The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

“Keep going!” Trefen Morys shouted, pointing to the next set of stairs. “Two more floors!”


They did as he directed, rushing ahead heedlessly, trusting that he knew what he was doing. At the top of the third set of stairs, he reached out and grabbed Kermadec’s arm, pointing to a wide set of double doors.

“In there!”

The entire party rushed into a cavernous meeting room filled with chairs and tables stacked all about, the ceiling high and dark with shadows, the room brightened only by a pair of narrow windows on their left.

The young Druid went straight to the windows and released the catch on the nearest. “Go outside,” he told them as they rushed up to him. His breath came in short gasps, and there was blood on one arm. “Follow the ledge to the third set of windows. Inside the room beyond, you will find a door that opens onto a narrow stairway. It leads directly down two flights to the base of the north wall. You will know where your gate is once you get there.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Kermadec asked, realizing what the young Druid had decided.

Trefen Morys shook his head. “We’re of no further use to you, Bellizen and I. We’re not fighters; we’ll just hold you back. Maybe we can do something from up here. Another distraction, perhaps.” He stretched out his hand. “Don’t fail us, Kermadec. Don’t fail our mistress. She isn’t the monster they try to make her seem. She has done much good with the order. We need her back.”

The Maturen gripped his hand tightly. “Get out of this room, Trefen. If they find you somewhere else, they might think you are just another pair of Druids.”

“They’re coming,” Bellizen hissed from where she kept watch at the door.

“Keep safe,” Trefen Morys said. He released the big Troll’s hand and hurried over to stand next to her.

Kermadec climbed through the window without another word, the other Trolls following, and disappeared onto the ledge.


With Rue Meridian and Tagwen keeping watch from just down the darkened passageway, Bek Ohmsford and Khyber Elessedil placed themselves, one on each side of the hidden door, keeping clear of the greenish glow that seeped from the sleeping chamber, staying back from the opening itself. They were going to have to use their magic in entirely new ways. Bek, in particular, was going to test himself as he never had. The wishsong was a powerful magic, and he had never spent much time trying to master it. Now he was going to attempt something that even a practiced user would have thought twice about.

But he had no choice if he wanted to save his sister and his son. “Are you ready?” he asked the Elven girl.

She nodded, and he released the catch that held the door in place. The door swung slowly toward her.

Beyond, the sleeping chamber was bathed in a deep greenish glow. A complex webbing was strung all across the ceiling, thousands of strands of magic carefully joined together, the whole of it secured at the corners and center.

Placing herself to one side, staying carefully out of the magic’s steady glow as it flooded the passageway, Khyber brought out the Elfstones. Cradling them in the palm of her hand, she stared at the triagenel, concentrating on what she wanted revealed. She had never seen a triagenel; she had only heard about them. So it was difficult for her to know exactly what to look for. She relied on the Elfstones to respond to her need, and they did. Within seconds, they flared to life, their blue glow spreading all through the chamber, bathing the triagenel in a new brightness. At perhaps twenty-five or thirty places, the webbing burned faintly crimson, mostly where the strands connected to one another.

“Those red spots are the weaknesses,” Khyber whispered.

Bek took a long moment to study them, and then whispered back, “Good work, Khyber. Now hold the Elfstone magic steady.”

He called up the wishsong in a soft, barely audible hum. Building it slowly, he honed it to a cutting edge, a trick he had learned twenty years earlier from Grianne. When he had the edge sharp enough, he eased it up to the ceiling to where the brightest of the crimson spots could be found and began to cut. He was slow and careful, weakening each strand just a little at a time. Relying on his magic to give him a sense of its strength, he would cut the strand as deeply as he felt he could, and then move on to the next. The process took him a little longer each time, his concentration faltering; his strength was still not back after the injuries suffered in the escape from Paranor two weeks earlier.