The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

At her side, Weka Dart laughed aloud. “They’ve found what they were searching for, but not what they expected, Straken Queen! Listen to them! Too bad they weren’t paying better attention to what they were doing! I think maybe they’ve encountered something with teeth sharper than their own!”


She stared at him, and then she remembered. The Asphinx!

Her pursuers had stumbled right into the center of the colony, and the snakes were striking at them. She listened anew to the sounds of the struggle, and the sounds told her everything. “You put my cloak out there in the middle of the snakes!” she exclaimed. “You knew!”

His grin was frightening. “I suspected. They came more quickly than I had thought they would. Your cloak was a lure to draw them away from us. The night is dark and visibility poor. Too bad for them.”

The sounds were dying out, the growls and screams and shrieks turned to whimpers and moans, to gasps that carried even to where she crouched in the trees next to the Ulk Bog. She tried not to listen, but could not help herself. It was destruction of a sort with which she was familiar and from which she could not turn away.

Then everything went still, save for a single lengthy, ragged sob. And then even that was gone.

Weka Dart bent close. “Isn’t the silence beautiful?” he whispered.


When it was light enough to do so, the dawn a faint tinge of pale gray brightness set low against the horizon to the east, they walked back to where the Asphinx colony waited. What Grianne Ohmsford saw left her stunned. Statues filled the flats, sculpted creatures posed in desperate positions of battle and flight. There were demonwolves and Goblins, dozens of each, their bodies and necks twisted, their limbs lifted and crooked, and their mouths open in soundless cries.

In their midst stood Hobstull, his lean body rigid, his narrow face taut, hands closed into fists in recognition of what was happening to him.

All had been turned to stone. Not a one had escaped.

“It happens so quickly when you are bitten repeatedly,” Weka Dart ventured. “No waiting around for the inevitable. No false hope that you might somehow find a cure. You haven’t got more than a minute before it’s over. Better that way.”

He walked to the edge of the field, picked up one end of a thin line, and reeled in Grianne’s cloak, which had been tossed into the center of the killing field. Shaking it out carefully to make certain no snakes had hidden in its folds, he detached the line and handed the cloak back to her. “There, good as ever.”

She took the cloak and stared at him, seeing him in an entirely new light, one that gave her pause.

“I prefer Hobstull as a statue,” he declared, his smile wicked and challenging. “Don’t you?” He dusted off his hands and looked east. “Time to be on our way. The light is good enough for travel. If others are coming, we don’t want to be here to greet them.”

He walked away, and Grianne followed. As she did so, she glanced back a final time, reminded suddenly of her past. The Ilse Witch had used snakes to dispose of her enemies. That had been a long time ago, and she was no longer that person. Or didn’t want to be. But she had felt herself reverting in her battles with the Straken Lord and the Furies. She had felt the magic turning her dark and hard again. It wasn’t so difficult to imagine that, whether she wished it or not, she might be changing into something she had thought safely left behind.

She mulled the possibility as they walked, wondering what she could do to prevent it. It was like trying to hold water in your fingers; you could capture the wetness, but the water itself slipped away. She was that water, and she was running swiftly through the cracks in her determination.

They walked several miles, far enough that she could no longer see the statues and the flats, far enough that she had begun to turn her thoughts again to their destination. She could already see the dark rise of the Dragon Line ahead of them.

Then Weka Dart slowed. “Someone is coming,” he said.

She peered into the distance. At first, she didn’t see anything. The haze and the gloom obscured everything, blending the features of the landscape together. But finally she saw movement. A solitary figure was coming toward them, cloaked and spectral against the still-dark horizon. She tried to make out its features and failed. She could tell only one thing about it.

It was carrying a staff that glowed like fire.





TWENTY-THREE