High druid of Shannara_ Jarka Ruus - Terry Brooks [55]
She was still in Callahorn, in the Four Lands.
Yet it was not the Callahorn she knew and, from what she could see of it, only a ruined shell of the Four Lands.
She sat staring off into the distance, her gaze shifting from feature to feature to make certain. She took note of the Dragon’s Teeth, their jagged outline unmistakable, as familiar to her by then as her own face. And there, a glimpse of the Mermidon, south and west where the mountains broke apart. The plateau on which she sat was where the Druid’s Keep had stood. North, south, east, and west, the geography was just as it had been for thousands of years.
But blasted and leeched of life, a corpse of the sort she had thought herself to be on waking.
And where was Paranor?
She could reach only one conclusion. Either she had awakened in the aftermath of the Great Wars or gone into a future in which a similar catastrophe had occurred. But that was impossible.
She checked herself carefully to make certain she was all in one piece, and having done so, managed to get to her feet. Her dizziness and the sluggish feel of waking from a deep sleep had worn off, and her strength was beginning to return. She gave it a few more minutes, still puzzling through her situation, still trying to make sense of it. She couldn’t, of course. There was no way to do so without knowing both where she was and how she had gotten there.
She realized she was hungry, and she started to look for food. In her world, the one she had left behind that looked like this one but apparently wasn’t, there would have been berry bushes in a clearing near a stream not far from where she stood. While Ard Rhys, she had gone there from time to time to pick the fruit, a private, secret indulgence about which only Tagwen knew.
But it was unlikely that such sweet fruit grew anywhere in this world. Her hunger would have to wait.
She started to walk through the trees, looking for water. As she walked, she listened futilely for the sounds of other life. What sort of world was she in where there were no birds? Were there any people, any creatures at all? Was it possible that she was the only living thing there? The forest was empty and dead, smelling of its own decay. The gray light was unchanging and oppressive, and the sky remained empty of sun, moon, or stars. Even of clouds. The dark, ruined world felt incomplete, as if it were only a faintly cast shadow of the real world.
She found a stream finally, but the water looked so foul she decided against drinking it. She sat down again, her back against a blighted oak, and looked off into the shadowed trees, into the distance, reasoning out what had happened. Clearly, she hadn’t come on her own; someone had caused her to be transported. She could safely assume it had not been done for her benefit. Most likely, given the number of enemies she had made, it had been done to get her out of the way. Further, it had been done using magic, because there was no other explanation for how something so difficult could have been accomplished. Yet no one she knew possessed such magic. Not even she could transport people to other places.
So perhaps it had been accomplished by someone who was not of her world, but of another.
But what world would that be? Surely not this one.
She gave up thinking about it finally, deciding that she should walk to the edge of the bluff for a better look around. Something else must exist in the place, another creature, another life-form. If she could find it, whatever it was, she might be able to determine where she was. If she could do that, she would have a better idea of how to get back to where she belonged.
The walk took her only a short time, though it left her winded and fatigued. She wasn’t herself yet, and she would