Kahle Rese was standing on a ladder arranging a worn and shabby collection of leather-bound tomes when Bremen entered. He turned and started when he saw who was standing there. He was a small, wiry man, hunched slightly with age, but nimble enough to climb still. There was dust on his hands, and the sleeves of his robe were rolled up and tied. His blue eyes blinked and crinkled as a smile lit his face. Quickly he scurried down the ladder and came over. He held out his hands and gripped Bremen’s own tightly.
“Old friend,” he greeted. His narrow face was like a bird’s—eyes sharp and bright, nose a hooked beak, mouth a tight line, and beard a small, wispy tuft on his pointed chin.
“It is good to see you, Kahle,” Bremen told him. “I have missed you. Our conversations, our puzzling through of the world’s mysteries, our assessments of life. Even our poor attempt at jokes. You must remember.”
“I do, Bremen, I do.” The other laughed. “Well, here you are.”
“For a moment only, I’m afraid. Have you heard?”
Kahle nodded. The smile slipped from his face. “You came to give warning of the Warlock Lord. Athabasca gave it for you. You asked to speak to the Council. Athabasca spoke for you. Took rather a lot on himself, didn’t he? But he has his reasons, as we both know. In any case, the Council voted against you. A few argued quite vigorously on your behalf. Risca, for one. Tay Trefenwyd. One or two more.” He shook his head. “I am afraid I remained silent.”
“Because it did no good for you to speak,” Bremen said helpfully.
But Kahle shook his head. “No, Bremen. Because I am too old and tired for causes. I am comfortable here among my books and seek only to be left alone.” He blinked and looked Bremen over carefully. “Do you believe what you say about the Warlock Lord? Is he real? Is he the rebel Druid, Brona?”
Bremen nodded. “He is what I have told Athabasca and a great threat to Paranor and the Council. He will come here eventually, Kahle. When he does, he will destroy everything.”
“Perhaps,” Kahle acknowledged with a shrug. “Perhaps not. Things do not always happen as we expect. You and I were always agreed on that, Bremen.”
“But this time, I’m afraid, there is little chance they will happen any other way than I have forecast. The Druids spend too much time within their walls. They cannot see with objectivity what is happening without. It limits their vision.”
Kahle smiled. “We have our eyes and ears, and we learn more than you suspect. Our problem is not one of ignorance; it is one of complacency. We are too quick to accept the life we know and not quick enough to embrace the life we only imagine. We think that events must proceed as we dictate, and that no other voice will ever have meaning but ours.”
Bremen put his hand on the small man’s narrow shoulder. “You were always the best reasoned of us all. Would you consider making a short journey with me?”
“You seek to rescue me from what you perceive to be my fate, do you?” The other man laughed. “Too late for that, Bremen. My fate is tied irrevocably to these walls and the writings of these few books I manage. I am too old and too set in my ways to give up a lifetime’s work. This is all I know. I am one of those Druids I described, old friend—hidebound and moribund to the last. What happens to Paranor happens also to me.”
Bremen nodded. He had thought Kahle Rese would say as much, but he had needed to ask. “I wish you would reconsider. There are other walls to live within and other libraries to tend.”
“Are there?” Kahle asked, arching one eyebrow. “Well, they wait for other hands, I suspect. I belong here.”
Bremen sighed. “Then help me in another way, Kahle. I pray I am wrong in my assessment of the danger. I pray I am mistaken in what I think will occur. But if I am not, and if the Warlock Lord comes to Paranor, and if the gates should not hold against him, then someone must act to save the Druid Histories.” He paused. “Are they still kept separate within the adjoining room—behind the bookcase door?”
“Still and always,” Kahle advised.
Bremen reached into his robes and withdrew a small leather pouch. “Within is a special dust,” he told his friend. “If the Warlock Lord should come within these walls, throw it across the Druid Histories, and they will be scaled away. The dust will hide them. The dust will keep them safe.”
He handed the pouch to Kahle, who accepted it reluctantly. The wizened Druid held the pouch out in the cup of his hand as if to measure its worth. “Elf magic?” he asked, and Bremen nodded. “Some form of faerie dust, I suppose. Some form of old-world sorcery.” He grinned mischievously. “Do you know what would happen to me if Athabasca found this in my possession?”
“I do,” Bremen replied solemnly. “But he won’t find it, will he?”
Kahle regarded the pouch thoughtfully for a moment, then tucked it into his robes. “No,” he agreed, “he won’t.” His brow furrowed. “But I am not sure I can promise I will use it, no matter what the cause. I am like Athabasca in this one matter, Bremen. I am opposed to involvement of the magic in the carrying out of my duties. I deplore magic as a means to any end. You know that. I have made it plain enough before, haven’t I?”
“You have.”
“And still you ask me to do this?”
“I must. Who else can I turn to? Who else can I trust? I leave it to your good judgment, Kahle. Use the dust only if circumstances are so dire that the lives of all are threatened and no one will be left to care for the books. Do not let them fall into the hands of those who will misuse the knowledge. That would be worse than any imagined result of employing magic.”
Kahle regarded him solemnly, then nodded. “It would, indeed. Very well. I will keep the dust with me and use it should the worst come to pass. But only then.”
They faced each other in the ensuing silence, all the words spoken, nothing left to say.
“You should reconsider your decision to come with me,” Bremen tried a final time.
Kahle smiled, a brittle twist of his thin mouth. “You asked me to come with you once before, when you chose to leave Paranor and pursue your studies of the magic elsewhere. I told you then I would never leave, that this is where I belong. Nothing has changed.”
Bremen felt a bitter helplessness creep through him, and he smiled quickly to keep it from showing. “Then goodbye, Kahle Rese, my oldest and greatest friend. Keep well.”
The small man embraced him, hands gripping the old man’s slender frame and holding fast. “Goodbye, Bremen.” His voice was a whisper. “This one time, I hope you are wrong.”
Bremen nodded wordlessly. Then he turned and went out the library door without looking back. He found himself wishing that things could be different, knowing they could not. He moved swiftly down the hallway to the door that opened into the back stairs passageway that had brought him. He found himself looking at the tapestries and artifacts as if he had never seen them—or perhaps as if he would never see them again. He felt some part of himself slipping away, just as it had when he left Paranor the first time. He did not like to admit it, but this was still more home to him than any other place, and as it was with all homes, it laid claim to him in ways that could not be judged or measured.
He went through the door into the near darkness of the landing beyond and found himself face-to-face with Risca and Tay Trefenwyd.
Tay came forward immediately and embraced him. “Welcome home, Druid,” he said, clapping the old man on the back.
Tay was an Elf of unusual height and size, lanky and rather awkward-looking, as if he were constantly in danger of tripping over his own feet. His face was decidedly Elven, but his head seemed to have been grafted onto his body by mistake. He was young still, even with fifteen years of service at Paranor, his face smooth and clean-shaven. He had blond hair and blue eyes, and always bore a ready smile for everyone.
“You look well, Tay,” the old man replied, giving the other a quick smile in return. “Life at Paranor agrees with you.”
“Seeing you again agrees with me more,” the
other declared.
“When are we leaving?”
“Leaving?”
“Bremen, don’t be coy. Leaving for wherever it is you are going. Risca and I are decided. Even if you hadn’t called us to meet with you, we would have caught up with you on your way out. We have had enough of Athabasca and the Council.”
“You were not there to witness their performance,” Risca sneered, shouldering into the light. “A travesty. They gave your request the same consideration they would an invitation to become a victim of the plague! There was no debate allowed or reasoning undertaken! Athabasca presented your request in such a manner that there was no doubt where he stood. Others backed him up, sycophants all. Tay and I did our best to condemn his machinations, but we were shouted down. I have had enough of their politics, enough of their shortsightedness. If you say the Warlock Lord exists, then he exists. If you say he is coming to Paranor, then come he will. But I will not be here to greet him. Let those others stand in my place. Shades, how can they be such fools?”
Risca was all brawn and heat, and Bremen smiled in spite of himself. “So you gave a good account of yourselves on my behalf?”
“We were small whispers in a windstorm,” Tay laughed. His arms lifted and fell helplessly within his dark robes. “Risca is right. Politics rule at Paranor. They have since Athabasca became First Druid. You should have held that position, Bremen, not him.”
“You could have been First Druid, if you had wanted to be,” Risca pointed out irritably. “You should have insisted.”
“No,” said Bremen, “I would not have done the job well, my friends. I was never one for administration and management. I was meant to seek out and recover what was lost, and I could not do that from the high tower. Athabasca was a better choice than I.”
“Hogwash!” snapped Risca. “He has never been a good choice for anything. He resents you even now. He knows that his office was yours for the asking, and he has never forgiven you for that. Nor that you could walk away from it. Your freedom threatens his reliance on order and obedience. He would have us all placed carefully on a shelf and taken down when it suits his purpose. He would dictate our lives as if we were children. You escaped his reach by leaving Paranor, and he will not forgive you that.”
Bremen shrugged. “Ancient history. I regret only that he would not pay greater heed to my warning. I think the Keep in real danger. The Warlock Lord comes this way, Risca. He will not step around Paranor and the Druids. He will grind them beneath his army’s boots.”
“What are we to do?” Tay pressed, glancing about as if afraid someone might be listening. “We have continued practicing our magic, Bremen. Each of us, Risca and I, in our own way, employing our own disciplines. We knew you would come back for us someday. We knew the magic would be needed.”
Bremen nodded, pleased. He had relied on these two above all the others to pursue their conjuring skills. They were not as learned or practiced as he, but they were able enough. Risca was the weapons master, skilled in the war arts, in the study of arms. Tay Trefenwyd was a student of the elements, of the forces that created and destroyed, of the balance of earth, air, fire, and water in the evolution of life. Each was an adept, just as he, capable of summoning magic when called upon to protect and defend. The practice of magic was forbidden within the walls of Paranor, except under strict supervision. Conjuring was undertaken almost exclusively on a basis of need. Experimentation was discouraged and often punished if discovered. The Druids lived in the shadow of their own history and the dark memory of Brona and his followers. They had been rendered moribund by guilt and indecision. They could not seem to understand that their ill-conceived course of action threatened to swallow them whole.
“You were right in your assumptions,” he told them. “I relied on you not to abandon the magic. And I do want you to come with me. I will need your skills and your strength in the days ahead. Tell me, are there any others we can call upon? Others, who have accepted the need for magic’s use?”
Tay and Risca exchanged a brief glance. “None,” said the latter. “You must make do with us.”
“You shall do fine,” Bremen advised, his aged face crinkling with the smile he forced upon himself. Only these two to join Kinson and himself! Only these two against so many! He sighed. Well, he should have expected as much, he supposed. “I am sorry I must ask this of you,” he said, and genuinely meant it.
Risca snorted. “I should feel slighted if you did not. I am bored to tears of Paranor and her old men. No one cares for the practice of my craft. No one follows in my footsteps. I am an anachronism to all. Tay feels as I do. We would have left long ago if we had not agreed to wait for you.”
Tay nodded. “It is no cause for sadness to find you in need of traveling companions, Bremen. We are quite ready.”
Bremen took each by the hand and thanked him. “Gather what you would carry with you and meet me by the front gates tomorrow morning. I will tell you of our journey then. Tonight, I will sleep without in the forest with my companion, Kinson Ravenlock. He has accompanied me these two years past and proven invaluable. He is a Tracker and a scout, a Borderman of great courage and resolve.”
“If he travels with you, he needs no other recommendation,” said Tay. “We will leave now. Caerid Lock waits for you somewhere on the stairs below. He asks that you descend until you come upon him.” Tay paused meaningfully. “Caerid would be a good man to have with us, Bremen.”
The old man nodded. “I know. I will ask him to come. Rest well. I will see you both at sunrise.”
The Dwarf and the Elf slipped through the passageway door and closed it softly behind them, leaving Bremen alone on the landing. He stood there for a moment, thinking of what he must do next. Silence surrounded him, deep and pervasive within the fortress walls. Time slipped away. He did not require much of it, but he would have to be quick in any case.
And he would need Caerid Lock’s cooperation.
He hurried down the stairway, intent on his plan, mulling over the details in his mind. The musty smell of the close passage assailed his nostrils, causing his nose to wrinkle. Elsewhere, in the main corridors and stairways of the Keep, the air would be clean and warm, earned up from the fire pit that heated the castle throughout the year. Dampers and vents controlled the airflow, but none of these were present in hidden passages like this one.
He found the Captain of the Druid Guard two landings farther down, standing alone in the shadows. He came forward at Bremen’s approach, his worn face impassive.
“I thought you might visit more comfortably with your friends alone,” he said.
“Thank you,” Bremen replied, touched at the other’s consideration. “But we would have you be one of us, Caerid. We leave at sunrise. Will you come?”
Caerid smiled faintly. “I thought that might be your plan. Risca and Tay are eager enough to depart Paranor—that’s no secret.” He shook his head slowly. “But as for me, Bremen, my duty lies here. Especially if what you believe is true. Someone must protect the Druids of Paranor, even from themselves. I am best suited. The Guard is mine, all handpicked, all trained under my command. It would not do for me to abandon them now.”
Bremen nodded. “I suppose not. Still, it would be good to have you with us.”
Caerid almost smiled. “It would be good to come. But the choice is made.”
“Then keep careful watch within these walls, Caerid Lock.” Bremen fixed him with his gaze. “Be certain of the men you lead. Are there Trolls among them? Are there any who might betray you?”
The Captain of the Druid Guard shook his head firmly. “None. All will stand with me to the death. Even the Trolls. I would bet my life on it, Bremen.”
Bremen smiled gently. “And so you do.” He glanced about momentarily as if seeking someone. “He will come, Caerid—the Warlock Lord with his winged minions and mortal followers and perhaps creatures summoned out of some dark pit. He will descend on Paranor and attempt to crush you. You must watch your back, my frien
d.”
The seasoned veteran nodded. “He’ll find us ready.” He held the other’s gaze. “It’s time to take you back down to the gates. Would you like to take some food with you?”
Bremen nodded. “I would.” Then he hesitated. “I almost forgot. Would it be possible for me to have one final word with Kahle Rese? I am afraid we left each other under rather strained circumstances, and I would like to correct that before I go away. Could you give me just a few minutes more, Caerid? I will come right back.”
The Elf considered the request silently for a moment, then nodded. “Very well. But hurry, please. I have already stretched Athabasca’s instructions to their limit.”
Bremen smiled disarmingly and went back up the stairs once more. He hated lying to Caerid Lock, but there was no reasonable alternative open to him. The Captain of the Druid Guard would never have been able to sanction what he was about to do under any circumstances, friend or no. Bremen ascended two levels, passed through a doorway into a secondary passage, quickly followed it to its end, then went through yet another door to a second set of stairs, this one more narrow and steep than the first. He went quietly and with great care. He could not afford to be discovered now. What he was about to do was forbidden. If he was observed, Athabasca might well cast him into the deepest dungeon and leave him there for all time.
At the head of the narrow stairs he stopped before a massive wooden door secured by locks made fast with chains as thick as his aged wrists. He touched the locks carefully, one after the other, and with small snicks they fell open. He released the chains from their securing rings, pushed at the door, and watched with a mix of relief and trepidation as it swung slowly away.
He stepped through then and found himself on a platform high up within the Druid’s Keep. Below, the walls fell away into a black pit that was said to core all the way to the center of the earth. No one had ever descended to its bottom and returned. No one had ever been able to cast a light deep enough to see what was down there. The Druid Well, it was called. It was a place into which the discards of time and fate had been cast—of magic and science, of the living and the dead, of mortal and immortal. It had been there since the time of faerie. Like the Hadeshorn in the Valley of Shale, it was one of the few doorways that connected the worlds of life and afterlife. There were tales of how it had been used over the years and of the terrible things it had swallowed. Bremen had no interest in the tales. What mattered was that he had determined long ago that the pit as a shaft that channeled magic from realms no living soul had ever visited, and within the blackness that cloaked its secrets lay power that no creature would dare to challenge.