No matter how hard he pressed his hands to his ears, how loudly he hummed, how vigorously he tried to engage in conversation with himself, they would not be silenced. They would not be still.‘Xanth!’ he cried out, his own voice carried off on the warm wind sweeping in from the Twilight Woods. ‘Xanth, where are you?’ He paused, removed his hands from his ears and cocked his head to one side, hoping against hope that this time his friend would reply. The air echoed with a thousand voices; high, low, angry and sad – every voice in the world it seemed but the one he longed to hear.‘Oh, Xanth,’ he murmured. ‘Not all librarians are like Ambris Loppix. Why did you listen to him?’‘Once a Guardian, always a Guardian!’ the voices seemed to hiss back at him. ‘He betrayed others. Now he's betrayed you.’‘It's not true!’ Rook shouted back at the swirling, sparkling air. ‘Xanth's changed. He's one of us now!’‘One of us, one of us,’ taunted the chorus of voices, and Rook glimpsed a black shape out of the corner of his eye.
