The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

Knowing she was dead if she didn’t act quickly, she righted herself against the tree trunk and screamed the magic of the wishsong at the beast. Her voice was hoarse and raw from her long sleep, the magic badly managed and scattershot at best, but it was enough. It caught up the Dracha and threw it away as if it were made of straw. The creature hissed and shrieked, enraged at what was being done to it. She saw the fury mirrored in its lidded yellow eyes. She saw it in the twist and snap of its scaly body as it tumbled away into the trees.

Then her voice gave out; she was still too weak to sustain the magic for more than a few seconds. She staggered to her feet, watching as the damaged beast hauled itself upright, dazed and battered, but still dangerous. It turned toward her, eyes glistening from the shadow of its horned brow, the sound of its breathing heavy and thick with anger. Long neck extended, it flicked its tongue out from between rows of dagger-sharp teeth. It stared at her balefully for a long moment, weighing its options. She held her ground, staring back. If she tried to run, it would be on her in seconds. All she could do was to run her bluff and hope it worked.

For a moment, she was certain it wouldn’t. The Dracha was too furious even to think of backing away. It would come for her because that was its nature. It was a dragon and dragons were relentless. It would not back away until one of them was dead.

But then it surprised her. Perhaps it decided she wasn’t worth the trouble after all, that she was too dangerous, that there was easier prey. It spat venom, came toward her a few steps in menacing fashion, then turned away almost disdainfully and disappeared into the trees.

She took a deep breath to steady herself. A Dracha. There hadn’t been Drachas in the world in thousands of years, not since the time of Faerie. There were dragons still, though only a few, hidden in the mountains, in deep caves and bottomless crevices, in places far beyond the reach of men. But no Drachas—no small flying dragons of that sort.

She took a long moment to consider what encountering one meant. Her thinking shifted. There were no dragons in the aftermath of the Great Wars. There were barely any humans. Was she somewhere farther back in time, before the age of humans, when only Faerie creatures existed? That would explain the presence of the Dracha and the absence of Paranor. It would explain why the geography of the world about her looked so familiar, yet was devoid of buildings like Paranor. There would have been no buildings and no people in the first age, when the world was still new, populated by Faerie creatures that required no shelter save that provided by nature.

But had the age of Faerie been so bleak? She hadn’t thought so from her readings. She had not imagined it possible. That world was newly made and fresh. This world was dying.

A rustle in the branches overhead drew her attention. The sound was so slight that she almost missed it. But her encounter with the Dracha had put her on guard, and so she glanced up and caught sight of the creature. She stepped back automatically, tensing in expectation of a second attack, but what she found instead of another Dracha was some sort of monkey. It skittered through the trees on spindly limbs, flashes of its hairy, gnarled form appearing through breaks in the ragged boughs. Having been seen, it was trying frantically to escape.

Impulsively, she yelled at it. She didn’t pause to think about what she was doing, merely acted on an instinctive need to stop whatever it was from getting away. She was successful. Startled by the sound of her voice, the creature lost its grip and fell, tumbling end over end through the limbs to land with an audible grunt not a dozen yards from where she stood.

It lay dazed and twitching as she walked over to it, and she glanced about as she approached in case it had friends in hiding. But no others appeared, and this one seemed barely able to draw breath after its long fall. It lay on its side, panting heavily, face upturned to the sky. She changed her mind about it as she got closer; it wasn’t a monkey, after all. It was hard to say what it was. What it most resembled was a Spider Gnome, but it wasn’t that, either. Whatever it was, it was easily the ugliest creature she had ever seen. It was barely four feet tall. Its body was all out of proportion, with bony protrusions and elongated limbs. Coarse black hair sprouted in thick patches from the top of its head and from its dark, leathery skin through rents in its worn pants and tunic.