She didn’t like being followed, and she was going to put an end
to it. They would change the direction of their travel, disguise
their trail, backtrack once or twice, ride all night if need be, and
lose their shadow once and for all.
She took her hand away from the bag and her eyes were fierce.
Sometimes you had to make your own luck.
Walker Boh entered the Hall of Kings on cat’s feet, passing
noiselessly between the massive stone sentinels, stepping
through the cavern mouth into the blackness beyond. He paused
there, letting his eyes adjust. There was light, a faint greenish
phosphorescence given off by the rock. He would not need to
light a torch to find the way.
A picture of the caverns flashed momentarily in his mind, a
reconstruction of what he expected to find. Cogline had drawn
it for him on paper once, long ago. The old man had never been
into the caverns himself, but others of the Druids had, Allanon
among them, and Cogline had studied the maps that they had
devised and revealed their secrets to his pupil. Walker felt con-
fident that he could find the way.
He started ahead.
The passageway was broad and level, its walls and floors free
from sharp projections and crevices. The near-dark was wrapped
in silence, deep and hushed, and there was only the faint echo
of his boots as he walked. The air was bone-chilling, a cold that
had settled into the mountain rock over the centuries and could
not be dislodged. It seeped into Walker despite his clothing and
made him shiver. A prickling of unpleasant feelings crept
through him-loneliness, insignificance, futility. The caverns
dwarfed him; they reduced him to nothing, a tiny creature whose
very presence in such an ancient, forbidden place was an affront.
He fought back against the feelings, recognizing what they would
do to him, and after a brief struggle they faded back into the
cold and the silence.
He reached the cave of the Sphinxes shortly after. He paused
again, this time to steady his mind, to take himself deep down
inside where the stone spirits couldn’t reach him. When he was
there, wrapped in whispers of caution and warning, blanketed
in words of power, he went forward. He kept his eyes fixed on
the dusty floor, watching the stone pass away, looking only at
the next few feet he must cover.
In his mind, he saw the Sphinxes looming over him, massive
stone monoliths fashioned by the same hands that had made the
sentinels. The Sphinxes were said to have human faces carved
on the bodies of beasts-creatures of another age that no living
man had ever seen. They were old, so incredibly ancient that
their lives could be measured by hundreds of generations of
mortal men. So many monarchs had passed beneath their gaze,
carried from life to endless rest within their mountain tombs.
So many, never to return.
Look at us, they whispered! See haw wondrous we are!
He could sense their eyes on him, hear the whisper of their
voices in his mind, feel them tearing and ripping at the layers of
protection he had fashioned for himself, begging him to look
up. He moved more quickly now, fighting to banish the whis-
pers, resisting the urge to obey them. The stone monsters seemed
to howl at him, harsh and insistent.
Walker Boh! Look at us! You must!
He struggled forward, his mind swarming with their voices,
his resolve crumbling. Sweat beaded on his face despite the
cold, and his muscles knotted until they hurt. He gritted his
teeth against his weakness, chiding himself, thinking suddenly
of Allanon in a bitter, desperate reminder that the Druid had
come this way before him with seven men under his protection
and had not given in.
In the end, neither did he. Just as he thought he would, that
he must, he reached the far end of the cavern and stepped into
tfae passageway beyond. The whispers faded and were gone. The
Sphinxes were left behind. He looked up again, carefully re-
sisted the urge to glance back, then moved ahead once more.
The passageway narrowed and began to wind downward.
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