The High Druid's Blade (The Defenders of Shannara, #1)(90)

Paxon managed to sleep a few hours during their flight, but spent most of his time awake, much of it musing on the direction his life had taken. Only months earlier, his world had revolved around the airfreight business and his mother and sister. Now the business was gone, he was miles from his mother and his Highland home, and his sister was even further away in another sense and in danger of never coming back. He had made a life among the Druids of Paranor, but he wasn’t one of them and they might blame him—as he blamed himself—for the death of one of their order.

He was adrift in a world he didn’t fully understand and wasn’t even sure he believed in, struggling to keep his feet and maintain his determination, trying his best to balance the vicissitudes of a much-changed life. Everything he had done was buttressed as much on faith as on knowledge, and that wasn’t about to change with this current endeavor. His world was a confusing and treacherously shifting ground, and he did not see that he had any better way to deal with it than simply to keep marching on.

It was nearing morning when they arrived in Wayford, the sun a golden haze on the eastern horizon, the sky clear and promising as the night fled west. They landed at the airfield amid receding shadows and splashes of sunrise light, setting down close to the manager’s office so they could arrange to moor the airship. Grehling jumped down and went on ahead to speak to his father, whom he had already spotted inside the office, while Paxon and Leofur tied off the mooring lines, drew down the light sheaths, and coiled the radian draws.

The Highlander and the young woman were just finishing up when the boy hurried back over, clearly excited as he scrambled up the rope ladder and jumped over the railing and onto the decking beside them. “Father just told me,” he whispered, as if caution were advised. “Arcannen flew in late last night.”

Paxon straightened at once. “What time?”

“An hour or so after midnight. He moored his ship, left his crew aboard, and went alone into the city. He hasn’t come back. He told Father he might be gone as long as tonight and not to tell anyone he was here.”

“But your father told you anyway?” Paxon asked, one eyebrow arched.

Grehling gave him a sheepish grin. “He tells me everything.”

Paxon was already buckling on his sword. “I’m going after him.”

“I’m coming with you!” Grehling declared.

Paxon held out both hands to stop him where he was. “No, you’re not. You’re staying here.”

“But you might need help! You can’t face the sorcerer by yourself.”

Paxon only just kept himself from saying, So I should face him with a fourteen-year-old boy? “It’s too dangerous. I won’t let you risk your life for me. You stay right here and keep watch for his return.”

“But I want to—”

“No, Grehling.” Leofur cut him short before he could finish. “Paxon is right. You have to stay behind this time. It is too dangerous.”

“Thank you.” Paxon gave her an appreciative nod.

“Which is why I’ll be going instead,” she finished, hefting the flash rip in the cradle of her arms to emphasize why. She faced down Paxon defiantly. “Don’t say anything stupid. You need someone to watch your back. I can do that for you.”

He saw the determination in her eyes and nodded. “Let’s get going.”





[page]TWENTY-FIVE




SIDE BY SIDE, PAXON AND LEOFUR WALKED FROM THE AIRFIELD down the roadway leading into the city of Wayford. The road was mostly empty, the lamps in the residences either still off or just being lit. There were a few people abroad—those who began their workday early—but they passed without doing more than nodding or waving. Ahead, the larger buildings of the city were vague shadows in the gloom of the fading night.

“Why are you doing this?” Paxon asked her finally, unable to let the matter rest any longer. “You barely know me. You have no reason to risk yourself like this. Not after what you’ve already done.”

“I didn’t know there was a limit on how much help you could offer people,” she replied, deadpan.

“I just mean it’s unexpected.”

“It would be odd if you were expecting me to come with you, wouldn’t it? Like you say, we don’t know each other that well.”

“But why are you coming?”

She looked away a moment and then back again. “Several reasons. I think what you are doing is important. Not so much where Arcannen is concerned; more for helping Chrysallin. What was done to her is terrible. I’ve experienced something like that. I want to see her get better. This seems to me to be one way she could.” She shrugged. “I thought I might help you with that part, but try to talk you out of the other.”

They reached the outermost buildings of the business district of the city and she pointed him down a different street than the one he was intending on taking. “No point in doing the expected. Better if we go the back way.”

“You’ve had something done to you like what was done to Chrys?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes. But I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You just want to talk to me about leaving Arcannen alone. Even knowing how I feel about what happened to Starks?”

She looked over again. “I like you, Paxon. Even knowing as little about you as I do, I like what I do know. You care about your sister and you would do anything to help her. You are willing to sacrifice yourself for your friends. You aren’t afraid of things that would scare the pants off most people.”