The Keep

The pair of corpses, unable to cling to anything, fell limp and silent through the darkness to the rubble below.

Glaeken pulled himself inside the doorway and rested. Much too close.

But he could now venture a guess as to what his ancient enemy had in mind: Had Rasalom hoped to push him into the opening and then collapse all or part of the tower's i

It could work, Glaeken thought, his eyes searching the shadows for more cadavers lying in wait. And if successful, Rasalom would be able to use the German corpses to remove just enough rubble to expose the sword. After that he would have to wait for some villager or traveler to happen by—someone he could induce to take the sword and carry it across the threshold. It might work, but Glaeken sensed that Rasalom had something else in mind.

Magda watched with dread and dismay as Glaeken disappeared into the tower. She yearned to run after him and pull him back, but Papa needed her—more now than at anytime before. She tore her heart and mind away from Glaeken and bent to the task of tending her father's wounds.

They were terrible wounds. Despite her best efforts to stanch its flow, Papa's blood was soon pooled around him, seeping between the timbers of the causeway and making the long fall to the stream that trickled below.

With a sudden flutter his eyes opened and looked at her from a mask that was ghastly in its whiteness.

"Magda," he said. She could barely hear him.

"Don't talk, Papa. Save your strength."

"There's none left to save ... I'm sorry..."

"Shush!" She bit her lower lip. He's not going to die—I won't let him!

"I have to say it now. I won't have another chance."

"That's not—"

"Only wanted to make things right again. That was all. I meant you no harm. I want you to know—"

His voice was drowned out by a deep crashing rumble from within the keep. The causeway vibrated with the force of it. Magda saw clouds of dust billowing out of the second- and third-level windows of the tower. Glaeken...?

"I've been a fool," Papa was saying, his voice even weaker than before. "I forsook our faith and everything else I believe in—even my own daughter—because of his lies. I even caused the man you loved to be killed."

"It's all right," she told him. "The man I love still lives! He's in the keep right now. He's going to put an end to this horror once and for all."

Papa tried to smile. "I can see in your eyes how you feel about him ... if you have any sons..."

There was another rumble, much louder than the first. Magda saw dust gush out from all the levels of the tower this time. Someone was standing alone on the edge of the tower roof. When she turned back to Papa his eyes were glazed and his chest was still.

"Papa?" She shook him. She pounded his chest and shoulders, refusing to believe what all her senses and instincts told her. "Papa, wake up! Wake up!"

She remembered how she had hated him last night, how she had wished him dead. And now ... now she wanted to take it all back, to have him listen to her for just a single minute, to have him hear her say she had forgiven him, that she loved and revered him and that nothing had really changed. Papa couldn't leave without letting her tell him that!

Glaeken! Glaeken would know what to do! She looked up at the tower and saw that there were now two figures facing each other on the parapet.

Glaeken sprinted up the next two flights to the fifth level, dodging falling stone, skirting sudden holes in the floors. From there it was a quick vertical climb out of the darkness to the tower roof.

He found Rasalom standing on the parapet at the far side of the roof, his cloak hanging limp in the expectant hush before sunrise. Below and behind Rasalom lay the mist-choked Dinu Pass; and beyond that, the high eastern wall of the pass, its crest etched in fire by the awakening sun, as yet unseen.

As he started forward, Glaeken wondered why Rasalom waited so calmly in such a precarious position. When the roof suddenly began to crumble and fall away beneath his feet, he knew. In a purely reflexive move, Glaeken made a headlong lunge to his right and managed to fling his free arm over the parapet. By the time he had pulled himself up to a crouching position, the roof and all the i

Glaeken moved counterclockwise around the rim, expecting Rasalom to back away.

He did not. Instead, he spoke in the Forgotten Tongue.

"So, barbarian, it's down to the two of us again, isn't it?"

Glaeken did not reply. He was feeding his hatred, stoking the fires of rage with thoughts of what Magda had endured at Rasalom's hands. Glaeken needed that rage to strike the final blow. He couldn't allow himself to think or listen or reason or hesitate. He had to strike. He had weakened five centuries ago when he had imprisoned Rasalom instead of slaying him. He would not weaken now. This conflict had to find its end.

"Come now, Glaeken," Rasalom said in a soft, conciliatory tone. "Isn't it time we put an end to this war of ours?"

"Yes!" Glaeken said through clenched teeth. He glanced down at the causeway and saw the miniature figure of Magda bending over her stricken father. The old berserker fury reared up in him, pushing him to run the last four paces with his sword poised for a two-handed decapitating blow.

"Truce!" Rasalom screamed and cowered back, his composure shattered at last.

"No truce!"

"Half a world! I offer you half a world, Glaeken! We'll divide it evenly and you can keep whomever you wish with you! The other half will be mine."

Glaeken slowed, then raised the sword again. "No! No half measures this time!"

Rasalom ferreted out Glaeken's worst fear and flung it at him. "Kill me and you seal your own doom!"

"Where is that written?" Despite all his prior resolve, Glaeken could not help but hesitate.

"It doesn't need to be written! It's obvious! You continue to exist only to oppose me. Eliminate me and you eliminate your reason for being. Kill me and you kill yourself."

It was obvious. Glaeken had dreaded this moment since that night in Tavira when he had first become aware of Rasalom's release from the cell. Yet all the while, in the back of his mind, there had been a tiny hope that killing Rasalom would not be a suicidal act.

But it was a futile hope. He had to face that. The choice was clear: Strike now and end it all or consider a truce.

Why not a truce? Half a world was better than death. At least he would be alive ... and he could have Magda at his side.

Rasalom must have guessed his thoughts.

"You seem to like the girl," Rasalom said, looking down toward the causeway. "You could keep her with you. You wouldn't have to lose her. She's a brave little insect, isn't she?"

"That's all we are to you? Insects?"

" 'We'? Are you such a romantic that you still count yourself among them? We are above and beyond anything they could ever hope to be—as close to gods as they'll ever see! We should unite and act the part instead of warring as we do."

"I've never set myself apart from them. I've tried all along to live as a normal man."