The High Druid's Blade: The Defenders of Shannara by Terry Brooks Page B

if I lived here.”
    Paxon didn’t respond, thinking it was enough for him, too, but he would have liked to experience the time when it all belonged to the Leah family and they were Kings and Queens of the Highlands. Just to see what it would have felt like.
    “I’ve come to ask a favor of you,” Sebec said, putting down his empty cookie plate and cup. “I want you to come with me to Paranor to speak with the Ard Rhys. You won’t be gone long, maybe one night, maybe two. No more, and then I would bring you back again.”
    “She’s going to take away my sword, isn’t she?” Paxon declared, unable to help himself. The words just tumbled out of him, and he felt a deep emptiness at the truth he knew they carried.
    Sebec stared at him. “Do you mean the one you wear strapped across your back? That one? No, I don’t think that’s what she has in mind. She wants to talk to you about something else. But it isn’t my place to speak for her. She wants to do this in person.”
    “But she did not choose to come herself, did she?”
    “She doesn’t go much of anywhere these days, Paxon. She is very old and frail, and it is an effort for her just to get through the day while staying at home. You would be doing her a service by going, and I think maybe doing a service for yourself before matters are concluded.” He paused. “You know of her, don’t you? You are familiar with her name and history?”
    Paxon nodded. “Aphenglow Elessedil.”
    He knew very well who she was. Almost everyone did. And almost everyone knew her history—or as much of it as she allowed them to know. She had been alive for more than a century and a half, kept so by the Druid Sleep. Once within the protective confines of the sleep, Druids stopped aging until they woke again. An Ard Rhys was entitled to use it as often as he or she thought it advisable, maintaining consistency in the rule of the Druid Order through longevity.
    But Aphenglow Elessedil was famous from long before her time as Ard Rhys in the Fourth Druid Order. She was a member of the Elven royal family, and in her youth she had helped her sister Arling, a Chosen of the Ellcrys, pass safely through the ordeal required for her to become the successor to the Ellcrys when the old tree died. She had stood with the Ohmsford twins, Redden and Railing, against the demon hordes when they had broken free of the Forbidding. She had spearheaded the quest undertaken by the Third Druid Order when it had gone in search of the missing Elfstones of Faerie, and because of her efforts one set of the precious Stones, at least, had been recovered.
    There were rumors that all of them had been found and returned to the Four Lands but that the others had been lost again. The ones that remained were said to be scarlet in color, but few had ever seen them. They were kept at Paranor in the possession of the Druids as a part of the edict regarding recovered magic and its care and usage. The Elves, he knew, had laid claim to those Elfstones, demanding their return. After all, the Elves already had the blue Stones in their care. Why shouldn’t they be given possession of the scarlet Stones, as well?
    But Aphenglow had denied their demands repeatedly, insisting that the Druid edict on the collection and preservation of magic superseded any nationalistic claims. She was content to let the Elves keep the seeking-Stones, which had been in their possession for thousands of years, but not those scarlet talismans now referred to as the draining-Stones.
    So the antagonism and suspicion that had plagued her throughout her life continued, and Aphenglow Elessedil was never accepted back into the Elven nation as one of their own. She had made her choice, and she would have to live with it. She had chosen the Druid way, embraced its creed and enforced its laws, and it was clear that this is how it would always be. She was a Druid first and an Elf second.
    All of this was common knowledge. Or common to the Leahs and the