The Last Druid

by Terry Brooks

  “So you and Seelah and this boy came looking and found us?” He still couldn’t quite believe it.

  “It didn’t happen exactly like that.” Seelah was nudging him, and again Shea pushed her away. “I found Borshawk, then Seelah found us both. I planned to come alone, but she must have followed me. I couldn’t get rid of her. I tried to send her back to tell Rocan about where I was, but she just wouldn’t move. Then the bird flew in, and so we all came together. Anyway, we searched for you the rest of the day and night. Did you hear us signaling you? That was Borshawk and the shrike. Anyway, when we found you, Seelah jumped right off and attacked those men. Then we all followed after you—Borshawk and I flying, Seelah tracking you on the ground. But what about you? Everyone thought you were dead. How did you end up here?”

  Now it was Ajin’s turn to explain—which she quickly did, telling him about their crash, their efforts to walk out of the valley, and finally their encounter with the cannibals. While she was talking, Borshawk climbed down from his bird and walked over to them.

  “Untak equit perrintat,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the fleeing Jutes.

  To Shea’s obvious surprise, Ajin answered him back in his own tongue. They talked between themselves for a few minutes, then she turned back again.

  “The boy says we have to go. Those natives will be back, and this time there will be more of them. He says the ones we were captured by were only a small band. These men are exiles and are very dangerous. I think I got most of that right. We don’t speak exactly the same form of his language, but it’s close enough that we can understand each other.”

  Dar glanced around. The darkness was beginning to fade, the dawn finally arriving. But it was still hazy and the sky was a gray overcast. “How do we get out of here?”

  “Apparently by riding the bird. I don’t think it belongs to him, but he has some sort of connection with these giant animals, some ability to communicate with them.”

  “He can talk to them,” Shea interjected. “They listen to him and do what he asks. Like with that horned beast you ran into.”

  “His people are an offshoot of the Nambizi nation—rather like the Wing Riders are of the Westland Elves. Anyway, they have scouts in all these valleys to keep track of those Jute cannibals. I guess there are quite a few, in exile from their homeland for eating human flesh. Mostly they stay where they belong, but not always.”

  “But the animals and this bird…?” Dar started to ask.

  “No idea. Aberrations that survived the Great Wars and now live on this island and maybe on other islands, too? I couldn’t make out that part of what he said. But what matters is getting out of here.”

  Dar agreed. Riding atop a giant bird didn’t seem like a great idea, but now Borshawk was speaking to Ajin.

  “He says the bird will fly us out—you, me, Shea, and Seelah—but he will stay behind and walk out. He says the bird can’t carry more.”

  Shea shook his head at once. “I won’t leave him! I’ll walk out with him.”

  Ajin said something to the other boy, who shook his head firmly. “Not a chance,” she translated. “You go with us. Right now.”

  “I won’t do it!” Shea insisted. “He saved you. He helped me find you! I’m not running away now.”

  Borshawk came over and placed his hands on Shea’s shoulders, looking him in the face. He said a few words and pointed to the bird.

  Ajin nodded. “He understands,” she translated. “He says you are a warrior, but you can’t help him. He can manage on his own. You have to fly out with us.”

  The other boy said something else, then stepped back.

  “He said you would dishonor him if you refused.”

  Shea looked trapped and unhappy, and at first Dar thought he would continue to resist. But then he simply nodded, hugged the other boy for a moment, then turned away. “You tell him he better stay safe or I will be back!” he shouted over his shoulder.

  Borshawk waited for them to climb onto the giant bird and settle themselves in place. Then he called to the shrike, which dipped its head immediately. The boy whispered to him—words or simply sounds, it was hard to tell—before stepping away again.

  “Friend!” he called out to Shea. “Byshan teh!”

  Two fingers dipped into a pouch at his waist and emerged with the tips covered in white paint, which he swept across Shea’s forehead and cheeks to create the familiar stripes.

  “Borshawk!” Shea shouted back and held up two of his own fingers, drawing them across his own forehead and cheeks.

  Then the shrike lifted off and they were flying. The clouds were breaking up, and the sunrise revealed a dazzling brightness in the east that cast its light earthward in streamers. Dar watched Shea sitting forward, looking down at Borshawk as he dwindled in size. He waved once more, and once more Borshawk waved back.

  A second later, a group of Jutes flooded out of the woods. Borshawk was running now—not directly away, but cutting a path across to the south, his small figure flying across the clearing and disappearing into the trees. A few minutes passed and suddenly there were screams and shouts from where the boy had disappeared—and then silence.

  Shea wheeled around. “We have to go back for him!” he yelled at Dar.

  The Blade shook his head. “Do you know how to make this bird do that? Because I don’t.”

  Shea stared at him helplessly, then at Ajin and Seelah, and turned away, defeated.

  They flew on, out of the valley to the waters of the Tiderace and along the coast toward the Behemoth and their companions. All the while the sky was clearing, the sun brightening, and the air warming. It was a fine day for either flying or sailing. The smell of the ocean and the coastline below rose up to greet them, pungent and welcoming, but Shea ignored it. He just sat there, staring ahead, refusing to talk, and Dar and Ajin let him be.

  * * *

  —

  Around midday, the shrike let them off just down the coast from their friends and the airship, as if somehow it knew what was expected of it. Once they had dismounted—and without waiting longer—it lifted off again and disappeared back into the valley. The three passengers watched it go, then hurried to reunite with those they had left behind. There were exclamations of surprise and gleeful backslapping and more than a few words of mingled chastisement and relief. But through it all Shea Ohmsford had little to say and nothing to contribute. Rocan pressed him for more until Dar explained what had happened.

  “We may have lost the other boy. Shea didn’t want to leave him behind, and now he thinks he is paying the price for doing what he was told. Just let him be a bit.”

  So Rocan did, and the others gave him space as well as they prepared to set sail once more for Skaarsland. In the day since Shea had been gone, the Behemoth had been repaired and made fully operational once more, so there was no need to linger. Most were anxious to resume their journey and reach their destination—Shea being the notable exception. The only one who had any luck reasoning with him was the old man, Tindall, who sat beside him in silence for a long time on the aft deck before he started talking. No one could hear what he was saying, but the boy was responding.

  They were a mile or so up the coast, heading northward, when a shout rose from the forward deck and everyone rushed to the railing. Shea was brooding midship with Seelah, who was doing her best to comfort him in her inimitable Seelah way, one arm draped about his shoulders while she occasionally nuzzled him, but none of her efforts seemed to be achieving much. The boy glanced after the others curiously when they charged off, but remained where he was, too despondent to care what drew them. Dar, who had been keeping watch nearby, went along for a look, then quickly returned. “Come with me,” he ordered, practically yanking the boy out of Seelah’s possessive grip. “Right now. Hurry!”

  When they found an open space on the starboard railing, the Blade pointe
d. “Look up there, Shea Ohmsford.”

  The boy did, unresponsive for a moment, then lunged for a better look, his body rigid. A giant bird was circling the sky ahead of them, a familiar dark figure seated atop its feathered body. An arm lifted, waving farewell to the airship.

  Shea was smiling and laughing as he waved back. When he stepped away from the railing, he paused long enough to face Dar. “I knew he would be all right,” he said to the Blade with a casual shrug. “I was never really worried.”

  Dar Leah had to work hard not to roll his eyes.

  SIXTEEN

  Drisker Arc came awake slowly, rising up from blackness and lethargy to a shadowy, cold world of gray stone. At first, he had no idea where he was or what he was doing there. Everything felt disconnected and unreal. He knew he had been unconscious for some time and that it was due to a misfortune that had befallen him…a sickness, he decided after a few moments’ thought. He was weak and disoriented, but he was also hungry and thirsty, which was a good sign.

  Then he remembered the source of his problem. He had eaten food he shouldn’t have. So while food poisoning was bad, he would recover from it. And it seemed to him now, lying in his blanketed bed, that he had already begun the healing process. But it was so cold! He rose up enough to see that the fireplace contained nothing but ashes and shadows. No fire burned; no wood waited to be lit. A glance around revealed no food or water, either. A pair of windows opened through a pitted wall to one side, but they were barred and shuttered.

  So, he concluded with a touch of wryness, this was not an establishment that placed much emphasis on creature comforts.

  Then, as more pieces of his memory returned, he realized he had been brought here by the Straken Queen and was in her fortress castle at Kraal Reach.

  After that, he lay back in his bed and waited for his memory to straighten itself out. Weka Dart must have reached her and told her he lay poisoned and disabled. She must have arrived just in time to save him, because there had been that creature…He closed his eyes tightly against the image that formed and then opened them again. There had been that creature that he had managed to keep at bay with his magic just long enough for the queen of this horrific world to appear and destroy it.

  He recalled the flash and fire, the power she wielded to dismiss the threat when his own magic had begun to fail, the fire she had summoned to burn the creature to ash. Then she had brought Drisker out of his place of concealment and into a carriage. Yes, and back here to Kraal Reach to recover from his sickness.

  How long had he slept? How long since he had been saved…

  If saved he was.

  Good not to assume too much just yet. No doubt the Straken Queen wanted to escape the Forbidding as much as he did, but he needed to be careful. Just because they shared a similar goal did not mean they were allies. Because each had separate and very distinct reasons for wanting release.

  Tarsha, he remembered suddenly. What became of her?

  He lay quietly after that for a long time, thinking things through. He had reached her while dreaming through astral projection and found her inside Paranor. He had helped her get inside the chambers that housed the Druid Histories, where she seemed intent on doing some research to help him escape the Forbidding. But he had never gotten back to her—or she to him. How long ago had that been? How many days had passed?

  He knew at once he had to reach her right away, yet how was he to manage that? The only way they had been able to communicate so far had been in dreams while both were asleep. To reach her was more coincidence than intention. And even then, even if he did find her in his dreams, their communication could not include spoken words. But he had to try something. He had to harden himself against his weakness and uncertainty and find a way. There was too much at stake to delay.

  He took a series of slow, deep breaths, then tested himself by moving his limbs and body beneath the covers.

  Then he forced himself to sit up.

  It went more smoothly than he had expected, and he swung his legs from under the covers and out over the side of the bed. But when he had managed to sit up all the way, he abruptly realized he wasn’t alone. The Straken Queen sat off to one side in the shadows, bent and worn, her ancient features haggard and her eyes as hard as iron. She was watching him closely, but he did not think she could tell what he was thinking. Even she did not possess such power.

  He met her gaze squarely. “How long have I been sleeping?”

  “A full day.”

  Her voice was harsh and ragged, like a hasp torn from its seating. He gave her a nod. “I must have been much sicker than I thought.”

  She shrugged. “It was the medicine I gave you and the magic I employed. Both were very powerful. But you seem to be on the mend.”

  He nodded. “What of Weka Dart?”

  “The Ulk Bog? What of him?”

  “You said he reached you and brought you to me. But I remember there was something more, wasn’t there?”

  “Oh, that. Well, in this world, Drisker Arc, we pay a price for our ineptitude and our carelessness. He was warned to protect you from the things that might harm you in the Forbidding—of which there are many—and it was a charge he was not to take lightly. Yet he fed you food you could not tolerate, and to cover his mistake, he rushed back to find me to seek help. But he forgot to exercise the necessary precautions. He was almost to the gates when he aroused the interest of an Oric Clawling—vicious little beasties—that decided it was dinnertime. Only the quick action of my guards saved him. And then not quite all of him.”

  “His arm, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, he lost his arm from the elbow down. But the Clawling lost its life, so the trade should be considered a fair one. Besides, the arm should grow back. His species tends to regenerate.”

  Drisker stared at her, reminded anew of the horrors of this place and the hard, unforgiving lives of its denizens. Yet of them all, she was by far the worst. Much worse, he expected, than the creature whose place she had taken. Tael Riverine, the Straken Lord, had been no match for her. Nor, apparently, had any other demonkind since.

  “How have you survived for so long?” he asked her impulsively. “Surely it can’t have been easy.”

  “Easy?” She laughed outright, her tone derisive. “Nothing here is easy. I fight every day of my hopeless, wretched existence to survive. I do so because my hatred of what has been done to me is too great to allow me to die and be done with it all. Do you know my story, Druid? Do you know why I am here? Wrongfully imprisoned. Unfairly trapped!”

  “A little, perhaps. You were caught up in the rebirth of the Ellcrys. When the old tree died, a new one was born—and the Forbidding, which had gone down with the old Ellcrys’s death, went back up again. And all the creatures that had escaped were caught up and swept back into their prison.”

  She grimaced, her features knotting. “And I along with them—I, who did not belong. I was taken—wrongfully, shamefully, and completely unnecessarily. I was no demon from the Forbidding. I was stolen away, but I survived this as I have survived everything.”

  She paused. “That Ohmsford boy—Railing was his name, as I recall—tore me from my sanctuary with his begging and pleading to Mother Tanequil. He ripped me away from the small sense of belonging I had found, from my life as an aeriad, so that I might serve his interests. In the process, Grianne Ohmsford was lost and I was reborn as the Ilse Witch. Because, you see, the witch’s power was the power I needed to survive. But as a result, I became one of the demonkind and the Forbidding took me.”

  Drisker remembered some of it and knew the rest to be true as well, although not entirely as she claimed. But it did no good to argue specifics at this point. What mattered was escape.

  “Magic was used to send me here, just as it took you,” he said. “A once-Druid, now an exile, named Clizia Porse, trapped me in a triagenel and sent me here.
Something from inside the Forbidding must have been sent back in my place, as the magic of release always requires an exchange of one being for another. Do you know of this?”

  “I know of the rule, but it is not absolute. And I know nothing of any exchange. What I do know is that there are other ways to find release. There are exceptions. But being exiled here yourself suggests perhaps I was wrong to think you had come simply to save me, as was our bargain. Is that so, Drisker Arc?”

  He stared at her, thinking of what answer he should give.

  She gestured dismissively. “Never mind. You are here no matter the means, and you will honor our bargain. For now, I will leave you to heal as best you are able. I will come again when you are better. Then we will talk further.”

  She backed away from him, almost as if afraid to look away, her eyes never leaving his, her face a mask contorted by the long drain on her life and the pitiless vagaries of her misfortunes. “Do not attempt to leave here, Druid. There are worse fates than the loss suffered by my little Ulk Bog, and I am familiar with them all. You will wait here on my pleasure.”

  Then she was through the door, closing it behind her, the lock clicking into place.

  He was suddenly very tired. He sat on the edge of his bed, noticing suddenly that there was food and drink at his bedside. The witch must have supplied it on entering, while he was still asleep. He picked up a glass, poured water into it, and drank. Marginally tolerable, but much needed. He ate a few bites of food he did not recognize, but did not question. If she wanted him dead, it would be easy enough to arrange without bothering to poison him. For now, he believed, she would help him in his recovery, and he would tell her that when she returned.

  With Grianne gone, however, his thoughts returned to Tarsha. He would try to sleep some more. If he concentrated hard enough, perhaps he would be able to reach Tarsha. It was a faint hope, but it was all he had to work with.