and your magic helped. It was Elven-spawned, and every time
you relied on it you told him where you were. It was not
enough to enable him to capture you, but it kept him close.”
“But he was wrong about the Sword of Shannara,” Par in-
sisted. “He thought I was the only one who could use it, and
it was really meant for Coll.”
Walker shook his head. “I don’t know that it was meant spe-
cifically for either of you. It seems that it was meant for both
But it was necessary that Coil use it first if you were to be
saved from Rimmer Dall. You had to find a way to accept the
fact that even though your fears about the magic were true,
they were not determinative of your fate. Allanon was careful
not to reveal anything about Coil’s role. He must have known
that it had to be kept secret if Coil was to help you.”
“Perhaps he knew that the Shadowen would discover the
charges,” Morgan offered. “So he held one back.”
The Talismans of Shannara 435
“What about the charges? ” Par asked suddenly. “What were
they meant to accomplish? We know why retrieving the Sword
of Shannara was important, but what about the others9 ”
Walker breathed deeply, looked away toward the plains for
a moment thinking, then turned back again. His knowledge and
his reasoning allowed him to divine more quickly than his
companions the truths behind what had transpired, and so they
were quick to look to him for an explanation. Foresight, com-
prehension, perception, and deduction—Druid skills be-
queathed to him. Add to those the power of the magic and the
responsibility to use it wisely. He was beginning to appreciate
already the burden that Allanon had earned all those years.
“The charges were given to accomplish more than simply
the destruction of the Shadowen,” he said, choosing his words
carefully. “A combination of things was required if the Four
Lands was to survive. An understanding of who the Shadowen
were and what they were about was necessary first and fore-
most, and the quests to carry out Ailanon’s charges provided
that. More directly, there were the talismans that helped
destroy them—the Sword of Shannara, the Elfstones, the
wishsong, and Morgan’s blade. And peripherally there were the
magics that enabled us to recover those talismans.
“But the charges were given as well to sustain the Four
Lands once the Shadowen were gone, to help keep the
Shadowen or things like them from coming back. The Elves
were returned to provide a balance that has been missing. The
Elves are the healers of the land and her creatures, the caretak-
ers needed to keep the magic safe and secure. When they fled,
the Shadowen had no one to challenge their theft, no one who
even realized what was happening. The Elves will work to pre-
vent that from occuring again.
“And the Druids,” he said softly, “will contribute to that bal-
ance as well. It was something I did not understand before,
something I learned in becoming one of them. The Druids are
the land’s conscience. They do not simply manipulate and con-
trol. They seek out what troubles the land and her people, and
they help to put it right again. It might seem sometimes as if
they serve only their own purposes, but the misperception
comes from fear of the power they wield. It remains a judg-
ment for each of them, of course—for me, as well, I know—
436 The Talismans of Shannara
but the reason for their being comes from a need to serve.” He
paused. “I could not be one of them otherwise.”
“Once, you could not have been one of them in any case,”
Par observed quietly.
Walker nodded and the hardness in his eyes softened.
“Once, Par, was a long time ago for all of us.”
Cogline would have agreed with that, the Valeman thought
to himself. The old man would have recognized the truth in
those words right away. Cogline had seen the passing of so
many years, times gone out of memory and become legend,
the disappearance of the Druids and their return, the transition