It was while he was alone one day, just after the anniversary of the first year of his marvelous discovery, that he became lost. He was playing as he always played, oblivious of his progress, confident in his ability to find his way back because he had done so every time before, and all of a sudden he didn’t know where he was. The tunnel he followed did not appear familiar; the caves he encountered had a different, foreign look; the atmosphere became abruptly and chillingly unfriendly. It took him a while to accept that he was really lost and not simply confused, and then he simply stopped where he was and waited. He had no idea what it was that he was waiting for at first, but after a time it became clear. He was waiting to be swallowed. The caves had come alive, a sleeping beast that had finally roused itself long enough to put an end to the boy who thought to trifle with it. Morgan would remember how he felt at that moment for the rest of his life. He would remember his sense of despair as the caves transformed from inanimate rock into a living, breathing, seeing creature that wrapped all about him, snakelike, waiting to see which way he would try to run. Morgan did not run. He braced himself against the beast, against the way it hunched down about him. He drew the knife he carried and held it before him, determined to sell his life dearly. Slowly, without realizing what he was doing, he disappeared into the character he had played at being for so many hours. He became someone else. Somehow that saved him. The beast drew back. He walked ahead challengingly, and as he did so the strangeness slowly vanished. He began to recognize something of where he was, a bit of crystallization here, a tunnel’s mouth there, something else, something more, and all of a sudden he knew where he was again.
When he emerged from the caves it was night. He had been lost for several hours—yet it seemed only moments. He went home thinking that the caves had many disguises to put on, but that if you looked hard enough you could always recognize the face beneath.
He had been a boy then. Now he was a man and the beliefs of boyhood—had long since slipped away. He had seen too much of the real world. He knew too many hard truths.
Yet as he climbed the stairs that curled upward through the rock walls of the cavern beneath Eldwist he was struck by the similarity of what he felt now and what he had felt then, trapped both times in a stone maze from which escape was uncertain. There was that sense of life in the rock, Uhl Belk’s presence, stirring like a pulse in the silence. There was that sense of being spied upon, of a beast awakened and set at watch to see which way he would try to run. The weight of the beast pressed down upon him, a thing of such size that it could not be measured in comprehensible terms. A peninsula, a city and beyond, an entire world—Eldwist was all of these and Uhl Belk was Eldwist. Morgan Leah searched in vain for the disguise that had fooled him as a boy, for the face that he had once believed hidden beneath. If he did not find it, he feared, he would never get free.
They ascended in silence, those who had come from Rampling Steep, the only ones left who could face the Stone King. Morgan was so cold he was shivering, and the cold he felt derived from far more than the chill of the cavern air. He could feel the sweat bead along his back, and his mind raced with thoughts of what he would do when the stairs finally came to an end and they were inside the dome. Draw his sword, the one of ordinary metal, yet whole? Attack a thing that was nearly immortal with only that? Draw his shattered talisman, a stunted blade? Attack with what? What? What was it that he was expected to do?
He watched Quickening move ahead of him, small and delicate against Walker Boh’s silver light, a frail bit of flesh and blood that might in a single sweep of Uhl Belk’s stone hand scatter back into the elements that had formed it. Quickening gone—he tried to picture it. Fears assailed him anew, darts that pierced and burned. Why were they doing this? Why should they even try?
Walker slipped on the mist-dampened steps and grunted in pain as he struck his knee. They slowed while he righted himself, and Morgan waited for Uhl Belk to stir. Hunter and hunted—but which was which? He wished he had Steff to stand beside him. He wished for Par Ohmsford, for Padishar Creel. He wished for any and all of them, for even some tiny part of them to appear. But wishing was useless. None of them were there; none of them would come. He was alone.
With this girl he loved, who could not help.
And with Walker Boh.
An unexpected spark of hope flashed inside the Highlander. Walker Boh. He stared at the cloaked figure leading them, one-armed, escaped from the Hall of Kings, risen from the ashes of Hearthstone. A cat with many lives, he thought. The Dark Uncle of old, evolved perhaps from the invincible figure of the legends, but a miracle nevertheless, able to defy Druids, spirits, and the Shadowen and live on. Come here to Eldwist, to fulfill a destiny promised by the shade of Allanon or to die—that was what Walker Boh had elected to do. Walker, who had survived everything until now, Morgan reminded himself, was not a man who could be killed easily.
So perhaps it was not intended that the Dark Uncle be killed this time either. And perhaps—just perhaps—some of that immortality might rub off on him.
Ahead, Walker slowed. A flick of his fingers and the silver light vanished. They stood silently in the dark, waiting, listening. The blackness lost its impenetrability as their eyes adjusted, and their surroundings slowly took shape—stairs, ceiling, and walls, and beyond, an opening.
They had reached the summit of their climb.
Still Walker kept them where they were, motionless. When Morgan thought he could stand it no longer, they started ahead once more, slowly, cautiously, one step at a time, shadows against the gloom. The steps ended and a corridor began. They passed down its length, invisible and silent save for their thoughts which seemed to Morgan Leah to hang naked and screaming and bathed in light.
When the corridor ended they stopped again, still concealed within its protective shadow. Morgan stepped forward for an anxious look.
The Stone King’s dome opened before them, vast and hazy and as silent as a tomb. The stands that circled the arena stretched away in symmetrical, stair-step lines, a still life of shadows and a half-light that lifted to the ceiling, its highest levels little more than a vague suggestion against the aged stone. Below, the arena was flat and hard and empty of movement. The giant form of Uhl Belk crouched at its center, turned away so that only a shading of the rough-hewn face was visible.
Morgan Leah held his breath. The silence of the dome seemed to whisper the warnings that screamed inside his head.
Walker Boh moved back to stand beside him, and the pale, hollowed face bent close so that the other’s mouth was at his ear. “Circle left. I’ll go right. When I strike him, be ready. I shall try to cause him to drop the Stone. Seize hold of it if he does. Then run. Don’t look back. Don’t hesitate. Don’t stop for anything.” The other’s hand seized his wrist and held it. “Be swift, Highlander. Be quick.”
Morgan nodded voicelessly. For an instant Quickening’s black eyes met his own. He could not read what he saw there.
Then Walker was gone, slipping from the mouth of the corridor into the arena, moving to his right along the front wall of the stands into the gloom. Morgan followed, turning left. He pushed aside his dread and gave himself over to the Dark Uncle’s command. He passed across the stone like a wraith, quick and certain, finding a surprising reassurance simply from being in motion. But his fear persisted, a cornered beast within his skin. Shadows seemed to circle about him as he went, and the dome’s silence hissed at him in his mind, a voiceless snake. His eyes fixed on the bulky form at the arena’s center; he found himself searching for even the smallest movement. There was none. Uhl Belk was carved stone against the gray, still and fixed. Quick, now, thought Morgan as he went. Quick as light. He saw Walker at the far side of the arena, a lean and furtive figure, nearly invisible in the gloom. Another few moments, he thought. And then...