The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

“I can.”


“And then take it to the chamber of the Ard Rhys, where she went into the Forbidding, and figure out how to go in after her?” Khyber gripped his face in both of her hands and squeezed. “This doesn’t sound easy at all. We’re inside Paranor, and every Druid in the Keep is looking for you—or will be soon. We have no friends here, Penderrin. We have no allies, only enemies and potential enemies. We have no magic that counts. I can use the Elfstones once we’re backed into a corner and it doesn’t matter anymore, but by then we’re probably done for.”

“We can do it, Khyber,” he answered softly.

She stared into his eyes. “I think you believe that,” she said. She shook her head and sighed. “In any case, what does it matter? We both know we’re going to try. That is what we have been given to do and all we have left to do unless we try to go back to homes that aren’t even ours anymore.”

His enthusiasm faded suddenly. “My parents! What about my parents? The Druids still have them!”

“As a matter of fact, they don’t. Your parents fled or escaped or whatever, but they’re gone. I got that information from the Druid who brought me down here. So you don’t have to worry about them.”

His smile returned. “Then this is going to work. I know it.”

She wanted to tell him that he was right, that it would. But it was a stretch to accept that all the steps he must take to reach Grianne Ohmsford and return with her would be the right ones and none missteps that would doom them both. He saw things in simple terms, in the terms of a boy who believed everything was still possible and no reach too great. She knew better. She had a stronger sense of the possible than he did, and that made her cautious of embracing rarefied hopes too warmly.

She took her hands away from his shoulders and tucked them into her robes. “Let’s give it a try, Penderrin,” she said.


Outfitted in Druids’ robes, with weapons concealed and hoods pulled over their heads to shadow their faces, they went back up the stone stairwell to the upper corridors of Paranor. If Khyber had read the position of the stars correctly, it would be dawn in a few hours. She felt strongly that they had to complete their efforts by sunrise if they were to have any chance of succeeding. Once it grew light, they would have to hide. By the time it was dark again, everyone in the Keep would know that Pen was free and be looking for him. There would be little chance of succeeding after that.

Not that there was all that much chance of succeeding now.

She tried not to be negative in her thinking, but the odds against them were so enormous that she could not help herself. She reminded herself that the odds had been enormous from the beginning, and yet the two of them were still moving ahead, however slowly, still working their way toward their goal. They had lost good friends and strong allies, but even that hadn’t been enough to stop them. She must take heart from that. She had come a long way from her forbidden Druid studies with her uncle in Emberen—and a longer way still from her rarefied life as an Elessedil Princess in Arborlon. She could barely remember what the latter had been like. Her worries at the prospect of being married off on the whim of her father or brother seemed to belong to another person altogether. She was so far removed from that time, so distanced from it by the events of the past few weeks, that it might never have existed.

And might not ever exist again, given her present situation.

She felt a moment of panic and fought to contain it. Uncle Ahren would calm her if he were there. He would tell her not to think beyond the moment, but to confront what frightened her and bring it under control. She tried doing that, isolating the source of her fear and putting it aside. But it was hard to give it a name or even a shape. Her fear was for something too large and too amorphous to define, an overwhelming sense of smallness and weakness and inexperience in the face of a tidal wave of power and dark intent. She might thrash and struggle. She might try whatever she could to break free of its grip. But in the end, it would have her anyway.

“We need to go farther up,” Pen whispered suddenly, clutching at her arm, breaking the chains of the spell.