High Druid of Shannara: Tanequil (The High Druid of Shannara) by Terry Brooks

Author:Terry Brooks [Brooks, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307424396
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

They set out again at dawn, climbing out of the valley and into the jagged peaks of the Klu Mountains. The Klu were rugged, barren pinnacles that time and a shifting of the earth’s crust had compressed as if they had been grasped by a giant’s hand, the rock cracked and broken by the pressure, eroded by wind and water, and reshaped into strange formations that barely resembled the mountains they had once been. Narrow defiles and deep chasms split the rock at every turn, and passes were as likely to lead through stacked rocks and weather-carved fissures as along ledges or across slides. Nothing made sense about the Klu, which seemed to comprise an amalgam of every geological configuration that nature could devise.

As the day wore on and the air cooled at the higher elevations, the mist thickened about them. It did so slowly, but noticeably, so that Pen had time to realize that they would soon be climbing blindly into the rocks. It was not a pleasant prospect, given the treacherous terrain with its difficult and uncertain footing. But Kermadec pressed ahead, moving them along as quickly as conditions would allow, taking them off the flank of the mountains and into a series of defiles that twisted and wound through cliffs towering hundreds of feet above them.

The mist dissipated, but forward progress slowed. Loose stone littered the trail, and ice patches coated its surface. Wind howled overhead and down the gaps in the cliffs, buffeting them as they struggled to put one foot in front of the other without slipping. The path fell away to the left, the resulting cliff a sheer and unbroken drop that vanished into blackness.

Pen hugged the rock wall on his right, trying not to think of what would happen if he slipped, trying not to look down. He had managed to put his concern for his parents and his doubts about himself aside upon waking, but they nudged their way back into his thinking now, prompted by an increasing suspicion that their efforts on this day alone, their first day, were not going to be enough to get them to Stridegate. He watched Cinnaminson as she moved cautiously ahead of him, hands and feet finding the way. He would have taken her hand, done something to help her, but it was too dangerous on the narrow trail.

Then, abruptly, the mist gathered and settled down about them with such compacted heaviness that everything simply disappeared.

“Stay where you are!” Kermadec called back to them.

Pen froze on the trail, feeling the cold of the rock seep into him, listening to the wind die away to nothing, thinking that the worst had just happened. They were trapped, unable to go forward or back, exposed to the whim of the elements. It was probably close to midday. What would happen when it was night?

He reached out, groping, until he found Cinnaminson’s hand and took it in his own, then edged forward until he was just behind her. “Can you see anything that we can’t?” he asked.

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