The World of Shannara Read online

  “Through truth, power”: The Elit Druin medallion, a magic talisman worn by the High Druid as the symbol of Druid power.

  At first, it appeared the promise would be fulfilled. Paranor became the center of knowledge and learning for the world. The people looked to the Druids for guidance. The success of the council helped the emergent world gain confidence in its own abilities. The Druids were a very powerful force—probably the most powerful single force in the world at that time. Their goal, which was to re-create the best of the Old World while avoiding their ancestors’ mistakes, appeared to be a certain achievement. But the sciences they sought to master eluded them. Too often crucial keys to particular disciplines were missing. Or the information conflicted, and the Druids lacked the necessary experience to re-create what had been lost. Some within the walls began to look to other paths to achieve their goals. Many of them blamed the failure of the old sciences for the destruction of the world. They turned to the mystic arts for the power that had been denied them through the study of hard science.

  These rebels believed they were destined to shape the future of the world. Among them were some of the most brilliant of the Druid minds. For many years, they worked within Paranor’s walls, possibly in secret. Their work eventually caused a schism in the ranks of the Druid Council. The resulting conflict between those who sought answers in science and those who sought arcane solutions ended in a break in the council. The mystics were forced to leave Paranor.

  For 150 years, the Druid Council successfully provided guidance for the Races. Then a small sector of the Race of Man revolted against the teachings of the council. In an impossibly short time, they amassed a highly trained army and set forth to subjugate the rest of Man, and from there, the other Races. The revolt grew into full-scale war before it was crushed by the combined might of the Druids, Elves, Trolls, and Gnomes. During the war, Paranor served as the strategic and political seat of the alliance. The Druids provided the tactical leadership from Paranor’s walls, unaware that it was one of their own who was ultimately responsible for the revolt. The mastermind of the war, known only as Brona (which means “master” in the archaic Gnome tongue), was believed at the time to have been a mythic figurehead. It is now known that he was very real and was the leader of the exiled Druids.

  Druid Guard

  The building of Paranor was a time of great discovery and great risk, for until the fortress was finished, the council and all it stood to achieve were vulnerable to attack. A multinational force was created to protect against outside threats. These became known as the Druid Guard. When Paranor was completed, the members of this elite unit continued their service as the guardians of the keep and the fighting force of Paranor. Their gray uniforms, with the distinctive red torch emblem embroidered on the left breast, became synonymous with the power of the Druids in the age before the Second War of the Races. Their prestige and power failed along with that of the Druids after the partitioning of the Four Lands, and they ceased to exist altogether after the fall of Paranor during the Second War of the Races. The last Captain of the Guard was the Elf Caerid Lock, who served for more than fifteen years. One legend tells that Caerid was given advance knowledge of the coming attack so that he could escape, but he chose to stand and fight with his men even though he knew it was hopeless. Such courage and dedication were the hallmark of the Guard.

  A member of the Druid Guard, the elite fighting force of Paranor.

  After the war, in an attempt to prevent another conflict between the Races, the Druids and their allies partitioned the known world into four lands, one for each of the Races, with Paranor and the Druids at its crux. It was believed that such extreme segregation would prevent any one Race from ever trying to control the others. Paranor’s central location put the Druids in a geographical position that mirrored their political supremacy. Because of the damage done by magic during the war, the Druids all but outlawed the study of the arcane arts. Science and philosophy, they insisted, were the only true paths to the future.

  For the next three hundred years, the Four Lands existed in peace. Lacking an exterior threat, the Druids turned their attention inward, abandoning their worldly role as teachers and benefactors in favor of the more secular pursuits of pure research and meditation. Paranor’s massive parapets, designed to repel invaders, served instead to keep the Druids isolated from the lands they had originally sworn to serve.

  That isolation proved to be their downfall. Three hundred and fifty years after the First War of the Races, an army of Trolls came down out of the Northland intent upon taking the Druid’s Keep. The Druids were totally unprepared for an attack. Despite the surprise, the keep would probably have withstood even a prolonged siege if not for the fact that several within the Druid order had been suborned. Betrayed from within, Paranor fell to the Northland army of the Warlock Lord in a matter of hours. A handful of Druids managed to escape before the attack to join with the outcast mystic Bremen, but most did not. The majority of the order were either buried alive within the lower levels of the keep or transformed into creatures of dark magic in service to the Warlock Lord. It is said the souls of the ones who died now reside within the Druid’s Well. The fall of Paranor heralded the beginning of the Second War of the Races.

  Though the fortress would have made an impregnable base for the Warlock Lord, he abandoned it and took his Skull Bearers and his armies north, leaving the Druid’s Keep empty for the rest of the war. There are some indications that Brona feared the latent magic of the keep itself.

  At the conclusion of the war, Paranor once again became home to the Druids. The Druid Bremen and his heir, Allanon, held residence there for a time. Then, three years after the end of the war, Paranor disappeared. There was no battle, no victorious army. The entire keep just vanished. But like a ghost determined to haunt the world of the living, it was seen to reappear at unusual intervals—sometimes at darkest night, sometimes at brightest noon. It is probable that Druid magic, linked to the power of the Druid’s Well, was responsible for this and subsequent disappearances.

  After a mysterious ghostly existence lasting some sixty years, Paranor returned to the land of mortals. It is assumed that Allanon, the only surviving Druid, was responsible for its return. The Druid order was re-formed, though with far fewer members than its previous incarnation. For the next five hundred years the raw beginnings of a second Druid Council and a cadre of guards lived within Paranor’s walls. There is no record of whether or not the Druid Allanon lived at Paranor during these years, though it is likely that he was in residence at least part of the time. Very little is known about this second council of Druids. Their primary purpose seems to have been to hold Paranor ready for an unnamed future conflict. Some surviving records indicate that Allanon and the other Druids knew of and expected the return of the Warlock Lord.

  The Sword of Shannara, on display in the Vault Room at Paranor

  A few years after King Jerle Shannara’s death, his heir brought the legendary Sword of Shannara to the fortress for safekeeping, probably at Allanon’s request. The large room known as the Vault Room, off the Great Hall, was remodeled at this time to hold the sword in state in a large square block of mirror-finished Tre-Stone.

  The sword remained there for almost five hundred years, until a division of Gnome Hunters, under the command of the Warlock Lord, took Paranor and captured the sword. For the second time in its history, the walls of the Druid’s Keep were witness to the massacre of all its defenders and residents. There was some internal damage to the keep, especially in the furnace room, but the doors and gates were untouched, leaving historians to believe that, like the previous fall, the takeover was engineered with help from the inside.

  Paranor was not recovered until the Warlock Lord was defeated. Again it was repopulated with a tiny group of guardians, though none of these residents, save Allanon himself, dared call themselves Druids. The keep did not see action again until almost sixty years later, when the Mord Wraiths took Paranor in an attempt
to capture the Druid Histories hidden there. For the third time, all defenders within the walls were executed. For the second time, the High Druid Allanon, only remaining survivor of the order, had to accept the loss of the Druid’s Keep and the deaths of those he had set to watch it.

  In a bold stroke, undoubtedly knowing that Paranor could not be retaken by conventional means, Allanon decided to allow the keep to defend itself. The surviving fragments of Brin Ohmsford’s diary record that Allanon unleashed Paranor’s own magic, the spirit within the Druid’s Well, much as Bremen had done before. This defense, though an integral part of the castle since its creation, had never been used. While it would destroy any who were caught inside the walls, it also effectively eliminated the objective by removing Paranor itself. “This marks the end of all that has been. The age closes, and Paranor must pass from the land,” Brin’s diary quotes Allanon. “In my lifetime and yours—in the lifetime of your children and perhaps your children’s children—no man shall set foot within the walls of the Druid’s Keep after this night.” Allanon himself, last of his order, died only a short time later.

  True to the prophecy, Paranor and its Druid masters faded from the world of men and into the mists of legend for over three centuries, returning only with the rebirth of the Druids through the man known as Walker Boh, now known as the heir to Allanon’s legacy.

  Within the Walls:

  A TOUR OF PARANOR

  When Paranor was new, the Druid Guard warded the surrounding spruce forest. In the time of the Warlock Lord, huge wolves roamed the paths. In later years, impervious walls of thorns and deep thickets of brambles replaced the wolves. Today the ancient trees of the forest are the only surviving witnesses to Paranor’s many trials. They stand as towering sentinels, giving mute support to the castle rising above them in broken splendor.

  The rutted, overgrown paths leading to the four gates of the keep show the wear of several hundred years of use, and several hundred more of neglect. All that remains of the ramped drawbridge at the south entrance are a few rotted timbers lying in the bottom of the ravine. The gates themselves, stone portals sealed by massive wooden and iron doors, bear no marks to show the battles fought within, though the windows in the towers above seem to stare out across the land like blinded eyes, bearing silent testimony to all those who died within the cold stone walls. Of the hidden entrances known to exist within the cliff’s face, there is no sign; they are as enigmatic and mysterious as the men who built them.

  Inside the curtain wall, the ravages of past battles have left large portions of the keep in ruin. The barracks and other outbuildings are stone skeletons, their roofs and much of their wood interiors burned away. Throughout the large courtyard complex and in many portions of the inner keep, blackened and cracked slabs of masonry and melted flagstones mark the locations of heated battles and, often, deaths. In most cases, each damaged area is the only monument to the defenders who tried, and failed, to repel demonic invaders.

  Secret Passages

  Outside the grand rooms of Paranor’s public areas lies an all but unknown maze of halls and tunnels—the secret passages of the Druid’s Keep. Some are well documented, such as the narrow corridors that honeycomb the upper levels. Built into the walls, they were designed to allow servants unobtrusive access to those they served, or to hide the presence of secret visitors. Other passages, such as those within the outer wall, were designed for defense. Hidden doors, fifty yards apart, were built into alcoves along the curtain wall. These doors are all but invisible from the outside, but easily seen on the inside. During the years of the Council, these doors were always guarded at night.

  Below ground is a web of passages for which there exists no complete map. Most of these tunnels were unknown even to the majority of the Druids. They were often built along existing lava flumes—tunnels cut through the softer portions of the mountain by escaping molten rock. The lava created smooth-sided, winding tunnels, some of which were large enough for an armed man, or even an entire wagon. By using these natural formations the builders had only to cut stairs and corridors into any flumes that traveled in the right direction. The result is a maze of tunnels winding throughout the mountain. Some provide secret access to the outside, with their outer portals cleverly concealed and guarded by hidden doors. In most cases, they are concealed by magic as well.

  Lava vents were used as the basis for many secret passages beneath the Druid’s Keep.

  The largest of the flumes is not a passage meant for people, but for molten rock. Cut through the mountain from the main vent shaft to the outer edges of the cliff, it was once a lava flume opened during an ancient eruption long before Paranor was built. When the keep was built, workers cleared all but the outer end of this flume to allow a passage for pressurized lava. In the event of an eruption, the magma from the vent will force its way through the existing flume to the outside rather than pushing upwards to destroy the keep above. The outer end remains sealed by rock to prevent any use of the passage by invaders, but any lava flow will easily dislodge the rock.

  Within the keep, the massive double doors leading to the Assembly are little but twisted metal hinges and splinters of broken wood, shattered during the battle with the Warlock Lord, but the great room beyond still retains hints of its former glory. Most of the tapestries that once hung here are gone—burned away or rotted—but the great arched ceiling still stands proud above the scarred marble floor. Some of the ancient paintings still hang high on the walls, their forgotten subjects looking down upon the few remaining pieces of armor and statuary within the niches along the length of the room. It is still possible to imagine this great meeting place filled with scores of Druids debating the knowledge of the known world.

  Across the keep, the wooden walls of the Great Hall are also damaged, though most of the scars are cuts by edged weapons rather than the more destructive fires. Despite the damage, the wood still gleams through the dust from centuries of careful polishing. Paintings line the walls, though most are torn or slashed. Faded places on the wood mark where still others once hung. A few priceless pieces of statuary rest upon lavish mosaic pedestals. Larger statues exquisitely sculpted of iron and stone stand a silent vigil next to carved wooden doors along the hall. These surviving statues from a forgotten era long before Paranor’s birth guard empty corridors and lonely rooms that are themselves largely forgotten. The tapestries that once lined the hall hang in tatters. Pieces of broken pedestals litter the hall, the treasure they once held lost during a battle long ago. One huge pillar stands untouched in an alcove, supporting a graceful urn inset with jade and onyx. The matching alcove across the hall lies empty except for shards of pottery and broken pieces of the same rare stones.

  Druid Histories

  The library at Paranor contained the few books found since the destruction of the Old World as well as many books compiled from information and records the Druid Council had written down over the years, but its most valuable collection was the priceless Druid Histories, the chronicles of and by the Druids themselves. These hundreds of huge volumes, bound in burnished leather and etched with elaborately gilded script, contained the results of the council’s efforts to recover lost knowledge of both science and magic, the details of the Druids’ attempts at uncovering the secrets of the Old World’s greatest advancements, and considerations of all possibilities, however remote, concerning devices and formulas, talismans and conjuring, reasoning and deductions that might one day find understanding. Some of the knowledge within the pages of the Histories dated from the time of Faerie. These books, and the knowledge they contained, were the true power of the Druid Council, both the by-product of their existence and the reason for it.

  In order to protect this, the treasure of Paranor, from misuse, the Histories were stored in a secret room behind a locking shelf in the main library. Such precautions would have been enough to stop an ordinary man, but not another Druid or a creature of magic. Shortly before the fall of Paranor during the Second War of the Races,
the last Druid librarian, Kahle Rese, resorted to magic to protect the Histories. Though magic and the study of mystic arts was forbidden in the council at that time, he had been given a magic dust by the outcast mystic Bremen, to be used on just such an occasion. The dust created a granite wall, exactly matching all the other walls in the hidden room, that sealed the Histories away. Only one who was given the key to the spell and the power to use it could unlock the Histories from their protective tomb. Kahle managed to save the Histories, many of which had been transcribed by his own hand, but at the cost of his life.

  Today, each volume of the Histories is also protected by magic. If attacked, the book, and anyone who is in physical contact with it, returns to the vault within the library at Paranor.

  At the end of the Great Hall, the tall carved doors leading to the Vault have been torn from their hinges. The ruins of a large stone pillar lie within the large double doorway amid the remains of the broken doors. The room beyond, however, is largely untouched. The Vault is possibly the best preserved of all the major rooms of Paranor. Light from the many tall windows built high into the walls illuminates the marble below, making it easy to pick out the slight discoloration at the center of the room. This is the spot where the Sword of Shannara, enshrined in a block of Tre-Stone, rested for almost five hundred years. Here, alone of all the great rooms, the tapestries have survived, flowing in faded glory from the high ceiling to the polished marble of the floor. Even the masterly paintings on the walls are untouched. A few ornate furniture groupings occupy the perimeter of the room, facing the center point as if in tribute to the missing sword.

  While the Assembly, the Great Hall, and the Vault are undoubtedly the three most lavish areas of Paranor, its three towers are its most widely recognized physical features. Their spires rise more than a hundred feet above the keep’s ground level, making them visible from the Kennon Pass.