the first day of the new moon. Time was slipping past.
But it wasn’t of the old man or Allanon that Par found himself
thinking that night as the little company gathered around the fire
Steff had permitted them and washed down their dinner with
long draughts of spring water. It was of Walker Boh. Par hadn’t
seen his uncle in almost ten years, but what he remembered of
him was strangely clear. He had been just a boy then, and his
uncle had seemed rather mysterious-a tall, lean man with dark
features and eyes that could see right through you. The eyes-
mat was what Par remembered most, though he remembered
them more for how remarkable they had seemed than for any
discomfort they might have caused him. In fact, his uncle had
been very kind to him, but always rather introspective or perhaps
just withdrawn, sort of there but at the same time somewhere
else.
There were stories about Walker Boh even then, but Par could
recall few of them. It was said he used magic, although it was
never made clear exactly what sort of magic. He was a direct
descendent of Brin Ohmsford, but he had not had use of the
wishsong. No one on his side of the family had, not in ten
generations. The magic had died with Brin. It had worked dif-
ferently for her than for her brother Jair, of course. Where Jair
had only been able to use the wishsong to create images, his
sister had been able to use it to create reality. Her magic had
been by far the stronger of the two. Nevertheless, hers had dis-
appeared with her passing, and only Jair’s had survived.
Yet there had always been stories of Walker Boh and the
magic. Par remembered how sometimes his uncle could tell him
things that were happening at other places, things he could not
possibly have known yet somehow did. There were times when
his uncle could make things move by looking at them, even
people. Sometimes he could tell what you were thinking, too.
He would look at you and tell you not to worry, that this or that
would happen, and it would turn out that it was exactly what
you were thinking about.
Of course, it was possible that his uncle had simply been
astute enough to reason out what he was thinking, and that it
had simply appeared that the older man could read his thoughts.
But there was the way he could turn aside trouble, too-make
it disappear almost as fast as it came. Anything threatening al-
ways seemed to give way when it encountered him. That seemed
a sort of magic.
And he was always encouraging to Par when he saw the boy
attempting to use the wishsong. He had warned Par to leam to
control the images, to be cautious about their use, to be selective
in the ways in which he exposed the magic to others. Walker
Boh had been one of the few people in his life who had not been
afraid of its power.
So as he sat there with the others in the silence of the moun-
tain night, the memories of his uncle skipping through his mind,
his curiosity to know more was piqued anew, and finally he gave
in to it and asked Steff what tales the other had heard of Walker
Boh.
Steff looked thoughtful. “Most of them come from woods-
men, hunters, trackers and such-a few from Dwarves who fight
in the Resistance like myself and who pass far enough north to
hear of the man. They say the Gnome tribes are scared to death
of him. They say they think of Walker Boh in the same way they
think of spirits. Some of them believe that he’s been alive for
hundreds of years, that he’s the same as the Druids of legend.”
He winked. ‘ ‘Guess that’s just talk, though, if he’s your uncle.”
Par nodded. “I don’t remember anyone ever suggesting he
hadn’t lived the same number of years as any normal man.”
“One fellow swore to me that your uncle talked with animals
and that the animals understood. He said he saw it happen, that