“Too little of each, it seems,” Walker said pointedly.
Cogline looked at him, and the anger in his voice was palpable. “Well, Walker Boh. Perhaps one day you will have an opportunity to demonstrate that you can do it better.”
There was a strained moment of silence as the two faced each other in the blackness. Then Cogline looked away. “You need to understand what the Shadowen are. The Shadowen are parasites. They live off mortal creatures. They are a magic that feeds on living things. They enter them, absorb them, become them. But for some reason the results are not always the same. Young Par, think of the woodswoman that you and Coll encountered at the time of our first meeting. She was a Shadowen of the more obvious sort, a once-mortal creature infected, a ravaged thing that could no more help herself than an animal made mad. But the little girl on Toffer Ridge, do you remember her?”
His fingers brushed Par’s cheek lightly. Instantly, the Valeman was filled with the memory of that monster to whom the Spider Gnomes had given him. He could feel her stealing against him, begging him, “hug me, hug me,” desperate to make him embrace her. He flinched, shaken by the impact of the memory.
Cogline’s hand closed firmly about his arm. “That, too, was a Shadowen, but one that could not be so easily detected. They appear to varying extents as we do, hidden within human form. Some become grotesque in appearance and behavior; those you can readily identify. Others are more difficult to recognize.”
“But why are there some of one kind and some of the other?” Par asked uncertainly.
Cogline’s brow furrowed. “Once again, Allanon does not know. The Shadowen have kept their secret even from him.”
The old man looked away for a long moment, then back again. His face was a mask of despair. “This is like a plague. The sickness is spread until the number infected multiplies impossibly. Any of the Shadowen can spread the disease. Their magic gives them the means to overcome almost any defense. The more of them there are, the stronger they become. What would you do to stop a plague where the source was unknown, the symptoms undetectable until after they had taken root, and the cure a mystery?”
The members of the little company glanced at one another uneasily in the silence that followed.
Finally, Wren said, “Do they have a purpose in what they do, Cogline? A purpose beyond simply infecting living things? Do they think as you and I or are they... mindless?”
Par stared at the girl in undisguised admiration. It was the best question any of them had asked. He should have been the one to ask it.
Cogline was rubbing his hands together slowly. “They think as you and I, Rover girl, and they most certainly do have a purpose in what they do. But that purpose remains unclear.”
“They would subvert us,” Morgan offered sharply. “Surely that’s purpose enough.”
But Cogline shook his head. “They Would do more still, I think.”
And abruptly Par found himself recalling the dreams that Allanon had sent, the visions of a nightmarish world in which everything was blackened and withered and life was reduced to something barely recognizable. Reddened eyes blinked like bits of fire, and shadow forms flitted through a haze of ash and smoke.
This is what the Shadowen would do, he realized.
But how could they bring such a vision to pass?
He glanced without thinking at Wren and found his question mirrored in her eyes. He recognized what she was thinking instinctively. He saw it reflected in Walker Boh’s eyes as well. They had shared the dreams and those dreams bound them, so much so that for an instant their thinking was the same.
Cogline’s face lifted slightly, pulling free of the darkness that shaded it. “Something guides the Shadowen,” he whispered. “There is power here that transcends anything we have ever known...”
He let the sentence trail off, ragged and unfinished, as if unable to give voice to any ending. His listeners looked at one another.
“What are we to do?” Wren asked finally.
The old man rose wearily. “Why, what we came here to do, Rover girl—listen to what Allanon would tell us.” He moved stiffly away, and no one called after him.
Chapter Fifteen
They moved apart from each other after that, drifting away one by one, finding patches of solitude in which to think their separate thoughts. Eyes wandered restlessly across the valley’s glistening carpet of black rock, always returning to the Hadeshorn, carefully searching the sluggishly churning waters for signs of some new movement.
There was none.
Perhaps nothing is going to happen, Par thought. Perhaps it was all a lie after all.
He felt his chest constrict with mixed feelings of disappointment and relief and he forced his thoughts elsewhere. Coll was less than a dozen paces away, but he refused to look at him. He wanted to be alone. There were things that needed thinking through, and Coll would only distract him.
Funny how much effort he had put into distancing himself from his brother since this journey had begun, he thought suddenly. Perhaps it was because he was afraid for him...
Once again, this time angrily, he forced his thoughts elsewhere. Cogline. Now there was an enigma of no small size. Who was this old man who seemed to know so much about everything? A failed Druid, he claimed. Allanon’s messenger, he said. But those brief descriptions didn’t seem nearly complete enough. Par was certain that there was more to him than what he claimed. There was a history of events behind his relationships with Allanon and Walker Boh that was hidden from the rest of them. Allanon would not have gone to a failed Druid for assistance, not even in the most desperate of circumstances. There was a reason for Cogline’s involvement with this gathering beyond what any of them knew.
He glanced warily at the old man who stood an uncomfortable number of feet closer than the rest of them to the waters of the Hadeshorn. He knew all about the Shadowen, somehow. He had spoken more than once with Allanon, somehow again. He was the only living human being to have done so since the Druid’s death three hundred years ago. Par thought a moment about the stories of Cogline in the time of Brin Ohmsford—a half-crazed old man then, wielding magic against the Mord Wraiths like some sort of broom against dust—that’s the picture the tales conjured up. Well, he wasn’t like that now. He was controlled. Cranky and eccentric, yes—but mostly controlled. He knew what he was about—enough so that he didn’t seem particularly pleased with any of it. He hadn’t said that, of course. But Par wasn’t blind.
There was a flash of light from somewhere far off in the night skies, a momentary brightness that winked away instantly and was gone. A life ended, a new life begun, his mother used to say. He sighed. He hadn’t thought of his parents much since the flight out of Varfleet. He felt a twinge of guilt. He wondered if they were all right. He wondered if he would see them again.
His jaw tightened with determination. Of course he would see them again! Things would work out. Allanon would have answers to give him—about the uses of the magic of the wishsong, the reasons for the dreams, what to do about the Shadowen and the Federation... all of it.
Allanon would know.
Time slipped away, minutes into hours, the night steadily working its way toward dawn. Par moved over to talk with Coll, needing now to be close to his brother. The others shifted, stretched, and moved about uneasily. Eyes grew heavy and senses dulled.
Far east, the first faint twinges of the coming dawn appeared against the dark line of the horizon.
He’s not coming, Par thought dismally.
And in answer the waters of the Hadeshorn heaved upward, and the valley shuddered as if something beneath it had come awake. Rock shifted and grated with the movement, and the members of the little company went into a protective crouch. The lake began to boil, the waters to thrash, and spray shot skyward with a sharp hiss. Voices cried out, inhuman and filled with longing. They rose out of the earth, straining against bonds that were invisible to the nine gathered in the valley, but which they could all too readily imagine. Walker’s arms flung wide against the sound, scattering bits of silver dust that flared in a protective curtain. The others cupped their ears protectively, but nothing could shut the sound away.