cided. Walker could not begrudge that Cogline had chosen to
keep them secret. It was that way with everyone’s life. All
people kept parts of who and what they were and how they
had lived to themselves, things that belonged only to them,
things that no one else was meant to share. At death, those
things were dark holes in the memories of those who lived on,
but that was the way it must be.
He pictured the old man’s whiskered face. He listened for
the sound of his voice in the silence. Cogline had lived a long
time. He had lived any number of lives. He had lived longer
than he should have, spared at Hearthstone to come into
Paranor and see it brought back again, and he had died in the
way he chose, giving up his own life so that Walker could
keep his. It would be wrong for Walker to regret that gift, be-
cause in regretting it he was necessarily diminishing its worth.
Cogline had lived to see him transformed into the Druid the
old man had never become. He had lived to see him through
growing up to the dreams of Allanon and the fulfillment of
Brin Ohmsford’s trust. Whether it was for good or bad. Walker
had gotten safely through because of Cogline.
He felt some of the bitterness beginning to fade. The bitter-
ness was wrong. Regrets were wrong. They were chains that
230 The Talismans of Shannara
bound you tight and dragged you down. Nothing good could
come of them. What was needed was balance and perspective
if the future was to have meaning. Walker could remember—
and should. But memories were for shaping what would come,
for taking the possibilities that lay ahead and turning them to
the uses for which they were intended. He thought again of the
Druids and their machinations, of the ways they had shaped
the history of the Races. He had despised their efforts. Now he
was one of them. Cogline had lived and died so that he could
be so. The chance was his to do better what he had been so
quick to criticize in those who had gone before. He must make
the most of that chance. Cogline would expect him to do so.
The sun was slipping beneath the canopy of the forest west
when he rose and stood a final time before the ground in
which the old man lay. He was better reconciled to what had
happened than before, more at peace with the hard fact of it.
Cogline was gone. Walker remained. He would take strength
and courage and resolve from the old man’s example. He
would carry his memory in his heart.
With the light turning crimson and gold and purple in the
haze of summer heat, he made his way back through the dark-
ening forests to Paranor.
That night he dreamed of Allanon.
It was the first time he had done so since Hearthstone. His
sleep was deep and sound, and the dream did not wake him
though he thought afterward it might have come close once or
twice. He was exhausted from his struggle, and he had eaten
little. He had bathed, changed, then drank a cup of ale as he
sat within the study that Cogline had favored. Rumor lay
curled up at his feet, the luminous eyes glancing toward him
now and then as if to ask what had become of the old man.
When he had grown so tired he could barely hold himself up-
right, he had gone to his sleeping chamber, crawled beneath
the blankets, and let himself drift away.
The dream seemed to come instantly. It was night, and he
walked alone upon the shiny black rock that littered the floor
of the Valley of Shale. The sky was clear and filled with stars.
A full moon shone white as fresh linen against the jagged
ridge of the Dragon’s Teeth. The air smelled clean and new as
The Talismans of Shannara 231
it had of old, and a wind brushed his face with a cooling touch.
Walker was dressed in black, robe and cowl, belt and boots, a
Druid passing in the wake of Druids gone before. He did not