Dawn broke gray and cheerless, and a ma.s.s of rolling dark clouds swept east across the morning sky. The wind blew chill and harsh out of the north, biting at their faces it! fierce gusts, whistling through the skeletal limbs of the forest trees. Leaves and dirt swirled all about them as they resumed the march, and the air smelled heavily of rain.

Jair Ohmsford walked that day in the company of Edain Elessedil. The Elven Prince joined him at the start of the journey, conversing in his loose, easy manner, telling Jair what his father the King had told him of the Ohmsfords. There was a great debt owed Wil Ohmsford, the Elven Prince explained, as they bent their heads against the wind and trooped forward through the cold. If not for him, the Elven nation might have lost their war with the Demons, for it was Wil who had taken the Elven Chosen Amberle in search of the Bloodfire so that the seed of the legendary Ellcrys might be placed within its flames, then returned to the earth to be born anew.

Jair had heard the tale a thousand times, but it was different somehow hearing it from Edain, and he welcomed the retelling. He, in his turn, recounted to the Prince his own small knowledge of the Westland, of his father's admiration for Ander Elessedil, and of his own strong feelings for the Elven people. As they talked, a sense of kinship began to develop between them.

Perhaps it was their shared Elven ancestry, perhaps simply the closeness in age. Edain Elessedil was like Rone in his conversation at times-serious and relaxed by turns, anxious to share his feelings and ideas and to hear Jair's-and bonds of friendship were quickly formed.

Nightfall came, and the little company took shelter beneath an overhang along a ridgeline that shadowed the Silver River. There they had their dinner and watched the sullen rush of the river as it churned past through a series of rocky drops. Rain began to fall, the sky went black, and the day faded into an unpleasant night. Jair sat back within the overhang and stared out into the dark, the fetid smell of the poisoned river reaching his nostrils. The river had grown worse since Culhaven, its waters blackened and increasingly choked with ma.s.ses of dying fish and deadwood. Even the vegetation along the riverbanks had shown signs of wilting. There was a murky, depthless cast to the river, and the rain that fell in steady sheets seemed welcome, if only to help somehow wash clean the foulness that lay therein.

The members of the company began to fall asleep after a time. As always, one among them stood guard for the rest. This watch was Helt's. The giant Borderman stood at the far end of the outcropping, a ma.s.sive shadow against the faint gray of the rain. He had been a tracker a long time, Edain Elessedil had told Jair more than twenty years. No one ever talked about why he wasn't a tracker anymore. He'd had a family once, it was rumored, but no one seemed to knowwhat had become of them. He was a gentle man, quiet and soft-spoken; he was also a dangerous one. He was a skilled fighter. He was incredibly strong. And he possessed night vision-extraordinary eyesight that enabled him to see in darkness as clearly as if it were brightest day. There were stories about his night vision. Nothing ever crept up on Helt or got past him.

Jair hunched down within his blankets against the growing cold. A fire burned at the center of the outcropping, but the heat failed to penetrate the damp to where he sat. He stared a while longer at Helt. The Borderman hadn't said anything further to him after their brief conversation of the previous night. Jair had thought to talk again with him, and once or twice had almost done so. Yet something had kept him from it. Perhaps it was the look of the man; he was so big and dark. Like Allanon, only...different somehow. Jair shook his head, unable to decide what that difference was.

"You should be sleeping."

The voice startled Jair so that he jumped. Garet Jax was next to him, a silent black shadow as he settled in beside the Valeman and wrapped himself in his cloak.

"I'm not sleepy," Jair murmured, struggling to regain his composure.

The Weapons Master nodded, gray eyes peering out into the rain. They sat there in silence, huddled down in the dark, listening to the patter of the rainfall, the churning rush of the river, and the soft ripple of leaves and limbs as the wind blew past. After a time, Garet Jax stirred and Jair could feel the other's eyes shift to find him.

"Do you remember asking me why I helped you in the Black Oaks?" Garet Jax asked softly. Jair nodded. "I told you it was because you interested me. That was true; you did. But it was more than that."

He paused, and Jair turned to look at him. The hard, cold eyes seemed distant and searching.

"I am the best at what I do." The Weapons Master's voice was barely a whisper. "All my life I have been the best, and there is no one even close. I have traveled all of the lands, and I have never found anyone who was a match for me. But I keep looking."

Jair stated at him. "Why do you do that?"

"Because what else is there for me to do?" the other asked. "What purpose is there in being a Weapons Master if not to test the skill that the name implies? I test myself every day of my life; I look for ways to see that the skill does not fail me. It never does, of course, but I keep looking."

His gaze shifted once more, peering into the rain. "When I first came upon you back in that clearing in the Oaks, bound and gagged, trussed hand and foot, guarded by that Gnome patrol-when I saw you like that, I knew there was something special about you. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was there. I sensed it, I guess you'd say. You were what I was looking for."

Jair shook his head. "I don't understand what you mean."

"No, I don't guess you do. At first, I didn't understand either. I just sensed that somehow you were important to me. So I freed you and went with you. As we traveled, I saw more of what had intrigued me in the first place...something that I was looking for. Nothing really told me what I should do with you. I just sensed what I should do, and I did it."

He straightened. "And then..." His eyes snapped back to find Jair's. "You came awake that morning by the Silver River and told me of the dream. Not a dream, I guess-but something like it.

Your quest, you called it. And I was to be your protector. An impossible quest, a quest deep intothe heart of the lair of the Mord Wraiths for something no one knew anything about but you-and I was to be your protector."

He shook his head slowly. "But you see, I had a dream that night, also. I didn't tell you that. I had a dream that was so real that it was more...vision than dream. In a time and place I did not recognize, I stood with you as your protector. Before me was a thing of fire, a thing that burned at the touch. A voice whispered to me from within my mind. It said that I must do battle with the fire, that it would be a battle to the death, and that it would be the most terrible battle of my life. The voice whispered that it was for this battle alone that I had trained all of my life-that all of the battles that had gone before had been to prepare me for this."

His gray eyes burned with the heat of his words. "I thought after hearing of your vision that perhaps mine, too, came from the King of the Silver River. But whatever its source, I knew that the voice spoke the truth. And I knew as well that this was what I had been looking for-a chance to match my skill against power greater than any that I had ever faced and to see if I was indeed the best."

They stared silently at each other in the dark. What Jair saw in the other man's eyes frightened him-a determination, a strength of purpose-and something more. A madness. A frenzy, barely controlled and hard as iron.

"I want you to understand, Valeman," Garet Jax whispered. "I choose to come with you that I might find this vision. I shall be your protector as I have pledged that I would. I shall see you safely past whatever dangers threaten. I shall defend you even though I die doing so. But in the end it is the vision that I seek to test my skill against this dream!"

Pausing, he drew back from the Valeman. "I want you to understand that," he repeated softly.

Silent again, he waited. Jair nodded slowly. "I think I do."

Garet Jax looked out into the rain once more, withdrawing into himself. As if alone, he sat and watched the rain fall in steady sheets and said nothing. Then, after a time, he rose and slipped back into the shadows.

Jair Ohmsford sat alone for a long time after he was gone, wondering if he really did understand after all.

The next morning, when they came awake, Jair brought forth the vision crystal to discover what had become of Brin since last he had sought her out.

Rain and gray mist shrouded the forest as the members of the little company crowded about the Valeman. Holding the crystal before him so that all could see, he began to sing. Soft and eerie, the wishsong filled the dawn silence with its sound, rising up through the patter of the rain on the earth. Then light flared from within the crystal, fierce and sudden, and Brin's face appeared. She stared out at the members of the company, searching for something their own eyes could not see. There were mountains behind her, stark and barren as they rose against a dawn as gray and dismal as their own. Still Jair sang, following his sister's face as she turned suddenly.

Rone Leah and Allanon were there, haggard-looking faces lifted toward a deep, impenetrable forest.

Jair ceased to sing, and the vision was gone. He looked anxiously at the faces about him.

"Where is she?"

"The mountains are the Dragon's Teeth," Helt rumbled softly. "No mistaking them."

Garet Jax nodded and looked at Foraker. "The forest?""It's the Anar." The Dwarf rubbed his bearded chin. "She comes this way, she and the other two, but farther north, across the Rabb."

The Weapons Master gripped Jair's shoulder. "When you used the vision crystal before, the mountains were the same, I think the Dragon's Teeth. Your sister and the Druid were within them then; now they come out. What would they be doing there?"

There was a moment's silence, faces glancing one from the other.

"Paranor," Edain Elessedil said suddenly.

"The Druid's Keep," Jair agreed at once. "Allanon took Brin into the Druid's Keep." He shook his head. "But why would he do that?"

This time no one spoke. Garet Jax straightened. "We won't find out huddled here. The answers to such questions lie east."

They rose, and Jair slipped the vision crystal back into his tunic. The march into the Anar resumed.

16.

On the fourth day out of Culhaven, they arrived at the Wedge.

It was late afternoon, and the sky hung gray and oppressive across the land. Rain fell in steady sheets as it had fallen for three days past, and the Anar was sodden and cold. Trees stripped bare of autumn color shone black and stark through trailers of mist that slipped like wraiths across the deepening dusk. In the empty, sullen forest, there was only silence.

All day the land had been rising in a steady, gentle slope that lifted now into a ma.s.s of cliffs and ridgelines. The Silver River churned through their midst, swollen by the rains, cradled within a deep and winding gorge. Mountains rose up about the gorge and blocked it away with walls of cliffs that were sheer and stripped of trees and scrub. Shadowed by mist and coming night, the Silver River was soon lost from sight entirely.

It was the gorge that the Dwarves had named the Wedge.

The members of the little company came high upon its southern slope, heads bent against the wind, cloaks wrapped tightly about their bodies as the cold and the rain seeped through.

Silence hung over everything, the roar of the wind sweeping from their ears all sound save its own, and there was a deep and pervasive sense of solitude in each man's mind. The company walked through scrub and pine, making its way upward with slow, steady progress, feeling the whole of the skyline close down about it as the afternoon faded and night began to creep slowly in. Foraker led the way; this was his country and he was the most familiar with its tricks. Garet Jax followed, as black and hard as the trees they slipped through; then came Slanter, Jair, and Edain Elessedil. Giant Helt brought up the rear. No one spoke. In the stillness of their march, the minutes dragged by.

They had pa.s.sed over a gentle rise and come down into a stand of glistening spruce when Foraker suddenly stopped, listened, then motioned them all into the trees. With a word to Garet Jax, the Dwarf slipped from them and disappeared into the mist and rain.

They waited in silence for his return. He was gone a long time. When he finally reappeared, it was from a different direction entirely. Signaling for them to follow, he led them deep into the trees. There they knelt in a circle about him.

"Gnomes," he said quietly. Water ran from his bald head into his thick beard, curling in its ma.s.s. "At least a hundred. They've secured the bridge."

There was shocked silence. The bridge was in the middle of supposedly safe country-country that was protected by an entire army of Dwarves stationed at the fortress at Capaal. If there were Gnomes this far west and this close to Culhaven, what had befallen that army?

"Can we go around?" Garet Jax asked at once.

Foraker shook his head. "Not unless you want to lose at least three days. The bridge is the only pa.s.sage over the Wedge. If we don't cross here, we have to backtrack down out of these mountains and circle south through the wilderness."

Rain spattered down their faces in the silence that followed. "We don't have three days to waste," the Weapons Master said finally. "Can we get past the Gnomes?"

Foraker shrugged. "Maybe-when it's dark."

Garet Jax nodded slowly. "Take us up for a look."

They climbed into the rocks, circling through pine, spruce, and scrub, boulders damp and slick with rain, and mist and deepening night. Silent shadows, they worked their way ahead, ElbForaker in the lead as they crept cautiously into the gloom.

Then a flicker of firelight shone through the gray, its faint, lonely cast washed with rain. It slipped from beyond the rocks ahead of them. As one, they crouched from its eyes and crawled slowly on, up to where they could peek above the rim of a ridgeline and look down.

The sheer walls of the Wedge dropped away below, misted and rainswept as the night came down. Spanning the ma.s.sive drop was a st.u.r.dy trestle bridge built of timber and iron, fastened to the cliff rock at a narrows, and pinioned with Dwarf skill and engineering against the thrust and bite of the wind. On the near side of the bridge, a broad shelf ran back to the ridgeline, thinly forested and covered now by Gnome watchfires in the shelter of makeshift lees and canvas tents. Gnomes huddled everywhere-about fires in shadowed knots, within the cents silhouetted against the firelight, and along the shelf from ridgeline to bridge. On the far side of the gorge, nearly lost in the dark, a dozen more patrolled a narrow trail that ran back from the drop over a low rise to a broad, forested slope that fell away a hundred yards further on into the wilderness.

At both ends of the trestle bridge, Gnome Hunters stood watch.

The six who crouched upon the ridgeline studied the scene below for long moments, and then Garet Jax signaled for them all to withdraw into the shelter of a clump of boulders below.

Once there, the Weapons Master turned to Helt. "When it's dark, can we slip past?"

The big man looked doubtful. "Maybe as far as the bridge."

Garet Jax shook his head. "That's not far enough. We have to get beyond the sentries."

"One man might do it," Foraker said slowly. "Crawl under the bridge; crawl along the braces. If he were quick enough, he could slip across, kill the sentries and hold the bridge long enough for the others to follow."

"This is madness!" Slanter exclaimed suddenly, his rough face shoving into view. "Even if you manage somehow to make it to the far side-past those dozen or so sentries-the rest will be after you in a minute! How will you escape them?"

"Dwarf ingenuity," Foraker growled slowly. "We build things better than most, Gnome.

That bridge is rigged to collapse. Pull the pins on either side and the whole thing drops into the gorge."

"How long to pull the pins?" Garet Jax asked him.

"A minute, maybe two. It's been expected for some time that the Gnomes would try to flank Capaal." He shook his head. "It worries me, though, that they've done it now and no one's stopped them. They're bold to seize the bridge as openly as this. And the way they've camped suggests they aren't much concerned about being caught from the other direction." He shook his head once more. "I'm worried for the army."

Garet Jax brushed the rain from his eyes. "Worry about them another time." He glanced quickly at the others. "Listen carefully. When it's dark, Helt will lead us through the camp to the bridge. I'll cross underneath. When I dispose of the sentries, Elb and the Gnome will cross with the Valeman. Helt, you and the Elven Prince use long bows to keep the Gnomes on this side of the bridge until the pins ate pulled. Then cross when you're called and we'll drop the bridge."

Elb Foraker, Helt, and Edain Elessedil nodded wordlessly.

"There's more than a hundred Gnome Hunters down there!" Slanter pointed out heatedly.

"If anything goes wrong, we won't have a chance!"

Foraker looked coldly at the Gnome. "That shouldn't bother you, should it? After all, you can pretend you're with them."

Jair glanced quickly at the Gnome, but Slanter turned away without comment. Garet Jaxcame to his feet.

"No sound from here forward. Remember what we have to do.

They climbed back onto the ridgeline, then huddled patiently within the rocks and watched as the night descended. An hour slipped away. Then two. Still the Weapons Master kept them where they were. Darkness fell over the whole of the gorge, and the rain and the mist pa.s.sed across it like a veil. The cold began to deepen, settling through them with numbing bitterness. Below, the fires of the Gnome Hunters grew brighter against the black.

Then Garet Jax brought his arm up, and the little company rose. They slipped from the rocks like bits of scattered night and began their descent toward the Gnome encampment. They went one after another, Helt leading the way, slow and cautious as he picked his path downward.

The fires burned closer, and then voices became audible in the rush of wind and rain-low, guttural, and sounding of discomfort. The six forms crept past fire and tent, bent low within shadows that spread from rock and trees into the night. The company circled left about the encampment, and only Helt's night vision kept them from wandering off the drop.

The minutes slipped away, and the slow crawl through the enemy camp dragged on. Jair could smell food cooking as the wind blew the odor back in his face. He could hear the voices of the Gnomes, their laughter and grunts, and see the movement of the toughened bodies pa.s.sing in the faint light of the fires. He tried hard not even to breathe, willing himself to become one with the night. Then suddenly it occurred to him that if he wanted to, he really could become one with the night. He could use the wishsong to make himself invisible.

And then he realized that he had just stumbled on a better way to get them all across the bridge.

But how was he going to let the others know what it was?

They had crept to the edge of the gorge and were beyond the shelter of rocks and trees.

Only the open face of the cliff stretched ahead. They edged forward, crouched low against the night. There were no fires here, and so they stayed hidden in the mist and the rain. Ahead, the bulk of the trestle bridge loomed through the dark, its wooden beams glistening with rain.

Gnome voices came softly from above, brief and cryptic as the sentries hunched down within their cloaks and stared longingly at the warmth and cheer of the camp behind them. Silently, Helt took the company down beneath the bridge to where the supporting beams were anch.o.r.ed in the rock. Yards away, the empty depths of the Wedge opened in a monstrous chasm, wind howling through its cavernous stomach across the rock.

They crouched in a knot, and now Jair reached tentatively for Garet Jax. The hard face swung about. Jair pointed to the Weapons Master, then to himself, then to the sentries above them on the bridge. Garet Jax frowned. Jair pointed to his mouth and said soundlessly "Gnome"

and pointed again to each of them. The wishsong can make the two of us appear as Gnomes to the sentries and we can cross without being stopped, he was trying to say. Should he whisper it?

But no, the Weapons Master had said that no one was to speak. The wind would carry the sound of their voices; it was too dangerous. Again he made the same motions. The others crowded closer, glancing at one another uneasily as Jair continued to motion to Garet Jax.

Finally the Weapons Master seemed to understand. He hesitated for a moment, then took Jair's arm in his own, pulled him close and pointed to the others, then to the bridge above. Could the Valeman disguise them all? Jair hesitated; he hadn't considered that. Did he possess strength enough to carry the disguise that far? It was dark, raining, and they were all cloaked and hooded.

It would only be for moments. He nodded that he could.Garet Jax braced him firmly with both hands, gray eyes fixed upon his own. Then he motioned the others to follow them up. All understood. The Valeman was going to use the wishsong to get them across. They did not know how he was going to do that, but they had seen the power he commanded. Moreover, excepting only Slanter-and even he might have deferred to the other under those conditions-they trusted implicitly the judgment of Garet Jax. If he believed in Jair, so would they.

They rose in a knot from where they crouched hidden and walked boldly up the bluff rise coward the bridge. Before them, shadowed forms huddled in idle conversation. Aware suddenly of their approach, the Gnome sentries turned. There were only three. Jair was already singing; his voice blending into the wind in a harsh, guttural song that whispered of Gnomes. For an instant the sentries seemed to hesitate, and a few brought their weapons up guardedly. Jair pushed harder, probing with the wishsong to make them all appear as Slanter. The Gnome tracker would surely think I'm mad now, he thought fleetingly. Still he sang.

Weapons lowered then, and the sentries stepped aside. A changing of the watch? A relief for those on the far side of the gorge? Jair and his companions left them wondering, pa.s.sing through their midst with faces lowered and cloaks wrapped close. They trooped onto the bridge, their booted feet thudding softly on the heavy wooden planks. Still Jair sang, shading them all in Gnome disguise.

Then abruptly his voice faltered, drained by the use to which he had put it. But they were past the line of sentries now, lost in a shroud of mist and rain to any eyes that might follow them.

They reached the center of the bridge, the wind howling past them in stinging swipes. Hastily Garet Jax motioned for Helt and Edain Elessedil to drop back. For just an instant Jair had a fleeting glimpse of Slanter's face, filled with wonder as he stared at the Valeman. Then Garet Jax motioned both of them behind him, and with Elb Foraker at his side started forward once more.

They emerged from rain and night at the far side of the bridge, little more than hooded shadows to the Gnomes who kept watch there. Jair's throat tightened. This time there could be no wishsong to see them safely past; there were too many. A gathering of faces turned at their approach. For a few uncertain moments, the sentries simply stared at the figures who came at them, surprised by their appearance, yet certain that only Gnomes could come from the encampment they knew to hold the far cliff. Then before surprise could turn to alarm, or size and shape could properly register, Garet Jax and Foraker were upon them. Short sword and long knife glistened in the night. Half a dozen Gnomes lay dead before the others even realized what was happening. Their attackers swept into their midst, and now shouts of alarm broke wildly from their throats, calling to those on the far side.