question and pounced on it. “The last thing he and his black-
cloaked wolves will look for-that’s what!” His eyes narrowed.
“We’ll go back down into the Pit!”
Par quit breathing.
“We’ll go back down before they have a chance to figure out
where we are or what we intend, back down into that most
carefully guarded hidey-hole, and if the Sword of Shannara is
there, why, we’ll snatch it away from under their very noses!”
He brought an astonished Par to his feet with a jerk. “And
we’ll do it tonight!”
XXII
It was nearing twilight by the time Walker Boh reached his
destination. He had been journeying northward from
Hearthstone since midmoming, traveling at a comfortable
pace, not hurrying, allowing himself adequate time to think
through what he was about to do. The skies had been clear and
filled with sunshine when he had set out, but as the day length-
ened toward evening clouds began to drift in from the west and
the air turned dense and gray. The land through which he trav-
eled was rugged, a series of twisting ridges and drops that broke
apart the symmetry of the forests and left the trees leaning and
bent like spikes driven randomly into the earth. Deadwood and
outcroppings of rock blocked the trail repeatedly and mist hung
shroudlike in the trees, trapped there it seemed, unmoving.
Walker stopped. He stared downward between two massive,
jagged ridgelines into a narrow valley that cradled a tiny lake.
The lake was barely visible, screened away by pine trees and a
thick concentration of mist that clung tenaciously above its sur-
face, swirling sluggishly, listlessly, haphazardly in the nearly
windless expanse.
The lake was the home of the Grimpond.
Walker did not pause long, starting down into the valley al-
most immediately. The mist closed quickly about him as he
went, filling his mouth with its metallic taste, clouding his vision
of what lay ahead. He ignored the sensations that attacked him-
the pressing closeness, the imagined whispers, the discomfiting
deadness-and kept his concentration focused on putting one
foot in front of the other. The air grew quickly cool, a damp
layer against his skin that smelled of things decayed. The pines
rose up about him, their numbers increasing until there was
nowhere they did not stand watch. Silence cloaked the valley
and there was only the soft scrape of his boots against the stone.
He could feel the eyes of the Grimpond watching.
It had been a long time.
Cogline had warned him early about the Grimpond. The
Grimpond was the shade that lived in the lake below, a shade
older than the world of the Four Lands itself. It claimed to pre-
date the Great Wars. It boasted that it had been alive in the age
of faerie. As with all shades, it had the ability to divine secrets
hidden from the living. There was magic at its command. But
it was a bitter and spiteful creature, trapped in this world for all
eternity for reasons no one knew. It could not die and it hated
the substanceless, empty existence it was forced to endure. It
vented itself on the humans who came to speak with it, teasing
them with riddles of the truths they sought to uncover, taunting
them with their mortality, showing them more of what they would
keep hidden than what they would reveal.
Brin Ohmsford had come to the Grimpond three hundred
years earlier to find a way into the Maelmord so that she might
confront the Hdatch. The shade toyed with her until she used
the wishsong to ensnare it by trickery, forcing it to reveal what
she wished to discover. The shade had never forgotten that; it
was the only time a human had bested it. Walker had heard the
story any number of times while growing up. It was only after
he came north to Hearthstone to live, forsaking the Ohmsford
name and legacy, that he discovered that the Grimpond was
waiting for him. Brin Ohmsford might be dead and gone, but
the Grimpond was alive forever and it had determined that
someone must be made to pay for its humiliation. If not the one