She thought about it all night as she trudged on wearily through the bottomland, remembering what she had felt in the times she had used. the wishsong’s magic. The hours slipped past, and, the Werebeasts did not come to haunt them again that night. But in the mind of the Valegirl, there were demons of another sort.
By dawn the little company was clear of Olden Moor and found itself in the foothills bordering the southern mountains of the Ravenshorn. Wearied from their long march up from Hearthstone and the events of the night past and wary of traveling further in daylight when they might easily be seen, the five took refuge in a small copse of pine in a lea between two ridgelines and fell asleep.
They resumed their journey with the return of nightfall, traveling east now, following the high wall of the mountains where it brushed up against the moor. Trailers of mist wound through the trees of the forested lower slopes, a spider’s web across the pathway as the travelers passed silently by. The mountain peaks of the Ravenshorn were huge and stark, barren rock lifting out of the forestland to etch sharply against the sky. It was an empty, still night, and the whole of the land about seemed stripped of life. Shadows lay across the cliffs, forests, and the moor’s deep mists. In their pooling darkness nothing moved.
They rested at midnight, an uneasy pause where they found themselves listening to the silence as they rubbed aching muscles and tightened boot straps. It was then that Cogline chose to talk about his magic.
“Magic it is, too,” he whispered cautiously to Brin and Rone, almost as if he feared that someone might be listening. “Magic of a different sort than that wielded by the walkers, though born not of their time nor the time when Elves and faerie folk had the power, but of the time between!”
He bent forward, eyes sharp and accusing. “Thought I knew nothing of the old world, didn’t you, girl?” he asked Brin. “Well, I have the teachings of the old world, too—passed down to me by my ancestors. Not Druids, no. But teachers, girl—teachers! Theirs was the lore of the world that existed when the Great Wars caused such destruction to mankind!”
“Grandfather,” limber Boh cautioned gently. “Just explain it to them.”
“Humphh!” Cogline grunted testily. “Explain it, she says! What is it that you think I do, girl?” His forehead furrowed. “Earth power! That’s the magic I wield! Not the magic of words and spells—no, not that magic! Power born of the elements that comprise the ground on which we walk, outlanders. That is the earth power. Bits and pieces of ores and powders and mixings that can be seen by the eye and felt by the hand. Chemics, they were once called. Developed by skills of a different sort than the simple ones we use now in the Four Lands. Most of the knowledge was lost with the old world. But a little—just a little—was saved. And it is mine to use.”
“This is what you carry in those pouches?” Rone asked. “This is what you used to make those fires explode?”
“Ha-ha!” Cogline laughed softly. “They do that and much more, Southlander. Fires can be exploded, earth turned to mud, air to choking dust, flesh to stone! I have potions for all and dozens more. Mix and match, a bit of this and a bit of that!” He laughed again. “I’ll show the walkers power they haven’t seen before!”
Rone shook his head doubtfully. “Spider Gnomes are one thing; the Mord Wraiths are something else again. A finger points at you and you are reduced to ash. The sword I carry, infused with the Druid magic, is the only protection against those black things.”
“Bah!” Cogline spit. “You’d best look to me for your protection—you and the girl!”
Rone began to phrase a sharp retort, then thought better. of it and simply shrugged. “If we come up against the walkers, we shall both need to offer Brin whatever protection we can.”
He glanced at the Valegirl for confirmation, and she smiled agreeably. It cost her nothing to do so. She already knew that neither of them would be with her, in any case.
She pondered for a time what Cogline had told them. It troubled her that any part of the old skills should have survived the holocaust of the Great Wars. She did not like to think it possible that such awesome power could come again into the world. It was bad enough that the magic of the world of faerie had been reborn through the misguided efforts of that handful of rebel Druids in the Councils of Paranor. But to be faced with the prospect that the knowledge of power and energy might again be pursued was even more unsettling. Almost all of the learning that had gone into that knowledge had been lost with the destruction of the old world. What little had survived, the Druids’ had locked away again. Yet here was this old man, half-crazed and as wild as the wilderness in which he lived, in possession of at least a portion of that learning—a special kind of magic that he had resolved was now his own.
She shook her head. Perhaps it was inevitable that all learning, whether born of good or bad intention, whether used to give life or to take life away, must come to light at some point in time. Perhaps it was true both of skill and of magic—one born of the world of men, the other of the world of faerie. Perhaps both must surface periodically in the stream of time, then disappear again, then surface once more, and so on forever.
But a return now of the knowledge of energy and power, when the last of the Druids was gone… ?
Still, Cogline was an old man and his knowledge was limited. When he died, perhaps the knowledge would die with him and be lost again—for a time, at least.
And so, too, perhaps it would be with her magic.
They walked east for the remainder of the night, picking their way through the thinning forestland. Ahead, the wall of the Ravenshorn began to curve back toward them, turning north into the wilderness of the deep Anar. It rose up from out of the night, a towering, dark band of shadow. Olden Moor dropped away behind them, and only the thin green line of the foothills separated them from the mountain heights. A deeper silence seemed to settle over the land. It was in the crook of the mountains where they turned north, Brin knew, that Graymark and the Maelmord lay concealed.
And there I must find a way to be free of the others, she thought. There, I must go on alone.
The first trailers of sunrise began to slip into view beyond the mountain wall. Slowly the skies lightened, turning from deep blue to gray, from gray to silver, and from silver to rose and gold. Shadows fled away into the receding night, and the broad sweep of the land began to etch itself out of the dark. The trees grew visible first, leaves, crooked limbs, and roughened trunks drawn and colored by the light; then rocks, scrub, and barren earth, from foothills to bottomland, took form. For a time, the shadow of the mountains lingered, a wall against the light, lost in darkness not yet faded. But finally that, too, gave way to the sunrise, and the light spilled down over the rim of the peaks to reveal the awesome face of the Ravenshorn.
It was a stark and ugly face—a face that had been ravaged by time and the elements and by the poison of the dark magic sown within it. Where the mountains curved north into the wilderness, the rock had been bleached and worn—as if the life in it had been peeled away like skin to leave only bone. It rose up against the skyline, thousands of feet above them, a wall of cliffs and ragged defiles burdened with the weight of ages gone and horrors endured. On the hard, gray emptiness, nothing moved.
Brin lifted her face momentarily as the wind brushed past. Her nose wrinkled in distaste. An unpleasant smell rose up from somewhere ahead.
“Graymark’s sewers.” Cogline spit, ferret eyes darting. “We’re close now.”