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. Each gathered
a heel of bread for his song and turned, grumbling, eastward
toward Solamnic cities and the possibility of castles and
shelter.
It was night. Bats rustled in the upper regions of the
cavern, and I remembered an old time, a winter time, a
cavern and a dry rustling sound. Two last supplicants stood
between me and the bandit: a beggar whose leg had been
damaged in a field accident, and another bard.
While the beggar begged and was given a loaf, and
while the bard sang and received a crust, I waited in the
shadow of the cave.
None of them had the song. None of them. Neither bard
nor minstrel nor poet nor troubadour. Their songs rang
thinly in the cave, echoing back to them and to us, throwing
the music into a doubling confusion.
I had come this far, and for me there was still more to
discover, more than thin music and mendicant rhymes.
When summoned, I stepped to the light, and when the
dulled eyes of the bandit king rested upon me, I threw back
my hood.
*****
"Firebringer," he rasped, and "Orestes the Torch."
As all the bandits hastened to be the one to slay me, to
end the line and the curse before the approving eye of their
leader, Finn raised his hand and stayed theirs.
"No," he rumbled. The blood of the line of Pyrrhus
should not stain the floors of this cavern. For remember the
curse. Remember the harm it might visit."
One shaman, seated by the stone foot of the throne,
nodded in agreement, beads rattling as he fondled his bone
necklace
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