Terry Brooks - High Druid's Blade

On the first day of the third week following his return from Wayford, that sign appeared.

He was working down on the airfield, mending the frayed ends of lengths of radian draws that served as replacements for ones that had broken midflight, when a man approached, coming down from the airfield manager’s office at a slow, steady pace. Paxon had never seen him before, but he knew what he was the moment he caught sight of him. Black robes that reached to the ground and covered him from head to foot, a deep–set hood pulled back in the midday sun, and a silver medallion with a hand clasped about a burning torch marked him instantly as a Druid.

Paxon put down his tools and stood, a dark premonition forming in his chest, quickening his heart.

The stranger walked up to him, his blue eyes bright and cheerful. “Well met, Paxon Leah. My name is Sebec. I serve in the Fourth Druid Order.”

He held out his hand and Paxon shook it. Sebec was not particularly tall or imposing looking. If anything, he was slight of build and rather bookish in appearance. And he seemed very young. But there was an intensity to his gaze and a confidence in his manner that let Paxon know not to misjudge him.

“Your robes and medallion give you away,” the Highlander observed, releasing the other’s hand. “Can I help you?”

“It might be the other way around.” Sebec gave him a brief smile. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk?”

Paxon knew what he was suggesting. That it would be better not to talk out in the open where they could be seen, that whatever the Druid wanted to say would be better said in private. Paxon glanced around, trying to think where the best place might be.

“Perhaps we could go up to your home and sit outside in the yard while we talk,” Sebec suggested suddenly, revealing he knew more than a little about Paxon already.

Paxon didn’t argue. Together, they walked up from the airfield, skirting the edge of the city to reach the roadway leading to his home. Paxon watched the Druid out of the corner of his eye, still taking his measure, trying to decide what this was all about–even though he was afraid he already knew. It had to be about his confrontation with Arcannen. It was the only thing he could imagine the Druids would be interested in, although he wasn’t sure how the order had learned of it. He worried it might be because he had summoned the magic of the Sword of Leah, and they had a way of tracking such magic.

He worried they intended to take his sword away from him.

Once they had climbed the hill–a task Sebec accomplished without breaking a sweat–they sat down together on the porch steps. His mother called out from inside, then appeared in the doorway, brushing flour from an apron and smiling.

The smile dropped away when she saw Sebec. “Well met,” she greeted the Druid, quickly putting the smile back in place. “I’m Zeatha Leah.”

The young Druid stood. “Sebec, of the Fourth Druid Order.”

Something in his manner made her smile widen in spite of what Paxon recognized as her obvious discomfort. “Welcome to our home, Sebec. I’ve just baked cookies. Would you like some?”

So Paxon and Sebec sat together on the porch eating cookies and drinking cups of ale while looking out over the city. For a while, neither said anything, concentrating on their eating and drinking, lost in their separate thoughts.

“You have a beautiful view of the Highlands,” Sebec said finally.

“The land belonged to my family for centuries,” Paxon replied, nodding in agreement. “Once, we owned for as far as the eye can see. But now we make do with fifteen acres and this view.”

Sebec loosened the ties on his black robes to open them at the neck and let the breeze cool him. “This would be enough for me, if I lived here.”

Paxon didn’t respond, thinking it was enough for him, too, but he would have liked to experience the time when it all belonged to the Leah family and they were Kings and Queens of the Highlands. Just to see what it would have felt like.

“I’ve come to ask a favor of you,” Sebec said, putting down his empty cookie plate and cup. “I want you to come with me to Paranor to speak with the Ard Rhys. You won’t be gone long, maybe one night, maybe two. No more, and then I would bring you back again.”

“She’s going to take away my sword, isn’t she?” Paxon declared, unable to help himself. The words just tumbled out of him, and he felt a deep emptiness at the truth he knew they carried.

Sebec stared at him. “Do you mean the one you wear strapped across your back? That one? No, I don’t think that’s what she has in mind. She wants to talk to you about something else. But it isn’t my place to speak for her. She wants to do this in person.”

“But she did not choose to come herself, did she?”

“She doesn’t go much of anywhere these days, Paxon. She is very old and frail, and it is an effort for her just to get through the day while staying at home. You would be doing her a service by going, and I think maybe doing a service for yourself before matters are concluded.” He paused. “You know of her, don’t you? You are familiar with her name and history?”

Paxon nodded. “Aphenglow Elessedil.”

He knew very well who she was. Almost everyone did. And almost everyone knew her history–or as much of it as she allowed them to know. She had been alive for more than a century and a half, kept so by the Druid Sleep. Once within the protective confines of the sleep, Druids stopped aging until they woke again. An Ard Rhys was entitled to use it as often as he or she thought advisable, maintaining consistency in the rule of the Druid Order through longevity.

But Aphenglow Elessedil was famous from long before her time as the Ard Rhys in the Fourth Druid Order. She was a member of the Elven royal family, and in her youth she had helped her sister Arling, a Chosen of the Ellcrys, pass safely through the ordeal required for her to become the successor to the Ellcrys when the old tree died. She had stood with the Ohmsford twins, Redden and Railing, against the demon hordes when they had broken free of the Forbidding. She had spearheaded the quest undertaken by the Druid order under Khyber when it had gone in search of the missing Elfstones of Faerie, and because of her efforts one set of the precious Stones, at least, had been recovered.

There were rumors that all of them had been found and returned to the Four Lands but that the others had been lost again. The ones that remained were said to be scarlet in color, but few had ever seen them. They were kept at Paranor in the possession of the Druids as a part of the edict regarding recovered magic and its care and usage. The Elves, he knew, had laid claim to those Elfstones, demanding their return. After all, the Elves already had the blue Stones in their care. Why shouldn’t they be given possession of the scarlet Stones, as well?

But Aphenglow had denied their demands repeatedly, insisting that the Druid edict on the collection and preservation of magic superseded any nationalistic claims. She was content to let the Elves keep the seeking‑Stones, which had been in their possession for thousands of years, but not those scarlet talismans now referred to as the draining‑Stones.

So the antagonism and suspicion that had plagued her throughout her life continued, and Aphenglow Elessedil was never accepted back into the Elven nation as one of their own. She had made her choice, and she would have to live with it. She had chosen the Druid way, embraced its creed and enforced its laws, and it was clear that this is how it would always be. She was a Druid first and an Elf second.

All of this was common knowledge. Or common to the Leahs and the Ohmsfords who had grown up with it or heard about it later from their parents and grandparents. So Paxon knew something of Aphenglow, but none of it lessened the wariness he felt for Druids in general.