The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [215]
He was seeing something, though — that much was clear from his expression. He was looking through the mist and gloom to something beyond, those strange eyes penetrating to what was hidden from the rest of them.
The old man followed the direction of the boy’s gaze. Mist swirled, a shifting cloak across the whole of the valley’s eastern end. “What is it?” he asked softly.
But the boy only shook his head. He could sense it, but not yet identify it. His eyes remained fixed on the haze, his concentration complete. He was good at concentrating, Bremen had learned. In fact, he was better than good. His intensity was frightening. It was not something he had learned while growing or been imbued with as a result of the shock he had suffered in the destruction of Varfleet. It was something he had been born with — like the strange eyes and the razor-sharp mind. The boy was as hard and fixed of purpose as stone, but he possessed an intelligence and a thirst for knowledge that were boundless. Just a week earlier, following the night raid on the Northland camp, he had come to Bremen and asked the old man to teach him to use the Druid magic. Just like that. Teach me how to use it, he had demanded — as if anyone could learn, as if the skill could be taught easily.
“It takes years to master even the smallest part,” Bremen had replied, too stunned by the request to refuse it outright.
“Let me try,” the boy had insisted.
“But why would you even want to?” The Druid was genuinely perplexed. “Is it revenge you seek? Do you think the magic will gain you that? Why not spend your time learning to use conventional weapons? Or learning to ride? Or studying warfare?”
“No,” the boy had replied at once, quick and firm. “I don’t want any of that. I don’t care about revenge. What I want is to be like you.”
And there it was, the whole of it laid bare in a single sentence.
The boy wanted to be a Druid. He was drawn to Bremen and Bremen to him because they were more kindred than the old man had suspected. Galaphile’s fourth vision was another glimpse of the future, a warning that there were ties that bound the boy to the Druid, a promise of their common destiny. Bremen knew that now. The boy had been sent to him by a fate he did not yet understand. Here, perhaps, was the successor he had looked so long to find. It was strange that he should find him in this way, but not entirely unexpected. There were no laws for the choosing of Druids, and Bremen knew better than to try to start making them now.
So he had given Allanon a few small tricks to master — little things that required mostly concentration and practice. He had thought it would keep the boy occupied for a week or so. But Allanon had mastered all of them in a single day and come back for more. So for each of the ten days leading up to now, Bremen had given him some new bit of Druid lore with which to work, letting him decide for himself which way to take his learning, which use to employ. Caught up in the preparations for the Northland attack, he had barely had time to consider what the boy had accomplished. Yet watching him now, studying him in the faint dawn light as he gazed out across the valley, the old man was struck anew by the obvious depth and immutability of the boy’s determination.
“There!” cried Allanon suddenly, his eyes widening in surprise. “They are above us!”
Bremen was so shocked that for a moment he was rendered speechless. A few heads lifted in response to the boy’s words, but no one moved. Then Bremen swept his arm skyward, showering the gloom with Druid light in a wide, rainbow arc, and the dark shapes that circled overhead were suddenly revealed. Skull Bearers wheeled sharply away as they were exposed, their wings spread wide as they disappeared back into the haze.
Jerle Shannara was beside the Druid in a moment. “What are they doing?” he demanded.
Bremen’s eyes remained fixed on the empty skies, watching the Druid light as it faded away. The gloom returned, fixed