The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

He walked down to the cove and did a quick check of Steady Right, tightening the anchor ropes and cinch lines so that if a blow did materialize, nothing would be lost. He glanced out over the Rainbow Lake when he was finished, its vast expanse stretching away until it disappeared into a haze of clouds and twilight, its colors drained away by the approach of heavy weather. On clear days, those fabled rainbows were always visible, a trick of mist and light. On clear days, he could see through those rainbows all the way to the Runne Mountains. Such days gave him the measure of his freedom. He was allowed the run of the lake, his own private backyard, vast and wonderful, but forbidden to go beyond. His invisible tether stretched to its far shores and not a single inch farther.

He wondered sometimes if he would have been given more freedom if he had been born with the wishsong, but he supposed not. His parents weren’t likely to think him any better able to look after himself because he had the use of magic. If anything, they might be even stricter. It was all in the way they saw him. He would be old enough to do the things he couldn’t do now when they decided he was old enough and not before.

But then, how old had his father been when he had sailed aboard the Jerle Shannara? How old, when he had crossed the Blue Divide to the continent of Parkasia? Not much older than Pen, and his adoptive parents, Coran and Liria Leah, had given him permission to go. Admittedly, the circumstances compelling their agreement had been unusual, but the principle regarding a boy’s age and maturity was the same.

Well, that was then and this was now. He knew he couldn’t compare the two. Bek Ohmsford had possessed the magic of the wishsong, and without it he probably wouldn’t have survived the journey. It made Pen want to know how that felt. He would have liked to have the use of the wishsong for maybe a day or two, just to see what it was like. He wondered how it would feel to do the things that his father and aunt could do. Had done. He was curious in spite of himself, a natural reaction to the way things could have been versus the way they were. He just thought it would be interesting to try it out in some way, to put it to some small use. Magic had its attractions, like it or not.

His father talked about it as if possessing it wasn’t all that wonderful, as if it was something of a burden. Easy for his father to say. Easy for anyone who had the use of it to say to someone who didn’t.

Of course, Pen had his own gift, the one that seemed to have come out of nowhere after he was born, the one that allowed him to connect with living things in a way no one else could. Except for humans—he couldn’t do it with them. But with plants and animals, he could. He could always tell what they were feeling or thinking. He could empathize with them. He didn’t even have to work at it. He could just pay attention to what was going on around him and know things others couldn’t.

He could communicate with them, too. Not speak their language exactly, but read and interpret their sounds and movements and respond in a similar way. He could make them understand the connection they shared, even if he clearly wasn’t of their species.

He supposed that could be considered a form of magic, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to designate it as such. It wasn’t very useful. It was all well and good to know from gulls that a storm front was building in the west or from ground squirrels that a nut source was dwindling or from a beech tree that the soil that fed its roots was losing its nutrients. It could be interesting to tell a deer just by the way you held yourself that you meant no harm. But he hadn’t found much point in all that. His parents knew about it, and they told him that it was special and might turn out to be important one day, but he couldn’t see how.

His uncle Redden wanted him to read the seas when they went fishing, when they flew out over the Blue Divide. Big Red wanted to know what the gulls and dolphins were seeing that might tell him where to steer. Pen was glad to oblige, but it made him feel a bit like a hunting dog.

He grinned in spite of himself. There was that image again. A dog. The family dog, a hunting dog. Maybe in his next life, that was what he would be. He didn’t know if he liked the idea or not, but it was amusing to think about.

The wind was whipping across the lake, snapping the line of pennants attached atop the trees bracketing the cove entrance to measure velocity, a clear indication that a storm was indeed approaching. He was just turning away to go inside when he caught sight of something far out on the water. It was nothing more than a spot, but it had appeared all at once, materializing out of the mist. He stopped where he was and stared at it, trying to decide if it was a boat. It took him several minutes to confirm that it was. Not much of a boat, however. Something like a skiff or a punt, little and prone to capsizing.

Why would anyone be out in a boat like that in such weather?