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.
Chapter Sixteen
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 mass 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 passed 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 mass. «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 passage 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, Elb Foraker 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.