"Maybe, deep down, there's a part of you that knows you really could be a gunslinger."

Travis looked down at his hands. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it all the same--Jack's mark, the rune of runes--prickling beneath the skin of his palm. "No, I could never do what they did."

"Be careful, Travis. The human spirit is a great, deep ocean. Each of us has the ability to do things we don't care to think about. And that's fine. But if you try to deny that that ability exists, it can have a way of making itself manifest without your consent."

"I don't understand."

"Then put it this way. A hundred years ago, there wasn't much difference between the sheriff and the gunslinger. Each made his living with a revolver. The only difference was that one used a gun, while a gun used the other."

Travis stared. Deirdre couldn't possibly understand what it was like--how it felt to have power flow through you, and out of you, destroying another.

"I'm sorry, Travis. I didn't mean to lecture you. Besides, our shadow selves aren't always bad. Sometimes monsters can be heroes, too. Look at Beauty and the Beast."

He lifted his head and gave her a crooked smile. "Don't go trying to spoil my fun."

She took a sip of coffee, but the mug couldn't quite hide her grin. 24 Travis stood. "I should get back to my customers."

Deirdre tilted her head. "Your customers? You mean you own the saloon now?"

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"Well, then I had better try to drum up some business for you."

Deirdre picked up her mandolin and brushed the strings. "Thanks for the gig, Travis.

You're a good monster."

He laughed aloud. "Oh, I wouldn't go that far." Her only response was an enigmatic smile that haunted him all the way back to the bar.5.

Word must have spread that Deirdre Falling Hawk was back at the Mine Shaft, for by sundown the saloon was jammed with people who had come from all over the valley to listen to her music. Travis watched Deirdre from behind the bar. He thought of another bard he had known, in a place far from here, and he smiled at the memories, although it was a sad expression as well. Not a day went by that he didn't think of Falken, Melia, Grace, and all the people he had known on Eldh. Except that wasn't true, was it? Because lately there had been days when, distracted by the business of the saloon, he didn't think of Eldh at all. Would he forget it altogether someday? Or convince himself that it had all been the anguished hallucinations of a man who had lost his best friend---the compelling and realistic but entirely deranged construction of one who had wandered for two months in a haze 25 of grief, trying to make some sort of sense of what never "lade any sense?

The warm sounds of Deirdre's mandolin ended in a ^rge of applause.

Travis gazed at the cluttered saloon ^d shook his head. It wasn't that you couldn't come home again. It was just that home was never quite the same as when you left it. How could Dorothy have 24 * mark anthony ever stood the stark black-and-white drabness of Kansas again after dancing down the Technicolor roads of Oz? Except he did love his home, drabness and all.

He smiled again, and this time there was genuine mirth to it. Max stepped out of the back room, overloaded with two racks of beer glasses. Travis took one of the racks. As he did, the strumming of the mandolin rose again on the air along with, a moment later, the wine-rich sound of Deirdre's voice: We live our lives a circle, And wander where we can. Then after fire and wonder, We end where we began.

I have traveled southward, And in the south I wept. Then I journeyed northward, And laughter there I kept.

Then for a time I lingered, In eastern lands of light, Until I moved on westward, Alone in shadowed night.

I was born of springtime, In summer I grew strong. But autumn dimmed my eyes, To sleep the winter long.

We live our lives a circle, And wander where we can. Then after fire and wonder, We end where we began.

Travis dropped the rack of glasses on the bar; several broke. The applause of the crowd was cut short as 26Deonie tumsd arrmnrl tn 1nr>1/- fr}r tl-io cnnfr.o ft i-ko 25.

noise. Travis stared, a gauze of paralysis woven around him by the music.

How could she know that songi Across the saloon, a shadow touched Deirdre's forehead. She had noticed him. The bard stood, un- slung her mandolin, then threaded her way through the chairs and tables. The sound of conversation welled forth, and someone put a quarter in the jukebox. A woman asked Travis for a beer, but he couldn't connect his thoughts with his hands.

Fortunately, Max was there, and he didn't seem to see Travis's stunned expression as he moved in to help the customer.

Deirdre reached the bar.

"Where did you learn that?" he said in a hoarse voice.

She regarded him with almond eyes. "What's wrong, Travis?"

He gripped the edge of the bar. "That song. Where did you learn it?" "It was a couple of years ago. I learned it from a bard."

The floor turned to liquid beneath Travis. Falken? Did she know Falken Blackhand? But that was impossible.

Impossible like traveling to other worlds ImpossiHe licked his lips. "A bard?"

"That's right. I met him at the big Renaissance Festival up in Minnesota last year. We were . . . that is' 1 . ." Color touched her cheekbones like Indian Paintbrush.

Travis winced. She didn't know Falken. She had learned the song from an ex-boyfriend, and Travis had embarrassed her by making her talk about 27 it. How the ex-boyfriend had learned the song, who could say? "tit the connection between Eidh and Earth had WnrL-orl ;" *.,.," .);..""*.;""" Mrk^r ^^nirln't- i cot-xt havp 26 * mark anthony crossed as easily as a person? And once on Earth, there was nothing to stop it from being traded among singers.

Deirdre's fingers crept across the bar to touch his. "Travis, something's wrong. Will you tell me what it is?"

He opened his mouth, knowing he had to tell her something, but unsure what he was going to say.

Whatever it was, the words were cut short as the saloon's door banged open. He jerked his head up, along with a dozen of the saloon's patrons.At first Travis thought the man was from the Medieval Festival, like the three who had come in earlier. He was clad in a heavy black robe, as if posing as some sort of monk. Except the garment was dusty and tattered, and the more Travis looked at it, the less it looked like the robe of a monk and the more it looked the robe of a judge. Or an executioner.

The man in black lurched into the crowded saloon, and now Travis wasn't certain he was from the Medieval Festival after all. His hands were curled into claws, and his face was scarred and pitted like the wind-scoured surface of a stone. His blistered lips moved in fretful rhythm, as if he chanted something to himself. He stumbled against a table. People leaped to their feet and scrambled back. Max was already moving to intercept him. Travis hurried after.

The man reached a hand toward a passing woman. He rasped several words--they might have been, Where is he--then the woman let out a stifled scream and twisted away.

28.Travis swore. He considered calling Deputy Windom, but now he was closer to the man than he was to the phone. Half the people in the saloon had stopped their conversations to turn and gape. Travis swiped at his damp forehead--it was stifling in here.

Max had reached the stranger now, and he held out a hand to steady the ntbpr The mon