She was close to breaking at that point, all her preparations and the steeling of her resolve shattered and vanished, and she felt naked and exposed. Everything about her was revealed in an instant and nothing left hidden. The dead knew her. The dead could see all she was and all she ever would be, and it was terrifying.

“Someone speak to me!” she screamed, trying to hold on, wanting this to be over.

Her words had reached compliant ears, and the spirits of the dead scattered like moths caught in a sudden wind, their wails following after them, switching like lizard tails. In the wake of their passing, the waters of the Hadeshorn thrashed with new fury, and a black form heaved upward from their center, a giant rising from the depths, growing in size until it dwarfed Khyber ten times over.

Silence returned, undisturbed save for traces of the wailings and the hissing of spray. The black figure, huge and forbidding, stood upon the waters as if their surface somehow provided it with solid footing.

–Do you know me–

She did. Instinctively, immediately, and unquestionably.

“You are Allanon,” she said.

7

THE SHADE OF ALLANON GLIDED CLOSER ACROSS THE HISSING, roiling waters, black robes pulled close, hood covering everything but his terrible face. In life Allanon was said to have been frightening, a man with a dark temper and a darker history who had no hesitation about using either to intimidate. That he could reinforce his reputation with a command of magic unequaled in the annals of the Druid Histories cloaked him with the trappings of legend.

To Khyber Elessedil he seemed no less intimidating in death than the stories reported he had been in life.

–Speak to me, Ard Rhys–

So he knew her. Khyber felt exposed and vulnerable before him, helpless to protect herself even though there was no reason to believe she needed to. The spirits of the dead were said to reflect the substance of their lives, and no one had been more of a presence in life than this man. Strong features shaded by a short black beard and eyes that seemed to look right through you—there was nothing of weakness apparent in Allanon, nothing to suggest that he would ever equivocate or doubt himself. Even now, when she compared him with the other more transparent and ephemeral spirits, he seemed whole and unchanged.

“I would speak with you about the missing Elfstones, Allanon,” she managed finally.

–Speak to me then–

“Do you know, from there in the dark world into which you have passed, where in this world of light the Elfstones may be found?”

–Where they have been for countless centuries–

“But where exactly?”

–Hidden. Shrouded from all eyes. Ask me something else–