For long minutes no one spoke, though all were fully revived, each still savoring in unspoken fear and quiet desperation the taste of dying they had experienced, knowing that one day its inevitable touch would claim them forever. For several brief seconds they had stood at the edge of life and gazed into the forbidden land beyond-something no mortal was permitted to do before the end of his natural life. To have been this close was numbing, frightening, even maddening. They should not have survived.

But then the memories were gone, all but the dim knowledge that the three had narrowly escaped dying. Regaining their composure, they continued to search for an end to the confining blackness. Panamon spoke once to Shea in low tones, asking whether he knew if they were proceeding in the right direction. The reluctant response was a curt nod. What difference did it make if he did not know, the little Valeman wondered to himself angrily. What other direction would they take? If his instincts were wrong, then there was nothing left that could help them anyway. The Elfstones had saved him once; he would trust them again.

He wondered how Orl Fane had fared in his attempt to pass through the strange wall of mist. Perhaps the maddened Gnome had found his own way to escape its deadening effects, but it seemed unlikely. And if the little fellow had fallen by the way, then the Sword was lost somewhere in the impenetrable blackness and they would never regain it in time. This unpleasant prospect caused the Valeman to pause mentally for several long moments, weighing the possibilities of the Sword lying about in this haze, perhaps only yards away from them, waiting for someone to discover it once again.

Then abruptly the darkness faded into dingy gray and the wall of mist was behind them. It happened so quickly that they were caught completely by surprise. One minute they were shrouded in blackness, barely able to distinguish each other, and the next they were standing in shocked silence beneath the leaden gray skies of the Northland.

They took a moment to study the country into which they had emerged. It was the most dismal land Shea had ever seen-even more forbidding than the dreary lowlands of Clete and the frightening Black Oaks in the distant Southland. The terrain was barren and desolate, a gray-brown earth totally devoid of sunlight and plant life. Not even the hardiest scrub brush had survived-a mute warning that this was indeed the kingdom of the Dark Lord. The earth stretched away to the north in low, uneven hills of hardened dirt, unbroken by even a wisp of grassland. Blunted, sprawling boulders thrust upright into the dim, gray horizon, and in places the lowlands were gutted by dusty gullies where rivers had long since dried away. There was no sound of life anywhere-not even the faint hum of insects to break the haunting stillness. Nothing remained in this once living land but death. Far to the north, jutting sharply into the vacant sky, rose a low series of treacherous-looking peaks. Without being told, Shea knew that this was the home of Brona, the Warlock Lord.