«Gone, grandfather.» She smiled, relief in her dark eyes. «Are you all right?»
«All right?» He looked dazed, but nodded resolutely, his voice becoming stiff with indignation. «Of course I’m all right! Just got a bit ahead of myself, that’s all! Help me up!»
Rone took a deep breach. Lucky to be alive is what you are, old man, you and the girl, he thought grimly.
With Kimber’s aid he pulled Cogline back to his feet and let him test his weight alone. The old man looked like something dredged up from an ash pit, but he seemed uninjured. The girl hugged him warmly and began to brush him off.
«You must be more careful, grandfather,” she admonished. «You are not as quick as you used to be. The walkers will have you if you try to run past them again the way you did here.»
Rone shook his head in disbelief. Who should be scolding whom — the girl the old man or the old man the girl? What had Brin and he been thinking anyway when they…
He caught himself. Brin. He had forgotten about Brin. He glanced toward the Croagh. If the Valegirl had gotten this far, she had almost certainly gone down into the Maelmord. And that was where he must go as well.
He turned from Kimber and her grandfather and hurried across the rock shelf to where it joined with the steps of the Croagh. He was still gripping the Sword of Leah firmly. How much time had he lost here? He had to catch Brin before she got too far ahead into whatever it was that waited in the valley below…
Abruptly, he slowed and stopped. Whisper stood directly in his path, blocking the stairway down. The moor cat stared at him momentarily, then sat back on his haunches and blinked.
«Get out of the way!» Rone snapped.
The cat did not move. The highlander hesitated, then started forward impatiently. Whisper’s muzzle drew back slightly, and a low growl rumbled in his throat.
Rone stopped at once and looked back angrily at Kimber. «Get your cat out of my way, Kimber. I’m going down.»
The girl called softly to the moor cat, but Whisper stayed where he was. Puzzled, she came forward and bent close to him, talking in a low, calm voice, rubbing the massive head about the ears and neck. The cat nuzzled her back and made a soft purring sound, but did not move. Finally, the girl stepped back.
«Brin is well,” she informed him with a brief smile. «She has gone down into the pit.»
Rone nodded with relief. «Then I’ve got to go after her.»
But the girl shook her head. «You must remain here, highlander.»
Rone stared. «Remain here? I can’t do that! Brin is all alone down there! I’m going after her!»
But again the girl shook her head. «You cannot. She doesn’t want you doing that. She has used the wishsong to prevent it. She has made Whisper her sentry. No one may pass — not even me.»
«But he’s your cat! Make him move! Tell him that he has to move! The magic isn’t that strong, is it?»
Her pixie face looked up at him calmly. «It is more than the magic, Rone. Whisper’s instincts tell him that Brin is right about this. The magic does not hold him; his reason does. He knows that whatever danger waits in the valley is too great. He will not let you pass.»
The highlander continued to stare at the girl, anger and disbelief flooding his face. His gaze shifted to the giant cat and back again.
What was he supposed to do now?
Euphoria engulfed Brin, sweeping over her in a warm rush, flooding through her as if it were her life’s blood. She felt it carry her down within herself like a tiny leaf borne on the waters of some great river. Sight, sound, and smell meshed and ran in a dazzling mix of wild imaginings, some of beauty and light, some of darkest misshape, all in the ebb and flow of her mind’s eye. Nothing was as it had been, but new and exotic and alive with wonder. It was a journey of self–discovery that transcended thought and feeling and was its own reason for being.
She sang, the music of the wishsong the food and drink that fed her, sustained her, and gave her life.
She was deep within the Maelmord now, far from the stairway of the Croagh and the world she had left behind. It was another world entirely here. As she worked to make herself one with it, it reached out to her and drew her in. Stench, heat, and the rot of living things wrapped about her and found in her their child. Gnarled limbs, vines twisted and mottled, and great stalks of brush and weed stroked her body as she slipped past, feeding on the vibrancy of the music, finding in it an elixir that gave back life. From a great distance away, Brin felt their caress and smiled in response.
It was as if she had ceased to exist. Some tiny part of her knew that she should have been horrified by the things that wound about her and rubbed so lovingly against her. But she was given over to the music of the wishsong now, and she was no longer the one she had been. All of the feelings and reasonings that had been hers, that had made her who she was, were masked away by the dark magic, and she was become a thing like that into which she journeyed. She was a kindred spirit, wandered back from some distant place, the evil within her as strong as the evil she found waiting. She had become as dark as the Maelmord and the life that had been spawned there. She was one with it. She belonged.
A tiny part of her understood that Brin Ohmsford had ceased to exist, made over by the magic of the wishsong. It understood that she had let herself become this other thing — a thing so repulsive that she could not have stood it otherwise — and that she would not come back to herself until she had found her way through to the heart of the evil enfolding her. The euphoria, the exhilaration brought on by the frightening power of the wishsong, threatened to steal her away from herself completely, to strip her of her sanity and make her forever the thing she pretended to be. All the strange and marvelous imaginings were but trappings of a madness that would destroy her. All that remained of the one she once had been was that small bit of self that she still kept wrapped carefully within. All else had become the child of the Maelmord.
The wall of the jungle passed away and came about again, and nothing of it changed. Shadows wrapped close about, as soft as black velvet and as silent as death. The whole of the sky stayed screened away, and only the half–light of night’s coming penetrated beyond the gloom. All the while that she walked in this maze of darkness and stifling heat, the hissing of the Maelmord’s breath lifted from the earth, and the limbs, trunks, stalks, and vines swayed and writhed with the motion. Save for the hissing, there was only silence — intense and expectant. There was no sign of other life — no sign of the walkers, of the dark things that served them, or of the Ildatch that had given them all life.
She went on, driven by that spark of memory she harbored deep within herself. Find the Ildatch, it whispered in its small, empty voice. Find the book of the dark magic. Time fragmented and slipped away until it no longer had meaning. Had she been here an hour? Or more? There was a strange sense of having been here for a very long time, almost as if she had been here forever.
Far distant, almost lost to her in the vast tangle of the jungle, something tumbled from the cliffs above and fell into the pit. She could sense its fall and hear its scream as the Maelmord closed quickly about it, squeezing, crushing, and consuming until the thing was no more. She savored its death, tasted its blood as it was devoured. When it was gone, she longed for more.
Then whispered warnings brushed at her. From a dimly remembered past she saw Allanon once more. Tall and bent, his black hair gone gray, his lean face lined with age, he reached for her across a chasm she could not bridge, and his words were like sprinkled drops of rain upon a window closed before her. Beware. The wishsong is power like nothing I have ever seen. Use it with caution. She heard the words, saw them spatter on the glass and found herself laughing at the way they fell. The figure of the Druid receded and was gone. Dead, now, she reminded herself in surprise. Gone from the Four Lands forever.