end up like the Stone King, enveloped by your own magic,
destroyed by what you trusted most. Uhl Belk had thought he
had mastered the Stone’s magic, and it had cost him everything.
“I am guessing,” he replied. “Nothing more.”
He allowed his hand to open, and the Elfstone to come into
the light. It lay there in the cup of his palm, smooth-faced,
sharp-edged, opaque and impenetrable, power unto itself, power
beyond anything he had ever encountered. He remembered how
it had felt to use the Stone when he had brought back the Keep,
thinking it would end then, that the retrieval out of limbo where
Allanon had sent it was all that was required. He remembered
the surge of power as it joined him to the Keep, the entwining
of flesh and blood with stone and mortar, the reworking of his
body so that he was as much ghost as man, changing him so
that he could enter Paranor, so that he could discover the rest
of what he must do.
A metamorphosis of being.
Within, he had encountered Cogline and Rumor and heard
the tale of how they had survived the attack of the Shadowen
by being caught up in the protective shield of the Druid His-
tories’ magic and spirited into Paranor. Though Walker had
brought Paranor out of the limbo place into which Allanon had
dispatched it, it would not be fully returned until he had found
a way to complete his transformation, to become the Druid it
was decreed he must be. Until then, Paranor was a prison that
only he could leave-a prison rapidly drawing back into the
space from which it had come.
“I am guessing,” he repeated, almost to himself.
He had read and reread the Druid Histories in an effort to
discover what it was that he must do and found nothing. No-
where did the Histories relate how one became a Druid. De-
spairing, he had thought the cause lost to him when he had
remembered the Grimpond’s visions, two of which had come to
pass, the third of which, he realized, would happen here.
He faced the old man. “I stand within a castle fortress empty
of life and gray with disuse. I am stalked by a death I cannot
escape. It hunts me relentlessly. I know I must run from it, yet
cannot. I let it approach, and it reaches for me. A cold settles
within, and I can feel my life ending. Behind me stands a dark
shadow holding me fast, preventing my escape. The shadow is
Allanon.”
The words were a familiar litany by now. Cogline nodded
patiently. “Your vision, you said. The third of three.”
“Two came to pass already, but neither as I anticipated. The
Grimpond loves to play games. But this time I shall use that
gamesplaying to my advantage. I know the details of the vision;
I know that it will happen here within the Keep. I need only
decipher its meaning, to separate the truth from the lie.”
“But if you have guessed wrong . .
Walker Boh shook his head defiantly. “I have not.”
They were treading familiar ground. Walker had already told
the old man everything, testing it out on someone who would
be quick to spot the flaws he had missed, putting it into words
to see how it would sound.
The Black Elfstone was the key to everything.
He repeated from memory that brief, solitary passage in-
scribed in the Druid Histories:
Once removed, Paranor shall remain lost to the world
of men for the whole of time, sealed away and invisible
within its casting. One magic alone has the power to
return it-that singular Elfstone that is colored Black and
was conceived by the faerie people of the old world in
the manner and form of all Elfstones, combining never-
theless in one stone alone the necessary properties of
heart, mind, and body. Whosoever shall have cause and
right shall wield it to its proper end.
He had assumed until now that the Black Elfstone was meant
to restore Paranor to its present state of half-being and to gain
him entry therein. But the language of the inscription didn’t