He was signing everything he said, and now Garth made a quick response. The old man laughed. “Will I choose to make the journey? Yes, by golly, I think I will. I have gone about a shade’s business for some weeks now. I believe I am entitled to know the whole of what the culmination of that business might be.” He paused, thoughtful. “Besides, I am not altogether sure I have been given a choice...” He trailed off.
Wren glanced eastward to where the sun was a pale white ball of fire resting atop the horizon, screened by clouds and mist, its warmth still distant. Gulls swooped across the mirrored waters of the Myrian, fishing. The stillness of the early morning let her thoughts whisper undisturbed within her.
“What did my cousin...?” she began, then caught herself. The word didn’t sound right when she spoke it. It distanced her from him in a way she didn’t care for. “What did Par say that he was going to do?” she finished.
“He said he was going to think the matter over,” the old man replied. “He and his brother. They were together when I found them.”
“And my uncle?”
The other shrugged. “The same.”
But there was something in his eyes that said otherwise. Wren shook her head. “You are playing with me again. What did they say?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Rover girl, you try my patience. I haven’t the energy to sit about and repeat entire conversations just so you can use that as an excuse for making your decision in this matter. Haven’t you a mind of your own? If they go, they will do so for their own reasons and not for any you might provide. Shouldn’t you do likewise?”
Wren Ohmsford was a rock. “What did they say?” she repeated once again, measuring each word carefully before she spoke it.
“What they chose!” the other snapped, his fingers flicking his responses angrily now at Garth, though his eyes never left Wren’s. “Am I a parrot to repeat the phrases of others for your amusement?”
He glared at her a moment, then threw up his hands. “Very well! Here is the whole of it, then! Young Par, his brother with him, had been chased from Varfleet by the Federation for making use of the magic to tell stories of their family history and the Druids. He thought to go home when I last saw him, to think about the dreams a bit. He will have discovered by now that he cannot do so, that his home is in Federation hands and his parents—your own of sorts, once upon a time—are prisoners!”
Wren started in surprise, but the old man ignored her. “Walker Boh is another matter. He thinks himself severed from the Ohmsford family. He lives alone and prefers it that way. He wants nothing to do with his family and the world at large and Druids in particular. He thinks that only he knows the proper uses of magic, that the rest of us who possess some small skill are incapable of reason! He forgets who taught him what! He...”
“You,” Wren interjected.
“... charges about on some self-proclaimed mission of...” He stopped short. “What? What did you say?”
“You,” she repeated, her eyes locking on his. “You were his teacher once, weren’t you?”
There was a moment of silence as the sharp old eyes studied her appraisingly. “Yes, girl. I was. Are you satisfied now? Is that the revelation you sought? Or do you require something more?”
He had forgotten to sign what he was saying, but Garth seemed to have read his lips in any case. He caught Wren’s attention, nodding in approval. Always try to learn something of your adversary that he doesn’t want you to know, he had taught her. It gives you an edge.
“So he isn’t going then, is he?” she pressed. “Walker, I mean.”
“Ha!” the old man exclaimed in satisfaction. “Just when I conclude what a smart girl you are, you prove me wrong!” He cocked one eyebrow on his seamed face. “Walker Boh says he isn’t going, and he thinks he isn’t going. But he is! The young one, too—Par. That’s the way it will be. Things work out the way we least expect them to sometimes. Or maybe that’s just the Druid magic at work, twisting those promises and oaths we so recklessly take, steering us where we didn’t think we could ever be made to go.” He shook his head in amusement. “Always was a baffling trick.”
He drew his robes about him and bent forward. “Now what is it to be with you, little Wren? Brave bird or timid flyaway—which will you be?”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Why not both, depending on what is needed?” she asked.
He grunted impatiently. “Because the situation calls for one or the other. Choose.”
Wren let her eyes shift briefly to Garth, then off into the woods, slipping deep into the shadows where the still distant sunlight had not yet penetrated. Her thoughts and questions of the previous night came back to her, darting through her mind with harrying insistence. Well, she could go if she chose, she knew. The Rovers wouldn’t stop her, not even Garth—though he would insist on going as well. She could confront the shade of Allanon. She could speak with the shade of a legend, a man many said never existed at all. She could ask the questions of him she had carried about with her for so many years now, perhaps learn some of the answers, possibly come to an understanding about herself that she had lacked before. A rather ambitious task, she thought. An intriguing one.
She felt sunlight slipping across the bridge of her nose, tickling her. It would mean a reunion with Par and Coll and Walker Boh—her other family that maybe wasn’t really family at all. She pursed her lips thoughtfully. She might enjoy that.
But it would also mean confronting the reality of her dreams—or at least a shade’s version of that reality. And that could mean a change in the course of her life, a life with which she was perfectly content. It could mean disruption of that life, an involvement in matters which she might better avoid.
Her mind raced. She could feel the presence of the little bag with the painted stones pressing against her breast as if to remind her of what might be. She knew the stories of the Ohmsfords and the Druids, too, and she was wary.
Then, unexpectedly, she found herself smiling. Since when had being wary ever stopped her from doing anything? Shades! This was an unlocked door that begged to be opened! How could she live with herself if she passed it up?
The old man interrupted her thoughts. “Rover girl, I grow weary. These ageing bones require movement to keep from locking up. Let me have your decision. Or do you, like the others in your family, require untold amounts of time to puzzle this matter through?”
Wren glanced over at Garth, cocking one eyebrow. The giant Rover’s nod was barely perceptible.
She looked back at Cogline. “You are so testy, old grandfather!” she chided. “Where is your patience?”
“Gone with my youth, child,” he said, his voice unexpectedly soft. His hands folded before him. “Now what’s it to be?”
She smiled. “The Hadeshorn and Allanon,” she answered. “What did you expect?”
But the old man did not reply.
Chapter Fourteen
Five days later, with the sun exploding streamers of violet and red fire all across the western horizon in the kind of day’s end fireworks display that only summer provides, Wren, Garth, and the old man who said he was Cogline reached the base of the Dragon’s Teeth and the beginning of the winding, narrow rock trail that led into the Valley of Shale and the Hadeshorn.
Par Ohmsford was the first to see them. He had gone up the trail a few hundred yards to a rock shelf where he could sit and look out over the sweep of Callahorn south and be by himself. He had arrived with Coll, Morgan, Walker, Steff, and Teel one day earlier, and his patience at waiting for the arrival of the first night of the new moon had begun to wear a little thin. He was immersed mostly in his admiration for the majesty of the sunset when he caught sight of the odd trio as they rode their horses out of the westward glare from a screen of poplar trees and started toward him. He came to his feet slowly, refusing to trust his eyes at first. Then, having determined that he was not mistaken, he leaped from his perch and charged back down the trail to alert the others of his little company who were camped immediately below.