Gingerly, he straightened and then sat upright within the stale gathering of straw. Chains bound his wrists and ankles, fixed in iron rings to the stone walls. He had been hobbled by these shackles since the second day of his imprisonment. The jailer had placed them on him at Stythys’ command. As he shifted his weight, they clanked and rattled sharply in the deep silence, echoing down the corridors that lay without the cell’s ironbound door. Weary despite the long sleep, he listened as the echoes died away, straining for some other sound to come back to him. None did. There was no one out there to hear him, no one to come to his aid.
Tears welled up in his eyes then, flowing down his cheeks, and wetting the soiled front of his tunic. What was he thinking? That someone would come to him to help him escape from this black hold? He shook his head against the pain of his own certainty that there was no help left for him. All of the company from Culhaven were gone—lost, dead, or scattered. Even Slanter. He wiped the tears away roughly, fighting back against his despair. It did not matter that no one would come, he swore silently. He would never give the Mwellret what it wanted. And he would somehow find a way to escape.
Once again, as he had done each time he had come awake after sleeping, he worked at the pins and fastenings of the chains that bound him, trying to weaken them enough to break free. For long moments, he twisted and turned the iron, peering hopefully at their joinings through the dark. But in the end he gave it up as he always gave it up, for it was useless to pit flesh and blood against smith-forged iron. Only the jailer’s key could set him free again.
Free. He spoke the word within the silence of his mind. He must find a way to get free. He must.
He thought then of Brin; thinking of her, he found himself wondering at what he had seen when last he had looked within the mirror of the vision crystal. How strange and sad that brief glimpse had been—his sister sitting alone before a campfire, her face twisted in strain and despair as she stared out across the forestland. What had happened to Brin to cause her such unhappiness?
Self-consciously, his hand strayed to the small bulk of the crystal where it lay hidden beneath his tunic. Stythys had not found it yet, nor the bag of Silver Dust, and Jair had been careful to keep both hidden within his clothing whenever the Mwellret was about. The creature came to him all too frequently, slipping soundlessly from the dark when the Valeman least expected it, stealing from the shadows like some loathsome wraith to wheedle and cajole, to promise, and to threaten. Give to me what I ask and you will be set free… Tell me what I want to know!
Jair’s face hardened and set. Help that monster? Not in this world, he wouldn’t!
Swiftly, he lifted the silver chain and its stone from within his tunic and held it lovingly within the cupped palms of his hands. It was the sole tie he had with the world beyond this cell, his only means of discovering what Brin was about. He stared at the crystal, and his mind was decided. He would use it one time more. He would have to be careful, he knew. But just a moment was all that was required. He would call up the image and then banish it quickly. The monster would never be the wiser.
He had to know what had become of Brin.
With the crystal cupped in his hands, he began to sing. Soft and low, his voice called forth the dormant power of the stone, reaching into its murky depths. The light slowly rose from within and spread outward—a flood of whiteness that brightened the terrible gloom and brought an unexpected smile to his face.
Brin! he cried softly.
The image came to life—his sister’s face suspended within the light before him. He sang, steady and slow, and the image sharpened. She stood before a lake now. The sadness on her face had turned to shock. Stiff and unmoving, she stared out across the gray and misted waters at a cloaked and hooded apparition that hung upon the air. Slowly the image turned as he sang, swinging about to where he could see the face of the apparition.
The wishsong wavered and broke as the face drew near.
The face was Brin’s!
Then a furtive rustling sound from across the darkened cell turned Jair’s stomach to ice. Instantly, he went still and the strange vision faded. Jair’s hands closed about the vision crystal, desperately drawing it down within his tattered clothing, knowing even then that it was already too late.
“Ssee, little friend, you have found a way to help me,” a cold, familiar reptilian voice hissed.
And the cloaked form of the Mwellret Stythys advanced through the open cell door.
On the shore’s edge at the lake of the Grimpond, there was a long, endless moment of silence, broken only by the soft lapping of the gray waters as they washed against the rocks. The shade and the Valegirl faced each other in the gloom of mist and shadow like voiceless ghosts called forth from another world and time.
“Look upon me!” the shade commanded.
Brin kept her gaze steady. The face the Grimpond wore was her own, drawn, haggard, and ravaged with grief, and where her own dark eyes would have been, twin slits of crimson light burned like coals. Her smile taunted her from the shade’s lips, teasing with insidious purpose, the laughter low and evil.
“Do you know me?” came the whisper. “Speak my name.”
Brin swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “You are the Grimpond.”
The laughter swelled. “I am you, Brin of the Vale people, Brin of the houses of Ohmsford and Shannara. I am you! I am the telling of your life, and in my words you shall find your destiny. Seek, then, what you will.”
The hissing of the Grimpond’s voice died into a sudden roiling of the waters over which it hung suspended. A fine, thin spray exploded geyserlike into the misted air and showered down upon the Valegirl. It was as cold as death’s forbidden touch.
The Grimpond’s crimson eyes narrowed. “Would you know, child of the light, of the darkness that is the Ildatch?”
Wordlessly, Brin nodded. The Grimpond laughed mirthlessly and glided closer. “All that is and all that was of the dark magic traces to the book, bound by threads that close you and yours tight about. Wars of Races, wars of man—faerie demons, all one hand. Like rhymes of the voice, all are one. The humankind come to the dark magic, seeking power that they cannot hope to make theirs—seeking then death. They creep to the hiding place of the book, drawn by the lure, by the need. One time to the face of death, one time to the pit of night. Each time they find what they seek and are lost to it, changed from moral self to spirit. Bearers and Wraiths, all are one. And the evil is one with them.”
The voice faded. Brin’s mind raced, thinking through the meaning of what she had been told. One time to the face of death… Skull Mountain. Past and present were one, Skull Bearer and Mord Wraith—that was the Grimpond’s meaning. They were born of the same evil. And somehow, in some way, all of it was bound together in a single source.
“The dark magic made them all,” she said quickly. “Warlock Lord and Skull Bearers in the time of my great-grandfather; Mord Wraiths now. That is your meaning, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” the voice hissed softly, teasingly. “One of one? Where lies the Warlock Lord now, Valegirl? Who now gives voice to the magic and sends the Mord Wraiths forth?”
Brin stared at the apparition wordlessly. Was it saying that the Warlock Lord had come back again? But no, that was impossible…