certain way, I could occasionally touch that power and do things with it to make the story appear grander and captivate my audience. It didn't take long for Father to puzzle out that I had a sense of the Weave of magic in Faerun, and that I was destined to be more than a common minstrel. Even though he himself had no ability to use the Weave, he instructed me in being disciplined with it; and though I often tried in those earlier days to abuse my newfound skills, he taught me the value of using my powers to help and to soothe and to inspire.

Years passed, and we traveled west once again. After I had seen fifteen summers, we were passing the winter solstice in Calimshan. The closing of Nightal was upon the Realms when Father passed away from a sudden, swift illness. I remember it beginning as a light cough, then becoming an all-consuming hack and wheeze. It was clear to me that he was on a permanent downward spiral, what with the local healers unable to bring him any relief, and the local clerics unwilling to provide a blessing without conversion, which Father was strictly against (he always said that Milil would guide his life, and that to foresake Him for another would leave Father to suffer in the Wall of the Faithless). And within two weeks, he was gone. So there I was, naught but a stripling and only beginning to see my place in the world. I grieved, and sang songs to recount our journeys and describe the glory of the Fine Minstrel Glynn Llydferg.

Of course, life continued for me. It didn't take me long to realize that Father trained me superbly in the conventional minstrel lifestyle and I found, after a fashion, that it suited me just fine. So the following spring, I embarked on a new career as a solo act.

As part of that new act, I began to venture into larger cities, looking to see and understand what minstrels and troubadours were doing in the "big time". Despite the mystique that my father

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