Clouds banked from horizon to horizon, shutting out moon and stars, cloaking the world in blackness. Lightning flashed a second time, momentarily splintering the night like shattered glass, then vanishing as if it had never been. Thunder rolled in its wake, a long, deep peal that echoed off the mountain peaks. The storm was staying south of Paranor, but the air smelled of rain and the silence was deep and oppressive.
The Captain of the Druid Guard lingered a moment longer, contemplative, then moved on through a tower door and into the Keep. He made these same rounds every night, disdaining sleep, a compulsive man whose work habits never varied. The times of greatest danger, he believed, were just before midnight and just before dawn. These were the times when weariness and sleep dulled the senses and made you careless. If an attack was planned, it would come then. Because he believed that Bremen would not give warning without reason, and because he was cautious by nature, he had determined to keep an especially sharp eye these next few weeks. He had already increased the number of guards on any given watch and begun the laborious process of strengthening the gate locks. He had considered sending night patrols into the surrounding woods as an added precaution, but was worried that they would be too vulnerable beyond the protection of the walls. His guard was large, but it was not an army. He could provide security within, but he could not give battle without.
He descended the tower stairs to the front courtyard and crossed. Half a dozen guards were stationed at the entry, responsible for the gates, portcullis, and watchtowers that fronted the main approach to the castle. They snapped to attention at his approach. He spoke with the officer in charge, confirmed that all was well, and continued on. He recrossed the open court, listening to a new roll of thunder break the deep night silence, glancing south to search for the flash of lightning that had preceded it, realizing as he did that it would already be gone. He was uneasy, but no more so this night than any other, as wary as he was compulsive about his responsibilities. Sometimes he thought he had stayed too long at Paranor. He did his job well; he knew he was still good at it. He was proud of his command; all of the guards presently in service had been selected and trained by him. They were a solid, dependable bunch, and he knew he could take credit for that. But he was not getting any younger, and age brought a dulling of the senses that encouraged complacency. He could hardly afford that. The fall of the Northland and the rumors of the Warlock Lord made these dangerous times. He sensed change in the wind. Something bad was coming to the Four Lands, and it would most certainly sweep up the Druids in its wake. Something bad was coming, and Caerid Lock was worried that he would not recognize its face until it was too late.
He passed through a doorway at the end of the court and walked down a hall that ran to the north wall and the gate that opened there. There were four gates to the Keep, one for each approach.
There were a number of smaller doors as well, but these were constructed of stone and sealed with iron. Most were cleverly hidden.
You could find them if you looked hard enough, but to do that you had to stand right up against the wall where the light was good and the guards on the battlements would see you. Nevertheless, Caerid kept a man at each during the hours between sunset and sunrise, taking nothing for granted. He passed two on his way to the west gate, fifty yards apart along the winding corridor. The guard at each acknowledged him with a sharp salute. Alert and ready, they were saying. Caerid gave a nod of approval both times and passed on.
He frowned though, when out of sight, troubled by their deployment. The man at the first door, a Troll from the Kershalt, was a veteran, but the man at the second, a young Elf, was new. He did not like stationing new men by themselves. He made a mental note to correct that before the next watch.
He was concentrating on the matter as he passed a back stairway leading down from the Druid sleeping quarters and so missed the furtive movement of the three men hiding there.
The three pressed themselves tightly against the stone wall as the Captain of the Druid Guard passed unseeing below them. They remained very still until he was gone, then detached themselves once more and continued down. They were Druids, all of them, each with more than ten years of service to the Council, each with a zealot’s burning conviction that he was destined for greatness.
For they had lived within the Druid order and chafed at its dictates and rules and found them foolish and purposeless and unfulfilling.
Power was necessary if life was to have meaning. A man’s accomplishments meant nothing if they did not result in personal gain.
What purpose did private study serve if it could not be put to practical use? What sense did it make to brush up against all those secrets of science and magic if they could not ever be tested? So they had asked themselves, these three, separately at first, then all together as they came to realize that they shared a common belief.
They were not alone in their dissatisfaction, of course. Others believed as they did. But none so fervently—none so that, like these three, they would allow themselves to become subverted.
There was no hope for them. The Warlock Lord had been looking for them for a long time, planning his revenge on the Druids. He found them out eventually and made them his own. It had taken time, but bit by bit he had won them over, just as he had won over those who had followed him from the Keep three hundred and fifty years earlier. Such men were always there, waiting to be claimed, waiting to be used. Brona had been sly in his approach, not revealing himself to them in the beginning, letting them hear his voice as if it were their own, exposing them to the possibilities, to the scent of power, to the lure of magic. He let them chain themselves to him with their own hands, let them forge locks of expectation and greed, let them make themselves slaves by growing addicted to false dreams and cravings. In the end, they would have begged him to take them, even after they had discovered who he was and what price they must pay.
Now they crept through Paranor’s corridors with dark intent, committed to a course of action that would doom them forever.
They stole in silence from the stairwell and along the corridor to the doorway at which the young Elf stood watch. They clung to the shadows where the torchlight did not reach, using small conjurings of magic given them by the Master—sweet taste of power—to cloak themselves from the young guard’s eyes.
Then they were upon him, one of them striking a sharp blow to his head to knock him senseless. The other two worked quickly and furiously at the locks that secured the stone door, releasing them one by one, hauling back on the heavy iron grate, lifting off the massive bar from its fittings, and finally, irrevocably, pulling open the door itself so that Paranor lay open to the night and the things that waited without.
The Druids stepped back as the first of those things slouched into the light. It was a Skull Bearer, hunched and massive within its black cloak, claws extended before it. All sharp edges and flat planes, all hardness and bulk, it filled the corridor and seemed to suck away the very air. Red eyes burned into the three who cowered before it, and it shoved its way past them disdainfully.
Leathery wings beat softly. With a hiss of satisfaction, it seized the young Elven guard, ripped out his throat, and cast him aside. The Druids flinched as the rending sprayed them with the victim’s blood.
The Skull Bearer beckoned to the darkness without, and other creatures poured through the doorway, things of tooth and nail, twisted and gnarled and bristling with dark tufts of hair, armed and ready, quick-eyed and furtive in the silence. Some were vaguely recognizable; perhaps they had once been Trolls. Some were beasts of the netherworld and looked in no way human. All had been waiting since just after sunset in a dark alcove in the shelter of the outer walls where they could not be seen from the parapets.