their home. But the Warlock Lord had felt threatened there,
wary of latent magic within the stones of the Keep, within the
depths of the earth where the furnaces beneath the castle fortress
burned. So he had called the Skull Bearers to him and gone
north . . .
Walker frowned. He had forgotten that part. For a time
Paranor had been abandoned completely when it could have
belonged to the rebels. After all, the Second War of the Races
had dragged on for years.
He paged ahead once more, skimming the words, searching
without knowing exactly what it was he was searching for. He
had forgotten his resolve of earlier, his promise to himself that
he was not to be caught up in Cogline’s snare. His curiosity and
intellect were too demanding to be stayed by caution. There
were secrets here that no man had set eyes upon for hundreds
of years, knowledge that only the Druids had enjoyed, dispens-
ing it to the Races as they perceived necessary and never oth-
erwise. Such power! How long had it been hidden from everyone
but Allanon, and before him Bremen, and before him Galaphile
and the first Druids, and before them . . . ?
He stopped reading, aware suddenly that the flow of the nar-
rative had changed. The script had turned smaller, more precise.
There were odd markings amid the words, runes that symbol-
ized gestures.
Walker Boh went cold to his bones. The silence that envel-
oped the room became enormous, an unending, suffocating
ocean.
Shades! he whispered in the darkest comer of his mind. It is
the invocation for the magic that sealed away Paranor!
His breathing sounded harsh in his own ears as he forced his
eyes away from the book. His pale face was taut. This was what
Cogline had meant for him to find-why, he didn’t know-but
this was it. Now that he had found it, he wondered if he might
not be better off closing the book at once.
But that was the fear whispering in his ear again, he knew.
He lowered his eyes once more and began to read. The spell
was there, the invocation of magic that Allanon had used three
hundred years ago to close away Paranor from the world of men.
He found to his surprise that he understood it. His training with
Cogline was more complete than he would have imagined. He
finished the narrative of the spell and turned the page.
There was a single paragraph. It read-
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 o
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.
That was all it said. Walker read on, found that the subject
matter abruptly changed and skipped back. He read the para-
graph again, slowly, searching for anything he might have
missed. There was no question in his mind that this was what
Cogline had meant for him to find. A Black Elfstone. A magic
that could retrieve lost Paranor. The means to the end of the
charge that the shade of Allanon had given him.
Bring back Paranor and restore the Druids. He could hear
again the words of the charge in his mind.
Of course, there were no longer any Druids. But maybe Al-
lanon intended that Cogline should take up the cause, once
Paranor was restored. It seemed logical despite the old man’s
protestations that his time was past-but Walker was astute
enough to recognize that where Druids and their magics were
concerned logic often traveled a tortuous path.
He was two-thirds of the way through the history. He spent
another hour finishing it, found nothing further that he believed
was intended for him, and turned back again to the paragraph
on the Black Elfstone. Dawn was creeping out of the east, a