of the Druids, the keeper of the Histories of the Four Lands, the
protector of the Races, the dispenser of magic and secrets. His
dark form rose up against the years like a cloud against the sun,
blocking away the warmth and the light. Everything that had
taken place while he lived bore his touch. And before that, it
was Bremen, and before that the Druids of the First Council of
the Races. Wars of magic, struggles for survival, the battles
between light and dark-or grays perhaps-had all been the re-
sult of the Druids.
And now he was being asked to bring all that back.
It could be argued that it was necessary. It had always been
argued so. It could be said that the Druids merely worked to
preserve and protect, never to shape. But had there ever been
one without the other? And necessity was always in the eye of
the beholder. Wariock Lords, Demons, and Mord Wraiths past-
they had been exchanged for Shadowen. But what were these
Shadowen that men should require the aid of Druids and magic?
Could not then take it upon themselves to deal with the ills of
the world rather than defer to power they scarcely understood?
Magic carried grief as well as joy, its dark side as apt to influence
and change as its light. Bring it back again, should he, only to
give it to men who had repeatedly demonstrated that they were
incapable of mastering its truths?
How could he?
Yet without it, the world might become the vision Allanon’s
shade had shown them-a nightmare of fire and darkness in
which only creatures such as the Shadowen belonged. Perhaps
it was true after all that magic was the only means of keeping
the Races safe against such beings.
Perhaps.
The truth of the matter was that he simply didn’t want to be
part of what was to happen. He was not a child of the Races of
the Four Lands, not in body or in spirit, and never had been.
He had no empathy with their men and women. He had no place
among them. He had been cursed with magic of his own, and
it had stripped him of his humanity and his place among humans
and isolated him from every other living thing. Ironic, because
he alone had no fear of the Shadowen. Perhaps he could even
protect against them, were he asked to do so. But he would not
be asked. He was as much feared as they. He was the Dark
Uncle, the descendent of Brin Ohmsford, the bearer of her
seed and her trust, keeper of some nameless charge from Al-
lanon . . .
Except, of course, that the charge was nameless no more.
The charge was revealed. He was to bring back Paranor and the
Druids, out of the void of yesteryear, out of the nothingness.
That was what the shade had demanded of him, and the de-
mand tracked relentlessly through the landscape of his mind,
hurdling arguments, circumventing reason, whispering that it
was and therefore must be.
So he worried the matter as a dog would its bone, and the
days dragged by. The storms passed and the sun returned to bake
the plains dry but leave the forestlands weltering in the heat and
damp. He went out after a time, walking the valley floor with
only Rumor for company, the giant moor cat having wandered
down out of the rain forests east with the changing of the weather,
luminous eyes as depthless as the despair the Dark Uncle felt.
The cat gave him companionship, but offered no solution to his
dilemma and no relief from his brooding. They walked and sat
together as the days and nights passed, and time hung suspended
against a backdrop of events taking place beyond their refuge
that neither could know nor see.
Until, on the same night that Par Ohmsford and his compan-
ions were betrayed in their attempt to lay hands upon the Sword
of Shannara, Cogline returned to the valley of Hearthstone and
the illusion of separateness that Walker had worked so hard to
maintain was shattered. It was late evening, the sun had gone