“You are not trying!” he said fiercely. “You must try! Concentrate! See the hillside!”
She fixed her eyes on the spot, feeling them throb and burn from the glare overhead. The outlines of the vegetation began to shimmer slightly-or was it her imagination?
“I cannot….” She was shaking now, feeling a different sort of fear seize her.
“You must believe! You can, I swear it by my life, you can do it!”
She focused, stared until her vision blurred, tears of pain nearly blinding her as she forced herself not to blink. See a hillside-there is a hillside, she insisted to herself. Vegetation swam before her; then there was something . . . something reddish showing through. . . .
“I see . . .” She was forced to blink, then it was gone. She sagged back against his chest, limp with defeat. “I cannot, Alon!” she pleaded.
“You can,” he insisted, supporting her, though she could feel him trembling with weariness. “Lydryth … try humming while you look.”
She craned her neck to fix him with an incredulous glance, but he only nodded firmly. “Go on … try.”
Lydryth turned back to the tangle of shadowy vines, then began to hum, scarcely aware of what tune she had chosen. The greyness swam before her dazzled eyes, and she blinked to clear her vision, concentrating. …
As if it had always been there before her, she now saw a hill with a trail leading straight up it, narrow and precipitous between jagged boulders!
Lydryth gasped, and with the interruption of the music, the grey curtain of vines returned. “Alon!” she whispered. “I saw it!”
“Good,” he said, not at all surprised, and released her. “Your gift must be linked to music, Lydryth. When you tamed Monso, you sang. When you fooled the witch back in Es City, you were humming, were you not?”
She cast her mind back to events that now seemed years- instead of mere days-ago. “Yes, I was,” she said after a moment. “My mother’s lullaby . . .” She regarded him, completely bewildered. “But… Alon … how can this be? I have never heard of such a talent!”
“Neither have I,” he admitted. “But, now that I think of it. much of magic is dependent upon sounds-chants, incantations, even songs. Remember the crystal Gate? The spell to open it depended on the correct note being sung!”
She nodded, bemused. “This discovery explains … much,” she said slowly.
“At the moment, our concern must be escaping from this place and tracing Yachne,” he reminded her. Quickly, he stripped off his shirt, then used its sleeves to tie it snugly over Monso’s eyes. “If he cannot see where he is going, I do not believe the illusion will prevail for him,” he told the songsmith. “This would not work for one of us, for our minds are more complex, and thus not so easily fooled. Are you ready, my lady?”
Lydryth nodded firmly. “I am.”
“Can you see the hillside?”
She summoned music, hummed between parched lips, then nodded as the trail took shape before her eyes. “Then… after you, my lady,” Alon said, in his cracked, rasping voice. He bowed, waving her past with a courtly gesture. The contrast between his formal manner and his appearance made Lydryth shake her head. His face, with its livid weal caused by the web-rider’s slash, was blistered and seared by the heat, and his bare chest and shoulders were streaked with dust and muddy sweat. For a moment she wondered if he had gone quite mad-he certainly appeared demented.
But no, his eyes were sane. He believed in her. The least she could do was to believe in herself. Taking a deep breath, Lydryth hummed steadily, and they started up the long, rocky trail. The songsmith concentrated on filling her mind with the music. She was so intent upon her task that she did not feel the earth-tremor until it struck, making her stagger, making her gasp-
-whereupon, instantly, she was surrounded by bushes and dead vines. A thousand thorns jabbed her. Only by the grace of fortune were her eyes spared that assault.
“Concentrate!” she heard Alon’s shout from behind her.
Already she was summoning the music again, and the feel of the entangling growth was gone. She took a step forward, felt no obstruction, took another, and only then dared open her eyes. The hillside lay before her.
Lydryth slogged her way toward the top of the hill, alert for more quakes, kicking loose stones from her path, humming like an insect gone mad.
“You may stop now, and breathe,” Alon’s rasping whisper reached her. “We are beyond the illusion-thicket.”
The songsmith halted, regarding her arms with a silent thanksgiving to Gunnora that she had not panicked. Dozens of small pinpricks oozed a single droplet of scarlet apiece. Cautiously, she explored her grimy face with even dirtier fingertips, discovering several more stabs.
“For an illusion,” she said to Alon as he came up beside her, “that was all too real.” She held out her arm.
He nodded grimly. “At least we are past. You have learned a valuable lesson today, Lady. When one is working any kind of spell or counterspell, it can be disaster to let one’s concentration break. The first year or so as an apprentice is spent learning to focus and not to be distracted. You had to master that lesson in the space of minutes.” “Be assured it is a lessoning I shall not soon forget.”
He stepped up beside her, and together they made their way to the crest of the hillside. As weary as they were, it took them a long time, and they were gasping when they reached it. There they halted, gazing down at what now lay before them.
A short walk beyond, the blighted land ended abruptly in a chasm so deep and so black that Lydryth could not discern any bottom to it. A wall of thick grey mist seemed to rise out of the opening, roiling and drifting as though blown by a wind, though she could feel none. The mist extended before them, as high as she could see in each direction, blocking their sight of what, if anything, lay beyond.
They had reached the end of their road… they could go no farther.
Tears of despair filled the songsmith’s eyes, and she sank weakly to her knees, pressing both hands to her broken lips. Sobs shook her, wrenched her shoulders. To have come all this way, only to have it end thus. To have come all this way for nothing!
Alon sighed, dropping to sit beside her. His bare shoulders bowed forward as he buried his face in his hands, obviously as shaken as she.
“We shall have to go back,” Lydryth whispered, after a while. It was either that or die right here, and she wasn’t. . . quite . . . ready to die. “Perhaps there is another way. . . .”
He shook his head, then, with an effort that was palpable, straightened his shoulders. Retrieving his shirt from Monso’s head, he pulled it on, buttoning it with none-too-steady fingers. “We cannot,” he said. “Our way out lies there.” He pointed across the chasm. “That mist hides the real Arvon. We must find some way to cross over the chasm … to bridge that gap.”
Lydryth stared at him, certain that he was now completely bereft of his wits. “But… how?”
“We must make a bridge.”
“There is no way! We have nothing to build with-even if a bridge could span that void, which I do not for one moment believe!”
“It is the only way out,” he maintained stubbornly. “Arvon-the real Arvon-is there.” He pointed. “I can sense it. By the Sword Arm of Karthen the Fair, I can smell it! Cannot you?”
She gave him a sideways glance, then, as he regarded her steadily, ventured a sniff. “I smell . . . ,” she whispered. “I smell flowers! And water! Is that another illusion?”
“No,” he said. “It is real. The other hillside is there. We must cross the chasm to reach it, Lydryth. We must make a bridge.”
“Out of what? We have nothing!”
He did not answer, only unfastened the last water flask from Monso’s saddle. “Drink,” he said, holding it and the packet of food out to her. “And eat. Force yourself. You will need all your strength for what is about to come.”
Bewildered, she did as he bade. Scenting the water, Monso whickered pleadingly, but this time the Adept shook his head at the stallion. “I am sorry, old son,” he said, giving the Keplian a comforting pat, “but if we succeed, your thirst will be eased very quickly.”
“And if we fail?” asked Lydryth, giving him a sidelong glance. She could not imagine what he had in mind.
“If we fail,” he said grimly, “then neither thirst nor hunger will torture us for much longer, so the result will be the same.”