The Last Druid

by Terry Brooks

  It was bowing to her.

  No words passed between them. No other action was taken. The acknowledgment was made, then the mist dissipated in a scattering of brume and darkness. The light returned, and the Guardian of the Keep was gone.

  Silence wrapped the empty space left behind, filling Paranor’s chambers and corridors, leaving a ringing in Tarsha’s ears and a spinning in her mind that threatened to topple her.

  It recognized me! It knew who or at least what I am. It respected my Druid connection or my magic or something equally persuasive, and it chose to let me continue.

  She remained where she was for long minutes after, waiting for the beating of her heart to slow and her breathing to steady. She was overcome with relief and gratitude. Everything had changed so quickly she could barely give credence to it. She had stood on the threshold of her own death and been given a reprieve. It was a miracle. It was another instance of how thin the line was between life and death.

  Parlindru! she thought suddenly. Was this another instance of the rule of three? Was this another escape from death of the sort to which the rule might apply?

  She didn’t know. There were so many instances in her life since encountering the seer where Parlindru’s prophecy might apply. It was pointless to speculate on which ones mattered.

  When she felt ready, she started ahead once more. She continued down the corridors and through the chambers until she found a stairway leading up, then began to climb. She went all the way to the third floor before she broke down. The tears came unbidden, her legs gave out, and she collapsed against the wall, burying her face in her hands.

  Thank you, thank you! She whispered it so quietly she wasn’t sure she had actually spoken the words.

  She did not know exactly to whom she was whispering her thanks. To Drisker or the Guardian or the fates that watched over her, or all of them together. She said it in a relieved rush, and she cast it out there to whoever deserved it. Then she pulled herself together again, climbed to her feet, and continued moving down the hallway once more.

  It took her almost two hours to find the room she was looking for. All of the doors she passed bore insignias she did not recognize. The insignias were clearly meant to serve as identifications, but that didn’t help someone who didn’t know what any of them meant. She opened the doors that were not locked to try to make sense of each room, but nothing looked right. Undaunted, she kept on searching, traversing the entire length of the corridor, moving from side to side with each new door she reached.

  “This is ridiculous!” she announced aloud in frustration at one point.

  When she finally found the offices of the High Druid, she did so for the least likely reason she would have expected: She recognized the insignia carved into a plaque on the door. It was the insignia that belonged exclusively to Paranor’s High Druids, and Drisker’s books of magic had it embossed on their covers. There it was before her now, so she did not hesitate to enter.

  Inside she found a reception room with chairs and a desk, and beyond an office with shelves and files for storage. She walked the entirety of the room once and then began her search, opening drawers and pulling books and folders. But she quickly determined that none of this was what she was looking for. The Druid Histories were elsewhere, undoubtedly hidden from view and not accessible to those who did not know how to find them.

  Much like herself.

  She seated herself in one of the more comfortable chairs to think things over. She knew that entries in the Druid Histories had been made by various Druids over the years—most of them High Druids at the time of the chronicling. Beyond that, she knew almost nothing, so it didn’t take long for her to accept that, without help, she was lost. She slumped in the chair, more tired than she had realized, pondering what to do. Her thoughts returned momentarily to her encounter with the Guardian of the Keep, and a chill ran through her body as she relived the experience. Once more, she heard the terrible hissing, felt the monstrous presence, saw the greenish mist closing in about her, and she wasn’t past remembering how insignificant and vulnerable it had made her feel.

  Maybe she never would be.

  She looked around the chamber and wished she could leave. Just being inside this mausoleum left her feeling trapped, like she should be looking for a way out. The feeling that she had overstayed her allotted time—whatever it was—persisted, and her thoughts spun anew. Why would anyone want to be a member of the Druid order if it meant this stone-and-iron prison would be your home? How could you ever accept the cold emptiness and deep silence? How could you stay sane housed within such a soulless construction? Certainly, this must have contributed to Drisker Arc’s decision to abandon his position as Ard Rhys when he felt everyone had turned against him and he was accomplishing nothing. How could it not?

  But she couldn’t allow herself to think about leaving just yet. Not until she found the Druid Histories and read them through. She thought of Tavo and Drisker and those who had gone to Skaarsland. Whatever happened here—whatever she accomplished or failed to accomplish—would in all likelihood impact them. With Tavo, the matter was already settled. He was gone forever, his life given to save hers, his transgressions redeemed by his sacrifice.

  As she attempted to stiffen her resolve, staring down at her clasped hands, a sudden weariness came over her—perhaps from the stress of encountering and facing down the Guardian, perhaps simply from the exertion she had expended in getting this far. Thinking to rest for a moment or two before she continued her search for the Histories, she leaned back in the padded chair and closed her eyes.

  She was asleep almost instantly.

  * * *

  —

  Drisker Arc had lapsed back into unconsciousness midway through his encounter with Tarsha. Falling into a black hole into which no dreams could reach, he lost all contact with the real world. When he woke again, it was daylight but he had no sense of how much time had passed. The light in the Forbidding was diffuse and directionless, with no indication of its origin or its location, and so offered him little help. Here the world functioned on a different level entirely, and long ago Grianne Ohmsford, upon her rescue and return to the Four Lands, had written in the Druid Histories that she believed time passed at a different rate in the Forbidding. She had arrived at this conclusion from speaking with Pen and others in her family afterward, when she was already planning to resign her station as Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order and enter the service of Mother Tanequil.

  So it was now with Drisker, who, without being able to explain why, sensed that the movement of time in the Forbidding was different from what he remembered when he was still within the Four Lands.

  What this meant was that he could not be certain how long ago it was that his connection with Tarsha Kaynin had been broken. It was astonishing that they had been able to reach each other at all, given the nature of the barrier that enclosed the Forbidding. Yet apparently while they could make contact visually, they could not speak to each other. Was this always to be so? Was this perhaps a function of the misaligned time flows? Or was this barrier a onetime event only? Now that he was awake again, he must try to find out.

  To do so, he employed the same magic he had used to project himself beyond the walls of Paranor while it was still in limbo and return to the Four Lands. He was still weak, still wrapped in his sickness, aching and nauseous, limited in his use of his Druid magic, and altogether uncertain whether he could make a connection. Yet projecting his image was easier than he had expected, his reach by astral projection still strong enough to enable him to appear to her in recognizable form.

  But he failed to find her.

  “Tarsha!” he cried, calling out to her, seeking to bring her to him.

  But still nothing happened. She did not respond.

  He continued to try, over and over. He used every skill and trick of magic he knew to make a connection, but she
failed to appear. Eventually, his strength was sapped, and he gave up. Apparently the time before had been a quirk of fate. He could not reach her now. Their chance at connecting had come and gone, and he would have to let her continue on with her efforts back in the Four Lands as best she could. It was galling to him, but there was only so much he could do.

  Nevertheless, after resting a bit, he tried again. But again he could not manage to find her. Frustration and anger filled him in equal parts, and he felt his chance of helping her in any way fading. Exhausted, he lay back. There was nothing more he could do but wait on Weka Dart. Perhaps Grianne Ohmsford would have a suggestion of what he might do.

  If, of course, he deemed it a good idea to confide in her. He was not sure yet of how much he should allow her to know.

  He fell asleep pondering the matter.

  * * *

  —

  Tarsha was still asleep and dreaming when Drisker Arc appeared out of the ether. But something woke her, something that warned her of his presence. Her head snapped up at once, and when she saw him, she sprang to her feet. “Drisker! What happened to you? You just disappeared midsentence. Are you all right now? Will you disappear like that again?”

  But she was dreaming, she realized, and remembered that no words could be exchanged when they communicated in dreams. She quit talking and pointed at him, mouthing, Okay?

  He nodded back, pointed at her, and said, Paranor?

  She nodded, gesturing at her surroundings, walking from one wall to the other, letting him see the room. Then she shrugged, parodied reading, swept the room with her hands, and mouthed, Histories?

  He seemed to understand. He pointed to the wall she was standing before. She looked around, but there was nothing there. She turned back again and shrugged that she didn’t understand. He shrugged in turn and shook his head questioningly.

  She was instantly infuriated. How was she supposed to explain her purpose here? What was his problem? She mimed reading, turning pages, then jabbed a finger at him angrily and gestured back to her and Paranor.

  But Drisker frowned and shook his head.

  Now she was really incensed, and found herself falling into speech. “I’m trying to help you! I came all the way to Paranor to find a way to do that! I read your books on magic and found a drawing of the key to the tunnel door and used it to enter. Then the Guardian appeared and I thought I was dead. I thought it was going to destroy me, but it didn’t. It bowed to me. It bowed as if it knew me and was offering itself or…I don’t know! Anyway, I need to read the Histories!”

  She was speaking so fast the words were tumbling over one another. She forced herself to speak more slowly. “There might be something in the Histories about how Grianne Ohmsford got back from the Forbidding. If I search hard enough, perhaps…”

  But of course he couldn’t hear her, she realized. All that shouting and gesturing and anger and frustration had been wasted. She shook her head at him in dismay and gestured again at the wall and again mimed reading books.

  To her surprise, he nodded this time and gestured back. Go.

  She did as he requested, everything moving about as it does in dreams so that now she was facing the wall and four paintings, all of them of Paranor, hanging in a row with Drisker now standing right in front of them. She looked at him questioningly. He gestured for her to move over to the second picture, mimicked lifting his hands and placing one on either side of the picture, palms flat and fingers spread, and leaning into the wall. Then he stepped back and motioned for her to do the same.

  She did. Nothing happened. Then she looked at him. He was moving up behind her. She could feel his presence pressing into her. He gestured for her to place her fingers on top of his. When she did, they disappeared. She almost screamed in shock, but realized nothing had happened otherwise. She looked at him, and he mouthed a single word.

  Press.

  He waited then, giving her a chance to repeat the word. When she did, he nodded. Then he was gone again.

  * * *

  —

  When she woke again, it was morning. Immediately she rose from her chair and walked to the wall and its four pictures. Remembering Drisker’s instructions, she stood before the second and placed her hands and fingers where he had told her. She was helped by the fact that there were faint smudges where the tips of his fingers and hers, conjoined in her dream, had rested—no doubt a legacy of all the High Druids throughout the years doing this very thing—then waited. Nothing happened. Finally she felt the substance of the wall changing as it began to melt, and she stepped away quickly.

  A smile lit her countenance. Shelves lined every wall of the chamber beyond, filled with the Druid Histories.

  NINE

  Tarsha pulled the first several books from their places on the shelves, took a seat at the heavy wooden table that dominated the center of the room, and began reading. She had already decided to concentrate her efforts on the events surrounding Grianne Ohmsford’s imprisonment and rescue, thinking it likely that anything of use would be found there. In particular, she wanted to find the specifics of how Grianne’s nephew, Pen, had managed to get into the Forbidding and bring his aunt out again. Some sort of potent magic must have been at play to allow this to happen, and Tarsha needed to know if it could be used again.

  To her dismay, the Histories ran to over a hundred volumes, and her initial search was simply to find which of them contained any record of Grianne’s rescue. She presumed there would be at least one, but it took a long time to find what she was looking for. Tarsha knew the history of the order in general terms, but she did not know exactly where—within a several-hundred-year range—the chronicles of Grianne’s service as Ard Rhys could be found. That alone took several hours, and when she finally found it, she discovered it comprised the better part of two entire books.

  Undaunted, she began the arduous task of reading both books in their entirety, beginning with Grianne’s time as Ard Rhys. This required the rest of the day. She noted the passage of time from the way the light through the windows of the offices began to dim with the arrival of sunset. The day had gone by more quickly than she had imagined, and still she hadn’t found anything useful. Smokeless lamps within the chamber housing the Druid Histories ignited automatically—triggered by her presence—so at least she was able to see well enough as she continued her reading.

  It was shortly after nightfall when she found the first mention of the black staff. It was in a section of the second book written by Grianne, which detailed how Penderrin Ohmsford, her brave and determined young nephew, had journeyed deep within the wilderness of the Charnal Mountains. There he had located a magical being that took the form of a tree called a tanequil and discovered it was sentient and he could communicate with it. After great effort, he was able to persuade the tanequil to give him one of her branches so he could fashion it into a rune-marked staff that would breach the walls of the Forbidding and allow him to rescue his aunt.

  It was a compelling and almost unbelievable story, and it told her everything she needed to know about Pen Ohmsford. His willingness to risk himself for Grianne demonstrated a courage that exceeded anything she had ever known. But at its end, and upon Grianne’s return, there was a gap in the written record. Several pages following the account had been left blank—as if Grianne had intended to write more but had never followed through. She wrote of her return with Penderrin, and how the staff had saved them both from the Forbidding, but after that came a chronicle of the fates of Shadea a’Ru and the other rogue Druids who had helped imprison Grianne. There was no further mention of the staff.

  Then Tarsha noticed something she had missed before. Just before the blank pages, there was evidence of several pages having been carefully excised—as if Grianne had written something and then decided she didn’t want it there after all, but had left room for something else to be written another time, should there be a reason. B
ut why had she removed the pages, if indeed it was she who had done so? And why had she decided she might want to make a different entry later?

  Tarsha skipped ahead, bypassing entries from Druid scribes who had reported Grianne’s disappearance and the beginning of a new order, but found nothing more about the staff. She skimmed all the way to the end of the book, but still there was no mention. And by then, she was another hundred years into the history of the Druids and Grianne had dropped away entirely.

  So Tarsha went back to the point where Pen had rescued his aunt and reread the entire recording of events to see if she had missed anything. She had not. What had become of the black staff following Grianne’s return was never mentioned. Its fate remained a mystery.

  But the staff looked to offer the best possibility for helping Drisker, and she had to find out what had become of it. Perhaps there were other writings, other histories that had recorded the parts missing from these books—family histories, personal writings about Grianne and her fate. Wouldn’t Pen have kept something like this after returning? Wouldn’t he have written it all down, if only for himself and his descendants?

  If so, she had no idea where those writings could be found. There hadn’t been any Ohmsfords in the Four Lands for years. Only the appearance of Shea Ohmsford, who had gone to Skaarsland on the Behemoth—and her own and Tavo’s use of the wishsong—suggested there might be any of the family remaining. Shea appeared clueless about his heritage and even his name, and whatever Ohmsfords had been in her family tree were long lost to history.

  So where else should she be looking?

  She was left with no choice but to keep reading all the remaining Histories, in an effort to see if something more wasn’t contained in them that would help. At one point, too tired to continue, she put her head down on the reading table that dominated the center of the library and went to sleep. She had no idea how long she slept, but when she came awake again she found herself at least marginally refreshed, if stiff and sore from using the table and chair as a makeshift bed. She also realized that Drisker hadn’t come to her in her dreams.