from within a mirrored self-image. His voice was a disembodied
whisper and a thunderous shout. Colors appeared and faded to
black and white. Sounds came and departed. He was all things
on his journey, and he was none.
The dreams were his reality.
He dreamed in the beginning that he was falling, tumbling
downward into a pit as black as night and as endless as the cycle
of the seasons. There were pain and fear in him; he could not
find himself. Sometimes there were voices, calling to him in
warning, in comfort, or in horror. He convulsed within himself.
He knew somehow that if he did not stop falling, he would be
forever lost.
He did stop finally. He slowed and leveled, and his convul-
sions ceased. He was in a field of wildflowers as wondrous as a
rainbow. Birds and butterflies scattered at his approach, filling
the air with new brightness, and the smells of the field were soft I
and fragrant. There was no sound. He tried to speak so that I
there might be, but found himself voiceless. Nor did he have
touch. He could feel nothing of himself, nothing of the world
about him. There was warmth, soothing and extended, but that
was all.
He drifted and a voice somewhere deep within him whispered
that he was dead.
The voice, he thought, belonged to Walker Boh.
Then the world of sweet smells and sights disappeared, and
he was in a world of darkness and stench. Fire erupted from the
earth and spat at an angry, smudge-colored sky. Shadowen flit-
ted and leaped, red eyes glinting as they whipped about him,
hovering one moment, ducking away the next. Clouds rolled
overhead, filled with lightning, borne on a wind that howled in
fury. He felt himself buffeted and tossed, thrown like a dried
leaf across the earth, and he sensed it was the end of all things.
Touch and voice returned, and he felt his pain once more and
cned out with it.
“Par?”
The voice came once and was gone again-Coil’s voice. But
he saw Coil in his dream then, stretched against a gathering of
rocks, lifeless and bloodied, eyes open in accusation. “You left
me. You abandoned me.” He screamed and the magic of the
wishsong threw images everywhere. But the images turned into
monsters that wheeled back to devour him. He could feel their
teeth and claws. He could feel their touch . . .
He came awake.
Rain fell into his face, and his eyes opened. There was dark-
ness all about, the sense of others close at hand, a feeling of
motion, and the coppery taste of blood. There was shouting,
voices that called to one another against the fury of a storm. He
rose up, choking, spitting. Hands bore him back again, slipping
against his body and face.
“. . . awake again, hold him . . .”
“… too strong, like he’s ten instead of. . .”
“Walker! Hurry!”
Trees thrashed in the background, long-limbed giants lifting
into the roiling black, the wind howling all about them. They
threw shadows against cliffs that blocked their passage and
threatened to pen them up. Par heard himself scream.
Lightning crashed and thunder rolled, filling the dark with
echoes of madness. A wash of red screened his vision.
Then Allanon was there-Allanon! He came from nowhere,
all in black robes, a figure out of legend and time. He bent close
to Par, his voice a whisper that somehow managed to rise above
the chaos. Sleep, Par, he soothed. One weathered hand reached
out and touched the Valeman, and the chaos dissipated and was
replaced by a profound sense of peace.
Par drifted away again, far down into himself, fighting now
because he sensed that he would live if he could just will it to
be so. Some part of him remembered what had happened-that
the Werebeasts had seized him, that their touch had poisoned
him, that the poison had made him sick, and that the sickness
had dropped him into that black abyss. Walker had come for
him, found him somehow, and saved him from those creatures.
He saw Rumor’s yellow lamp eyes, blinking in warning, lidding