The Elf Queen of Shannara

Chapter Twenty-Five

In the long, deep silence of Paranor’s endless night, in the limbo of her gray, changeless twilight, Walker Boh sat staring into space. His hand was closed into a fist on the table before him, his fingers locked like iron bands about the Black Elfstone. There was nothing more to do—no other options to consider, no further choices to uncover. He had thought everything through to the extent that it was possible to do so, and all that remained was to test the right and wrong of it.

“Perhaps you should take a little more time,” Cogline suggested gently.

The old man sat across from him, a frail, skeletal ghost nearly transparent where caught against the light. Increasingly so, Walker thought in despair. White, wispy hair scattered like dust motes from the wrinkled face and head, robes hung like laundry set to dry on a line, and eyes flickered in dull glimmerings from out of dark sockets. Cogline was fading away, disappearing into the past, returning with Paranor to the place from which it had been summoned. For Paranor would not remain within the world of men unless there was a Druid to tend it, and Walker Boh, chosen by time and fate to fill those dark robes, had yet to don them.

His eyes drifted over to Rumor. The moor cat slouched against the far wall of the study room in which they were settled, black body as faint and ethereal as the old man’s. He looked down at himself, fading as well, though not as quickly. In any event, he had a choice; he could leave if he chose, when he chose. Not so Cogline or Rumor, who were bound to the Keep for all eternity if Walker did not find a way to bring it back into the world of Men.

Strangely enough, he thought he had found that way. But his discovery terrified him so that he was not certain he could act on it.

Cogline shifted, a rattle of dry bones. “Another reading of the books couldn’t hurt,” he pressed.

Walker’s smile was ironic. “Another reading and there won’t be anything left of you at all. Or Rumor or the Keep or possibly even me. Paranor is disappearing, old man. We can’t pretend otherwise. Besides, there is nothing left to read, nothing to discover that I don’t already know.”

“And you’re still certain that you’re right, Walker?”

Certain? Walker was certain of nothing beyond the fact that he was most definitely not certain. The Black Elfstone was a deadly puzzle. Guess wrong about its workings and you would end up like the Stone King, enveloped by your own magic, destroyed by what you trusted most. Uhl Belk had thought he had mastered the Stone’s magic, and it had cost him everything.

“I am guessing,” he replied. “Nothing more.”

He allowed his hand to open, and the Elfstone to come into the light. It lay there in the cup of his palm, smooth-faced, sharp-edged, opaque and impenetrable, power unto itself, power beyond anything he had ever encountered. He remembered how it had felt to use the Stone when he had brought back the Keep, thinking it would end then, that the retrieval out of limbo where Allanon had sent it was all that was required. He remembered the surge of power as it joined him to the Keep, the entwining of flesh and blood with stone and mortar, the reworking of his body so that he was as much ghost as man, changing him so that he could enter Paranor, so that he could discover the rest of what he must do.

A metamorphosis of being.

Within, he had encountered Cogline and Rumor and heard the tale of how they had survived the attack of the Shadowen by being caught up in the protective shield of the Druid Histories’ magic and spirited into Paranor. Though Walker had brought Paranor out of the limbo place into which Allanon had dispatched it, it would not be fully returned until he had found a way to complete his transformation, to become the Druid it was decreed he must be. Until then, Paranor was a prison that only he could leave—a prison rapidly drawing back into the space from which it had come.

“I am guessing,” he repeated, almost to himself.

He had read and reread the Druid Histories in an effort to discover what it was that he must do and found nothing. Nowhere did the Histories relate how one became a Druid. Despairing, he had thought the cause lost to him when he had remembered the Grimpond’s visions, two of which had come to pass, the third of which, he realized, would happen here.

He faced the old man. “I stand within a castle fortress empty of life and gray with disuse. I am stalked by a death I cannot escape. It hunts me relentlessly. I know I must run from it, yet cannot. I let it approach, and it reaches for me. A cold settles within, and I can feel my life ending. Behind me stands a dark shadow holding me fast, preventing my escape. The shadow is Allanon.”

The words were a familiar litany by now. Cogline nodded patiently. “Your vision, you said. The third of three.”

“Two came to pass already, but neither as I anticipated. The Grimpond loves to play games. But this time I shall use that gamesplaying to my advantage. I know the details of the vision; I know that it will happen here within the Keep. I need only decipher its meaning, to separate the truth from the lie.”

“But if you have guessed wrong...”

Walker Boh shook his head defiantly. “I have not.”

They were treading familiar ground. Walker had already told the old man everything, testing it out on someone who would be quick to spot the flaws he had missed, putting it into words to see how it would sound.

The Black Elfstone was the key to everything.

He repeated from memory that brief, solitary passage inscribed in the Druid Histories:

Once removed, Paranor shall remain lost to the world of men for the whole of time, sealed away and invisible within its casting. One magic alone has the power to return it—that singular Elfstone that is colored Black and was conceived by the faerie people of the old world in the manner and form of all Elfstones, combining nevertheless in one stone alone the necessary properties of heart, mind, and body. Whosoever shall have cause and right shall wield it to its proper end.

He had assumed until now that the Black Elfstone was meant to restore Paranor to its present state of half-being and to gain him entry therein. But the language of the inscription didn’t qualify the extent of the Elfstone’s use. One magic alone, it said, had the power to restore Paranor. One magic The Black Elfstone. There wasn’t any another magic mentioned, not anywhere. There wasn’t another word about returning Paranor to the world of men in all the pages of all the Druid Histories.

Suppose, then, that the Black Elfstone was all that was required, but that it must be used not just once, but twice or even three times before the restoration process was complete.

But used to do what?

The answer seemed obvious. The magic that Allanon had released into the Keep three hundred years ago was a sort of watchdog set loose to do two things—to destroy the Keep’s enemies and to dispatch Paranor into limbo and keep it there until it was properly summoned out again. The magic was a living thing. You could feel it in the walls of the castle; you could hear it stir in its bowels. It watched and listened. It breathed. It was there, waiting. If the Keep was to be restored to the Four Lands, the magic Allanon had loosed must be locked away again. It was reasonable to assume that only another form of magic could accomplish this. And the only magic at hand, the only magic even mentioned in the Druid Histories where Paranor was concerned, was the Black Elfstone.

So far, so good. Druid magic to negate Druid magic. It made sense; it was the Black Elfstone’s stated power, the negation of other magics. One magic, the inscription read. And Walker must wield it, of course. He had done so once, proved that he could. Whosoever shall have cause and right. Himself. Use the Black Elfstone against the watchdog magic and secure it. Use the Black Elfstone and bring Paranor all the way back.

But there was still something missing. There was no explanation of how the Black Elfstone would work. It was infinitely more complicated than simply calling up the magic and letting it run loose. The Black Elfstone negated other magics by drawing them into itself—and into its holder. Walker Boh had already been changed when he had used the Elfstone to bring Paranor back and gain entry, turned from a whole man into something incorporeal. What further damage might he do to himself if he used the Elfstone on the watchdog? What further transformation might take place?

And then, abruptly, he realized two things.

First, that he was still not a Druid and would not become one until he had established his right to do so—that his right would not come from study, or learning, or wisdom gleaned from a reading of the Druid Histories, that it was not foreordained, not predetermined by the bestowal of Allanon’s blood trust to Brin Ohmsford three hundred years earlier, but that it would come at the moment he found a way to subdue the watchdog that guarded the Keep and brought Paranor fully back into the world of Men, because that was the test that Allanon had set him.

Second, that the third vision the Grimpond had shown him, the one that would take place within Paranor, the one where he was confronted by a death he could not escape, held fast by the ghost of Allanon, was a glimpse of that moment.

His arguments were persuasive. The Druids would not commit to writing a process as inviolate as this one when there was a better way. Only Walker Boh could use the Black Elfstone. Only he had the right. Somehow, in some way, that use would trigger the required transformation. When it was necessary to know, Walker would discover what was needed. So much of the Druid magic relied on acceptance—use of the Elfstones, of the Sword of Shannara, even of the wishsong. It was only reasonable that it would be the same here.

And the Grimpond’s vision only cemented his thinking. There would have to be a confrontation of the sort depicted. A literal reading of the vision suggested that such a confrontation would result in Walker’s death, that Allanon by sending him here had bound him so that he must die, and that whatever he might try to do to escape would be futile. But that was too simplistic. And it made no sense. Why would Allanon send him all this way to certain death? There had to be another interpretation, another meaning. The one he favored was the one that ended one life and began another, that established him once and for all as a Druid.

Cogline was not so sure. Walker had guessed wrong on both of the Grimpond’s previous visions. Why was he so convinced that he was not guessing wrong here as well? The visions were never what they seemed, devious and twisted bits of half-truth concealed amid lies. He was taking a terrible gamble. The first vision had cost him his arm, the second Quickening. Was the third to cost him nothing? It seemed more reasonable to believe that the vision was open to a number of interpretations, any one of which could come to pass in the right set of circumstances, including Walker’s death. Moreover, it bothered Cogline that Walker had no clear idea of how use of the Black Elfstone was to effect his transformation, how it was to subdue the Druid watchdog, how Paranor itself was to be brought fully alive—or how any of this was to work. It‘ could not possibly be as easy as Walker made it sound. Nothing involving use of the Elven magic ever was. There would be pain involved, enormous effort, and the very real possibility of failure.

So they had argued, back and forth, for longer than Walker cared to admit, until now, hours later, they were too tired to do anything but exchange a final round of perfunctory admonishments. Walker’s mind was made up, and they both knew it. He was going to test his theory, to seek out and confront the thing that Allanon had let loose within Paranor and use the magic of the Black Elfstone to resecure it. He was going to discover the truth about the Black Elfstone and put an end to the last of the Grimpond’s hateful visions.

If he could make himself rise from this table, take up the talisman, and go forth.

Though he had sought to keep it hidden from Cogline with hard looks and confident words, his terror bound him. So much uncertainty, so many guesses. He forced his fingers to close again over the Black Elfstone, to grip so hard he could feel pain.

“I will go with you,” Cogline offered. “And Rumor.”

“No.”

“We might be able to help in some way.”

“No,” Walker repeated. He looked up, shaking his head slowly. “Not that I wouldn’t like you to. But this isn’t something you can help me with, either of you. It isn’t something anyone can help me with.”

He could feel an ache where his missing arm should be, as if it were somehow there and he simply couldn’t see it. He shifted uneasily, trying to relieve muscles that had tightened and cramped while he had stayed seated with the old man, arguing. The movement gave him impetus, and he forced himself to rise Cogline stood with him. They faced each other in the half-light, in the fading transparency of the Keep.

“Walker.” The old man spoke his name quietly. “The Druids have made us both their creatures. We have been twisted and turned in every direction, made to do things we did not wish to do and become involved in matters we would rather have left alone. I would not presume to argue with you now the merits of their manipulation. We are both beyond the point where it matters.”

He leaned forward. “But I would tell you, would ask you to remember, that they choose their paladins wisely.” His smile was worn and sad. “Luck to you.”

Walker came around the table, wrapped his good arm about the old man, and hugged him tight. He held him momentarily, then released him and stepped away.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

There was nothing more to be said. He took a deep breath, walked over to scratch Rumor between his cocked ears, gazed into the luminous eyes, then turned and disappeared out the door.

With slow, cautious steps, moving through the vast, empty hallways as if the walls might hear him coming, as if his intentions could be divined, he proceeded toward the center of the Keep. Shadows hung about him in colorless folds, a sleep-shroud that cloaked his thoughts. He buried himself in the sanctuary of his mind, drawing his determination and strength of will about him in protective layers, summoning from deep within the resolve that would give him a chance at life.

For the truth of things was that he had no real idea what would happen when he confronted the Druid watchdog and called upon the Black Elfstone’s magic to subdue it. Cogline was right; there would be pain and the process would be more complex and difficult than he wanted to admit. There would be a struggle, and he might not emerge the victor. He wished he had some better idea of what it was he faced. But there was no point in wishing for what could never be, for what had never been. The Druid ways had been secretive forever.

He turned down the main hallway, heading now to the doors that opened into the Keep—and to the well in which the watchdog slumbered. Or perhaps simply laired, for it seemed to the Dark Uncle that the magic was awake and watching, following him with its eyes as he moved through the castle, trailing along in a ripple of changing light, an invisible presence. Allanon’s shade was there as well, a tightening at his back, a cramping of the muscles in his shoulders where the great hands gripped. He was held fast already, he thought to himself. He was propelled to this confrontation as much as if he were deadwood carried on the crest of a river in flood, and he could not turn aside from it.

Speak to me, Allanon, he pleaded silently. Tell me what to do.

But no answer came.

The doors of empty rooms and the dark tunnels of other halls and corridors came and went. He felt again the ache of his missing arm and wished that he were whole again, if only for the moment of this confrontation. He gripped the Black Elfstone tightly in his good hand, feeling its smooth facets and sharp edges press reassuringly against his flesh. He could summon the power within, but he could not predict what it would do. Destroy you, the thought came unbidden. He breathed slowly, deeply, to calm himself. He tried to remember the passage on the Stone’s usage from the Druid History, but his memory suddenly failed him. He tried to remember what he had read in all the pages of all those books and could not. Everything was melting away within, lost in the rush of fear and doubt that surged through him, anxious and threatening. Don’t give way to it, he admonished himself. Remember who you are, what has been promised you, what you have told yourself will happen.

The words were dead leaves caught in a strong wind.

Ahead, a broad alcove opened into the stone of the walls, arched and shadowed so deeply that it was as black as night. There, a set of tall iron doors stood closed.

The entry to the well of the Druid’s Keep.

Walker Boh came up to the doors and stopped. All around him he could hear a whispering of voices, taunting, teasing in the manner of the Grimpond, telling him to go back, urging him to go on, a maddening whirl of conflicting exhortations. Memories stirred from somewhere within—but they were not his own. He could feel their movement along his spine, a reaching out of fingers that coiled and tightened. Before him, he could see a trace of wicked green light probe at the cracks and crevices of the door frame. Beyond, he could sense movement.

In that instant, he almost bolted. Had he been able to do so, he would have thrown down the Black Elfstone and run for his life, the whole of his resolve and purpose abandoned. His fear was manifest; it was so palpable that it seemed he could reach out and touch it. It did not wear the face he had expected. His fear was not of the confrontation, of the vision’s promise, or even of dying. It was of something beyond that, something so intangible he was unable to define it and at the same time was certain it was there.

But Allanon’s shade held him fast, just as in the vision, a contrivance of fate and time and manipulation of centuries gone combining to assure that Walker Boh fulfilled the purpose the Druids had set for him.

He reached forward with his closed fist, seeing his hand as if it belonged to another person, watching as it pushed against the iron doors.

Soundlessly they swung open.

Walker stepped through, his body numb and his head light and rilled with small, terror-filled cries of warning. Don’t, they whispered. Don’t.

He stopped, breathless. He stood on a narrow stone landing within the well of the Keep. Stairs coiled upward along the wall of the tower like a spike-backed serpent. Weak gray light filtered through slits cut in the stone, piercing the shadows. There was nothing below where he stood but emptiness—a vast, yawning abyss out of which rose the hollow echo of the iron doors as they thudded closed behind him. He listened to his heart pound in his ears. He listened to the silence beyond.

Then something stirred in the abyss. Breath released from a giant’s lungs, quick and angry. Greenish light flared, dimmed again, turned to mist, and began to swirl sluggishly.

Walker Boh felt the vastness of the Keep settle down about him, a monstrous weight he could not escape. Tons of stone ringed him, and the blackness it sealed away was a death shroud. The mist rose, a dark and ancient magic, the Druid watchdog roused and come forth to investigate. It came for him in a sweeping, lifting motion, curling along the stone, eating away at the dark, a morass that would swallow him without a trace.

Still he would have run but for the certainty that it was too late, that he had begun something that must be finished, that time and events had caught up with him at last, and now here, alone, he would have to resolve the puzzle of his Druid-shaped life. He made himself move forward to the landing’s edge, frail flesh a drop of water against the ocean of the power below. It hissed at him as if it saw, a whisper of recognition. It seemed to gather itself, a tightening of movement.

Walker brought up the hand with the Black Elfstone.

Wait.

The voice rose out of the mist. Walker froze. The voice belonged to the Grimpond.

Do you know me?

The Grimpond? How could it be the Grimpond? Walker blinked rapidly. The mist had begun to take form at its center, a pillar of swirling green that bore upward into the light, that lifted through the shadows, steady, certain, until it was even with him, hanging in air and silence.

Look.

It became a human figure all cloaked and hooded and faceless. It grew arms and hands that stretched to embrace Walker. Fingers curled and flexed.

Who am I?

A face appeared, shadows and light shifting within the mist. Walker felt as if his soul had been torn away.

The face he saw was his own.

Within the dark seclusion of the vault that housed the Druid Histories, Cogline lurched to his feet. Something was happening. Something. He could feel it in the air, a vibration that stirred the shadows. The wrinkled face tightened in concentration; the aged eyes stared into space. The silence was unbroken, vast and changeless, time suspended, and yet...

Across the room from him, Rumor’s head snapped up and the moor cat gave a deep, low, angry growl. He moved into a crouch, turning first this way, then that, as if seeking an enemy that had made itself invisible. He, too, sensed something. Cogline’s eyes flickered right and left. On the table before him, the pages of the open book began to tremble.

It begins, the old man thought.

He gathered his robes close in an unconscious motion, thinking of all that had brought him to this place and time, of all that had gone before. After so many years, what price? he wondered. But the price would be paid not by him, but by Walker Boh.

I must do what I can, he decided.

He focused deep within, one of those few skills he retained from his once-Druid past. He retreated down inside until he was free enough to leave. He could travel short distances so, see within small worlds. He sped through the castle corridors, still within his mind, seeing and hearing everything. He swept through the darkness, through the gray half-light, to the tower of the Keep.

There he found Walker Boh face to face with immortality and death, frozen by indecision. He realized what was happening.

His voice was surprisingly calm.

Walker Use the Stone.

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 Crimpond 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 Crimpond. 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 had 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!

Shades! Had the Grimpond been right after all?

He was seeing other places and times, viewing the faces of men and women and children he did not know, witnessing events transpire and fade, and above all feeling a wrenching series of emotions emanate from the being inside. Walker’s sense of where he was disappeared. He was transported into the mind of his invader. A man? Yes, a man, he realized, a man who had lived countless lifetimes, centuries, far longer than any normal human, someone so different...

The images abruptly changed. He saw a gathering of black robes, dark figures concealed behind castle walls, closeted in chambers where the light barely reached, hunched over ancient books of learning, writing, reading, studying, discussing...

Druids!

And then he realized the truth—a jarring, shocking recognition that cut through the madness with a razor’s edge.

The being that the mist had carried within him was Allanon—his memories, his experiences, his feelings, and his thoughts, everything but the flesh and blood he had lost in death.

How had Allanon managed this? Walker asked himself in disbelief, fighting to breathe against the rush of memories, against the suffocating blanket of the other’s thoughts. But he already knew the answer to that. A Druid’s magic allowed almost anything. The seeds had been planted three hundred years ago. Why, then? And that answer, too, came swiftly, a red flare of certainty. This was how the Druid lore was to be passed on to him. All that Allanon had known and felt was stored within the mist, his knowledge kept safe for three hundred years, waiting for his successor.

But there was more, Walker sensed. This was how he was to be tested as well. This was how it was to be determined if he should become a Druid.

His speculation ended as the images continued to rush through him, recognizable now for what they were, the whole of the Druid experience, all that Allanon had gleaned from his predecessors, from his studies, from the living of his own life. Like footprints in soft earth, they embedded in Walker’s mind, their touch fiery and harsh, each a coal laid against his skin. The words and impressions and feelings descended in an avalanche. It was too much, too fast. I don’t want this! he screamed in terror, but still the feeding continued, relentless, purposeful—Allanon’s self transferring into Walker. He fought back against it, groping through the maze of images for something solid. But the black light of the Elfstone was a funnel that refused to be stoppered, drawing in the greenish mist, absorbing it, and channeling it into his body. Voices spoke words, faces turned to look, scenes changed, and time rushed away—a composite of all the years Allanon had been alive, struggling to protect the Races, to assure that the Druid lore wasn’t lost, that the hopes and aspirations the First Council had envisioned centuries ago were carried forth and preserved. Walker Boh became privy to it all, learned what it had meant to Allanon and those whose lives he had touched, and experienced for himself the impact of life through almost ten centuries.

Then abruptly the images ceased, the voices, the faces, the scenes out of time—everything that had assailed him. They vanished in a rush, and he was standing alone again within the Keep, a solitary figure slumped against the stone-block wall.

Still alive.

He lifted away unsteadily, looking down at himself, making certain he was whole. Within, there was a rawness, like skin reddened from too much sun, the implant of all that Druid knowledge, of all that Allanon had intended to bequeath. His spirit felt leavened and his mind filled. Yet his command over the knowledge was disjointed, as if it could not be brought to bear, not called upon. Something was wrong. Walker could not seem to focus.

Before him, the Black Elfstone pulsed, the nonlight a bridge that arced into the shadows, still joined with what remained of the mist—a roiling, churning mass of wicked green light that hissed and sparked and gathered itself like a cat about to spring.

Walker straightened, weak and unsteady, frightened anew, sensing that something more was about to happen and that the worst was still to come. His mind raced. What could he do to prepare himself? There wasn’t time enough left...

The mist launched itself into the nonlight. It came at Walker and enveloped him in the blink of an eye. He could see its anger, hear its rage, and feel its fury. It exploded through the new skin of his knowledge, a geyser of pain. Walker shrieked and doubled over. His body convulsed, changing within the covering of his robes. He could feel the wrenching of his bones. He closed his eyes and went rigid. The mist was within, curling, settling, feeding.

He experienced a rush of horror.

All of his life, Walker Boh had struggled to escape what the Druids had foreordained for him, resolved to chart his own course. In the end, he had failed. Thus he had gone in search of the Black Elfstone and then Paranor with the knowledge that if he should find them it would require that he become the next Druid, accepting his destiny yet promising himself that he would be his own person whatever was ordained. Now, in an instant’s time, as he was wracked by the fury of what had hidden within the mist, all that remained of his hopes for some small measure of self-determination was stripped away, and Walker Boh was left instead with the darkest part of Allanon’s soul. It was the Druid’s crudest self, a composite of all those times he had been forced by reason and circumstance to do what he abhorred, all those situations when he had been required to expend lives and faith and hope and trust, and all those years of hardening and tempering of spirit and heart until both were as carefully forged and as indestructible as the hardest metal. It was a rendering of the limits of Allanon’s being, the limits to which he had been forced to journey. It revealed the weight of responsibility that came with power. It delineated the understanding that experience bestowed. It was harsh and ragged and terrible, an accumulation of ten normal lifetimes, and it inundated Walker like floodwaters over the wall of a dam.

Down into blackness the Dark Uncle spiraled, hearing himself cry out, hearing as well the Grimpond’s laughter-imagined or real, he could not tell. His thoughts scattered before the flaying of his spirit, of his hopes, and of his beliefs. There was nothing he could do; the force of the magic was too powerful. He gave way before it, a monstrous strength. He waited to die.

Yet somehow he clung to life. He found that the torrent of dark revelation, while testing his endurance in ways he had not believed possible, had failed nevertheless to destroy him. He could not think—there was too much pain for that. He did not try to see, lost within a bottomless pit. Hearing availed him nothing, for the echo of his cry reverberated all about him. He seemed to float within himself, fighting to breathe, to survive. It was the testing he had anticipated—the Druid rite of passage. It battered him senseless, filled him with hurt, and left him broken within. Everything washed away, his beliefs and understandings, all that had sustained him for so long. Could he survive that loss? What would he be if he did?

Through waves of anguish he swam, buried within himself and the force of the dark magic, borne to the edge of his endurance, an inch from drowning. He sensed that his life could be lost in the tick of a moment’s passing and realized that the measure of who and what he was and could be was being taken. He couldn’t stop it. He wasn’t sure he even cared. He drifted, helpless.

Helpless.

To be ever again who he had thought he would. To fulfill any of the promises he had made to himself. To have any control over his life. To determine if he would live or die.

Helpless.

Walker Boh.

Barely aware of what he was doing, separated from conscious reasoning, driven instead by emotions too primal to identify, the Dark Uncle thrashed clear of his lethargy and exploded through the waves of pain, through nonlight and dark magic, through time and space, a bright speck of fiery rage.

Within, he felt the balance shift, the weight between life and death tip.

And when he broke at last the surface of the black ocean that had threatened to drown him, the only sound he heard, as it burst from his lungs, was an endless scream.