faint golden light in the dark horizon. Walker rubbed his eyes
and tried to think. Why was there so little digression on the
purpose and properties of this magic? What did it look like and
what could it do? It was a single stone instead of three-why?
How was it that no one had ever heard of it before?
The questions buzzed around inside his head like trapped
flies, annoying and at the same time intriguing him. He read the
paragraph several times more-read it, in fact, until he could
recite it from memory-and closed the book. Rumor stretched
and yawned on the floor in front of him, lifted his head and
blinked.
Talk to me, cat. Walker thought. There are always secrets
that only a cat knows. Maybe this is one of them.
But Rumor only got up and went outside, disappearing into
the fading shadows.
Walker fell asleep then and did not come awake again until
midday. He rose, bathed and dressed anew, ate a slow meal with
the closed book in front of him, and went out for a long walk.
He passed south through the valley to a favorite glade where a
stream rippled noisily over a meandering rock bed and emptied
into a pool that contained tiny fish colored brilliant red and blue.
He lingered there for a time, thinking, then returned again to
the cottage. He sat on the porch and watched the sun creep
westward in a haze of purple and scarlet.
“I should never have opened the book,” he chided himself
softly, for its mystery had proven irresistible after all. “I should
have bound it back up and dropped it into the deepest hole I
could find.”
But it was too late for that. He had read it and knowledge
acquired could not be readily forgotten. A sense of futility min-
gled with anger. He had thought it impossible that Paranor could
be restored. Now he knew that there was a magic that could do
exactly that. Once again, there was that sense of the inevitability
of things prophesied by the Druids.
Still, his life was his own, wasn’t it? He needn’t accept the
charge of Allanon’s shade, whatever its viability.
But his curiosity was relentless. He found himself thinking
of the Black Elfstone, even when he tried not to. The Black
Elfstone was out there, somewhere, a forgotten magic. Where?
Where was it?
That and all the other questions pressed in about him as the
evening passed. He ate his dinner, walked again for a time, read
from the few precious books of his own library, wrote a bit in
his journal, and mostly thought of that single, beguiling para-
graph on the magic that would bring back Paranor.
He thought about it as he prepared for bed.
He was still thinking about it as midnight approached.
Teasingly, insinuatingly, it wormed about restlessly inside his
mind, suggesting this possibility and that, opening doors just a
crack into unlighted rooms, hinting at understandings and in-
sights that would bring him the knowledge he could not help but
crave.
And with it, perhaps, peace of mind.
His sleep was troubled and restless. The mystery of the Black
Elfstone was an irritation that would not be dispelled.
By morning, he had decided that he must do something about
it.
Par Ohmsford came awake that morning with a decision of
his own to make. It had been five days since Damson and he
had rescued Coil, Morgan, Padishar Creel, and the other two
outlaws from the cells of the Federation Gatehouse, and the
bunch of them had been on the run ever since. They had not
attempted to leave the city, certain that the gates would be closely
watched and the risk of discovery too great. They had not re-
turned to the basement of the weapons-maker’s shop either, feel-
ing that it might have been compromised by their mysterious
betrayer. Instead, they had skipped from one shelter to the next,
never remaining more than one night, posting guards through-
out their brief stay at each, jumping at every sound they heard
and every shadow they saw.
Well, enough was enough. Par had decided that he was