Терри Брукс - The Druid of Shannara

The First Seeker moved to within a few feet of Coll and stopped. His craggy face was calm and reassuring. “Are you rested?”

“That’s a stupid question,” Coll answered before he could think better of it. “Where’s my brother?”

Rimmer Dall shrugged. “I don’t know. When I last saw him he was carrying the Sword of Shannara from its vault.”

Coll stared. “You were there—inside?”

“I was.”

“And you let Par take the Sword of Shannara? You just let him walk away with it?”

“Why not? It belongs to him.”

“You want me to believe,” Coll said carefully, “that you don’t care if he has possession of the Sword, that it doesn’t matter to you?”

“Not in the way you think.”

Coll paused. “So you let Par go, but you took me prisoner. Is that right?”

“It is.”

Coll shook his head. “Why?”

“To protect you.”

Coll laughed. “From what? Freedom of choice?”

“From your brother.”

“From Par? You must think me the biggest fool who ever lived!”

The big man folded his arms across his chest comfortably. “To be honest with you, there is more to it than just offering you protection. You are a prisoner for another reason as well. Sooner or later, your brother will come looking for you. When he does, I want another chance to talk with him. Keeping you here assures me that I will have that chance.”

“What really happened,” Coll snapped angrily, “is that you caught me, but Par escaped! He found the Sword of Shannara and slipped past you somehow and now you’re using me as bait to trap him. Well, it won’t work. Par’s smarter than that.”

Rimmer Dall shook his head. “If I was able to capture you at the entrance to the vault, how is it that your brother managed to escape? Answer me that?” He waited a moment, then moved over to the table with its wooden chairs and seated himself. “I’ll tell you the truth of things, Coll Ohmsford, if you’ll give me a chance. Will you?”

Coll studied the other’s face wordlessly for a moment, then shrugged. What did he have to lose? He stayed where he was, standing, deliberately measuring the distance between them.

Rimmer Dall nodded. “Let’s begin with the Shadowen. The Shadowen are not what you have been led to believe. They are not monsters, not wraiths whose only purpose is to destroy the races, whose very presence has sickened the Four Lands. They are victims, for the most part. They are men, women and children who possess some measure of the faerie magic. They are the result of man’s evolution through generations in which the magic was used. The Federation hunts them like animals. You saw the poor creatures trapped within the Pit. Do you know what they are? They are Shadowen whom the Federation has imprisoned and starved into madness, changing them so that they have become worse than animals. You saw as well the woodswoman and the giant on your journey to Culhaven. What they are is not their fault.”

The gloved hand lifted quickly as Coll started to speak. “Valeman, hear me out. You wonder how it is that I know so much about you. I will explain if you will just be patient.”

The hand came down again. “I became First Seeker in order to hunt the Shadowen—not to harm or imprison them, but to warn them, to get them to safety. That was why I came to you in Varfleet—to see that you and your brother were protected. I did not have the chance to do so. I have been searching for you ever since to explain what I know. I thought that you might return to the Vale and so placed your parents under my protection. I believed that if I could reach you first, before the Federation found you in some other way, you would be safe.”

“I don’t believe any of this,” Coll interjected coldly.

Rimmer Dall ignored him. “Valeman, you have been lied to from the beginning. That old man, the one who calls himself Cogline, told you the Shadowen were the enemy. The shade of Allanon warned you at the Hadeshorn in the Valley of Shale that the Shadowen must be destroyed. Retrieve the lost magics of the old world, you were advised. Find the Sword of Shannara. Find the missing Elfstones. Find lost Paranor and bring back the Druids. But were you told what any of this would accomplish? Of course not. Because the truth of the matter is that you are not supposed to know. If you did, you would abandon this business at once. The Druids care nothing for you and your kin and never have. They are interested only in regaining the power they lost when Allanon died. Bring them back, restore their magics, and they will again control the destiny of the Races. This is what they work for, Coll Ohmsford. The Federation, unwittingly, ignorantly, helps them. The Shadowen proved the perfect victim for both to prey upon. Your uncle recognized the truth of things. He saw that Allanon sought to manipulate him, to induce him to undertake a quest that would benefit no one. He warned you all; he refused to be part of the Druid madness. He was right. The danger is far greater than you realize.”

He leaned forward. “I told all of this to your brother when he came into the vault after the Sword of Shannara. I was waiting there for him—had been waiting in fact for several days. I knew he would come back for the Sword. He had to; he couldn’t help himself. That’s what having the magic does to you. I know. I have the magic, too.”

He stood up suddenly, and Coll shrank back in alarm.

The black-clad body began to shimmer in the gloom as if translucent. Then it seemed to come apart, and Coll heard himself gasp. The dark form of a Shadowen lifted slowly out of Rimmer Dall’s body, red eyes glinting, hung suspended in the air for a moment, and settled back again.

The First Seeker smiled coldly. “I am a Shadowen, you see. All of the Seekers are Shadowen. Ironic, isn’t it? The Federation doesn’t know. They believe us ordinary men, nothing more, men who serve their twisted interests, who seek as they do to rid the land of magic. They are fools. Magic isn’t the enemy of the people. They are. And the Druids. And any who would keep men and women from being who and what they must.”

One finger pointed at Coll like a dagger. “I told this to your brother, and I told him one thing more. I told him that he, too, is a Shadowen. Ah, you still don’t believe me, do you? But listen, now. Par Ohmsford is in truth a Shadowen, whether either of you cares to admit it or not. So is Walker Boh. So is anyone who possesses real magic. That’s what we are, all of us—Shadowen. We are sane, rational, and for the most part ordinary men, women, and children until we become hunted and imprisoned and driven mad by fools like the Federation. Then the magic overwhelms us and we become animals, like the woodswoman and the giant, like the things in the Pit.”

Coll was shaking his head steadily. “No. This is all a lie.”

“How is it that I know so much about you, do you think?” Rimmer Dall persisted, his voice maddeningly calm, even now. “I know all about your flight south down the Mermidon, your encounters with the woodswoman and the old man, how you met with that Highlander and persuaded him to join you, how you journeyed to Culhaven, then to Hearthstone, and finally to the Hadeshorn. I know of the Dwarves and Walker Boh. I know of your cousin Wren Ohmsford. I know of the outlaws and Padishar Creel and the girl and all the rest. I knew when you were going down into the Pit and tried to have you stopped. I knew that you would return and waited there for you. How, Valeman? Tell me.”

“A spy in the outlaw camp,” Coll answered, suddenly unsure.

“Who?”

Coll hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“Then I will tell you. The spy was your brother.”

Coll stared.

“Your brother, though he didn’t realize it. Par is a Shadowen, and I sometimes know what other Shadowen think. When they use their magic, my own responds. It reveals to me their thoughts. When your brother used the wishsong, it let me know what he was thinking. That was how I found you. But Par’s use of his magic alerted others as well. Enemies. That was why the Gnawl tracked you in the Wolfsktaag and the Spider Gnomes at Hearthstone.”