The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

“She is too dangerous,” Sen Dunsidan declared, once she was gone. He faced Iridia Eleri in challenge. “Too dangerous for either of us. You would not argue the point, would you?”

She floated across the room into the darkness from which she had come and sat down again, cloaked in shadows. “I wouldn’t worry about Shadea a’Ru, Sen Dunsidan.”

He didn’t care for the way she said it. “Well, I do worry about her, Iridia. If you choose to pretend she isn’t a threat, that is up to you. But I intend to do something about her.”

“I can protect you,” she said.

“Perhaps. But if Shadea is dead, I won’t need your protection.”

There was a long silence. “Killing her won’t be easy,” she said. “And if you fail, she will know who to come looking for. Besides, who will you send to eliminate her? Who can you trust to make certain she is dead?”

He hesitated, unable to answer those questions.

“And we have other concerns at the moment.” Iridia sounded sleepy and bored. “Your airship is nearly ready to fly again. You need to do what I told you. You need to take it into the Westland and attack the Elven home city of Arborlon. You need to convince the Elves they are not safe anywhere so that they will agree to abandon their alliance with the Free-born.”

“If I smash the Free-born army first, I won’t need to worry about persuading the Elves to abandon their alliance. There won’t be anyone left for them to ally themselves with.”

“An ill-advised course of action.” He felt displeasure radiating from her words. “A waste of time and effort. You might smash this army, but they will simply raise another. You think too small, Sen Dunsidan. You must think in larger terms. Winning the war on the Prekkendorran will not happen until you win the war in their homes. Strike at their capital cities, and they will seek your peace quickly enough. Start with Arborlon, then fly on to the others. Soon, all resistance will end.”

Her argument made sense, as it had the first time she had made it, but something about it bothered him. It felt to him as if she was saying one thing, but meaning another—as if she had thought the situation through better than he had and knew something about it he didn’t. Besides, he could not ignore the defeat he had suffered in the Borderlands at the hands of the Elves. His army, so certain of victory after the destruction of the Elven airfleet, was stunned by the abrupt turnabout. He could not ignore what that meant to morale. If he didn’t give the army a fresh reason to believe that the war was ending, it was hard to say what might happen.

“The best approach is still the one I settled on originally, Iridia. We attack the Free-born position on the east plateau of the Prekkendorran, using the airship and her weapon to break their defensive lines. Once they are scattered and the position overrun, the Federation will hold the entire Prekkendorran. Then I will do as you suggest and fly the Dechtera to Arborlon and attack the Elven home city.”

She said nothing. She stared at him from out of the darkness, an all-but-invisible presence, faceless and silent. He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. Finally, he lost patience and rose. “I am going to bed. We can talk about this later. Think about what we can do to eliminate Shadea. I won’t sleep soundly again until she’s disposed of.”

He walked quickly from the room, the weight of Iridia Eleri’s eyes pressing against his exposed back.





EIGHT


A sudden lurch of the airship brought Khyber Elessedil awake, jarring her from sleep with such abruptness that for a moment she did not know where she was. Then her scattered thoughts came together, and she remembered. She was hiding in a locker in a forward storeroom that was filled with yards of light sheaths and coils of radian draws and heavy rigging. Rough voices sounded from somewhere outside the locker and she flinched anew. Gnome guards. She blinked uncertainly, listened as the voices drew nearer and the storeroom door banged open. She caught her breath as the Gnomes rummaged about, conversed in their guttural tongue, then departed once more.

She took a deep, steadying breath, squeezed free of the sail material into which she had wrapped herself, then opened the locker door cautiously and peered out.

Shadows draped the storeroom in heavy layers, the darkness broken by slender bands of moonlight spearing through cracks in the shutters that closed off the storeroom’s solitary window. Reluctant to chance another encounter that might end less favorably, she had been hiding there since she had been discovered and almost caught the previous night. If she was discovered, she knew Pen would have no chance at all.