“Do shades have finite lives once they reach the netherworld?” Drisker asked, intrigued. “I thought shades simply lived on in ghost form.”
“Well, now you’ve learned something new, haven’t you? Think about it. All those shades take up space. Where do you put them? Eventually some have to give way to allow for new ones. When they do, they simply vanish. Poof. Gone in a moment’s time.”
“And what happens then?”
Cogline shrugged. “That’s the question, isn’t it? I will soon know the answer, but you will have to wait awhile. Which brings us to your present situation and the more pressing question of how long that wait might be.”
“Can you help me get out of the Keep?” Drisker asked.
“Well, shades don’t really help anyone, do they? You must know that much from the way living and dead Druids must meet at the Hadeshorn to converse. The living always desire answers from the dead, but the dead can’t provide them. They can only hint or suggest or riddle. It is the way of things.”
“So you can’t help me?”
“I didn’t say that. I can try to help you. But mostly you are going to have to help yourself.”
Drisker sighed. “So far I haven’t had much success. I’ve been trying for days and nothing works. Surely you can tell me something that would put me on the right track?”
Cogline shrugged, and when he did so his entire body shivered as if threatening to disappear. “You might try checking your pockets to see if there isn’t something there that would prove useful.”
“I already checked my pockets. I did that right away, just to see if I still had the Black Elfstone. I didn’t. Clizia Porse took it from me when she left me here to die. All I have is the scrye orb.”
Cogline looked decidedly disappointed. “You should check again. Maybe you missed something. In our tendency to be certain about what might or might not be true, we sometimes persuade ourselves things are different from reality. I wonder if it could have happened here?”
“I don’t see how.” Drisker was irritated now. All this back-and-forth talk was leading nowhere. He shook his head. “All right, I’ll make another search. But I hope this isn’t a game you’re playing. Because I am not interested in games!”
The shade said nothing. It simply waited, head cocked. There was a curiously intense look on its face, readable within the shimmering of its features. Drisker stared at it, momentarily fascinated, and then began rifling through his empty pockets, reaching deep, fumbling around, finding the scrye orb and continuing to dig deeper.
“Nothing,” he muttered, still searching. “Just the scrye orb.”
“Hmmm. Well, then, at least we have eliminated one possibility.” Cogline scratched his ghostly head. “Perhaps when you have finished rummaging about, you should check the chamber where the talismans curated by the Druid order are stored.”
“So that I can discover it isn’t there, either? I know what’s in that chamber. I’ve cataloged it all myself, personally!”
“Have you anything better to do with your time?”
“Wasting it like this isn’t helping!”
“But what if you’re not wasting it?”
Drisker was about to offer a fresh retort when suddenly he froze, his hand still buried deep inside his pocket. His fingers explored carefully, and a shocked expression crossed his face. Then he slowly withdrew his hand.
In his palm lay the Black Elfstone.
Drisker stared. “I don’t understand,” he said quietly, looking up at Cogline. “How did this happen? How could it have happened? It wasn’t there earlier. I would swear it wasn’t.” He glanced down, frowning. “This is your doing, isn’t it?”
“There is so much to explain,” the shade replied. “There are answers to be had to all your questions, Drisker Arc, although not all of them might be ones you will be happy to discover.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Drisker replied. As maddening as Cogline was, he was clearly the only one who knew the story behind what had happened to the Elfstone. “Tell me what you know.”
“I was about to do so. Let’s begin with my recent past. I have been living in Paranor since before you became Ard Rhys. I was always fond of it there. Spent considerable time in it back when Walker Boh was struggling to accept his destiny. The netherworld was never for me. So when you left and Ober Balronen became Ard Rhys, I knew what lay ahead. The current Druid order was rotten clear through, made that way by the machinations of Balronen and his associates and their foolish indifference to the danger they were facing. But while a shade can observe, it can neither change the future nor interfere with the present.”
He paused. “Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
The shade made a dismissive gesture. “I was here when the Keep fell. I watched them die, all of them—all of the Druids trapped inside save Clizia Porse. But she had betrayed them, and she would betray you, as well. While you clearly distrusted her, I knew that alone would not be enough to save you. Your nature was to give the benefit of the doubt while hers was to take advantage. She would gain your help, then steal the Black Elfstone once you retrieved it and leave you to die. I could not stand by and watch it happen—it would put an end of the Druid order for good, destroying everything that had been established by Galaphile all those years ago.”
Drisker nodded slowly. All those years ago. Thousands of years of Druid efforts expended to save the Four Lands. “So you did something, didn’t you? Even though you weren’t supposed to be able to do so?”
Cogline shrugged. “Shades cannot impact the lives of the living, but they can cause disturbances in other, smaller ways. Lengthy occupation of a place gives a shade a small amount of power over it. I discovered, quite by accident some years back, that my long tenure as a resident of Paranor had given me the ability to change things now and again without having to touch them. A sort of teleporting or rearranging, I suppose you would call it.”
He looked off into the gloom of the Keep, as if remembering. “When I saw you go down, disabled by Clizia’s magic, I knew what I had to do. I waited until she had removed the pouch with its Elfstone inside and then I—how shall I put this? I swapped what she had for something else. I waited until she had pocketed the Elfstone and was bending over you, and then I swapped the Stone for something else. Then I waited.”
“For me to wake?”
The shade managed to look embarrassed. “Not exactly.”
“What, then? Why did you wait to tell me about the Elfstone?”