The Scions of Shannara

At last Cogline lifted from his crouch and came back to them, beckoning with birdlike movements of his hands to draw them close about him. When they were gathered in a knot that locked them shoulder to shoulder, he spoke.

“Allanon will come just before dawn.” The sharp old eyes regarded them solemnly. “He wishes me to speak with you first. He is no longer what he was in life. He is just a shade now. His purchase in this world is but the blink of an eye. Each time he crosses over from the spirit world, it requires tremendous effort. He can stay only a little while. What time he is allotted he must use wisely. He will use that time to tell you of the need he has of you. He has left it to me to explain to you why that need exists. I am to tell you of the Shadowen.”

“You’ve spoken to him?” asked Walker Boh quickly.

Cogline said nothing.

“Why wait until now to tell us about the Shadowen?” Par was suddenly irritated. “Why now, Cogline, when you could have done so before?”

The old man shook his head, his face both reproving and sympathetic. “It was not permitted, youngster. Not until all of you had been brought together.”

“Games!” Walker muttered and shook his head in disgust.

The old man ignored him. “Think what you like, only listen. This is what Allanon would have me tell you of the Shadowen. They are an evil beyond all imagining. They are not the rumors or the tall tales that men would have them be, but creatures as real as you and I. They are born of a circumstance that Allanon in all his wisdom and planning did not foresee. When he passed from the world of mortal men, Allanon believed the age of magic at an end and a new age begun. The Warlock Lord was no more. The Demons of the old world of faerie were again imprisoned within the Forbidding. The Ildatch was destroyed. Paranor was gone into history and the last of the Druids were about to go with it. It seemed the need for magic was past.”

“The need is never past,” Walker said quietly.

Again, the old man ignored him. “The Shadowen are an aberration. They are a magic that grew out of the use of other magics, a residue of what has gone before. They began as a seeding that lay dormant within the Four Lands, undetected during the time of Allanon, a seeding that came to life only after the Druids and their protective powers were gone. No one could have known they were there, not even Allanon. They were the leavings of magic come and gone, and they were as invisible as dust on a pathway.”

“Wait a minute!” Par interjected. “What are you saying, Cogline? That the Shadowen are just bits and pieces of some stray magic?”

Cogline took a deep breath, his hands locking before him. “Valeman, I told you once before that for all the use you have of magic, you still know little about it. Magic is as much a force of nature as the fire at the earth’s core, the tidal waves that sweep out of the ocean, the winds that flatten forests or the famine that starves nations. It does not happen and then disappear without effect! Think! What of Wil Ohmsford and his use of the Elfstones when his Elven blood no longer permitted such use? It left as its residue the wishsong that found life in your ancestors! Was that an inconsequential magic? All uses of the magic have effects beyond the immediate. And all are significant.”

“Which magic was it that created the Shadowen?” asked Coll, his blocky face impassive.

The old man shook his wispy head. “Allanon does not know. There is no way of being certain. It could have happened at anytime during the lives of Shea Ohmsford and his descendents. There was always magic in use in those times, much of it evil. The Shadowen could have been born of any part of it.”

He paused. “The Shadowen were nothing at first. They were the debris of magic spent. Somehow they survived, their presence unknown. It was not until Allanon and Paranor were gone that they emerged into the Four Lands and began to gain strength. There was a vacuum in the order of things by then. A void must be filled in all events, and the Shadowen were quick to fill this one.”

“I don’t understand,” Par said quickly. “What sort of vacuum do you mean?”

“And why didn’t Allanon foresee it happening?” added Wren.