The Elf Queen of Shannara

Chapter Fourteen

In a world of light and shadows where truths were a shimmer of inconsistency, of life stolen out of substance and made over into transparency, of nonbeing and mist, Walker Boh was brought face to face with the impossible.

“I have been waiting a long time, Walker, hoping you would come,” the ghost before him whispered.

Cogline—he had been dead weeks now, killed by the Shadowen at Hearthstone, destroyed by Rimmer Dall—and Rumor with him Walker had seen it happen, sick almost beyond recovery from the poison of the Asphinx, crouched helplessly in his bedroom as the old man and the moor cat fought their last battle. He had seen it all, the final rush of the monsters created of the dark magic, the fire of the old man’s magic as it flared in retaliation, and the explosion that had consumed everyone within reach. Cogline and Rumor had disappeared in the conflagration along with dozens of their attackers. None had survived save Rimmer Dall and a handful who had been thrown clear.

Yet here was Cogline and the cat, come somehow into Paranor, shades out of death.

Except that Walker Boh found them as real as he was, a reflection of himself in this twilight world into which the Black Elfstone had dispatched him, ghostlike and yet alive when they should not have been. Unless he was dead as well and a reflection of them instead. The contradictions overwhelmed him. His breath caught sharply in his throat and he could not speak. Who was alive and who was not?

“Walker.” The old man spoke his name, and the sound of it drew him back from the precipice on which he was poised.

Cogline approached, slowly, carefully, seeming to realize the fear and confusion that his presence had generated in his pupil. He spoke softly to Rumor, and the moor cat sat back on his haunches obediently, his luminous eyes bright and interested as they fixed on Walker. Cogline’s body was as fragile and sticklike as ever beneath the gathering of worn robes, and the gray, hazy light passed through him in narrow streamers. Walker flinched as the old man reached out to touch him on the shoulder, the skeletal fingers trailing down to grip his arm.

The grip was warm and firm.

“I am alive, Walker. And Rumor, too. We are both alive,” he whispered. “The magic saved us.”

Walker Boh was silent a moment, staring without comprehension into the other’s eyes, searching for something that would give meaning to the other’s words. Alive? How could it be? He nodded finally, needing to respond in some fashion, to get past the fear and confusion, and asked hesitantly, “How did you get here?”

“Come sit with me,” the other replied.

He led Walker to a stone bench that rested against a wall, both an odd glimmer of hazy relief against the shadows, wrapped in mist and gloom. Sound was muffled within the Keep, as if an unwelcome guest forced to tread lightly in order not to draw attention. Walker glanced about, disbelieving still, searching the maze of walkways that disappeared ahead and behind, catching glimpses of stone walls and parapets and towers rising up about him, as empty of life as tombs set within the earth. He sat beside the old man, feeling Rumor rub up against him as he did.

“What has happened to us?” he asked, a measure of steadiness returning, his determination to discover the truth pushing back the uncertainty. “Look at us. We are like wraiths.”

“We are in a world of half-being, Walker,” Cogline replied softly. “We are somewhere between the world of mortal men and the world of the dead. Paranor rests there now, brought back out of nonbeing by the magic of the Black Elfstone. You found it, didn’t you? You recovered it from wherever it was hidden and carried it here. You used it, as you knew you must, and brought us back.

“Wait, don’t answer yet.” He cut short Walker’s attempt to speak. “I get ahead of myself. You must know first what happened to me. Then we will speak of you. Rumor and I have had an adventure of our own, and it has brought us to this. Here is what happened, Walker. Some weeks earlier when I spoke with the shade of Allanon, I was warned that my time within the world of mortal men was almost gone, that death would come for me when next I saw the face of Rimmer Dall. When that happened, I was to hold the Druid History to me and not to give it up. I was told nothing more. When the First Seeker and his Shadowen appeared at Hearthstone, I remembered Allanon’s words. I managed to slow them long enough to retrieve the book from its hiding place. I stood with it clasped to my breast on the porch of the cottage, Rumor pressed back up against me, as the Shadowen reached to tear me apart.

“You thought it was my magic that enveloped me. It was not. When the Shadowen closed about me, a magic contained within the Druid History came to my defense. It released white fire, consuming everything about it, destroying everything that was not a part of me, except for Rumor, who sought to protect me. It did not harm us, but instead caught us up and carried us away as quick as the blink of an eye. We fell unconscious, a sleep that was as deep as any I have ever known. When we came awake again, we were here within Paranor, within the Druid’s Keep.”

He bent close. “I cannot know for certain what happened when the magic was triggered, Walker, but I can surmise. The Druids would never leave their work unprotected. Nothing of what they created would ever be left for use by those who lacked the right and the proper intent. It was so, I am certain, of their Histories. The magic that protected them was such that any threat would result in their return to the vault within the Keep that had sheltered them all those years. That was what happened to the History I held. I have looked within the vaults and found the History back among the others, safely returned. Allanon must have known this would happen—and known that anyone holding the History would be carried away as well—back into Paranor, back into the Druid’s sanctuary.

“But not,” he finished, “back into the world of mortal men.”

“Because the Keep had been sent elsewhere three hundred years ago,” Walker murmured, beginning to understand now.

“Yes, Walker, because the Keep had been sent from the Four Lands by Allanon and would remain gone until the Druids brought it back again. So the book was returned to it and Rumor and I sent along as well.” He paused. “It appears that the Druids are not done with me yet.”

“Are you trapped here, then?” Walker asked softly.

The other’s smile was tight. “I am afraid so. I lack the magic to free us. We are a part of Paranor now, just as the Histories are, alive and well, but ghosts within a ghost castle, caught in some twilight time and‘ place until a stronger magic than mine sets us free. And that is why I have been waiting for you.” The bony fingers tightened about Walker’s arm. “Tell me now. Have you brought the Black Elfstone? Will you show it to me?”

Walker Boh remembered suddenly that he still had hold of the Stone, the talisman clasped so tightly in his hand that the edges had embedded themselves in the flesh of his palm. He held his hand out tentatively, and his fingers slipped open one by one. He was cautious, afraid that the magic would overwhelm him. The Black Elfstone gleamed darkly in the hollow of his palm, but the magic lay dormant, the nonlight sealed away.

Cogline peered down at the Stone wordlessly for long moments, not attempting more, his narrow, seamed face reflecting wonder and hesitation. Then he looked up again and said, “How did you find it, Walker? What happened after Rumor and I were taken away?”

Walker told him then of the coming of Quickening, the daughter of the King of the Silver River, and of how she had healed his arm. He related all that had happened on the journey north to Eldwist, of the struggle of Quickening and her companions to survive in that land of stone, of the search for Uhl Belk, of the encounters with the Rake and the Maw Grint, and of the ultimate destruction of the city and those who sought to preserve it.

“I came here alone,” he concluded, his gaze distant as the memories of what had befallen him recalled themselves. “I knew what was expected of me. I accepted that the trust Allanon had bequeathed to Brin Ohmsford had been meant for me.” He glanced over. “You always told me that I first needed to accept in order to understand, and I suppose I have done as you advised. And as Allanon charged. I used the Black Elfstone and brought back the Druid’s Keep. But look at me, Cogline. I appear as you do, a ghost. If the magic has achieved what was intended, then why—”

“Think, Walker,” the other interrupted quickly, a pained look in his ancient eyes. “What was your charge from Allanon? Repeat it to me.”

Walker took a deep breath, his pale face troubled. “To bring back Paranor and the Druids.”

“Yes, Paranor and the Druids—both. You realize what that means, don’t you? You understand?”

Walker’s brow knotted with frustration and reluctance. “Yes, old man.” He breathed harshly in response. “I must become a Druid if Paranor is to be restored. I have accepted that, though it shall be as I wish it and not as a shade three hundred years dead intends.” His words were angry now and quick. “I will not be as they were, those old men who—”

“Walker!” Cogline’s anger was as intense as his own, and he went still immediately. “Listen to me. Do not proclaim what you will do and how you will be until you understand what is required of you. This is not simply a matter of accepting a charge and carrying it out. It was never that. Acceptance of who you are and what you must do is just the first of many steps your journey requires. Yes, you have recovered the Black Elfstone and summoned its magic. Yes, you have gained entry into disappeared Paranor. But that is only the beginning of what is needed.”

Walker stared. “What do you mean? What else is there?”

“Much, I am afraid,” the other whispered. A sad smile eased across the wrinkled features, seamed wood splitting with age. “You came to Paranor much in the same way as Rumor and I. The magic brought you. But the magic gives you entry on its own terms. We are here at its sufferance, alive under the conditions it dictates. You have already noted how you seem—almost a ghost, having substance and life yet not enough of either to be as other mortal men. That should tell you something, Walker. Look about you. Paranor appears the same—here and yet not here, vague in its form, not come fully to life.”

The thin mouth tightened. “Do you see? We are none of us—Rumor, you and I, Paranor—returned yet to the world of men. We are still in a limbo existence, somewhere between being and nonbeing, and we are waiting. We are waiting, Walker, for the magic to restore us fully. Because it has not done that yet, despite your use of the Black Elfstone and your entry into the Keep. Because it has not yet been mastered.”

He reached down and gently closed Walker’s fingers back around the Black Elfstone, then slowly sat back, a frail bundle of sticks against the shadows.

“In order for Paranor to be restored to the world of men, the Druids must come again. More precisely, one Druid, Walker You. But acceptance of what this means is not enough to let you become a Druid. You must do more if the magic is to be yours, if it is to belong to you. You must become what you are charged with being. You must transform yourself.”

“Transform myself?” Walker was aghast. “It would seem that I have done so already! What further transformation is required? Must I disappear altogether? No, don’t answer that. Let me puzzle this through a moment on my own. I have the legacy of Allanon, possession of the Black Elfstone, and still I must do more if any of this is to mean anything. Transform myself, you say? How?”

Cogline shook his head. “I don’t know. I know that if you do not do so you will not become a Druid and Paranor will not be restored to the world of men.”

“Am I trapped here if I fail?” Walker demanded furiously.

“No. You can leave whenever you choose. The Black Elfstone will see you clear.”

There was an uncertain moment of angry silence as the two men faced each other, vague shadows seated on the stone bench beneath the castle walls. “And you?” Walker asked finally. “And Rumor? Can you come away with me?”

Cogline smiled faintly. “We gained life at a cost, Walker. We are tied to the magic of the Druid Histories, irrevocably bound. We must remain with them. If they are not restored into the world of men, then we cannot be brought back either.”

“Shades.” Walker breathed the word like a curse. He felt the weight of Paranor’s stone settle down about him. “So I can gain my own freedom, but not yours. I can leave, but you must stay.” His own smile was hard and ironic. “I would never do that, of course. Not after you gave up your own life so that I could keep mine. You knew that, didn’t you? You knew it from the start. And Allanon surely knew. I am trapped at every turn, aren’t I? I posture about who I will be and what I will do, how I will control my own destiny, and my words are meaningless.”

“Walker, you are not bound to us,” Cogline interjected quickly. “Rumor and I fought to save you because we wished to.”

“You fought because it was necessary if I was to carry out Allanon’s charge, Cogline. There is no escaping why I am alive. And if I refuse to carry it out now, or if I fail, everything that has gone before will have been pointless!” He fought to control himself as his voice threatened to become a shout. “Look at what is being done to me!”

Cogline waited a moment, then said quietly, “Is it really so bad, Walker? Have you been so misused?”

There was a pause as Walker glared at him. “Because I have nothing to say about what is to become of me? Because I am fated to be something I despise? Because I must act in ways I would not otherwise act? Old man, you astonish me.”

“But not sufficiently to provoke you to answer?”

Walker shook his head in disgust. “Answers are pointless. Any answer I might give would only come back to haunt me later. I feel I am betrayed by my own thoughts in this business. Better to deal with what is given than what might be, isn’t it?” He sighed. The cold of the stone seeped into him, felt now for the first time. “I am as trapped here as you are,” he whispered.

Cogline leaned back against the castle wall, looking momentarily as if he might disappear into it. “Then make your escape, Walker,” he said quietly. “Not by running from your fate, but by embracing it. You have insisted from the beginning that you would not allow yourself to be manipulated by the Druids. Do you suppose that I feel any different? We are both victims of circumstances set in motion three hundred years ago, and we would neither of us be so if we had the choice. But we don’t. And it does no good to rail against what has been done to us. So, Walker, do something to turn things to your advantage. Do as you are fated, become what you must, and then act in whatever ways you perceive to be right.”

Walker’s smile was ironic. “So you would have me transform myself. How do I do that, Cogline? You have yet to tell me.”

“Begin with the Druid Histories. AH of the secrets of the magic are said to be contained within.” The old man’s hand gripped his arm impulsively. “Go up into the Keep and take the Histories from their vault, one by one, and see for yourself what they can teach. The answers you need must lie therein. It is a place to start, at least.”

“Yes,” Walker agreed, inwardly mulling over the possibility that Cogline was right, that he might gain what he sought not by pushing his fate away but by turning it to his own use. “Yes, it is a start.”

He rose then, and Cogline with him. Walker faced the old man in silence for a moment, then reached out with his good arm and gently embraced him. “I am sorry for what has been done to you,” he whispered. “I meant what I said back at Hearthstone before Rimmer Dall came—that I was wrong to blame you for any of what has happened, that I am grateful for all you have done to help me. We shall find a way to get free, Cogline. I promise.”

Then he stepped back, and Cogline’s answering smile was a momentary ray of sunlight breaking through the gloom.

So Walker Boh went up into the keep, following the lead of Cogline and Rumor, three specters at haunt in a twilight world. The castle of the Druids was dark and heavy, shimmering like an image reflected in a pool of water adrift with shadows. The stone of the walls and floors and towers was cold and empty of life, and the hallways wound about like tunnels beneath the earth, dark and dank. There were bones scattered here and there along the carpeted, tapestried halls, the remains of those Gnomes who had died when Allanon had invoked the magic that sent the Keep out of the Four Lands three hundred years earlier. Piles of dust marked the end of the Mord Wraiths trapped there, and all that remained of what they had been was a whisper of a memory sealed away by the walls.

Passageways came and went, stairways that ran straight and curved about, a warren of corridors burrowing back into the stone. The silence was pervasive, thick and deep as leaves in late autumn in the forest, rooted in the castle walls and inexorable. They did not challenge it, wordless as they passed through its curtain, focusing instead on what lay ahead, on the path they followed to the paths that waited. Doors and empty chambers came and went about them, stark and uninviting within their trappings of gloom. Windows opened into grayness, a peculiar haze that shaded everything beyond so that the Keep was an island. Walker searched for something of the forestland that ringed the empty hill on which Paranor had stood, but the trees had disappeared; or he had, he amended—come out of the Four Lands into nothingness. Color had been drained from the carpets and tapestries and paintings, from the stone itself, and even from the sky. There was only the gloom, a kind of gray that defied any brightening, that was empty and dead.

Yet there was one thing more. There was the magic that held Paranor sealed away. It was present at every turn, at once invisible and suddenly revealed, a kind of swirling, greenish mist. It hovered in the shadows and along the edges of their vision, wicked and certain, the hiss of its being a whisper of killing need. It could not touch them, for they were protected by other magic and were at one with the Keep itself. But it could watch. It could tease and taunt and threaten. It could wait with the promise of what would happen when their protection was gone.

It was odd that it should be such an obvious presence,—Walker Boh felt it immediately. It was as if the magic were a living thing, a guard dog set at prowl through the Keep, searching out intruders and hunting them down so that they might be destroyed. Its presence reminded him of the Rake in Eldwist, a Creeper that scoured its master’s grounds and swept them clean of life. The magic lacked the substance of the Rake, but its feel was the same. It was an enemy, Walker sensed, that would eventually have to be faced.

Within the Druid library, behind the bookcases where the vault was concealed, they found the Histories, banks of massive, leather-bound books set within the walls of the Keep, the magic that had once hidden them from mortal eyes faded with the passing of the Keep from the world of men. Walker studied the books for a time, deliberating, then chose one at random, seated himself, and began to read. Cogline and Rumor kept him company, silent and unobtrusive. Time passed, but the light did not change. There was no day or night in Paranor. There was no past or future. There was only the here and now.

Walker did not know how long he read. He did not grow tired and did not find himself in need of sleep. He did not eat or drink, being neither hungry nor thirsty. Cogline told him at one point that in the world into which Paranor had been dispatched, mortal needs had no meaning. They were ghosts as much as they were two men and a moor cat. Walker did not question. There was no need.

He read for hours or days or even weeks; he did not know. He read at first without comprehending, simply seeing the words flow in front of his eyes, a narrative that was as distant and removed as the life he had known before the dreams of Allanon. He read of the Druids and their studies, of the world they had tried to make after the cataclysm of the Great Wars, of the First Council at Paranor, and of the coming together of the Races out of the holocaust. What should it mean to him? he wondered. What difference did any of it make now?

He finished one book and went on to another, then another, working his way steadily through the volumes, constantly searching for something that would tell him what he needed to know. There were recitations of spells and conjurings, of magics that could aid in small ways, of healings by touch and thought, of the succor of living things, and of the work that was needed to make the land whole again. He read them, and they told him nothing. How was he supposed to transform himself from what he was into what he was expected to be? Where did it say what he was supposed to do? The pages turned, the words ran on, and the answers stayed hidden.

He did not finish in one sitting, even though he was free of the distractions of his mortal needs and did not sleep or eat or drink. He left to walk about periodically, to think of other things, and to let his mind clear itself of all that the Histories related. Sometimes Cogline went with him, his shadow; sometimes it was Rumor. They might have been back at Hearthstone, walking its trails, keeping each other company, living in the seclusion of the valley once more. But Hearthstone was gone, destroyed by the Shadowen, and Paranor was dark and empty of life, and no amount of wishing could change what had gone before. There was no returning to the past, Walker thought to himself more than once. Everything that had once been was lost.

After a time, he began to despair. He had almost finished reading the Druid Histories and still he had discovered nothing. He had learned everything of who and what the Druids were, of their teachings and their beliefs, and of how they had lived and what they they had sought to accomplish, and none of it told him anything about how they acquired their skills. There was no indication of where Allanon had come from, how he had learned to be a Druid or who had taught him, or what the subject matter of his teachings had been. The books were devoid of any reference to the conjuring that had sealed away the Keep or what it might require to reverse the spell.

“I cannot fathom it, Cogline,” Walker Boh admitted finally, frustrated beyond hope as the last of the volumes sat open on his lap before him. “I have read everything, and none of it has helped. Is it possible that there are volumes missing? Is there something more to be tried?”

But Cogline shook his head. The answers, if they existed in written form, would be found here. There were no other books, no other sources of reference. Everything was contained in the Histories. All of the Druid studies began and ended there.

Walker went out alone then for a time, stalking the halls in anger, feeling betrayed and cheated, a victim of Druid whim and conceit. He thought bitterly of all that had been done to him because of who he was, of all that he had been forced to endure. His home had been destroyed. He had lost an arm and barely escaped with his life. He had been lied to and tricked repeatedly. He had been made to feel responsible for the fate of an entire world. Self-pity washed through him, and then his mouth tightened in admonishment. Enough, he chided himself. He was alive, wasn’t he? Others had not been so fortunate. He was still haunted by Quickening’s face; he could not forget how she had looked when he had let her fall. Remember me, she had pleaded with Morgan Leah—but she had been speaking to him as well. Remember me—as if anyone who had known her could ever forget.

Absently he turned down a corridor that led toward the center of the Keep and the entrance to the black well that had given birth to the magic that sealed away Paranor. His mind was still on Quickening, and he recalled once again the vision the Grimpond had shown him of her fate. Bitterness welled up within him. The vision had been right, of course. The Grimpond’s visions were always right. First the loss of his arm, then the loss of Quickening, then...

He stopped suddenly, startled into immobility, a statue staring blankly into space at the center of the cavernous passageway. He had forgotten There was a third vision. He took a steadying breath, picturing it in his mind. He stood within an empty, lifeless castle fortress, stalked by a death he could not escape, pursued relentlessly...

He exhaled sharply. This castle? He closed his eyes, trying to remember. Yes, it might have been Paranor.

He felt his pulse quicken. In the vision, he felt a need to run, but could not. He stood frozen as Death approached. A dark-robed figure stood behind him, holding him fast, preventing his escape.

Allanon.

He felt the silence grow oppressive. What had become of this third vision? he wondered. When was it supposed to happen? Was it meant to happen here?

And suddenly he knew. The certainty of it shocked him, but he did not doubt. The vision would come to pass, just as the others had, and it would come to pass here. Paranor was the castle, and the death that stalked him was the dark magic called forth to seal the Keep. Allanon did indeed stand behind him, holding him fast—not physically, but in ways stronger still.

But there was more, some part of things that he had not yet divined. It was not foreordained that he should die. That was the obvious meaning of the Grimpond’s vision, what the Grimpond wanted Walker to think. The visions were always deceptive. The images were cleverly revealed, lending themselves to more than one interpretation. Like pieces to a puzzle, you had to play with them to discover how they fit.

Walker’s eyes prowled the dark shadows that lay all about, hunting. What if he could find a way to turn the Grimpond’s cleverness to his own use? What if this time he could decipher the vindictive spirit’s foretelling in advance of its happening? And suppose—he hardly dared let himself hope—deciphering the vision could provide him with the key to understanding his fate within the Druid’s Keep?

A fire began to build within him—a burning determination. He did not have the answers he needed yet, but he had something just as good. He had a way to discover what they were.

He thought back to his entry into Paranor, to his meeting with Cogline and Rumor. The missing pieces were there, somewhere. He retraced his reading of the Druid Histories, seeing again the words on the pages, feeling anew the weight of the books, the texture of the bindings. Something was there, something he had missed. He closed his eyes, picturing himself, following all that had happened, relating it to himself in his mind, a sequence of events. He searched it, standing solitary in that hall, wrapped in shadows and silence, feeling the edges of his confusion begin to draw away, hearing sounds that were new and welcome begin to whisper to him. He went down inside himself, reaching for the darker places where the secrets hid themselves. His magic rose to greet him. He could see anything if he searched hard and long enough, he told himself. He dropped away into the stillest, calmest part of himself, letting everything fall away.

What had he overlooked?

Whosoever shall have the cause and the right shall wield it to its proper end.

His eyes snapped open. His hand came up slowly along his body, groping. His fingers found what they were seeking, carefully tucked within his clothing, and they closed tightly about it.

The Black Elfstone.

Clutching the talisman protectively, his mind awash with new possibilities, he hurried away.