She felt the Druid’s presence at once. Responding to it, she stepped through the debris and into the remains of a chamber to one side.
She saw him almost immediately. He sat propped against one wall, staring back at her. Stained red with blood, his black robes spread away from him like a tattered shroud. His body was burned and ravaged. Most of one leg was gone. His skin, where not blistered and peeling, was so pale it seemed drawn with chalk on the drifting haze.
She stared at his ruined body and was surprised to discover that she felt no satisfaction. If anything, she was disappointed. She had waited all her life for that moment, and once it had arrived, it was nothing at all as she had pictured it. She had wanted to be the instrument of the Druid’s destruction. Someone had cheated her of the pleasure.
She walked to within a few feet of him and stopped. Still she did not speak, her eyes locked on his, looking for something that would give her a little of the satisfaction she had been denied. She found nothing.
“Where are the others?” she asked finally. “The seer and the Elf?”
He coughed and swallowed thickly. “Gone.”
“You’re dying, Druid,” she said.
He nodded. “It is my time.”
“You’ve lost.”
“Have I?”
“Death steals away all our chances. Yours flee from you even as we speak.”
“Perhaps not.”
His refusal to acknowledge his defeat infuriated her, but she held her temper carefully in check. “Did you find the magic you sought?” She paused. “Will you tell me willingly or must I pry open your mind to gain an answer to my question?”
“Threats are unnecessary. I found the magic and took from it what I could. But while I live, it is beyond your reach.”
She stared at him. “I haven’t long to wait then, do I?”
“Longer than you think. My dying is only the beginning of your journey.”
She had no idea what he was talking about. “What journey is that, Druid? Tell me.”
Blood appeared on his lips and ran down his chin in a thin stream. His eyes were beginning to glaze. She felt a twinge of panic. He must not die yet. “I have the boy,” she said. “You did an impressive job of convincing him of the lies he now insists are the truth. He really believes himself to be Bek and me to be his sister. He believes you are his friend. If you care for him, you will help me now, while there is still time.”
Walker’s eyes never left her face. “He is your brother, Grianne. You hid him in the cellar of your home, in a chamber behind a cabinet. He was found there by a shape-shifter, who in turn brought him to me. I took him to a man and his wife in the Highlands to raise as a foster son. That is the truth. The lies are all your own.”
“Don’t use my name, Druid!” she hissed at him.
One hand lifted weakly. “The Morgawr killed your parents, Grianne. He killed them and stole you away so that he could take advantage of your talents and make you his student. He told you I did it so that you would hate his greatest enemy. He did so in the hopes that one day you would destroy me. That was his plan. He subverted your thinking early and trained you well. But he did not know about Bek. He did not know that there was someone besides me who knew the truth he had worked so hard to conceal.”
“All lies,” she whispered, her anger strong again, her magic roiling within her. She would strike him down if he said another word. She would tear him apart and put an end to things here and now.
“Would you know the truth?” he asked.
“I know it already.”
“Would you know the truth finally and forever?”
She stared at him. There was intensity to his dark eyes that she could not dismiss. He had something in mind, something he was working toward, but she was not certain what it was. Be careful, she told herself.