She stared. “Can you hear it, too? Do you hear it the same way you hear our footsteps and know whose it is?”

The wrinkles of his aged face deepened when he smiled. “It belongs to the Keep. I hear it, but I had to learn to listen for it. It doesn’t speak to me, as it does to you. But then you have always had a special connection to the Keep, haven’t you?”

She nodded.

“Can you understand what it says to you?”

She hesitated. “Sometimes. Not the words so much as the tone. I can feel it in my heart. Like now. It wants me to do something. It seems anxious, even desperate, for me to understand what that something is.”

The old man shook his head. “I don’t know that this has ever happened before, Aphen. The Keep sometimes responds to our needs, but I have been reading the Druid Histories and cannot find mention of it speaking to a Druid.”

“Then why is it doing so now?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been hearing the voice for years; I knew it was there. But it was only very recently I understood to whom it was speaking. I thought at first it was the Ard Rhys. But after she was in the Druid Sleep, it still whispered. Then, when you went to Arborlon, the voice stopped and I realized it must have been speaking to you. When you returned and it started up again, I was certain.”

“There’s no record of this ever happening before? Not even to Allanon or Grianne Ohmsford?”

“None. I have been reading through the Histories these past few days trying to discover if anything’s been written down about this. It struck me that this most recent effort to communicate is a warning. Something crucial is happening. I am speculating now, but I think the Keep is trying to tell you what that something is.”

She leaned forward eagerly. “Why would it do that?”

He hesitated, cocking an eyebrow at her. “I think it feels threatened in some way. I think it’s trying to protect itself. I think it wants you to help.”

She cocked an eyebrow back at him. “It seems to me the Keep’s done a pretty fair job of protecting itself.”

“Appearances can be deceiving. What has protected the Keep so far is magic conjured up and set in place by Grianne Ohmsford before Khyber Elessedil succeeded her as Ard Rhys. The magic Grianne created was powerful and effective, but it was not an original part of the Keep. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

She shook her head.

“There is a second, older magic that wards Paranor, one that dwells beneath the Keep’s main tower, deep underground. This magic was created when Paranor was brought into the world to serve as a home for the Druids, and its purpose is much darker. Do you know of it?”