It was nearing midnight when the Elven fortress at last came into view. The great stronghold sat back within a deep crevice, a twisting maze of parapets, towers, and bulwarks rising up darkly against the moonlit stone of the cliffs. A long, winding stairway ran up the slope to a gaping entry in the castle’s outer wall. Ironbound wooden doors, weathered and split with age, their hinges rusted fast, stood open against the night. Watchtowers perched like squat beasts of prey atop massive stone-block walls, their narrow windows black and vacant. Spikes protruded from the crest of the parapets; high within the duster of peaked turrets, chains that had once carried the standards of the Elven Kings clanged sharply against iron poles. From somewhere above the fortress, deep within the mountain’s crags, sounded the piercing cry of a night bird, its shriek rising until it matched the shrill pitch of the wind, hanging momentarily, then fading into echo.
The five who remained of the little company from Arborlon climbed the steps to the entrance of the abandoned fortress and stepped cautiously through. A high, tightly enclosed walkway ran back to a second wall. Weeds and scrub had grown through the stone block that formed the walk. The five started forward, boots echoing hollowly in the stillness of the passage. Bats flew from chinks and cracks, their leathery wings flapping wildly. Small rodents scurried across the broken stone in flashes of sudden movement. Cobwebs hung like sheets of thin, fine linen, clinging in streamers to the company’s clothing as they passed.
At the end of the walkway, an entry opened into a huge courtyard littered with debris and filled with the whine of the wind. To either side of an encircling battlement, a broad stairway wound upward toward a balcony that fronted the main tower of the ancient fortress, a monstrous walled citadel that rose hundreds of feet into the night sky, its rugged stone curving back into the shadow of the mountain. Windows marked the rising floors of the tower, overlooking the tangled blackness of the Matted Brakes. At the center of the balcony, a deep alcove sheltered a single wooden door. Below, leading directly from the courtyard into the tower, was a second door. Both stood closed.
Wil glanced about uneasily at the walls and battlements that loomed over him, dark and sinister and crumbling with age. The wind howled in his ears and blew dirt in his eyes, and he tightened the cowl of his cloak about his face for protection. He did not like this place. It frightened him. It was a haven for the ghosts of dead men, a haven in which the living were intruders. He looked at Amberle and saw the same uneasiness reflected in her face.
Crispin had dispatched Dilph to explore the balcony. With Katsin in tow, the Elf Captain moved now to the tower entry before him. He worked the latch unsuccessfully, then put his weight against the door. It held firm. Katsin tried with no better luck. The door was blocked solidly. Wil watched their struggles to free it with growing apprehension. The fortress shut them in like a prison, and he was anxious to be free of it.
Dilph reappeared from the balcony, his words nearly lost in the shriek of the wind. The upper door was open. Crispin nodded. Gathering up several loose sticks of wood that could serve as torches once they had gained access to the tower, he led the company up the balcony stairs and into the shelter of the alcove. The door stood ajar. Stepping just inside, the Elf Captain used tinder to catch fire to one of the brands he carried, lit a second to give to Dilph, then motioned them all inside, pushing the door closed against the wind.
They found themselves in a small anteroom that branched off into a series of darkened hallways. A stairwell cut into the far wall, winding out
of the stone-block floor and upward into the gloom. Dust hung heavily in the wind-stirred air, and the rock of the tower was permeated with the smell of musty dampness. Holding out his torch, Crispin paced across the room and back again, tested the heavy iron latch that secured the anteroom door, then turned back to the others. They would rest here until dawn. Katsin and Dilph would stand watch in the courtyard while Wil and Amberle slept. Crispin would go in search of the passageway that would take them through the mountain to the banks of the Mermidon.
Dilph handed his torch to Wil. With Katsin following, he slipped out into the night. Crispin bolted the door behind them, cautioned Wil and Amberle to keep the latch down, and then disappeared into the darkness of one of the hallways. The Valeman and the Elven girl watched until the light from his torch had faded into the gloom. Then Wil moved over to the entry, set his torch into an iron rack fixed in the stone and hunched down with his back against the door. Amberle wrapped herself in her blanket and lay down next to him. Through chinks in the fastenings that held the door, the howl of the wind sounded its eerie call down the tunnel-like halls of the tower.
It was a long time before either of them fell asleep.
Wil was never certain that he did sleep. He seemed to doze more than sleep, a light drifting rest that left him groping uncertainly between wake-fulness and slumber. Almost at once, he began to dream, moving through the tangle of half-sleep that hung like a fog across his subconscious. Darkness and mist enfolded him in a forest of imaginings, and he wandered lost. Yet he had been here before, it seemed. It was familiar to him, this darkness and the haze that drifted through it, the mass of jumbled landscapes through which he passed. It was a dream, yet not a dream, that he had had before …
Then he felt the terrible presence of the creature as it crouched somewhere in the dark about him and abruptly he remembered. Havenstead—he had dreamed this dream at Havenstead. The creature had come for him and he had fled, but fled in vain, for there had been no escape. He had come awake finally. But could he do so now? Panic surged through him.
It
was out there, the thing, the monster. It was coming for him again. He could not run from it, could not escape it unless he could wake. But he could not find the way out of the dark and this mist.
He heard himself scream as it reached for him.
Instantly, he was awake. In the pocket of his tunic, the Elfstones burned like fire against his body. Lurching up wildly from his blanket, he peered into the smoky haze of the torchlight as it flickered redly from the tower’s stone walls. Amberle crouched beside him, sleep clouding her vision, her
face pale and frightened. Wil touched the small bulk of the Elfstones uncertainly. Had it been his scream that had wakened them, he wondered? But the Elven girl was not looking at him. She was looking fixedly at the door.
“Out there,” she whispered.
Hurriedly, the Valeman rose, drawing the girl up with him. He listened but heard nothing.
“It might have been the wind,” he said finally, his voice hushed and filled with doubt. He put his hand on her arm. “I had better have a look. Lock the door after me. Do not open it unless you hear my voice.”
He rose, pulled back the heavy bar, and slipped out into the night. Wind whistled sharply through the door as it closed behind him. Amberle pushed the latch securely in place and waited.
Wil crouched for a moment in the shadow of the alcove, staring out into the dark beyond. Moonlight fell across the length of the deserted balcony and across walls and battlements that rose all about. Cautiously, he crossed to the parapet and peered downward into the courtyard. It was empty. There was no sign of Katsin or Dilph. He hesitated, uncertain as to what he should do next. A moment later he started along the length of the balcony. At the top of the stairway, he stopped again to scan the courtyard. Still nothing. He started down.
Tumbleweeds and dust balls blew randomly across the debris-littered court, scattering wildly with each new gust of wind. Wil slipped down the stairs soundlessly. He was almost to the bottom when he saw Katsin. At least he saw what was left of Katsin, his body twisted grotesquely as it slumped against the tower wall beneath the balcony. A few feet beyond lay Dilph, barely visible under what remained of the heavy tower door that earlier had been solidly blocked.
Wil felt himself go cold. The Reaper! It had found them. And it was inside the tower.
In the next instant he was scrambling back up the stairs toward the balcony entry, praying that he was not already too late.
Alone in the tower anteroom, Amberle thought she heard a noise rise out of the gloom of the stairwell behind her, a noise that came from somewhere deep within the structure. Uneasily she glanced about, then listened. She was still listening when a pounding on the tower door startled her so that she jumped away in surprise, crying out.
“Amberle! Open the door!”
It was Wil’s voice, so muffled by the wind that it was barely recognizable. Hurriedly she threw back the heavy latch. The Valeman darted inside, shoving the door closed behind him. He was white with fear.
“They’re dead—both of them!” He kept his voice low with an effort. “The Reaper got them. It’s here, in the tower!”
Amberle started to say something, but Wil quickly put his hand to her mouth, silencing her. A noise—he had heard a noise—there, on the stairwell. It was the Reaper. He knew it with a certainty that defied argument. It was coming for them. Once it found its way up to this room, it would have them. The Valeman felt a moment of utter panic. How could this have happened? How could the Demon have found them so quickly? What was he supposed to do now?
Holding the torch before him like a shield, he moved away from the door, away from the stairwell. Amberle seemed frozen to him, stumbling back mechanically as he did. They could not stay here, he told himself numbly. He glanced at the passageways about him. Which one had Crispin gone into? He was not certain. He chose the one he believed the Elf Captain had gone down, and raced into its darkness, holding tightly to Amberle.
Several hundred feet further on, they stumbled to a halt. The passageway ended, branching into three new corridors. Again the Valeman panicked. Which should he take? He brought the torch close to the tower floor. The passing of a single pair of Elven boots had stirred the dust collected over the years, leaving a clear and easily recognizable trail, one that he could follow to Crispin—one that the Reaper could follow to them. He choked down his fear and rushed quickly on.
Together, Valeman and Elven girl fled down the dark corridors of the fortress, into halls thick with must and cobwebs, through chambers filled with rotting tapestries and crumbling pieces of furniture, and along balconies and parapets that dropped away into pits of blackness. Silence filled the ancient citadel, deep and pervasive within its bowels so that even the sound of the wind faded and there was only the pounding of their boots on the stone flooring as they ran. Twice they lost their way entirely, racing down a wrong corridor before finding that the trail had disappeared and that they had missed a turn in their haste. Several times they found more than one set of prints where Crispin had doubled back on himself in trying to find the right path. Each time precious seconds were used to discover where he had actually gone. Always there was the feeling that at any moment the Reaper would appear from out of the gloom behind them, and their last chance for escape would be gone.
Then a flicker of torchlight cut through the darkness in the corridor ahead of them. They stumbled toward it, watching with relief as Crispin’s lean form materialized out of the shadows. The Elf Captain was returning from his search for the passage that led through the mountain. He came up to them at a dead run, sword blade glinting dully in the red firelight.
“What has happened?” he asked, seeing at once the fear in their eyes.
Quickly the Valeman told him. Crispin’s face went ashen.
“Dilph and Katsin, too! What will it take to stop this thing?” Staring down at the sword he held, he hesitated, then beckoned for them to follow. “This way. There may yet be a chance for us.”
Together they raced back down the passage through which Crispin had come, turning left into another corridor, passing through a massive hall that had once been an armory, hastening down a flight of stairs into an empty rotunda, then into yet another passage. At the end of this final corridor was an iron door, fixed to the rock of the mountain by bolts and crossbars. Crispin drew back the bars and pulled open the heavy door. Wind roared in their faces, bursting through the opening and thrusting them backward violently. Motioning for Wil and Amberle to follow, the Elf Captain discarded his torch, lowered his head resolutely, and pushed through the opening into the darkness beyond.
They found themselves staring out across a deep gorge where the mountain split apart from crest to base. Bridging the two halves was a slender catwalk that led from the small rocky niche in which they stood to a single tower set into the far cliff. Wind howled across the drop of the chasm, shrieking in fury as it buffeted the narrow iron span. Only a thin sliver of moonlight penetrated the deep crevice, its white band falling across a small section of the catwalk near its far end.
Crispin pulled the Valeman and the Elven girl close.
“We have to cross!” he shouted above the roar of the wind. “Hold fight to the railing! Don’t look down!”
“I’m not sure I can do this!” Amberle shouted back, looking anxiously out at the catwalk. Wil felt her small hands grip his arm tightly.
“You have to!” Crispin’s response left no room for argument. “This is the only way out!”
The wind howled in their ears. Amberle glanced momentarily at the closed door behind her, then looked back again at Crispin. Wordlessly, she nodded.
“Stay close now!” the Elf warned.
In a line, they started onto the catwalk, the Elf Captain leading, Amberle behind him, Wil trailing. They moved slowly, carefully, hands gripping the railing to either side, heads bent low. The wind ripped across their bodies in fierce gusts, tearing at their clothing and shaking the slender iron walk until it seemed certain that it must collapse and fall into the gorge. As they passed from the shelter of the cliff face, the freezing air of the mountain’s upper slopes blew down across them. Hands and feet went quickly numb, and the iron of the bridge felt like ice. Step by step, they made their way across, moving at last from the shadow of the cliffs into the slender band of moonlight that marked the final leg of their crossing. Moments later they
gained the platform that fronted the solitary tower. The structure rose up before them against the cliff face, its narrow windows recessed and dark, its stone walls trailing moisture frozen to ice. A single door, now closed, marked the entrance into the keep.