The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

When Traunt Rowan threw her over his shoulder and carried her from the room, Khyber Elessedil was not unconscious. She was pretending to be, as she had pretended to be for most of the time after Shadea had thrown her down. But she was awake.

It was a trick of elemental magic she had learned from Ahren. If she was suffering too much pain, whatever the reason, she could distance herself from her anguish. She could quite literally go outside her body; she could disconnect her emotional self from her physical self. She couldn’t do it for long, only a couple of minutes at a time. When the ruse worked, it gave her the appearance of being unconscious or asleep. In the past, the attempt was sometimes unsuccessful because her concentration failed. She had good reason not to let it fail here—the pain Shadea was inflicting on her was excruciating.

Once she appeared unconscious and Shadea lost interest in her, she slipped back inside her pain-racked body, hoping the Druids were preoccupied enough that they would let her be. She listened to what they had to say, though. She listened carefully. Some of it was inaudible to her, the words whispered too softly and from too far away to be heard clearly. But she heard enough to get the gist of what they were deciding, especially when it came to the part about disposing of her.

All she could think about after that was, They’re going to kill me.

She had to do something to save herself—anything—but she had no idea what that might be. She was without weapons, including the Elfstones, and weak with pain and fear. The ordeal at Shadea’s hands, while not breaking her, had left parts of her physically and emotionally drained. She had thought herself tougher than she was; Shadea had been right about that. It was a sobering experience to discover how badly mistaken she had been.

She lay limp over Traunt Rowan’s shoulder, her eyes closed, but her mind racing. She heard the tall Druid’s breathing as he carried her. She heard the sound of Pyson Wence walking next to them, his gait just different enough from his companion’s to be distinctive. There were only the two of them; it was probably the best numerical odds she would get. But she knew that favorable odds alone weren’t going to be enough to save her.

At that point, she didn’t know what was going to be enough, and she was trying hard not to panic.

She had been confined to a cell in the depths of the Keep since they had broken into the chambers of the Ard Rhys two days earlier and overpowered her. Penderrin was gone into the Forbidding by then, swept away by the magic of the darkwand, and when they discovered she was alone, they tried to make her tell them where he was. She had feigned ignorance, as if his disappearance were as confusing to her as it was to them. She had suggested every false possibility she could think of, and they had seemed all too willing to accept that somewhere in the web of her deceptive explanations they would find the truth.

They had not tortured her or mistreated her in any way to discover if she lied, which had surprised her. She had come to understand why; they had saved her for Shadea a’Ru. They had saved her for someone who understood how to employ torture in the most effective way. Still racked with pain, still humiliated by her collapse, she knew that she would have told the sorceress anything.

In fact, she had told her more than enough. Shadea was now aware that Pen was inside the Forbidding, searching for the Ard Rhys. She knew that if the boy found his aunt, they would return with the aid of the darkwand to the chambers of the Ard Rhys. Shadea would be waiting for them. The damage to the chamber entry in the battle of two days earlier had been repaired. It would be an easy matter to seal off the room. Once that was done, Shadea could implement a triagenel.

Even an apprentice Druid like Khyber understood what a triagenel was. Every practitioner of magic in the Four Lands aspired to a level of excellence that would allow his or her participation in the creation of such a wonder. Triagenels were the most difficult form of magic to employ because they required the talents of not one, but three practitioners of equally advanced abilities. Druids were the only ones she had ever heard of who even thought about trying to create triagenels. Even then, under current Druid law, it could not be done without the authorization and supervision of the Ard Rhys. Few attempts at a triagenel had been made in her lifetime, and she did not know the details of any of them. Most such attempts were little more than forms of practice to give credence to the belief that a Druid had advanced far enough in his or her studies to combine talents with others with similar aspirations. A successful attempt was proof of mastery of a certain level of magic.