Cogline and Rumor, three specters at haunt in a twilight world.
The castle of the Druids was dark and heavy, shimmering like
an image reflected in a pool of water adrift with shadows. The
stone of the walls and floors and towers was cold and empty of
life, and the hallways wound about like tunnels beneath the
earth, dark and dank. There were bones scattered here and there
along the carpeted, tapestried halls, the remains of those Gnomes
who had died when Allanon had invoked the magic that sent
the Keep out of the Four Lands three hundred years earlier.
Piles of dust marked the end of the Mord Wraiths trapped there,
and all that remained of what they had been was a whisper of a
memory sealed away by the walls.
Passageways came and went, stairways that ran straight and
curved about, a warren of corridors burrowing back into the
stone. The silence was pervasive, thick and deep as leaves in
late autumn in the forest, rooted in the castle walls and inexo-
rable. They did not challenge it, wordless as they passed through
its curtain, focusing instead on what lay ahead, on the path they
followed to the paths that waited. Doors and empty chambers
came and went about them, stark and uninviting within their
trappings of gloom. Windows opened into grayness, a peculiar
haze that shaded everything beyond so that the Keep was an
island. Walker searched for something of the forestland that
ringed the empty hill on which Paranor had stood, but the trees
had disappeared; or he had, he amended-come out of the Four
Lands into nothingness. Color had been drained from the car-
pets and tapestries and paintings, from the stone itself, and even
from the sky. There was only the gloom, a kind of gray that
defied any brightening, that was empty and dead.
Yet there was one thing more. There was the magic that
held Paranor sealed away. It was present at every turn, at once
invisible and suddenly revealed, a kind of swirling, greenish mist.
It hovered in the shadows and along the edges of their vision,
wicked and certain, the hiss of its being a whisper of killing
need. It could not touch them, for they were protected by other
magic and were at one with the Keep itself. But it could watch.
It could tease and taunt and threaten. It could wait with the
promise of what would happen when their protection was gone.
It was odd that it should be such an obvious presence;
Walker Boh felt it immediately. It was as if the magic were a
living thing, a guard dog set at prowl through the Keep, search-
ing out intruders and hunting them down so that they might be
destroyed. Its presence reminded him of the Rake in Eldwist, a
Creeper that scoured its master’s grounds and swept them clean
of life. The magic lacked the substance of the Rake, but its feel
was the same. It was an enemy, Walker sensed, that would even-
tually have to be faced.
Within the Druid library, behind the bookcases where the
vault was concealed, they found the Histories, banks of mas-
sive, leather-bound books set within the walls of the Keep,
the magic that had once hidden them from mortal eyes faded
with the passing of the Keep from the world of men. Walker
studied the books for a time, deliberating, then chose one at
random, seated himself, and began to read. Cogline and Rumor
kept him company, silent and unobtrusive. Time passed, but
the light did not change. There was no day or night in Paranor.
There was no past or future. There was only the here and
now.
Walker did not know how long he read. He did not grow
tired and did not find himself in need of sleep. He did not eat
or drink, being neither hungry nor thirsty. Cogline told him at
one point that in the world into which Paranor had been dis-
patched, mortal needs had no meaning. They were ghosts as
much as they were two men and a moor cat. Walker did not
question. There was no need.
He read for hours or days or even weeks; he did not know.