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For days I wandered through hot country and distant
rising smoke. I would stand outside the village pubs,
hooded and shrouded like a highwayman or a self-important
mage, and through open windows I heard the nervous talk,
the despair of farmer and villager alike.
Spontaneous fires arose in the dry grain fields, leaving
the countryside a wasteland of ash and cinder. In droves the
farmers were leaving, no longer able to fight the flames. All
this disaster, they claimed, had enraged Finn to the point
where, in the search for remedy, he had offered an
extravagant bounty to any bard or enchanter who could
extinguish the fires with song or incantation.
Hard words about a curse drifted through one of the
windows. I heard the name of my father. It lightened my
steps somehow, as I passed through the deserted village of
Ebrill in the early morning, then over the ruins of Llun and
Mercher, moving ever westward, believing now that my
quest would at last be done. Endaf was the last place Finn
would look for a far-flung quarry, and my father's name
rode on the smoky air.
It was midmorning when I reached Endaf. I wandered
the village for a while, weaving a path amid the deserted
cottages and charred huts and lean-tos, all looking like a
grim memory of a village. And it was odd walking there,
passing the old flame-gutted ruins of the inn and knowing
that somewhere in its vanished upper story my father had
received the scars I had mysteriously inherited.
I turned abruptly from the ashes
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