The Keep

And she would keep the hilt. It was all she had left.

EPILOGUE

I'm alive.

He sat in the darkness, touching his body to reassure himself that he still existed. Rasalom was gone, reduced to a handful of dust flung into the air. At last, after ages, Rasalom was no more.

Yet I live on. Why?

He had plummeted through the fog, landing on the rocks with force enough to shatter every bone in his body. The blade had broken, the hilt had changed.

Yet he lived on.

At the moment of impact he had felt something go out of him and he had lain there waiting to die.

Yet he hadn't.

His right leg hurt terribly. But he could see, he could feel, breathe, move. And he could hear. When he had picked up the sound of Magda approaching across the floor of the gorge, he had dragged himself to the hinged stone at the base of the tower, opened it, and crawled within. He had waited in silence as she called out his name, covering his ears to shut out the pain and bewilderment in her voice, longing to answer her, yet unable to. Not yet. Not until he was sure.

And now he heard her splashing away through the stream. He swung the stone open all the way and tried to stand. His right leg wouldn't support him. Was it broken?—he had never had a broken bone before. Unable to walk, he crawled down to the water. He had to look. He had to know before he did another thing.

At the edge of the stream he hesitated. He could see the growing blue of the sky in the rippled surface of the water. Would he see anything else when he leaned over it?

Please, he said in his mind to the Power he had served, the Power that might no longer be listening. Please let this be the end of it. Let me live out the rest of my allotted years like a normal man. Let me have this woman to grow old with instead of watching her wither away while I remain young. Let this be the end of it. I have completed the task. Set me free!

Setting his jaw, he thrust his head over the water. A weary red-haired man with blue eyes and an olive complexion stared back. His image was there! He could see himself! His reflection had been returned to him!

Joy and relief flooded through Glaeken. It's over! It's finally over!

He lifted his head and looked across the gorge to the slowly receding figure of the woman he loved like no other woman in all his long life.

"Magda!" He tried to stand but the damn leg still wouldn't hold him up. He was going to have to let it heal like anybody else. "Magda!"

She turned and stood immobile for an eternity. He waved both his arms over his head. He would have sobbed aloud had he remembered how. Among other things, he would have to learn how to cry again.

"Magda!"

Something fell from her hands, something that looked like the hilt to his sword. Then she was ru

Glaeken was there, waiting to be touched.

And far above, a blue-winged bird with a beak full of straw fluttered to a gentle perch on a window ledge of the keep in search of a place to build a nest.