isn’t going, and he thinks he isn’t going. But he is! The young
one, too-Par. That’s the way it will be. Things work out the
way we least expect them to sometimes. Or maybe that’s just
the Druid magic at work, twisting those promises and oaths we
so recklessly take, steering us where we didn’t think we could
ever be made to go.” He shook his head in amusement. “Al-
ways was a baffling trick.”
He drew his robes about him and bent forward. “Now what
is it to be with you, little Wren? Brave bird or timid flyaway-
which will you be?”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Why not both, depending on
what is needed?” she asked.
He grunted impatiently. “Because the situation calls for one
or the other. Choose.”
Wren let her eyes shift briefly to Garth, then off into the woods,
supping deep into the shadows where the still-distant sunlight
had not yet penetrated. Her thoughts and questions of the pre-
vious night came back to her, darting through her mind with
harrying insistence. Well, she could go if she chose, she knew.
The Rovers wouldn’t stop her, not even Garth-though he would
insist on going as well. She could confront the shade of Allanon.
She could speak with the shade of a legend, a man many said
never existed at all. She could ask die questions of him she had
carried about with her for so many years now, perhaps team
some of the answers, possibly come to an understanding about
herself that she had lacked before. A rather ambitious task, she
thought. An intriguing one.
She felt sunlight slipping across the bridge of her nose, tick-
ling her. It would mean a reunion with Par and Coil and Walker
Boh-her other family that maybe wasn’t really family at all.
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. She might enjoy that.
But it would also mean confronting the reality other dreams-
or at least a shade’s version of that reality. And that could mean
a change in the course of her life, a life with which she was
perfectly content. It could mean disruption of that life, an in-
volvement in matters that she might better avoid.
Her mind raced. She could feel the presence of the little bag
with me painted stones pressing against her breast as if to re-
mind her of what might be. She knew the stories of the Ohms-
folds and the Druids, too, and she was wary.
Then, unexpectedly, she found herself smiling. Since when
had being wary ever stopped her from doing anything? Shades!
This was an unlocked door that begged to be opened! How could
she live with herself if she passed it up?
The old man interrupted her thoughts. “Rover girl, I grow
weary. These ageing bones require movement to keep from
locking up. Let me have your decision. Or do you, like the
others in your family, require untold amounts of time to puzzle
this matter through?”
Wren glanced over at Garth, cocking one eyebrow. The giant
Rover’s nod was barely perceptible.
She looked back at Cogline. “You are so testy, old grandfa-
ther!” she chided. “Where is your patience?”
“Gone with my youth, child,” he said, his voice unexpect-
edly soft. His hands folded before him. “Now what’s it to be?”
She smiled. “The Hadeshom and Allanon,” she answered.
“What did you expect?”
But the old man did not reply.
XIV
Five days later, with the sun exploding streamers of violet
and red fire all across the western horizon in the kind of
day’s-end fireworks display that only summer provides,
Wren, Garth, and the old man who said he was Cogline reached
the base of the Dragon’s Teeth and me beginning of the wind-
ing, narrow rock trail that led into the Valley of Shale and the
Hadeshom.
Par Ohmsford was the first to see them. He had gone up the
trail a few hundred yards to a rock shelf where he could sit and
look out over the sweep of Callahom south and be by himself.
He had arrived with Coil, Morgan, Walker, Steff, and Teel one
day earlier, and his patience at waiting for the arrival of the first