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AND THE FINDING WOULD SAVE MY LIFE AND
MAKE THE PAST UNCHANGEABLE. The song had to be
here, or there was no song. And could the final pain of the
monster's acid be any worse than this perpetual burning?
"You'll have it, Father," I muttered into the dark of my
hood. "REDEEMED AND CONTINUED. The past will be
unchangeable. Whatever you have, it will be the truth. And
whatever I have, it will be better."
*****
Finn of the Dark Hand sat in a huge chair hewn from
the cavern wall. He looked hewn from stone himself, a
sleepless giant or a weathered monument set as a sign of
warding along the rocky peninsular coast. His right hand
was gloved in black, the reason known only to himself.
Around him milled his company of bandits, rough and
scarred like burned villages. They bared their knives as they
watched the singers, smiling wickedly one to another, as
though keeping a dreadful secret unto a fast-approaching
hour.
I hovered at the mouth of the cave, listening for an hour
to the technically brilliant and lifeless songs of the bards.
They claimed to play the music for its own sake, for the
sake of the glory of song, but they all knew otherwise, for
always music serves some master.
Even Finn knew they were liars. Finn, who had held
neither harp nor flute, whose poetry was ambush and
plunder. He leaned into the eroded throne, dismissing the
pearly singer from Kalaman, the pale lad from Palanthas
and the merchant turned poet from Dargaard
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