“I’ll go,” he said quietly, the anger in his voice undiminished.
He rose and looked down at her. “I was your friend. I would be
still if you would let me.”
“I know,” she said.
He stayed where he was momentarily, as if undecided about
what to do next, whether to stay or go, whether to speak or
keep silent. He looked back through the darkness into the haze.
“I won’t die here,” he whispered.
Then he wheeled and stalked away. Wren sat where she was,
looking after him until he could no longer be seen. Tears came
to her eyes, but she brushed them quickly away. Gavilan had
hurt her, and she hated it. He made her question everything she
had decided, made her wonder if she had any idea at all what
she was doing. He made her feel stupid and selfish and naive.
She wished that she had never gone to speak with the shade of
Allanon, never come to Morrowindl, never discovered the Elves
and their city and the horror of their existence-that none of it
had ever happened.
She wished she had never met her grandmother.
No! she admonished herself sharply. Don’t ever wish that!
But deep down inside, she did.
CHAPTER
20
DAYBREAK ARRIVED, a stealthy apparition cloaked iron-
gray against the shadow of departing night as it crept
uncertainly out of yesterday in search of tomorrow.
The company rose to greet it, weary-eyed and disheart-
ened, the weight of time’s passage and shortening odds a mantel
of chains that threatened to drag them down. Pulling cloaks arid
packs and weapons across their shoulders, they set out once
more, wrapped in the silence of their separate thoughts, grim-
faced against a rising wall of fear and doubt.
If I could sleep but one night, Wren was thinking as she tried to
blink away her exhaustion. Just one.
There had been little rest for her last night, restless again as
she lay awake in the stillness, beset by demons of all shapes and
kinds, demons that bore the faces of those who had been or
were closest, friends and family, the tricksters of her life. They
whispered words to her, they teased and taunted, they warned
of secrets she could not know, they gave her trails to follow and
burdens to carry, and then they faded from her side like the
morning mist.
Her hands clasped the Ruhk Staff and she leaned upon it for
support as she climbed. Trust no one, the Addershag hissed again
from out of memory.
The climb was short, for they had emerged froni the lava
tubes close to the summit at the end of yesterday’s trek, with
the ridgeline already in view. They reached it quickly this day,
scrambling up the final stretch of broken trail to stand atop the
wall, pausing to look back into the mists that cloaked the coun-
try they had passed through-almost as if they expected to find
something waiting there. But there was nothing to see, the whole
of it shrouded in clouds and fog, a world and a life vanished
into the past. They could see it still in their minds, picture it as
if it were drawn on the air before them. They could remember
what it had cost them to come through it, what it had taken
from them, and how little it had given back. They stared a
moment longer, then quickly turned away.
They walked then through narrow stretches of rocks sepa-
rated by trees that stretched from the edge of Blackledge like
fingers until everything abruptly ended at a ragged tangle of
ravines and ridges that split and folded back on themselves, huge
wrinkles in the land’s skin. A lava flow had passed this way some
years back, come down out of Killeshan’s maw to sweep the
crest of Blackledge clean. Everything had been burned away
save a scattering of silvered tree trunks standing bare and skel-
etal, some fallen away at strange angles, some propped against
one another in hapless despair. Scrub grew out of the lava in
gnarled clumps, and patches of moss darkened the shady side of
roughened splits.
Stresa brought them to the edge of this forbidding world,