The Scions of Shannara

“Oh, my, Walker. Never is such an impossible amount of time. Besides, I have no intention of trying to persuade you to do anything. A sufficient amount of persuading has already been done, I suspect.”


Walker was still standing in the doorway. He felt awkward and exposed and moved over to the table to sit across from Cogline. The old man took a long sip of the ale.

“Perhaps you thought me gone for good after my disappearance at the Hadeshorn,” he said softly. His voice was distant and filled with emotions that the other could not begin to sort out. “Perhaps you even wished it.”

Walker said nothing.

“I have been out into the world, Walker. I have traveled into the Four Lands, walked among the Races, passed through cities and countrysides; I have felt the pulse of life and found that it ebbs. A farmer speaks to me on the grasslands below the Streleheim, a man worn and broken by the futility of what he has encountered. ‘Nothing grows,’ he whispers. ‘The earth sickens as if stricken by some disease.’ The disease infects him as well. A merchant of wooden carvings and toys journeys from a small village beyond Varfleet, directionless. ‘I leave,’ he says, ‘because there is no need for me. The people cease to have interest in my work. They do nothing but brood and waste away.’ Bits and pieces of life in the Four Lands, Walker—they wither and fade like a spotting that spreads across the flesh. Pockets here and pockets there—as if the will to go on were missing. Trees and shrubs and growing things fail; animals and men alike sicken and die. All become dust, and a haze of that dust rises up and fills the air and leaves the whole of the ravaged land a still life in miniature of the vision shown us by Allanon.”

The sharp, old eyes squinted up at the other. “It begins, Walker. It begins.”

Walker Boh shook his head. “The land and her people have always suffered failings, Cogline. You see the shade’s vision because you want to see it.”

“No, not I, Walker.” The old man shook his head firmly. “I want no part of Druid visions, neither in their being nor in their fulfillment. I am as much a pawn of what has happened as yourself. Believe what you will, I do not wish involvement. I have chosen my life in the same manner that you have chosen yours. You don’t accept that, do you?”

Walker smiled unkindly. “You took up the magic because you wished to. Once-Druid, you had a choice in your life. You dabbled in a mixture of old sciences and magics because they interested you. Not so myself. I was born with a legacy I would have been better born without. The magic was forced upon me without my consent. I use it because I have no choice. It is a millstone that would drag me down. I do not deceive myself. It has made my life a ruin.” The dark eyes were bitter. “Do not attempt to compare us, Cogline.”

The other’s thin frame shifted. “Harsh words, Walker Boh. You were eager enough to accept my teaching in the use of that magic once upon a time. You felt comfortable enough with it then to learn its secrets.”

“A matter of survival and nothing more. I was a child trapped in a Druid’s monstrous casting. I used you to keep myself alive. You were all I had.” The white skin of his lean face was taut with bitterness. “Do not look to me for thanks, Cogline. I haven’t the grace for it.”

Cogline stood up suddenly, a whiplash movement that belied his fragile appearance. He towered above the dark-robed figure seated across from him, and there was a forbidding look to his weathered face. “Poor Walker,” he whispered. “You still deny who you are. You deny your very existence. How long can you keep up this pretense?”

There was a strained silence between them that seemed endless. Rumor, curled on a rug before the fire at the far end of the room, looked up expectantly. An ember from the hearth spat and snapped, filling the air with a shower of sparks.

“Why have you come, old man?” Walker Boh said finally, the words a barely contained thrust of rage. There was a coppery taste in his mouth that he knew came not from anger, but from fear.

“To try to help you,” Cogline said. There was no irony in his voice. “To give you direction in your brooding.”

“I am content without your interference.”

“Content?” The other shook his head. “No, Walker. You will never be content until you learn to quit fighting yourself. You work so hard at it. I thought that the lessons you received from me on the uses of the magic might have weaned you away from such childishness—but it appears I was wrong. You face hard lessons, Walker. Maybe you won’t survive them.”

He shoved the heavy parcel across the table at the other man. “Open it.”

Walker hesitated, his eyes locked on the offering. Then he reached out, snapped apart the binding with a flick of his fingers and pulled back the oilcloth.