ful not to brush against the walls, against anything of sub-
stance, for even in his spirit form he might be sensed. The
wards were powerful here, greater than had been those of Uhl
Betk at Eldwist, greater even than those of the Druids in the
Hall of Kings. The magic was powerful beyond belief, a great
crushing force that could destroy anything.
Anything, he corrected, but the bonds that secured it and
made it serve the Shadowen.
He followed a stairwell down, winding and twisting through
the black, hearing for the first time the sound of something
grinding and huffing, the sound of something at labor. It had
the feel of a dragon chained. It had the taste and smell of
sweat. It strained and lifted like a bellows at work within a
forge—and yet it was nothing so simple as that. It was from
here that the magic took its life, he sensed. It was from here
that it was given birth.
Then he reached wards that even a spirit could not pass un-
detected, and he was forced to turn aside. He was close to
what lay trapped within the cellars of Southwatch, close to the
source of the magic, to the secret the Shadowen kept so care-
fully hidden. But he could go no closer, and so the secret
would have to keep.
He turned back up the stairway, speeding quickly through
the gloom, a brief glimmer of thought and nothing more. He
passed more of the Shadowen wraiths as he went, and one or
two slowed before going on, but none discovered him. He
went now in search of Par, knowing the Valeman was a pris-
oner, anxious to discover where he was being kept and whether
he was still himself. For there was reason to believe he might
not be. There was reason to believe that he had been subverted
and was lost.
380 The Talismans of Shannara
Walker Boh’s heart was as stone as he considered the pos-
sibility. The signs were there that it was happening. It had be-
gun with the changing of Par’s magic, the evolution of the
wishsong into something more than what it had been when he
had begun his journey to the Hadeshom and Allanon. It had
continued with the breaking down of his confidence in its use,
the sense that somehow the magic was getting away from him.
It would terminate here, in the Shadowen keep, if Par em-
braced their cause, if he accepted that he was one of them.
As he was. Walker Boh thought darkly.
And yet wasn’t.
Games within games. He knew some of their rules, but not
yet all.
He ascended the stairwells of the keep in steady search of
the Valeman, seeking down the dark corridors and into the
darker rooms, swiftly and silently. He remembered how Par
had convinced him to come to the Hadeshom to speak with the
shade of Allanon. He remembered how Par had believed. The
magic is a gift. The dreams are real. Well, yes and no. It was
so. And not. Like so many things, the truth lay somewhere in
between.
Old memories triggered new, and he saw himself as Allanon
leading Cogline down the corridors of Paranor when the Dru-
id’s Keep was still locked in the mists between worlds, ban-
ished by the magic to the nether reaches. He felt Cogline’s mix
of fear and determination, and in those emotions found mir-
rored anew the conflict within himself. Cogline had understood
that conflict. He had tried to help Walker leam to balance the
weight of it. Human and Druid—the parts that formed him
would struggle with each other forever, the demands and needs
of each at constant war. It would never change. It was the bar-
gain he had struck with himself when he had agreed to accept
the blood trust. The last of the old Druids or the first of the
new—which was he? Both, he thought. And thought, too, that
maybe this was the way it had been for Allanon and Bremen
and Galaphile and all the others.
He rose high within the dark tower, and suddenly there was
the barest whisper of a familiar presence. It emanated from