Free Jarka Ruus by Terry Brooks Page A

from their first session. The old man was delighted and actually clapped his hands. She progressed rapidly from there, all of it, at first, a mystery that offered such possibilities that she could not help imagining the secrets she would uncover.
    After he died, held in her arms as he breathed his last, comforted in the way he deserved to be, she studied alone for several years, closeted away in quarters not far from her Federation soldier friends, whom she still spent time with regularly. But the Federation no longer held any interest for her. It was too regimented, too structured, and she was in need of freedom. She saw that her future lay elsewhere.
    Her break with Federation life came about in an unexpected way. She stayed too long and perhaps spoke too freely of leaving. Some took exception, men she knew only casually and didn’t much care for. One night, they drugged her and took her out of the city to an abandoned shack on the Rappahalladran’s banks. There, they held her prisoner for two days and violated her in unspeakable ways, and when they were finished with her they threw her into a river to drown. Tougher than they suspected, dragging herself to safety through sheer force of will, she survived.
    When she had recovered her strength, she went back into the city, hunted them down one by one, and killed them all.
    She fled afterwards, because the dead men most certainly had relatives and friends. There had been enough talk that sooner or later some of them would come looking for her. Besides, the incident had soured her on the city and the Federation and her life in general. It was time for her to go somewhere else. She had heard about the Third Druid Council and thought she might find a home there, but she didn’t want to ask for admission into the order until she was certain they would not turn her away. So she went west into the Wilderun and the town of Grimpen Ward, the last refuge of fugitives and castoffs of all kinds, thinking to isolate herself and work on her magic skills until she had perfected them. Few came looking for those who hid in Grimpen Ward, where all hid secrets of one sort or another and none wanted the past revealed.
    She stayed there until her twenty-eighth birthday, keeping apart from the other denizens, practicing her art with the single-mindedness that defined her personality. She expanded her field of study from potions and spells to the uses of earth power and the elements, particularly the summoning up of shades and dead things that could be made to do her bidding and to offer their insights. Her skills sharpened, but her emotional character deadened proportionately. She had never had trouble killing when it was required; now killing became a means to her magic’s ends. Killing was inherent to the unlocking of many of the forms of power she sought to master. Whether of animals or humans, killing was a part of the rituals she embraced. There were other, safer ways in which to proceed, but none so quick or far-reaching in their results. She let herself become seduced. She hastened to her self-destruction.
    By the time she met Iridia Eleri, an outcast and a sorceress like herself, she was deep in the throes of dark magic’s lure and hungry for a larger taste. Iridia was already half-mad with her own twisted needs, her own secrets, and they formed a friendship based on mutual cravings. Magic could give them everything they desired, they believed; they needed only to master its complexities.
    They decided together to go to Paranor and seek admission into the Druid order. They made the journey in a fever, but when they put forth their applications were careful to hide the inner madnesses that drove them. The Ard Rhys was surprisingly easy to fool. She was distracted by the demands of her undertaking as leader of the order, and her primary concern was to find talented individuals willing to serve the Druid cause. Shadea a’Ru and Iridia Eleri seemed to be what she was