Cogline had come to him during the second year of his solitary life at Hearthstone. Risse had been dead fifteen years, Kenner five. He had been on his own ever since despite the efforts of Jaralan and Mirianna Ohmsford to make him a part of their family, an outcast from everyone because his magic would not let him be otherwise. While it had disappeared with the coming of age of all the Ohmsfords since Brin, it did not do so in him. Rather, it grew stronger, more insistent, more uncontrollable. It was bad enough when he lived in Shady Vale; it became intolerable at Hearthstone. It began to manifest itself in new ways—unwanted perceptions, strange foresights, harsh sensory recognition, and frightening exhibitions of raw power that threatened to shatter him. He could not seem to master them. He didn’t understand them to begin with and therefore could not find a way to decipher their workings. It was best that he was alone; no one would have been safe around him. He found his sanity slipping away.
Cogline changed everything. He came out of the trees one afternoon, materializing from the mist that spilled down off the Wolfsktaag at autumn’s close, a little old man with robes that hung precariously on his stick frame, wild unkempt hair, and sharp knowing eyes. Rumor was with him, a massive, immutable black presence that seemed to foreshadow the change that was to come into the Dark Uncle’s life. Cogline related to Walker the history of his life from the days of Bremen and the Druid Council to the present, a thousand years of time. It was a straightforward telling that did not beg for acceptance but demanded it. Strangely enough, Walker complied. He sensed that this wild and improbable tale was the truth. He knew the stories of Cogline from the time of Brin Ohmsford, and this old man was exactly who and what the stories had described.
“I was sleeping the Druid sleep,” Cogline explained at one point, “or I would have come sooner. I had not thought it was time yet, but the magic that resides within you, brought to life with your arrival at manhood, tells me that it is. Allanon planned it so when he gave the blood trust to Brin; there would come a time when the magic would be needed again and one among the Ohmsfords would be required to wield it. I think that perhaps you are meant to be that one, Walker. If so, you will need my help in understanding how the magic works.”
Walker was filled with misgivings, but recognized that the old man might be able to show him how to bring the magic under control. He needed that control desperately. He was willing to take a chance that Cogline could give it to him.
Cogline stayed with him for the better part of three years. He revealed to Walker as a teacher to a student the lore of the Druids, the keys that would unlock the doors of understanding. He taught the ways of Bremen and Allanon, of going within to harness the magic’s raw power, of working mind sets so that the power could be channeled and not loosed haphazardly. Walker had some knowledge to begin with; he had lived with the magic for many years and learned something of the self-denial and restraint that was necessary to survive its demands. Cogline expanded on that knowledge, advancing it into areas that Walker had not thought to go, instructing on methods he had not believed possible. Slowly, gradually, Walker began to find that the magic no longer governed his life; unpredictability gave way to self-control. Walker began to master himself.
Cogline instructed on the sciences of the old world as well, the chemicals and potions that he had developed and utilized over the years, the powders that burned through metal and exploded like fire, and the solutions that changed the form of both liquids and solids. Another set of doors opened for Walker; he discovered an entirely different form of power. His curiosity was such that he began to explore a combining of the two—old world and new world, a blending of magic and science that no one had ever successfully tried. He proceeded slowly, cautiously, determined that he would not become another of the victims that the power had claimed over the years, from the men of the old world who had brought about the Great Wars to the rebel Druid Brona, his Skull Bearers, and the Mord Wraiths who had sparked the Wars of the Races.
Then for some reason his thinking changed. Perhaps it was the exhilaration he felt when wielding the magic. Perhaps it was the insatiable need to know more. Whatever it was, he came to believe that complete mastery over the magic was not possible, that no matter how diligently he went about protecting himself against its adverse effects, the power would eventually claim him. His attitude toward using it reversed itself overnight. He tried to back away from it, to thrust it from him. His dilemma was enormous; he sought to distance himself from the magic yet could not do so successfully because it was an integral part of him. Cogline saw what was happening and tried to reason with him. Walker refused to listen, wondering all of a sudden why it was that Cogline had come to him in the first place, no longer believing it was simply to help. An effort was being made to manipulate him, a Druidic conspiracy that could be traced all the way back to the time of Shea Ohmsford. He would not be a part of it. He quarreled with Cogline, then fought. In the end, Cogline went away.
He came back, of course, over the years. But Walker would no longer accept instruction on use of the magic, fearing that further knowledge would result in an erosion of the control he had worked so hard to gain, that enhancement would lead to usurpation. Better simply to rely on what understanding he had, limited but manageable, and keep apart from the Races as he had planned from the first. Cogline could come and go, they could maintain their uneasy alliance, but he would not give himself over to the ways of Druids or once-Druids or anyone else. He would be his own person until the end.
And now that end had come, and he was no longer so sure of the path he had chosen to take. Death had arrived to claim him, and had he not distanced himself so from the magic he might have delayed its arrival a bit longer. Admission of the possibility required swallowing a bitter dose of pride. It was harsh to second-guess himself so, but it could not be avoided. Walker Boh had never in his life shied away from the truth; he refused to begin doing so now.
On the second week of his return from Storlock, sitting before the fire in the early evening hours, the pain of his sickness a constant reminder of things left undone, he said to Cogline, who was somewhere in the shadows behind rummaging through the books he kept at the cottage for his own use, “Come sit with me, old man.”
He said it kindly, wearily, and Cogline came without argument, seating himself at Walker’s elbow. Together they stared into the fire’s bright glow.
“I am dying,” Walker said after a time. “I have tried everything to dispel the poison, and nothing has worked. Even my magic has failed. And your science. We have to accept what that means. I intend to keep working to prevent it, but it seems that I will not survive.” He shifted his arm uncomfortably against his side, a stone weight that worked relentlessly to pull him down, to make an end of him. “There are things I need to say to you before I die.”
Cogline turned toward him and started to speak, but Walker shook his head. “I have embittered myself against you without reasonable cause. I have been unkind to you when you have been more than kind to me. I am sorry for that.”
He looked at the old man. “I was afraid of what the magic would do to me if I continued to give myself over to it; I am still afraid. I have not changed my thinking completely. I still believe that the Druids use the Ohmsfords for their own purposes, that they tell us what they wish and direct us as they choose. It is a hard thing for me to accept, that I should be made their cat’s-paw. But I was wrong to judge you one of them. Your purpose has not been theirs. It has been your own.”