Терри Брукс - The Talismans of Shannara

Walker’s face lifted. “The light was the magic the Shadowen stole from the earth. It was how they gained their power. Elven magic in the time of faerie borrowed from the elements, most particularly from the earth, for the earth was its greatest source. When the Elves recovered that lost magic after Allanon’s death, the Shadowen were the renegades among them who sought to use it in ways for which it was not intended. Like the Skull Bearers and the Mord Wraiths before them, the Shadowen came to rely on the magic so heavily that eventually it subverted them. They became addicted to it, reliant on it for their survival. Eventually it was their sole reason for being. They stole it in small doses at first, and when the need grew stronger, when they wanted power enough to control the destiny of the races and the Four Lands, they built Southwatch to drain the magic off in massive amounts. They found a way to leach it from the core of the earth and chain what they had stolen beneath the keep. Southwatch, and the magic they gathered within, became the source of their power everywhere. But as they used it to propagate, to create things like the Creepers, to strengthen themselves, they weakened the earth from which the magic had been taken. The Four Lands began to sicken because the magic was no longer strong enough to keep them healthy.”

“The dreams of Allanon,” Par said.

“They would have come to pass in time. There was nothing to prevent it unless the magic was set free again.”

“And when it was, it destroyed its jailers.”

Walker shook his head. “Not in the way you think. It did not deliberately destroy them. What happened was more basic. Once it was freed, it pulled back into itself the whole of what had been stolen. It took back the power that had been drained away. When it did, it left the Shadowen and their monsters bereft of the life that had sustained them. It left them as hollow as sea shells left to dry on the beach. The magic kept them alive. When it was taken away, they died.”

They were silent a moment, thinking it through. “Was Southwatch a living thing, too?” Coll asked.

Walker nodded. “Alive, but not in the sense that we are. It was an organism, a creature of the Shadowen that served to feed and protect them. It was the mother that nurtured them, a mother they had created out of the magic. They fed on what she gave to them.”

Matty Roh made a face and scuffed at the earth. “Their sickness come back into themselves,” she murmured.

“I don’t understand why there were so many different kinds of Shadowen,” Morgan said suddenly. “Those at Southwatch, like Rimmer Dall and his Seekers, seemed in control of themselves. But what about those poor creatures in the Pit? What about the woodswoman and the giant we encountered on our way to Culhaven?”

“The magic affected them differently,” Par answered, glancing over. “Some did better with it than others.”

“Some adapted,” Walker said. “But many could not, though they tried. And some of those in the Pit were men who had been drained of their small magics by the Shadowen, the weak subverted by the strong. Remember how the Shadowen kept trying to come into you and become part of you? Like the woodswoman and the child on Toffer Ridge?”

Like Rimmer Dall, Par thought to himself but did not say so.

“They needed to feed to survive, and they fed where and when the need arose. They used up the humans around them as well as the earth that sustained them. If the magic was strong, the lure to steal it was stronger still. When the Shadowen had drained the magic away, it drove mad the creatures it had been drained from. Or in some cases, it drove the Shadowen mad to feed on it. It was a very destructive subversion. The Shadowen never understood. The power they sought was forbidden to them. The power that gives life to the earth and its creatures is too dangerous to tamper with.”

Rumor padded in from out of the shadows, singed and bloodied in a dozen places, patches of fur torn off in a dozen more. He seemed not to notice. His muzzle was wet from having drunk from a spring found somewhere back within the trees. His luminous eyes surveyed them briefly, then he wandered over to Walker, sat down, and began to lick himself clean.

Par picked at a wildflower growing near his feet. “Rimmer Dall wanted to drain the magic of the wishsong from me, didn’t he?”

“He wanted more than the magic, Par.” Walker had shifted to a more comfortable position, and Rumor looked over to make certain he wasn’t leaving. “He wanted you as well. He wanted to become you. This is difficult to understand, but the Shadowen had discovered how to leave their bodies and survive as wraiths early on. The old magic let them do that; the earth magic gave them the power to be anything they wished. But they lacked identity that way, and they craved to be something more than smoke. So they used the bodies of humans, discarding them when they were ready to be someone or something new.”

He leaned forward slightly. “But Rimmer Dall was First Seeker, the strongest of the Shadowen, and he hungered to be more than the others. He settled on being you, Par, because you gave him youth and power unlike that possessed by any other human. The wishsong was evolving; he knew that. More than that, he recognized the direction that evolution was taking. Your Elven blood was bringing the magic back around to what Brin Ohmsford had inherited from her father, the magic born of the Elfstones. Remember how she had struggled to keep it from destroying her? Rimmer Dall understood the nature of this magic. It was Elven, but it had its Shadowen side, too. If he could gain control of it, he could turn it to his own use. But this was not something he could do unless you helped him. The magic was too strong, too protective, to let you be subverted forcibly. He needed to trick you into helping him. It was what destroyed him in the end, his obsession with claiming you. He gave himself over to it, spending his time on finding a way to satisfy it, telling you that you were already a Shadowen, suggesting you were the very enemy you sought, letting you think you killed Coll and then bringing Coll back to life, chasing you about, harrying you into believing that without his help you would go mad.

“His cause was strengthened by his discovery that Allanon had sent you in search of the Sword of Shannara. He knew of your magic from Varfleet, but now he saw a way to make you his ally against his most dangerous enemy. He needed to keep close to you to make certain you did not discover the truth, and your magic helped. It was Elven-spawned, and every time you relied on it you told him where you were. It was not enough to enable him to capture you, but it kept him close.”

“But he was wrong about the Sword of Shannara,” Par insisted. “He thought I was the only one who could use it, and it was really meant for Coll.”

Walker shook his head. “I don’t know that it was meant specifically for either of you. It seems that it was meant for both. But it was necessary that Coll use it first if you were to be saved from Rimmer Dall. You had to find a way to accept the fact that even though your fears about the magic were true, they were not determinative of your fate. Allanon was careful not to reveal anything about Coll’s role. He must have known that it had to be kept secret if Coll was to help you.”

“Perhaps he knew that the Shadowen would discover the charges,” Morgan offered. “So he held one back.”

“What about the charges?” Par asked suddenly. “What were they meant to accomplish? We know why retrieving the Sword of Shannara was important, but what about the others?”

Walker breathed deeply, looked away toward the plains for a moment thinking, then turned back again. His knowledge and his reasoning allowed him to divine more quickly than his companions the truths behind what had transpired, and so they were quick to look to him for an explanation. Foresight, comprehension, perception, and deduction—Druid skills bequeathed to him. Add to those the power of the magic and the responsibility to use it wisely. He was beginning to appreciate already the burden that Allanon had carried all those years.