«Rone, wait!» Brin cried out frantically.
Spider Gnomes raced past her on all sides, chittering madly. A few reached for her with their hairy limbs, their crooked fingers fastening on her clothing and tearing at it. Wildly, she lashed out at them, breaking free and running on to catch the others. But there were too many. They were all about her, grasping. In desperation, she used the wishsong; the strange, numbing cry flung them back from her with howls of dismay.
Then she fell, sprawling face forward in the tall grass, dirt flying into her eyes and mouth. Something heavy sprang atop her, a mass of hair and sinew wrapping itself tightly about her. She lost control of herself in that instant, fear and loathing consuming her so that she could no longer reason. She staggered to her hands and knees, but the unseen thing still clung to her. She used the wishsong with all the fury that she could muster. It burst from her throat like an explosion, and the thing on her back simply flew apart, shredded with the force of the magic.
Brin whirled then and saw what she had done. A Spider Gnome lay broken and lifeless against the rocks behind her, curiously small and fragile–looking in death. She stared at the shattered form and for one brief instant she felt an odd, frightening sense of glee.
Then she thrust the feeling from her. Voiceless, horrorstricken, she turned and ran blindly into the smoke, all sense of direction lost.
«Rone!» she screamed.
She fled into the wall of mist that rose before her and disappeared from view.
Chapter Thirty–Six
It was as if the world had fallen away.
There was only the mist. Moon, stars, and sky had vanished. Forest trees, mountain peaks, ridgelines, valleys, rocks, and streams were all gone. Even the ground over which Brin ran was a dim and shapeless thing, its grasses a part of the shifting gray haze. She was alone in the vast and empty void into which she had fled.
She stumbled to a weary halt, her arms folding tightly against her body, the sound of her breathing harsh and ragged in her ears. For a long time, she stood within the haze and did not move, only vaguely aware even now that she had become turned about in her flight from the bottomland and run into Olden Moor. Her thoughts scattered like blown leaves, and though she snatched frantically at them, trying to hold them back and gather them together, they were lost almost instantly. A single clear, hard image remained fixed before her eyes — a Spider Gnome, twisted, broken, and lifeless.
Her eyes closed against the light and her hands clasped into fists of rage. She had done what she had said she would never do. She had taken another human, life, wrenching it away in a frenzy of fear and anger, using the wishsong to do it. Allanon had warned her that it could happen. She could hear the whisper of his caution. «Valegirl, the wishsong is power like nothing that I have ever seen. The magic can give life, and the magic can take life away.»
«But I would never use it…»
«The magic uses all, dark child — even you!»
It was the Grimpond’s warning and not Allanon’s that mocked her now, and she thrust it from her mind.
She straightened. It was not as if she had not known somewhere deep within that she might someday be forced to use the wishsong’s magic as Allanon had warned. She had recognized the possibility from the moment he had shown her the extent of its power in that simple demonstration of the trees intertwined in the forests of the Runne Mountains. It was not as if the death of the Spider Gnome came as some shocking and unexpected revelation.
It was the fact that some part of her had enjoyed what she had done, that some part of her had actually taken pleasure in the killing, that horrified her.
Her throat tightened. She remembered the sudden, furtive sense of glee she had felt on seeing the Gnome’s shattered form, realizing that it was the wishsong that had destroyed it. She had reveled for that single instant in the power of the magic…
What kind of monster had she let herself become?
Her eyes snapped open. She had not let herself become anything. The Grimpond was right: You did not use the magic — the magic used you. The magic made you what it would. She could not fully control it. She had discovered that in the encounter at the Rooker Line Trading Center with the men from west of Spanning Ridge and had promised herself that she would never lose control of the magic like that again. But when the Spider Gnomes had come at her as she fled through their encampment, such control as she had thought to exercise had quickly evaporated under the flood of her emotions and the confusion and urgency of the moment. She had used the magic without any real presence of mind at all, but had simply reacted, wielding the power as Rone Leah would wield his sword, a terrible, destructive weapon.
And she had enjoyed it.
Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. She could argue that the enjoyment had been momentary and tinged with guilt and that her horror at its being — would prevent it from reoccurring. But the truth could not be avoided. The magic had proven to be dangerously unpredictable. It had affected her behavior in ways she would not have thought possible. That made it a threat not only to her but to those close to her, and she must guard carefully against that threat.
She knew that she could not turn aside from her journey eastward to the Maelmord. Allanon had given her a trust, and she knew that, despite everything that had happened and all that argued against it, she must fulfill that trust. She believed that even now. But even though she was bound by the need she saw, she could yet choose her own code of being. Allanon had intended that the wishsong be put to a single use — to gain Brin entry into the pit. She must find a way therefore to keep the magic to herself until it was time to call upon it for that intended use. Only once more would she risk using the magic. Determined, she brushed the tears from her eyes. It would be as she had sworn. The magic would use her no more.
She straightened. Now she must find her way back to the others. She stumbled forward again, groping ahead through the gloom, her direction uncertain. Trailers of mist slipped past her, and in their meandering movement she was surprised to discover images. They crowded about her, drawn from the haze into her mind and out again. The images began to take the shapes and forms of memories resurrected from her childhood. Her mother and her father passed before her, larger in memory than in life in their warmth and security, gentle figures that sheltered and loved. Jair was there. Shadows slipped through the strange, empty half–light, ghosts of the past. Allanon might be one of those ghosts, come from death to the living. She looked to find him, half–expecting…
And suddenly, shockingly, he was there. Come from the mist like the shade he now was, he stood barely a dozen yards distant, gray haze all about him, swirling like the Hadeshorn stirred to life.
«Allanon?» she whispered.
Yet she hesitated. The shape belonged to Allanon, but it was the mist — only the mist.
The shadow that was Allanon slipped back into the gloom — gone, as if it had never really been. Gone…
And yet there had been something, after all. Not Allanon, but something else.
Swiftly, she glanced about, searching for the thing, sensing somehow that it was out there, watching her. Images danced again before her eyes, born on the trailers of mist, reflections of her memory. The mist gave them life, a magic that entranced and lured. She stood transfixed in their wake and wondered momentarily if she were indeed going mad. Such imaginings as she was experiencing were certainly indicative of madness, and yet she felt herself clear–headed and sure. It was the mist that sought to seduce her, teasing her with its musings, playing with her memories as if they were its own. It was the mist — or something in the mist!