The more Tarsha heard about this man, the more she became infatuated with the idea of having him be her teacher. She had no idea how she would go about this. She did not know him personally; nor did anyone else in her village. She had no reason to think he would give her the time of day, let alone commit to teaching her.
Unless, she thought, he found her worthy.
As her seventeenth birthday approached, her parents asked her what she would like for a present. What she wanted was clear to her, but it was not something they could give her. Still, it was something she might be able to give herself.
She celebrated her birthday with her parents, all the while knowing what she was going to do. What she had to do.
And on the morning following, without telling them anything or even leaving them a note, she set out on foot for Paranor.
FOUR
Parfend, Maturen of the Corrax Trolls, stood with his army atop a rise facing northeast to where the waters of the Tiderace were visible in vague choppy heads of foam through layers of shifting mist. The army stood readied perhaps five miles back from the shoreline, but from the high ground they could look down on their enemies as they marched in loose formation to a second rise, somewhat below them and several hundred yards away.
The Corrax were a fearsome sight. Their faces were painted with terrifying images of blood and bones, and they were stripped naked to their waists to emphasize the huge muscles of their arms, shoulders, and torsos. They carried massive battle-axes and broadswords, their blades sharpened and gleaming even in the faint light of dawn. Were an adversary to be struck by any of these—even if it were only a glancing blow—death was almost certain. The Corrax fed on the fear of those they fought, and fear was unavoidable against creatures and weapons as large as these.
Parfend did not know who these enemies were, but they had invaded Corrax territory and were exhibiting a clear hostile intent to remain. Where they had come from remained a mystery. Efforts to speak with them had failed. Any chance at a reasonable resolution had evaporated when the heads of their envoys had been returned in a cart. The Corrax were warriors, fighters for as far back as anyone could remember. Nomads as well, which made their claim to the land on which they stood somewhat suspect.
But for the Corrax, wherever they were was territory that belonged to them until they decided to move on. They themselves were invaders with a long and bloody history of warring with the other Troll tribes. They had engaged most of them in battle at one time or another and, for the most part, triumphed. So they were not worried about this latest batch of fools.
The Corrax attack relied on brute force and a reckless disregard for personal safety to overwhelm and crush their opponents. It had always worked before. Strike hard. Give no ground. Show no mercy. It should have worked here. The Corrax should have been able to hammer their way through the invaders’ lines with all the fury and bloodlust that had destroyed so many other armies.
Parfend took a moment to watch these latest enemies draw up in an uneven line on the lower ridge. They were lightly armored, tall, and fair-haired. With the ocean brume shifting and swirling, it was hard to tell much about them besides that. There did not appear to be as many of them as there were Corrax, which suggested they did not understand the nature of the enemy they faced. Anyone who knew anything of the Corrax people knew they were ferocious, relentless, and implacable. Once they engaged, they fought to the death. Once they attacked, they did not retreat.
But this enemy did not seem concerned. It simply waited for them to come, standing perfectly still in precise but loosely formed ranks, showing rather large gaps between individual soldiers. They stood with their long scarlet robes tightly drawn and their pale-tan boots set. Those in the front two ranks carried spears—eight-foot poles with hafts of pale ash, smooth, iron-tipped points affixed to one end, handgrips carved into the wood at the other. Those in the rear ranks bore short swords—held loosely at their sides, balanced and easily maneuverable in combat.
Parfend waited to see what they would do, but it soon became apparent they intended to do nothing. If the Corrax wanted a battle, they would have to do the attacking. This was fine with Parfend. The Corrax were used to attacking, to seizing the advantage, to striking swiftly and surely and making a quick end to any conflict. So it did not trouble him that they would have to do so here.
Nevertheless, he held his ground longer than usual. There was something odd about these men lined up across from them. There was an ethereal quality to them, a sense of ghostliness. The wind off the Tiderace whistled and the mists swept all around the invaders, and at times they seemed to fade and then reappear. Everything about them—even their weapons—seemed curiously insubstantial. They were creatures made not of flesh and blood but of smoke and mirrors. They were there, clearly revealed in their paleness, and yet they were not.
It was unsettling, but the Corrax were not accustomed to being troubled by things they couldn’t explain. That was the nature of the world and those that inhabited it.
A moment longer, and Parfend gave the signal to attack, his sword arm raised high as he roared the Corrax battle cry. His warriors took it up. When his arm fell, the army rushed forward, screaming like madmen. They tore down the slope toward the waiting enemy, brandishing weapons while keeping their lines intact, one on point and two to form the body of the charge. Their cries shredded the sounds of the ocean and the wind, and the pounding of their feet on hardpan and rock sent up a fearful roar.
But the enemy did not stir. It continued to wait.
They will break, Parfend thought. They will break and run.
But they did not. They held their line, the butts of their spears firmly planted on the ground, their swords still sheathed. They remained so still they seemed to be statues rather than men. Not even a shifting of feet was visible. Not even the faintest whisper of voices could be heard.
The Corrax reached the valley between the two ridges and continued on. They slowed slightly with the incline, but their war cries remained undiminished. Even the bravest and most resolute of adversaries had always fled from them in the end.
The Corrax were within fifteen feet when the invaders shifted slightly, the entire line taking on a curious shimmer all along their ranks as they did so. While nothing seemed to change, there was an odd sense that something had happened. Then those in front lowered their spears and a bristling forest of long, steel-tipped shafts faced the Corrax. And all of a sudden it was unclear where any of them were. In another instant, they were not there at all. They had simply vanished.
The Corrax were caught completely by surprise and had no chance to adjust. By then, they were on top of the enemy, weapons slashing and stabbing, finding only empty air as the enemy ranks dissolved before them. They experienced a few quick moments of confusion and then sword blades and spear points were skewering and slashing the Corrax from places where no one seemed to be. The Corrax fought back in a frenzy, still screaming their battle cries as they died, but there was nothing they could do to protect themselves. They couldn’t see their attackers. All they could see were empty images, insubstantial and no more solid than air.
Their enemies had become ghosts.
The Corrax fought on anyway, because that was all they knew to do, struggling as they did so to understand what was happening, to restore things to the way they should have been. But it was hopeless. Blood flew everywhere, painting the ground and the faces and torsos of the living. The Corrax swung wildly at nothing, trying to find their adversaries and failing. And still they were cut down.
They died still wondering what had killed them, still blind to what had happened.
At the center of the line, where the fighting was fiercest, Parfend tried to rally his warriors. He called them to him, had them form a solid line of defense, their weapons pointed out, their bark-skinned mass surging forward toward the enemy. Or to where they believed the enemy to be. But by now, the enemy was no longer where they had been. By now, the enemy was behind them, a
ttacking their rear, felling the unsuspecting Trolls before they could defend themselves. All around the Corrax Maturen his friends and family died. All around him, his warriors perished. It was a slaughter, and there was nothing Parfend could do to stop it.
The battleground had become a charnel house, and the dead were piling up all around him. The Corrax were down to less than a hundred men, and those who remained alive were reduced to fighting for their lives individually or in small groups. A few even fell to their knees in abject surrender, begging. They were not spared. The wounded cried out for mercy. They were ignored.
One by one, they fell—the entirety of the Corrax attack force, all five hundred. Parfend battled on because he knew no other way, watching in dismay and fury as his warriors succumbed. All of his efforts at saving them, at rallying them, at turning the tide, failed. They were battling ghosts. They were fighting spirits of the air.
Parfend watched it all until one of those horrific eight-foot spears was driven through his body, and the strength went out of him. He fell to his knees, his great ax falling from his fingers, his arms limp at his sides. He looked up in time to see a vision approaching—a slender, cloaked form all in white, a broadsword gripped in two gloved hands. In a dream, he watched the sword lift and fall in a mighty swing.
Then his head fell from his shoulders.
FIVE
North of Arborlon at the borders of the Elven nation, a new day had begun in the village of Emberen. In skies somewhat grayer and less friendly than those of the previous night, clouds massed on the western horizon, suggesting the approach of another storm. There was a metallic taste to the air and a smell of dampness that warned of what was coming. Winds had begun to gust, and the leaves of trees surrounding the village had begun to shiver with expectation.
Drisker Arc paid no attention to any of it. Instead, he continued to read his book, sitting on the porch of his cottage, absorbed in a study of shape-shifting. He had been up since dawn, an early riser, his breakfast consumed and his ablutions completed hours ago. His was a mostly solitary life, a life of study, contemplation, and practice with magic. Sometimes more experimentation than practice, but both always led to the same thing—an acquired or improved skill. His cottage was a mile removed from Emberen proper and surrounded by heavy forest, which allowed him to carry out his work undisturbed. His nearest neighbor was far enough away that even shouting was unlikely to attract any attention. Drisker preferred it this way. He valued his privacy more than the company of others. He always had—and now more than ever, since he had almost nothing else. He lived alone. No one came to visit. No one came to seek his advice. Traders and vendors passed him by. The past was past, and that was the way he liked it.
Although on mornings such as this one, he wished that, for a single day, he could go back in time and gain temporary access to Paranor and the Druids. There was trouble afoot, and it was the kind of trouble that the Druids should know about and investigate. Probably, at some point, they would. Some, at least, would think it worth doing. Some would manage to put aside their petty squabbles and constant bickering and look to the north. Some would find a way to ignore the politics and game playing that the others engaged in on a daily basis and realize that more important things were at stake than gaining a momentary advantage over their fellows by raising their status in the Druid pecking order.
Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe no one would do anything. He hadn’t been able to change this attitude when he was there.
And he had been the order’s High Druid.
He sighed, put aside his book, and stared off into the trees. It was hard even to think about it now. So much infighting. So many attempts by members of the order to advance their own causes. So little tolerance for the opinions of others. So little willingness to engage in reasonable discussion and compromise. How had it gotten so bad? Even now, looking back on it, remembering all the little details that had brought it about, he wasn’t sure. It had happened slowly, if inexorably. Perhaps choices of who to admit as Druids in training had hastened the degeneration of the order’s smooth operation. Perhaps the increase in size had weakened the earlier stability that he and a handful of others had enjoyed and been better able to control. There had always been periods of turmoil over the years, deaths and departures, changes in the structure of the order, periodic attacks from within and without. But the Druids had survived the worst of it, emerging stronger each time, ready to continue their work. They had put the past behind them and continued to seek out foreign magic, collecting or neutralizing the more dangerous forms, determining the sources of power that showed on the scrye waters, and housing those artifacts that needed watching over so that they could not be misused.
A struggle, to be sure. A work in progress that had no discernible end and might never be finished. In the world of the Four Lands, magic was everywhere and much of it was unstable. Science had failed in the Old World and been abandoned. Magic had filled the void, and for many years now had been the dominant power in the reborn world of the Races. But always there had been the threat that magic, like science, might be misused, might be left untended, might break free on its own, or might give birth to new ills and sicknesses that would match those that marked the time of science. That had happened, sometimes with devastating consequences. But each time the magic had been brought under control and turned back before growing too dark to contain.
It was always the Druids who made this possible. It was the Druids who shepherded and bound close wild magic, standing against the worst of it and mastering the best.
Now the world was changing once more, and the Druids were changing with it. Wasn’t that why he was here instead of at Paranor? New science was emerging, mostly from the Federation, forms unknown in the Old World that had come alive in the new. Forms that relied to a substantial extent on diapson crystals and the power that could be unleashed through skilled faceting and a harnessing of sunlight. There were airships and ground vehicles that utilized both. There were flash rips and thunderbolts, railguns and shredder slings all capable of releasing power that could shred and destroy enemies and their weapons. There were new communications devices that allowed conversations and visuals between people who were hundreds of miles away from each other. There were machines that could affect the weather, machines that could generate storms to provide rain for farmland. There were transports of such size they could carry entire armies. So much changing, but the Druids weren’t changing with it.
The magic was all they needed, they kept saying.
The magic was the only power that mattered.
It wasn’t necessary to employ these new sciences. They didn’t need to embrace a future others claimed to own.
They held the balance of power among the nations, and they would continue to do so forever.
Drisker Arc pursed his lips. Not if you tear yourselves and your order to pieces from within first.
He rose and stretched. He was a big man—enormously strong, broad-shouldered, and muscular. Of all the Druids since the time of Allanon, he was physically the most impressive. At almost seven feet, he wore his hair long and braided. He was not a young man, his dark skin lined by weather and the demands of magic’s use, but neither was he old. He had not slept the Druid Sleep while High Druid, so his aging was a natural process. His eyes were bright and alert and a curious pale blue that suggested an unexpected gentleness. His smile was warm when offered, but his gaze was piercing enough that most would look away rather than meet it.
He was a mass of contradictions.
He adhered to order and ethic, as did few others, yet he was forgiving of those who could not match his discipline. Magic and its uses were his life’s passion but he understood those who did not share his feelings or even thought them foolish and dangerous. He was famously mercurial, his temperament going from calm and steady to borderline out-of-control—in spite of the warmth reflected in his eyes. He sounded the same when he was patient and when he was not; his moods were often hard to determi
ne.
He was unreadable. Inscrutable. No one could ever be quite certain what he was thinking before he revealed himself.
He lowered his arms out of his stretch and sat down again. He knew all these things about himself. Others had witnessed it often enough that he would have had to be obtuse not to notice their reactions. He accepted what was true about himself but did not much admire any part of it save his compulsion for studying and mastering magic. That meant something. That had value.
Although no longer, perhaps. No longer, when this latest Druid order threatened to throw away all that had been accomplished. Not when the Four Lands were in danger and there might be no one who would come to the rescue.
He shook his head, bitterness flooding through him.
Word of terrible violence had come down out of the Northland, bits and pieces of rumor that filtered through vast distances. The rumors were neither clear nor reliable, because they were carried to him by strange visions sent in dreams and the shrieks of birds and the whispers of winds rustling in the forest. But he was a magic wielder, and he knew better than to discount such signs. His eyes in that part of the world would send word at some point if it were true, a confirmation of the magic’s vestigial warnings. Still, he sensed even now that it was. And his instincts seldom betrayed him in these matters.
The Druids should be wondering the same thing. Especially if the scrye waters indicated magic had been used. The scrye responded to all magical disturbances in the Four Lands, and one of this size could hardly have been missed. Surely, the waters of the reading bowl had recorded it, and someone would be sent to investigate.
He would have gone to Paranor to inquire if he had thought for one minute anyone would admit him. Or even listen to him. Just to hear what they had to say about it and what they intended to do would ease his concerns. Doing nothing ate at him, yet what choice did he have? He was no longer one of them. He was no longer welcome at Paranor. Balronen had made sure of that when he assumed the position of High Druid. Never one to leave anything to chance, he had banned Drisker from the Keep on the spot, proclaiming him a Druid no longer but an outcast. He was making sure that Drisker could not change his mind at some point and choose to return.