The High Druid of Shannara Trilogy

Ahren Elessedil’s arms were stretched above his head, as if he sought to grasp something that was just out of reach. The funnel cloud of mist and wind continued to tighten. It caught the outermost flits and engulfed them. One minute they were there, fighting to stay aloft, and the next they were gone. The rest tried to flee, banking their tiny ships in all directions, seeking a means of escape. Some came right at the Skatelow and Ahren Elessedil, but they could not get close enough to strike at either. One by one, they were plucked from the sky by the funnel. One by one, they disappeared until all were gone.

The Druid lowered his arms, the mist dissipated, the winds died, and the whirlwind vanished, as well. Not a flit remained in the sky. Everything was the way it had been before the attack, the air hazy and gray but calm. The Skatelow sailed on, wounded but able to continue. In the distance, a sliver of sunlight broke through the clouds.

Ahren Elessedil walked back over to the pilot box and beckoned to Pen. “Let’s help clear the decks and put away the rail slings,” he said. He glanced at Gar Hatch. “Odd weather we’re having, isn’t it? No one would ever believe such strange things could happen. A man would be crazy even to suggest it.”

Pen smiled inwardly. The Druid knew something about giving warnings, as well. Which was a good thing, he supposed, since now everyone aboard knew what he was.





NINETEEN


Late in the morning of the following day, they arrived at Anatcherae, the inland port on the Lazareen that serviced all traffic passing north along the corridor formed by the Charnal Mountains to the east and the Knife Edge Mountains to the west. They reached their destination more quickly than anticipated because tailwinds filled and sunshine fed the sails and because Gar Hatch had been able to complete repairs to the damaged radian draw before nightfall of the previous day. It was a smooth flight the entire way after their escape from the flits, with no further trouble arising to impede their passage.

Anatcherae was an old city built by a mix of Trolls and Bordermen following the Second War of the Races, when Southlanders were mostly keeping to themselves below Callahorn but trade was flourishing everywhere else. A sprawling, ramshackle outpost in its early days, it grew quickly, the principal port servicing trappers and traders coming out of the Anar, Callahorn, and everywhere the Troll nations made their homes. It had become a major city, though still with the look and feel of a frontier town, its buildings spread out along the southwest shore of the lake, timber and shingle structures that were torn down and replaced as the need arose and without much thought to permanency. Even though the greater part of the populace lived in the city, most did not intend to make Anatcherae their final stop along life’s road and so did not build for the long term.

The Skatelow set down at the waterfront docks, where warehouses and barns loomed like low, squat beasts bent down for a drink at the Lazareen’s dark waters, their mouths open to receive what the lake would deliver. Airships crowded the waterfront, most of them large freighters and warships. Traffic leaving the docks passed down roads flanked by ale houses, pleasure dens, and inns of various descriptions. Shops and homes lay farther inland, away from the bustle and din of the docks, back from the raw edge of seaport life.

Standing on deck while the harbormaster towed the Skatelow to her assigned slip, Pen took a moment to glance over his shoulder in the other direction, back across the lake. The Lazareen was legendary. A broad, slate-gray body of water that seldom changed color in any weather, it was believed to run several thousand feet deep. Rumor had it that in some places it reached all the way to the netherworld and thereby provided the souls of the dead a doorway to the domain of the living. Mountains framed its rugged banks to the east and south, walls of stone that kept those souls contained. Dozens of rivers had their origins in snowmelt glaciers thousands of feet higher up, the confluence of their waters tumbling through canyons and defiles to feed the lake. Cold winds blew down out of snowy heights to mix with the warmer air of the flats and create a swirling mist that clung to the shorelines like gray moss. Pen did not like the Lazareen, he decided. It had the look and feel of the Mist Marsh, a place the boy was all too familiar with and wished never to visit again.

The Skatelow eased up against the dock, and the Rovers set about securing her. When Gar Hatch came over to speak with Ahren, Pen listened in.

“I’ll be needing several days to make repairs before we continue on,” the Rover Captain advised in a gruff voice, hitching up his pants to emphasize that work lay ahead. “Maybe more. Once that’s done, we’ll continue on to where you need to go, and then I’ll be dropping you off and saying good-bye.”

“I don’t think we discussed being dropped, Captain,” the Druid said, frowning. “I think the agreement was that you would wait until we came out again from our search.”

“That was then, this is now. The agreement is changed.” Gar Hatch spit over the side. “Others need a little business done, as well, and rely on me to conduct it for them. I require my ship to do so. I can’t make a living while she sits idle. You don’t pay enough for that. Give me a time and a place, and I’ll come back for you. My Captain’s word on it.”