, fools to the last. It couldn’t get us all, not once we started running. No, it had to settle for three. That was going in. Coming out, it only got one. Of course, there were just two of us left by then. I was the one it missed.”
Pe Ell stared at him expressionlessly. “Like you said, old man—lucky for you.”
Dees rose, as bearish as any Koden Morgan might have imagined, sullen and forbidding when he set his face as he did now. He faced Pe Ell as if he meant to have at him. Then he said, “There’s all sorts of luck. Some you’ve got and some you make. Some you carry with you and some you pick up along the way. You’re going to need all kinds of it getting in and out of Eldwist. The Koden, he’s a thing you wouldn’t want to dream about on your worst night. But let me tell you something. After you see what else is down there, what lies beyond Bone Hollow, you won’t have to worry about the Koden anymore. Because the dreams you’ll have on your worst nights after that will be concerned with other things!”
Pe Ell’s shrug was scornful and indifferent. “Dreams are for frightened old men, Horner Dees.”
Dees glared at him. “Brave words now.”
“I can see it,” Walker Boh said suddenly.
His voice was soft, almost a whisper, but it silenced the others instantly and brought them about to face him. The Dark Uncle was staring out across the broken desolation of the Hollow, seemingly unaware that he had spoken.
“The Koden?” Dees asked sharply. He came forward a step.
“Where?” Pe Ell asked.
Walker’s gesture was obscure. Morgan looked anyway and saw nothing. He glanced at the others. None of them appeared to be able to find it either. But Walker Boh was paying no attention to any of them. He seemed instead to be listening for something.
“If you really can see it, point it out to me,” Pe Ell said finally, his voice carefully neutral.
Walker did not respond. He continued to stare. “It feels...” he began and stopped.
“Walker?” Quickening whispered and touched his arm.
The pale countenance shifted away from the Hollow at last and the dark eyes found her own. “I must find it,” he said. He glanced at each of them in turn. “Wait here until I call for you.”
Morgan started to object, but there was something in the other man’s eyes that stopped him from doing so.
Instead, he watched silently with the others as the Dark Uncle walked alone into Bone Hollow.
The day was still, the air windless, and nothing moved in the ragged expanse of the Hollow save Walker Boh. He crossed the broken stone in silence, a ghost who made no sound and left no mark. There were times in the past few weeks when he had thought himself little more. He had almost died from the poison of the Asphinx and again from the attack of the Shadowen at Hearthstone. A part of him had surely died with the loss of his arm, another part with the failure of his magic to cure his sickness. A part of him had died with Cogline. He had been empty and lost on this journey, compelled to come by his rage at the Shadowen, his fear at being left alone, and his wish to discover the secrets of Uhl Belk and the Black Elfstone. Even Quickening, despite ministering to his needs, both physical and emotional, had not been strong enough to give him back to himself. He had been a hollow thing, bereft of any sense of who and what he was supposed to be, reduced to undertaking this quest in the faint hope that he would discover his purpose in the world.
And now, here within this vast, desolate stretch of land, where fears and doubts and weaknesses were felt most keenly, Walker Boh thought he had a chance to come alive again.
It was the presence of the Koden that triggered this hope. Until now the magic had been curiously silent within him, a worn and tired thing that had failed repeatedly and at last seemed to have given up. To be sure, it was there still to protect him when he was threatened, to frighten off the Urdas when they came too close, to deflect their hurled weapons. Yet this was a poor and sorry use when he remembered what it had once been able to do. What of the empathy it had given him with other living things? What of his sense of emotions and thoughts? What of the knowledge that had always just seemed to come to him? What of the glimpses of what was to be? All of these had deserted him, gone away as surely as his old world, his life with Cogline and Rumor at Hearthstone. Once he had wished it would be so, that the magic would disappear and he would be left in peace, a man like any other. But it had become increasingly clear to him on this journey, his sense of who and what he was heightened by the passing of Cogline and his own physical and emotional devastation, that his wish had been foolish. He would never be like other men, and he would never be at peace without the magic. He could not change who and what he was; Cogline had known that and told him so. On this journey he had discovered it was true.
He needed the magic.
He required it.
Now he would test whether or not he could still call it his own. He had sensed the presence of the Koden before Pe Ell had. He had sensed what it was before Horner Dees had described it. Amid the strewn rock, hunched down and silent, it had reached out to him as creatures once had when he approached. He could feel the Koden call to him. Walker Boh was not certain of its purpose in doing so, yet knew he must respond. It was more than the creature’s need that he was answering; it was also his own.
He moved directly through the jumble of boulders and petrified wood to where the Koden waited. It had not moved, not even an inch, since the company had arrived. But Walker knew where it lay concealed nevertheless, for its presence had brought the magic awake again. It was an unexpected, exhilarating, and strangely comforting experience to have the power within him stir to life, to discover that it was not lost as he had believed, but merely misplaced.