High druid of Shannara_ Jarka Ruus - Terry Brooks [148]
And had.
She closed her eyes against a wave of memories that paraded through her mind like specters. A flood of emotion followed on their heels. The sadness she felt for the man she had left in order to pursue Ahren. The emptiness she had experienced when she had given birth to and then abandoned the man’s baby. The humiliation she had endured when Grianne Ohmsford had discovered what she had done. The terrible hurt she had suffered when Ahren had told her that in spite of everything, they could not be together, that his life was meant to go another way. The rage she had called upon to ally herself with Shadea and the others in their determination to rid the Druids of Grianne Ohmsford. The hatred she had nurtured for the Ard Rhys, the person most responsible for her misery.
The sense of devastation and irreparable loss she felt now, with Ahren Elessedil forever beyond her reach.
— But it need not be so —
Her eyes snapped open and she took a quick breath. The voice was back, come to comfort her anew. She nearly began crying again, so grateful was she to hear it. How much she depended on it. Just the sound of it was enough to give her fresh hope, new strength.
— He can still be yours —
She nodded at the darkness, wanting it to be true. But how could it? Ahren was dead, the voice had already told her so. There was no way to bring him back, no way to restore life to his shattered body. She could join him, of course. She could end her own life and reunite with him in death. She believed that was possible and even preferable to what life offered without him. Maybe she would have that, anyway. Now that she had broken with Shadea, it would not take the other long to decide to eliminate her.
— You need not die to have him back —
She had always trusted the voice, and she had never had cause to regret it. From the beginning, when it had summoned her north to the ruins of the Skull Kingdom and she had built the fires and made the sacrifices that had brought it into being, she had known it spoke the truth. It was a small thing for her to help it, when it was doing so much to help her. Shadea had believed from the first that she was the guiding force behind the conspiracy to eliminate the Ard Rhys, that she was the one who had sought out and found the means to carry out the act through her connection with Sen Dunsidan. The Federation Prime Minister, in turn, believed that he was the one who was determining the course of events, that his promises and gifts to Iridia, after she had approached him, had subverted her and made her his spy within the Druid camp. But she was the one to whom the voice spoke. She was the one who had brought it out of the darkness and into the light. She was the one to whom it had given the liquid night and the means by which she could gain some small measure of revenge against the woman who had turned Ahren Elessedil against her through scurrilous subterfuge and self-serving advice.
The others could think what they wished. She was the one who had made everything possible.
— I am here, Iridia —
She felt a surge of expectation and joy. She had waited for it, longed for it, the time when the voice took form, as it had promised it would, to give her back her place in the world. It would happen after the exile of the Ard Rhys, it had told her. Once the High Druid was gone, the voice could come out of hiding. It could take form and become for Iridia the friend and confidant she had once thought Shadea might be.
— I can be more than that, Iridia. I can be him —
Not quite willing to believe that she had heard the words correctly, she felt her heart lurch. She stood frozen in the darkness of the alcove, listening to their echo in the silence. I can be him. Was that possible? The voice was a chameleon, a changeling, capable of wondrous things. But could it bring back