wondered. But the price would be paid not by him, but by
Walker Boh.
I must do what I can, he decided.
He focused deep within, one of those few skills he retained
from his once-Druid past. He retreated down inside until he was
free enough to leave. He could travel short distances so, see
within small worlds. He sped through the castle corridors, still
within his mind, seeing and hearing everything. He swept
through the darkness, through the gray half-light, to the tower
of the Keep.
There he found Walker Boh face to face with immortality
and death, frozen by indecision. He realized what was hap-
pening.
His voice was surprisingly calm.
Walker. Use the Stone.
WALKER BOH HEARD the old man’s voice, a whisper in his mind,
and he felt his body respond. His arm straightened, and he
tensed.
The thing before him laughed. Do you still not know me?
He did-and didn’t. It was many things at once, some of
which he recognized, some of which he didn’t. The voice,
though-there could be no mistake. It was the Grimpond’s,
taunting, teasing, calling his name.
You have found your third vision, haven’t you, Dark Uncle?
Walker was appalled. How could this be happening? How
could the Grimpond be both this thing he had come to subdue
and the avatar imprisoned in Darklin Reach? How could it be
in two places at once? It didn’t make sense! The Druids hadn’t
created the Grimpond. Their magics were diverse and opposed.
Yet the voice, the movement, and the feel of the thing .
The shadow before him was growing larger, approaching.
I am your death, Walker Boh. Are you prepared to embrace me?
And abruptly the vision was back in Walker’s mind, as clear
as the moment it had first appeared to him-the shade of Allanon
behind him, holding him fast, the dark shadow before him, the
promise of his death, and the castle of the Druids all about.
Why don’t you flee? Flee from me!
It was all he could do to keep from screaming. He groped
away from it, beseeching help from any quarter. Cogline’s voice
was gone, buried in black fear. Resolve and purpose were scat-
tered in pieces about him. Walker Boh was disintegrating while
still alive.
Yet some small part of him did not give way, held fast by
memory of what had brought him, by the promise he had made
himself that he would not die willingly or in ignorance. Cogline’s
face was still there, the eyes frantic, the lips moving, trying to
speak. Walker reached down inside for the one thing that had
sustained him over the years, for that core of anger that burned
at the thought of what the Druids had done to him. He fanned
it until it blazed. He cupped it to his face and let it sear him.
He breathed it in until the fear was forced to give way, until
there was only rage.
Then an odd thing happened. The voice of the thing before
him changed. The voice became his own, frantic, desperate.
Flee, Walker Bob!
The voice was no longer coming from the mist; it was com-
ing from himself! He was calling his own name, urging himself
to flee!
What was happening?
And suddenly he understood. He wasn’t listening to the thing
before him; he was listening to himself. It was his own voice he
had been hearing all along, a trick of his subconscious-a trick,
he realized in fury, of the Grimpond. The wraith had implanted
in Walker’s mind, along with that third vision, a suggestion of
his death, a voice to convince him of it, and a certainty that it
was the Grimpond itself who came forth in another form to
deliver it. Revenge on the descendants of Brin Ohmsford-it was
what the Grimpond had been after from the first. If Walker
listened to that voice, faltered in his resolve, and turned away
from the purpose that had brought him .
No!
His fingers opened and the Black Elfstone flared to life.
The nonlight streaked forth, spreading like ink across the
shadowed well of the Keep to embrace the mist. No more games!
Walker’s shout was a euphoric, silent cry within his mind. The