The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

Then the magic simply faded until no trace of it remained.

Drained of her strength and stunned by her body’s response to the magic’s implacable surge, Grianne Ohmsford sank to her knees. The wishsong had come out of her with more power than she had ever experienced. It was as if she had been storing it away for weeks on end, had accumulated and hoarded it, waiting for just that moment to set it free. The wishsong had been put to the test countless times over the years, but she had never seen it respond that way.

What had happened to make it do so?

Weka Dart was standing before her, wizened face bright with unrestrained exultation and wild-eyed glee. Holding out the torch in a kind of salute, he bent his head in crude submission.

“Straken Queen,” he whispered, the awe in his voice unmistakable. “Yours is the greatest power. Yours is the supreme magic. I bow to you. I salute you. You have no equal.”

She closed her eyes against what she was feeling and made no response. She did not pretend to know if the extent of her power was as vast as it appeared. But she knew without question that it was strong enough to have revealed their presence to the Straken Lord, and that he would be there quickly enough to test it for himself.





ELEVEN


When the rune-carved length of the darkwand began to glow, Pen could sense a shift in place and time almost immediately. It was an odd feeling, a suggestion of movement that felt like a small tremor in the earth coupled with a subtle progression of light toward dark. He knew immediately that the magic was in play and the darkwand was responding to his silent plea for help. There was nothing earthshaking about it, nothing overtly dramatic or astounding, just a hint of things being altered.

He had time to glance once at Khyber, who faced the opening where the doors to the Ard Rhys’s sleeping chamber had stood before she collapsed them, her body rigid with concentration, her arms lifted and her fingers extended to meet whatever challenge might appear. He regretted abandoning her to so many enemies—hated himself for it, after everything she had done for him—but there was no time or way to act on it. She had accepted the consequences of her fate by agreeing to bring him there, knowing what must happen. What he could do best for her was what he could do best for them both: cross over into the Forbidding, find the Ard Rhys, and bring her back into the Four Lands.

It happened quickly after that. The runes caught fire beneath his fingers and the staff turned bright with their glow. Then the glow was all around him, enveloping him, shutting him away from his surroundings. The room and Khyber disappeared. He closed his eyes, hands tightening on the staff, praying that he would be strong enough to do what was needed.

A giant fist clutched his body, and all the air disappeared from his lungs. He gasped in response, trying to breathe, fighting to keep from choking.

Then he was standing in a twilit clearing of wintry grasses and barren earth surrounded by sparse woods and a deeply clouded sky. Paranor was gone. The world of the Four Lands was gone. Nothing he was looking at reminded him of home. Except, perhaps, for the bleaker places he had visited, like the Slags or the Klu. He stared blankly for a moment, making the comparisons, measuring the differences in his head, looking slowly about as he did so.

What struck him first was how dark things were. It didn’t seem to be nightfall, but the sun was nowhere to be seen, the brightness of the overcast sky like a pale reflection off clouded waters. The trees and grasses were washed of color, their greens muted and dulled. He peered into the distance. There wasn’t much to see, the woods fading into shifting walls of mist; the sky and earth coming together miles away in a grayish haze; the mountains stark and barren; the woods skeletal and empty looking. He could not imagine what lived there. He had the feeling that whatever did spent most of the time hunkered down and watchful.

He had a feeling that here you were either pursuer or pursued, hunter or prey.

I hate this world already, he thought.