The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

When they stopped for the night, Pen used his compass a final time to check their direction. It seemed as if they were going the right way, but he was beginning to wonder if the compass was working. His concerns were fostered in part by the way in which the light seemed not to change in any direction, the gloom and haze so thick that it was getting harder and harder to tell which way the sun was moving through the hidden sky.

“We might be lost,” he admitted to them. “I can’t be sure any more.”

“We’re not lost,” Khyber insisted. “Tomorrow, we will be through.”

But Pen wasn’t convinced. He took the first watch and sat brooding while the others slept, replaying the events of the past few days in his mind, a nagging concern that he couldn’t identify tugging at his already dwindling confidence. Something wasn’t right about the way they were looking at things, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. As the darkness deepened and the minutes slipped by, he found himself going further afield with his thinking, working his way back through the entire journey, from the moment Tagwen had first appeared with news of his aunt’s disappearance. Remembering how he had been forced to flee his home triggered memories of his parents and made him aware of how much he missed them and wished they were with him. He had always been an independent sort, raised to be that way, but this was the farthest he had ever been from home. It was also the most threatened he had ever felt. He knew of the dangerous creatures that dwelled in the places he visited regularly on his skiff journeys, but most of those he was encountering now were entirely new. Some of them didn’t even have a name.

And just like that, he realized what was bothering him. It was his inability to account for what had become of the mysterious hunter that had chased him through the streets of Anatcherae on the night he had fled Terek Molt.

He took a long moment to think it through. His pursuer had come after him outside Fisherman’s Lie, when the little company had fled into the streets to reach the safety of the Skatelow. A man had died right in front of him, killed by a dagger thrown from the rooftops and intended for him. During all of this, he had caught only brief glimpses of the wielder, just enough to suggest it wasn’t entirely human.

What had happened to it?

It would be comforting to think that it had died aboard the Galaphile, consumed in the inferno that had claimed the ship, the Gnome Hunters, and Terek Molt. But Pen didn’t think that was what had happened. It didn’t feel right to him. The thing that had chased him through the streets wouldn’t have been caught off guard like that. If it was still with Terek Molt at the time the Galaphile had found them, it would have been off the ship and stalking him anew. It would have survived.

It would be out there now.

In spite of the fact that he was virtually certain it wasn’t, he looked around cautiously, peering into the darkness as if something might reveal itself. He even took time to read his magic’s response to the sounds of the night creatures surrounding him, to the insects and birds and beasts that inhabited the swamp gloom, searching for anything that would warn him of danger. When he had satisfied himself that he was not threatened, that the hunter he feared might be lurking out there, invisible and deadly, was not, he took a deep breath and exhaled softly, feeling comforted for the moment, at least.

He sat listening, nevertheless, through the rest of his watch.

When his watch was finished, he took a long time falling asleep.


On waking the following morning, Pen said nothing to Khyber and Tagwen of his concerns. There was nothing to be gained by doing so. Everyone was already on edge, and adding to the tension could not help the situation. Besides, the hunter of Anatcherae’s dark streets might have been a denizen of the port city rather than a tool of Terek Molt’s. If the hunter had been the Druid’s creature, then it stood to reason that it would have been used in tracking them down and disposing of them long since. The Druid wouldn’t have confronted them himself when he had his creature to do the job for him.

It was solid reasoning, but it didn’t make Pen feel any better and in the end it didn’t convince him that his problems with his mysterious enemy were finished. Just because he couldn’t account for its whereabouts didn’t mean he was rid of it. But he kept that unsettling thought to himself, knowing that what mattered just then was getting clear of the Slags.