We can’t bring him back, Walker was thinking in despair. He won’t respond to any of us. Already he could sense the pursuit beginning again, could feel the Shadowen drawing near down the connecting halls. Once Rimmer Dall reached them...
And then suddenly Damson Rhee was moving forward, brushing past Walker before he could think to object, mounting the stairs and closing on Par. Par saw her coming and squared himself away to face her, the magic flaring wickedly at his fingertips. Damson approached without weapons or magic to aid her, arms lowered, hands spread open, head lifted. Walker thought momentarily to rush forward and yank her back again, but it was already too late.
“Par,” she whispered as she came up to him, stopping when she was no more than a yard away. She was on a lower step and looking up, her red hair twisted back from her face, her eyes filling with tears. “I thought I would never see you again.”
Par Ohmsford stared.
“I am frightened I will lose you again, Par. To the magic. To your fear that it will betray you as it did when you believed Coll killed. Don’t leave me, Par.”
A hint of recognition showing in the maddened eyes.
“Come close to me, Par.”
“Damson?” he whispered suddenly.
“Yes,” she answered, smiling, the tears streaking her face now. “I love you, Par Ohmsford.”
For a long moment he did not move, standing on the stairs in the gloom as if carved from stone while the magic raced down his limbs and about his body. Then he sobbed in response, something coming awake within him that had been sleeping before, and he squeezed his eyes shut in concentration. His body shook, convulsed, and the magic flared once and died away. His eyes opened again. “Damson,” he whispered, seeing her now, seeing them all, and swayed forward.
She caught him as he fell, and instantly Walker was there, too, and then all of them, reaching for the Valeman and bringing him down into the hall, holding him upright, searching his ravaged face.
“I can’t breathe anymore,” he whispered to them. “I can’t breathe.”
Damson was holding him close, whispering back that it was all right, that he was safe now, that they would get him away. But Walker saw the truth in Par Ohmsford’s eyes. He was waging a battle with the wishsong’s magic that he was losing. Whatever was happening to him, he needed to confront it now, to be set free of the fears and doubts that had plagued him for weeks.
“Coll,” he said quietly as they lowered Par to his knees and let him collapse against Damson. “Use the Sword of Shannara. Don’t wait any longer. Use it.”
Coll stared back at the Dark Uncle uncertainly. “But I’m not sure what it will do.”
Walker Boh’s voice turned as hard as iron. “Use the Sword, Coll. Use it, or we’re going to lose him!”
Coll turned away quickly and knelt next to Par and Damson. He held the Sword of Shannara before him, both hands knotting on its handle. It was his talisman to use, but the consequences of that use his to bear.
“Morgan, watch the stairs,” Walker Boh ordered. “Matty Roh, the halls.” He moved toward Par. “Damson, let him go.”
Damson Rhee stared upward with stricken eyes. There was unexpected warmth in Walker’s gaze, a mix of reassurance and kindness. “Let him go, Damson,” he said gently. “Move away.”
She released Par, and the Valeman slumped forward. Coll caught him, cradled him in his arms momentarily, then took his brother’s hands and placed them on the handle of the Sword beneath his own. “Walker,” he whispered beseechingly. “Use it!” the Dark Uncle hissed.
Morgan glanced over uneasily. “I don’t like this, Walker...”
But he was too late. Coll, persuaded by the strength of Walker Boh’s command, had summoned forth the magic. The Sword of Shannara flared to life, and the dark well of the Shadowen keep was flooded with light.
Wrapped in a choking cloud of paralyzing indecision and devastating fear, Par Ohmsford felt the Sword’s magic penetrate like fire out of darkness, burning its way down into him. The magic of the wishsong rose to meet it, to block it, a white wall of determined silence. Protective doors flew closed within, locks turned, and the shivering of his soul rocked him back on his heels. He was aware, vaguely, that Coll had summoned the Sword’s magic, that the power to do so was somehow his where it had not been Par’s, and there was a sense of things being turned upside down. He retreated from the magic’s approach, unable to bear the truth it might bring, wanting only to hide away forever within himself.
But the magic of the Sword of Shannara came this time with the weight of his brother’s voice behind it, pressing down within him. Listen, Par. Listen. Please, listen. The words eased their way past the wishsong’s defenses and gave entry to what followed. He thought it was Colls words alone at first that breached his defenses, that let in the white light. But then he saw it was something more. It was his own weary need to know once and for all the worst of what there was, to be free of the doubt and terror that not knowing brought. He had lived with it too long to live with it longer. His magic had shielded him from everything, but it could not do so when he no longer wished it. He was backed to the wall of his sanity, and he could not back away farther.
He reached for his brother’s voice with his own, anxious and compelling. Tell me. Tell me everything.
The wishsong spit and hissed like a cornered cat, but it was, after all, his to command still, his birthright and his heritage, and nothing it might do could withstand both reason and need. He had bent to its will when his fear and doubt had undermined him, but he had never broken completely, and now he would be free of his uncertainty forever.
Coll, he pleaded. His brother was there, steadying him. Coll.
Holding on to each other and to the Sword, they locked their fingers tight and slipped down into the magic’s light. There Coll soothed Par, reassuring him that the magic would heal and not harm, that whatever happened, he would not abandon his brother. The last of Par’s defenses gave way, the locks releasing, the doors opening, and the darkness dispelling. Shedding the last of the wishsong’s trappings, he gave himself over with a sigh.
And then the truth began, a trickle of memories that grew quickly to a flood. All that was and had ever been in Par’s life, the secrets he had kept hidden even from himself, the shames and embarrassments, the failures and losses he had locked away, marched forth. They came parading into the light, and while Par shrank from them at first, the pain harsh and unending, his strength grew with each remembering, and the task of accepting what they meant and how they measured him as a man became bearable.
The light shifted then, and he saw himself now, come in search of the Sword of Shannara at Allanon’s urging, anxious for the charge, eager to discover the truth about himself. But how eager, in fact? For what he found was that he might be the very thing he had committed against. What he found was Rimmer Dall waiting, telling him he was not who he thought, that he was someone else entirely, one of the dark things, one of the Shadowen. Only a word, Rimmer Dall had whispered, only a name. A Shadowen, with Shadowen magic to wield, with power no different than that of the red-eyed wraiths, able to be what they were, to do as they did.
What he saw now, in the cool white light of the Sword’s truth, was that it was all true.
One of them.
He was one of them.
He lurched away from the recognition, from the inescapability of what he was being shown, and he thought he might have screamed in horror but could not tell within the light. A Shadowen! He was a Shadowen! He felt Coll flinch from him. He felt his brother jerk away. But Coll did not let go. He kept holding him. It doesn’t matter what you are, you are my brother, he heard. No matter what. You are my brother. It kept Par from falling off the edge of sanity into madness. It kept him grounded in the face of his own terror, of his frightening discovery of self.