“As much as any purpose is mine and not one of circumstance and fate,” Cogline said, and his face was sad. “We use so many words to describe what happens to us, and it all amounts to the same thing. We live out our lives as we are meant to live them—with some choice, with some chance, but mostly as a result of the persons we are.” He shook his head. “Who is to say that I am any freer of the Druids and their manipulations than you, Walker? Allanon came to me in the same way as he did to you, young Par and Wren, and made me his. I cannot claim otherwise.”
Walker nodded. “Nevertheless, I have been harsh with you and I wish I had not been. I wanted you to be the enemy because you were a flesh-and-blood person, not a Druid dead and gone or an unseen magic, and I could strike out at you. I wanted you to be the source of the fear I felt. It made things easier for me if I thought of you that way.”
Cogline shrugged. “Do not apologize. The magic is a difficult burden for any to bear, but more so for you.” He paused. “I don’t believe you will ever be free of it.”
“Except in death,” Walker said.
“If death comes as swiftly as you think it will.” The old eyes blinked. “Would Allanon establish a trust that could be thwarted so easily? Would he risk a complete undoing of his work on the chance that you might die too soon?”
Walker hesitated. “Even Druids can be wrong in their judgments.”
“In this judgment?”
“Perhaps the timing was wrong. Another besides myself was meant to possess the magic beyond youth. I am the mistaken recipient. Cogline, what can possibly save me now? What is there left to try?”
The old man shook his head. “I do not know, Walker. But I sense that there is something.”
They were silent then. Rumor, stretched out comfortably before the fire, lifted his head to check on Walker, and then let it drop again. The wood in the fireplace snapped loudly, and a whiff of smoke tinged the air of the room.
“So you think the Druids are not finished with me yet?” Walker said finally. “You think they will not let me give up my life?”
Cogline did not reply at once. Then he said, “I think you will determine what is to become of you, Walker. I have always thought that. What you lack is the ability to recognize what you are meant to do. Or at least an acceptance of it.”
Walker felt a chill run through him. The old man’s words echoed Allanon’s. He knew what they meant. That he was to acknowledge that Brin Ohmsford’s trust was meant for him, that he was to don the magic’s armor and go forth into battle—like some invincible warrior brought forth out of time. That he was to destroy the Shadowen.
A dying man?
How?
The silence returned, and this time he did not break it.
Three days later Walker’s condition took a turn for the worse. The medicines of the Stors and the ministerings of Cogline suddenly gave way before the onslaught of the poison. Walker woke feverish and sick, barely able to rise. He ate breakfast, walked out onto the porch to enjoy the warmth of the sun, and collapsed.
He remembered only snatches of what happened for several days after that. Cogline put him back to bed and bathed him with cold cloths while the poison’s fever raged within him, an unquenchable fire. He drank liquids but could not eat. He dreamed constantly. An endless mirage of vile, frightening creatures paraded themselves before him, threatening him as he stood helpless, stripping him of his sanity. He fought back against them as best he could, but he lacked the necessary weapons. Whatever he brought to bear the monsters withstood. In the end, he simply gave himself over to them and drifted in black sleep.
From time to time he came awake and when he did so Cogline was always there. It was the old man’s reassuring presence that saved him once again, a lifeline to which he clung, pulling him back from the oblivion into which he might otherwise have been swept. The gnarled hands reached out to him, sometimes gripping as if to hold him fast, sometimes stroking as if he were a child in need of comfort. The familiar voice soothed him, speaking words without meaning but filled with warmth. He could feel the other beside him, always near, waiting for him to wake.
“You are not meant to die, Walker Boh,” he thought he heard more than once, though he could not be certain.
Sometimes he saw the old man’s face bending close, leathery skin wrinkled and seamed, wispy hair and beard gray and disheveled, eyes bright and filled with understanding. He could smell the other, a forest tree with ancient limbs and trunk, but leaves as fresh and new as spring. When the sickness threatened to overwhelm him, Cogline was there to lift him free. It was because of the old man that he did not give up, that he fought back against the effects of the poison and willed himself to recover.
On the fourth day he awoke at midday and took some soup. The poison had been arrested temporarily, the medicines and ministerings and Walker’s own will to survive taking command once more. Walker forced himself to explore the devastation of his shattered arm. The poison had progressed. His arm was turned to stone almost to the shoulder.
He wept that night in rage and frustration. Before he fell asleep he was aware of Cogline standing over him, a fragile presence against the vast, inexorable dark, telling him quietly that all would be well.
He awoke again in the slow, aimless hours between midnight and dawn when time seems to have lost its way. It was instinct that woke him, a sense that something was impossibly wrong. He struggled up on one elbow, weak and disoriented, unable to pinpoint the source of his trepidation. An odd, unidentifiable sound rose out of the night’s stillness, a buzz of activity from somewhere without that sleep and sickness rendered indistinct. His breathing was ragged as he pushed himself into a sitting position, shivering beneath his bedclothes against the chill of the air.
Light flared sharply, suddenly visible through the breaks in his curtained window.
He heard voices. No, he thought anxiously. Not voices. Guttural, inhuman sounds.
It took what strength he had to crawl from the bedside to the window, working his way slowly and painfully through fatigue and fever. He kept still, aware of a need for caution, sensing that he should not reveal himself. Without, the sounds had risen, and an overpowering smell of decay had descended over everything.
Groping, he found the windowsill before him and pulled himself level with its edge.
What he saw through the part in the curtains turned his stomach to ice.
Cogline awoke when Rumor nudged him with his face, a rough, urgent shove that brought the old man upright instantly. He had not gone to bed until well after midnight, buried in his books of old world science, fighting to discover some means by which Walker Boh’s life could be saved. Eventually he had fallen asleep in his chair before the fire, the book he was perusing still open in his lap, and it was there that Rumor found him.
“Confound it, cat,” he muttered.
His first thought was that something had happened to Walker. Then he heard the sounds, faint still, but growing louder. Growls and snarls and hisses. Animal sounds. And no effort being made to disguise their coming.
He pushed himself to his feet, taking a moment to wipe the sleep from his eyes. A single lamp burned at the dining table; the fire in the hearth had gone out. Cogline drew his robes close and shuffled toward the front door, uneasy, anxious to discover what was happening. Rumor went with him, moving ahead. The fur along the ridge of his back bristled, and his muzzle was drawn back to expose his teeth. Whatever was out there, the moor cat didn’t like it.
Cogline opened the door and stepped out onto the covered porch that fronted the cottage. The sky was clear and depthless. Moonlight flooded down through the trees, bathing the valley in white luminescence. The air was cool and bi ought Cogline fully awake. He stopped at the edge of the porch and stared. Dozens of pairs of tiny red lights blinked at him from out of the shadows of the forest, a vast scattering of delicate scarlet blossoms that shone in the black. They were everywhere, it seemed, ringing the cottage and its clearing.