“The Black Elfstone drew the mist into itself and thereby into me,” Walker whispered, the words a familiar repetition by now, as if saying them would make them better understood. His stark visage lowered into the cowl of his robe, a mask still changing. “It brought Allanon within. It brought all of the Druids within—their history and lore and magic, their knowledge, their secrets, all that they were. It spun them through me like threads on a loom that weaves a new cloth, and I could feel myself invaded and helpless to prevent it.”
The face within the cowl swung slightly toward the old man. “I have all of them inside me, Cogline. They have made a home within me, determined that I should have their knowledge and their power and that I should use it as they did. It was Allanon’s plan from the beginning—a descendant of Brin to carry forth the Druid lineage, one that would be chosen when the need arose, one who would serve and obey.”
Iron fingers fastened suddenly on Cogline’s shoulder and made him wince. “Obey, old man! That is what they intend of me, but not what they shall have!” Walker Boh’s words were edged with bitterness. “I can feel them working about inside, living things! I can sense their presence as they whisper their words and try to make me heed. But I am stronger than they are, made so by the very process that they used to change me. I survived the trial they set for me, and I will be what I choose, be they living within my body and mind, be they shades or memories of the past, be they what they will! If I must be this this thing they have made of me, I shall at least give it my voice and my heart!”
So they walked, Cogline as cold as death listening to the tormented Walker Boh, Walker as hot as the fires that had begun to burn anew within the furnaces below Paranor’s stone walls, his fury made over into the strength that sustained him against what was happening.
For the change continued even now as they walked the castle corridors, the old man and the becoming Druid, shadowed by the silent presence of Rumor the moor cat, as black-browed as his masters. The change swirled through Walker like smoke in the wind, stirred by the hands of the Druids gone, their spirits alive within the one who would permit the magic to live again. It came as knowledge revealed in bits and pieces and sometimes in sharp bursts, knowledge gained and preserved through the years, all that the Druids had discovered and shaped in their order, the whole of what had sustained them through the years of the Warlock Lord and the Skull Bearers, through the Demons within the Forbidding, through the Ildatch and the Mord Wraiths, through all the trials of dark evil set to challenge humankind. The magic revealed itself little by little, peeking forth from the jumble of hands and eyes and whispered words that roiled in Walker Boh’s mind and gave him no peace.
He did not sleep at all for three days. He tried, exhausted to the point of despair, but when he endeavored to let himself go, to slip away into the comfort of the rest he so desperately needed, some new facet of the change lurched alive and brought him upright as if he were a puppet on strings, making him aware of its need, of its presence, of its determination to be heard. Each time he would fight it, not to prevent it from being, for there was no sense in that, but to assure that it was not accepted without question, that the knowledge was perused and studied, that he recognized its face and was cautioned thereby against blind use. The Druids were not his maker, he reminded himself over and over again. The Druids had not given him his life and should not be allowed to dictate his destiny. He would do that. He would decide the nature of his life, power of magic or no, and in doing so would be accountable only to himself.
Cogline and Rumor stayed with him, as exhausted as he was, but frightened for him and determined that he would not be left alone to face what was happening. Cogline’s was the voice that Walker needed to hear now and again in response to his own, a caution and reassurance to blunt his lamentations of disgust. Rumor was the shaggy dark certainty that some things did not change, a presence as solid and dependable as the coming of day after night, the promise that there could be a waking from even the worst of nightmares. Together they sustained him in ways he could not begin to describe and that they in turn could not begin to understand. It was enough that they sensed that the bond was there.
Three days passed, then, before the change finally ran its course and the transformation was made complete. All at once the hands stopped molding, the eyes disappeared, and the whispers faded. Within Walker Boh, everything suddenly went still. He slept then and did not dream, and when he woke he knew that while he was changed in ways he was only beginning to discover, still he was in the deepest part of himself the same person he had always been. He had preserved the heart of the man who mistrusted the Druids and their magics, and while the Druids now lived within him and would have their voice in the way he conducted his life, nevertheless they would be ruled by beliefs that had preceded their coming and would survive their stay. Walker rose in the solitude of his sleeping chamber, alone in the darkness that the windowless room provided, at peace with himself for the first time he could remember, the long, terrible journey to fulfill the charge he had been given ended, the ordeal of the transformation set for him finished at last. Much had come undone and more than a little had been lost, but what mattered above all else was that he had survived.
He went out then to Cogline and found him sitting close-by with the moor cat curled at his feet, worry lines etched in his aging face, uncertainty reflected in his eyes. He came up to the old man and raised him to his feet as if he were a child—grown impossibly strong with the change, made over by the hands and eyes and voices until he was as ten men. He put his good arm about the frail old body and held his mentor gently.
“I am well again,” he whispered. “It is over and I am safe.” And the old man gripped him back and cried into his shoulder.
They talked then as they had of old, two men who had experienced more than their share of surprises in life, joined by the common bond of the Druid magic and by the fates that had brought them to this time and place. They spoke of Walker’s change, of the feelings it had generated, of the knowledge it had brought, and of the needs it might fulfill. They were whole again, flesh-and-blood men, and Paranor was returned. It was the beginning of a new era in the world of the Four Lands, and they were at the first moment in time that would determine how that era evolved. Walker Boh was uncertain even now how he was to wield the Druid magic—or even that he should. There was the Shadowen threat to consider, but the nature and extent of that threat remained a mystery. Walker had been given the Druid lore, but not an insight into what he was expected to do with it—especially as regarded the Shadowen.
“My transformation has left me with certain insights that weren’t there before,” Walker confided. “One is that the use of Druid magic will prove necessary if the Shadowen threat is to be ended. But whose insight is it—mine or Allanon’s? Can I trust it, I wonder? Is it a truth or a fiction?”
The old man shook his head. “I think you must discover that for yourself. I think Allanon wants it that way. Hasn’t it always been left to the Ohmsfords to discover the truth of things on their own? Gamesplaying, you once called it. But isn’t it really much more than that? Isn’t it the nature of life? Experience comes from doing, not from being told. Experiment and discover. Seek and find. It is not the machinations of the Druids that compel us to do so; it is our need to know. It is, in the end, the way we learn. I think it must be your way as well, Walker.”