The breathing of the Maelmord rose and fell more quickly now and the hissing was more intense. It wanted her, had need for her. It found in her a vibrant piece of itself, the heart of the body that lay rooted there, missing for so long, but now returned. Come to me, it hissed. Come to me!
Her face alive with excitement and need, Brin passed from the Croagh into the jungle beyond.
«There has got to be an end to these sewers, for cat’s sake!» Rone was insisting to Kimber and Cogline as he stepped clear of the tunnel passage into the cavern beyond. It seemed to him in his frustration that they had been stumbling about in the sewers of Graymark forever.
«There doesn’t have to be anything of the sort!» Cogline snapped back, as disagreeable as ever.
But the highlander barely heard, his attention focused instead on the cavern into which they had passed. It was a massive chamber, its roof cracked so that hazy sunlight flooded downward in bright streamers and its floor split down the center by a monstrous chasm. Wordlessly, Rone hurried forward along the chasm’s edge, his eyes sweeping toward the stone bridge that spanned it. Beyond the bridge, the cavern stretched away to a high, arched alcove of polished stone, scrolled in some ancient markings and opening into daylight and the green of a misted valley.
The Maelmord, he thought at once.
And that’s where Brin will be.
He bounded onto the bridge and crossed, the old man and the girl hurrying after. He was moving toward the alcove when Kimber’s sharp cry brought him about.
«Highlander, come look!»
He turned and walked quickly back. She waited for him at the center of the bridge, then pointed wordlessly as he came up. A great section of iron chain forming the bridge railing had snapped and broken. At her feet, streaks of blood lay drying on the stone.
The girl knelt and touched the blood with her fingers. «Not very old,” she said softly. «Not more than an hour.»
He stared at her in stricken silence, and the same unspoken thought passed between them. His hand came up quickly, as if to ward it off. «No, it can’t be hers…»
Then a scream rent the air, shrill and terrifying — the scream of an animal filled with rage and fear. It shattered the stillness and their thoughts and left them frozen. It came. from beyond the alcove.
«Whisper!» Kimber cried.
Rone whirled. Brin!
He sprang from the bridge to the cavern floor and raced for the alcove’s passageway, both hands reaching back across his shoulder for the great broadsword strapped there. He was quick, but Kimber was even quicker. She went past him like a frightened animal, darting from the shadows of the cavern to the alcove and the light beyond. Trailing, Cogline called out in a furious attempt to slow them both, his voice high and shrill with desperation, but his crooked legs too slow to keep up.
Then they were through the alcove and into the light, with Kimber a dozen yards in front of Rone. There was Whisper, locked in battle with a pair of faceless black things on a narrow rock shelf before them, a blur of motion and darkness. Beyond, on a stone stairway that wound downward from the cliffs to the ledge and the valley below — on a stairway that Rone knew at once to be the Croagh — one of the Mord Wraiths stood watching.
At the approach of the girl and the highlander, the Mord Wraith turned.
«Kimber, look out!» Rone howled in warning.
But the girl was already springing to Whisper’s aid, long knives appearing in both hands. The Wraith pointed toward the girl and red fire exploded from its fingers. The fire lanced past the girl, missing her somehow, and fragments of rock flew into the air as it struck. Rone sprang forward with a cry, the ebony blade of the Sword of Leah held before him. The Wraith turned toward him instantly, and the fire burst forth a second time. It hammered at the highlander, caught on the blade of the sword, and the whole of the air about him turned bright with flame. The force of the blow lifted him clear of the ground and threw him back.
Then Cogline appeared from out of the caverns, old, bent, and fierce as he screamed at the Wraith in challenge. A little bit of flesh, bone, and cloth, he skittered toward the black–robed form. The walker swung about, pointing. But the old man’s sticklike arm whipped forward, and a dark object flew from his hand, hurtling into the Wraith’s crimson fire. A tremendous explosion rocked the whole of the mountainside. Flames and smoke geysered skyward from the stem of the Croagh, and bits of shattered rock flew everywhere.
For an instant everything disappeared in smoke and silt. Frantic, Rone scrambled back to his feet.
«Taste a bit of my magic, you worm food!» Cogline was howling in glee. «See what you can do against that!»
He darted past Rone before the highlander could stop him, dancing about in maddened delight, his sticklike form disappearing into the smoke. Whisper’s sudden snarl lifted from somewhere ahead, then Kimber’s sharp cry. Rone swore in fury and leaped forward. Crazy old man!
Directly before him, red fire erupted from the haze. Cogline’s thin form flew sideways as if it were a doll flung by an angry child. The highlander set his teeth and hurtled toward the source of the fire. Almost at once, he came up against the Wraith, its black–cloaked form tattered and bent. The Sword of Leah pierced into a burst of red fire, shattering it apart. The Wraith disappeared. Something moved behind him, and the highlander swung about. But it was Whisper who lunged past through a trailer of smoke, the first of the black things clinging to him, the second borne before him in his teeth. Swiftly, Rone struck, the sword cleaving through the creature that hung upon the moor cat’s back and stripping it from him.
«Kimber!» he screamed.
Red fire exploded close to him, but he caught it again on the sword. A cloaked form appeared momentarily through the smoke, and he lunged at it. This time the Wraith was not quick enough. Backed against the stone stairway of the Croagh, it tried to slip left, with fire bursting from its fingers. Rone was on it at once. The Sword of Leah came down, and the Wraith exploded into a pile of ash.
Everything went still then, save for the low coughing sound Whisper made as he padded ghostlike through the haze toward Rone. Slowly the smoke drifted away and the whole of the ledge and the Croagh became visible once more. The ledge was littered with broken rock, and an entire section of the Croagh where it joined to the ledge — where the Mord Wraith had been standing when Cogline had challenged it — was gone.
Rone glanced quickly about. The Wraith and the black things were gone as well. He wasn’t sure what had happened to them — whether they had been destroyed or merely driven off — but they were nowhere to be seen.
«Rone. ”
He whirled at the sound of Kimber’s voice. She appeared from the far side of the ledge, looking small and bedraggled, limping slightly as she came. Anger and relief flooded through him. «Kimber, why in the name of all that’s right and sensible did you… ?»
«Because Whisper would have done the same for me. Where is grandfather?»
Rone clamped his mouth shut on the rest of what he would have said to her. Together, they scanned the littered rock shelf. They saw him finally, half buried in a pile of rubble by the cliff side, as blackened as the ash left by the fires of their battle with the Wraith. They hurried to him and lifted him clear. His face and arms were burned, his hair singed, and he was covered with soot. Gently, Kimber cradled the old man’s head. His eyes were closed and he did not appear to be breathing.
«Grandfather?» the girl whispered, her hand on his cheek.
«Who’s that?» the old man cried abruptly, startling both the girl and the highlander. Arms and legs began to thrash. «Get out of my house, trespassers! Get out of my home!»
Then his eyes blinked and opened. «Girl?» he muttered weakly. «What happened to the black things?»