For a moment he was convinced that it must be so. Then fear gave way to nervous irritation and that in turn to anger. He realized that what he had experienced was more probably a premonition of what might be than a vision of what was.
Steadying himself, he built a small fire, let it burn awhile to warm him, then took a pinch of silver powder from a pouch at his waist and dropped it into the flames. Smoke rose, filling the air before him with images that shimmered with iridescent light. He waited, letting them play themselves out, watching them closely until they had faded away.
Then he grunted in satisfaction, kicked out the fire, rolled himself back into his robes and lay down again. The images told him only a little, but a little was all he needed to know. He was reassured. The dream was only a dream. The Shannara children lived. There were dangers that threatened them, of course—just as there had been from the beginning. He had sensed them in the images, monstrous and frightening, dark wraiths of possibility.
But that was as it must be.
The old man closed his eyes and his breathing slowed. There was nothing to be done about it this night.
Everything, he repeated, was as it must be.
Then he slept.
Here ends Book One of The Heritage of Shannara. Book Two, The Druid of Shannara, will reveal more of Cogline, who calls himself a failed Druid, and of the troubles of the children of Shannara.