The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

Then Traunt Rowan walked over and picked it up. “He might have need of it, Pyson. I’ll carry it up for him. Go on, Pen.”


Pen exhaled sharply and began to climb, taking care to favor his supposedly injured leg as he went. He did not look down at the Druids. He did not slow until he was aboard the airship, when he turned to wait for them. They were aboard quickly, dark faces shadowed and unreadable in the faint diffusion of the now distant firelight. Below, the Gnome Hunters were moving to follow, all but those who ringed the prisoners.

Traunt Rowan moved over to Pen and handed him back his staff. “You wouldn’t consider trying to use this as a weapon, would you?” he asked with an edgy smile.

Pen shook his head.

“Good. Now let’s go below and get you settled in.”

Instantly, Pen moved over to the railing, away from everyone. “Not until I see that my friends are going to be all right,” he said. “I want to watch what happens next.”

Pyson Wence’s Gnomic features were dark with anger, but Traunt Rowan merely shrugged. “Stay where you are then.”

He turned to Wence and nodded, and the latter issued orders to the Hunters who crewed the airships. The Hunters began scurrying about the decks and up the rigging, preparing the three ships to sail. With a last, dark look at Pen, Pyson Wence moved into the pilot box to stand next to the Athabasca’s Captain, his face turned away from the boy.

Now only the few Gnomes guarding Tagwen and the Trolls remained, and one by one, weapons held at the ready, eyes fixed on the prisoners, they began to drift back toward the airships as well. Pen’s companions sat quietly and watched their captors withdraw, making no attempt to stop them. Atalan was staring up at Pen, a strange look on his fierce face, one that suggested he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Tagwen was whispering to Kermadec, his head bent close to that of the Troll, their faces dark and intense.

Pen scanned the grounds at the edges of the firelight, where the walls caught the last of the flickering yellow glow, where the shadows encroached from the woods beyond. No sign of Khyber. But she had to be there. She had to be watching.

Then the Athabasca was lifting away, the other two airships following close behind, and the ruins of Stridegate were shrinking into the darkness. His former companions came to their feet and stood close together, looking after him. Quickly, their faces turned small and indistinct, and then disappeared. The ruins faded, as well, until all that remained was the tiny dot of the fire’s heart.

When that disappeared and the island of the tanequil was nothing more than a dark lump silhouetted by starlight against the horizon, Traunt Rowan appeared at his side to take him below.


On the deck of the ship flying to starboard, Khyber Elessedil sat quietly in the concealing shadow of the aft port rail sling, watching the Athabasca. Pen had gone down the main hatchway and was no longer in view. The ruins of Stridegate had disappeared into the distance, and her companions with them. The glow of the fire had faded, and the position of the stars told her they were flying south along the edge of the Klu toward the Upper Anar, the vast sprawl of the Inkrim a dark lake below.

There was nothing she could do but wait.

When she was twelve, she had run away for the third time. On that occasion, intent on escaping her family and their dictatorial ways, she had stowed away aboard an airship flying to Callahorn. It wasn’t that she didn’t love them. It was that she didn’t love what they had planned for her. Her brother and her father before him had very definite ideas about the ways in which an Elessedil Princess should conduct herself, and Khyber had trouble even seeing herself as a Princess. Her station in life was an accident of birth, and she could never quite bring herself to accept it as her due. She was always more comfortable with being someone and something else. Her family didn’t like that. Her family let her know that rebelliousness would not be tolerated.