A huge, blocklike structure loomed before them, windows no more than tiny slits through the stones, doors ironbound and massive. They entered this building and silence closed about them.
“Prissonss, Elfling,” Jair heard the Mwellret whisper back at him.
They traversed a maze of dark and shadowed corridors, hallways filled with doors whose bolts and hinges showed rust and cobwebs undisturbed by the passage of time. Jair felt cold and empty as he watched row after row of these doors pass away. Their boots echoed dully in the silence, and only the distant sound of iron clanging and stone being chiseled came otherwise to his ears. Jair’s eyes scanned dismally the walls that rose about him. How will I ever get out of here? he wondered in the silence of his mind. How will I ever find my way?
Then a torch flared before them in the corridor, and a small cloaked form came into view. It was a Gnome, aged and ruined, yellow face ravaged by some nameless disease so loathsome that Jair pulled back against the leather ties that bound him. Stythys advanced to where the Gnome stood waiting, bent over the ugly little man, and made a few cryptic signs with his fingers. The Gnome replied in kind; with a brief motion of one crooked hand, he bade them follow.
They went deeper into the prisons, the light from the world without all but lost in the twist of stone and mortar. Only the torch showed them the Way, burning and smoking through the blackness.
They stopped at last before an ironbound door similar to the hundreds they had passed before it. Hands twisting roughly about the metal latch, the Gnome wrenched its bolt free. With a grating screech, he brought the heavy portal open. Stythys looked back at Jair, then pulled at the leash and brought him forward into the room beyond. It was a small, cramped cell, empty save for a pile of straw bundled in one corner and a wooden bucket next to the door. A single tiny slit cut into the far wall let though a sliver of gray light from without.
The Mwellret turned, cut free the bonds that tied fair’s hands and slipped loose the gag that bound his mouth. Roughly, he shoved the Valeman past him onto the bed of straw.
“Thiss iss yourss, Elfling,” he hissed. “Home for little peopless until you tell me of the magicss.” The crooked finger pointed back to the hunched form of the Gnome behind him. “Your jailer, Elfling. He iss mine; one who sstill obeyss. Mute he iss—doess not sspeak or hear. Ssongss of magicss usseless on him. Feedss and tendss you, he doess.” He paused. “Hurtss you, too, if you dissobeyss.”
The Gnome’s ravaged face was turned toward the Valeman as Stythys spoke, but revealed nothing of what the mind behind it thought. Jair glanced about bleakly.
“Tellss me what I musst know, Elfling,” the Mwellret whispered suddenly. “Tellss me or never leavess thiss plasse!”
The cold voice hung with a hiss in the silence of the little room as the yellow eyes bore deep into the Valeman’s. Then Stythys wheeled away and strode back through the cellroom door. The Gnome jailer turned as well, crooked hands gripping the ironbound door by its latch bolt and pulling it firmly shut.
Huddled alone in the dark, Jair listened until the sound of their footfalls had disappeared.
The minutes slipped away into hours as he sat motionless within the cell, listening to the silence and thinking of how hopeless his position had become. Smells assailed his nostrils as he sat there, rank and harsh, mingling with the sense of despair that coursed relentlessly through him. He was scared now, so scared that he could barely bring himself to think. The thought had never crossed his mind before in all the time that had passed since he had abandoned his home in Shady Vale, fleeing from the Gnomes that hunted for him, but now for the first time it did.
You are going to fail, it whispered.
He would have cried then if he could have made himself do so, but somehow the tears would not come. Perhaps he was too frightened even for that. Think about how you will escape this place, he ordered himself. There is always a way out of everything.
He took a deep breath to steady himself. What would Garet Jax do in this situation? Or even Slanter? Slanter always had a way out; Slanter was a survivor. Even Rone Leah would have been able to come up with something.
His thoughts drifted for a time, wandering through memories of what had been, sidestepping effortlessly into dreams of what might somehow yet be. All of it was fantasy, false rendering of truths twisted in the madness of his own despair to become what he would have them be.
Then at last he made himself rise and walk about his tiny prison, exploring what he could already see was there, touching the damp, cold stone, and peering at the shaft of gray that slipped through the airhole from the skies without. He journeyed all about the cell, studying to no particular purpose, waiting for his emotions to still themselves and his thoughts to settle.
Suddenly he decided to use the vision crystal, If he were to have any sense of what time remained to him, he must discover what had become of Brin.
Hurriedly, he brought the crystal and its silver chain out from their place of concealment within his tunic. He stared down at the crystal, cupped gently within his hands. He could hear the old King’s voice whispering to him, cautioning him that this would be the means by which he could follow Brin’s progress. All he need do was sing to it…
Softly, he sang. At first, his voice would not come, choked with emotions that swam restlessly through him still. Yet he hardened himself against his own sense of uncertainty, and the sound of the wishsong filled the tiny room. Almost at once, the vision crystal brightened, sharp light flaring outward into the gloom and chasing the shadows before it.
He saw at once that it came from a small fire, and Brin’s face was before him, obviously studying the flames of a campfire. Her lovely face was cupped in her hands. Then she looked up and seemed to be searching. There were signs of strain and worry, and she looked almost haggard. Then she looked down again and sighed. She shuddered slightly, as if repressing a sob. All of her that Jair could see seemed to be given over to despair. Whatever had happened to her had obviously been unpleasant…
Jair’s voice broke as worry for his sister flooded through him, and the image of his sister’s frowning face wavered and vanished. The Valeman stared down in stunned silence at the crystal cupped in his hands.
Where, he wondered, was Allanon? There had been no sign of him in the crystal.
Leaves in the wind, the voice of the King of the Silver River whispered in his mind. She will be lost.
Then he closed his hands tightly about the vision crystal and stared sightlessly into the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Night had settled down across the forests of the Anar when Brin Ohmsford saw the lights. They winked at her like fireflies through the screen of the trees and shadows that stretched away into the dark, small, elusive, and distant.
She slowed, her arms wrapping quickly about Rone to keep him from falling as he stumbled to a halt beside her. An aching weariness wracked her body, but she forced herself to hold the highlander upright as he fell against her, his head drooping to her shoulder, his face hot and flushed with the fever.
“… can’t find where… lost, can’t find…” he muttered incoherently and the fingers of his hand gripped her arm until it hurt.
She whispered to him, letting him hear her voice and know she was still there. Slowly the fingers relaxed their grip, and the fevered voice went silent.