High druid of Shannara_ Jarka Ruus - Terry Brooks [24]
She met the cripple the following year. He was of indeterminate origin, so gnarled and deformed that it was impossible to label his Race. She never learned his name, but names were never important in their relationship. He was a practitioner of the magic arts, primarily a weaver of spells. He was infatuated with her for reasons she never fully understood, and he was willing to trade what he knew for the pleasure of her company. It was an easy bargain for her to make. She stayed with him only one year, time that passed so quickly that in retrospect it always seemed impossible to her that it had really been that long. His health was already failing when they met, and by the end of the year he was dead. But before he died, he taught her what he knew about magic, which was considerable. He was a teacher in search of a student, but he was careful in making his choices. He must have watched her first, she decided afterwards, measuring her strengths, determining whether or not she would be worth the effort. Once he had decided that she was and further determined that she was not repelled by his looks, he gave her his full attention for the time that was left him.
He never told her why he decided to spend his last few months teaching her. He must have known he was dying. She thought that maybe it helped him to have a purpose in his life rather than simply waiting for the inevitable. She thought that he took pleasure in watching his own deteriorating skills put to use by someone still young and strong. Perhaps teaching was all he knew to do in his final years, and so he did it. Perhaps he found in her company something that was sustaining and comforting. Perhaps he simply didn’t want to die alone. It was hard to tell, but she accepted his gift without questioning it.
Her natural affinity for summoning and employing magic was immediately apparent to both of them. She was able to grasp and employ the subtle art of spell weaving almost from the beginning, her comprehension of the ways in which words and hand movements worked together enabling her to cast simple spells from their first session. The old man was delighted and actually clapped his hands. She progressed rapidly from there, all of it, at first, a mystery that offered such possibilities that she could not help imagining the secrets she would uncover.
After he died, held in her arms as he breathed his last, comforted in the way he deserved to be, she studied alone for several years, closeted away in quarters not far from her Federation soldier friends, whom she still spent time with regularly. But the Federation no longer held any interest for her. It was too regimented, too structured, and she was in need of freedom. She saw that her future lay elsewhere.
Her break with Federation life came about in an unexpected way. She stayed too long and perhaps spoke too freely of leaving. Some took exception, men she knew only casually and didn’t much care for. One night, they drugged her and took her out of the city to an abandoned shack on the Rappahalladran’s banks.
There, they held her prisoner for two days and violated her in unspeakable ways, and when they were finished with her they threw her into a river to drown. Tougher than they suspected, dragging herself to safety through sheer force of will, she survived.
When she had recovered her strength, she went back into the city, hunted them down one by one, and killed them all.
She fled afterwards, because the dead men most certainly had relatives and friends. There had been enough talk that sooner or later some of them would come looking for her. Besides, the incident had soured her on the city and the Federation and her life in general. It was time for her