The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

“Pen, what’s happening?” Cinnaminson cried, crouching on her hands and knees in the dirt, her face frantic with confusion and fear. Sling stones clattered all around her like hail.

“Get up!” he screamed, hauling her back to her feet, blood running down his arm and side. “Run!”

Searching for any sort of shelter that would deflect the deadly missiles, he tried to shield her as he pulled her after him. It seemed as if they were the only ones left in the village, the streets and buildings empty and the inhabitants all safely inside the tunnels and caves. But where were the tunnels? In what direction? Smoke obscured everything, and he had gotten turned around completely in his effort to escape.

A tiny alcove at the back of a building offered temporary shelter, and he shoved Cinnaminson inside, both of them gasping and bloodied.

I’m going to get us killed! he screamed at himself. What am I supposed to do?

Overhead, the Druid warship was swinging back around, searching for movement. They were safe for the moment, but trapped. Sooner or later, those Gnome Hunters would land and begin a search of the buildings. They couldn’t stay where they were. They had to get out of there.

“Penderrin!” a familiar voice boomed, causing the boy to jump.

“Kermadec! We’re here!”

He yanked Cinnaminson from their shelter and began to run toward the sound of the Rock Troll’s voice, hugging the walls that best protected them as they went. Overhead, the smoke was building in thick black clouds, and the airship was a massive shadow wrapped in its haze. The Gnome Hunters were still firing blindly into the village, and the boy could feel bolts and arrows whistle past him as he ran.

Then Kermadec appeared in front of them, a huge armored behemoth. Without slowing, he snatched them up like children, tucking one under each arm. “Can’t afford to lose you now,” he said, pounding ahead like a great beast of burden. “Hold tight.”

Gripped by one massive arm like a sack of grain, bouncing up and down with each footfall, Pen felt as if his eyes were going to be shaken loose from his head, but on balance he decided that was a small price to pay for being rescued. He closed his eyes to steady himself and waited patiently for the bouncing to stop.





FIFTEEN


When Kermadec set them down again, Pen and Cinnaminson were safely inside the caves that formed the Rock Troll fortress in the cliffs above the village. He had carried them in through an entrance concealed in the rocks, bundled them up a set of narrow stone steps to a door that opened after he’d manipulated various jagged outcroppings, then deposited them where they could spend a few moments regaining their equilibrium.

“We thought no one was coming,” Cinnaminson offered, her face pale and her honey hair disheveled and coated with dust.

“Oh, it only took finding out where you were,” the big Troll replied cheerfully. His strange, flat face glanced at her briefly. “You can thank the Elf girl for that. She had the magic, some blue gems that showed an image of you hiding in the tunnel of the Gathering Place.”

The Elfstones, Pen thought. He had forgotten them entirely. But of course she can use them now, when there is no longer any reason to guard against revealing our presence.

“I remembered Cinnaminson and went back for her,” Pen said. “But then after I found her, I got lost.”

“Easy enough to do in our streets, young Penderrin. They were constructed to get you lost, if you weren’t one of us. No need to say anything more about it. You’re safe now, and that’s what matters.”

He released the locks on a concealed door and pulled it open to admit them to the safehold. Inside, it was controlled chaos of the same sort that Pen had experienced in the village on the approach of the Druid warships. Trolls bustled in all directions, each with a seemingly different task to accomplish. The chamber was huge, a monstrous cavern fully fifty feet high and more than a hundred across. Dozens of tunnels led away to places the boy could not see for the twists and turns in the corridors. But the openings to the left of where they stood formed a series of fortified redoubts in the cliff wall above Taupo Rough. Sunlight slanted through these overlooks in bright streamers, chasing back the shadows. Smaller cracks and crevices in the stone of the cliff wall admitted additional light. The combination of sunlit openings gave the chamber a peculiarly dappled look, but one that allowed the inhabitants to see clearly.