her so that she could sleep. While he worked, the others
washed and bound themselves as best they could.
Now, the sunlight stretching toward the hills west, they sat
looking back across the flats where Southwatch smoldered. Ev-
erywhere they looked, there were wildflowers, come into
bloom with the collapse of the Shadowen keep and the return
of the light to the earth. A profusion of color, the blossoms
blanketed the whole of the land for as far as the eye could see,
covering even those areas that had been sickened and ravaged.
Their smell drifting lightly on the morning air seemed to signal
a new beginning.
“Stolen magic,” Walker Boh amended.
What Par had been shown by the magic of the Sword of
Shannara, Walker had been able to intuit with his Druid in-
stincts. Walker’s dark eyes were ringed in ash and dirt and his
face was drawn, yet there was strength in his steady gaze.
They had finished sharing their separate stories and were now
considering me reasons behind everything that had happened to
them.
Walker’s face lifted. “The light was the magic the Shadowen
stole from the earth. It was how they gained their power. Elven
magic in the time of faerie borrowed from the elements, most
particularly from the earth, for the earth was its greatest
source. When the Elves recovered that lost magic after
Allanon’s death, the Shadowen were the renegades among
them who sought to use it in ways for which it was not in-
tended. Like the Skull Bearers and the Mord Wraiths before
them, the Shadowen came to rely on the magic so heavily that
eventually it subverted them. They became addicted to it, reli-
ant on it for their survival. Eventually it was their sole reason
for being. They stole it in small doses at first, and when the
need grew stronger, when they wanted power enough to con-
trol the destiny of the races and the Four Lands, they built
432 The Talismans of Shannara
Southwatch to drain the magic off in massive amounts. They
found a way to leach it from the core of the earth and chain
what they had stolen beneath the keep. Southwatch, and the
magic they gathered within, became the source of their power
everywhere. But as they used it to propagate, to create things
like the Creepers, to strengthen themselves, they weakened the
earth from which the magic had been taken. The Pour Lands
began to sicken because ihe magic was no longer strong
enough to keep them healthy.”
“The dreams of Allanon,” Par said.
‘They would have come to pass in time. There was nothing
to prevent it unless the magic was set free again.”
“And when it was, it destroyed its jailers.”
Walker shook his head. “Not in the way you think. It did not
deliberately destroy them. What happened was more basic.
Once it was freed, it pulled back into itself the whole of what
had been stolen. It took back the power that had been drained
away. When it did, it left the Shadowen and their monsters be-
reft of the life that had sustained them. It left them as hollow
as sea shells left to dry on the beach. The magic kept them
alive. When it was taken away, they died.”
They were silent a moment, thinking it through. “Was
Southwatch a living thing, too? ” Coil asked.
Walker nodded. “Alive, but not in the sense that we are. It
was an organism, a creature of the Shadowen that served to
feed and protect them. It was the mother that nurtured them, a
mother they had created out of the magic. They fed on what
she gave to them.”
Matty Roh made a face and scuffed at the earth. “Their sick-
ness come back into themselves,” she murmured.
“I don’t understand why there were so many different kinds
of Shadowen,” Morgan said suddenly. “Those at Southwatch,
like Rimmer Dall and his Seekers, seemed in control of them-
selves. But what about those poor creatures in the Pit? What
about the woodswoman and the giant we encountered on our
way to Culhaven? ”
‘The magic affected them differently,” Par answered, glan-