The Elf Queen of Shannara

Walker Boh heard the old man’s voice, a whisper in his mind, and he felt his body respond. His arm straightened, and he tensed.

The thing before him laughed. Do you still not know me?

He did—and didn’t. It was many things at once, some of which he recognized, some of which he didn’t. The voice, though—there could be no mistake. It was the Grimpond’s, taunting, teasing, calling his name.

You have found your third vision, haven’t you, Dark Uncle?

Walker was appalled. How could this be happening? How could the Grimpond be both this thing he had come to subdue and the avatar imprisoned in Darklin Reach? How could it be in two places at once? It didn’t make sense! The Druids hadn’t created the Grimpond. Their magics were diverse and opposed. Yet the voice, the movement, and the feel of the thing . . .

The shadow before him was growing larger, approaching.

I am your death, Walker Boh. Are you prepared to embrace me?

And abruptly the vision was back in Walker’s mind, as clear as the moment it had first appeared to him—the shade of Allanon behind him, holding him fast, the dark shadow before him, the promise of his death, and the castle of the Druids all about.

Why don’t you flee? Flee from me!

It was all he could do to keep from screaming. He groped away from it, beseeching help from any quarter Cogline’s voice was gone, buried in black fear. Resolve and purpose were scattered in pieces about him. Walker Boh was disintegrating while still alive.

Yet some small part of him did not give way, held fast by memory of what had brought him, by the promise he had made himself that he would not die willingly or in ignorance. Cogline’s face was still there, the eyes frantic, the lips moving, trying to speak. Walker reached down inside for the one thing that had sustained him over the years, for that core of anger that burned at the thought of what the Druids had done to him. He fanned it until it blazed. He cupped it to his face and let it sear him. He breathed it in until the fear was forced to give way, until there was only rage.

Then an odd thing happened. The voice of the thing before him changed. The voice became his own, frantic, desperate.

Flee, Walker Boh!

The voice was no longer coming from the mist; it was coming from himself! He was calling his own name, urging himself to flee!

What was happening?

And suddenly he understood. He wasn’t listening to the thing before him; he was listening to himself. It was his own voice he had been hearing all along, a trick of his subconscious—a trick, he realized in fury, of the Grimpond. The wraith had implanted in Walker’s mind, along with that third vision, a suggestion of his death, a voice to convince him of it, and a certainty that it was the Grimpond itself who came forth in another form to deliver it. Revenge on the descendants of Brin Ohmsford—it was what the Grimpond had been after from the first. If Walker listened to that voice, faltered in his resolve, and turned away from the purpose that had brought him . . .

No!

His fingers opened and the Black Elfstone flared to life.

The nonlight streaked forth, spreading like ink across the shadowed well of the Keep to embrace the mist. No more games! Walker’s shout was a euphoric, silent cry within his mind. The Grimpond—so insidious, so devious—had almost undone him. Never again. Never . . .

Then everything began to happen at once.

Nonlight and mist meshed and joined. Back through the tunnel of the magic’s dark flooded the mist, a greenish, pulsing fury. Walker bad only an instant to catch his breath, to question what had gone wrong, and to wonder if perhaps he had failed to outsmart the Grimpond after all—and then the Druid magic was on him. It exploded within, and he screamed in helpless dismay. The pain was indescribable, a fiery incandescence. It felt as if another being had entered him, carried within by the magic, drawn out of the concealment of the mist. A physical presence, it burrowed into bone and muscle and flesh and blood until it was all that Walker could bear. It expanded and raged until he thought he would be torn apart. Then the sense of it changed, igniting a different kind of pain. Memories flooded through him, vast and seemingly endless. With the memories came the feelings that accompanied them, emotions charged with horror and fear and doubt and regret and a dozen other sensations that rolled through Walker Boh in an unstoppable torrent. He staggered back, trying to resist, to fling them away. His hand fought to close over the Black Elfstone in an effort to shut this attack off, but his body would no longer obey him. He was gripped by the magics—those of both Elfstone and mist— and they held him fast.

Like Allanon and the specter of death in the third version!