The High Druid's Blade (The Defenders of Shannara, #1)(43)

He found her at the river’s edge, collapsed in a heap. She had reverted to human form, her clothes in tatters and blood everywhere. His sword had done more damage than he realized when it had deflected her attack. She was watching him come toward her, but making no move to do anything about it. Her hands were empty; she had no weapons.

He knelt beside her, and she gave him a weak smile. “I’m sorry, Paxon. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“You should have told me,” he said. “Maybe I could have helped you.”

She shook her head. “There is no help for things like me. Father has been searching for a cure for years. Neither of us wanted this life. This curse. We change without warning. We do it together and separately both. We can’t stop it.”

She was dying, he realized. He fought down a sudden wave of anguish. “I know this. I know you wouldn’t hurt me if you could help it.”

Her voice was surprisingly strong. “It was the gemstone. Father found it two years ago buried beneath the house—beautiful and mysterious and glowing, like nothing he had imagined possible. He believed it to be a treasure of great worth. He thought we could sell it and become rich. He brought it inside the house and showed it to me. While he stood there, holding it in his hands, he was compelled to kiss it. It poisoned him. He didn’t know it at the time, but he found out soon enough. The urge to kill consumed him after that. He tried to fight it, but it was too strong. He needed the relief the killing gave him. In those early days, he made his kills far away from Eusta, traveling to other villages. But after a while he couldn’t manage to wait until he was far away and began killing our neighbors.”

She coughed, and there was blood on her lips. “For a long time, I knew nothing of what had happened to him. The killings were still taking place far away, and he never spoke of them. And the change never came to me, even though I had kissed the gemstone, too. My father thought I might not have the curse. But eight months ago, it showed itself. I changed for the first time. It happened while Father was away, and the urge to kill overcame me and I acted on it. I didn’t know what to do; I was terrified. When finally I admitted it to my father, he told me the truth. He and I were the same.”

She was crying softly. “He tried to protect me. But he couldn’t even protect himself. We were the same, and we killed together, father and daughter. We shared in the bloodlettings. Neither of us could stop; neither of us could help the other.”

She closed her eyes. “It hurts,” she whispered, and he knew she was speaking of the pain her memories caused her.

He took her hands in his and held them. It was raining again, the droplets running down her anguished face. “Just rest a moment.”

“Father is dead, isn’t he?”

“I think he is.”

“This will end it, then. Once I’m gone.” Her eyes opened. “Find the gemstone, Paxon. Don’t touch it. Just take it and destroy it. Promise me.”

He nodded. “I will.”

Her blood was soaking into the ground all around her, and her skin was growing whiter. “I could have loved you. I did love you. You were so nice. I just wanted you to be my friend. I didn’t want to hurt you, even when I knew I would. I tried not to, Paxon.”

Her eyes fixed in an unseeing stare, and she quit breathing.

“I know you did,” he whispered, and released her hands.


He carried her body back to the mill and found Starks just getting ready to come after him. Together, they buried father and daughter in the deep woods, and then they began searching the cottage for the gemstone Iantha had warned about. It took them a long time to find it. Joh had hidden it well, perhaps because he was afraid of its power and wanted to protect against anyone else stumbling on it. They had to conduct their search cautiously because they didn’t want to touch it accidentally in the process of finding it. They located it finally at the back of a cabinet in the miller’s bedroom beneath a false drawer bottom. It was a wicked-looking thing, an irregularly shaped black orb with dozens of facets, their mirrored surfaces flecked with gold shards that glimmered and sparked like bits of dancing fire.

“A passive magic,” Starks said, studying it carefully without touching it, using Druid magic to probe and reveal. “That’s why it didn’t register on the scrye. It only comes awake when the stone is touched. Otherwise, it lies dormant.”

“Where did it come from?” Paxon said. “Who would have made such a thing? Or is it just an aberrant magic?”

Starks shook his head. “I doubt that we will ever know. What matters is what we do with it now.”

He pulled the cabinet drawer all the way out and dumped the gemstone onto the cottage floor. He used the toe of his boot to roll it into a leather pouch, which he then stuffed into a worn feed bag he found in the mill. He rolled up the feed bag and its deadly contents into a tight ball and bound it with twine.

“That should keep it safe until we get it back to Paranor.”

“What do we tell the townspeople?” Paxon asked.

Starks shook his head. “Not the truth. They wouldn’t accept it. They wouldn’t want to live with it. They would spend the rest of their lives wondering who else might be infected.”

Paxon understood. “Well, we’ll have to think of something to tell them that explains both the creature and the disappearance of Iantha and her father.”