down wearily, his thoughts tight.
He had been having the dreams for almost a month now, and
he still didn’t know why.
The dreams occurred with a frequency that was unsettling.
They always began with a black-cloaked figure that rose from a
lake, a figure that might be Allanon, a lake that might be the
Hadeshom. There was a shimmering of images in his dreams,
an ethereal quality to the visions that made them difficult to
decipher. The figure always spoke to him, always with the same
words. “Come to me; you are needed. The Four Lands are in
gravest danger; the magic is almost lost. Come now, Shannara
child.”
There was more, although the rest varied. Sometimes there
were images of a world born of some unspeakable nightmare.
Sometimes there were images of the lost talismans-the Sword
of Shannara and the Elf stones. Sometimes there was a call for
Wren as well, little Wren, and sometimes a call for his uncle
Walker Boh. They were to come as well. They were needed,
too.
He had decided quite deliberately after the first night that the
dreams were a side effect of his prolonged use of the wishsong.
He sang the old stories of the Warlock Lord and the Skull Bear-
ers, of Demons and Mord Wraiths, of Allanon and a world
threatened by evil, and it was natural that something of those
stories and their images would carry over into his sleep. He had
tried to combat the effect by using the wishsong on lighter tell-
ings, but it hadn’t helped. The dreams persisted. He had re-
frained from telling Coil, who would have simply used that as
a new excuse to advise him to stop invoking the magic of the
wishsong and return to the Vale.
Then, three nights ago, the dreams had stopped coming as
suddenly as they had started. Now he was wondering why. He
was wondering if perhaps he had mistaken their origin. He was
considering the possibility that instead of being self-induced,
they might have been sent.
But who would have sent them?
Allanon? Truly Allanon, who was three hundred years dead?
Someone else?
Something else? Something that had a reason of its own and
meant him no good?
He shivered at the prospect, brushed the matter from his mind,
and went quickly back up the hallway to find Coll.
The crowd was even larger for the second telling, the walls
lined with standing men who could not find chairs or benches
to sit upon. The Blue Whisker was a large house, the front
serving room over a hundred feet across and open to the rafters
above a stringing of oil lamps and fish netting that lent a sort of
veiled appearance that was apparently designed to suggest inti-
macy. Par couldn’t have tolerated much more intimacy, so close
were the patrons of the ale house as they pressed up against the
platform, some actually sitting on it now as they drank. This
was a different group than earlier, although the Valeman was
hard-pressed to say why. It had a different feel to it, as if there
was something foreign in its makeup. Coil must have felt it, too.
He glanced over at Par several times as they prepared to per-
form, and there was uneasiness mirrored in his dark eyes.
A tall, black-bearded man wrapped in a dun-colored forest
cloak waded through the crowd to the platform’s edge and eased
himself down between two other men. The two looked up as if
they intended to say something, then caught a close glimpse of
the other’s face and apparently thought better of it. Par watched
momentarily and looked away. Everything felt wrong.
Coil leaned over as a rhythmic clapping began. The crowd
was growing restless. “Par, I don’t like this. There’s some-
thing . . .”
He didn’t finish. The owner of the ale house came up and told
them in no uncertain terms to begin before the crowd got out of
hand and started breaking things. Coil stepped away wordlessly.
The lights dimmed, and Par started to sing. The story was the
one about Allanon and the battle with the Jachyra. Coil began
to speak, setting the stage, telling those gathered what sort of