The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

“No, Pen,” Cinnaminson whispered suddenly, taking his hands and lifting them away. “These are spirits of the air. Reach up to them.”


He did as she bid, holding up his hands with his fingers spread, as if to catch the feel of the wind. He held them steady, then moved them slowly about, groping for contact.

A moment later, he had it. Something brushed against his fingers ever so softly, just for a moment before it was gone. Then something else grazed his arm. He read purpose in those touchings; he found life. They were as gossamer as spider webbing and as ephemeral as birdsong, but they were old and therefore strong, too. They had lived a long time and seen a great deal. He could tell all that from a single touching, and it shocked him.

But they were gone as quickly as they had come, and they didn’t return. After he told Cinnaminson what he had felt, he tried to reach for them several times more and could not find them.

“They are not ready for us to know them,” the Rover girl said. “We must be patient. They will reveal themselves when they are ready.”

Later, wrapped in his blanket, Pen thought for a long time before he drifted off to sleep about what form that revelation might take.


They set out at daybreak, moving into the heavy woods while the shadows still layered the earth in dark patches and the sunlight was a dim glow east through the canopy of the trees. The air was chilly and smelled of earth grown rich and fecund over time. The night sounds were gone, replaced by morning birdsong and the soft rustle of the wind through the leaves. The woods remained dark and deep, as impenetrable to sight as a midnight pond, looking exactly the same in all directions, the trees and grasses a wall against the outside world.

They traveled in single file, Kermadec leading, Atalan acting as rear guard, and Pen and his companions placed squarely in the center of the line. The boy walked with Cinnaminson, his eyes sweeping the forest, his senses alert. He searched the shadows and treetops for life, and more often than not, he found it. The Inkrim hummed with activity, its life-forms a surprise at every turn. The birds were often strange, colored and plumed in unfamiliar ways. There were small ground animals that reminded him of squirrels and chipmunks, but were something else. This valley and the creatures that lived within it were old, Kermadec had said, and that suggested that their origins could be found in the world that had existed before the Great Wars. Certainly nothing of the world Pen knew seemed to have a place here.

The day wore on and the sun lifted into the mountain sky, but little of its light penetrated to the forest floor. The night shadows remained thick and unbroken, and the air stayed cool and crisp. There was a twilight feel to the valley, a peculiar absence of real daylight and summer warmth. The woods produced their own climate, peculiarly suitable to this valley.

Now and then they would cross a trail. Narrow and poorly defined, the tracks meandered and ended abruptly, and there was little about them to suggest that they might lead to anything. Kermadec followed them when it was convenient to do so, but more often than not kept to the off-trail breaks in the trees that offered easiest passage and clearest vision of their surroundings. He did not seem particularly concerned about what might be hiding from them and spent no noticeable time searching the deep shadows. Perhaps his training and experience reassured him that he would sense any danger lying in wait. Perhaps it was his acceptance of the fact that in a place like this, ancient and secretive, there was only so much you could do to protect yourself.

Though he searched carefully at every turn, Pen did not see anything that day that seemed threatening. While at times the forest appeared dark and menacing, nothing dangerous ever materialized.

On the second day things changed.

They had enjoyed a fire and hot food the night before, the first of both in a week. They had drunk strong-flavored ale from skins the Trolls carried and slept undisturbed through the night. Rested and refreshed, they had set out again at dawn. This day looked very much like the first; the skies were more cloudy and the light paler, but the forests of the Inkrim seemed unchanged. Nevertheless, Pen felt a difference in things almost at once, a subtle distinction that at first lacked a source. It was only after he had been walking a while that he realized that the forest sounds were quieter, the wind softer, and the air warmer. Even these didn’t seem to him to be the source of the problem, and he was plagued by a nagging certainty that he was missing something.

“Does everything seem all right to you?” he asked Cinnaminson finally.

“You sense them, too, don’t you?” she replied at once. She was walking next to him, keeping close.

He stared at her, then glanced around quickly, scanning the forest shadows, the deep mottled black and green of the trunks and grasses, of the limbs and leaves. “Is someone there?”