F. Paul Wilson - The Keep

"Don't try to stop me!" Magda said as she rushed by. Something in her voice must have warned them away, for they stepped aside and let her pass.

She stumbled back through the brush, the case and the blankets weighing her down, snagging on the branches, slowing her as she rushed toward Glenn, praying he was still alive. She found him lying on his back, weaker, his voice fainter.

"The blade," he whispered as she leaned over him. "Take it out of the case."

For an awful moment Magda feared he would ask for a coup de grace. She would do anything for Glenn—anything but that. But would a man with his injuries make so desperate a climb out of the gorge just to ask for death? She opened the case. Two large pieces of the shattered mirror lay within. She brushed them aside and lifted the dark, cold blade with both her hands, feeling the shape of the runes carved in its surface press against her palms.

She passed it to his outstretched arms and almost dropped it when a faint blue glow, blue like a gas flame, leaped along its edges at his touch. As she released it to him, he sighed; his features relaxed, losing their pain, a look of contentment settling on them ... the look of a man who has come home to a warm and familiar room after a long, arduous winter journey.

Glenn positioned the blade along the length of his battered, punctured, blood-soaked body, the point resting a few inches short of his ankles, the spike of the butt where the missing hilt should be almost to his chin. Folding his arms over the blade and across his chest, he closed his eyes.

"You shouldn't stay here," he said in a faint, slurred voice. "Come back later."

"I'm not leaving you."

He made no reply. His breathing became shallower and steadier. He appeared to be asleep. Magda watched him closely. The blue glow spread to his forearms, sheathing them in a faint patina of light. She covered him with a blanket, as much for warmth as to hide the glow from the keep. Then she moved away, wrapped the second blanket around her shoulders, and seated herself with her back against a rock. Myriad questions, held at bay until now, rushed in on her.

Who was he, really? What manner of man was this who suffered wounds enough to kill him many times over and then climbed a slope that would tax a strong man in perfect health? What manner of man hid his room's mirror in a closet along with an ancient sword with no hilt? Who now clasped that sword to his breast as he lay on the borderland of death? How could she entrust her love and her life to such a man? She knew nothing about him.

Then Papa's ranting came back to her: He belongs to a group that directs the Nazis, that is using them for its own foul ends! He's worse than a Nazi!

Could Papa be right? Could she be so blinded by her infatuation that she could not or would not see this? Glenn certainly was no ordinary man. And he did have secrets—he had been far from totally open with her. Was it possible that Glenn was the enemy and Molasar the ally?

She drew the blanket closer around her. All she could do was wait.

Magda's eyelids began to droop—the aftereffects of the concussion and the rhythmic sounds of Glenn's breathing lulled her. She struggled briefly, then succumbed ... just for a moment... just to rest her eyes.

Klaus Woermann knew he was dead. And yet... not dead.

He clearly remembered his dying. He had been strangled with deliberate slowness here in the subcellar in darkness lit only by the feeble glow of his fallen flashlight. Icy fingers with incalculable strength had closed on his throat, choking off the air until his blood had thundered in his ears and blackness had closed in.

But not eternal blackness. Not yet.

He could not understand his continued awareness. He lay on his back, his eyes open and staring into the darkness. He did not know how long he had been this way. Time had lost all meaning. Except for his vision, he was cut off from the rest of his body. It was as if it belonged to someone else. He could feel nothing, not the rocky earth against his back or the cold air against his face. He could hear nothing. He was not breathing. He could not move—not even a finger. When a rat had crawled over his face, dragging its matted fur across his eyes, he could not even blink.

He was dead. And yet not dead.

Gone was all fear, all pain. He was devoid of all feeling except regret. He had ventured into the subcellar to find redemption and had found only horror and death—his own death.

Woermann suddenly realized that he was being moved. Although he could still feel nothing, he sensed he was being roughly dragged through the darkness by the back of his tunic, along a narrow passage, into a dark room—

—and into light.

Woermann's line of vision was along the limp length of his body. As he was dragged along a corridor strewn with granite rubble, his gaze swept across a wall he immediately recognized—a wall upon which words of an ancient tongue had been written in blood. The wall had been washed but brown smudges were still visible on the stone.

He was dropped to the floor. His field of vision was now limited to a section of the partially dismantled ceiling directly above him. At the periphery of his vision, moving about, was a dark shape. Woermann saw a length of heavy rope snake over an exposed ceiling beam, saw a loop of that same rope go over his face, and then he was moving again...

... upward...

... until his feet left the ground and his lifeless body began to sway and swing and twist in the air. A shadowy figure melted into a doorway down the corridor and Woermann was left alone, hanging by his neck from a rope.

He wanted to scream a protest to God. For he now knew that the dark being who ruled the keep was waging war not only against the bodies of the soldiers who had entered his domain, but against their minds and their spirits as well.

And Woermann realized the role he was being forced to play in that war: a suicide. His men would think he had killed himself! It would completely demoralize them. Their officer, the man they looked to for leadership, had hanged himself—the ultimate cowardice, the ultimate desertion.

He could not allow that to happen. And yet he could do nothing to alter the course of events. He was dead.

Was this to be his penance for closing his eyes to the monstrousness of the war? If so, it was too much—too much to pay! To hang here and watch his own men and the einsatzkommandos come and gawk at him. And the final ignominy: to see Erich Kaempffer smiling up at him!

Was this why he had been left teetering on the edge of eternal oblivion? To witness his own humiliation as a suicide?

If only he could do something!

One final act to redeem his pride and—yes—his manhood. One last gesture to give meaning to his death.

Something!

Anything!

But all he could do was hang and sway and wait to be found.

Cuza looked up as a grating sound filled the room. The section of the wall that led into the base of the tower was swinging open. When it stopped moving, Molasar's voice came from the darkness beyond.

"All is ready."

At last! The wait had been almost unbearable. As the hours had edged by, Cuza had almost given up on seeing Molasar again tonight. Never had he been a patient man, but at no time could he remember being so consumed by an urgency such as he had known tonight. He had tried to distract himself by dredging up worries about how Magda was faring after that blow to the head ... it was no use. The coming destruction of "Lord Hitler" banished all other considerations from his mind. Cuza had paced the length, breadth, and perimeters of both rooms again and again, obsessed by his fierce longing to get on with it and yet unable to do a thing until word came from Molasar.