grow strong again, he promised himself. When he did, someone
would answer for what had been done to Coll.
XXXIV
The prisoner came awake, easing out of the drug-in-
duced sleep that had kept him paralyzed almost from
the moment he was taken. He lay on a sleeping mat
in a darkened room. The ropes that had bound his hands and
feet had been removed, and the cloths with which he had been
gagged and blindfolded were gone. He was free to move about.
He sat up slowly, fighting to overcome a sudden rush of diz-
ziness. His eyes adjusted to the dark, and he was able to make
out the shape and dimensions of his jail. The room was large,
more than twenty feet square. There was the mat, a wooden
bench, a small table, and two chairs pushed into it. There was
a window with metal shutters and a metal door. Both were
closed.
He reached out experimentally and touched the wall. It was
constructed of stone blocks and mortar. It would take a lot of
digging to get through.
The dizziness passed finally, and he rose to his feet. There
was a tray with bread and water on the table, and he sat down
and ate the bread and drank the water. There was no reason not
to; if they had wanted him dead, he would be so by now. He
retained faint impressions of the journey that had brought him
there-the sounds of the wagon in which he rode and the horses
that pulled it, the low voices of the men, the rough grasp of the
hands that held him when he was being fed and bedded, and the
ache that he felt whenever he was awake long enough to feel
anything.
He could still taste the bitterness of the drugs they had forced
down his throat, the mix of crushed herbs and medicines that
had burned through him and left him unconscious, drifting in a
world of dreams that lacked any semblance to reality.
He finished his meal and came back to his feet. Where had
they brought him, he wondered?
Taking his time, for he was still very weak, he made his way
over to the shuttered window. The shutters did not fit tightly,
and there were cracks in me fittings. Cautiously, he peered out.
He was a long way up. The summer sunlight brightened a
countryside of forests and grassy knqlls that stretched away to
the edge of a huge lake that shimmered like liquid silver. Birds
flew across the lake, soaring and diving, their calls ringing out
in me stillness. High overhead, the faint traces of a vast, brightly
colored rainbow canopied the lake from shoreline to shoreline.
The prisoner caught his breath in surprise. It was me Rainbow
Lake.
He shifted his gaze hurriedly to me outer walls of his prison.
He could just catch a glimpse of mem as the window well opened
up and dropped away.
They were formed of black granite.
This time his revelation stunned him. For a moment, he could
not believe it. He was inside Southwatch.
Inside.
But who were his jailors-the Federation, the Shadowen, or
someone else altogether? And why Southwatch? Why was he
here? Why was he even still alive for that matter?
His frustration overcame him for a moment, and he lowered
his head against the window ledge and closed his eyes. So many
questions once again. It seemed that the questions would never
end.
What had become of Par?
Coil Ohmsford straightened, and his eyes slipped open. He
pressed his face back against the shutters, peered into the distant
countryside, and wondered what fate his captors had planned
for him.
That night Cogline dreamed. He lay in the shelter of the forest
trees that ringed the barren heights on which ancient Paranor
had once stood, tossing beneath the thin covering of his robes,
beset by visions that chilled him more surely man any night
wind. When he came awake, it was with a start. He was shaking
with fear.
He had dreamed that the Shannara children were all dead.
For a moment he was convinced that it must be so. Then fear