Brooks, Terry - High Druid's Blade - The Defenders of Shannara (9780345540713)

It was approaching midmorning when Leofur finally reappeared. She returned from a different direction than the one she had taken earlier with Grehling, catching them both by surprise. She approached at a brisk walk, her eyes fixed on them, her posture ramrod-straight.

She stopped in front of Paxon and took a deep breath.

“I have news of your friend. It’s very bad.”

He knew at once what it was. He knew it as much from her tone of voice and the look on her face as from the words themselves. When she spoke them aloud, he already knew what she was going to say. He held up his hand in a belated gesture to forestall hearing them. But it was too late. She was speaking, and the words were cutting at him like knives.

T

WENTY-THREE

ARCANNEN’S NERVES SHOWED NO SIGN OF GIVING WAY IN THEface of what he had done until he had reached his airship, woken the crew, and lifted off. Then all at once his hands were shaking and he was damp with sweat. He had killed a Druid. He had committed the one act he had warned himself against, the one act he had known would bring him the worst kind of trouble. Now the Druids would hunt him until he was found and killed. He could argue all he wanted about why that wouldn’t happen—the passage of time would take the edge off the urgency of finding him, changes in the order would result in an agenda where punishing him was a lesser concern, whatever. But the truth was inescapable: Sooner or later, he was going to have to answer for what he had done.

He cursed the Druid for being so persistent, for continuing to hunt him long after any reasonable person would have given up. He cursed himself for believing his ambush would be enough to stop the other. He should have kept running, should have made better choices, should never have given the man the chance to come after him in the first place.

But it was all water under the bridge now, wasn’t it? It was all beyond a place where he could do anything about it. He was stuck with things the way they were. Regrets and hindsight and disgust were all shackles that threatened to slow him down and ultimately to undo him. What he needed to remember was that if he kept a clear head and acted quickly enough, he might still find a way to get clear of this mess. After all, it wasn’t the first time he had put himself in danger. It wasn’t the first time he had made a mistake that threatened to cost him everything.

But it was the first time he felt really, truly threatened.

Still, a solution to his problems was already nudging him, whispering in his ear—a plan that would free him from the immediate threat of Druid retaliation. It had come to him—as so many things did—when he least expected it. He was fleeing the scene of the killing, not yet seen by any of Wayford’s citizens, still not exposed nor his deed revealed. It gave him the opportunity and time to escape from the city, and it was while he was coming up to the airfield and making for his airship that the idea had begun to take shape.

If he could find a way to shift attention away from himself, he would have a chance to disappear until matters settled down. If he could give the Druid order a distraction to occupy its time, a matter that was more pressing than finding him—a threat so immediate and troubling that its members wouldn’t hesitate to focus all their efforts on dealing with it—he could salvage this debacle.

And by debacle he meant his disrupted plans for gaining control of the Druid order through Paxon and Chrysallin Leah.

The plan as originally conceived had long since fallen apart. The goal, however, remained the same: Find a way to take control of the order, then subvert it sufficiently to turn it to his own uses. In the beginning, after he had inadvertently discovered that Paxon Leah had in his possession a talisman believed lost, one quite possibly infused with extraordinary magic, his goal had been simple—he would claim it for himself. His first impulse was simply to steal it. But then he had remembered he lacked a means to unlock its magic, that only a member of the Leah household could do so. Therefore, he had taken Chrysallin Leah as a way to make her brother do his bidding.

But that effort had failed when Paxon Leah discovered the power of the sword and by doing so found a way to rescue his sister. For a time, it seemed he would have to forget the whole idea of using the boy; he was in the Druid camp after that, living at Paranor and not likely to return for a second encounter without bringing help.

Then he had come up with the idea of taking the girl a second time and using her in a different way. She was better suited to what he had wanted to accomplish in the first place, and maybe the boy could be brought around, as well. Using Mischa to subvert her thinking, he would make her his pawn—one who could be conditioned to perform without hesitation a single act when the opportunity was given her.

She would kill the Ard Rhys.

Such a thing had seemed impossible at first glance. But Mischa was talented, and she had turned more than one unwilling subject into an obedient servant. Give Chrysallin Leah enough reason, fill her with enough hatred, subject her to enough emotional and psychological suffering, and she would react instinctively against one she perceived to be an implacable enemy. The torture would not have to actually happen; it would not be necessary to physically damage her. It need only be perceived as real by the victim to accomplish what mattered—to leave her so obsessed with gaining freedom from and revenge upon her perceived torturer that she would use deadly force against her at the first opportunity.

All that, Mischa now claimed, she had accomplished. Chrysallin Leah was terrified of the gray-haired Elven woman who had stood by and directed her endless suffering—a woman who wasn’t even there, but who was as real to the girl as the pain she had experienced. A woman who looked exactly like Aphenglow Elessedil. The first time Chrysallin Leah came face-to-face with the Ard Rhys, she would try to kill her. She wouldn’t be able to help herself. She would use whatever weapon she could find, whatever tool lay close at hand, to put an end to the Druid leader.

To help her with this, Arcannen had arranged for Mischa to leave the Stiehl where Chrysallin could find it. But when she had escaped, she hadn’t even bothered to take the blade with her. He had worried from the beginning that Chrysallin Leah might not react as Mischa believed she would—that she might simply break down and be unable to function, reverting to a helpless victim. But the witch said the girl was very strong and very determined, and once she was free of her imprisonment she would be driven by the memories of what she thought had been done to her and would act quickly and directly. She would not see herself as helpless. She would see herself as needing to prevent any chance of ever again becoming her enemy’s prisoner. She would be driven to seek revenge for acts that were embedded in her memory like spikes.

All that was needed was a way to put the Ard Rhys and the girl together in the same room. And that would have been arranged if the girl hadn’t somehow found a way to escape through Mischa’s carelessness. It might still happen, of course. If her brother found her before the witch did—which was entirely possible—he would take her with him to Paranor to keep her safe. He would want the Ard Rhys to have a look at her. He would not understand the danger of what he was doing. Not until it was too late.

It was an ambitious and admittedly uncertain plan, but it was worth trying so he had carried it out. Now, of course, the outcome was highly improbable given the extent of the disruption that had occurred. Mischa could believe whatever she wanted, but he was a realist and he knew that the chances of Chrysallin Leah doing what she had been conditioned to do had fallen off dramatically.