When she had told them why, they were stunned into silence. Not even Bek could believe it. Not then and clearly not now.
“She might be mistaken about this,” Rue continued obstinately. “She might be taking on more than was ever intended of her.”
Alt Mer nodded. “She might. But none of us thinks so, not even Bek. She was saved for this, made whole by the Sword of Shannara and her brother’s love.” He grimaced. “I sound almost poetic.”
She smiled. “Almost.”
They watched in silence again. Bek was gesturing furiously, but Grianne was only standing there, weathering the storm of his anger, calm resolution reflected in her stance and lack of movement. She had made up her mind, Alt Mer knew, and she was not someone who could be persuaded to change it easily. It was more than stubbornness, of course. It was her certainty of her destiny, of what was needed of her, of what was expected. It was her understanding of what it would take for her to gain redemption for the damage she had done to so many lives in so many places for all those years that she had been the Ilse Witch.
When this is done, he thought, nothing will be the same again for any of us, our lives will he changed forever. Perhaps the lives of everyone in the Four Lands will be changed, as well. What waited in the days ahead was that compelling—a new order, a fresh beginning, a reaching into the past to find hope for the future. All these would come about because of what happened here, on this night, in the mountains of the Dragon’s Teeth, in the Valley of Shale, at the edge of the Hadeshorn, when Grianne Ohmsford summoned the shade of Walker.
So she had promised them.
He found it hard to argue with someone who believed she was meant to be Walker Boh’s successor and the next Druid to serve the Four Lands.
Bek was having none of it. He had gone through too much in bringing his sister safely home again to let her wander off now, to place herself at risk once more—at greater risk perhaps than ever.
“You assume that you are meant to achieve something that even Walker could not!” he snapped, willing her to flinch in the face of his wrath. “He could not return for this, could not save himself to make the Druid order come alive. Why do you think it will be any different for you? At least he was not universally despised!”
He threw out the last few words in desperation and regretted them as soon as they were spoken. But Grianne did not seem bothered, and she reached out to touch his face gently.
“Don’t be so angry, Bek. Your life does not lie with me in any case. It lies with her.”
She glanced toward the Jerle Shannara and Rue Meridian. Stubbornly denying what he knew was true, Bek refused to look. “My life is not the subject of this discussion,” he insisted. “Yours is the one that’s likely to be thrown away if you go through with this. Why can’t you just come home with me, find a little peace and comfort for a change, not go out and try to do something impossible!”
“I don’t know yet exactly what it is I am expected to do,” she answered calmly. “I only know what was revealed to me through the magic of the Sword of Shannara—that I am to become the next Druid and will atone for my wrongs by accepting that trust. If through my efforts a Druid Council is formed, as Walker intended that it should be, then the Druids will have a strong presence again in the Four Lands. That was why I was saved, Bek. That was what Walker gave his life for, so that I could make possible the goals he had set for himself but knew he would not live to see fulfilled.”
She stepped close to him and placed her slender hands on his shoulders. “I don’t do this out of foolish expectation or selfish need. I do this out of an obligation to make something worthwhile of a wasted life. Look at me, Bek. Look at what I have done. I can’t ignore who I am. I can’t walk away from a chance to redeem myself. Walker was counting on that. He knew me well enough to understand how I would feel, once the truth was revealed to me. He trusted that I would do what was needed to atone for the harm I have visited on others. How wrong it would be for me to betray him now.”