The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

One last task remained to her, the one she dreaded most. She had no more love for Aphasia Wye than did Terek Molt, but she found him useful in carrying out assignments that others would either refuse or mishandle. She had already seen enough of the latter in the hunting down of Grianne Ohmsford’s family, and the task would get no easier with Ahren Elessedil added to the mix. Terek Molt might protest her decision, but it was a matter of common sense and expediency. One Druid of her inner circle was all she cared to spare for the venture, and one was probably not enough.

As she passed through the towers and hallways of the Keep, by sleeping rooms and meditation chambers, the resting and the restless, her mind focused on the task ahead. She wanted the business over, but not before she had accomplished what was necessary. She had given the matter considerable thought since Terek Molt’s return. It was a mistake—her mistake, unfortunately—to have thought of the Patch Run Ohmsfords as ordinary people. The boy and his parents might not be Druids, but that did not render them commonplace. The magic that was in their blood, and their long history of surviving against impossible odds, made them dangerous. It would require a special effort to overcome both, one that she would not underestimate again.

It would help that she had the services of Aphasia Wye. But something more was needed.

She descended the winding stairways of the Keep into its depths, into the cellars and dungeons that lay far underground in the bedrock, dark places where the Druids seldom ventured. Her destination was known only to her, now that Grianne Ohmsford was gone, a place she had discovered some years ago while shadowing the Ard Rhys in an effort to discover her secrets. She had been good at shadowing even then, having developed the skill in her early years when the uses of magic were first revealing themselves to her. It was dangerous to challenge Grianne Ohmsford’s instincts, but she managed it with the aid of a fine-grained, odorless dust that rendered the other’s tracks visible in a wash of prismatic light. Layering the dust in the dark places she knew the other sometimes went, she would wait for her return before sneaking back down to read the trail. She had gotten lucky once or twice, but never again as lucky as with what she now sought to retrieve.

She entered the deep center of the Keep, the heart of the fortress, down where the earth’s heat lifted out of its churning magma to warm the rooms above. She found it interesting that the Druids would build their home atop a volcanic fissure that might erupt and destroy them one day. But the Druids lived in harmony with the earth’s elements and found strength in what was raw and new. She understood and appreciated that. A proximity to the sharp edge that divided life and death was compelling for her, as well.

The passageways narrowed and darkened further. So far down, there was no need for space or light. She thought that some of the corridors had not been walked in a thousand years, that some of the cells and rooms they fed into had not seen life in thousands more. But she sought nothing of life that day, only of death. She moved in silence, listening for sounds of the spirit creature that lived in the pit beneath the Keep and warded Paranor and its magic. It slept now and would slumber until awakened. So long as the Druids kept occupancy and life, it would lie dormant. She knew the stories of its protective efforts. The stories were legend. They did not frighten her, however. Rather, they intrigued her. One day, she would come down to take a closer look at it. Spirits were something she understood.

She pondered for a moment the circumstances that had led her to that moment. She had no regrets about how she had achieved her position, but she would have preferred that it be otherwise. She wasn’t evil, just practical. She was the right choice to be Ard Rhys, the better person for the title, but that did not mean she was happy with the way she had obtained it. Climbing over the backs of others to get what you wanted was suited more to politicians and to royalty than to students of magic. She would have preferred to face Grianne Ohmsford in combat, but a decision based on the outcome of trial by magic would not have been accepted by the others—neither her allies nor her enemies. Druids, for all their examination and study, were conservative by nature. History had taught them that independence and disobedience led to disaster, so they preferred that matters progress in an orderly fashion.

That couldn’t happen here. Not with the Ilse Witch as Ard Rhys and the fate of the order hanging in the balance. Shadea had understood that from the beginning. Unlike the others, she had chosen to act.

She reached a heavy iron door at the end of a corridor and stopped. Placing her fingers on a set of symbols cut into the metal, she closed her eyes and pressed in deliberate sequence. It had taken her a while to unlock the puzzle, but in the end she had done so. Tumblers clicked and a bolt slid back. The door opened.