magic. No one wanted any part of them.
‘ ‘It grows too dangerous for us here,” Coil said, as if reading
Par’s mind. “We will be discovered.”
Par shook his head. “We are but one of a hundred practicing
the art,” he replied. ‘ ‘Just one in a city of many.”
Coil looked at him. “One in a hundred, yes. But the only one
using real magic.”
Par looked back. It was good money the ale house paid them,
the best they had ever seen. They needed it to help with the
taxes the Federation demanded. They needed it for their family
and the Vale. He hated to give up because of a rumor.
His jaw tightened. He hated to give up even more because it
meant the stories must be returned to the Vale and kept hidden
there, untold to those who needed to hear. It meant that the
repression of ideas and practices that clamped down about the
Four Lands like a vise had tightened one turn more.
“We have to go,” Coil said, interrupting his thoughts.
Par felt a sudden rush of anger before realizing his brother
was not saying they must go from the city, but from the doorway
of the ale house to the performing stage inside. The crowd would
be waiting. He let his anger slip away and felt a sadness take its
place.
“I wish we lived in another age,” he said softly. He paused,
watching the way Coil tensed. “I wish there were Elves and
Druids again. And heroes. I wish there could be heroes again-
even one.”
He trailed off, thinking suddenly of something else.
Coil shoved away from the doorjamb, clapped one big hand
to his brother’s shoulder, turned him about and started him back
down the darkened hallway. “If you keep singing about it, who
knows? Maybe there will be.”
Par let himself be led away like a child. He was no longer
thinking about heroes though, or Elves or Druids, or even about
Seekers.
He was thinking about the dreams.
They told the story of the Elven stand at Halys Cut, how
Eventine Elessedil and the Elves and Stee Jans and the Legion
Free Corps fought to hold the Breakline against the onslaught
of the Demon hordes. It was one of Par’s favorite stories, the
first of the great Elven battles in that terrible Westland war. They
stood on a low platform at one end of the main serving room,
Par in the forefront. Coil a step back and aside, the lights dimmed
against a sea of tightly packed bodies and watchful eyes. While
Coil narrated the story. Par sang to provide the accompanying
images, and the ale house came alive with the magic of his
voice. He invoked in the hundred or more gathered the feelings
of fear, anger, and determination that had infused the defenders
of the Cut. He let them see the fury of the Demons; he let them
hear their battle cries. He drew them in and would not let them
go. They stood in the pathway of the Demon assault. They saw
the wounding of Eventine and the emergence of his son Ander
as leader of the Elves. They watched the Druid Allanon stand
virtually alone against the Demon magic and turn it aside. They
experienced life and death with an intimacy that was almost
terrifying.
When Coil and he were finished, there was stunned silence,
then a wild thumping of ale glasses and cheers and shouts of
elation unmatched in any performance that had gone before. It
seemed for a moment that those gathered might bring the rafters
of the ale house down about their ears, so vehement were they
in their appreciation. Par was damp with his own sweat, aware
for the first time how much he had given to the telling. Yet his
mind was curiously detached as they left the platform for the
brief rest they were permitted between tellings, thinking still of
the dreams.
Coil stopped for a glass of ale by an open storage room and
Par continued down the hallway a short distance before coming
to an empty barrel turned upright by the cellar doors. He slumped