The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

“Are there lots of dragons here in the Dragon Line?” she pressed. “Big ones, as well as the Drachas?”


“You are a stranger, aren’t you?” he said. He was growing bolder again, more confident. He puffed out his narrow chest. “Of course there are big ones. Wyverns and Frost Dragons. Fire Drakes, too, though not so many of those. Some live right down here in the forests, like the Drachas. You have to watch out for them all the time. That’s how I happened to be up in that—”

He stopped himself quickly, looking away into the trees. “Well, how I was, uh … how I was …”

“That Dracha I encountered was hunting you, wasn’t it?” she guessed. She leaned close. “Don’t lie to me, little rodent.”

The Ulk Bog sneered at her. “It wasn’t my fault it found you instead of me. I didn’t do anything to make it come after you. I was just trying to hide in the trees, because Drachas don’t climb and they can’t fly close in where there are branches that might get in the way of their wings, so I …”

She held out her hand beseechingly and stopped him midsentence. She doubted he was telling the truth, but then again she wasn’t sure he would recognize the truth if it bit him on the nose. There wasn’t much about Ulk Bogs in the Druid Histories, but if they were all like this one, they were pretty good at shifting blame.

“Never mind,” she told him. “It doesn’t matter.”

She cast about for help from any quarter, but there was none to be found. She was alone and stuck with this fast-talking creature unless she set him free, which she wasn’t ready to do quite yet. She still might learn something from him if she gave herself a chance. Even by just letting him rattle on, she might stumble over something that would help.

“Tell me your name,” she said.

He drew himself up. “Weka Dart. What’s yours?”

“Grianne.” She abandoned the Ard Rhys designation because it clearly meant nothing to him. “Tell me more about the Dragon Line. Have there ever been any buildings up here on this bluff? A castle, perhaps?”

He laughed. “Dragons don’t need buildings! They rule this territory of the Jarka Ruus. Everything else stays away. If you want buildings, you need to go down onto the plains where the Straken live. Your kind.”

My kind. She remembered suddenly that they were speaking in the Elven tongue—an ancient dialect, but Elven nevertheless, a Faerie language. The Elves were the original people, the only true Faerie Race to survive the Great Wars. There had been Elves forever in the world. If this was the past, even if she was all the way back to the time of the Word, there would be Elves.

“Tell me, Weka Dart,” she said. “Are there Elves close by? Where do the Elves live?”

The look he gave her was filled with disdain. “Are you stupid? There are no Elves here! Elves are forbidden! We cast them out, back when we made this world! Jarka Ruus ba’enthal corpa u’pahs!”

She had no idea what he was saying, but she got the message anyway. “But there must be Elves. You are speaking in the Elven tongue.”

He became enraged. “I speak Ulk Bog, my tongue, my language, and it does not sound anything at all like Elfish! I will hurt you if you say that again, whether you are Straken or not! No one can call an Ulk Bog an Elf! We are the free peoples, the world of the ca’rel orren pu’u! Jarka Ruus!”

For a moment she was afraid he was going to attack her; his face was twisted in fury, and his breathing had turned quick and dangerous. She could not imagine why he was reacting that way. If he knew about the Elves, this must be the Old World, and the Elves had always been a part of it, not separate from it, not until after the war when the bad Faerie creatures had been exiled to—

She went still, realization flooding through her, so dark it threatened to bury her in an avalanche of horror. No, she must be mistaken, she thought. But she remembered now the origin of the words Jarka Ruus. She had never heard them spoken; she had read them. They were words from the Druid Histories—Elven words, whether Weka Dart liked it or not. They meant banished peoples, and they had been used first in a time before the Four Lands existed, long ago in the beginning, when the war fought between good and evil Faerie creatures reached its climax.

But she had to be certain. “Ulk Bog,” she said to him. “You say there are dragons. Are there giants, as well? Are there demonspawn and goblins? Are there warlocks and witches and ogres?”

He nodded at once. “Of course.”

She took a deep breath. “Are there Furies?”

He grinned at her with unsettling purpose. “Everywhere.”

She was frozen by that single word. Everywhere. Furies. No Elves, only monsters that preyed on each other and those more helpless. The Ellcrys had shut them all away thousands of years ago in a place that no human had ever gone into.

Until now.

She exhaled slowly. She was inside the Forbidding.





ELEVEN