The Druid of Shannara

“But she changed the Meade Gardens simply by touching the earth!” Morgan protested, his voice angry, defiant.

“The Meade Gardens, yes. But Eldwist was far too monstrous to change so easily. She could not have done so with a simple touching. She needed to infuse herself into the rock, to make herself a part of the land.” Walker sighed. “That was why she chose Pe Ell. The King of the Silver River must have known or at least sensed that the Shadowen would send someone to try to stop Quickening. It was no secret who she was or how she could change things. She was a very real threat. She had to be eliminated. A Shadowen, it appears now, would lack the necessary means. So Pe Ell was sent instead. Pe Ell believed that his purpose was a secret, that killing Quickening was his own idea. It wasn’t. Not ever. It was hers, right from the beginning. It was the reason she sought him out, because her father had told her to do so, to take with her to Eldwist the man and the weapon that could penetrate the armor of her magic and allow her to transform.”

“Why couldn’t she simply change by willing it?”

“She was alive, Morgan—as human as you and I. She was an elemental, but an elemental in human guise. I don’t think she could be anything else in life. It was necessary for her to die before she could work her magic on Eldwist. No ordinary weapon could kill her; her body would protect her against common metals. It required magic equal to her own, the magic of a weapon like the Stiehl—and the hands and mind of an assassin like Pe Ell.”

Walker’s smile was brief, tight. “She summoned us to help her—because she was told to and because we were needed to serve a purpose, yes—but because she believed in us, too. If we had failed her, any of us, even Pe Ell, if we had not done what she knew we could do, Uhl Belk would have won. There would have been no transformation of the land. The Maw Grint would have continued its advance and Uhl Belk’s kingdom would have continued to expand. Combined with the onslaught of the Shadowen, everything would have been lost.”

Morgan straightened perceptibly, and his eyes finally lifted. “She should have told us, Walker. She should have let us know what she had planned.”

Walker shook his head gently. “No, Morgan. That was exactly what she couldn’t do. We would not have acted as we did had we known the truth. Tell me. Wouldn’t you have stopped her? You were in love with her, Highlander. She knew what that meant.”

Morgan stared at him tight-lipped for a moment, then nodded reluctantly. “You’re right. She knew.”

“There wasn’t any other way. She had to keep her purpose in coming here a secret.”

“I know. I know.” Morgan’s breathing was ragged, strained. “But it hurts anyway. I can almost believe she isn’t gone, that she will find a way to come back somehow.” He took a deep breath. “I need her to come back.”

They were silent then, staring off in separate directions, remembering. Walker wondered momentarily if he should tell the other of the Grimpond’s vision, of how he had spoken of that vision with Quickening yet she had brought him anyway, of how she must have known from the first how it would end yet had come nevertheless so that her father’s purpose in creating her could be fulfilled. He decided against it. The Highlander had heard enough of secrets and hidden plans. There was nothing to be gained by telling him any more.

“What’s become of Belk, do you think?” Horner Dees’ rough voice broke the silence. “Is he still down there in that dome? Still alive?”

They looked as one over the cliff edge to where the last vestige of Eldwist sat amid the newborn green of the peninsula, closed about and secretive.

“I think a fairy creature like Uhl Belk does not die easily,” Walker answered, his voice soft, introspective. “But Quickening holds him fast, a prisoner within a shell, and the land will not be changed to his liking again any time soon.” He paused. “I think Uhl Belk might go mad when he understands that.”

Morgan reached down tentatively and touched a patch of grass as if searching for something. His fingers brushed the blades gently. Walker watched him for a moment, then rose. His body ached, and his spirits were dark and mean. He was starved for real food, and his thirst seemed unquenchable. His own Odyssey was just beginning, a trek back through the Four Lands in search of Pe Ell and the stolen Black Elfstone, a second confrontation to discover who should possess it, and if he survived all that, a journey to recover disappeared Paranor and the Druids …

His thoughts threatened to overwhelm him, to drain the last of his strength, and he shoved them away.