something huge appeared.. Par tried to move away, but the effort
brought him to his knees. Great, luminous yellow eyes blinked
into the night, and a massive black shadow bounded to his side.
“Rumor!” he whispered in disbelief.
The moor cat edged carefully past him to face Coil. The huge
cat growled, a low, dangerous warning cough that seemed to
break through the mist and fill the darkness with shards of sound.
“Coil?” Par called out to his brother and started forward, but
the moor cat quickly blocked his way, shoving him back. The
shadows were moving closer, taking on form now, becoming
lumbering things, bodies covered with scales and hair, faces that
showed demon eyes and jaws split wide in hunger. Rumor spat
at them and lunged, bringing them up short to hiss back at him.
Then he whirled with claws and teeth bared and tore Coil to
pieces.
Coil-what had appeared to be Coil-turned into a thing of
indescribable horror, bloodied and shredded, then shimmered
and disappeared-another deception. Par cried out in anguish
and fury. Tricked! Ignoring the pain and the sudden nausea, he
sent the magic of the wishsong hurtling at the Werebeasts, dag-
gers and arrows of fury, images of things that could rend and
tear. The Werebeasts shimmered and the magic passed harm-
lessly by.
Re-forming, the Werebeasts attacked.
Rumor caught the closest a dozen paces off, hammering it
away with a single breathtaking swipe of one great paw. Another
lunged, but the cat caught it as well and sent it spinning. Others
were appearing now from the shadows and mist behind those
already creeping forward. Too many, thought Par frantically!
He was too weak to stand, the poison from the Werebeasts’
touch seeping through him rapidly now, threatening to drop him
into that familiar black abyss that had begun to open within.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, firm and instantly com-
forting, reassuring him and at the same time holding him in
place, and he heard a voice call sharply, “Rumor!”
The moor cat edged back, never turning to look, responding
to the sound of the voice alone. Par lifted his face. Walker Boh
was beside him, wrapped in black robes and mist, his narrow,
chiseled face set in a look that tamed Par cold, his skin so white
it might have been drawn in chalk.
“Keep still. Par,” he said.
He moved forward to face the Werebeasts. There were more
than a dozen now, crouched down at the edge of the rise, drifting
in and out of the mist and night. They hesitated at Walker Boh’s
approach, almost as if they knew him. Par’s uncle came directly
down to them, stopping when he was less than a dozen yards
from the nearest.
“Leave,” he said simply and pointed off into the night. The
Werebeasts held their ground. Walker came forward another
step, and this time his voice was so hard that it seemed to shiver
the air. “Leave!”
One of them lunged at him, a monstrous thing, jaws snapping
as it reached for the black-robed figure. Walker Boh’s hand shot
out, dust scattering into the beast. Fire erupted into the night
with an explosion that rocked the bottomland, and the Were-
beast simply disappeared.
Walker’s extended hand swept the circle of those that re-
mained, threatening. An instant later, the Werebeasts had faded
back into the night and were gone.
Walker turned and came back up the rise, kneeling next to
Par. “This is my fault,” he said quietly.
Par struggled to speak and felt his strength give out. He was
sick. Consciousness slipped away. For the third time in less than
two days, he tumbled into the abyss. He remembered thinking
as he fell that this time he was not sure he would be able to
climb out again.
XII
Far Ohmsford drifted through a landscape of dreams.
He was both within himself and without as he jour-
neyed, a participant and a viewer. There was constant
motion, sometimes as charged as a voyage across a stormy sea,
sometimes as gentle as the summer wind through the trees. He
spoke to himself alternately in the dark silence of his mind and