The Last Druid

by Terry Brooks

  He might have blacked out for a moment. He was never sure afterward. But when the moment was finished, so was the protective shield he had thought beyond his reach. He stared at its shimmer against the curtain of rain. He traced its outlines along the edges of the rocks and across the ground in front of him—solid everywhere with no gaps, no signs of loosening, and no indication of any flaws.

  He leaned back against the rocks and tightened his cloak around him. Beyond his shelter, the rain continued. There were no signs of it ceasing and no indication of any breaks in the weather.

  He closed his eyes in exhaustion and went to sleep sitting up.

  * * *

  —

  Far to the south, beyond the lower borders of the Pashanon and nearing the last stretch of country before arriving at Kraal Reach, Weka Dart smiled to himself, pleased he had gotten this far so fast. He had run most of the way, heedless of weather and terrain, of dangers seen and hidden. He had covered the distance in half the time another would, driven by his commitment to see the stricken man he had left behind rescued before one of the larger predators could get to him. His mistress would be pleased that he had come so quickly. She would be proud of his efforts and come at once to this man she had asked him to find and bring back.

  He fought to see through the continuing downpour, every inch of his journey a sodden mist-and-rain-clogged nightmare. He was soaked through by now, but steady movement kept him warm enough and he was energized by his progress. His thoughts of his mistress—of the Straken Queen, Grianne Ohmsford—drove him on. He wondered momentarily if the Druid had been right about her need to leave and return to the world from which she had been snatched. Could he blame her for wanting to be herself again, for wanting to become Grianne Ohmsford once more? As the Ilse Witch, she was no longer physically attractive or completely in control of her emotions. Her unwarranted outbursts and uncontrollable rages were becoming more frequent, and there was no one who hadn’t felt her wrath of late. Himself included.

  Worse, there were rumors of an impending effort to remove her as Straken Queen.

  Permanently.

  Scrunching up his wizened features at the thought of losing her for whatever cause, he ran on.

  * * *

  —

  Drisker Arc was dreaming. He had fallen asleep and had not woken even once in the hours that followed. It was night again by now, and the darkness helped comfort him. The rains still fell, but not with the same intensity as earlier. The heavy weather was passing, with a hint of clearing skies evident to the west. By morning, everything would be as it had been before the storm—if you discounted all the standing water and muddy flats and runoffs. But that was all hours away yet, and the Druid was aware of none of it.

  In his dream, he was seated at a small fire across from Tarsha Kaynin. He had no idea how this had happened—how they had somehow found each other—but he knew she was alive, and that gave him hope. He stared at her raptly, but even though she was talking he could not manage to hear what she was saying. He tried hard to listen, watching the movement of her mouth and noting her gestures, but he remained in a soundless vacuum.

  He tried to speak to her instead. He managed a few ragged words, but she showed no understanding. She just stared at him, and then shrugged, pointing at her ears and shaking her head.

  She couldn’t hear him at all. Suddenly he understood: They could see each other, but not communicate verbally.

  She pointed to him and shrugged, then slowly mouthed something. He could not quite decipher the words, but her gestures made it clearer: Where?

  How to tell her? He pointed at his surroundings, and she gave him a questioning look.

  In response, he mouthed a single word. Forbidding.

  Forbidding! She pointed at him with a horrified look and repeated the word, mouthing it slowly. Forbidding?

  He nodded.

  The look on her face turned desperate. She pointed to him and then made a beckoning gesture. He understood. She was asking if he could escape. Could he manage to get back to her?

  He shook his head. No, he mouthed.

  Pointing at herself, then gesturing to her surroundings, she mouthed two words. He understood the first word—Druids—but was unsure of the second.

  Tavo? He mouthed the name carefully.

  Tavo, she repeated. She made a slicing movement across her throat and began to cry. Then, all at once, she became very excited. Flinc! She made an exaggerated expression and some wild motions. Alive!

  He smiled in spite of himself. The little forest imp was nothing if not resourceful. Dead one minute, alive the next. Drisker was happy for the news. But he was frustrated by the lack of any verbal communication at all with Tarsha. That he could reach out to her and see her and know she was well was a great relief. But not being able to discover her circumstances or plans for Clizia or any of the rest of what was hidden from him was maddening. Mouthing words could accomplish only so much.

  She was trying to tell him something, mouthing and gesturing frantically, but the words were unclear and she never finished. Blackness enfolded her, and she was gone.

  And at the moment she disappeared, Drisker’s dreaming ended abruptly.

  * * *

  —

  Tarsha had been dreaming, too. She was camped on the Streleheim, two days into her journey to Paranor, with the night deep and still about her. She had rolled into her blankets inside her two-man airship and gone to sleep several hours earlier. She had made no conscious effort to reach out to Drisker, not knowing how he had managed to do so while still trapped inside Paranor. She simply fell asleep, and suddenly he was there in her dreams.

  When he first appeared, sitting across a campfire from her, she had been stunned and then elated. She immediately launched into a recitation of everything that had befallen her, but eventually noticed that he didn’t seem to be listening. Desperate for him to hear her and respond, she began shouting her words, pleading with him to answer.

  Until finally it became apparent he couldn’t hear her. Nor, apparently, could she hear him. She mouthed a few words and gestured to clarify what was happening. They exchanged a few gestures and mouthings of words, but for the most part neither could understand the other. And then—just like that—he was gone again, as if he had never been there in the first place. As if he were nothing more than a figment of her imagination. He disappeared just as she was trying to figure out how to ask him about entering Paranor and gaining access to the Druid Histories. She had the drawing from his private books that showed her how to get past the door at the end of the underground tunnel that opened into the Keep, but she had no way of knowing what to do if the Guardian of the Keep surfaced.

  And now he was trapped in the Forbidding—the Forbidding! Was she right in her understanding of what he was trying to tell her? Was there any way Clizia Porse could send him into the Forbidding when he wasn’t a demon? Or was this all just a dream, one conjured by weariness and exhaustion and desperation…

  She came awake then, jarred out of her sleep by something she had forgotten and was finally remembering.

  At the Hadeshorn, where she had gone with Drisker to meet with the Shade of Allanon, something had transpired that she had not understood and her companion had not explained. At Allanon’s urging, Drisker had dipped his fingers into the waters of the Hadeshorn and placed them against her forehead. He had held them there while murmuring words of Ancient Elfish. Then later, when they were departing the Valley of Shale and she had pressed him to tell her what that was all about, he had demurred. He had said she must be patient and he would tell her later.

  But he never had explained. He had instead been snatched away and trapped inside the Forbidding before he could do so.

  Yet as she sat up within her aircraft, the darkened sky pinpricked with stars and the chill of the night air sharp against her skin, she thought she might kno
w anyway. She stared into the distance without seeing, thinking it through—remembering how the touching and the speaking of the words had come about, and remembering his reticence both to complete the act and then to talk about it afterward.

  One of the last exchanges between Drisker and Allanon before he had done the shade’s urging was about her destiny. One or the other had clearly related what she had been told by the seer Parlindru. That she would make three choices, and that one of those choices would change the world. Then the shade had said to Drisker, “Ordain her.”

  For what reason? To ordain her as what?

  As a Druid, she realized. Nothing else made sense. He was marking her as a Druid—or at least as a student of the lore and a Druid-in-training. He was giving her that designation, and he was reluctant to do so.

  She folded in on herself, drawing the blankets closer. Why would he do that? In case something happened to him, so she could carry on? As a precaution? Or as an anointment? But was this what Druids did for one another? She couldn’t know, of course, but it seemed unlikely that every Druid would be hauled off to the Hadeshorn to make their Druid tenure official.

  So why her?

  Because he sensed she might be the last? Because the Shade of Allanon sensed it, too?

  Drisker had said she was not a Druid, and he did not intend that she should be. The training he had given her was merely meant to enable her to master the wishsong, not to turn her into a Druid. But in some way, for some purpose—and at Allanon’s insistence—he had done something of that very sort in the little ceremony at the edge of the Hadeshorn.

  What she wondered now was if that act had in some way given her access to Paranor and its secrets. If so, she should be able to enter without fear of retaliation from the Guardian of the Keep. She should be able to gain access to the Druid Histories and to the archives and the talismans of magic they contained.

  And there was only one way to find out if she was right.

  It was still late at night—too early to rise and set out if she wanted to sleep, which she did—so she rolled back up in her blankets and lay down once more. She was awake enough she did not expect to fall asleep again easily, so of course she did exactly that. This time she did not dream.

  Awake again with the sunrise, she ate a little from the stores she had brought and allowed herself a small portion of ale. The day was bright and clear, a pleasant change from the storms she had endured in the Rock Spur, and she found that the sun warmed her even in the chilly air. She flew east toward Paranor, and by late afternoon she had arrived and set down her small craft some distance away from the Keep but close to the entrance to the underground tunnel.

  She remembered the way and the location, and carrying the drawing she had made of the entry key she found her way in and started ahead into the darkness. She was able to make a flame at her fingertips to help guide her—a skill she had learned from Drisker—so the journey was short and uneventful. It was musty and dry and silent in the passageway, and she could hear herself breathe. When she reached the huge iron door that barred entry, she gathered her courage, then pulled out the drawing.

  But as she stood there, staring from drawing to door, her doubts about what she was attempting gnawed at her with a rat’s persistence. Drisker had not resurfaced in her dreams or come to her while awake, so she was left only with the small but important revelation that he was now trapped within the Forbidding and that Clizia had engineered it. It felt as if Drisker was always being trapped somewhere other than where she was, which worried her deeply. How was she to accomplish anything if he was never here? How was she to know what she could and couldn’t do safely?

  There was no good reason to think she was right in her conclusion that Drisker had endowed her with Druid status so that she could enter the Keep. She might believe it was true, but she had no real confirmation—and with Drisker locked away, she was not likely to receive that confirmation before she had to go inside.

  She wondered if she should wait until the following morning before attempting to unlock the door and enter, just to see if he might resurface in her dreams, knowing he would come if he could manage it to complete their truncated conversation. How they had connected while she slept remained a mystery—both when he was trapped inside Paranor and now. Yet it had felt real enough; it felt as if he were actually there, trying to reveal what he knew she wanted to know, just as she had tried to do for him.

  But eventually she decided that such a delay would be a foolish waste of time, and instead boldly triggered the locks. The door gave smoothly and silently, opening before her.

  She entered the cellars of Paranor as if become a shade herself—drifting into the cavernous chambers with their connecting corridors, all of it devoid of any sign of life. She made her way through and along the passageways’ snaking lengths, searching for a stairway leading up. From here, she would have to find her way to the Druid Histories, which she knew could be found on the third floor, in the offices of the High Druid. It would take time to find those offices, but once she had done so, she would use the wishsong to search for what was hidden in their walls.

  It was a reasonable plan. She believed she was safe now. The Guardian of the Keep had not revealed its presence. Even without help from Drisker, she could do this.

  And then she heard the hissing.

  EIGHT

  Now and again, time stops. It happens often when one is caught off guard and shocked into inactivity—when one becomes so afraid that the ability to think and move vanishes. Then everything seems to go still and sometimes to disappear entirely.

  It was so for Tarsha Kaynin as she heard the sibilant hiss echo through the corridors and chambers of the Keep’s shadowed cellars. The hiss was raw and inhuman, a deep and rumbling warning, and she knew at once what had caused it. Even without ever having heard it before, she knew. There could be only one source of such a sound in this vast and empty Druid fortress.

  It was the Guardian of the Keep.

  And it was coming for her.

  She had thought she’d managed to keep it at bay—that it had recognized her as either a Druid-in-training or bestowed with the protective mantle of her Druid mentor. She had been so sure. But now all of her certainty was shattered, leaving her defenseless. She closed her eyes and fought to control her fear and indecision. She managed to momentarily subdue both, but she remained where she was, standing alone in the center of a seemingly endless dark. She would not turn back; she would not flee. Her knowledge of what was needed and of the rightness of her cause held her fast. The Guardian might be coming for her, but she could not give in to it. She would simply have to find a way to turn it aside. She was there doing a Druid’s work, and she had presence of mind enough to know if she gave in now, she was defeated forever.

  So she stood where she was, waiting. The hissing increased in volume and the air before her began to take on a nasty greenish tint. This would be an excellent time, she thought, for Drisker to appear and tell her what to do. But she knew he would not—and, in truth, could not—so she would have to handle matters on her own.

  She summoned the wishsong magic and held it before her like a shield. What she would do when the Guardian reached her was beyond imagining. The Guardian of the Keep was a creature of mist and deep magic that lacked both substance and form, but was capable of wielding immense power nevertheless. It might be able to penetrate her defenses simply by infusing itself into them and passing through unharmed.

  She took an involuntary step back as the cavernous hallway ahead filled floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall with thick, roiling brume—a sensory mix of what one found in a swamp, laden with toxins and rife with the stench of death. She fought down her revulsion and held fast to her convictions, and in her mind whispered, over and over, I belong here; I am one of the Druids.

  She stared in dismay as the mist rose up, completely filling the passageway before her,
consuming everything in its greenish wave. It formed a wall to block her—a wall that threatened to descend, enfolding and swallowing her whole. It hung in the air before her, generating an urge to flee that was almost overpowering, yet still she held her ground. The mist began to swirl with hypnotic intent, its threat plain and its intention undeniable. She increased the power of her wishsong and brought it forward until it was set flat against the mist to bar its advance. She could feel it pressing against her shields, and sensed that it could break through whenever it chose.

  She felt her strength failing. She could sense her courage begin to give way to the terrible threat it fought to hold back.

  The hissing increased in volume until it approached the roar of a waterfall—a huge, monstrous release of pressure so deafening she felt engulfed by it. It seemed to force her backward, pushing up against her as she stood unprotected before its immense power. Her mind spun, and her common sense told her she had to get out of there, that this creature of magic was too much for her and she would surely be destroyed. What made her think it would accept her as anything more than another intruder? She had been a fool, deluded into hoping there could be any sort of recognition of her purpose.

  This was the end, and she had brought it on herself.

  But it was too late to change her mind. It was too late to do anything but stand there and accept whatever would happen.

  She abruptly straightened, facing it full-on, her head lifted defiantly. “I have a right to be here!” she cried out. “I am a Druid and share the right to enter!”

  Nothing. She might as well have been shouting down a well.

  Then the Guardian tightened its mist-infused self to form a featureless, amorphous shape, elongated and sinuous, with only the suggestion of a head on a body—and the head inclined toward her ever so slowly, in a gesture that could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was.