you wished to. Once-Druid, you had a choice in your life. You
dabbled in a mixture of old sciences and magics because they
interested you. Not so myself. I was born with a legacy I would
have been better bom without. The magic was forced upon me
without my consent. I use it because I have no choice. It is a
millstone that would drag me down. I do not deceive myself. It
has made my life a ruin.” The dark eyes were bitter. “Do not
attempt to compare us, Cogline.”
The other’s thin frame shifted. “Harsh words, Walker Boh.
You were eager enough to accept my teaching in the use of that
magic once upon a time. You felt comfortable enough with it
then to learn its secrets.”
“A matter of survival and nothing more. I was a child trapped
in a Druid’s monstrous casting. I used you to keep myself alive.
You were all I had.” The white skin of his lean face was taut
with bitterness. “Do not look to me for thanks, Cogline. I
haven’t the grace for it.”
Cogline stood up suddenly, a whiplash movement that beliew
his fragile appearance. He towered above the dark-robed figure
seated across from him, and there was a forbidding look to hi;
weathered face. “Poor Walker,” he whispered. “You still deny
who you are. You deny your very existence. How long can you
keep up this pretense?”
There was a strained silence between them that seemed end
less. Rumor, curled on a rug before the fire at the far end of the
room, looked up expectantly. An ember from the hearth spa
and snapped, filling the air with a shower of sparks.
“Why have you come, old man?” Walker Boh said finally
the words a barely contained thrust of rage. There was a coppery
taste in his mouth that he knew came not from anger, but from
fear.
“To try to help you,” Cogline said. There was no irony in
his voice. “To give you direction in your brooding.”
“I am content without your interference.”
“Content?” The other shook his head. “No, Walker. You
will never be content until you leam to quit fighting yourself
You work so hard at it. I thought that the lessons you received
from me on the uses of the magic might have weaned you away
from such childishness-but it appears I was wrong. You face
hard lessons, Walker. Maybe you won’t survive them.”
He shoved the heavy parcel across the table at the other man
“Open it.”
Walker hesitated, his eyes locked on the offering. Then he
reached out, snapped apart the binding with a flick of his fingers
and pulled back the oilcloth.
He found himself looking at a massive, leatherbound book
elaborately engraved in gold. He reached out and touched it
experimentally, lifted the cover, peered momentarily inside, then
flinched away from it as if his fingers had been burned.
“Yes, Walker. It is one of the missing Druid Histories, a
single volume only.” The wrinkled old face was intense.
“Where did you get it?” Walker demanded harshly.
Cogline bent close. The air seemed filled with me sound of
his breathing. “Out of lost Paranor.”
Walker Boh came slowly to his feet. “You lie.”
“Do I? Look into my eyes and tell me what you see.”
Walker flinched away. He was shaking. “I don’t care where
you got it-or what fantasies you have concocted to make me
believe what I know in my heart cannot possibly be so! Take it
back to where you got it or let it sink into the bogs! I’ll have no
part of it!”
Cogline shook his wispy head. “No, Walker, I’ll not take it
back. I carried it out of a realm of yesterdays filled with gray
haze and death to give to you. I am not your tormentor-never
that! I am the closest thing to a friend you will ever know, even
if you cannot yet accept it!” The weathered face softened. “I
said before that I came to help you. It is so. Read the book,
Walker. There are truths in there that need learning.”
“I will not!” the other cried furiously.
Cogline stared at the younger man for long minutes, then