The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

“For insisting that he was making a mistake in attacking the Federation, in misreading the signs of what was clearly a trap, but particularly for insisting that my sons should go with him. For recognizing that Kiris and Wencling were pawns in his stupid, stupid game, pieces to be moved about on a board by a father who was mostly concerned that they grow to be the same sort of man he was, even when it was clear to everyone else that this was a bad idea, that they would never be even remotely like he was.”


She lifted a finger and pointed it at him. “But none of that changes the fact that my sons are dead because of you. You failed them because you failed to out-think Kellen, something that should never have happened. You knew his propensity for rash behavior, for ill-considered action. You knew what he was like. Yet you reacted to the moment without thinking it through. You spoke your mind when you should have known better, and you got yourself dismissed from his service. No, don’t say anything! Nothing you say will help now. You were given responsibility for my sons! You let them die, Pied! You put them in a position from which they could not extricate themselves and then you put yourself in a position where you couldn’t help them. It would have been better for you if you had died with them. At least then I might be able to forgive you. That can never happen now. I can never forgive you for this. Never!”

He stood flushed and humiliated before her, the weight of the responsibility she was attributing to him immense and crushing and somehow inescapable. He knew he had done the best he could, but she made him feel as if that was not enough.

“So now you are the hero of the Elven army and my sons are dead,” she continued softly. “You have pretended to be Captain of the Home Guard when in truth you were relieved of your command days ago. Shame on you.”

He took a deep breath. “I did what I thought I needed to do to save the army. I didn’t choose to pretend at what I was; it was thrust upon me by circumstance and need. I don’t ask you to forgive me, only to try to understand.” He paused. “I will resign my position at once and let another take my place.”

“Oh, I think not!” she snapped at him. “Resign so that you can have the entire Elven army begging for your return? Resign, so that you can escape yet another obligation and another duty?”

He stared at her in shock. “It was not my intention—”

“Be quiet!” she snapped. He flinched at the force of her words. She froze him with her glare, with the bitterness reflected in her eyes. “Don’t say another word unless I ask for it. Not one word.”

His center went so cold that it might have been midwinter on the Prekkendorran instead of summer. He held her gaze and waited.

“You have won the hearts of my Elven Hunters,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “You have won them and now you shall see to it that you do not break them as you have broken mine. Vaden Wick tells me that a counterattack is planned for tonight. What is your part in it?”

“I will go into the Federation camp after darkness with a handful of my Home Guard and destroy the airship and its weapon.”

Now it was her turn to stare. “Do you really think you can do this?”

He shook his head wearily. “I will do it or die trying.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “I will take that as a promise and hold you to it. But hear me. If you survive this, if you manage somehow to come back alive, if you are successful in your efforts to put an end to the threat of this weapon that killed my sons, I will put this entire business behind me. Neither of us will speak of it again. But your service to the throne is finished. You will resign your position as Captain of the Home Guard immediately. You may give any reason you wish so long as my name is not mentioned. You will pack your belongings and leave Arborlon. You may go anywhere within the Westland so long as I never have to see you again. Is that clear?”

He thought of their past, a wisp of a memory turned to frost in the coldness of her voice. “It is.”

She held herself very still. “It could have been different for us, Pied. If you had saved my sons as you had sworn you would do, it could have been different.”

He said nothing in response. There was nothing to say. She might even believe that what she said was true. But he didn’t.

She studied his face a moment longer, then held out her hand for him to kiss, turned, and went back through the tent flap. He stared after her, trying to decide how much of what had just happened was deserved. In the end, he guessed, it didn’t really matter.


Two hours later, he stood at the edge of the Free-born airfield looking out over the broad sweep of the Prekkendorran to where the fires of the Federation army were being lit against the growing darkness. Dusk had settled in, deep and gloomy on a night that promised clouds and mist. It was the weather Pied had hoped for, an unexpected gift. He was dressed in black, and Drumundoon was standing in front of him applying lampblack to his face.

“She has no right to blame you,” his young aide repeated yet again, scowling.

Pied held himself still as Drum’s fingers worked across his face. “She has every right.”

“She should be grateful you lived. If you hadn’t, she might have lost the whole of her army.”