“Tell me why you come here, Dark Uncle?” Allanon’s shade whispered.
Walker felt the chill burn away as his determination caught fire. “I need tell you nothing,” he replied. “You are not Allanon. You are only the Grimpond.”
Allanon’s visage shimmered and faded in the half-light, replaced by Walker’s own. The Grimpond emitted a hollow laugh. “I am you, Walker Boh. Nothing more and nothing less. Do you recognize yourself?”
His face went through a flurry of transformations—Walker as a child, as a boy, as a youth, as a man. The images came and went so quickly that Walker could barely register them. It was somehow terrifying to watch the phases of his life pass by so quickly. He forced himself to remain calm.
“Will you speak with me, Grimpond?” he asked.
“Will you speak with yourself?” came the reply.
Walker took a deep breath. “I will. But for what purpose should I do so? There is nothing to talk about with myself. I already know all that I have to say.”
“Ah, as do I, Walker. As do I.”
The Grimpond shrank until it was the same size as Walker. It kept his face, taunting him with it, letting it reveal flashes of age that would one day claim it, giving it a beaten cast as if to demonstrate the futility of his life.
“I know why you have come to me,” the Grimpond said suddenly. “I know the private-most thoughts of your mind, the little secrets you would keep even from yourself. There need be no games between us. Walker Boh. You are surely my equal in the playing of them, and I have no wish to do battle with you again. You have come to ask where you must go to find the Black Elfstone. Fair enough. I will tell you.”
Immediately, Walker mistrusted the shade. The Grimpond never volunteered anything without twisting it. He nodded in response, but said nothing.
“How sad you seem, Walker,” soothed the shade. “No jubilation at my submission, no elation that you will have what you want? Is it so difficult then to admit that you have dispensed with pride and self-resolution, that you have forsaken your lofty principles, that you have been won over after all to the Druid cause?”
Walker stiffened in spite of himself. “You misread matters, Grimpond. Nothing has been decided.”
“Oh, yes, Dark Uncle! Everything has been decided! Make no mistake. Your life weaves out before my eyes as a thread straight and undeviating, the years a finite number, their course determined. You are caught in the snare of the Druid’s words. His legacy to Brin Ohmsford becomes your own, whether you would have it so or not. You have been shaped!”
“Tell me, then, of the Black Elfstone,” Walker tried.
“All in good time. Patience, now.”
The words died away into the stillness, the Grimpond shifting within its covering of mist. Daylight had faded into darkness, the gray turned black, the moon and stars shut away by the valley’s thick haze. Yet there was light where Walker stood, a phosphorescence given off by the waters beneath the air on which the Grimpond floated, a dull and shallow glow that played wickedly through the night.
“So much effort given over to escaping the Druids,” the Grimpond said softly. “What foolishness.” Walker’s face dissipated and was replaced by his father’s. His father spoke. “Remember, Walker, that we are the bearers of Allanon’s trust. He gave it to Brin Ohmsford as he lay dying, to be passed from one generation to the next, to be handed down until it was needed, sometime far, far in the distant future...”
His father’s visage leered at him. “Perhaps now?”
Images flared to life above him, born on the air as if tapestries threaded on a frame, woven in the fabric of the mist. One after another they appeared, brilliant with color, filled with the texture and depth of real life.
Walker took a step back, startled. He saw himself in the images, anger and defiance in his face, his feet positioned on clouds above the cringing forms of Par and Wren and the others of the little company who had gathered at the Hadeshorn to meet with the shade of Allanon. Thunder rolled out of a darkness that welled away into the skies overhead, and lightning flared in jagged streaks. Walker’s voice was a hiss amid the rumble and the flash, the words his own, spoken as if out of his memory. I would sooner cut off my hand than see the Druids come again! And then he lifted his arm to reveal that his hand, indeed, was gone.
The vision faded, then sharpened anew. He saw himself again, this time on a high, empty ridgeline that looked out across forever. The whole world spread away below him, the nations and their Races, the creatures of land and water, the lives of everyone and everything that were. Wind whipped at his black robes and whistled ferociously in his ears. There was a girl with him. She was woman and child both, a magical being, a creature of impossible beauty. She stunned him with the intensity of her gaze, depthless black eyes from which he could not turn away. Her long, silver hair flowed from her head in a shimmering mass. She reached for him, needing his balance to keep her footing on the treacherous rock—and he thrust her violently away. She fell, tumbling into the abyss below, soundless as she shrank from sight, silver hair fading into a ribbon of brightness and then into nothing at all.
Again, the vision faded, then returned. He saw himself a third time, now in a castle fortress that was empty of life and gray with disuse. Death stalked him relentlessly, creeping through walls and along corridors, cold fingers probing for signs of his life. He felt the need to run from it, knew that he must if he were to survive—and yet he couldn’t. He stood immobile, letting Death approach him, reach for him, close about him. As his life ended, the cold filled him, and he saw that a dark, robed shape stood behind him, holding him fast, preventing him from fleeing. The shape bore the face of Allanon.
The visions disappeared, the colors faded, and the gray mist returned, shifting sluggishly in the lake’s phosphorescent glow. The Grimpond brought its robed arms downward slowly, and the lake hissed and spit with dissatisfaction. Walker Boh flinched from the spray that cascaded down upon him.
“What say you, Dark Uncle?” the Grimpond whispered. It bore Walker’s pale face once more.
“That you play games still,” Walker said quietly. “That you show lies and half-truths designed to taunt me. That you have shown me nothing of the Black Elf stone.”
“Have I not?” The Grimpond shimmered darkly. “Is it all a game, do you think? Lies and half-truths only?” The laugh was mirthless. “You must think what you will, Walker Boh. But I see a future that is hidden from you, and it would be foolish to believe I would show you none of it. Remember, Walker. I am you, the telling of who and what you are—just as I am for all who come to speak with me.”
Walker shook his head. “No, Grimpond, you can never be me. You can never be anyone but who you are—a shade without identity, without being, exiled to this patch of water for all eternity. Nothing you do, no game you play, can ever change that.”
The Grimpond sent spray hissing skyward, anger in its voice. “Then go from me, Dark Uncle! Take with you what you came for and go!” The visage of Walker disappeared and was replaced by a death’s head. “You think my fate has nothing to do with you? Beware! There is more of me in you than you would care to know!”
Robes flared wide, throwing shards of dull light into the mist. “Hear me, Walker! Hear me! You wish to know of the Black Elfstone? Then, listen! Darkness hides it, a black that light can never penetrate, where eyes turn a man to stone and voices turn him mad! Beyond, where only the dead lie, is a pocket carved with runes, the signs of time’s passing. Within that pocket lies the Stone!”
The death’s head disappeared into nothingness, and only the robes remained, hanging empty against the mist. “I have given you what you wish, Dark Uncle,” the shade whispered, its voice filled with loathing. “I have done so because the gift will destroy you. Die, and you will end your cursed line, the last of it! How I long to see that happen! Go, now! Leave me! I bid you swift journey to your doom!”