Терри Брукс - The Elf Queen of Shannara

Strangely enough, he thought he had found that way. But his discovery terrified him so that he was not certain he could act on it.

Cogline shifted, a rattle of dry bones. “Another reading of the books couldn’t hurt,” he pressed.

Walker’s smile was ironic. “Another reading and there won’t be anything left of you at all. Or Rumor or the Keep or possibly even me. Paranor is disappearing, old man. We can’t pretend otherwise. Besides, there is nothing left to read, nothing to discover that I don’t already know.”

“And you’re still certain that you’re right, Walker?”

Certain? Walker was certain of nothing beyond the fact that he was most definitely not certain. The Black Elfstone was a deadly puzzle. Guess wrong about its workings and you would end up like the Stone King, enveloped by your own magic, destroyed by what you trusted most. Uhl Belk had thought he had mastered the Stone’s magic, and it had cost him everything.

“I am guessing,” he replied. “Nothing more.”

He allowed his hand to open, and the Elfstone to come into the light. It lay there in the cup of his palm, smooth-faced, sharp-edged, opaque and impenetrable, power unto itself, power beyond anything he had ever encountered. He remembered how it had felt to use the Stone when he had brought back the Keep, thinking it would end then, that the retrieval out of limbo where Allanon had sent it was all that was required. He remembered the surge of power as it joined him to the Keep, the entwining of flesh and blood with stone and mortar, the reworking of his body so that he was as much ghost as man, changing him so that he could enter Paranor, so that he could discover the rest of what he must do.

A metamorphosis of being.

Within, he had encountered Cogline and Rumor and heard the tale of how they had survived the attack of the Shadowen by being caught up in the protective shield of the Druid Histories’ magic and spirited into Paranor. Though Walker had brought Paranor out of the limbo place into which Allanon had dispatched it, it would not be fully returned until he had found a way to complete his transformation, to become the Druid it was decreed he must be. Until then, Paranor was a prison that only he could leave—a prison rapidly drawing back into the space from which it had come.

“I am guessing,” he repeated, almost to himself.

He had read and reread the Druid Histories in an effort to discover what it was that he must do and found nothing. Nowhere did the Histories relate how one became a Druid. Despairing, he had thought the cause lost to him when he had remembered the Grimpond’s visions, two of which had come to pass, the third of which, he realized, would happen here.

He faced the old man. “I stand within a castle fortress empty of life and gray with disuse. I am stalked by a death I cannot escape. It hunts me relentlessly. I know I must run from it, yet cannot. I let it approach, and it reaches for me. A cold settles within, and I can feel my life ending. Behind me stands a dark shadow holding me fast, preventing my escape. The shadow is Allanon.”

The words were a familiar litany by now. Cogline nodded patiently. “Your vision, you said. The third of three.”

“Two came to pass already, but neither as I anticipated. The Grimpond loves to play games. But this time I shall use that gamesplaying to my advantage. I know the details of the vision; I know that it will happen here within the Keep. I need only decipher its meaning, to separate the truth from the lie.”

“But if you have guessed wrong...”

Walker Boh shook his head defiantly. “I have not.”

They were treading familiar ground. Walker had already told the old man everything, testing it out on someone who would be quick to spot the flaws he had missed, putting it into words to see how it would sound.

The Black Elfstone was the key to everything.

He repeated from memory that brief, solitary passage inscribed in the Druid Histories:

Once removed, Paranor shall remain lost to the world of men for the whole of time, sealed away and invisible within its casting. One magic alone has the power to return it—that singular Elfstone that is colored Black and was conceived by the faerie people of the old world in the manner and form of all Elfstones, combining nevertheless in one stone alone the necessary properties of heart, mind, and body. Whosoever shall have cause and right shall wield it to its proper end.

He had assumed until now that the Black Elfstone was meant to restore Paranor to its present state of half-being and to gain him entry therein. But the language of the inscription didn’t qualify the extent of the Elfstone’s use. One magic alone, it said, had the power to restore Paranor. One magic The Black Elfstone. There wasn’t any another magic mentioned, not anywhere. There wasn’t another word about returning Paranor to the world of men in all the pages of all the Druid Histories.

Suppose, then, that the Black Elfstone was all that was required, but that it must be used not just once, but twice or even three times before the restoration process was complete.

But used to do what?

The answer seemed obvious. The magic that Allanon had released into the Keep three hundred years ago was a sort of watchdog set loose to do two things—to destroy the Keep’s enemies and to dispatch Paranor into limbo and keep it there until it was properly summoned out again. The magic was a living thing. You could feel it in the walls of the castle; you could hear it stir in its bowels. It watched and listened. It breathed. It was there, waiting. If the Keep was to be restored to the Four Lands, the magic Allanon had loosed must be locked away again. It was reasonable to assume that only another form of magic could accomplish this. And the only magic at hand, the only magic even mentioned in the Druid Histories where Paranor was concerned, was the Black Elfstone.

So far, so good. Druid magic to negate Druid magic. It made sense; it was the Black Elfstone’s stated power, the negation of other magics. One magic, the inscription read. And Walker must wield it, of course. He had done so once, proved that he could. Whosoever shall have cause and right. Himself. Use the Black Elfstone against the watchdog magic and secure it. Use the Black Elfstone and bring Paranor all the way back.

But there was still something missing. There was no explanation of how the Black Elfstone would work. It was infinitely more complicated than simply calling up the magic and letting it run loose. The Black Elfstone negated other magics by drawing them into itself—and into its holder. Walker Boh had already been changed when he had used the Elfstone to bring Paranor back and gain entry, turned from a whole man into something incorporeal. What further damage might he do to himself if he used the Elfstone on the watchdog? What further transformation might take place?

And then, abruptly, he realized two things.

First, that he was still not a Druid and would not become one until he had established his right to do so—that his right would not come from study, or learning, or wisdom gleaned from a reading of the Druid Histories, that it was not foreordained, not predetermined by the bestowal of Allanon’s blood trust to Brin Ohmsford three hundred years earlier, but that it would come at the moment he found a way to subdue the watchdog that guarded the Keep and brought Paranor fully back into the world of Men, because that was the test that Allanon had set him.

Second, that the third vision the Grimpond had shown him, the one that would take place within Paranor, the one where he was confronted by a death he could not escape, held fast by the ghost of Allanon, was a glimpse of that moment.

His arguments were persuasive. The Druids would not commit to writing a process as inviolate as this one when there was a better way. Only Walker Boh could use the Black Elfstone. Only he had the right. Somehow, in some way, that use would trigger the required transformation. When it was necessary to know, Walker would discover what was needed. So much of the Druid magic relied on acceptance—use of the Elfstones, of the Sword of Shannara, even of the wishsong. It was only reasonable that it would be the same here.