Terry Brooks - First King of Shannara

They faced each other in the ensuing silence, all the words spoken, nothing left to say.

“You should reconsider your decision to come with me,” Bremen tried a final time.

Kahle smiled, a brittle twist of his thin mouth. “You asked me to come with you once before, when you chose to leave Paranor and pursue your studies of the magic elsewhere. I told you then I would never leave, that this is where I belong. Nothing has changed.”

Bremen felt a bitter helplessness creep through him, and he smiled quickly to keep it from showing. “Then goodbye, Kahle Rese, my oldest and greatest friend. Keep well.”

The small man embraced him, hands gripping the old man’s slender frame and holding fast. “Goodbye, Bremen.” His voice was a whisper. “This one time, I hope you are wrong.”

Bremen nodded wordlessly. Then he turned and went out the library door without looking back. He found himself wishing that things could be different, knowing they could not. He moved swiftly down the hallway to the door that opened into the back stairs passageway that had brought him. He found himself looking at the tapestries and artifacts as if he had never seen them—or perhaps as if he would never see them again. He felt some part of himself slipping away, just as it had when he left Paranor the first time. He did not like to admit it, but this was still more home to him than any other place, and as it was with all homes, it laid claim to him in ways that could not be judged or measured.

He went through the door into the near darkness of the landing beyond and found himself face-to-face with Risca and Tay Trefenwyd.

Tay came forward immediately and embraced him. “Welcome home, Druid,” he said, clapping the old man on the back.

Tay was an Elf of unusual height and size, lanky and rather awkward-looking, as if he were constantly in danger of tripping over his own feet. His face was decidedly Elven, but his head seemed to have been grafted onto his body by mistake. He was young still, even with fifteen years of service at Paranor, his face smooth and clean-shaven. He had blond hair and blue eyes, and always bore a ready smile for everyone.

“You look well, Tay,” the old man replied, giving the other a quick smile in return. “Life at Paranor agrees with you.”

“Seeing you again agrees with me more,” the other declared. “When are we leaving?”

“Leaving?”

“Bremen, don’t be coy. Leaving for wherever it is you are going. Risca and I are decided. Even if you hadn’t called us to meet with you, we would have caught up with you on your way out. We have had enough of Athabasca and the Council.”

“You were not there to witness their performance,” Risca sneered, shouldering into the light. “A travesty. They gave your request the same consideration they would an invitation to become a victim of the plague! There was no debate allowed or reasoning undertaken! Athabasca presented your request in such a manner that there was no doubt where he stood. Others backed him up, sycophants all. Tay and I did our best to condemn his machinations, but we were shouted down. I have had enough of their politics, enough of their shortsightedness. If you say the Warlock Lord exists, then he exists. If you say he is coming to Paranor, then come he will. But I will not be here to greet him. Let those others stand in my place. Shades, how can they be such fools?”

Risca was all brawn and heat, and Bremen smiled in spite of himself. “So you gave a good account of yourselves on my behalf?”

“We were small whispers in a windstorm,” Tay laughed. His arms lifted and fell helplessly within his dark robes. “Risca is right. Politics rule at Paranor. They have since Athabasca became First Druid. You should have held that position, Bremen, not him.”

“You could have been First Druid, if you had wanted to be,” Risca pointed out irritably. “You should have insisted.”

“No,” said Bremen, “I would not have done the job well, my friends. I was never one for administration and management. I was meant to seek out and recover what was lost, and I could not do that from the high tower. Athabasca was a better choice than I.”

“Hogwash!” snapped Risca. “He has never been a good choice for anything. He resents you even now. He knows that his office was yours for the asking, and he has never forgiven you for that. Nor that you could walk away from it. Your freedom threatens his reliance on order and obedience. He would have us all placed carefully on a shelf and taken down when it suits his purpose. He would dictate our lives as if we were children. You escaped his reach by leaving Paranor, and he will not forgive you that.”

Bremen shrugged. “Ancient history. I regret only that he would not pay greater heed to my warning. I think the Keep in real danger. The Warlock Lord comes this way, Risca. He will not step around Paranor and the Druids. He will grind them beneath his army’s boots.”

“What are we to do?” Tay pressed, glancing about as if afraid someone might be listening. “We have continued practicing our magic, Bremen. Each of us, Risca and I, in our own way, employing our own disciplines. We knew you would come back for us someday. We knew the magic would be needed.”

Bremen nodded, pleased. He had relied on these two above all the others to pursue their conjuring skills. They were not as learned or practiced as he, but they were able enough. Risca was the weapons master, skilled in the war arts, in the study of arms. Tay Trefenwyd was a student of the elements, of the forces that created and destroyed, of the balance of earth, air, fire, and water in the evolution of life. Each was an adept, just as he, capable of summoning magic when called upon to protect and defend. The practice of magic was forbidden within the walls of Paranor, except under strict supervision. Conjuring was undertaken almost exclusively on a basis of need. Experimentation was discouraged and often punished if discovered. The Druids lived in the shadow of their own history and the dark memory of Brona and his followers. They had been rendered moribund by guilt and indecision.

They could not seem to understand that their ill-conceived course of action threatened to swallow them whole.

“You were right in your assumptions,” he told them. “I relied on you not to abandon the magic. And I do want you to come with me. I will need your skills and your strength in the days ahead. Tell me, are there any others we can call upon? Others, who have accepted the need for magic’s use?”

Tay and Risca exchanged a brief glance. “None,” said the latter.

“You must make do with us.”

“You shall do fine,” Bremen advised, his aged face crinkling with the smile he forced upon himself. Only these two to join Kinson and himself! Only these two against so many! He sighed.

Well, he should have expected as much, he supposed. “I am sorry I must ask this of you,” he said, and genuinely meant it.

Risca snorted. “I should feel slighted if you did not. I am bored to tears of Paranor and her old men. No one cares for the practice of my craft. No one follows in my footsteps. I am an anachronism to all. Tay feels as I do. We would have left long ago if we had not agreed to wait for you.”

Tay nodded. “It is no cause for sadness to find you in need of traveling companions, Bremen. We are quite ready.”

Bremen took each by the hand and thanked him. “Gather what you would carry with you and meet me by the front gates tomorrow morning. I will tell you of our journey then. Tonight, I will sleep without in the forest with my companion, Kinson Ravenlock. He has accompanied me these two years past and proven invaluable. He is a Tracker and a scout, a Borderman of great courage and resolve.”

“If he travels with you, he needs no other recommendation,” said Tay. “We will leave now. Caerid Lock waits for you somewhere on the stairs below. He asks that you descend until you come upon him.” Tay paused meaningfully. “Caerid would be a good man to have with us, Bremen.”