High druid of Shannara_ Jarka Ruus - Terry Brooks [48]
Pen didn’t argue; he was exhausted. “All right.” He yawned.
“I don’t sleep much anyway,” Tagwen continued. “I used to stay awake for hours sometimes while your aunt was sleeping, just sitting there with her. I was always there for her when she was sick. I liked doing that — just sitting there. It made me feel I was doing something to help her, something besides keeping her affairs organized.”
“What is she like?” Pen asked suddenly.
The Dwarf looked at him. “You’ve spent time with her.”
“Not very much. Not enough to know her well. She doesn’t let you know her well. She keeps you at a distance.”
“She does that even to me. I can tell you that she lives with her past more than most. She’s haunted by it, Penderrin. She hates who she was and what she did as the Ilse Witch. She would do anything to take it all back and start over. I don’t think anyone understands that. The Druids mostly think she hasn’t changed all that much, that once you have the kind of magic she does, you don’t regret anything. They think she’s the same underneath, that she just masks it from them.”
“I don’t know what she was like before,” Pen said. “But I think she is a good person now. She doesn’t want to get close, but she wants to help. She tries to be kind. At least, that’s how she was with me, and she didn’t even know me then. What do you think has happened to her?”
Tagwen shook his head. “Whatever it is, I think it has something to do with Terek Molt and Shadea a’Ru and the rest of their little group of vipers. At first I thought it had something to do with her trip into the Northland a few days before she disappeared, but I don’t think that now.”
He took a few minutes to explain what he knew about Grianne Ohmsford’s journey into the ruins of the Skull Kingdom with the Maturen Kermadec, then segued right into a dissertation about the cliques of Druid troublemakers who had made things so difficult for the Ard Rhys at Paranor. The boy listened attentively, thinking that there was a lot about his aunt that he didn’t know, much of it because his parents never discussed it. He was seeing her in an entirely new light now, and his admiration for her was growing.
“I would have walked away from all that a long time ago,” he said. “I think Kermadec is right. She should just start over.”
Tagwen shrugged. “Well, it’s all to do with politics and appearances, Pen. If she were free to act as she chose without consequences, I expect there would be some very surprised Druids when she was finished.”
Pen was silent for a moment, contemplating the ramifications of what he had just learned. If someone had acted against his aunt, as powerful as she was, and that same someone was responsible for sending Terek Molt and those gimlet-eyed Gnomes after him, then he was in a world of trouble — much more than he had thought he was. He wondered what was at stake that would cause someone to take such drastic action. If it was Shadea a’Ru, then perhaps the lure of becoming Ard Rhys was enough. But given his aunt’s dark history, he thought it more likely that it had something to do with revenge or misguided loyalties or fanatical beliefs. Those who committed atrocities always seemed to do so out of a misconceived sense of righteousness and the greater good.
“Do you think she’s dead, Tagwen?” he asked impulsively.
It was a terrible thing to ask the Dwarf, who was beside himself with feelings of guilt and despair already, and Pen regretted asking the question as soon as it was out of his mouth. But boys ask those kinds of questions, and Pen was no exception.
“I don’t care to think about it,” the Dwarf said quietly.
Pen cringed at the sadness he heard in the other’s voice. “It was a stupid question.”
Tagwen nodded noncommittally. “Go to sleep, Pen,” he said, nudging him with his boot. “There’s nothing more to be done this night.”
Pen nodded. There didn’t seem to be. He wasn’t at all certain how much could be done on waking, but at least a new day might grace him with a better attitude. The damp and cold had leeched all the good