powder anyway.
Cogline’s eyes opened, startlingly white against the black-
ened skin. “Walker? ” he breathed.
Walker nodded. “I’m here. It’s over, old man. They are
finished—all of them.”
A rattle of breath ended in a gasping for air. “I knew you
would need me.”
“You were right. I did.”
“No.” Cogline’s hand reached up and gripped his arm pos-
sessively. “I knew. Walker.” He coughed up blood, and his
voice strengthened. “I was told. By Allanon. At the
Hadeshom, when he warned me that my time was gone, that
my life was ending. Remember, Walker? I told you only part
of what I learned that day. The part about the Druid Histories.
There was more that I kept secret from you. You would have
need of me, I was told. I would be given a little time, here, in
Paranor, to be with you. I would stay alive long enough to be
of use once more.”
He coughed, doubling over with pain. “Do you under-
stand? ”
Walker nodded. He recalled how distant and withdrawn the
226 The Talismans of Shannara
old man had seemed within the Dmid’s Keep. Something had
changed, he had thought, but consumed by his struggle to es-
cape the Shadowen he had not taken time to discover what.
Now it was clear. Cogline had known his life was almost
over. Allanon had given him a reprieve from death, but not a
pass. The magic of the Druid Histories had saved him at
Hearthstone so that he could die at Paranor. It was a trade the
old man had been willing to make.
Walker glanced down at the ruined body. Where the scythe
had cut through him, there was frost woven in silver streaks
through the fabric of his robes.
“You should have told me,” he insisted quietly. There were
tears in his eyes. He did not know when they had come. Some
part of him remembered being able to cry once, a long time
ago. He did not understand why he was able to do so now, but
did not think after this that he would ever do so again.
Cogline shook his head, a slow and painful movement. “No.
A Druid doesn’t tell what he doesn’t have to.” He coughed
again. “You know that.”
Walker Boh couldn’t speak. He simply stared down at the
old man.
Cogline blinked. “You told me that I always knew when to
act and when not to.” He smiled. “You were right.”
He swallowed once more. Then his eyes fixed and he quit
breathing. Walker kept staring down at him, kneeling in the
dust and heat, listening to the silence as it stretched away un-
broken, thinking in bitter consolation that Allanon had used the
old man for the last time.
He closed Cogline’s sightless eyes.
It remained to be seen if the Druid had used him well.
XX
Walker Boh buried Cogline in the woods below
Paranor, laying him to rest in a glade cooled by a
stream that meandered through a series of shallow
rapids, a glade sheltered by oaks and hickories whose leafy
branches dappled a carpet of wildflowers and green grasses
with shadowy patterns that would shift and change each day
with the sun’s passage west. It was a setting that reminded
Walker of the hidden glens at Hearthstone where they had both
loved to walk. He chose a place near the center of the glade
where the spires of Paranor could be clearly seen Cogline,
who to the end had thought of himself as a Druid gone astray,
had come home for good.
When he was finished with the old man. Walker stayed in
the clearing. He was battered and worn, but the wounds that
were deepest were those he couldn’t see, and it gave him a
measure of comfort to stand amid the ancient trees and breathe
the forest air. Birds sang, a wind rustled the leaves and grasses,
the stream nppled, and the sounds were soothing and peaceful.
He didn’t want to go back into Paranor just yet. He didn’t want
to go up past the blackened, charred remains of the Four
Horsemen and their serpent mounts. What he wanted was to