The Scions of Shannara

He glanced without thinking at Wren and found his question mirrored in her eyes. He recognized what she was thinking instinctively. He saw it reflected in Walker Boh’s eyes as well. They had shared the dreams and those dreams bound them, so much so that for an instant their thinking was the same.

Cogline’s face lifted slightly, pulling free of the darkness that shaded it. “Something guides the Shadowen,” he whispered.

“There is power here that transcends anything we have ever known . . .”

He let the sentence trail off, ragged and unfinished, as if unable to give voice to any ending. His listeners looked at one another.

“What are we to do?” Wren asked finally.

The old man rose wearily. “Why, what we came here to do, Rover girl—listen to what Allanon would tell us.”

He moved stiffly away, and no one called after him.





XV



They moved apart from each other after that, drifting away one by one, finding patches of solitude in which to think their separate thoughts. Eyes wandered restlessly across the valley’s glistening carpet of black rock, always returning to the Hadeshorn, carefully searching the sluggishly churning waters for signs of some new movement.

There was none.

Perhaps nothing is going to happen, Par thought. Perhaps it was all a lie after all.

He felt his chest constrict with mixed feelings of disappointment and relief and he forced his thoughts elsewhere. Coll was less than a dozen paces away, but he refused to look at him. He wanted to be alone. There were things that needed thinking through, and Coll would only distract him.

Funny how much effort he had put into distancing himself from his brother since this journey had begun, he thought suddenly. Perhaps it was because he was afraid for him . . .

Once again, this time angrily, he forced his thoughts elsewhere. Cogline. Now there was an enigma of no small size.

Who was this old man who seemed to know so much about everything? A failed Druid, he claimed. Allanon’s messenger, he said. But those brief descriptions didn’t seem nearly complete enough. Par was certain that there was more to him than what he claimed. There was a history of events behind his relationships with Allanon and Walker Boh that was hidden from the rest of them. Allanon would not have gone to a failed Druid for assistance, not even in the most desperate of circumstances.

There was a reason for Cogline’s involvement with this gathering beyond what any of them knew.

He glanced warily at the old man who stood an uncomfortable number of feet closer than the rest of them to the waters of the Hadeshorn. He knew all about the Shadowen, somehow. He had spoken more than once with Allanon, somehow again. He was the only living human being to have done so since the Druid’s death three hundred years ago. Par thought a moment about the stories of Cogline in the time of Brin Ohmsford—a half-crazed old man then, wielding magic against the Mord Wraiths like some sort of broom against dust—that’s the picture the tales conjured up. Well, he wasn’t like that now. He was controlled. Cranky and eccentric, yes—but mostly controlled. He knew what he was about—enough so that he didn’t seem particularly pleased with any of it. He hadn’t said that, of course. But Par wasn’t blind.

There was a flash of light from somewhere far off in the night skies, a momentary brightness that winked away instantly and was gone. A life ended, a new life begun, his mother used to say. He sighed. He hadn’t thought of his parents much since the flight out of Varfleet. He felt a twinge of guilt. He wondered if they were all right. He wondered if he would see them again.

His jaw tightened with determination. Of course he would see them again! Things would work out. Allanon would have answers to give him—about the uses of the magic of the wishsong, the reasons for the dreams, what to do about the Shadowen and the Federation . . . all of it.

Allanon would know.

Time slipped away, minutes into hours, the night steadily working its way toward dawn. Par moved over to talk with Coll, needing now to be close to his brother. The others shifted, stretched, and moved about uneasily. Eyes grew heavy and senses dulled.

Far east, the first twinges of the coming dawn appeared against the dark line of the horizon.

He’s not coming, Par thought dismally.