The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

“So now she views herself as despicable.” Khyber held his gaze. “When you tell her she can’t go with you anymore, she sees it as an affirmation of what she already believes to be true about herself—that she is worthless, that no one could love her. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know the truth because she has kept it to herself. It’s enough that she knows.”


Pen looked off into the darkness, filled with sudden rage, filled with a need to exact revenge for what had happened, but impotent to do anything but sit and fume. The images that filled his mind were so terrible that he couldn’t bear them. “I didn’t realize what I was doing by telling her she couldn’t come,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know.”

She squeezed his hand. “I wish you still didn’t know. I wish I didn’t have to tell you. But you still care about the girl, don’t you? So you need to know what’s happened to her so that you can understand what she’s going through. She’s fragile in ways that you don’t see. She might have mind-sight, but it’s not sufficient protection against the monsters of this world and not enough to make up for the loss of her family. Her father, bad as he was, loved her, and she loved him. He was the support she could fall back on when things were too much for her. Who’s going to offer her that support now?”

“I am,” he said at once.

“Then you can’t tell her you intend to leave her behind.” Khyber’s voice was fierce. “You can’t make her safe that way, Pen. I know taking her is dangerous, but leaving her is worse.”

They stared at each other in silence. In the background, the music and singing of the Troll revelers wafted through the darkness, rising above the firelight, echoing off the rock walls of the cliffs. Pen wanted to cry for what he was feeling, but no tears would come.

“I’ll tell her she can come,” he said finally. “I’ll tell her I was wrong, that we need her.”

She nodded. “Be careful what you say and how you say it. She wouldn’t like it that I’ve told you what happened. She will probably want to tell you herself one day.”

He nodded. “Thank you, Khyber. Thank you for telling me. Thank you for not letting me make a mistake I couldn’t correct.”

She got to her feet and stood looking at him. “I just did what I thought I had to do, Pen, but I have to tell you that it doesn’t make me feel very good to have done it.”

She turned and walked away.


Acting on whispered instructions from Shadea a’Ru, the Gnome Hunters removed the heavy mesh netting and bound and gagged Bek Ohmsford. He could have struggled or used magic to save himself, but he was terrified that if he did so, they would kill Rue. Bitter with disappointment and self-recrimination, he let them take him without a struggle.

“You aren’t half so clever as you believe yourself to be,” she said to him as the Gnomes carried him down into the cellars of the Keep. “I knew of your contact with your son the moment you made it. It was impossible to miss. I knew you were pretending at being ill earlier today, too, and that you would come back to the cold chamber to use the scrye waters again if you were given the chance. So I gave it to you.”

She leaned over and tapped him lightly on the nose, a taunting gesture he couldn’t fail to register. “You couldn’t get a clear reading of where Penderrin was from your first contact; I saw that right away. So I knew you would have to come back and probe the scrye waters again when you thought we weren’t around to see what you were searching for. Somehow, you found us out, didn’t you? It was probably Traunt Rowan who gave us away. He lacks the finesse needed to fool someone as perceptive and experienced as you. Disappointing, if not entirely unexpected. At least I knew enough not to trust that you had been taken in by his explanation. I knew enough to read you the same way you must have read him.”

She was silent for a time, staring straight ahead into the darkness, keeping pace with the guards who bore him. She took big, full strides that radiated power and determination. She looked taller and broader through the shoulders than he remembered, and there was a confidence about her that suggested she was equally comfortable with weapons or words. He did not know what his sister had done to antagonize her, but Shadea a’Ru was a formidable enemy.

“Your son has turned out to be a meddlesome boy, Bek,” she continued after a while, “but no more so than Tagwen or the others who joined him to hunt for your sister. I took steps to put an end to their search, but until now they have managed to elude me. I tracked them all the way from Patch Run to the Elven village of Emberen and from there east to the Lazareen. Then, I lost them. But now, thanks to you, I know exactly where they are.”