and come into the outside world. This was his home now, the
cottage at Hearthstone reduced to ashes, the life he had known
gone into another time. He had traveled a road that had altered
his existence as surely as dying. He had taken up Allanon’s
charge and followed it through to its conclusion. He had recov-
ered the Black Elfstone and brought back Paranor. He had be-
come the first of the new Druids. He was someone entirely
different than the person he had been only weeks ago. That
change had given him new insight, strength, knowledge, and
power. But it had also exposed him to new responsibilities, ex-
pectations, challenges, and enemies. It remained to be decided
if the former would be sufficient to overcome the latter. For
the moment at least, the matter was unresolved. Walker Boh
might fall and be lost forever—or he might find a way to
climb back to safety. He was a man hanging from a precipice.
The Shadowen knew this. They had come for him as soon
as they had discovered that Paranor was returned. Walker was
still a child in his role as Druid, and now was the time when
he would be most vulnerable. Besiege him, frustrate him, dis-
tract his development, kill him if possible, but cripple him at
all costs—that was the plan.
And the plan was working. Walker had come back into
Paranor, after his first aborted attempt at escape, aware of sev-
eral very unpleasant truths. First, he did not possess sufficient
power to break free in a head-to-head confrontation. The Four
Horsemen were his equal and more, their magic a match for
his own. Second, he could not slip past them undetected.
Third, and worst of all, their experience was superior to his
own—and they did not fear him. They had come looking for
him. They had done so openly, without subterfuge. They had
challenged him, daring him to come out and fight them. They
circled Paranor in open disdain of what he might do. He was
a prisoner in his own castle, reduced to trying to come up with
a plan that would let him be free, and the Four Horsemen were
betting he couldn’t do it. It was possible, he was forced to ad-
mit, that they were right.
“You are working too hard at this,” Cogline advised him fi-
The Talismans of Shannara 149
nally, finding him back on the walls, staring down at the
wraiths circling below. He looked gaunt and pale, ragged and
worn. “Look at you. Walker. You barely sleep. You take no no-
tice of your appearance—you have not bathed since your re-
turn. You do not eat.”
A frail hand rubbed at the whiskers of the old man’s chin.
“Think, Walker. This is what they want. They are afraid of
you! If they weren’t, they would simply force the gates and
finish this business. But that won’t be necessary if you can be
made to doubt yourself, to panic, to forgo the caution and re-
solve that got you this far. If that happens, they will have won.
Sooner or later, they think, you will do something foolish, and
then they will have you.”
It was the most that Cogline had said to him since his re-
turn. Walker stared at him, at the ancient, weather-beaten face,
at the stick-thin body, at the arms and legs jutting from his
robes like poles. Cogline had welcomed him back with reassur-
ances, but mostly he had seemed removed and distant—just as
he had for those few days before Walker had first tried to go
out. Something was happening with Cogline, some secret con-
flict, but Walker had been too preoccupied with his own prob-
lems then, as he was now, to take time to decipher what it was.
Nevertheless, he let the old man lead him down from the
parapets to the inner shell of the castle and a hot meal. He ate
without enthusiasm, drank a little ale, and decided that a bath
was a good idea after all. He sat in the steaming water, letting
it cleanse him inside and out, feeling the heat soothe and relax
his body and mind. Rumor kept him company, curled up