F. Paul Wilson - The Keep

"Yes, I know," Glenn said with a sardonic twist to his lips. "The same type of 'authorities' who scoffed at the possibility that Troy might have truly existed—and then Schliemann found it. But I'm not going to debate you. The First Age was real. I was born into it."

"But how—"

"Let me finish quickly. There isn't much time and I want you to understand a few things before I go to face Rasalom. Things were different in the First Age. This world was then a battleground between two..." He appeared to be groping for a word. "I don't want to say 'gods' because that would give you the impression that they had discrete identities and personalities. There were two vast, incomprehensible ... forces ... Powers abroad in the land then. One, the Dark Power, which was called Chaos, reveled in anything inimical to mankind. The other Power was..."

He paused again, and Magda could not help but prompt him.

"You mean the White Power ... the power of Good?"

"It's not so simple as that. We merely called it Light. What mattered was that it opposed Chaos. The First Age eventually became divided into two camps: those who sought dominion through Chaos and those who resisted. Rasalom was a necromancer of his time, a brilliant adept to the Dark Power. He gave himself over to it completely and eventually became the champion of Chaos."

"And you chose to be champion of Light—of Good." She wanted him to say yes.

"No ... I didn't exactly choose. And I can't say the Power I serve is all that good, or all that light. I was ... conscripted, you might say. Circumstances too involved to explain now—circumstances that have long since lost any shred of meaning for me—led me to become involved with the armies of Light. I soon found it impossible to extricate myself, and before long I was at their forefront, leading them. I was given the sword. Its blade and hilt were forged by a race of small folk now long extinct. It was fashioned for one purpose; to destroy Rasalom. There came a final battle between the opposing forces—Armageddon, Ragnarök, all the doomsday battles rolled into one. The resulting cataclysm—earthquakes, fire storms, tidal waves—wiped out every trace of the First Age of Man. Only a few humans were left to begin all over again."

"But what of the Powers?"

Glenn shrugged. "They still exist, but their interest waned after the cataclysm. There was not much left for them in a ruined world whose inhabitants were reverting to savagery. They turned their attention elsewhere while Rasalom and I fought on across the world and across the ages, neither one gaining the upper hand for long, neither one sickening or aging. And somewhere along the way we lost something..."

He glanced down at a broken fragment of mirror that had fallen out of the blade case and now lay near his knees.

"Hold that up to my face," he told Magda.

Magda lifted the fragment and positioned it next to his cheek.

"How do I look in it?" he asked.

Magda glanced at the glass—and dropped it with a tiny scream. The mirror was empty! Just as Papa had said of Rasalom!

The man she loved cast no reflection!

"Our reflections were taken away by the Powers we serve, perhaps as a constant reminder to Rasalom and me that our lives were no longer our own."

His mind seemed to drift for a moment "It's strange not to see yourself in a mirror or a pool of water. You never get used to it." He smiled sadly. "I believe I've forgotten what I look like."

Magda's heart went out to him. "Glenn...?"

"But I never stopped pursuing Rasalom," he said, shaking himself. "Wherever there was news of butchery and death, I would find him and drive him off. But as civilization gradually rebuilt itself, and people began to crowd together again, Rasalom became more ingenious in his methods. He was always spreading death and misery in any way he could, and in the fourteenth century, when he traveled from Constantinople throughout Europe, leaving plague-ridden rats in every city along his way—"

"The Black Death!"

"Yes. It would have been a minor epidemic without Rasalom, but as you know, it turned out to be one of the major catastrophes of the Middle Ages. That was when I knew I had to find a way to stop him before he devised something even more hideous. And if I'd done the job right, neither of us would be here right now."

"But how can you blame yourself? How can Rasalom's escape be your fault? The Germans let him loose."

"He should be dead! I could have killed him half a millennium ago but I didn't. I came here looking for Vlad the Impaler. I had heard of his atrocities and they fit Rasalom's pattern. I expected to find him posing as Vlad. But I was wrong. Vlad was just a madman under Rasalom's influence, feeding Rasalom's strength by impaling thousands of innocents. But even at his worst, Vlad could not match by one tenth what is happening every day in today's death camps. I built the keep. I tricked Rasalom by luring him inside. I bound him with the power of the hilt and sealed him in the cellar wall where he would stay forever." He sighed. "At least I thought it would be forever. I could have killed him then—I should have killed him then—but I didn't."

"Why not?"

Glenn closed his eyes and was quiet for a long time before replying. "This isn't easy to say ... but I was afraid. You see, I've lived on as a counterbalance to Rasalom. But what happens if I'm finally victorious and kill him? When his threat is extinguished, what happens to me? I've lived for what seems like eons, but I've never grown tired of life. It may be hard to believe, but there's always something new." He opened his eyes again and looked squarely at Magda. "Always. But I fear Rasalom and I are a pair, the continued existence of one dependent on the other. I am Yang to his Yin. I'm not ready to die yet."

Magda had to know: "Can you die?"

"Yes. It takes a lot to kill me, but I can die. The injuries I received tonight would have done me in had you not brought the blade to me. I had gone as far as I could ... I would have died right here without you." His eyes rested on her for a moment, then he looked over to the keep. "Rasalom probably thinks I'm dead. That could work to my advantage."

Magda wanted to throw her arms around him but could not bring herself to touch him again just yet. At least now she understood the guilt she had seen in his face at unguarded moments.

"Don't go over there, Glenn."

"Call me Glaeken," he said softly. "It's been so long since someone called me by my real name."

"All right... Glaeken." The word felt good on her tongue, as if saying his true name linked her more closely to him. But there were still so many unanswered questions. "What about those awful books? Who hid them there?"

"I did. They can be dangerous in the wrong hands, but I couldn't let them be destroyed. Knowledge of any kind—especially of evil—must be preserved."

There was another question, one which Magda hesitated to ask. She had come to realize as he spoke that it mattered little to her how old he was—it didn't change him from the man she had come to know. But how did he feel about her?

"What of me?" she said finally. "You never told me..." She wanted to ask him if she were just a stop along the way, another conquest. Was the love she had sensed in him and seen in his eyes just a trick he had learned? Was he even capable of love anymore? She couldn't voice the thoughts. Even thinking them, was painful.

Glaeken seemed to read her mind. "Would you have believed me if I had told you?"

"But yesterday—"

"I love you, Magda," he said, reaching for her hand. "I've been closed off for so long. You reached me. No one has been able to do that for a long time. I may be older than anyone or anything you've ever imagined, but I'm still a man. That was never taken away from me."