The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

She started to reply, then stopped herself. Her face softened, her anger faded, and she nodded slowly. “All right, Pen. Let’s drop the matter. What right do I have to tell you how to behave, anyway? Ask my family how well behaved I’ve been. I haven’t the right to lecture you.”


He sighed wearily, looking out over the bow toward the approaching night. “I know I shouldn’t be doing this. I know I should just stay away from her. I know that.”

Khyber put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “But you can’t and you won’t and I don’t have the right to ask you to do so. I wouldn’t want you telling me what to do if our positions were reversed. But I worry, anyway. I don’t want you disappearing over the side of the ship one night just because you smiled at this girl once too often. Everything we’re doing depends on you. We can’t afford to lose you. Just keep that in mind when you’re thinking about how pretty she looks.”

He exhaled sharply. “You don’t have to worry about that. I can’t stop thinking about it. That’s part of the reason I like being with her. She helps me forget for a little while.”

They didn’t say anything for a long time as they looked out at the skyline, listened to the cries of the seabirds and the hum of the ship’s rigging. The western sky had gone shadowed and gray with the setting of the sun, and the first star had appeared in the north.

“Just be careful,” Khyber said finally.

He nodded, but did not answer.


The fourth day of travel dawned gray and sullen with storm clouds layered all across the northwest horizon, roiling and windswept as they bore down on the Streleheim. Pen came on deck at first light to find Gar Hatch and both Rover crewmen hard at work taking down the sails, tightening the rigging, and lashing in place or carrying below everything that might be lost in the blow. Cinnaminson was standing in the pilot box, her face lifted as if to taste the raindrops that had begun to fall.

He thought at first to go to her, then decided against it. There was no reason to do so, and it would call needless attention to his infatuation. Instead, familiar enough with what was needed to be able to help, he went to help the crewmen secure the vessel. They glanced at him doubtfully as he joined them in their work, but said nothing to discourage it. Behind him, Ahren and Khyber appeared, as well, standing in the hatchway, stopped by a wind that had begun to howl through the rigging like a banshee.

“Get below!” Gar Hatch bellowed at them. His gaze shifted to Pen. “Penderrin! Take Cinnaminson down with them, then come back on deck! We need your strong back and skilled hands, lad! This is a heavy blow we’re facing down!”

Pen dropped what he was doing and raced at once to the pilot’s box, slipping precariously on decking slick with dampness. He heard Cinnaminson shouting at him as he reached her, but her words were lost in the shrieks and howls of the wind. Shouting back that everything would be all right, he took her arm and steered her out of the pilot box and over to the hatchway, bending his head against the sudden gusts that swept into him. Again, she tried to say something, but he couldn’t make it out. Ahren was waiting to receive her, and Pen turned back at once to help the beleaguered Rovers.

“Safety lines!” Gar Hatch roared from the pilot box, where he had taken over the controls.

Pen found one coiled about a clasp on the mainmast and snapped the harness in place around his waist. The Skatelow was dropping swiftly toward the plains as Gar Hatch sought shelter. The Rover Captain had to set her down or she would be knocked out of the sky. But finding a place that would offer protection from the wind and rain was not so easy when it was impossible to see clearly for more than a dozen yards.

The sails were down by then, so the boy hurried forward to secure the anchor ropes and hatch covers. Rain began to fall in sheets, a deluge that soaked Pen in only seconds. He had not worn his weather cloak on deck, and his pants and tunic offered no protection at all. He ignored the drenching, blinking away the torrent of water that spilled out of his hair and into his eyes, fighting to reach his objective. Still descending toward the plains, a stricken bird in search of a roost, the airship was shaking from the force of the wind.