The Black Elfstone

  Her muted laugh was deeply bitter. “Oh, please! You would pretend you do not care for the future of the Druid order? You care for it more than anyone! So here is your chance to show how much. I can do everything but open the archives. The codes defy me. But you know them, so use them!”

  “Unless they have been changed.”

  “By Balronen? He was too lazy to change his boots, let alone the codes to a room he believes his personal fiefdom. The codes will be the same. Go and open the door and take the Black Elfstone. Keep it yourself, if you wish. I have no need of it, so long as I know it is safe with you.”

  He thought about it for a long moment, considering what she was asking and what the results would be. His guard was up; he had every reason to find Clizia duplicitous and scheming. But he saw the wisdom in her plan, and he could not make himself walk away at this point and leave the Keep and all its wildly unpredictable magic for the invaders. Even if they didn’t know how to use it now, what was to say they might not learn? And then what use might they make of it in their plans—whatever their nature—regarding the Four Lands? He did not care to find out.

  “We must do what we can for the good of the order,” he acknowledged.

  She smiled. “Lead the way, Ard-Rhys-that-was. Who knows? Perhaps one day you will be the Ard Rhys again.”

  Drisker ignored the comment and moved out of the shadows and down the hallway, peering into the dark spaces that fell between those scattered islands lit by smokeless lamps. He was mindful of Clizia’s limited ability to move with any quickness or dexterity, and so he kept the pace from becoming too rapid. The Keep was as silent as a tomb and had the same feel. From his perspective, Paranor was now a place fit only for the dead, and the living did not belong. If he followed through with Clizia’s plan, the invaders would join the dead soon enough.

  They descended into the very deepest regions of the Keep’s cellars, using ancient stone stairs laced with cracks and worn from use, passing through doors sealed by magic, steadily making their way toward the archives. The location of these chambers had been changed after the sorcerer Arcannen Rai had tricked his way into the Keep in an attempt to loot their artifacts and talismans more than two hundred years earlier. It was decided after his death that a stronger, safer set of chambers was needed to prevent this from ever happening again.

  So the archives had been made much harder to locate and less easily breached. There were numerous doors and twisting halls that needed to be navigated just to reach them. It required employing multiple sets of codes to open a series of formidable doors and complex words of magic to release the seals that bound them. It was a fortress within a fortress, and only an Ard Rhys or someone of equal stature could gain it. Drisker knew how and Clizia Porse seemed content to let him lead the way, following dutifully, head down and voice stilled.

  At the final barrier, a great iron door set back into the stone of the walls waited, secured and sealed with dozens of locks. They halted and turned to each other.

  “You can open it, can’t you?” Clizia inquired. When he nodded, the old woman gestured impatiently. “Then get on with it.”

  Working his way clockwise from top to bottom downward on the right and back up again on the left, Drisker released the locks and seals one by one. It took time, and Clizia seated herself with her back against the passage wall while she waited. Drisker felt her eyes on him, and the weight of her gaze was so strong it was almost visceral. He remembered again his concerns about her propensity for hidden plans, about her still-questionable reasons for sending Dar to see him, and about her history of using poisons. He remembered how she had lied to him about Kassen. He kept vigilant watch against any sort of treachery, not so foolish as to think he was immune. But what was to be gained from harming him? In truth, he was doing exactly what she thought necessary anyway, so it was hard to see what else she could possibly want.

  Which was not to say that he was dismissing the possibility she wanted something. Only that he should not obsess over his safety.

  When the last of the locks and seals were undone, the huge door swung open effortlessly, revealing the individual vaults within. Drisker looked back at Clizia, but she only shrugged and gestured for him to go on inside. He did so, moving to where he knew the Black Elfstone was locked away within a space hollowed out of the bedrock that formed the chamber walls. He took a moment to study the protections formed of Druid magic—unseen wards set down from before his time as Ard Rhys and left unchanged by Balronen. After he had figured out the order of the releases required, he went to work.

  It took him longer than he had expected. There was no rushing this one. A single slip could cause the entire effort to collapse and the locks to meld together in an impenetrable barrier that would take days if not weeks to undo. So he paused now and then, wanting to be sure that he was doing what he should, careful not to make a mistake.

  He summoned an opening of the barrier with words and gestures. The barrier melted like frost in the sun, and in the darkness beyond a small wrapped package revealed itself. Inside would be a pouch that could be dated to the time of Walker Boh, who had retrieved the stolen Elfstone from the far-north fortress of the Stone King and carried it back to Paranor. The pouch leather was old and cracked and discolored, a victim of time and nature.

  He hesitated before taking it.

  There were grim stories about the Black Elfstone—tales to bring a shiver to the spine and a tightening to the throat. It was said to be dark, yet it was the nature of its magic that gave it that reputation. The Stone possessed the ability to absorb and contain other magic. It was the talisman that could negate, at a later time, what his Druid magic might have to do now to seal Paranor and hide it away. On this night, the Guardian in the black pit of the Druid’s Well would be summoned. It would rise from its lair and destroy the Keep’s invaders and reclaim Paranor for the Druids. But Clizia wanted to go further. She wanted to use magic to make Paranor vanish until a new Druid order was formed. To bring Paranor back after would require using the Black Elfstone to absorb the magic that had concealed it. It was the pathway that Clizia favored—the founding of a new Druid order. Yet Drisker remained unconvinced of her intentions.

  I am still not sure, he thought, confronting in the silence of his mind his uncertainty and foreboding.

  Yet he reached inside the opening, took the pouch in his hand, and drew the Elfstone clear.

  “Hurry!” Clizia was suddenly right behind him. “We have no time!”

  Drisker nodded but did not speak. He closed off the concealment that had protected the Black Elfstone, reset the seals and locks, and backed away as if he had committed a violation. Just for a moment, he experienced the strangest sense of having failed.

  Then he turned to Clizia, and they went out the door and moved through the cellar passageways toward the door that opened into the pit where dwelled the spirit creature they called the Guardian of the Keep.

  —

  It was a given that the creature would be waiting. It would know what had happened and be aware of what was needed. It would be crouched within the green mists that wrapped it like a shroud, waiting for a summoning. It would not act without being called—not so long as there was a Druid presence within the Keep’s walls.

  And it would know that summons was drawing near.

  Clizia seemed revitalized, moving more quickly and surely than earlier, eager to do what was needed to rid the Keep of its occupants. But Drisker was still cautious. The Keep’s protector was a most uncertain magic, and it was known to kill friend as quickly as foe. It did not always distinguish one from the other, once released. It was a wild magic barely contained by power the Druids had set in place hundreds of years ago—an act of good intentions that had not entirely succeeded. There were insufficient checks and balances on the creature, and its release was always one of desperation and despair. If it was summoned, Drisker and Clizia both understood they had better be well clear of the walls of the Keep before it surfaced if they wante
d to be sure they would still be alive at the end of the night.

  They did not speak as they went, dark figures moving to fulfill a purpose darker still. No one happened upon them; they saw no guards and heard no sounds of life. Yet at one point Drisker thought he heard a low expectant hiss snake through the corridors of the Keep. He listened for it again afterward, unable to help himself. Each time the wait was shorter. The Guardian was growing impatient.

  When they arrived at the door to the Druid’s Well, Drisker turned to Clizia. “Once we do this, there is no turning back. We cannot stop these events if we set them in motion. The consequences will be ours to bear.”

  She nodded, a deep frown twisting her ancient features. “Is it your intent to talk me to death? Open the door.”

  He did so, and they stepped into darkness so complete it was startling. They engaged werelights to fend it off, but the light could penetrate no farther than a dozen paces. A dozen paces that, had they taken them blindly, would have carried them directly over the edge of a platform and into the void of the pit. They held their ground, peering into the gloom. The tower was huge, built with smooth stones, which both rose above and fell below an impenetrable blackness. They stood on a metal platform from which a spiral staircase circled upward and downward into the blackness with no end in sight either way. No windows admitted light from without. No other doors were visible from where they stood. The gloom was complete and unrelenting.

  “We must work together,” Clizia said. “I will follow your lead, Drisker. Weave the thread. I will fill the gaps.”

  Giving her a nod of acquiescence, the Druid began to recite the invocation that would draw the Keep’s Guardian from the pit. He combined words with other, less intelligible sounds and added gestures of power to strengthen the spell. It was a familiar recitation; learning it had been an Ard Rhys’s priority since forever to protect against the unthinkable. It had only been used a handful of times in the entire history of the Druids, and then always in dire situations. He had never thought he would see a time when he would be required to use it, to deliberately summon magic that was so dangerous. But it was the unexpected that so often crept up on you when you weren’t looking.

  Behind him, he could hear Clizia’s rough, insistent voice adding to the spell, strengthening it in her own particular way. But her words were strange to him, and he wondered what it was she was doing that was so unfamiliar. No matter. He could not break his concentration now, because the Keep’s Guardian was beginning to stir. Low hissing sounded from the depths of the pit, and the first tendrils of mist began to stretch upward like crooked fingers, emanating a wicked green light. The blackness was filled with it, its sickly illumination infusing the dark to mark the creature’s coming. It was far below still, but rising steadily. Drisker bore down, anxious to finish the conjuring and retreat to the safety of the world outside Paranor’s walls. A sudden surge lifted the mist with a visible heave, and the hissing turned to a long, slow sigh of satisfaction.

  “Drisker! Enough!” Clizia was pulling on his arm.

  The creature was awake. It was free to do what it had been given to do whenever Paranor was threatened. And now it would destroy its enemies and cleanse its lair.

  Drisker stepped back, but as he turned to leave, he felt a sharp sting on his exposed neck as Clizia’s fingers brushed his skin. His knees buckled and a sudden weakness flooded through him. He started to fall, and Clizia caught hold of him and held him up until they had reached the opening leading out of the Druid’s Well. She guided him through the door and closed it behind them. Then she let him sink slowly to the floor, where he rested limply, his back against the wall.

  He saw it then, reflected in her eyes. Her duplicity. Her treachery. Her well-hidden intent. “What did you do to me?” he asked, his voice slurring.

  “I stole your strength, Drisker. I took it from you with a needle’s prick.” She held up her right hand, the nails purple with a potion’s coating, studying him as she might a curious insect. Then she reached into his pocket and pulled out the pouch that contained the Black Elfstone. “Here is where we part ways.”

  He managed a nod, but it was difficult. “You planned this all along.”

  She shrugged. “You were in the way. I have bigger plans than you know.”

  His head was heavy, and his chin sank to his chest so that he was looking at her feet. “This will not end well for you.”

  “Oh, I think it might. But you won’t be around to find out. The mist is rising; the Guardian approaches, and the Keep will be cleansed. You, along with the invaders, will pass from memory soon enough.”

  He could no longer respond, his voice gone, his strength dissipated entirely.

  She knelt then, placed a hand under his chin, and lifted his head. “You won’t die from anything I do, Drisker. You will die when the mist reaches you and steals away your breath. You should try to think well of me. It will make your death less unpleasant when it comes for you.” She paused. “I am leaving you the scrye orb so you can tell me the details of your dying. I would be interested to hear what it feels like.”

  Then she lowered his head again, rose quickly, and hurried away.

  THIRTY-ONE

  A determined Dar Leah worked his way along the empty hallway on the second-floor level, shadowing the white-cloaked invasion leader and Kassen Drue where they walked below. He was able to track them by listening to their footsteps and now and then catching a glimpse of their reflections in the heavy glass of the tall windows that lined the lower wall. Their progress was slow and measured, and the tone and rhythm of their talk suggested it was one of rumination. Try as he might, however, the Blade could not make out what they were saying. But what mattered was that he stayed with them, waiting to see…

  To see what? What was he doing anyway? He wondered at his decision to track them through the Keep—a decision that had been sudden and unexpected, and in retrospect seemed foolish. What was the point of this exercise? Would he confront them and demand they surrender? Would he attack them? Was he trying to find out something important by spying on them?

  He didn’t know. He only knew that he did not want either of them to escape the consequences of what they had done by destroying the Druid order. It was one thing to accept that they had done so, as Drisker had, and turn your attention to preventing any further damage by sealing away the Keep to protect what it contained. It was another to be seeking a confrontation, an accounting, and a resolution of the sort he craved. The loss of Zia was still fresh in his mind, and the two he followed were arguably the most responsible. All he knew at this point, with Paranor undone and its Druids dead, was that someone should pay.

  But maybe it was something more, too. Maybe it had to do with his own sense of failure—at not being quick enough or smart enough to find a way to protect and save either Zia or Paranor. And finally, at the end of the day, it had to do with knowing he had escaped their fates in part, at least, because of his failures.

  At the first stairway he encountered, he descended to the ground floor and found himself not twenty feet behind them. Here the passageway was bloodstained and littered with debris, but the bodies of the dead and wounded had been dragged away. No one else was about; the main body of the attack force was still back in the south entry to Paranor’s main tower. Smokeless lamps were dimmed, and the air was thick with ash and the stench of death.

  Dar waited until his quarry was well down the hallway and nearing the broad staircase that climbed to the higher floors. He found himself wondering if they were looking for something rather than simply wandering. The conversation remained muffled, their words vague and indistinct; it was still impossible to know what they were saying. Because it was neither heated nor urgent, he was guessing the two were talking over what would happen after this night. Clearly Kassen was important to whatever plans they had devised; his role in arranging entry into Paranor was undeniably the key to their success in seizing the Keep—and Dar had the distinct feeling things would not stop
there.

  He was closing in on the pair when a trio of newcomers suddenly appeared from out of the gloom ahead, hailing them, talking in urgent tones. Instantly Dar shrank back against the wall, deep within the shadow of a stone pillar. Those ahead of him were looking around now, scanning in all directions, searching for something.

  Right away he knew it was Drisker.

  A chill settled in his heart. They must have discovered the Druid. Perhaps they only knew he was inside the Keep, but perhaps they already had taken him prisoner and were now wondering if there was anyone else who needed finding.

  He kept his head, despite a sudden urge to go in search of Drisker. Knowing that if he moved he would likely be seen, he stayed where he was. His hand strayed to the handle of the Sword of Leah and then lowered again. There were too many of the invaders around; the time was not right for an attack.

  After a few minutes of further conversation, the white-cloaked leader made a dismissive gesture and the three soldiers disappeared once more. The leader and Kassen remained where they were, heads bent close. Now that Dar had put himself in this position, getting close enough that he could attack them, he had a choice to make. He couldn’t just stay where he was. Sooner or later, Drisker would either release the Guardian of the Keep from its confinement or, if captured, be hauled before the invasion leader and killed. If he wanted to prevent the latter, Dar had to act now.

  He took a deep breath and prepared to move. But just before he did, the pair ended their conversation and separated, White Cloak continuing down the hallway to ascend the grand stairway, and Kassen turning toward Dar.

  The decision had been made for him. Dar Leah reached back over his shoulder and gripped the handle of his sword. He would rush from hiding and try to take the other man alive, a prisoner to question, a hostage with which to bargain. If he could get himself and Kassen safely out of the Keep, Drisker could join them as planned and an important inroad would have been made in their efforts to blunt this invasion and to learn the reason behind it. And if Drisker was now a prisoner of the invaders, Kassen could be used to bargain for his return.