He finished scanning his surroundings, found nothing useful, stood for a moment longer, and then sat down to gather his thoughts. He wondered briefly about his parents. There was no way for them to know what had happened to him unless Khyber managed to reach them. At least they were free of Paranor and the Druids. They would not be tricked again by Shadea a'Ru and her minions. He was still bothered by the fact that the King of the Silver River had failed to warn them, as he had promised he would. Unless they had ignored that warning, of course, and had determined to help him no matter what the risk. His mother would think like that. His mother would brave anything for him.
As would any of his friends and companions on this journey, he thought. As all of them had. He found himself missing them desperately-steady Tagwen, brave Kermadec, resourceful Khyber, and even the truculent Atalan. But most of all he missed Cinnaminson. Just thinking of her made him ache in a way nothing else ever had. He tried to picture her as he remembered her best-free and alive, smiling at him on the decks of theSkatelow, reaching out to take his hand. He tried not to think of where she was and what had become of her. But he couldn't quite manage it.
He compressed his lips in a tight line and forced himself to think instead of other things. He was alone for the moment, at least until he found his aunt, and there was nothing he could do to change that. He hoped the others were all right, that they had found ways to escape their predicaments, but wondering if they had was just another dead end in his thinking.
What he must think about was finding his aunt, the Ard Rhys, and bringing her home safe.
He started as sudden heat flooded through his palms. The runes of the darkwand were glowing, turning the staff warm. He got to his feet quickly and looked around, wondering if the staff were warning him of hidden danger. But he sensed nothing. He stared down at the staff once more, but the runes had dimmed and the wood gone cool.
He frowned in confusion. Something had triggered the reaction, but what was it? He looked around.
Nothing. He looked back at the staff. Was it something inside him? Was the staff responding to him? He knew already that they were connected, sufficiently so that he had been able to find it when it was taken away by Traunt Rowan and had known instinctively how to trigger its magic when crossing from his world into this one.
The staff responded to his needs. Was it doing so here? Was it responding to his need to find Grianne Ohmsford?
Experimenting, he turned his thoughts to his aunt, asking himself where she was and how he could find her. At once, the runes turned fiery, pulsating beneath his hands, enveloping the entire staff in a red glow.
He grinned. Now he knew what the staff could do. But he still didn't know how to make practical use of it.
The grayness of the day was fading rapidly toward night, the sky darkening and shadows beginning to drape the world below. Pen glanced around, thinking that he did not want to be caught out in the open once night arrived. He needed to find shelter, but first he needed to determine which way he should go.
To do that, he needed to figure out how to use the darkwand.
He looked at it again, turning his thoughts away from his quest, watching the brightness of the runes fade.
Maybe if he asked it to show him where his aunt was, it would do so. If he thought about a direction to take in the same way he thought about looking for her, perhaps the runes would show him something.
He gave it a try. He thought about his aunt, about his need to find her, watched the runes brighten anew, then started thinking about directions he might take, projecting himself going first one way and then another.
Nothing happened. The runes stayed bright, but did not respond in any way to his silent questions.
He shook his head in disgust. So much for that approach. Still, there had to be a way.
He decided to try something else. Keeping his thoughts focused on his aunt, he started walking toward the last of the light, a direction he assumed might be west, but the runes dimmed almost at once. He stopped and turned around to walk the other way, toward the encroaching darkness, which would be east. Again, the runes darkened. At least he was getting a clear response, he thought.
He turned south, toward the mountains that were closest to where he stood. Instantly, the runes turned fiery.
He felt a surge of elation. He would go that way.
He started walking, the staff held before him in both hands like a compass, the runes glowing brightly, providing him with both light and reassurance. All around, the shadows thickened and the world began to change. What had been indistinct before began to lose all shape and form, until most of what he could see was distinguished by little more than changes in color and brightness. He could still make out the peaks ahead of him, but little else. He would have to find shelter soon.
He was further persuaded of that when he noticed movement in the shadows, movement that hadn't been there earlier. He caught only glimpses of it, sudden dartings, like the scurrying of small furry animals except that there were no small furry animals living within the Forbidding-at least, not ones that werelikely to be friendly. In any case, he didn't think he wanted to find out. Other than the darkwand, all he carried for protection was a long knife he had taken from one of the guards. But he didn't think it would prove much of a weapon against the things that lived in the Forbidding-especially after dark.
He trudged on, keeping as much to the open as he could manage, following the dictates of the staff while keeping close watch on his surroundings. Once, something massive flew overhead, a great winged creature that, had it fallen on him, would have crushed him instantly. He froze when he saw it, distant and indistinct, and he did not move again until he was certain it was gone.
He saw other things, too. He saw catlike creatures leaping through the dead-limbed trees and lizard-things that slithered along the earth through the grasses and scrub. He started to hear hissing and snarling, the sounds of hunters at work. Once a shriek momentarily brought his heart to his throat. In the silence that followed, he could hear the rasp of his own frightened breathing.
Iam alone here, he kept thinking.I am alone, and I have no idea what lives here or how to dejend myself.
He swallowed hard.I wish I weren't so afraid.
Darkness was almost complete by then, and he had reached the lower slopes of the mountains that blocked the way forward. Clusters of boulders formed huge barriers that rose before him like sentries to challenge his passage. The bare limbs of trees rose against the sky like the finger bones of giants long dead. He saw that a trail led upward through the maze to a pass that in turn opened toward the mountains, to the land beyond. But the way forward was long and arduous. And with the fall of darkness, he would not get far before he couldn't see at all.
So he moved into the center of the tree trunks and boulder piles, found a shelter in the rocks where he was protected on three sides, and settled in. He quit thinking about his aunt, turned his thoughts away from his search, and watched the light of the runes fade. He had nothing to eat or drink, so he tried not to think about how hungry and thirsty he was. Beyond his shelter, the world was ink black, devoid of light from moon or stars, empty of sky. But there were sounds everywhere, sharp and piercing, low and rumbling, sudden and slow to build and die. There were sounds of every sort, but none of them familiar and none pleasant.
Pen wedged himself into one corner of his shelter, clasped his arms about the darkwand, and took out the long knife and placed it against his chest. He sat staring out into the darkness for a long time before he fell asleep.
When he woke, the dragon was staring at him. He didn't realize it was there at first. He woke slowly and lethargically, still half asleep as he opened his eyes to look around. He didn't know where he was.
He was stretched out on the hard ground, his bones aching and his muscles sore. The world was dark and hazy, there was no sunshine, no bright color, and no welcoming warmth or birdsong to encourage his rising. The new day was cloaked in sullen stillness and a deep gray wash that made him want to go back to sleep.
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again as his head cleared and he remembered that he was inside the Forbidding. He glanced down. The long knife was still in his hand, his fingers stiff from gripping it. The darkwand was clutched to his chest, its runes pulsating softly, come alive with the day. He stared at the staff doubtfully. Why was it glowing? He couldn't remember thinking about his search for his aunt or anything that would have made it brighten.
Then his attention was drawn to a huge cluster of mottled boulders settled squarely in front of him. He didn't remember those boulders being there the night before and wasn't sure how he could have missed seeing them, even in the dark. It was like having a wall materialize out of nowhere, a great massive barrier that somehow didn't seem to quite belong.
He stared at them in confusion.
A window-size eye blinked, a lazy lowering and lifting of a scaly lid.
Pen caught his breath and held it. The cluster of rocks began to assume shape and take on definition.
Limbs studded with spikes crooked awkwardly at the joints to end in claws that were each the size of his leg. Scales larger than blankets layered a body that would dwarf a small cottage. Bony ridges ran in parallel lines down a broad back and long, reticulated tail. A triangular head was tucked between its forelegs, encrusted snout and brow thick with armor and blunt horns.
"Shades," he whispered.
He had never seen a dragon, of course. No one in his lifetime had ever seen a dragon. Most types were extinct. Those that weren't were consigned to the Forbidding, like the one before him, or so deeply and thoroughly entrenched in mountain caverns and wilderness forests that no human had ever ventured in far enough to encounter them. But he knew what dragons were and what they looked like, and the creature facing him was clearly a dragon.
It was easily the biggest living creature that Pen had ever seen. It was bigger than he had imagined anything could be. Fascinated in spite of himself, he stared at it. He wondered what it was doing there.
He wondered why it hadn't eaten him.
He wondered if it planned to.
He became aware all at once that it was looking at him. It was watching through half-closed lids with a sleepy, almost dreamy gaze. It seemed mesmerized, like a cat stretched out for a nap, lazy and content, drifting in and out of private reveries. Then it occurred to him, almost as an afterthought, that the dragon wasn't looking at him.
It was looking at the darkwand.
Or, more particularly, at the glow of its runes.
At first, he thought he must be mistaken. After all, why would the dragon be interested in the staff and its runes? Was the beast sentient? It certainly didn't look it. But maybe it understood something of magic and of talismans and recognized the darkwand for what it was.
He didn't think that was right, though. The way the dragon was watching the staff suggested that it was all but hypnotized, that its interest was one of almost primordial attraction. Pen glanced down, watching the way the light played across the runes, how it worked itself up and down the staff in ever-changing patterns, how it brightened and dimmed, pulsed and steadied, reinventing itself over and over. The dragon was watching, too, fascinated by the movement of the light as it danced from rune to rune. Pen tried an experiment. Taking his cloak, he covered the top half of the staff, blocking the light.
Instantly, the great horn-encrusted head lifted, the triangular snout swung about, and its maw split wide in a hiss that sounded like an explosion. Rows of blackened teeth revealed themselves, some still clotted with bits of flesh, some with bones wedged between them. A gaping throat as black as damp ashes pulsed and shimmered, and the stench of carrion on its breath flattened the boy against the rock wall of his all-too-inadequate shelter. Pen gagged and nearly fainted, but he retained sufficient presence of mind to uncloak the darkwand at once, As the runes began anew their intricate play across the polished surface of the wood, the dragon slowly settled back into place, its maw closing, its eyelids drooping, content.
That was a really bad idea,Pen thought, taking great gulps of air to clear his head.
He remained where he was for a moment, sagging against the wall of his shelter, the darkwand held firmly in front of him, his talisman against a monster with breath that would melt iron. He hung his head for a time, thinking he was going to vomit, but when the nausea had passed, he straightened and looked out again at the dragon, trying to think what to do. He still wasn't certain what was happening with the darkwand, which until then he had assumed would respond only to his thoughts of the Ard Rhys. But it had apparently begun to glow even before he was awake and knew what was happening. How could that be?
He returned his attention to the dragon, saw how its eyes were fixed on the glowing runes, listened to how its breathing came slowly and evenly as it crouched there, waiting. Waiting on what? He didn't know. How long did dragons wait on things, anyway? He wondered suddenly if he was trapped. He hadn't thought of it before, but it might well be that just as the dragon wouldn't let him cover up the light, it wouldn't let him take it away, either. That would mean he was stuck in these rocks until the dragon tired of him and moved on.
Which might take a very long time, he realized. Time he didn't have to spare.
He took a moment to consider his options. He didn't have many to consider. He could stay where he was until the dragon grew bored and went away, or he could try leaving and hope the dragon didn't follow-or if it did follow, that it wouldn't follow for long. And that it wouldn't eat him.
He didn't like where his thinking was taking him, so he abandoned it in favor of trying to decide what else he might do to help himself. The long knife he carried was all but useless against something the size of the dragon, so there was no point in relying on that. Of course, any weapon was all but useless against a beast as big as that one. A whole army was probably useless.
He might try using his magic.
It was a reach. He didn't even know if his magic would work in the Forbidding. But he didn't have anything else he could look to for help, and he had to do more than sit around waiting for the dragon to decide to eat him. His magic had worked with the moor cat they had encountered in the Slags, well enough that it had saved his life. It was conceivable that it might work here, as well.
But how should he try to use it?
He decided to find out first if it irritated the beast, because if it did, that was the end of the matter. He began by reaching out with his five senses, taking in everything he could discover about the creature, from the sound of its breathing to the baleful look in its sleepy eye. He scoured the monster from head to tailand back again, working at finding a connection, at trying to feel something of what the dragon felt. It was hard work, and in the end it yielded almost nothing.
Dragons, apparently, didn't give much away.
There was nothing for it but to try using the magic in the only way that seemed feasible-as a tool of communication. He had no idea how dragons communicated. All he had learned so far was how they breathed and how they reacted when irritated. Perhaps if he started there, a way might reveal itself. What made his efforts so difficult was that the dragon wasn't really interested in him at all; it was only interested in the darkwand. If it were the darkwand that was trying to communicate, he was certain that he would make better progress. But that wasn't possible, of course, so he would have to settle for using his own voice and hope the dragon gave something back.
He began with an imitation of the dragon's breathing, slow and heavy and raw. Enhancing his efforts with his magic, giving them life, it still took him a while to get it right. Eventually, he was sounding exactly like a miniature version of the larger thing. The dragon blinked-once, twice. When he began alternating the breathing with variations on the disgruntled hissing, the dragon lifted its head off its forefeet and looked at him. But it didn't seem inclined to do anything more than stare. Still, Pen kept at it, hoping for something more.
Nothing happened. Eventually, the dragon lost interest, lowered its head to its forefeet and went back to watching the dancing glow of the runes.
Pen sank back, exhausted. He was getting nowhere. Worse, he was growing weak from the effort. He had not eaten or drunk anything since arriving and could not remember when he had done so before that.
It had been more than a day. His throat was parched, and he was feeling light-headed. If he didn't get away soon, he was going to pass out from lack of nourishment.
But what in the world was he supposed to do?
He spent several hours trying to figure that out. He used his small magic in every conceivable way to entice the dragon into communicating, but the beast simply ignored him. It lay there across the opening to his shelter, a great scaly lump that refused to move. With one eye fixed steadily on the darkwand and its intriguing runes, it dozed like a monstrous cat in front of a mouse hole, transfixed by the movement of the light. It barely stirred for the whole of the time it kept watch and then only to shift positions.
After a while, Pen dozed off. He wasn't sure how long he slept, as the gray light that marked daytime in the Forbidding was virtually unchanging from dawn to dusk. But when he awoke, he came to a decision.
Rather than experiment further with the magic, he would simply try to leave. He had no idea if the dragon would permit it. But anything was better than doing nothing.
Holding the darkwand in front of him so as not to disturb or obscure the play of the light across its runes, he stood and gathered his strength. He was so weak by then that it took him a few minutes to do so.
When he felt sufficiently ready, he took a single step out from his shelter.
The dragon blinked slowly.
He took another step. And then another.
The dragon's head came up, the horn-encrusted snout swung toward him, and a sharp hiss escaped through a pair of wide-flaring nostrils. Pen stopped at once, held his ground, and waited. The dragon continued to watch him, head lifted, yellow eyes fixed. They stared at each other for long moments, each waiting to see what the other would do. Pen listened to the sound of the dragon's breathing and smelled its fetid stench. He forced himself to ignore the urge to gag. Instead, he focused on his determination to keep going.
When he felt he had waited long enough, he took another step.
This time the dragon slowly extended one great spiked foreleg in the manner of a cat toying with a mouse that had become its favorite plaything. It took its time, reaching out slowly and leisurely until the foreleg was stretched directly across the path Pen had intended to take, blocking it.
Pen stared at the dragon in dismay, then slowly backed into the rocks once more.
He spent the rest of the day hoping for a miracle. If only the dragon would grow bored. If only it would grow hungry. If only it would leave for just a few minutes. Didn't it have something else to do or somewhere else to go? Dragons must have lives like other creatures, habits and patterns of behavior that this one would be compelled to act on eventually. If he was just patient, if he could just wait it out, it would have to move on.
Daylight faded and night set in. It began to rain, a soft steady drizzle. Pen stuck his head far enough out of the shelter to catch a few drops in his open mouth, then used his cloak to gather a little more and sucked the water from the cloth. All the while, the dragon lay there, its scaly hide glistening, its eyes lidded, watching the darkwand and its glowing runes.
Eventually, Pen grew sleepy once more. He worried for a short while about what the staff would do when he closed his eyes, then dismissed the matter. Apparently, it would continue to glow, just as it must have done the previous night when the dragon was first attracted, just as it must have done while he was napping earlier. Otherwise, the dragon would have eaten him already. He wondered again how the staff could function independently of his thoughts when it had seemed before that it relied on them. He was missing something, wasn't picking up on what should have been obvious if he wasn't so hungry and exhausted. He wished he could think more clearly, that he could reason better.
He closed his eyes and dreamed about his home and his parents, about how things had been not two months earlier. He had been so anxious for an adventure, so willing for a change in his mundane existence. He had embraced the chance to go in search of the tanequil with Tagwen and the others. He had relished the excitement that would result.
He wished now that none of it had ever happened. He wished that things were back to the way they had been.
He fell asleep, and his wishes drifted away.
Twelve.
Dreams, bits and pieces of incomplete thoughts and unfinished stories, came and went with the swiftness of shadows and light in a cloud-swept forest. They were bright and bold and filled with promise, and Bek Ohmsford rode them like a bird across landscapes that stretched away forever. Sometimes he was inmotion for the duration of the dream without ever touching the earth. Sometimes he felt the solid ground just long enough to be reassured that it was still there before winging away again. Nothing of what he saw was familiar to him. People came and went in the course of his travels, but he did not know who they were or why they were there. He had left his waking life behind, he had gone ahead of those he once knew.
It could have been a time of peace and contentment, but the dreams were interspersed with nightmares, and the nightmares were horrifying. Some were memories of things in his past, of creatures and events that he could never forget. Some were dark prophecies of what lay ahead if he could not turn aside in time. All were populated with predators that pursued him relentlessly, hunters of a sort that lacked recognizable purpose or intent. They came at him in waves, and no matter where he fled or tried to hide, they meant to have him. Dreams and nightmares. There was no recognizable connection between the one and the other, and he transitioned between light and dark visions with distressing unpredictability. He slept, but his sleep was not sound or restful. The strange mix left him plagued with anxiety over which would appear next and how he would deal with it. He sought to combat them by gaining a measure of control, but his efforts fragmented and failed. He sought to wake, swimming upward through the waters of his sleep toward the bright surface of waking, but the distance was too great. Each time he felt himself getting close, the nightmares would come and drag him down again.
He did not know how long the ordeal continued, but it was a considerable time. At times, he came close to crying out his frustration at being unable to break the chains that bound him to a sleep from which there seemed to be no waking. Perhaps he did cry out. He couldn't be sure. But no one came to help. No one reached to take his hand and pull him clear. He struggled on alone, battling to keep the dark from overshadowing the light.
Then something changed. He did not know what it was or how it came to pass, but suddenly the dreams and the nightmares withdrew, fading like wind-blown dust. He was left wrapped in warm silence, in a quietude he had not experienced before. He found solace in his isolation. He was able to breathe normally, to ease down into a comforting sleep that allowed him to rest in the way he needed, deeply and peacefully.
For he had been injured, he knew. He had suffered damage of some sort, though he could not put a name to it. He slept because his body was trying to heal, but the injuries were severe enough that it was not certain yet that he could do so. He knew that without being able to say how. He knew it without being able to remember the specifics of what had happened to him. What he knew was he was fighting to survive and the battle had been going badly.
But the tide had turned and the storm had receded and his damaged body was healing. He dropped deep into a place in which a sense of calm prevailed and no dark things were allowed. He was so grateful for it that he wanted to cry in happiness and relief. The possibility that he had died occurred to him, but he dismissed it. His physical state did not feel like death, unless death was something very different than he had imagined. It felt like living, as if life had found him again.
Time passed, his sleep stretched away like a deep blue ocean, and the world about him began to take shape again. It assumed color and definition in the way a landscape is revealed by the lifting of a fog. As it did so, he found himself in the most beautiful gardens he had ever seen. The gardens were of varying sorts, different shapes and sizes and formations. Some were carefully cultivated beds, each given over to a flower and a theme. Some were hanging, vines and blankets of moss cascading off walls and trellises.
Some were hillside and some meadow. There were flowering plants and bushes and grasses. Great ancient trees with broad leafy canopies shaded portions of the gardens while bright sunshine flooded the rest. The colors were vibrant and shimmering like the bands of a rainbow after a storm, blankets of onecolor and quilts of many. Amid the radiance rose the buzzing of bees as they pollinated flowers and the bright whistle and chirp of birds as they did all the things birds do. Wisps of cloud floated overhead, passing across the sun, casting strange, fleeting shadows on the earth.
It was a vision of paradise. Bek Ohmsford stood in the center of it and marveled. The gardens weren't real; they couldn't be. They were only dreamed. Yet in his sleep, he found them as real as the flesh of his own body.
"Welcome, Bek Ohmsford," a soft voice whispered from behind him.
He turned and found an old man staring at him, an ancient wearing a white robe and carrying a long, bleached wooden staff. White hair tumbled from his head to his shoulders and from chin to chest. His face was deeply lined and careworn in a way that suggested that he had been waging a long, hard fight.
But his blue eyes were the eyes of a child, bright and interested and filled with expectation.
"This is my home," the old man said, a smile deepening the wrinkles of his face.