The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

She gave herself only a moment to consider all that before refocusing on the task at hand. She had come too far to turn back and would not have done so if she could have. She had made her decision and she would be the equal of whatever happened. It was not bravado or foolhardiness that drove her; it was the certainty that it was her one and only chance to find a way out of this prison.

It took everything she had to maintain her concentration. Her instincts were screaming at her to back away, to cease her efforts. The air was filled with sounds and sensations that grated on her resolve and wore at her courage. The Hadeshorn was roiling by then, a volcanic pit threatening to explode with every new gesture she made, with every new word she spoke. Her magic, she saw, was anathema there, stirring the currents that led to the netherworld in the manner of fire on parchment, incendiary and destructive.

Still she continued, implacable and unyielding, as hard as the stone upon which she stood.

Then the shades began to rise in looping spirals, their transparent forms linked by the trailing iridescence that poured out of their trapped souls. Like shooting stars, they soared from the waters and lifted into the air, bright flashes against the night’s firmament. They writhed and wailed piteously, giving vent to the travesty of their imprisonment, their outrage a mirror of her own. They spun like sparks showered from a fire grown too hot, released in an explosion of heat. But from where she stood on the shore, she felt only a deep, abiding cold that permeated the air and left her exposed skin freezing.

Where was Walker? Where was Allanon? Where was the help she so badly needed?

She bore down, ignoring the cold air and damp spray, the terrible wailing and the debilitating infusion of fear and doubt. She hardened herself as she had been taught to do in darker times, cloaking herself in her magic and her determination, fighting to keep her hold over the lake and its inhabitants. She had opened the door to the world of the dead to seek answers to her questions, and she would not close it again until she found what she had come for.

Her search ended when her strength was almost gone. A Druid shade surged out of the roiling waters like a leviathan, huge and threatening, scattering lesser shades as if they were krill on which it might feed. Dark robes billowed out, the edges frayed and torn, the opening of its hood a black hole that had no bottom. The lake’s greenish light filtered through rents in its empty form, carving intricate patterns that threw strange shadows everywhere.

Grianne Ohmsford stepped backwards in shock.

It’s too big! Too massive!

The shade wheeled toward her soundlessly, drawing all the light into itself, extinguishing the smaller shades around it. Within the hood, red eyes flared to life and burned with unmistakable rage. She felt it watching her, measuring her. It advanced as it did so, coming on like a juggernaut that meant to crush her. As powerful as she was, as skilled at magic’s uses, she was dwarfed by this presence. She could not decide who it was. Not Walker, she knew. She had spoken with his shade enough times to know how it felt when he appeared. Allanon, perhaps. Yes, Allanon, darkest of them all.

But this dark?

She waited as the shade skimmed across the lake’s boiling surface to reach her, growing steadily in size. It gave her no hint of whom it was nor spoke even a single word. It simply advanced, enigmatic and intimidating, testing her resolve to stand fast. She could not look away from it. She was transfixed.

When it was close enough that it had blotted out the entirety of the sky behind it, it stopped, hovering above the Hadeshorn, its dark form riddled and tattered. Grianne brought her arms down now, lowering them slowly, carefully, keeping her eyes fixed on the crimson orbs that burned out of the impenetrable gap in the shade’s hood.

–Do you know me, Straken–

Its voice was as empty and cold as the death that had stolen away its life. Her stomach lurched in sudden recognition. Sweat beaded her forehead, though the rest of her was as cold as that voice. She knew who it was. She knew it instinctively. It wasn’t Allanon. Or Bremen. Or even Galaphile. Not here, inside the Forbidding. She had forgotten the importance of where she was. She was in a place where only creatures exiled from the world of Faerie belonged. She was in a place where only those who felt at home with such creatures would come.

Even from the world of the dead.

What sort of shade would such creatures draw? Only one, she realized belatedly.

The shade of the rebel Druid Brona.

It was the Warlock Lord.