him mad! Beyond, where only the dead lie, is a pocket carved
with runes, the signs of time’s passing. Within that pocket lies
the Stone!”
The death’s head disappeared into nothingness, and only the
robes remained, hanging empty against the fog. “I have given
you what you wish. Dark Uncle,” the shade whispered, its voice
filled with loathing. “I have done so because the gift will destroy
you. Die, and you will end your cursed line, the last of it! How
I long to see that happen! Go, now! Leave me! I bid you swift
journey to your doom!”
The Grimpond faded into the mist and was gone. The light
it had brought with it dissipated as well. Darkness cloaked the
whole of the lake and the shore surrounding it, and Walker was
left momentarily sightless. He stood where he was, waiting for
his vision to clear, feeling the chill touch of the mist as it brushed
against his skin. The Grimpond’s laughter echoed in the silence
of his mind.
Dark Uncle came the harsh whisper.
He cast himself in stone against it. He sheathed himself in
iron.
When his vision returned, and he could make out the vague
shape of the trees behind him, he turned from the lake with his
cloak wrapped close about him and walked away.
XXIIl
Afternoon slid toward evening. A slow, easy rain fell on
me city of Tyrsis, washing its dusty streets, leaving
them slick and glistening in me fading light. Storm
clouds brushed low against the trees of the People’s Park, trail-
ing downward in ragged streamers to curi about the roughened
trunks. The park was empty, silent save for me steady patter of
the rain.
Then footsteps broke the silence, a heavy thudding of boots,
and a Federation squad of six materialized out of the gray,
cloaked and hooded, equipment packs rattling. A pair of black-
birds perched on a peeling birch glanced over alertly. A dog
rummaging amid the garbage slunk quickly away. From a still-
dry doorway, a homeless child huddled against the chill and
peered out, caution mirrored in its eyes. No other notice was
taken. The streets were deserted, the city hunkered down and
unseeing in the damp, unpleasant gloom.
Padishar Creel took his little band across the circle of the
Tyrsian Way and into the park. Wrapped against the weather,
they were indistinguishable one from the other, one from anyone
else. They had come all the way from their warehouse lair with-
out challenge. They had barely seen another living thing.
Everything was going exactly as planned.
Par Ohmsford watched the faint, dark outline of the Gate-
house appear through the trees and felt his mind fold in upon
itself. He hunched his shoulders against the chill of the rain and
the heat of the sweat that ran beneath his clothing. He was
trapped within himself and yet at the same time able to watch
from without as if disembodied. The way forward was far darker
than the day’s light made it seem. He had stumbled into a tunnel,
its walls round and twisting and so smooth he could not find a
grip. He was falling, his momentum carrying him relentlessly
toward the terror he sensed waiting ahead.
He was in danger of losing control of himself, he knew. He
had been afraid before, yes-when Coil and he fled Varfleet,
when the woodswoman appeared to confront them below the
Runne, when Cogline told them what they must do, when they
crossed me Rainbow Lake in night and fog with Morgan, when
they fought the giant in the forests of the Anar, when they ran
from the Gnawl in the Wolfsktaag, and when the Spider Gnomes
and the giri-child who was a Shadowen seized him. He had been
afraid when AUanon had come. But his fear men and since was
nothing compared to what it was now. He was terrified.
He swallowed against the dryness he felt building in his throat
and tried to tell himself he was all right. The feeling had come
over him quite suddenly, as if it were a creature that had lain in
wait along the rain-soaked streets of the city, its tentacles lashing