faultlessly.”
He shook his head. “Yet even had the Elves remained in the
world of men and the Federation been less a presence, the Shad-
owen might have come alive. The vacuum was there the mo-
ment the Druids passed away. There was no help for it.” He
sighed. “Allanon did not foresee as he should have. He did not
anticipate an aberration on the order of the Shadowen. He did
what he could to keep the Pour Lands safe while he was alive-
and he kept himself alive for as long as was possible.”
“Too little of each, it seems,” Walker said pointedly.
Cogline looked at him, and the anger in his voice was pal-
pable. “Well, Walker Boh. Perhaps one day you will have an
opportunity to demonstrate that you can do it better.”
There was a strained moment of silence as the two faced each
other in the blackness. Then Cogline looked away. “You need
to understand what the Shadowen are. The Shadowen are para-
sites. They live off mortal creatures. They are a magic that feeds
on living things. They enter them, absorb them, become them.
But for some reason the results are not always the same. Young
Par, think of the woodswoman that you and Coil encountered at
the time of our first meeting. She was a Shadowen of the more
obvious sort, a once-mortal creature infected, a ravaged thing
that could no more help herself than an animal made mad. But
the little girl on Toner Ridge, do you remember her?”
His fingers brushed Par’s cheek lightly. Instantly, the Vale-
man was filled with the memory of that monster to whom the
Spider Gnomes had given him. He could feel her stealing against
him, begging him, “hug me, hug me,” desperate to make him
embrace her. He flinched, shaken by the impact of the memory.
Cogline’s hand closed firmly about his arm. “That, too, was
a Shadowen, but one that could not be so easily detected. They
appear to varying extents as we do, hidden within human form.
Some become grotesque in appearance and behavior; those you
can readily identify. Others are more difficult to recognize.”
“But why are there some of one kind and some of the other?”
Par asked uncertainly.
Cogline’s brow furrowed. “Once again, Allanon does not
know. The Shadowen have kept their secret even from him.”
The old man looked away for a long moment, then back
again. His face was a mask of despair. “This is like a plague.
The sickness is spread until the number infected multiplies im-
possibly. Any of the Shadowen can transmit the disease. Their
magic gives them the means to overcome almost any defense.
The more of them there are, the stronger they become. What
would you do to stop a plague where the source was unknown,
the symptoms undetectable until after they had taken root,
and the cure a mystery?”
The members of the little company glanced at one another
uneasily in the silence that followed.
Finally, Wren said, “Do they have a purpose in what they do,
Cogline? A purpose beyond simply infecting living things? Do
they think as you and I or are they . . . mindless?”
Par stared at the girl in undisguised admiration. It was the
best question any of them had asked. He should have been the
one to ask it.
Cogline was rubbing his hands together slowly. “They think
as you and I, Rover girl, and they most certainly do have a
purpose in what they do. But that purpose remains unclear.”
“They would subvert us,” Morgan offered sharply. “Surely
that’s purpose enough.”
But Cogline shook his head. “They would do more still, I
think.”
And abruptly Par found -himself recalling the dreams that
Allanon had sent, the visions of a nightmarish world in which
everything was blackened and withered and life was reduced to
something barely recognizable. Reddened eyes blinked like bits
of fire, and shadow forms flitted through a haze of ash and
smoke.
This is what the Shadowen would do, he realized.
But how could they bring such a vision to pass?
He glanced without thinking at Wren and found his question
mirrored in her eyes. He recognized what she was thinking in-