He cut them short irritably. “Yes, yes! How many Coglines can there possibly be!” He frowned as he saw the looks on their faces. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
Par took a deep breath. “Cogline was an old man in the time of Brin Ohmsford. That was three hundred years ago.”
Unexpectedly, the other laughed. “An old man! Ha! And what do you know of old men, Par Ohmsford? Fact is, you don’t know a whisker’s worth!” He laughed, then shook his head helplessly. “Listen. Allanon was alive five hundred years before he died! You don’t question that, do you? I think not, since you tell the story so readily! Is it so astonishing then that I have been alive for a mere three hundred years?” He paused, and there was a surprisingly mischievous look in his eyes. “Goodness, what would you have said if I had told you I had been alive longer even than that?”
Then he waved his hand dismissively. “No, no, don’t bother to answer. Answer me this instead. What do you know about me? About the Cogline of your stories? Tell me.”
Par shook his head, confused. “That he was a hermit, living off in the Wilderun with his granddaughter, Kimber Boh. That my ancestor, Brin Ohmsford, and her companion, Rone Leah, found him there when they...”
“Yes, yes, but what about the man? Think now of what you’ve seen of me!”
Par shrugged. “That he...” He stopped. “That he used powders that exploded. That he knew something of the old sciences, that he’d studied them somewhere.” He was remembering the specifics of the tales of Cogline now, and in remembering found himself thinking that maybe this old man’s claim wasn’t so farfetched. “He employed different forms of power, the sorts that the Druids had discarded in their rebuilding of the old world. Shades! If you are Cogline, you must still have such power. Do you? Is it magic like my own?”
Coll looked suddenly worried. “Par!”
“Like your own?” the old man asked quickly. “Magic like the wishsong? Hah! Never! Never so unpredictable as that! That was always the trouble with the Druids and their Elven magics—too unpredictable! The power I wield is grounded in sciences proven and tested through the years by reliable study! It doesn’t act of its own accord; it doesn’t evolve like something alive!” He stopped, a fierce smile creasing his aged face. “But then, too, Par Ohmsford, my power doesn’t sing either!”
“Are you really Cogline?” Par asked softly, his amazement at it being possible apparent in his voice.
“Yes,” the old man whispered back. “Yes, Par.” He swung quickly then to face Coll, who was about to interrupt, placing a narrow, bony finger to his lips. “Shhhh, young Ohmsford, I know you still disbelieve, and your brother as well, but just listen for a moment. You are children of the Elven house of Shannara. There have not been many and always much has been expected of them. It will be so with you as well, I think. More so, perhaps. I am not permitted to see. I am just a messenger, as I have told you—a poor messenger at best. An unwilling messenger, truth is. But I am all that Allanon has.”
“But why you?” Par managed to interject, his lean face troubled now and intense.
The old man paused, his gnarled, wrinkled face tightening even further as if the question demanded too much of him. When he spoke finally, it was in a stillness that was palpable.
“Because I was a Druid once, so long ago I can scarcely remember what it felt like. I studied the ways of the magic and the ways of the discarded sciences and chose the latter, forsaking thereby any claim to the former and the right to continue with the others. Allanon knew me, or if you prefer, he knew about me, and he remembered what I was. But, wait. I embellish a bit by claiming I actually was a Druid. I wasn’t; I was simply a student of the ways. But Allanon remembered in any case. When he came to me, it was as one Druid to another, though he did not say as much. He lacks anyone but myself to do what is needed now, to come after you and the others, to advise them of the legitimacy of their dreams. All have had them by now, you understand—Wren and Walker Boh as well as you. All have been given a vision of the danger the future holds. No one responds. So he sends me.”
The sharp eyes blinked away the memory. “I was a Druid once, in spirit if not in practice, and I practice still many of the Druid ways. No one knew. Not my grandchild Kimber, not your ancestors, no one. I have lived many different lives, you see. When I went with Brin Ohmsford into the country of the Maelmord, it was as Cogline the hermit, half-crazed, half-able, filled with magic powers and strange notions. That was who I was then. That was the person I had become. It took me years afterward, long after Kimber was gone, to recover myself, to act and talk like myself again.”
He sighed. “It was the Druid Sleep that kept me alive for so long. I knew its secret; I had carried it with me when I left them. I thought many times not to bother, to give myself over to death and not cling so. But something kept me from giving way, and I think now that perhaps it was Allanon, reaching back from his death to assure that the Druids might have at least one spokesman after he was gone.”
He saw the beginning of the question in Par’s eyes, anticipated its wording, and quickly shook his head. “No, no, not me! I am not the spokesman he needs! I barely have time enough left me to carry the message I have been given. Allanon knows that. He knew better than to come to me to ask that I accept a life I once rejected. He must ask that of someone else.”
“Me?” asked Par at once.
The old man paused. “Perhaps. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
No one said anything, hunched forward toward the firelight as the darkness pressed close all about. The cries of night birds echoed faintly across the waters of the Rainbow Lake, a haunting sound that somehow seemed to measure the depth of the uncertainty Par felt.
“I want to ask him,” he said finally, “I need to, I think.”
The old man pursed his thin lips. “Then you must.”
Coll started to say something, then thought better of it. “This whole business needs some careful thought,” he said finally.
“There is little time for that,” the old man grumbled.
“Then we shouldn’t squander what we have,” Coll replied simply. He was no longer abrasive as he spoke, merely insistent.
Par looked at his brother a moment, then nodded. “Coll is right. I will have to think about this.”
The old man shrugged as if to indicate that he realized there was nothing more he could do and came to his feet. “I have given you the message I was sent to give, so I must be on my way. There are others to be visited.”
Par and Coll rose with him, surprised. “You’re leaving now, tonight?” Par asked quickly. Somehow he had expected the old man to stay on, to keep trying to persuade him of the purpose of the dreams.
“Seems best. The quicker I get on with my journey, the quicker it ends. I told you, I came first to you.”
“But how will you find Wren or Walker?” Coll wanted to know.
“Same way I found you.” The old man snapped his fingers and there was a brief flash of silver light. He grinned, his face skeletal in the firelight. “Magic!”
He reached out his bony hand. Par took it first and found the old man’s grip like iron. Coll found the same. They glanced at each other.
“Let me offer you some advice,” the old man said abruptly. “Not that you’ll necessarily take it, of course—but maybe. You tell these stories, these tales of Druids and magic and your ancestors, all of it a kind of litany of what’s been and gone. That’s fine, but you don’t want to lose sight of the fact that what’s happening here and now is what counts. All the telling in the world won’t mean a whisker if that vision I showed you comes to pass. You have to live in this world—not in some other. Magic serves a lot of purposes, but you don’t use it any way but one. You have to see what else it can do. And you can’t do that until you understand it. I suggest you don’t understand it at all, either one of you.”