The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

If Cinnaminson were there, she might be able to offer a different perspective. In her blindness, sometimes she saw things more clearly than he did. He still didn’t know why she had been ordered to leave him alone even though the aeriads had been so specific about her coming with him. Frustration and irritation warred with each other as he thought about it.

Suddenly, he was just tired. He didn’t want to think anymore. He didn’t want to do anything but rest. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had slept.

He stretched out on the ground under the limbs of the ancient tree and closed his eyes. He needed only a few minutes, just long enough to clear his thinking, and then he would go back to work.

Overhead, the tanequil’s branches formed a silvery green canopy in the moonlight, its strange webbing of orange lines shimmering softly. He had the distinct impression that time was slowing down, that his own breathing had become the measure of its passing. His tension and frustration drained out of him until nothing remained but the leaden ache of his body.

He closed his eyes and slept.


As he slept, he dreamed. His dream was of home and his parents. He was back in Patch Run, and his mother was telling him that magic wasn’t important, that in some ways it was a burden. His father stood close by, using the wishsong to bring the buds of flowers into bloom. All around them, the sky was green and damp, and the air smelled of rain-soaked earth and leaves. Somewhere distant, an airship flew in silhouette against the sky, and he wished he were on it, safely aloft, safely away.

The scene changed, and he was hiding in a fortress, deep within its walls, down where only torchlight could penetrate the shadows and darkness. He crouched behind a wall, listening to sounds that came from the other side. He knew what was happening behind those walls, but he couldn’t bring himself to look. His aunt, the Ard Rhys, was a prisoner of creatures so terrible that even to look at them was death. They were doing things to her best left to the imagination. Those things were meant to change her, to alter her mind, to make her something she didn’t want to be. She was calling his name, begging him to help her, to save her from what was happening. Her cries were desperate, unbearable, filled with pain. She was all alone in that dark place, and he was the only one who could bring her back into the light.

But he couldn’t move.

He could only sit there, listening …


He came awake again, eyes opening to a sunrise brightening through the heavy canopy of the tanequil in a flush of pink light. He stared at the limbs and the sky and the light, fighting back tears and a sense of desperation that threatened to overwhelm him. He lay without moving, waiting for both to pass, waiting to regain control of his emotions, to breathe easily again.

Something stroked the skin of his arms, soft and feathery. Little fingers were touching him, fairy hands or insect legs. They moved along the backs of his hands and wrists. But their movement was circular, a stroking that suggested an attempt to soothe or ease. He grew calm. His tears dried and his heartbeat slowed. He took deep, steadying breaths.

Without moving his hands or wrists, he raised himself carefully on his elbows.

Tiny roots sprouted from the ground all around him, little nests of them, some so slender they matched the hairs on his arm. They formed a bed, poking from the earth, weaving and touching, twisting and stroking. They were everywhere, though he felt them only where his skin was exposed. In front of him, the tanequil’s limbs were swaying gently and its leaves shivering in time to the movement of the bed of roots that cradled him. He watched their undulation, watched the swaying of the tree, fascinated, mesmerized.

He lay back again and closed his eyes. The touching continued, and he lost himself in its hypnotic repetition. He reached out to it with his senses, embraced it, and made it a part of himself.

Then, deep within his consciousness, down where his heart beat and his life pulsed, he heard a deep, slow whisper, and even though it came from within himself, the voice wasn’t his.

–Penderrin–





TWENTY-FOUR


A single word spoken. His name.

–Penderrin–

Only it wasn’t spoken in the way that humans spoke. It didn’t come from a mouth or even from an independent source. It came from the stroking of the tree roots against his skin, his magic extracting from that touch a communication meant solely for him.

–Penderrin–

The tanequil was speaking to him. He had been wrong about how communication with the tree would happen. It wasn’t up to him to initiate contact; it was only up to him to be open to it. The tree would speak to him when it chose to. Trying to reach the tanequil on his terms was not going to work.