Then the sun began to drop below the western skyline and dusk to settle over the land. The dark line of Toffer Ridge loomed before them, a rugged and uneven shadow, and Cogline took them through a twisting pass that breached its wall. They walked in silence, fatigue now beginning to slip through them. Insect sounds filled the darkness, and high above them, lost in the tangle of the great trees, night birds sent forth their shrill calls. Ridgeline and wilderness forest tightened about them, closing them away in the darkened pass. The air, warm all day, grew hot and unpleasant, and its smell turned stale. That hidden life which waited within the woodland shadows came awake and rose up to look about…
Abruptly, the timber broke apart before them, sloping sharply downward through the ridgeline into a vast, featureless lowland shrouded in mist and lighted in eerie glow by stars and a strange, pale orange gibbous moon that hung at the edge of the eastern horizon. Sullen and dismal, the sprawling bottomland was little more than a shadowed.. black mass of stillness that seemed to open into the earth like some bottomless canyon where Toffer Ridge slipped away into the mist.
“Olden Moor,” Kimber whispered softly.
Brin stared down at the moor in watchful silence. She could feel it staring back.
Midnight came and went, and time slowed until it seemed to cease all passage. A hint of wind fluttered enticingly across Brin’s dust-streaked face and faded away. She looked up expectantly, but there was nothing more. The heat returned, harsh and oppressive. She felt as if she had been shut within a furnace, its unseen fires snatching from her aching lungs the very air she needed to survive. In the bottomland, the autumn night gave nothing back of its cooling promise. Sweat soaked Brin’s clothing through, ran down her body in distracting rivulets, and coated her worn countenance with a silver gray sheen. Muscles cramped and knotted wearily. Though she shifted about frequently in an effort to relieve the discomfort, she quickly found there were no new positions to be tried. The ache simply followed. Swarms of gnats buzzed annoyingly, drawn by the moisture from her body, biting at her face and hands as she brushed at them uselessly. All about her, the air reeked of rotting wood and stagnant water.
Crouched in the concealing shadows of a clump of rocks with Rone, Kimber, and Cogline, she stared downward along the base of the ridgeline to where the camp of the Spider Gnomes lay settled at the edge of Olden Moor. A jumble of makeshift huts and burrows, the camp stretched between the base of Toffer Ridge and the darkness of the moor. A scattering of fires burned in its midst, their sullen, ragged light barely penetrating the gloom. The crooked, bent shadows of the camp’s inhabitants passed through the muted glare. The Spider Gnomes, their strange and grotesque bodies covered with gray hair, were naked to the elements as they skittered about in the withered long grass on all fours, hunched and faceless. Large groups of them gathered at the edge of the moor, shielded from the mist by the flames as they chanted dully into the night.
“Calling to the dark powers,” Cogline had informed his companions hours earlier, after first bringing them to this hiding place. “A tribal people, the Gnomes—the Spider folk more so than any. Believe in spirits and dark things that rise from other worlds with the change of seasons. Call to them for their own strength, do the Gnomes—hoping at the same time that strength doesn’t turn against them. Ha! Superstitious stuff!”
But the dark things were real sometimes, however, Cogline told them. There were things within Olden Moor as dark and terrible as those that inhabited the forests of the Wolfsktaag—things born of other worlds and lost magics. They were called Werebeasts. They lived within the mists, creatures of dreadful shapes and forms that preyed upon body and mind, snaring mortal beings weaker than they and draining away their lives. The Werebeasts were not imaginary, Cogline admitted grimly. It was against their coming that the Spider Gnomes sought to protect themselves—for the Spider Gnomes were the Werebeasts’ favorite food.
“Now, with the autumn’s change to winter, the Gnomes come down to the moor to call out against the rise of the mists.” The old man’s voice had been a harsh whisper. “Gnomes think the winter won’t come or the mists stay low if they don’t. A superstitious folk. Come here like this each fall for nearly a month, whole camps, whole tribes of them—just migrate down off the ridge. Call out to the dark powers day and night so that the winter will keep them safe and keep the beasts away.” He grinned secretively and winked. “Works, too. Werebeasts feed off them for that whole month, you see. Eat enough to carry them through the winter. No need to go onto the ridge after that!”
Cogline had known where the Spider people would be found. With the fall of night, the little group had traveled north along the base of the ridgeline until the Gnome camp had been sighted. Then, as they hunched down within the concealment of the rocks, Kimber Boh had explained what must happen next.
“They will have your sword with them, Rone. A sword such as that, pulled from the waters of the Chard Rush, will be considered a talisman sent to them by their dark powers. They will set it before them, hoping it will shield them from the Werebeasts. We must discover where it is housed and then steal it back from them.”
“How will we do that?” Rone had asked quickly. He had talked of little else for the whole of their journey there. The lure of the sword’s power had claimed him once more.
“Whisper will track it,” she had replied. “If given your scent, he can follow it to the sword, however well concealed. Once he has found it, he will return to lead us in.”
So Whisper had been given the highlander’s scent and dispatched into the night. He had gone soundlessly, fading into the shadows, lost from view almost instantly. The four from Hearthstone had been waiting ever since for his return, crouched down in the humid dark and the fetid dampness of the bottomland, listening and watching. The moor cat had been gone a very long time.
Brin closed her eyes against the weariness that seeped through her and tried to block the sound of the Gnomes chanting from her mind. A dull, empty monotone, it went on ceaselessly. Several times, while she listened, there had been screams from close to the mists—shrill, quick, and horror-stricken. Almost at once, though, they had ceased. Still the chanting went on…
A monstrous shadow detached itself from the dark right in front of her, and she started to her feet with a small cry.
“Hush, girl!” Cogline yanked her down again, one bony hand slipping tightly across her mouth. “It’s only the cat!”
Whisper’s massive head materialized then, luminous blue eyes winking lazily as he padded up to Kimber. The girl bent down to wrap her arms about him, stroking him gently, whispering in his ear. For several moments she spoke with the moor cat, and the cat nuzzled and rubbed up against her. Then she turned back to them, excitement dancing in her eyes.
“He has found the sword, Rone!”
Instantly Rone was beside her. “Take me to where it can be found, Kimber!” he begged. “We will have a weapon then with which to face the walkers and any other dark thing that might serve them!”