simple game-playing,” Par began, but then Walker was all over
him.
“No, of course not. Par-you see all this as a chance to satisfy
your misguided curiosity about the uses of magic! I warned you
before that magic was not the gift you envisioned, but a curse!
Why is it that you persist in seeing it as something else?”
“Suppose the shade spoke the truth?” Coil’s voice was quiet
and firm, and it turned Walker’s attention immediately from Par.
“The truth isn’t in those cowled tricksters! When has the
truth ever been in them? They tell us bits and pieces, but never
the whole! They use us! They have always used us!”
“But not unwisely, not without consideration for what must
be done-that’s not what the stories tell us.” Coil held his
ground. “I am not necessarily advocating that we do as the
shade suggested. Walker. I am only saying that it is unreason-
able to dismiss the matter out of hand because of one possibility
in a rather broad range.”
“The bits and pieces you speak of-those were always true
in and of themselves,” Par added to Coil’s surprisingly eloquent
defense. “What you’mean is that Allanon never told the whole
truth in the beginning. He always held something back.”
Walker looked at them as if they were children, shaking his
head. “A half-truth can be as devastating as a lie,” he said
quietly. The anger was fading now, replaced by a tone of res-
ignation. ‘ ‘You ought to know that much.”
“I know that there is danger in either.”
“Then why persist in this? Let it go!”
“Uncle,” Par said, the reprimand in his voice astonishing
even to himself, “I haven’t taken it up yet.”
Walker looked at him for a long time, a tall, pale-skinned
figure against the dawn, his face unreadable in its mix of emo-
tions. “Haven’t you?” he replied softly.
Then he turned, gathered up his blankets and gear and rolled
them up. “I will put it to you another way, then. Were every-
thing the shade told us true, it would make no difference. I have
decided on my course of action. I will do nothing to restore
Paranor and the Druids to the Four Lands. I can think of nothing
I wish less. The time of the Druids and Paranor saw more mad-
ness than this age could ever hope to witness. Bring back those
old men with their magics and their conjuring, their playing with
the lives of men as if they were toys?”
He rose and faced them, his pale face as hard as granite. “I
would sooner cut off my hand than see the Druids come again!”
The others glanced at one another in consternation as he
turned away to finish putting together his pack.
“Will you simply hide out in your valley?” Par shot back,
angry now himself.
Walker didn’t look at him. “If you will.”
“What happens if the shade spoke the truth. Walker? What
happens if all it has foreseen comes to pass, and the Shadowen
reach extends even into Hearthstone? Then what will you do?”
“What I must.”
“With your own magic?” Par spat. “With magic taught to
you by Cogline?”
His uncle’s pale face lifted sharply. “How did you leam of
that?”
Par shook his head stubbornly. “What difference is there be-
tween your magic and that of the Druids, Walker? Isn’t it all the
same?”
The other’s smile was hard and unfriendly. “Sometimes, Par,
you are a fool,” he said and dismissed him.
When he rose a moment later, he was calm. “I have done my
part in this. I came as I was bidden and I listened to what I was
supposed to hear. I have no further obligation. The rest of you
must decide for yourselves what you will do. As for me, I am
finished with this business.”
He strode through them without pausing, moving down to
where the horses were tethered. He strapped his pack in place,
mounted, and rode out. He never once looked back.
The remaining members of the little company watched in
silence. That was a quick decision. Par thought-one that Walker
Boh seemed altogether too anxious to make. He wondered why.