“Don’t want you coming back again without telling me first, though,” Cogline interrupted suddenly. “Or until I invite you. You don’t come into peoples’ homes without being asked!”
“Grandfather.” Kimber sighed.
“Will you come to see me?” Brin asked her.
The girl smiled and glanced at her grandfather. “Perhaps, some day. For a time, I think I’ll stay with grandfather and Whisper at Hearthstone. I have been away long enough. I miss my home.”
Brin came to her and hugged her close. “I miss mine as well, Kimber. But we’ll meet again some day.”
“You will always be my friend, Brin.” There were tears in her eyes as she buried her face in the Valegirl’s shoulder.
“And you will be mine,” Brin whispered. “Good-bye, Kimber. Thank you.”
Rone added his good-byes to Brin’s, then walked over to stand before Whisper. The big moor cat sat back on his haunches regarding the highlander curiously, saucer blue eyes blinking.
“I was wrong about you, cat,” he offered grudgingly. He hesitated. “That probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but it means something to me. You saved my life, too.” He stood looking at the moor cat for a moment, then glanced ruefully back at the others. “I promised myself I’d say that if he brought Brin safely out of the pit; but I still feel like an idiot standing here talking with him like this, for cat’s… for…”
He trailed off. Whisper yawned sleepily and showed all of his teeth.
A dozen yards away, Jair was feeling something of an idiot himself as he faced Slanter and struggled to find expression for the jumble of emotions rushing through him.
“Look, boy.” The Gnome was gruff and impatient. “Don’t make so much work out of this. Just say it. Good-bye. Just say it.”
But Jair shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t, Slanter. It’s not enough. You and I, we’ve been together one way or another right from the first—right from the time I tricked you with the snakes and locked you in that wood bin.”
“Please don’t remind me!” the Gnome grumbled.
“We’re all that’s left, Slanter,” Jair tried to explain, folding his arms protectively across his chest. “All that way we came, you and I and the others—but they’re gone and we’re all that’s left.” He shook his head. “So much has happened, and I can’t just dismiss it with a simple ‘good-bye’.”
Slanter sighed. “It’s not as if we’ll never see each other again, boy. What’s the matter—you think I’ll end up dead, too? Well, think again! I know how to take care of myself—said so yourself once, remember? Nothing’s going to happen to me. And I’d bet a month of nights in the black pit that nothing will ever happen to you! You’re too confounded sneaky!”
Jair smiled in spite of himself. “I guess that’s quite a compliment, coming from you.” He took a deep breath. “Come back with me, Slanter. Come back to Culhaven and tell them what happened. It should come from you.”
“No, boy.” The Gnome lowered his rough face and shook his head slowly. “I won’t be going back there again. Gnomes won’t be welcome in the Lower Anar for a good many years to come, no matter their reasons. No, I’m for the borderlands again—for now, at least.”
Jair nodded, and there was an awkward silence between them.“Good-bye then, Slanter. Until next time.”
He stepped forward and put his arms about the Gnome. Slanter hesitated, then patted him roughly on the shoulders.
“Now see, boy—that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Nevertheless, it was a long time before he broke away.
It was more than a week later when Brin, Jair, and Rone arrived once more in Shady Vale and turned onto the cobblestone walkway that led to the front door of the Ohmsford home. It was late afternoon, and the sun had already slipped behind the hills, leaving the forest cloaked in shadows and half-light. The sound of voices drifted through the still autumn air from homes scattered about, and leaves rustled through the long grass.
Before them, the windows of the cottage were already lighted against the evening gloom.
“Brin, how are we going to explain all this?” Jair asked for what must have been the hundredth time.
They had passed through the stand of flowering plum, by now almost entirely leafless, when the front door swung open and Eretria came rushing out.
“Wil, they’re home!” she called back over her shoulder and hurried to embrace both of her children and Rone in the bargain.
A moment later Wil Ohmsford appeared as well, bent to kiss both Brin and Jair, and gave Rone a warm handshake.
“You look a bit tired, Brin,” he observed quietly. “Did you and your brother manage to get any sleep while you were in Leah?”
Brin and Jair exchanged a quirk glance, while Rone smiled benignly and began studying the ground. “How was your trip south, father?” Jair changed the subject quickly.
“We were able to help a lot of people, fortunately.” Wil Ohmsford scrutinized his son carefully. “The work kept us away much longer than we had intended or we would have come for you in Leah. As it was, we just returned last night.”
Brin and Jair exchanged another quick glance, and this time their father saw it at once. “Would either of you like to tell me now who that old man was you sent?”
Brin stared. “What old man?”
“The old man with the message, Brin.”
Jair frowned. “What message?”
Eretria stepped forward now, a hint of displeasure in her dark eyes. “An old man came to us in the outlying villages south of Kaypra. He was from Leah. He had a message from you telling us that you had gone to the highlands and that you would be away for several weeks and not to worry. Your father and I thought it strange that so old a man would be serving as messenger for Rone’s father, but…”
“Brin!” Jair whispered, wide-eyed.
“There was something familiar about him,” Wil mused suddenly. “It seemed to me that I ought to have known him.”
“Brin, I didn’t send any…” Jair began, then cut himself short. They were all staring at him. “Wait… just wait right here, just… for a moment,” he sputtered, stumbling over the words as he edged past them. “Be right back!”
He dashed past them into the house, down the hallway, through the front room, and into the kitchen. He went at once to the stone hearth where it joined the shelving nooks and traced his way down to the third shelf. Then he moved the loose stone from its niche and reached inside.
His fingers closed over the Elfstones and their familiar leather pouch.
He stood there for a moment, stunned. Then gripping the Stones in his hand, he walked back through the house to where the others still waited on the cobbled walkway. With a grin, he produced the pouch and its contents and displayed them to an astonished Brin and Rone.
There was a long moment of silence as the five stared at one another, Then Brin took her mother with one arm and her father with the other.
“Mother. Father. I think we had better all go inside and sit down for a while.” She smiled. “Jair and I have something to tell you.”