F. Paul Wilson: The Keep

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 running toward him, running as fast as her long legs would carry her, her expression a mixture of joy and doubt, as if she wanted him to be there more than anything in the world but could not allow herself to believe until she had touched him.

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.