Catching her father’s eye upon her, she gave him a wan smile. “To come so close to finding her . . . and fail. Yachne knew where my mother is.”
He nodded. “It is hard,” he said. “But we will not give up.”
“Here and not-here,” Alon repeated, puzzling aloud. “Stone that is not-stone.” He shook his head. “What can it mean?”
None of them could think of an answer. But Alon refused to give up, worrying at the riddle as though it were a bone and he a hound. “Here . . .” He glanced around the clearing. “What could be here, and yet not-here? Stone and not-stone? Stone … stone is rock, it is granite, it is limestone, and quartz . . .” He trailed off, staring down at the crystal he wore. “Crystal!” he exclaimed. “It is stone, yet not-stone. Could that be what Yachne meant?”
All of them turned to survey their surroundings in the growing light. “There is no stone except that one,” Jervon said, finally, pointing to the monstrous boulder. “And that appears grey, not crystal.”
The Adept rose and walked over to the stone. Lydryth walked beside him, and together they gazed upon it. “Here and not-here,” Alon said. “Stone and not-stone. It sounds rather like those mirror Gates we used, does it not?”
It was obvious that he was having some insight that Lydryth could not follow. “But that stone is nothing like this one,” she said, touching the crystal talisman he wore with her fingers, tapping it with a nail. It rang, ever so faintly, and Alon, who had been staring at the huge rock, gasped.
“Do that again!” he commanded, holding the crystal out to her. “And match the note with your voice, as you did once before!”
Puzzled, she obeyed him, making the crystal ting, then attempting to match the note.
“I see it!” Alon exclaimed, wide-eyed. “Lydryth, look at the stone as you do so!”
Again she sounded the crystal, echoed it with a sung note. And, before her eyes, the great stone grew translucent!
She could see within it … and, in the crystalline depths, there was a pallet, and upon the pallet, a human shape!
“It is a Gate!” she exclaimed in astonishment. By that time the others, arrested by their excited voices, had come over to discover what chanced.
Once more Alon performed his demonstration, and this time it was Jervon’s turn to grow wide-eyed. “That is Elys!” he gasped. “That is what I saw in the Seeing Stone! I knew I would recognize it if I ever saw it again!”
“We must break the illusion that this is a solid boulder,” Joisan said. “We must link and attempt to open the Gate.”
“How?” Kerovan asked. “You and Alon seem to be the ones who have done so in the past.”
“I believe we should link hands and Power,” Joisan said. “Then pour our Power into Lydryth. The crystal responds to sound, and she is our singer. Her voice is the key that will unlock this Gate.” The Wise Woman glanced at Alon, and he nodded agreement.
So it was that they linked hands, concentrated. Within moments Lydryth began to feel light-headed, as though she were some kind of rod that was being used to conduct a thunderbolt. Opening her mouth, she sang-and her voice rang out with greater volume and clarity than she had ever possessed before.
Slowly, the boulder cleared again . . . became crystal . . . then became mist. With Jervon close behind them, the group took a step forward, straight into that mist.
They were in a place, and it was filled with light-but it was a Dark light, as though Shadow had been turned to flame, and given substance. The place had no horizons, no boundaries. There was no sky … nothing. Their feet rested on something, but it was difficult to tell what. Lydryth swallowed as she was assailed by sudden vertigo. It was extremely disconcerting to have no reference points.
Except one. Before her was the pallet, and on it, Elys lay sleeping. Lydryth saw the gentle mound of her belly beneath her robe. “She has been here the entire time,” Joisan whispered.
“But why?” Kerovan asked. “Why take her and confine her? If these Adepts at Garth Howell are so powerful, and yet evil enough to do this, then why not simply do away with her?”
“Because to murder a woman who is carrying is such a great transgression that even the masters and mistresses of Garth
Howell would not dare to do so,” Hyana replied. “Gunnora is a powerful spirit who protects the unborn, and those who carry them. They dared not harm Elys outright. They feared Gunnora’s reprisal too much.”
Lydryth walked forward, and they followed her. The songsmith’s eyes adjusted more to the strangeness of this Place, and she could see lines of Dark light arcing over her sleeping mother’s form, as though she lay within a cage.
“Beyond the cage, beneath the flesh,” Alon whispered. “The Seventh Defender ofArvon sleeps before us.”
“How can we free her?” Hyana asked. “I know of no spell to undo this kind of sorcery.”
“Nor do I,” Joisan admitted.
“Landisi cannot help us here,” Kerovan said. “This Place is outside our world, and not within any that he ever trod.”
Lydryth scarcely heard her family’s comments. She stared at those lines of Dark light. And the longer she stared at those lines of Dark light arcing over the pallet, the more they seemed to her to akin to harpstrings. As though they could be … plucked. Music. Music had been the key to so many of the spells they had encountered. . . .
“Alon . . .,” the minstrel whispered hoarsely, “lend me all your strength!”
“You have it,” he replied, and a moment later his fingers tightened around hers. Power flooded her… poured into her in a wave of warmth.
Humming, the songsmith formed in her mind the image of a giant finger pick. Concentrating fiercely, she forced herself to see it, glimpse it hovering over those “strings.”
Then, with an effort that made her break out in a sweat, she moved her giant mind-pick downward, made it pluck one of those “strings.”
A sound so loud it staggered her boomed out. Lydryth waited, but the cage remained in place. She concentrated again, and “plucked” another string. Then another.
“That’s three,” Alon said. “One of the numbers of Power.”
“What are the others?” she asked. “Three did not work, as you can see.” “Seven,” he said. “And nine.”
“Seven,” she said. “Seven Defenders . . . and, Alon”-her voice grew more excited, as she swiftly counted-“there are seven ‘strings’!”
“Try it,” he urged.
Shaking with the effort it took, the songsmith plucked the strings steadily . . . until finally all seven had been sounded.
Nothing happened. Lydryth fought back tears of disappointment.
“Seven … it must be related to seven,” Alon whispered. “It cannot be coincidence. Spells are often constructed with repetitions of certain numbers, words, sounds. . . .”
“Seven Defenders, seven strings . . . ,” Lydryth whispered. “Seven sevens . . .”
“Try it,” Alon urged again.
Lydryth began. Wielding the huge “mind-pick” was taking an increasing toll of her strength . . . and of the borrowed Power she was getting from Alon. The songsmith knew she was draining him every bit as surely as Yachne had planned to. His hand in hers began to tremble.
And still she sounded the notes. Seven different notes, in a complex pattern, choosing them nearly at random . . . but aware all the time that a melody was being shaped. A melody of love, of longing. A child’s love for her mother, a husband’s love for his wife … all of that and more she forged into that melody.
Fourteen . . . twenty-one . . . thirty-five . . . Blackness was nibbling at the edges of her vision, like a voracious rasti. Forty-two . . . forty-nine!
With a suddenness that made them all blink and stagger, the lines of Dark light vanished!
Alon and Lydryth stumbled forward; then Alon caught her arm, held her back. “Let your father go first,” he whispered.
The songsmith hesitated, then halted, knowing the Adept was right.
Slowly, reverently, Elys’s lord approached the pallet; then his fingers went out, stroked his sleeping wife’s cheek. “Elys . . .” he whispered. “Oh, my heart . . . my lady . . .” Gently, he kissed her forehead, her lips; then Jervon raised her hand, prisoned safely within his own, to his face. A tear broke free, ran down his stubbled cheek, to trickle at last over her finger. At that touch, the sleeping woman’s eyelids fluttered, then lifted. She gazed up at him, bewildered. “Jervon …” she whispered. “My lord . . .”
“My lady,” he murmured, in a hushed, ragged voice. “Oh, Elys!” Quickly, he scooped her up into his arms, and, when Kerovan would have aided him, unsure that his friend was up to bearing her weight, shook his head fiercely at the other.