The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

Shades, he thought. He exhaled sharply. “Come to gloat?”


She lifted her head slightly. “I am your personal Druid adviser, Sen Dunsidan. It is not my place to gloat. It is my place to advise. I have come to do so tonight. My sense of things suggests that you need me to do so.”

The coach lurched forward, the team of horses turning it back toward the main compound and his tent. He rubbed at his tired eyes, wishing she would simply disappear. “What sort of advice would you offer, Iridia?”

“You have lost your airship and your weapon because you wasted time on a target of no consequence,” she said quietly. “Now you will replace them with a new weapon and a new ship. Perhaps you should take this opportunity to reconsider your strategy for winning the war on the Prekkendorran.”

He studied her without speaking for a moment. Odd, how used to her strangeness he had gotten, to the peculiar way she made him feel. It bothered him still that he couldn’t define what it was about her that was so troubling, but he had gotten past his queasiness and now found her simply irksome. “My strategy?”

“It is still your intention to attack the Free-born forces on the Prekkendorran, to decimate them and thereby gain your victory,” she said softly. “You would waste your time on an effort that will prove meaningless. I have told you this before and you have ignored me. I am telling you again, except that this time I must warn you that you ignore me at your peril. You won’t get many more chances at winning this war. If you persist in trying to win it here, on this battlefield, or on any battlefield where soldiers and weapons alone are all that are at stake, the odds will catch up to you.”

He folded his arms across his chest defensively. “You want me to attack Arborlon? Is that it?”

“It is what will end the war, Prime Minister. Attack the home city of the Elves, cause damage to their homes and their institutions, take the lives of their young and old, of their sick and crippled, and you take away their heart. They will cede you your victory. They will cede you anything to get you off their doorstep. Battles fought and won far from home make no lasting impression. Lives lost mean nothing when those lives are taken in a distant place. But kill a few thousand Elves in front of the rest of the population, and it will impact them forever.”

He sighed. “We have had this discussion. I told you I would do as you advised. But I will do so when I am ready, Iridia.”

“Time slips away, Prime Minister.” Her words were a snake’s hiss in the darkness.

“Does it? Perhaps time works differently for you than for me.” He leaned forward. “I don’t know why you are so adamant about attacking Arborlon. Why not attack Tyrsis or Culhaven? Why not go after the Bordermen or the Dwarves? We’ve already smashed the Elves on the battlefield. They are no longer the strongest of the Free-born allies.”

“It is the Elves who serve as inspiration for the others. It is the Elves who promise hope in the worst of situations. In spite of the death of Kellen Elessedil, they came back to defeat you in the hills north. They broke the back of your pursuit force. Why do you think it was the Elves who attacked here tonight? Because they will give their lives willingly when they must. The other Races take note. They look to the Elves to see how they, too, must be.”

“Well, they can look to their ashes when I am through with them. They can sift through those and see how much courage they can find to continue the fight!”

The coach rolled to a stop within the Prime Minister’s encampment. As Sen Dunsidan reached for the latch on the door, Iridia reached out and grasped his wrist, her hand as cold as ice. “Arborlon is the key to everything—”

“Enough!” he shouted at her, snatching back his wrist, repulsed by the feel of her hand on his skin. He rubbed at his wrist furiously. “You forget your place, Iridia! You are my adviser, but that is all you are! Do not presume to try to think for me! Confine your comments to suggestions and let me make the decisions!”

He threw open the door to the carriage and stalked off into the night.