The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

On the dockside, the shouts were coming closer. Torchlight flickered through the mist. “Cast off,” Ahren Elessedil snapped at Gar Hatch, “or I’ll put you and your crew over the side and do it myself!”


The Rover Captain hesitated for just an instant, as if perhaps he would test this threat, then wheeled about, ordering his men to release the lines. The ropes fell away, and the airship began to drift from the dock. Pen continued to scan the waters into which the dark thing had fallen, not convinced it had given up, not persuaded it wasn’t going to come at him again.

“Safety lines!” Gar Hatch snapped.

The Skatelow began to rise and the lake to drop away. Pen exhaled sharply. Still nothing. He glanced at Tagwen. The Dwarf’s rugged features reflected his fear. His eyes shifted to find the boy’s and he shook his head.

“Safety lines!” Hatch repeated angrily. “Young Pen! If you can spare the time, would you bring Cinnaminson into the pilot box before you secure yourself?”

Pen waved his response. He took a final look over the side before heading for the hatchway. The lake had disappeared beneath a sea of shifting mist.

Then they were flying into the night, a solitary island in the deepening gloom, leaving Anatcherae and its horrors behind.





TWENTY-THREE


Darkness had fallen, stealing away the last of the daylight. Heavy fog closed on the airship, enfolding it in a swirling gray haze. There was no difference now between up or down or even sideways to those who sailed aboard the Skatelow. Everything looked the same. The day had been dreary to begin with, washed of color and empty of sunshine, but the night was worse. The clouds were so thickly massed overhead that there was not even the smallest hint of stars or moon. Below, the waters of the Lazareen had vanished as if drained from an unplugged basin. The lights of Anatcherae had vanished minutes after their departure. The world had disappeared.

Pen brought Cinnaminson to her father. She squeezed Pen’s hand as he led her along the corridor from her cabin and up the stairway to the deck, but neither of them spoke. There was too much to say and no time to say it. In the pilot box, she moved obediently to her father’s side, saying as she did so, “I’m here, Papa.” Pen was dismissed, told to go below, and he moved away. But he lingered at the hatchway with Khyber and Ahren, staring out into the impenetrable fog, into the depthless night. If Cinnaminson wasn’t able to navigate blind, he was thinking, they were in trouble. There wasn’t even the smallest landmark on which they could fix, no sky to read, no point of reference to track. There was nothing out there at all.

“She’s her father’s compass, isn’t she?” Ahren asked him quietly. “His eyes in the darkness?”

He nodded, looking at the Druid in surprise. “How did you know?”

“It was nosed about at the docks in Syioned. Some say she’s his good-luck charm. Some say she can see in darkness, even though she’s blind in daylight. None of them have it right. I saw the way she moved the first few days we were aboard. She can sense the position of things in her mind, their location, their look and feel.”

“She said she sees the stars in her mind, even in mist and rain like this. That’s how she navigates.”

“A gift,” Ahren Elessedil murmured. “But her father thinks it belongs to him because she is his child.”

Pen nodded. “He thinks she belongs to him.”

They could hear her speaking softly to her father, giving him instructions, a heading to take, a course to follow. His hands moved smoothly over the controls in response, turning the airship slightly to starboard, bringing up her bow as he did so, easing ahead through the gloom. In a less stressful situation, he might have noticed them watching and immediately ordered them below so that they would not discover his secret. He might have refused to proceed at all. But that night he was so preoccupied that he didn’t even know they were there.

The mist thickened the farther away from land they flew, swirling like witch’s brew around the airship, alive with strange shadows and unexpected movement. There was no wind, and yet the haze roiled as if there were. Pen felt uneasy at the phenomenon, not understanding how it could occur. He glanced again at Ahren Elessedil, but the Druid was staring straight ahead, his concentration focused on something else. He was listening.

Pen listened, as well, but he could hear nothing beyond the creaking of the ship’s rigging. He looked to Khyber, but she shook her head to indicate that she didn’t hear anything, either.

Then Pen froze. There was something after all. At first, he wasn’t sure what it was. It sounded a little like breathing, deep and low, like a sleeping man exhaling, only not that, either. He furrowed his brow in concentration, trying to place it. It must be the wind, he thought. The wind, sweeping over the hull or through the rigging or along the decks. But he knew it wasn’t.