The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

She felt a surge of expectation and joy. She had waited for it, longed for it, the time when the voice took form, as it had promised it would, to give her back her place in the world. It would happen after the exile of the Ard Rhys, it had told her. Once the High Druid was gone, the voice could come out of hiding. It could take form and become for Iridia the friend and confidant she had once thought Shadea might be.

–I can be more than that, Iridia. I can be him–

Not quite willing to believe that she had heard the words correctly, she felt her heart lurch. She stood frozen in the darkness of the alcove, listening to their echo in the silence. I can be him. Was that possible? The voice was a chameleon, a changeling, capable of wondrous things. But could it bring back the dead? Could it make Ahren Elessedil whole again? Was the voice capable of that?

–Walk to me. In the cellars–

She left the alcove at once and proceeded to the main staircase, descending in a rush, her footfalls tiny and lost in the cavernous passage. No other Druid was abroad; most were gathered in the dining hall, the rest in their rooms or libraries. It felt to her as if she were alone in the world, free of its constraints and discriminations. She had never been well liked, never a part of anything, always alone. It was because of her childhood, where she had been set apart by her skills and the mistrust of those who recognized them. Even her parents had looked on her with growing suspicion and doubt, distancing themselves and their other children, sending her away early to study with an old woman who was said to understand such magic. The old woman did not, but living with her gave Iridia space and time to grow as she wished, to hone her talents, to gain a better understanding of what they offered. She needed no mentor to help her with this. She needed only herself.

Ten years she lived with the old woman, a crone of demands and false promises that would have eroded a less determined student. But Iridia only smiled and agreed and acquiesced to all, pretending obedience and waiting until she was alone to do what she wished. The old woman was no match for her, and when it was time, Iridia led her abusive and demanding benefactor to the well out back and pushed her in. For three days and nights, the crone screamed for help that never came.

Iridia turned down the lower hallway to the cellar doors at the north end of the Keep, knowing instinctively that was where she was meant to go, that was where the voice would be waiting. Shadows draped the heavy stones of the floors she passed across, her own the only one moving. No guards warded the passageways or walked the walls of Paranor now; the Druids alone kept watch, and theirs was a desultory, disinterested effort. In the time of the Warlock Lord, the keep would have fallen already.

At the heavy, ironbound doors leading down, the Elven sorceress paused to look back. No one was in sight; no one had followed. Shadea might have thought to try, but had not made the attempt. Just as well, Iridia thought. That would have complicated things. She wanted no one to intrude on her meeting.

–Hurry, Iridia. I am anxious–

As was she, flushed with unexpected passion. She was like a young, foolish girl, filled with wild emotion and desperate need. The voice had never failed her, and now it was going to give her the thing she desired most. It made her feel heady, as if she could dare anything, as if anything were possible. She pushed through the cellar doors in a rush, taking one of the torches from the brackets just inside, lighting it with a sweep of her fingers and a spray of magic, and started downward once more.

This time, her descent was much longer and darker, the stairwell windowless and narrow as it tunneled into the deep earth beneath the castle foundation. The air was damp and stale, smelling of long years of confinement and ageless dust. Her footsteps on the stone steps matched the sound of her breathing, quick and hurried. When this was finished, she thought, she would leave Paranor and go far away, taking Ahren with her so that they could build a life together free of everything that had gone before. It was what she would have done in the first place, had the Ard Rhys not poisoned Ahren against her. Ahren claimed Grianne had nothing to do with his dismissal of her, but Iridia knew better. His claim that he had never loved her, did not feel for her as she did for him, was a lie forged in the furnace of his anger at what she, who would always be the Ilse Witch, had told him. For that alone, she had deserved banishment to the Forbidding, and much worse.

At the bottom of the stairs, a rotunda formed a hub for a dozen passageways leading in different directions. Iridia chose the one from which the voice was calling, certain of its location, of its presence. Holding out the torch to chase back the darkness, she went down the passageway, a silent presence in a silent tomb. The catacombs were used infrequently, which had something to do with the past, with the history of the Keep, though Iridia had never cared enough to find out what that history was. It was the place she met with her coconspirators, but not a place she visited otherwise. It was enough that she would do so for the last time tonight.

A hundred feet down the corridor, a door stood open, the room beyond as black as pitch.