Or what had once been Coil.
His brother’s face was barely recognizable, ravaged by some
inner torment that he could only begin to imagine, a twisting
that had distorted the familiar features and left them slack and
lifeless. His body was misshapen as well, all pulled out of joint
and hunched over, as if the bones had been rearranged. There
were marks on his skin, tears and lesions, and the eyes burned
with a fever he recognized immediately.
“They took me,” Coil whispered despairingly. “They made
me. Please, Par, I need you. Hug me? Please?”
Par cried out, howling as if he would never stop, willing the
thing before him to go away, to disappear from his sight and
mind. Chills shook him, and the emptiness that opened inside
threatened to collapse him completely.
“Coil!” he sobbed.
His brother stumbled and jerked toward him, arms out-
stretched. Rimmer Dall’s warning whispered in Par’s ear-the
truth, the truth, the horror of it! Coil was a Shadowen, had
somehow become one, a creature like the others in the Pit that
Rimmer Dall claimed the Federation had destroyed! How? Par
had been gone only minutes, it seemed. What had been done to
his brother?
He stood there, stunned and shaking, as the thing before him
caught hold of him with its fingers, then with its arms, enfolding
him, whispering all the time, “hug me, hug me,” as if it were
a litany that would set it free. Par wished he were dead, that he
had never been born, that he could somehow disappear from the
earth and leave all that was happening behind. He wished a
million impossible things-anything that could save him. The
Sword of Shannara dropped from his nerveless fingers, and he
felt as if everything he had known and believed in had in a single
instant been betrayed.
Coil’s hands began to rip at him.
“Coil, no!” he screamed.
Then something happened deep inside, something that he
struggled against for only an instant’s time before it overpow-
ered him. A burning surged within his chest and spread outward
through his body like a fire out of control. It was the magic-
not the magic of the wishsong, the magic of harmless images
and pretended things, but the other. It was the magic that had
belonged once to the Elfstones, the magic that Allanon had
given to Shea Ohmsford all those years ago, that had seeded
itself in Wil Ohmsford and passed through generations of his
family to him, changing, evolving, a constant mystery. It was
alive in him, a magic greater than the wishsong, hard and un-
yielding.
It rushed through him and exploded forth. He screamed to
Coil to let go of him, to get away, but his brother did not seem
to hear. Coil, a ruined creature, a caricature of the blood and
flesh human Par had loved, was consumed with his own inner
madness, the Shadowen that he had become needing only to
feed. The magic took him, enveloped him, and in an instant
turned him to ash.
Par watched in horror as his brother disintegrated before his
eyes. Stunned, speechless, he collapsed to his knees, feeling his
own life disappear with Coil’s.
Then other hands were reaching for him, grappling with him,
pulling him down. A whirl of twisted, ravaged faces and bodies
pressed into him. The Shadowen of the Pit had come for him as
well. There were scores of them, their hands grasping for him,
their fingers ripping and tearing as if to shred him. He felt him-
self coming apart, breaking beneath the weight of their bodies.
And then the magic returned, exploding forth once more, and
they were flung away like deadwood.
The magic took form this time, an unbidden thought brought
to life. It coalesced in his hands, a jagged shard of blue fire, the
flames as cool and hard as iron. He did not understand it yet,
did not comprehend its source or being-yet he understood in-
stinctively its purpose. Power radiated through him. Crying out
in fury he swung his newfound weapon in a deadly arc, cutting
through the creatures about him as if they were made of paper.
They collapsed instantly, their voices unintelligible and remote