He had a choice. He was free.
Kellen walked on.
He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, both to shut out the terrifying sight of the obelisk, and to keep from stepping on a stone. The only thing covering his feet were the thick leather socks he had worn beneath his armored boots. Kellen's feet were quickly growing numb with cold, but if he stepped on a stone and cut himself, or twisted his ankle, he might not be able to walk. And he had to be able to walk, at least as far as the top of the cairn.
Even if he was alone and abandoned. Even if he had no true friends, no family worthy of the name. Even if despair weighed him down so heavily that it felt as if he should be staggering beneath the weight of it. Despair drove him even to tears; he felt them leaking out of the corners of his eyes, but he was too sunk in despondency to care.
At last—he had no idea how long it took—Kellen reached the ring of stones at the foot of the cairn. They were not directly at the base, he saw now, nor did they completely enclose it. There was a gap about six feet wide between two tall stones, and through the gap he could see that the cairn did not rest on the same level ground as the rest of the mountaintop, but at the bottom of a deep pit which began a few feet inside the ring of stones. The sides of the pit were absolutely vertical except where a long sloping path led down between the stones and into the pit.
The cairn was much taller than he'd realized; from where the four of them had stood, they had only been able to see the top two-thirds. He would have to go down in order to go up. Down into a place that had almost certainly been designed as a trap.
Kellen hesitated just outside the tall stones, almost unable to force himself to walk between them. The closer he got to the obelisk, the more he could sense the Darkness radiating from it. The air seemed thick and dirty, heavy now with that bitter scent and taste, making him reluctant to breathe, as if he were accepting the obelisk's foulness into his lungs when he did. With a conscious effort, Kellen compelled himself to breathe deeply. There was no point in half-measures when he was actually going to have to touch the thing.
He felt a little better once he did, as if the icy air had cleared his head, and a few good breaths had actually swept some of that despair away from him. He was shivering in earnest now, and his body ached with cold. He wished he had his sword, or even a dagger, but the instructions that had come with the keystone had been quite specific. He could bring nothing with him but the keystone. The stone and himself.
He continued forward, stumbling a little through the stones, down the path to the cairn itself.
In the temporary relief from the wind, it was almost warm. He could still hear it moaning, but at least the cold wasn't cutting through to his bones. Going down was a little easier than going up, which made it a little easier to resist the spiritual attack on him, the attempt to make him give up before he started.
And in a way, that was heartening. If despair was the Demons' primary weapon—perhaps the odds weren't as great as he feared.
Soon he was facing the cairn itself, and the long winding grey stone staircase that led to the top.
Here was where the Demons had battled in his vision—hordes of them beneath a black-red sky filled with green lightning. Had his vision been of the past, or of the near-future? Would they come now?
He could feel them, though they were not visible. Their presence was everywhere. And one step on the stairs would be the trigger that released them.
He almost turned back then to warn the others, though he wasn't sure even now what he'd say. Why hadn't he told them earlier, when there was time?
You're stalling, he realized, and smiled grimly to himself. Stalling didn't make this any easier, and not going up those stairs didn't guarantee that the monsters from his dreams and visions wouldn't come. No matter what he did, they would come.
He took a step forward and placed his foot on the first of the steps.
Suddenly the wind's force increased, changing from a steady monotonous whine to a-howling gale in an instant. But even that was not enough to mask the shrieks, the howls, the tumult of the creatures as they were released from whatever arcane concealment they'd been held in.
He looked back. He could see nothing but the wall of the pit, but he didn't need to see to know what was happening now, this instant.
This was the place of the monsters of his vision, and the monsters were on their way. Imprisoned in the rocks, perhaps, or held in pits, or even materializing out of the thin air, taking the path between the rocks to the cairn, to tear him limb from limb and end the threat of the keystone forever.
He had never had a chance, of course, and he stood there in a state of fatalistic resignation, waiting for them to come.
But fast as they must be, Jermayan and the others were faster. Ill and wounded as they were, it was
