He hugged himself against the chills that swept through him, looking out across the hazy expanse of the lake, remembering. How many days had he run? How much time had been lost?
Follow me!
He had stolen the metal disk then, the one that Par wore hung about his neck—had stolen it without knowing why, but only from seeing him hold and caress it in the twilight shadows and sensing its importance, thinking to hurt Par by taking it, but thinking, too, that stealing the disk would make his brother follow after him.
As it had.
To the ruined land below Southwatch.
Why had he run there? The reason eluded him, an evasive whisper in his subconscious. His brow furrowed deeply as he struggled to understand. He had been driven by the Mirrorshroud’s magic, compelled to return...
His eyes widened. To bring Par, because...
And Par had caught up with him there beneath that ancient, blasted oak, found him exhausted and beaten and ruined. They had fought one final time, grappling for the Sword of Shannara, trying to break through the barriers that separated them, each in his own way—Par struggling to summon the Sword’s magic so that Coll could be free, Coll battling in turn to... to...
What!
To tell Par. To tell him.
“Par,” he whispered in horror, and his memory of what the Sword’s truth had revealed to him burned through him like white fire. He looked down at the mud-streaked blade, at the carving beneath his fingers—the hand that held aloft a burning torch. He stared at it in recognition and wonder, and his fingers moved along the emblem as if finding secrets still.
All those months spent searching for the Sword of Shannara, he thought, and they had never realized. So much effort expended to recover it, a struggle marked by desperate battles and lost lives, and they had never once suspected. Allanon’s charge had swept them on, heedless. It had driven Par, and Coll had been swift to follow. Find the Sword of Shannara, the Druid shade had instructed. Only then can the Four Lands be made whole. Find the Sword, he had whispered in the whirlwind of cries that echoed from the Hadeshorn.
And Par Ohmsford had done so—without once suspecting that it was never to be his to use.
Coll Ohmsford’s heart was racing, and he took slow, deep breaths to steady himself against the pounding of his blood. He experienced an almost overpowering urge to despair because of what the deception might have cost them, but he would not let himself be drawn to that precipice. With both hands wrapped about the talisman, he moved back from the Rainbow Lake to where a stand of maple trees spread dappled shadows across a grassy knoll. Dazed and weakened, he sat where the sun’s light could find him through the branches and tried to sort through the images he had unlocked from his memory.
Par had tracked him to that plain west of Southwatch and they had done battle a final time, brother against brother. Par had come for him because the Mirrorshroud was a Shadowen magic from which Coll could not free himself. Par had sought to use the Sword of Shannara to give Coll what he needed to break his shackles—recognition of who and what he had become, understanding of how he had been subverted. Truth, the special province of the Sword, would help him to escape. Par had been certain that it really was the Sword of Shannara he possessed because the magic had revealed itself when Coll had come at him above Tyrsis. Triggered in the heat of their struggle, it had spiraled down through them both, letting Par know that Coll was alive and giving Coll a terrifying glimpse of what he had become. Let the magic of the Sword come into his brother, Par had believed, and Coll would be set free.
There were tears in his eyes as he remembered the intensity in Par’s face as they stood locked in battle in the fury of that storm. Again he saw his brother’s lips move, whispering to him. Coll. Listen to me, Coll. Listen to the truth.
And the truth had come, blazing out of the Sword of Shannara in a cleansing, white heat, winding down into Coll and shattering the Shadowen magic so that he could tear off the Mirrorshroud and cast it away forever. The truth had come, and Coll had indeed been set free.
But the truth had never been Par’s truth—and never Par’s to give. It had been Colls—and his alone to take.
East, the sun was breaking through the diminishing storm clouds, the grayness of dawn giving way to golden daylight. Coll stared at it and felt as if all the sadness he had ever known had been compressed into this single moment in time.
Par hadn’t summoned the magic of the Sword of Shannara. Coll had. Not once, but both times, and each time without realizing what he was doing or that it was his to command. Coll, not Par, was the Ohmsford for whom the Sword was meant. But the truth here, as in so many things, was as elusive as smoke and took time to understand. Allanon had given Coll no charge when they had gathered at the Hadeshorn—yet the power to summon the Sword of Shannara’s magic was his. It was reasonable that it should be, when you thought about it. He was Par’s brother, and like Par an heir to the Elven magic. They shared the same Elven blood and birthright. But it was to Par that the charge had been given, and it was on Par that everything had subsequently focused. Par had been sent to recover the Sword, armored in his own magic and in his unyielding resolve, certain of his purpose even when the others in the little company had doubted. Par had been sent, and Allanon must have known he would not fail. But why had they not been told that the Sword was meant for Coll? Why had nothing been asked of him?
His hands clasped and knotted before him. He remembered how it had felt when he had brought the Sword’s magic to life, an inexplicably cool white fire. Even trapped as he was in the thrall of the Mirrorshroud he had felt it come, a flood washing through him, sweeping everything before it. Truths broke down the barriers of the Shadowen magic, small ones first, remembrances of childhood and youth, then larger ones, harsher and more insistent, blows that stiffened his resolve, that toughened him little by little against what was to follow. The truths were painful, but they were healing as well, and when the last of them was brought before him—the truth of who and what he had become—he was able to accept it and to put an end to the charade being played on him.
He had told the story of the Sword of Shannara a thousand times—how the talisman had come to life in the hands of Shea Ohmsford five hundred years earlier, how it had revealed the Valeman to himself and then unmasked the Warlock Lord. He had told the story so often that he could recite it in his sleep.
But even that had not prepared him for. what he felt now in the aftermath of the magic’s use. Exposure to the truth had drained him of illusions and conceits that had sheltered him for his entire life. He had been stripped of the protective barriers he had erected for himself against the harshest of his mistakes and failings. He had been left naked and exposed. He had been left feeling foolish and ashamed.
And terrified for Par.
For the Sword of Shannara in freeing him had revealed truths about Par as well. One of them was that Par could not use the Sword. Another was that he did not realize this. A third was that the wishsong was the cause of his brother’s problems.
Secrets revealed—he had seen them all. But Par had not. For reasons still unknown, the wishsong would not let Par summon the Sword’s magic, would not let him bring the magic into himself, and would not let him see any truths about himself. The wishsong was a wall that kept the Sword’s magic out, hiding what it would reveal, keeping his brother a prisoner. Coll didn’t know why that was—only that it was so. The wishsong was doing something to Par, and Coll was not certain what it was. He had felt its resistance to the power of the Sword when he had struggled with his brother for possession of the blade. He had felt it force the magic away, keeping it inside Coll, making certain that the truths revealed were his and not his brother’s.