The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

He smacked his lips. “Oh, that’s for me to know. I have plans for myself. I may tell you when I get to know you better.”


“Won’t you be missed?” She had put up with this Ulk Bog’s deceptions long enough and had decided to do something about it. He was relaxed and unsuspecting. It was a good time to teach him a lesson. She began to hum softly, bringing up the magic of the wishsong and layering it about him. “Parents? Brothers and sisters?”

He shrugged, yawned. “No family. No friends, either, for that matter. Not ones I care about leaving behind. Ulk Bogs are a stupid lot, most of them. Can’t see beyond their ground roots and mushrooms.”

“Roots can be tender and mushrooms sweet,” she ventured, the magic beginning to insinuate itself into his thinking. “You were quick enough to bring them to me. Why don’t you eat them?”

He laughed foolishly, the magic taking hold. He had no defense against it. A Druid would have brushed her efforts aside effortlessly, but Weka Dart didn’t even know what she was doing to him. “I could tell you were the sort that ate roots and berries. Not me. I need meat, fresh meat. Keeps me strong. Makes me dangerous!”

She had a strong hold over him now, so she began to press harder. “Not eating roots was what got you in trouble in the first place, wasn’t it?” she asked, guessing at the truth, reading it in his poor attempt at lying. “What sort of fresh meat did you eat? It must have been something that was forbidden to Ulk Bogs.”

“More foolishness!” he snapped defensively. “What difference did it make? They weren’t even ours! They were tender, and I only ate a few! There were plenty more where those came from! But you would have thought I had eaten my own children!”

“Instead of someone else’s?”

“Another tribe’s offspring, useless to everyone! Weren’t even missed for a long time!”

“But when they were missed? …”

“All my fault, not even a chance at an explanation!”

“So they drove you out.”

“I left before they could. It was clear what they intended for me, and I saw no reason to endure it. Stupid burrow people! Rodents! They are food for bigger things themselves, little more than rats to dragons and ogres and such! If you don’t want to be prey, you have to be predator! I told them this, I told them! What good did it do? What reward did I get? A promise of punishment if I stayed and no more babies to eat. Impossible! I had a taste for them by then. I couldn’t give them up just because the others didn’t feel the same way I did!”

He stopped suddenly and stared at her, wild-eyed. “Why did I tell you that? I didn’t want to tell you that! Not any of it! But I did! How did that happen? What did you do to me?”

“I helped you come to terms with the truth, little man,” she said softly. “I don’t like liars and deceivers. I was one myself, and I know them for what they are. You were perfectly willing for me to believe that you are traveling about to see the world. But the truth is that you are running away, perhaps from other Ulk Bogs searching for you because you ate their babies. You want me to protect you, but you don’t want to tell me why. All this talk about my tricking you has got to do mostly with you tricking me.”

“You used magic on me! You are a Straken, just as I said!”

“I am not a Straken …”

But Weka Dart was having none of it. He was so incensed he didn’t even try to listen to the rest of what she was going to say, leaping to his feet, hissing and spitting like a scorched cat, and baring his teeth at her as if to attack. Then down the tree trunk he skittered, still raging at her, leaping away with a final epithet and disappearing into the dark.

She waited for him to return, unable to believe that he wouldn’t. Staying with her seemed too important for him to allow his pride to stand in the way. But after a while, when he failed to reappear, she gave up listening for him, deciding that she was better off without him in any case. Anything that would eat its own kind, whatever the reason, was not suitable company. If he stayed, she would have to watch him every minute, always wondering when he might turn on her. Let him go off on his own and be done with it.

But in the ensuing silence, she became aware again of how different she felt inside the Forbidding. For as much as that world resembled the one she had come from, it was not the same. Where before she had always been comfortable in the darkness, here she was uneasy. The night had a decidedly different feel. Smells, tastes, and sounds were just strange enough to bother her, to make her think that she must watch her every step. She was convinced she could make her way to that world’s version of the Hadeshorn, if it existed, and attempt a summoning of the shades of the Druids. But was she ready for the things she might meet along the way? It was one thing to face down a Dracha, but another altogether to stand against a pack of Furies. She was powerful in her world, but how powerful was she in the Forbidding?

She stared out into the blackness, not at all certain she wanted to find out the answer.