The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

They were almost through the trees when Pen drew up short and pointed back the way they had come. “Did you see something move just then?” he asked.

The Dwarf and the girl peered through the dark wall of trunks and the pooling shadows. “I didn’t see anything,” Khyber said.

Tagwen shook his head as well. “Shadows, maybe. The wind.”

Pen nodded. “Maybe.”

They went on quickly and were out of the trees and across the meadow in moments, heading for the rocks. Pen saw at once that it was exactly what they had hoped to find. The meadow sloped gently upward into a jumble of boulders too high and too deep to see over. There were passages leading into the rocks, but most of them ended within a dozen yards. Only one led all the way through, traversing small clearings in which sparse stands of evergreens and scrub blocked clear passage. It was possible to get through, but not without maneuvering over and around various obstacles and making the correct choices from among the narrow defiles. Best of all, one of the choices led to an outcropping at the edge of the woods they had just come through—and it was elevated enough to allow them to see over the rim of the maze to the meadow below.

“We build our fire in one of these clearings, make our sleeping dummies, and hide out here.” Pen had it all worked out. “An airship can spot our fire if she comes anywhere within miles, but we can spot the airship, too. We can tell if she’s the Skatelow. We can see her land, we can watch what happens. Once the creature comes into the rocks, we slip down off the outcropping, skirt the trees, and come at the ship from outside. It’s perfect.”

Neither the girl nor the Dwarf cared to comment on that bold declaration, so it was left hanging in the stillness of the twilight, where, even to Pen, it sounded a bit ridiculous.

They went back through the maze to a clearing where the opening from the meadow was so narrow it was necessary to turn sideways to squeeze through. Pen looked around speculatively, then found what he was looking for. On the other side of the clearing, deeper in, was a rocky alcove where someone could hide and watch the opening.

“One of us will hide here,” he said, facing them. “When our friend from the Skatelow comes through that opening, the tar gets thrown at it. The leaves will split on impact, so the tar will go all over. It will take the creature a moment or two at least to figure out what happened. By then, we’ll be heading for the airship.”

Tagwen actually laughed. “That is a terrible plan, young Penderrin. I suppose you believe that you should be the one who throws the tar, don’t you?”

“Tagwen has a point,” Khyber agreed quickly. “Your plan won’t work.”

Pen glowered at her. “Why not? What’s wrong with it?”

The Elven girl held his angry gaze. “In the first place, we have already established that you are the one individual who is indispensable to the success of the search for the Ard Rhys. So you can’t be put at risk. In the second place, you are the only one who can fly the airship. So you have to get aboard if we’re to fly out of here. In the third place, we still don’t know what this thing is. We don’t know if it’s human or not. We don’t know if it has the use of magic. That’s too many variables for you to deal with. I’m the one who has the Elfstones. I also have a modicum of magic I can call upon if I need to. I’m faster than you are on foot. I’m expendable. I have to be the one who confronts it.”

“If you miss,” Tagwen said darkly, “you had better be fast indeed.”

“All the more reason why you and Pen have to be moving toward the Skatelow the moment it enters the rocks. You have to be airborne before it can recover and decide it has been tricked, whatever the result of my efforts. If it gets back through that maze and out into the meadow before you board and cut the lines, we’re dead.”

There was a long silence as they considered the chances of this happening. Pen shook his head. “What if it brings Cinnaminson into the rocks with it?”

Khyber stared at him without answering. She didn’t need to tell him what he already knew.

“I don’t like it,” Tagwen growled. “I don’t like any of it.”

But the matter was decided.





FOUR