The Last Druid

by Terry Brooks

  Drisker interrupted. “So how did you find out about it?”

  She sneered at his rudeness. “First, you must understand this was a long time ago. I was informed of the darkwand’s reappearance by one of my spies. I have them everywhere, of course; I would not be alive if I did not. So I went to Ansa Trax and asked for the staff’s return. He refused me. If I wanted it this badly, he reasoned, it must hold value for him, too. He would keep the staff until I was willing to give up my position as Straken Queen and accept him as my lord and master.”

  She paused. “Then I made a mistake. I told him the staff was useless to anyone but me—that only I could summon the magic—but that just gave him further reason to keep it from me. I even promised him I would leave the Forbidding and he would be free to become Straken King, but he refused to believe me and remained intractable.

  “When I finally departed his fortress, the Iron Crèche, I did so determined that somehow I would return and take the darkwand back. I used spies to try to find it, but they failed. My patience was at an end, so I went into his fortress myself a second time—at Ansa’s open invitation—and searched for it. Nothing. Shortly afterward, Ansa Trax died, suddenly and mysteriously. His son became king. Pule Trax claimed he knew nothing of the staff’s whereabouts, so I stormed the Iron Crèche, found him, forced him to talk, and then killed him. But all my tortures revealed nothing, and the staff remained missing.

  “After his nephew, Vendra Trax, eliminated all other claimants to the throne, family and friends alike, he made himself king of the Chule. Under Vendra, the Chule grew stronger, and his power grew alongside. When I demanded the staff back, he claimed it had been stolen before his time and he knew nothing about its whereabouts. I knew he lied. Storming the Iron Crèche a second time felt pointless. Wherever the darkwand was hidden, I would not find it that way. If I could have gotten Vendra here, to Kraal Reach, I would have had my answer soon enough. I would have broken him like I broke Pule. He would have begged me to let him tell me where the darkwand was concealed!”

  She shook her head. “So I chose, once again, to use spies. They tried to locate the darkwand for decades, but still could not find it. Eventually I realized I was becoming fixated on its recovery—crazed by my frustration, consumed by the wrong I had suffered to the detriment of everything else. So I abandoned my efforts to reclaim it. I let go of this madness as I let go of so much else in my life, and ceased to think about it.”

  “But now I’ve reminded you again?”

  She smiled enigmatically. “More or less. It is enough to say that now you are involved, things are different. I firmly believe that, this time, you and I working together can find where Trax has hidden it.”

  Drisker shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t see why you think I will make a difference…”

  Grianne Ohmsford’s lips twisted. “What is wrong with you? Are you so in need of creating obstacles that you are compelled to seek them out? No wonder you didn’t have a way of dealing with the Skaar and the Federation! There are always obstacles to the things we want most, Drisker Arc, but we don’t need to dwell on them. We need to make them disappear!”

  “But we also need to be cognizant of our limitations,” Drisker countered. “And I am still not sure why you are so convinced the two of us can retrieve the darkwand from Vendra Trax and the Chule if you’ve already tried twice and failed. What makes this attempt any different?”

  “Because you are here. Or so I once thought,” she said, her voice filled with a heavy contempt. “But you are making me less certain by the minute.”

  She glared at him, and Drisker knew his perpetual doubts were responsible. Worse, she was right.

  “Grianne,” he said quietly, “forgive me. I am prone to finding obstacles everywhere, but I will try hard not to do so here. I leave leadership on this matter entirely to you. I am here to help in any way I can, but this is not my world, and I am not familiar with it. I promise to put my trust in you.”

  “You have no choice, Druid. You have no Ohmsford blood. You cannot make the staff’s magic respond to you. You say you have reminded me of the darkwand’s existence, so maybe that was all you were meant to do. I asked you to find a way to help me escape the Forbidding. Maybe you have. Maybe this time I will find the talisman and make that escape. Without you!”

  She lurched from the bed and stood looking down at him. Then she was out the door and gone, the locks clicking into place behind her.

  Drisker stared at the closed door and felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. What if she did as she had threatened? Could she escape and just strand him here? She was bitter, quick to anger, and unpredictable. After a lifetime of harsh treatment, why should she be any other way?

  There was nothing he could do for now but wait and see what she decided. He was at her mercy, when it came right down to it. And if she did not allow him to help, to escape with her, he would be trapped here forever.

  Unless, perhaps, when the darkwand was back in the Four Lands, Tarsha could take it from Grianne and come into the Forbidding to free him, much as Pen had done for Grianne all those years back. The girl was an Ohmsford, after all…

  And then he felt wretched for even thinking it. How much could he put one person through, for his own selfish ends? No, he would return to the Four Lands with Grianne, or never return at all.

  He lay back on the bed to sleep, but sleep was a long time coming.

  * * *

  —

  Grianne Ohmsford stood just outside the door for a long time after leaving Drisker’s bedroom, thinking through the bitter exchange she had just left. She regretted her anger, but not the reason behind it. She knew she needed the Druid in order to find the darkwand; that he would be the catalyst that would reveal its location. She had learned it from her visions of the future. His presence was necessary if it were to be found, and that was why she had come to him in the Hadeshorn—and why she had made her bargain with him in the first place.

  But she had not told him everything, because she was afraid if he knew all he would give way to the weight of it and be unable to do anything. He had touched on this, and she had responded accordingly—almost before she could think to stop herself. And so her anger had flared up in the face of his recalcitrance, and she had come very close to revealing a truth she must not.

  A truth she must hide at all costs.

  NINETEEN

  Clizia Porse was suffering. She was suffering so badly she could barely make herself get out of bed long enough to eat and drink. She was so exhausted that a deep ache had settled into her ancient bones, and her muscles were sore enough that she cringed and cried out every time she tried to move. A fever also had her in its grip: cycles of extreme heat and cold that came and went with a persistent regularity she could not seem to shake. She lost count of the hours and days, the affairs of the world beyond, her schemes and intentions, and even the presence of the Jachyra, when it wasn’t out hunting. Nothing seemed to help.

  Clizia Porse had noticed, after leaving Cleeg Hold and the Rock Spur—in the wake of destroying Drisker Arc and the Kaynin siblings—that all was not right. Back aboard her airship, she was beset with a feeling of weakness almost immediately. At first, she attributed it to the effects of the battle she had fought to survive, and then to a sickness she had somehow contracted earlier but which had lain dormant until now. Eventually she came to recognize it as a severe side effect of using her magic, because she had been beset by similar symptoms after killing the Elven king Gerrendren Elessedil and fleeing Arborlon. She had thought herself protected by putting aside the very dangerous Stiehl, forgoing further use of its magic, which she knew to be extremely powerful. Yet it appeared to her now that any use of magic was draining her far more quickly than it had in the past, and even abstaining from using the Stiehl was not going to be enough. She was very old by now, and more susceptible to the side effects of calling up pow
erful magic such as the triagenel she had used to banish Drisker.

  What she would need to do from here on out was to husband her strength and use her magic more wisely and cautiously, so as not to deplete herself.

  Even so, she wondered if her conclusion was flawed. In other cases in which she had employed her magic against her enemies, she had not experienced this weakness. It had not happened in the Federation encampment when she had been trapped by Drisker Arc and managed to escape by using magic. It had not been true at Paranor when she had fled the Guardian of the Keep. So why should it be true now, when the causes seemed so similar? And yet the longer she examined the problem, the more certain she became that it was.

  She was housed in a cottage at the edge of the village of Winstrom, a forested community of traders situated on the eastern border of the Tirfing where it abutted Federation territory some miles above Arishaig. She had taken two days to reach this safe house, a destination she had used before when hiding from the world—a small house owned by an old ally who cared nothing for her machinations but only for her coin and her willingness to spend it freely—and by then she was deep in the throes of whatever illness had beset her. Still uncertain of its origins, she was aware it had surfaced her first night away from Cleeg Hold while she slept within her airship, disturbing her sleep and ending any sense of well-being. By the time she reached the cottage, she was shaking and sweating. Her throat was raw, and her exhaustion so debilitating she almost didn’t make it to her bed that night.

  While she struggled to weather her illness, she was aware of certain things happening around her. The Jachyra came and went as it chose. What could she do to stop it? She knew it was hunting because it returned with blood on its jaws and savage delight in its eyes. It was a strange, filthy beast that she tolerated only because of its talent for killing and its willingness to accede to her dictates. She knew little of its habits or its predilections; it was its reputation that drew her. It was a Jachyra that had killed Allanon all those centuries ago. It was a Jachyra that had fought the fabled Weapons Master, Garet Jax, to a standstill on the heights of Heaven’s Well at the edge of the Maelmord in that same year. They might even have killed each other, although the Druid Histories were not clear.

  She had chosen it for its usefulness as a weapon—a thing that killed indiscriminately and without compunction. It was no more than a tool that would serve her purposes in the days ahead—a reasonable exchange for a troublesome Druid, but not an altogether reliable companion. It was fairly obedient, if she didn’t demand too much of it, but it was no sort of companion. It stank to high heaven—whether from bodily excretions or something more directly related to its killings—and its habits would have shamed a pig in mud. It brought itself dirtied and bloodied and stinking into her presence over and over, and several times she had gagged and vomited in spite of her resolve. Mostly, it kept to itself in a shed out back—a choice for which she would forever be grateful.

  A week passed—or maybe a bit more—but no one came to see her; no one but the owner of the cottage would even know to come, and he was not the sort willing to take that risk. If there were neighbors, she had not seen them. Perhaps the Jachyra had eaten them all. She hoped it was eating farm stock and wild animals instead, but she had no way of knowing. She seldom left her bed, drifting in and out of a coherent state of wakefulness. The world around her was reduced to her bedroom with occasional trips to the privy or kitchen. Everything else ceased to exist.

  Then, one day, she woke feeling better.

  She was so much better that she felt compelled to get up and walk about the cottage for a time, just to make sure she wasn’t mistaken. But her strength appeared to have returned. She washed, dressed, and walked outside for the first time in days, thinking to take a short walk in the surrounding woods, wanting to feel as if she was a part of the larger world again.

  She had walked only a short distance before she found the ravaged and mostly consumed carcass of a sizable dog. She studied it a moment, then walked on. Another carcass lay off the path a bit farther on. This one appeared to be a wild animal, but it was hard to tell. She was growing angry by now; the Jachyra had failed to use even a modicum of common sense, leaving its kills too close to the cottage.

  She found the old man another three hundred yards farther on. She wouldn’t have seen him at all except that she caught a glimpse of blue amid all the greenery of the moss and grass that grew between the dark trunks of the old growth, nestled in where it didn’t seem to belong, and so she discovered the body. This one was only partially eaten, so she guessed the Jachyra had made this kill recently and planned on coming back later to consume the rest.

  This last discovery was the most disturbing. It was one thing for an animal to go missing, and another for a member of someone’s family to disappear. A search would be organized—a search that would eventually reach here and uncover the body. And that, in turn, would lead directly to her doorstep.

  She tramped back to the cottage seething with rage and frustration. She had thought the acquisition of the Jachyra a good idea, but now it was beginning to look like a big mistake. This demon monster killed whenever it felt the urge and did nothing to hide its actions. Worse, it killed indiscriminately, paying no attention to the probable consequences. To allow it to run loose was foolhardy, yet what was she supposed to do to stop it? She could barely control its behavior as it was, and if she interfered with its eating habits, she would have a genuine fight on her hands.

  Back inside the cottage, she sat down to think things through. Now that she was on the mend and feeling stronger, she needed to decide what to do next about reestablishing the Druid order at Paranor. With Drisker gone, she was the last of the Druids and thus entitled to the position of Ard Rhys. The Guardian had kept her out before, but it would be unable to do so if she declared her intention to form a new order. For the new order to ever consist of more than herself, though, she needed support, and all of her ties had been severed with the Federation, the Elves, and the Skaar. So now she needed to repair at least two out of three. The Federation was most likely to consider an alliance, but only if Ketter Vause was out of the way.

  Which brought her back to the reason she had chosen to bring the Jachyra out of the Forbidding. She could send it into the Federation camp—a monster no one had ever seen before and would never see again after it had killed the Prime Minister. She could just give it instructions and turn it loose.

  Then she shook her head, knowing that plan was futile. The Jachyra was a savage, feral demon with only the barest capacity for understanding. It would never be able to distinguish Vause from anyone else unless she was there to point him out, which sort of defeated the whole idea of letting the demon do the work for her. So if she already had to go into the Federation camp, she might as well kill the Prime Minister herself. Even if she had to avoid risking harm to herself by sticking with her promise not to use the Stiehl.

  Yet whatever inconvenience the Jachyra presented, it was still capable of inciting confusion and fear. So that might be valuable in itself. But what would she do with her pet in the meantime? What could she do with it while she was off dispatching Ketter Vause?

  The Jachyra returned before she could reach a decision, and she berated it for its foolish decision to haul its kills back to where they could be traced to her. It slouched to a halt before her, assuming a posture that was meant to suggest shame and regret but failed to demonstrate either. Its body hunched like that of a submissive, yet betrayed itself with knots of muscles and cords of sinew. Its paws flexed and relaxed, and its claws flashed and vanished. Its cruel muzzle lifted to reveal the teeth hiding within its maw, and its nostrils flared. It was listening, but this wasn’t a creature that cared what anyone else thought about it. It was a monster, and a monster only understood the basics: survival and pleasure, predators and prey. Nothing else mattered.

  No, she was wasting time, she decided. Sh
e was almost certain the creature either didn’t understand what she was communicating or didn’t care, and in the end she settled for ordering it to hide every last trace of the carcasses and the killings. She wasn’t even sure it understood that much, but it gave the demon something to do and got it out of the way while she went back to sleep once more.

  In the morning, she would fly east until she reached the Mermidon and the Federation camp and deal with Ketter Vause at last. And just hope the Jachyra did not get into too much additional trouble while she was away.

  * * *

  —

  She slept late, and it was nearing midday when she finally departed, ordering the Jachyra to stay in the cottage until she returned. She doubted it would remain there for long, but it was the best she could do at the moment. And to demonstrate anew who was in charge, she summoned a fiery magic that burned about her hands and licked out at the beast. While the Jachyra showed no fear or even any concern, it moved at once to do her bidding and hide itself.

  For the moment, at least, her place as leader was reestablished. But she didn’t fool herself into thinking this settled their relationship in any way. The Jachyra’s memory was inferior to its predatory instincts and uncontrollable urges, and she would have to repeat the process the minute she returned. It might remember that she had brought it out of the Forbidding and into a world of light and substantial prey, but any loyalty to her was likely fleeting. She would have to be wary.