The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [38]
He frowned though, when out of sight, troubled by their deployment. The man at the first door, a Troll from the Kershalt, was a veteran, but the man at the second, a young Elf, was new. He did not like stationing new men by themselves. He made a mental note to correct that before the next watch.
He was concentrating on the matter as he passed a back stairway leading down from the Druid sleeping quarters and so missed the furtive movement of the three men hiding there.
The three pressed themselves tightly against the stone wall as the Captain of the Druid Guard passed unseeing below them. They remained very still until he was gone, then detached themselves once more and continued down. They were Druids, all of them, each with more than ten years of service to the Council, each with a zealot’s burning conviction that he was destined for greatness.
For they had lived within the Druid order and chafed at its dictates and rules and found them foolish and purposeless and unfulfiUmg.
Power was necessary if life was to have meaning. A man’s accomplishments meant nothing if they did not result in personal gain.
What purpose did private study serve if it could not be put to practical use? What sense did it make to brush up against all those secrets of science and magic if they could not ever be tested? So they had asked themselves, these three, separately at first, then all together as they came to realize that they shared a common belief.
They were not alone in their dissatisfaction, of course. Others believed as they did. But none so fervently — none so that, like these three, they would allow themselves to become subverted.
There was no hope for them. The Warlock Lord had been looking for them for a long time, planning his revenge on the Druids. He found them out eventually and made them his own. It had taken time, but bit by bit he had won them over, just as he had won over those who had followed him from the Keep three hundred and fifty years earlier. Such men were always there, waiting to be claimed, waiting to be used. Brona had been sly in his approach, not revealing himself to them in the beginning, letting them hear his voice as if it were their own, exposing them to the possibilities, to the scent of power, to the lure of magic. He let them chain themselves to him with their own hands, let them forge locks of expectation and greed, let them make themselves slaves by growing addicted to false dreams and cravings. In the end, they would have begged him to take them, even after they had discovered who he was and what price they must pay.
Now they crept through Paranor’s corridors with dark intent, committed to a course of action that would doom them forever.
They stole in silence from the stairwell and along the corridor to the doorway at which the young Elf stood watch. They clung to the shadows where the torchlight did not reach, using small conjurings of magic given them by the Master — sweet taste of power — to cloak themselves from the young guard’s eyes.
Then they were upon him, one of them striking a sharp blow to his head to knock him senseless. The other two worked quickly and furiously at the locks that secured the stone door, releasing them one by one, hauling back on the heavy iron grate, lifting off the massive bar from its fittings, and finally, irrevocably, pulling open the door itself so that Paranor lay open to the night and the things that waited without.
The Druids stepped back as the first of those things slouched into the light. It was a Skull Bearer, hunched and massive within its black cloak, claws extended before it. All sharp edges and flat planes, all hardness and bulk, it filled the corridor and seemed to suck away the very air. Red eyes burned into the three who cowered before it, and it shoved its way past them disdainfully.
Leathery wings beat softly. With a hiss of satisfaction, it seized the young Elven guard, ripped out his throat, and cast him aside. The Druids flinched as