now as if you were a baby! But mostly, I think, young Coil,
about this!”
He threw a dash of dark powder into the fire with a sudden-
ness that caused Par and Coil to jerk back sharply. The fire flared
as it had when the old man had first appeared, but this time the
light was drawn out of the air and everything went dark.
Then an image formed in the blackness, growing in size until
it seemed to be all around them. It was an image of the Four
Lands, the countryside barren and empty, stripped of life and
left ruined. Darkness and a haze of ash-filled smoke hung over
everything. Rivers were filled with debris, the waters poisoned.
Trees were bent and blasted, shorn of life. Nothing but scrub
grew anywhere. Men crept about like animals, and animals fled
at their coming. There were shadows with strange red eyes cir-
cling everywhere, dipping and playing within those humans who
crept, twisting and turning them until they lost their shape and
became unrecognizable.
It was a nightmare of such fury and terror that it seemed to
Par and Coil Ohmsford as if it were happening to them, and that
the screams emanating from the mouths of the tortured humans
were their own.
Then the image was gone, and they were back again about
the fire, the old man sitting there, watching them with hawk’s
eyes.
“That was a part of my dream,” Par whispered.
“That was the future,” the old man said.
“Or a trick,” a shaken Coil muttered, stiffening against his
own fear.
The old man glared. “The future is an ever-shifting maze of
possibilities until it becomes the present. The future I have shown
you tonight is not yet fixed. But it is more likely to become so
with the passing of every day because nothing is being done to
turn it aside. If you would change it, do as I have told you. Go
to Allanon! Listen to what he will say!”
Coil said nothing, his dark eyes uneasy with doubt.
“Tell us who you are,” Par said softly.
The old man turned to him, studied him for a moment, then
looked away from them both, staring out into the darkness as if
there were worlds and lives hidden there that only he could see.
Finally, he looked back again, nodding.
“Very well, though I can’t see what difference it makes. I
have a name, a name you should both recognize quickly enough.
My name is Cogline.”
For an instant, neither Par nor Coil said anything. Then both
began speaking at once.
“Cogline, the same Cogline who lived in the Eastland
with . . . ?”
“You mean the same man Kimber Boh . . . ?”
He cut them short irritably. “Yes, yes! How many Coglines
can there possibly be!” He frowned as he saw the looks on their
faces. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
Par took a deep breath. “Cogline was an old man in the time
of Brin Ohmsford. That was three hundred years ago.”
Unexpectedly, the other laughed. “An old man! Ha! And
what do you know of old men. Par Ohmsford? Fact is, you don’t
know a whisker’s worth!” He laughed, then shook his head
helplessly.’ ‘Listen. Allanon was alive five hundred years before
he died! You don’t question that, do you? I think not, since you
tell the story so readily! Is it so astonishing then that I have been
alive for a mere three hundred years?” He paused, and there
was a surprisingly mischievous look in his eye. “Goodness,
what would you have said if I had told you I had been alive
longer even than that?”
Then he waved his hand dismissively. “No, no, don’t bother
to answer. Answer me this instead. What do you know about
me? About the Cogline of your stories? Tell me.”
Par shook his head, confused. “That he was a hermit, living
off in the Wilderun with his granddaughter, Kimber Boh. That
my ancestor, Brin Ohmsford, and her companion. Rone Leah,
found him there when they …”
‘ ‘Yes, yes, but what about the man? Think now of what you’ve
seen of me!”