She moved in front of him, her face lifting. “I can tell you that it will happen. My father has said it will be so.”
“With my magic and Walker’s and Pe Ell’s. I know. Well, then, what of Pe Ell? Isn’t he supposed to go with us? Don’t we need him if we are to succeed?”
She hesitated before giving her answer. “No. Pe Ell’s magic will be needed later.”
“Later. And your own?”
“I have no magic until you recover the Elfstone.”
“So it is left to Walker and me.”
“Yes.”
“Somehow.”
“Yes.”
Walker Boh stepped forward impatiently, his pale face hard. “Enough, Highlander. You make it sound as if this were some mystical process that required divine intervention or the wisdom of the dead. There is nothing difficult about what we are being asked to do. The Stone King holds the Black Elfstone; he must be made to give it up. We must sneak through the floor of the dome and surprise him. We must find a way to shock him, to stun him, to do something that will make him release his grip on the Stone, then snatch it from him. We don’t have to stand against him in battle; we don’t have to slay him. This isn’t a contest of strength; it is a contest of will. And cleverness. We must be more clever than he.”
The Dark Uncle’s eyes burned. “We have not come all this way, Morgan Leah, just to turn around and go back again. We knew there were no answers to be given to our questions, that we would have to find a way to do everything that was required. We have done so. We need to do so only one time more. If we don’t, the Elfstone is lost to us. That means that the Four Lands are lost as well. The Shadowen have won. Cogline and Rumor died for nothing. Your friend Steff died for nothing. Is that what you wish? Is that your intent? Is it, Morgan Leah?”
Morgan pushed past Quickening and seized the front of the other’s cloak. Walker seized his in turn. For an instant they braced each other without speaking, Morgan’s face contorted with rage, Walker’s smooth and intense.
“I am frightened, too, Highlander,” Walker Boh said softly. “I have fears that go far beyond what we are being asked to do here. I have been charged by the shade of Allanon with using the Black Elfstone to bring back Paranor and the Druids. If using the Elfstone on the Maw Grint turned Uhl Belk to stone, what will using it on disappeared Paranor do to me?”
There was a long, empty silence in which the question hung skeletal and forbidding against the dark of the room. Then Walker whispered, “It doesn’t matter, you see. I have to find out.”
Morgan let the other’s cloak slip from his fingers. He took a slow step back. “Why are we doing this?” he whispered in reply. “Why?”
Walker Boh almost smiled. “You know why, Morgan Leah. Because there is no one else.”
Morgan laughed in spite of himself. “Brave soldiers? Or fools?”
“Maybe both. And maybe we are just stubborn.”
“That sounds right.” Morgan sighed wearily, pushing back the oppressiveness of the dark and damp, fighting through his sense of futility. “I just think there should be more answers than there are.”
Walker nodded. “There should. Instead, there are only reasons and they will have to suffice.”
Morgan’s mind spun with memories of the past, of his friends missing and dead, of his struggle to stay alive, and of the myriad quests that had taken him from his home in the Highlands and brought him at last to this farthest corner of the world. So much had happened, most of it beyond his control. He felt small and helpless in the face of those events, a tiny bit of refuse afloat in the ocean, carried on tides and by whim. He was sick and worn; he wanted some form of resolution. Perhaps only death was resolution enough.
“Let me speak with him,” he heard Quickening say.
Alone, they knelt at the center of the room in shadow, facing each other, their faces so close that Morgan could see his reflection in her dark eyes. Walker had disappeared. Quickening’s hands reached out to him, and he let her fingers come to rest on his face, tracing the line of his bones.
“I am in love with you, Morgan Leah,” she whispered. “I want you to know that. It sounds strange to me to say such a thing. I never thought I would be able to do so. I have fears of my own, different from yours and Walker Boh’s. I am afraid of being too much alive.”
She bent forward and kissed him. “Do you understand what I mean when I say that? An elemental gains life not out of the love of a man and a woman for each other but out of magic’s need. I was created to serve a purpose, my father’s purpose, and I was told to be wary of things that would distract me. What could distract me more, Morgan Leah, than the love I have for you? I cannot explain that love. I do not understand it. It comes from the part of me that is human and surfaces despite my efforts to deny it. What am I to do with this love? I tell myself I must disdain it. It is... dangerous. But I cannot give it up because the feeling of it gives me life. I become more than a thing of earth and water, more than a bit of clay made whole. I become real.”
He kissed her back, hard and determined, frightened by what she was telling him, by the sound of the words, by the implications they carried. He did not want to hear more.
She broke away. “You must listen to me, Morgan. I had thought to keep to my father’s path and not to stray. His advice seemed sound. But I find now that I cannot heed it. I must love you. It does not matter what is meant for either of us; we are not alive if we do not respond to our feelings. So it is that I will love you in every way that I am able; I will not be frightened any longer by what that means.”
“Quickening...”
“But,” she said hurriedly, “the path remains clear before us nevertheless and we must follow it, you and I. We have been shown where it leads, and we must continue to its end. The Stone King must be overcome. The Black Elfstone must be recovered. You and I and Walker Boh must see that these things are done. We must, Morgan. We must.”
He was nodding as she spoke, helpless in the face of her persistence, his love for her so strong that he would have done anything she asked despite the gravest reservations. The tears started in her eyes, but he forced them back, burying his face in her shoulder, hugging her close. He combed her silver hair with his fingers; he stroked the curve of her back. He felt her slim arms go around him, and her body tremble.
“I know,” he answered softly.
He thought then of Steff, dying at the hands of the girl he had loved, thinking her something she was not. Would it be so with him? he wondered suddenly. He thought, too, of the promise he had once made his friend, a promise they had all made, Par and Coll and he, that if any of them found a magic that would help free the Dwarves, they would do what they could to recover it and see that it was used. Surely the Black Elfstone was such a magic.
He felt a calm settle through him, dissipating the anger and foreboding, the doubt and uncertainty. The path was indeed laid out for him, and he had never had any choice but to follow it.
“We’ll find a way,” he whispered to her and felt her own tears dampen his cheek.
Standing in the blackness of the room beyond, Walker Boh looked back at the lovers as they embraced and felt the warmth of their closeness reach out to him like a lost child’s tiny hands. He turned away. There could be no such love for him. He felt an instant’s remorse and brushed it hastily aside. His future was a shining bit of certainty in the darkness of his present. Sometimes his prescience revealed a cutting edge.
He moved soundlessly through the building until he reached an open window high above the street and looked down into the roil of mist and gloom. The world of Eldwist was a maze of stone obstructions and corridors that glared back at him through a hard, wet sheen. It was harsh and certain and pointless and it reminded him of the direction of his life.