The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

“In the trees. Hiding. Watching. More than one.”


He exhaled slowly. “I sensed them, but I didn’t know what they were. How long have they been there?”

“Since we started out. They must have found us during the night.” She brushed back loose strands of her honey-colored hair. “I thought they were the spirits of the air at first, the ones from last night. But these are creatures of flesh and blood.” She paused. “They track us.”

Pen took her hand and squeezed it. His eyes swept the trees. “Wait here. I’ll tell Kermadec.”

But Kermadec already knew. “Urdas,” he advised, bending close to Pen to whisper the word. “Not many of them, but enough to keep us in sight without showing themselves. They’re working in relays, small groups of them, each leapfrogging ahead of the others in turn to pick us up as we come past, bracketing us so that we don’t get away.”

Pen felt his heart quicken. “What do they want?”

The Maturen glanced over. His barklike features made him seem one with the trees. “They want to know what we are doing here. They will stay with us until they are sure.”

Pen dropped back again, falling into step with Cinnaminson. “He says he knows about them. He says they are just watching us.”

The Rover girl smiled. “Someone is watching them, too.” Her blind eyes shifted to find his. “The spirits of the air didn’t leave, after all. They are still out there.”

The morning passed away, and the clouds massed and darkened overhead. A storm was blowing in, and it would bring a heavy rain. Kermadec began to look for shelter, but there were no caves or rocky overhangs to keep them dry. Instead, they crawled beneath the protective boughs of a huge fir, hunkering down when the cloudburst struck, staying put until the rains had slowed to a drizzle, then crawling out again, dampened and chilled, to begin walking once more.

That night, they camped in the lee of a lightning-split hardwood that had once risen hundreds of feet into the air and was now as dead as old cornstalks. Its leaves were gone and its limbs blackened and bare, charred bones on a skeleton. All around its shattered trunk, the ground was burned and denuded as well, and their fire cast its broken giant’s shadow into the enfolding darkness. Kermadec doubled the watch, and Pen hardly slept at all. Overhead, clouds scudded across the stars and bats darted through the night like wraiths.

The third day dawned gray and damp, but the rains did not return. The company set out at daybreak, the Urdas tracking it from somewhere in the trees where Pen still could not see them, even if Kermadec could. Pen was tired and irritable from a restless night, and he was unnerved by the constant, unseen presence. His spirits lifted only marginally when Kermadec assured him that they were getting closer to their destination; seeing would be believing.

By midmorning, the look of the Inkrim had undergone a noticeable change. The trees had become massive and twisted, a forest of ancient behemoths that crowded out everything smaller and left the valley floor barren and stark. The gray light filtering through the clouds was diffused further by the canopy of leaves and branches. The forest was shadowy and gray at every turn, and the air had grown thin and stale. Birdsong and insect buzzing disappeared, and the ground animals faded away. There was a hushed quality to the landscape that reminded the boy of places where only dead things were found. He heard the sound of his own breathing as he walked. He could hear the beating of his heart.

“I don’t like this place anymore,” Cinnaminson whispered to him at one point, and took his hand in her own.

Sometime around midday, Pen saw the Urdas for the first time. They appeared all at once, coming out of the shadows, sliding from behind tree trunks, materializing out of nowhere. Even though he had never seen one before, he knew what they were immediately. They had a primitive, dangerous look to them. Physically, they appeared to be a cross between Trolls and Gnomes. Their bodies were small and wiry like those of the latter, but their skin was thick and barklike and their faces blunt and flat like the former. They were covered in a tangle of wiry hair, their Trollish features flat and expressionless. Short, muscular legs and long arms allowed them to move sideways in crab fashion as they shadowed the company on both sides through the ancient trees.

“Stay together,” Kermadec called back over his shoulder. “Don’t provoke them. They’re only watching.”

But more were appearing at every turn, gathering at the fringes of the hazy light in large clusters. Gradually, they began to surround the company. For the first time, Pen noticed the nature of the weapons they carried, a mix of short spears and odd-shaped flat objects that were hooked and sharpened on their ends and appeared to be designed for throwing.