The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

He reached Khyber and knelt beside her. He touched her shoulder. “Khyber,” he said softly.

She did not look up or stop shaking, so he put his lips to her ear, whispering, “Khyber, it’s all right, it’s over. Look at me. I need to know you can hear me. You’re all right.”

“So much power,” she whispered suddenly. She stopped shaking then, her body going perfectly still. A long sigh escaped her lips. She lifted her head and looked out across the fiery surface of the wetlands. “I couldn’t stop it, Pen. Once it started, I couldn’t stop it.”

“I know,” he said, understanding now something of what had transpired. “It’s all over.”

He helped her to her feet, and they stumbled together to where Tagwen knelt beside Ahren Elessedil. Pen knew at a glance that the Druid was dying. A handful of arrows and darts had pierced him, and his body was blackened and smoking from the explosion. But his eyes were open and calm, and he watched their approach with a steady gaze.

Khyber gasped as she saw him, then dropped to her knees and began to cry, her hands clasped helplessly in her lap, her head shaking slowly from side to side.

The Druid reached out with one charred hand and touched her wrist. “Terek Molt tied his magic to the Galaphile,” he whispered, his voice dry and cracked with pain. “To protect her. When I attacked, he strengthened the connection until he was too committed to withdraw it. The Elfstones couldn’t tell the difference. To them, the Galaphile was a weapon, an extension of Molt. So it consumed them both.”

“I could have helped you!”

“No, Khyber.” He coughed and blood flecked his burned lips. “He couldn’t be allowed to know that you had the Elfstones. Otherwise, he would have destroyed you.”

“Instead, he destroyed you!” She was crying so hard that she could barely make herself understood.

The ruined face tilted slightly in response. “I misjudged the extent of my invulnerability. Still, it is a reasonable trade.” He swallowed thickly. “The Elfstones are yours now. Use them with caution. Your command of their power …” He trailed off, the words catching in this throat. “You’ve seen the nature of your abilities. Strong. Your heart, mind, body—very powerful. But the Stones are more powerful still. Be wary. They will rule you if you are not careful. There is danger in using them. Remember.”

She lifted her tear-streaked face and looked over at Pen. “We have to help him!”

She was almost hysterical. Pen was frightened, unable to think of what to say to her. There was nothing they could do. Surely she could see that. But she looked so wild that he was afraid she might try something anyway, something dangerous.

Ahren Elessedil’s hand tightened on her wrist. “No, Khyber,” he said. He waited until she looked back at him, until she met his terrible burned gaze. “There is nothing to be done. It is finished for me. I’m sorry.”

His eyes shifted slowly to Pen. “Penderrin. Twenty years ago, when I sailed on the Jerle Shannara with your father, a young girl gave up her life for me. She did so because she believed I was meant to do something important. I would like to think this is part of what she saved me for. Make something good come out of this. Do what you were sent here to do. Find the Ard Rhys and bring her back.”

He took several sharp, rattling breaths, his eyes holding the boy’s as he struggled to speak. “Ahren?” Pen whispered. “Promise me.”

The Druid’s eyes became fixed and staring, and he quit breathing. Pen could not look away, finding in that terrible gaze strength of purpose he would not have believed possible. He reached out and touched the Druid’s charred face, then closed those dead eyes and sat back again. He looked over at Khyber, who was crying silently into her hands, then at Tagwen.

“I never thought anything like this would happen,” the Dwarf said quietly. “I thought he would be the one to get us safely through.”

Pen nodded, looking out over the burning lake at the flames licking at the twilight darkness, staining sky and earth the color of blood. The surface of the water burned silently, steadily, a fiery mirror reflected against a backdrop of shadow-striped trees. Smoke mingled with mist and mist with clouds, and everything was hazy and surreal. The world had an alien feel to it, as if nothing the boy was seeing was familiar.

“What are we going to do?” Tagwen asked softly. He shook his head slowly, as if there were no answer to his question.

Penderrin Ohmsford looked over again at Khyber. She was no longer crying. Her head was lifted and her dark features were a mask of resolve. He could tell from the way she was looking back at him that there would be no more tears.

The boy turned to the Dwarf. “We’re going to do what he asked of us,” he said. “We’re going to go on.”





TWENTY-SEVEN