Straken by Terry Brooks Read Free Book Online

out for emptying now and then, they had paid no attention to her at all. As far as she could determine, in the minds of her captors she had ceased to exist.
    So she sat and waited for something to happen, all the while thinking of ways she might escape.
    She thought constantly of her son, frantic for his safety. Her husband was resourceful and would be able to help himself. And she would be fine. But Pen lacked their experience and their skills; he would be at the mercy of whoever went to find him. She knew enough of Shadea a’Ru to appreciate how determined she was to eradicate the Ohmsfords. It wouldn’t stop with Grianne, though she was the excuse for the purge. It would continue until the last Ohmsford was wiped from the face of the Four Lands.
    Thinking of it left her furious. She had never trusted the Druids, never cared for their secretive ways and manipulative schemes. It had been bad enough when there was only one, and that one was Walker Boh. But now there were dozens of them, not only within the walls of Paranor, but scattered throughout the Four Lands, as well. She had always felt at risk, especially with Grianne as Ard Rhys. Her feelings for Bek’s sister were unchanged. In her mind, Grianne would always be the Ilse Witch. Bek’s assurances notwithstanding, she had never been convinced that Grianne’s transformation from dark witch to white queen was real. Her attitude was not so different from that of many others. She could understand why some among the Druids were so eager to be rid of her.
    But the real problem was her certainty that their connection with Grianne put them all in danger. It didn’t matter that they were not close to the Ard Rhys and had nothing to do with the Druid order. It didn’t matter that their lives were so different. Blood and history bound them inextricably. She had always known that the cauldron of mistrust and dislike Grianne stirred among those who were troubled by her position of power as Ard Rhys was in danger of spilling over onto the rest of them.
    Her present circumstances seemed to bear that out.
    She stared at the iron door and wished she had thought to stick a throwing knife into her boot. She wished she had any kind of weapon at all. She wished she had two minutes alone outside that door.
    After a time, she dozed, drifting away on thoughts of her family and better times. In the near blackness of her prison, sleep was the only form of relief she could find.
    She did not know how long she slept, only that it ended suddenlyand unexpectedly. She awoke with a start, her sleep broken by an odd sound from beyond her cell. She blinked in confusion, sensing that what she had heard was the collapse of something. She sat up straight, listening for more.
    Then a key twisted in the lock, metal scraping on metal, and the lock released with a sharp
snick
. She got to her feet quickly and took a deep breath to steady herself, to clear her sleep-fogged mind. She didn’t know what to expect, didn’t know how to prepare herself. She snatched up the broom, the only thing at hand that might serve as a weapon, and moved to stand close by the door.
    The door opened, and a black-cloaked figure stepped through. One gloved hand came up quickly in warning as she started to move out of her crouch. “Wait!”
    The hands rose to pull back the hood, and she found herself confronted by a young man with angular features and a quizzical expression. He blinked at her and smiled. “No need for that. I’ve come to help.” He glanced over his shoulder into the hallway, his lank brown hair falling over his forehead and into his eyes. “Hurry. We haven’t much time. They’ll discover you’ve gone soon enough and they’ll know where it is they must look.”
    Satisfied to be free, to have a chance at escaping the Keep, she went with him without questioning their destination. They slipped from the cell into the hallway, where she saw the collapsed form of the Gnome Hunter who had been keeping guard