High druid of Shannara_ Jarka Ruus - Terry Brooks [10]
She compressed her lips tightly, fighting back the snarl forming on them, consumed by the feelings this thing had generated. It was all she could do to pull herself together and turn back to an obviously unnerved Kermadec.
“Are you all right?” he asked at once.
She nodded. “But I wasn’t for a moment, old bear. That thing radiated such evil that I think letting it come even that near was a serious mistake. If I didn’t know better, I would say it lured me here.”
Which it had, she knew at once, though she would not say so to him. It had known she would come, would respond to its advances, and would step close enough to feel it. It wanted her to know it was there. But why? What did it want? Where did it hide that she could not find it, and that it could not do more than it had?
“Do we stay here another night?” the Rock Troll asked cautiously.
She shook her head “I think we’ve seen all we are going to see. We’ll fly to Paranor at first light I’ll find better answers back there to what is happening,”
Chapter THREE
“We’ve talked enough!” Shadea a’Ru snapped irritably. “How much more talking does it need? This is the best chance we’ll get!”
No one said anything in response. No one cared to be the first to speak. She was a big woman, and she dominated with her size as much as with the force of her personality. Fully six feet tall, broad-shouldered and strong, she had fought in the front lines on the Prekkendorran for two years, and none of them had survived anything nearly as terrible as that. The contrasting hues of her sun-browned skin, smooth and dusky, and wind-blown blond hair, short-cropped and uncombed, gave her a look of good health and vitality. When she stepped into any room, heads turned in her direction and conversation slowed.
Here, however, the reaction was different. Here, they all knew her too well to be much more than cautious. She looked from face to face, her calculating blue eyes searching out signs of doubt or hesitation, challenging them to try to hide it from her. Their responses were as different as they were. Terek Molt disdained even to look at her, his flat, hard features directed toward the doorway of the room that concealed their secret meeting. Iridia Eleri’s stunningly perfect features had a cool, distant look. Neither Dwarf nor Elf had ever demonstrated any hesitation in their joint endeavor. Either would have undertaken the effort alone long ago but for Shadea’s insistence on unity.
Traunt Rowan and Pyson Wence glanced uneasily at each other.
The problem lay with the Southlander and the Gnome. Cowards, she thought angrily, though she knew better than to say so to their faces.
“Act in haste, regret at leisure, Shadea,” the former offered softly, shrugging.
She wanted to kill him. He was the only one of them who would dare to speak to her like that, and he did so for no better reason than to demonstrate that she could push him only so far before he would dig in his heels. He wanted this as much as she did, as all of them did, but he was too cautious for his own good. It came out of being the child of Federation functionaries; the fewer chances you took in that world, the better off you were.
“Please don’t fall back on platitudes to justify your reluctance to do what is necessary!” she snapped in reply. “You’re better than that, Traunt. Smarter than that. We can nose this matter about like a dog with an old bone for as long as you wish, but it won’t change a thing. Nothing will happen to improve matters unless we make it happen.”
“She smells out plots like ours,” Pyson Wence said, his small hands gesturing for emphasis. “Step wrong with her, and you might find yourself down here for good!”
They were deep underground in the cellars of Paranor, gathered in one of the rooms used primarily for storage. The room smelled of dust and the air was cold and stale to the taste. Stone walls locked them away beneath tons of rock and earth, a safehold that few ever bothered to visit save to retrieve stores. It was the one place in Paranor where some degree