Speak to me, Allanon, he pleaded silently. Tell me what to do.
But no answer came.
The doors of empty rooms and the dark tunnels of other halls and corridors came and went. He felt again the ache of his missing arm and wished that he were whole again, if only for the moment of this confrontation. He gripped the Black Elfstone tightly in his good hand, feeling its smooth facets and sharp edges press reassuringly against his flesh. He could summon the power within, but he could not predict what it would do. Destroy you, the thought came unbidden. He breathed slowly, deeply, to calm himself. He tried to remember the passage on the Stone’s usage from the Druid History, but his memory suddenly failed him. He tried to remember what he had read in all the pages of all those books and could not. Everything was melting away within, lost in the rush of fear and doubt that surged through him, anxious and threatening. Don’t give way to it, he admonished himself. Remember who you are, what has been promised you, what you have told yourself will happen.
The words were dead leaves caught in a strong wind.
Ahead, a broad alcove opened into the stone of the walls, arched and shadowed so deeply that it was as black as night. There, a set of tall iron doors stood closed.
The entry to the well of the Druid’s Keep.
Walker Boh came up to the doors and stopped. All around him he could hear a whispering of voices, taunting, teasing in the manner of the Grimpond, telling him to go back, urging him to go on, a maddening whirl of conflicting exhortations. Memories stirred from somewhere within—but they were not his own. He could feel their movement along his spine, a reaching out of fingers that coiled and tightened. Before him, he could see a trace of wicked green light probe at the cracks and crevices of the door frame. Beyond, he could sense movement.
In that instant, he almost bolted. Had he been able to do so, he would have thrown down the Black Elfstone and run for his life, the whole of his resolve and purpose abandoned. His fear was manifest; it was so palpable that it seemed he could reach out and touch it. It did not wear the face he had expected. His 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 rilled 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 sweeping, 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 faceless. 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 concentration; 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. Cogline’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 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 happening.
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?