by Terry Brooks
There was a long silence as the others exchanged wary glances. “You think the Druids are all dead?” Tay asked softly.
Bremen nodded. “I think it is a possibility. I hope I am wrong. In any event, whether they are dead or not, I must retrieve the Eilt Druin in accordance with the first vision. The visions taken together make it clear that the medallion is the key to forging a weapon that will destroy Brona. A sword, a blade of special power, of magic that the Warlock Lord cannot withstand.”
“What magic?” Kinson asked at once.
“I don’t know yet.” Bremen smiled anew, shaking his head. “I know hardly anything beyond the fact that a weapon is needed and if the vision is to be believed, the weapon must be a sword.”
“And that you must find the man who will wield it,” Tay added. “A man whose face you were not shown.”
“But the last vision, that dark image of the Hadeshorn and the boy with the strange eyes . . .” Mareth began worriedly.
“Must wait until its time.” Bremen cut her short, though not harshly. His gaze settled on her face, searching. “Things reveal themselves as they will, Mareth. We cannot rush them. And we cannot allow ourselves to be constrained by our concern for them.”
“So what are you asking us to do?” Tay pressed.
Bremen faced him. “We must separate, Tay. I want you to return to the Elves and ask Courtann Ballindarroch to mount an expedition to search out the Black Elfstone. In some way the Stone is critical to our efforts to destroy Brona. The visions suggest as much. The winged hunters already search for it. They must not be allowed to find it. The Elf King must be persuaded to support us in this. We have the particulars of the vision to help us. Use what it has shown us and recover the Stone before the Warlock Lord.”
He turned to Risca. “I need you to travel to Raybur and the Dwarves at Culhaven. The armies of the Warlock Lord march east, and I believe they will strike there next. The Dwarves must make themselves ready to defend against an attack and must hold until help can be sent. You must use your special skills to see that they do so. Tay will speak with Ballindarroch to ask the Elves to join forces with the Dwarves. If they do so, they will be a match for the Troll army that Brona relies upon.”
He paused. “But mostly we must gain time to forge the weapon that will destroy Brona. Kinson, Mareth, and I will return to Paranor and discover whether the vision of its fall is true. I will seek to gain possession of the Eilt Druin.”
“If he still lives, Athabasca will not give it up,” Risca declared. “You know that.”
“Perhaps,” Bremen replied mildly. “In any case, I must determine how this sword that I was shown is to be forged, what magic it shall possess, what power it needs to be imbued with. I must discover how to make it indestructible. Then I must find its wielder.”
“You must perform miracles, it seems to me,” Tay Trefenwyd mused ironically.
“All of us must do so,” Bremen answered softly.
They looked at each other in the gloomy light, an unspoken understanding taking shape between them. Beyond their shelter, rainwater dripped in steady cadence from the rocky outcroppings. It was midmorning, and the light had turned silvery as the sun sought to fight its way through the lingering stormclouds.
“If the Druids at Paranor are dead, then we are all that is left,” Tay said. “Just the five of us.”
Bremen nodded. “Then five must be enough.” He rose, looking out into the gloom. “We had better get started.”
VI
The same night, west and north of where Bremen confronted the shade of Galaphile, deep within the stone ring of the Dragon’s Teeth, Caerid Lock made his rounds of the watch at Paranor. It was nearing midnight when he crossed an open court on the parapets facing south and was momentarily distracted by a wicked flash of lightning in the distant skies. He paused, watching and listening to the silence. Clouds banked from horizon to horizon, shutting out moon and stars, cloaking the world in blackness. Lightning flashed a second time, momentarily splintering the night like shattered glass, then vanishing as if it had never been. Thunder rolled in its wake, a long, deep peal that echoed off the mountain peaks. The storm was staying south of Paranor, but the air smelled of rain and the silence was deep and oppressive.
The Captain of the Druid Guard lingered a moment longer, contemplative, then moved on through a tower door and into the Keep. He made these same rounds every night, disdaining sleep, a compulsive man whose work habits never varied. The times of greatest danger, he believed, were just before midnight and just before dawn. These were the times when weariness and sleep dulled the senses and made you careless. If an attack was planned, it would come then. Because he believed that Bremen would not give warning without reason, and because he was cautious by nature, he had determined to keep an especially sharp eye these next few weeks. He had already increased the number of guards on any given watch and begun the laborious process of strengthening the gate locks. He had considered sending night patrols into the surrounding woods as an added precaution, but was worried that they would be too vulnerable beyond the protection of the walls. His guard was large, but it was not an army. He could provide security within, but he could not give battle without.
He descended the tower stairs to the front courtyard and crossed. Half a dozen guards were stationed at the entry, responsible for the gates, portcullis, and watchtowers that fronted the main approach to the castle. They snapped to attention at his approach. He spoke with the officer in charge, confirmed that all was well, and continued on. He recrossed the open court, listening to a new roll of thunder break the deep night silence, glancing south to search for the flash of lightning that had preceded it, realizing as he did that it would already be gone. He was uneasy, but no more so this night than any other, as wary as he was compulsive about his responsibilities. Sometimes he thought he had stayed too long at Paranor. He did his job well; he knew he was still good at it. He was proud of his command; all of the guards presently in service had been selected and trained by him. They were a solid, dependable bunch, and he knew he could take credit for that. But he was not getting any younger, and age brought a dulling of the senses that encouraged complacency. He could hardly afford that. The fall of the Northland and the rumors of the Warlock Lord made these dangerous times. He sensed change in the wind. Something bad was coming to the Four Lands, and it would most certainly sweep up the Druids in its wake. Something bad was coming, and Caerid Lock was worried that he would not recognize its face until it was too late.
He passed through a doorway at the end of the court and walked down a hall that ran to the north wall and the gate that opened there. There were four gates to the Keep, one for each approach. There were a number of smaller doors as well, but these were constructed of stone and sealed with iron. Most were cleverly hidden. You could find them if you looked hard enough, but to do that you had to stand right up against the wall where the light was good and the guards on the battlements would see you. Nevertheless, Caerid kept a man at each during the hours between sunset and sunrise, taking nothing for granted. He passed two on his way to the west gate, fifty yards apart along the winding corridor. The guard at each acknowledged him with a sharp salute. Alert and ready, they were saying. Caerid gave a nod of approval both times and passed on.
He frowned though, when out of sight, troubled by their deployment. The man at the first door, a Troll from the Kershalt, was a veteran, but the man at the second, a young Elf, was new. He did not like stationing new men by themselves. He made a mental note to correct that before the next watch.
He was concentrating on the matter as he passed a back stairway leading down from the Druid sleeping quarters and so missed the furtive movement of the three men hiding there.
The three pressed themselves tightly against the stone wall as the Captain of the Druid Guard passed unseeing below them. They remained very still until he was gone, then detached themselves once more and continued down. They were Druids, all of them, each with more than te
n years of service to the Council, each with a zealot’s burning conviction that he was destined for greatness. For they had lived within the Druid order and chafed at its dictates and rules and found them foolish and, purposeless and unfulfilling. Power was necessary if life was to have meaning. A man’s accomplishments meant nothing if they did not result in personal gain. What purpose did private study serve if it could not be put to practical use? What sense did it make to brush up against all those secrets of science and magic if they could not ever be tested? So they had asked themselves, these three, separately at first, then all together as they came to realize that they shared a common belief. They were not alone in their dissatisfaction, of course. Others believed as they did. But none so fervently—none so that, like these three, they would allow themselves to become subverted.
There was no hope for them. The Warlock Lord had been looking for them for a long time, planning his revenge on the Druids. He found them out eventually and made them his own. It had taken time, but bit by bit he had won them over, just as he had won over those who had followed him from the Keep three hundred and fifty years earlier. Such men were always there, waiting to be claimed, waiting to be used. Brona had been sly in his approach, not revealing himself to them in the beginning, letting them hear his voice as if it were their own, exposing them to the possibilities, to the scent of power, to the lure of magic. He let them chain themselves to him with their own hands, let them forge locks of expectation and greed, let them make themselves slaves by growing addicted to false dreams and cravings. In the end, they would have begged him to take them, even after they had discovered who he was and what price they must pay.
Now they crept through Paranor’s corridors with dark intent, committed to a course of action that would doom them forever. They stole in silence from the stairwell and along the corridor to the doorway at which the young Elf stood watch. They clung to the shadows where the torchlight did not reach, using small conjurings of magic given them by the Master—sweet taste of power—to cloak themselves from the young guard’s eyes.
Then they were upon him, one of them striking a sharp blow to his head to knock him senseless. The other two worked quickly and furiously at the locks that secured the stone door, releasing them one by one, hauling back on the heavy iron grate, lifting off the massive bar from its fittings, and finally, irrevocably, pulling open the door itself so that Paranor lay open to the night and the things that waited without.
The Druids stepped back as the first of those things slouched into the light. It was a Skull Bearer, hunched and massive within its black cloak, claws extended before it. All sharp edges and flat planes, all hardness and bulk, it filled the corridor and seemed to suck away the very air. Red eyes burned into the three who cowered before it, and it shoved its way past them disdainfully. Leathery wings beat softly. With a hiss of satisfaction, it seized the young Elven guard, ripped out his throat, and cast him aside. The Druids flinched as the rending sprayed them with the victim’s blood.
The Skull Bearer beckoned to the darkness without, and other creatures poured through the doorway, things of tooth and nail, twisted and gnarled and bristling with dark tufts of hair, armed and ready, quick-eyed and furtive in the silence. Some were vaguely recognizable; perhaps they had once been Trolls. Some were beasts of the netherworld and looked in no way human. All had been waiting since just after sunset in a dark alcove in the shelter of the outer walls where they could not be seen from the parapets. There they had hidden, knowing these three pitiful beings who cowered before them had been claimed by the Master and would gain them access to the Keep.
Now they were inside and eager to begin the bloodletting that had been promised them.
The Skull Bearer sent one back out into the night to summon those still within the forest. There were several hundred, waiting for the signal to advance. They would be seen from the walls as they emerged from the trees, but the alarm would come too late. By the time Paranor’s defenders could reach them, they would be inside the Keep.
The Skull Bearer turned and started down the hall. It did not acknowledge the three Druids. They were less than nothing to it. It left them behind, discards, leavings. It was up to the Master to decide what would become of them. All that mattered to the winged hunter was the killing that lay ahead.
The attackers divided into small groups as they went. Some crept up the stairway to the Druid sleeping chambers. Some turned down a secondary corridor that led deep into the Keep. Most continued with the Skull Bearer along the passageway that led to the main gates.
Soon, the screams began.
Caerid Lock came racing back across the courtyard from the north gate when the alarm was finally given. The screams came first, then the sound of a battle horn. The Captain of the Druid Guard knew everything in an instant. Bremen’s prophecy had come true. The Warlock Lord was inside the gates of Paranor. The certainty of it chilled him to the bone. He called his men to him as he ran, thinking there might still be time. They charged into the Keep and down the corridor that led to the door the traitor Druids had breached. As they rounded a turn, they found the passageway ahead packed with black, hunched forms that squirmed through the opening out of the night. Too many to engage, Caerid realized at once. He took his men back quickly, and the beasts were quick to pursue. The guards abandoned the lower level and went up the stairs to the next, closing doors and dropping gates behind them, trying to seal their attackers off. It was a desperate gamble, but it was all that Caerid Lock could think to do.
On the next floor, they were able to close off the lesser entrances and move to the main stairs. By then, they were fifty strong—but still not enough. Caerid sent men to wake the Druids, to beg their assistance. Some among the elders knew magic, and they would need whatever power they could call upon if they were to survive. His mind raced as he rallied his men. This was no forced entry. This was a betrayal from within. He would find those responsible later, he swore. He would deal with them personally.
At the top of the main stairs, the Druid Guard made its stand. Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, and one or two Gnomes, they stood shoulder to shoulder, ordered and ready, united in their determination. Caerid Lock stood foremost in the center of their ranks, sword drawn. He did not try to fool himself; this was a holding action at best and doomed eventually to fail. Already he was considering his options when they were defeated. There was nothing he could do about the outer walls; they were lost already. The inner walls and the Keep were theirs for the moment, the entries sealed off, his men rallied in their defense. But these efforts would only slow a determined attacker. There were too many ways into and over and under the inner wall for the Druid Guard to hold for very long. Sooner or later their attacker would break through from behind. When that happened, they would have to flee for their lives.
An attack was mounted from below under the direction of the Skull Bearer, and crooked-limb monsters ascended the stairs in a knot of teeth and claws and weapons. Caerid led his guards in a counterattack, and the rush was repulsed. The monsters came again, and again the Druid Guard threw them back. But by now half of the defenders were either dead or injured, and no more had appeared to replace them.
Caerid Lock looked around in despair. Where were the Druids? Why weren’t they responding to the alarm?
The monsters attacked a third time, a bristling mass of thrashing bodies and windmilling limbs, shrieks and cries rising out of gaping throats. The Druid Guard counterattacked once more, cutting into the monsters, beating them back down the stairway, leaving half their number sprawled lifeless on the blood-slicked steps. In desperation Caerid dispatched another man to summon help from wherever he could find it. He grabbed the man by his tunic as he was about to leave and pulled him close. “Find the Druids and tell them to flee while there is still time!” he whispered so that no other might hear. “Tell them Paranor is lost! Go quick, tell them! Then flee yourself!”
The messenger’s face drained of blood, and he sprinted away wordlessly.
Caerid felt his heart sink. It’s finished, he thought, not frightened or sad, but simply disgusted.
Seconds later, the creatures of the Warlock Lord surged up the stairway once more. Caerid Lock and his failing command braced to meet them, weapons raised.
But this time there were too many.
Kahle Rese was asleep in the Druid library when the sounds of the attack woke him. He had been working late, cataloging reports he had compiled during the past five years on weather patterns and their effects on farm crops. Eventually he had fallen asleep at his desk. He came awake with a start, jolted by the cries of wounded men, the clash of weapons, and the thudding of booted feet. He lifted his graying head and looked about uncertainly, then rose, took a moment to steady himself, and walked to the door.
He peered out guardedly. The cries were louder now, more terrible in their urgency and pain. Men rushed past his door, members of the Druid Guard. The Keep was under attack, he realized. Bremen’s warning had fallen on deaf ears, and now the price of their refusal to heed was to be exacted. He was surprised at how certain he was of what was happening and how it would end. Already he knew he was not going to live out the night.
Still he hesitated, unwilling even at this point to accept what he knew. The hall was empty now, the sounds of battle centered somewhere below. He thought to go out for a better look at things, but even as he was contemplating the idea, a shadowy presence emerged from the back stairway. He pulled his head inside quickly and peered out through his barely cracked door.