fear was not of the confrontation, of the vision’s promise, or
even of dying. It was of something beyond that, something so
intangible he was unable to define it and at the same time was
certain it was there.
But Allanon’s shade held him fast, just as in the vision, a
contrivance of fate and time and manipulation of centuries gone
combining to assure that Walker Boh fulfilled the purpose the
Druids had set for him.
He reached forward with his closed fist, seeing his hand as
if it belonged to another person, watching as it pushed against
the iron doors.
Soundlessly they swung open.
Walker stepped through, his body numb and his head light
and filled with small, terror-filled cries of warning. Don’t, they
whispered. Don’t.
He stopped, breathless. He stood on a narrow stone landing
within the well of the Keep. Stairs coiled upward along the wall
of the tower like a spike-backed serpent. Weak gray light filtered
through slits cut in the stone, piercing the shadows. There was
nothing below where he stood but emptiness-a vast, yawning
abyss out of which rose the hollow echo of the iron doors as
they thudded closed behind him. He listened to his heart pound
in his ears. He listened to the silence beyond.
Then something stirred in the abyss. Breath released from a
giant’s lungs, quick and angry. Greenish light flared, dimmed
again, turned to mist, and began to swirl sluggishly.
Walker Boh felt the vastness of the Keep settle down about
him, a monstrous weight he could not escape. Tons of stone
ringed him, and the blackness it sealed away was a death shroud.
The mist rose, a dark and ancient magic, the Druid watchdog
roused and come forth to investigate. It came for him in a sweep-
ing, lifting motion, curling along the stone, eating away at the
dark, a morass that would swallow him without a trace.
Still he would have run but for the certainty that it was too
late, that he had begun something that must be finished, that
time and events had caught up with him at last, and now here,
alone, he would have to resolve the puzzle of his Druid-shaped
life. He made himself move forward to the landing’s edge, frail
flesh a drop of water against the ocean of the power below. It
hissed at him as if it saw, a whisper of recognition. It seemed to
gather itself, a tightening of movement.
Walker brought up the hand with the Black Elfstone.
Wait.
The voice rose out of the mist. Walker froze. The voice
belonged to the Grimpond.
Do you know me?
The Grimpond? How could it be the Grimpond? Walker
blinked rapidly. The mist had begun to take form at its center,
a pillar of swirling green that bore upward into the light, that
lifted through the shadows, steady, certain, until it was even
with him, hanging in air and silence.
Look.
It became a human figure all cloaked and hooded and face-
less. It grew arms and hands that stretched to embrace Walker.
Fingers curled and flexed.
Who am I?
A face appeared, shadows and light shifting within the mist.
Walker felt as if his soul had been torn away.
The face he saw was his own.
WITHIN THE DARK SECLUSION of the vault that housed the
Druid Histories, Cogline lurched to his feet. Something was
happening. Something. He could feel it in the air, a vibration
that stirred the shadows. The wrinkled face tightened in con-
centration; the aged eyes stared into space. The silence was
unbroken, vast and changeless, time suspended, and yet .
Across the room from him, Rumor’s head snapped up and
the moor cat gave a deep, low, angry growl. He moved into a
crouch, turning first this way, then that, as if seeking an enemy
that had made itself invisible. He, too, sensed something. Cog-
line’s eyes flickered right and left. On the table before him, the
pages of the open book began to tremble.
It begins, the old man thought.
He gathered his robes close in an unconscious motion,
thinking of all that had brought him to this place and time, of
all that had gone before. After so many years, what price? he