The Gnome yanked him about. “What did you think you were doing back there?”
Jair was still dazed. “I couldn’t let him…
“Off to the rescue with your tricks, were you?” the other cut him short. “You don’t understand anything—you know that? You really don’t understand anything! What is it that you think we’re doing here? You think we’re playing some kind of game?” Slanter was livid. “There’s choices been made long before this about living and dying, boy! You can’t change that. You don’t have the right! All of the others—all of them—died because that was the way it had to be! That was the way they wanted it! And why do you think that was?”
The Valeman shook his head. “I…”
“Because of you! They died because they believed in what it was that you had come here to do—every last one of them! Even I would have…” He caught himself and took a deep breath. “It would have done a lot of good if you’d gone dashing to the rescue back there and gotten yourself killed, now wouldn’t it? A whole lot of sense that would have made!”
He wheeled Jair about and shoved him ahead into the cave. “Enough time’s been wasted on teaching you things you ought to know already—time we don’t have! I’m all that’s left, and I’m not going to be much help to you if the walkers find us now. The others—they were the real protectors, looking out for me as much as for you!”
The Valeman slowed and half turned. “What’s happened to Garet, Slanter?”
The other shook his head darkly. “He fights his promised battle—just as he wished.” He pushed Jair again and hurried him on. “Find your well quickly, boy. Find it and do what you came here to do. Make all of this madness count for something!”
Jair ran with him and said nothing more, his face flushed with shame. He understood the Gnome’s anger. Slanter was right. He had acted without thinking—without consideration for what the others of the little company had given up for him. His intentions might have been good, but his judgment had been poor indeed.
Ahead, the shadows fell away in a haze of graying sunlight that poured down through a massive crevice in the mountain stone. In the floor of the cavern, caught in the half-light, foul black water bubbled up from out of the rock in a broad Basin, pumped in some impossible way through thousands of feet of stone from the depths of the earth. Gathering and churning, it gushed through a slot at one end of the basin into a worn channel, then poured through—an opening in the mountain wall to tumble to the canyons below, where it began its long journey west to become the Silver River.
Gnome and Valeman slowed cautiously, eyes darting through gloom and hazy spray to the deep niches and corners of the cavern’s dark ends. Nothing moved. Only the flow of the blackened waters gave evidence of life, a terrible rush of poison that steamed and boiled as it lifted from the wellspring. All about, the stench of the Maelmord hung like a shroud.
Jair went forward once more, eyes fixed on the basin that was Heaven’s Well. How perverse that name seemed to him now as he gazed upon the fouled waters. Silver River no more, he thought dismally, and he wondered how even the magic of the old man could change it back to what it had once been. Slowly, he reached into his tunic front and his fingers closed about the tiny pouch of Silver Dust that he had carried with him all through his long journey east. He slipped the drawstrings free and peered within. The dust lay gathered, like ordinary sand.
And if it were only sand… ?
“Quit wasting time!” Slanter snapped.
Jair moved to the edge of the basin, conscious of the sludge that choked the well’s dark waters and of the reek. It could not be only sand! He swallowed against that fear, remembering Brin…
“Throw it!” Slanter cried angrily.
Jair’s hand jerked up, flinging the Silver Dust from its pouch, scattering it in a wide sweep across the surface of the fouled well. The tiny grains flew from the darkness of their container; and in the light of the cavern they seemed suddenly to sparkle and shimmer. They touched the waters and flared to life. A sheet of brilliant silver fire burst from the dark well. Jair and Slanter recoiled, shielding their eyes with their hands, blinded by the glare.
“The magic!” Jair cried.
Hissing and boiling, the waters of Heaven’s Well exploded skyward, raining down across the length and breadth of the cavern, showering the two who crouched at the basin’s walls. Then a rush of clean air seemed to spring to life, born out of the shower of water. Gnome and Valeman stared in awe and disbelief. Before them, the waters of Heaven’s Well bubbled clear and fresh from the mountain rock. The stench and the black, poisoned color were gone. The Silver River was clean once more.
Quickly, Jair took from around his neck the vision crystal and its silver chain. There was no hesitation now. He moved back to the basin and climbed to a small outcropping of rock that overlooked it. He heard again in his mind the King of the Silver River telling him what he must do if he were to save Brin.
His hand tightened on the crystal, and he stared downward into the waters of the basin. All of the weariness and pain seemed to seep away in that single instant.
He threw the crystal and the chain into the basin’s depths. There was a blinding flash of light—a flash greater than that created by the scattering of the Silver Dust—and the whole of the cavern seemed to explode in white fire. Jair dropped to his knees in fright, hearing Slanter’s harsh cry behind him, and for an instant he thought that something had gone terribly wrong. But then the light fell away into the surface of the basin’s waters, and the waters became as smooth and clear as glass.
The answer—show me the answer!
An image spread slowly across the mirrored surface, shimmering like a thing of transparency, then tightening. A tower room appeared, cavernous and flooded with musted, graying light, and there was an oppression that was almost palpable. Jair shrank from what he felt as he watched the room broaden and begin to draw him in.
And then the face of his sister appeared…
Brin Ohmsford felt the eyes looking at her, seeing all that she was and would become, then reaching to draw her close. Though wrapped within layers of magic as the power of the Ildatch built within her, she sensed the eyes and her own snapped up.
Stay from me! she howled. I am the dark child!
But that tiny part of her that the magic had not subverted knew the eyes and sought their help. Trapped thoughts broke from their shackles within her mind, fleeing like sheep from wolves that hunted, crying out and striving to reach shelter. She saw them, and the discovery filled her with fury. She reached for the scattered thoughts as they fled and she crushed them, one by one. Childhood, home, parents, friends—the disparate pieces of what she had been before she had found what she could be—she crushed them all.
Her voice found release then in a wail of anguish, and even the aged walls of the dark tower shook with the force of her keening. What had she done? There was pain within her now, brought about by the harm she had caused. A brief moment’s insight flooded through her, and she heard the echo of the Grimpond’s prophecy. It was her own death, indeed, that she had come into the Maelmord to find that she had found! But it was not the death that she had supposed. It was the death of self through her entrapment by the magic! She was destroying herself!
But even in the horror of that realization, she could not release the Ildatch. She was caught up in the feel of the magic’s power as it built and expanded like flood waters gathering. Before her, she held the book in a death grip, hearing its dispassionate voice whisper in encouragement and promise. Her pain was forgotten. The eyes were swept away. There was only the voice. She listened to its words, unable not to, and the world began to open up before her…