“Nothing living wants any part of these poor dead creatures,” Woostra muttered as they hurried past.
Aphenglow was looking around, searching the shadows and listening for the voice, but everything was silent and blanketed in soft, white light. The night was clear and empty of everything but a quarter moon and stars. Shadows cast by the towers, the walls, the parapets, and the trees of the forest themselves draped the stones of the Druid’s Keep.
Climbing to the battlements where they could peer over the side of the Outer Wall, they crouched in silence while Aphenglow used both her senses and her Druid skills to layer a skein of magic over the surrounding forest. She found no evidence of a human presence. She found scant evidence of any life at all.
She looked at Woostra when she was finished and shook her head. Nothing. Nodding, he motioned for her to follow him down again. Together they descended the battlement steps.
They were halfway across the courtyards and heading back toward the Inner Wall when tendrils of greenish mist began seeping out of the stone ahead of them. The mist advanced toward them, reaching the clusters of dead, penetrating the lifeless bodies and turning them to dust. Aphen and Woostra began to run, skirting the mist until they had passed once more into the Keep. Winding through a series of secondary corridors, they found their way back to the furnace tower and its metal catwalk.
That was when they both heard the voice.
Aphen.
They stopped as one, looking at each other.
None can leave.
Aphen felt her heart catch in her throat. We are not like the others.
All the living are the same. All must become the dead.
She saw Woostra close his eyes in mute acceptance of his fate. He knew this was the risk they had taken. As did she, but she refused to embrace it.
Your task is finished here. The Keep is intact. The Druids are safe. Let us be.
Then release me!
Its scream shook her to the soles of her feet, reverberating through her body like a shock wave. She could feel pain and rage emanating from the words. But what was it asking of her? She had released it already.
You are released already.
No!
She hesitated, having no idea what her response should be. What was it seeking from her? She could feel its presence now, pushing closer, drawing near. She glanced down into the pit and saw the greenish mist rising from the depths. Instinctively, she backed away, flattening herself against the stone of the chamber wall. Woostra was beside her, his face drawn and gray.
The voice screamed again. Release me now!
It was coming for them, and there was little doubt of what it intended once it reached them. She started to summon the magic she could use against their attacker. Release it? Release it how?
Then abruptly, she saw what it was asking of her. She rushed to the railing, looking down at the approach of her own death.
“I release you back into your resting place! Listen to me. The Druids are returned!” She screamed the words, the sound echoing off the walls of the Keep. “I release you from your task and send you back!”
There was a long, deep, endless sigh, and the greenish mist began to recede back into the gloom, withdrawing into the depths, a roiling haze slowly losing color and presence until it was gone.
Aphenglow felt the tension and fear recede within her, and she exhaled slowly in response.
“Hurry,” she told Woostra.
She was thinking of the future now, of what it meant to leave Paranor. The Druid’s Keep would be abandoned, with no Druids in residence and no immediate prospect of any returning. With the magic that warded the Keep sent back into seclusion, all of Paranor was again at risk. But there was nothing to be done about it. Not when so much else was at stake, as well.
Unspeaking, they made their way down the circular stairway to the entrance of the underground tunnel, passed through, and went back out into the world.
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