The Druid | Short Fiction – Renwulf Creations

NOTE: content warning for violence within this story

Halec’s Story

I was the son of the king’s sister. I belonged to royalty before I belonged to the Order. Before the Order, the Druids, shuffled me down to the lowest of the low amongst them. Before my noble family cast me off to drift out to the misty seas of our ancient ancestors.

I was taken in by my Druid elders, new, without past or privilege. Without a debt of blood. Without the name of my clan. They washed me clean. My mother even, as she was the last to embrace me, told me that I must choose for myself a new name. For the one she had given me was to stay with her and be wrapped within her memories of the child she had borne and then raised to a man. That I, who now stepped into a new life, was henceforth and evermore a stranger to her and to all that was hers.

This was not cruel, it was the way to become a Druid. It was the way to remember who we were before we were anyone.

I had seen seventeen summers in my life and I did not make this choice for myself. It had been decided by the signs in place at my birth. Read by those same men who took me from my home and would soon enough come to look at me with suspicion and doubt.

Choosing me because I am something other. Then, when they caught a whisper of what I am, they put me at a distance and cut me off. No better than a foolish peasant frightened by an old woman’s curse, by a black cat, by a fire-encircled moon.

My frustration with them came to burn in the pit of my stomach. I swallowed that fire, I kept my eyes dull and tamed.

When I left my family, I was placed under the leadership of Arlan, White Robe Brother and High Teacher, elderly and slow. It was Taveon, his second, who truly instructed and lead our small band of students. Myself and five others, all further advanced in their lessons than me, though we were equalled in age.

It was not many months before the troubles began. A king in the west, Osian of Akahna, who did not like what he had been told by the High Druids. A king who claimed his kingship as authority above the Order and above the Spirits they spoke for. He set his forces loose upon those clans loyal to the Order and rewarded those who were not. People began to turn away from us. We, who had been a blessing, were now a curse to them.

Arlan, in his wisdom, took our small group to an isolated settlement at the coast. Fishermen and their families, few in number and below the notice of Akahna’s king.

Arlan enlisted these men to take us across that grey sea and leave us on an island I had never heard of, Keeper’s Haven. There is a power there, Arlan told us, power we hoped to never need, but we need it now.

For days we hiked through the cool, dark forest we found there. Shaded from the bright Sun that travelled across clear skies. We were peaceful, alert but calm. Armed only to be ready against beasts who stayed back from us, scared and wary.

Then it changed. A palpable sense of being watched by our own kind, their thoughts connecting with our own. Threads unfurling and hooking.

We did not alter our path nor our pace, but when, finally, after days, they appeared before us, we were ready.

They were lined in formation before us, shadowed by the tight canopy of the forest, almost invisible across the thirty or so paces that divided our two groups. Their number more than three score, we were feeble in comparison. No kind of genuine threat. One man walked forward, he stopped midway between us and them. He called out, his voice honed like an instrument to carry and echo beneath the canopy and across the dense undergrowth, the rocky embankments and outcrops.

His voice caught my entire attention. It was sharp, his intent. He would see us to our death or his. Unless we proved a use and gave his people advantage. Pity was not within him, we were not his concern. A Druid is different. They seek to guide the world.

His voice revealed another thing. He and I were two branches of the same root, however deeply buried beneath the accumulation of time’s shedding skin. The words he spoke, so similar to those of the Red Deer. Hearing them, I stepped forward without thinking. A pace or two but enough to mark me out from the others of my group. I heard his meaning in those hazy words as I would see a man standing through mist. I answered him, we are men of medicine, men of remembrance and chronicle.

He flinched hearing me, drew his head back in a quick reflex. His eyes keen and fixed, studying me. I felt a hand grab my arm, Arlan, studying me just as keenly. I told them who we are, I said to Arlan. It is almost the language of the Red Deer.

Arlan dropped his hand from me and stepped forward ahead. The clan leader looked at both of us, back and forth, he and his men waiting. Arlan spoke, we mean no harm. We seek the guidance of our ancestors, we seek the great monument. Finding it, we then will leave.

Arlan turned back to me. Tell him, he said. I did, and the clan leader seemed to accept it.

If he knew of the great monument, then he had no care to lead us to it. He returned to his men, and they pulled back into the cloak of the forest, men of mist vanishing with the dawn.

We pressed on, Arlan and Taveon keeping counsel with one another, staying apart from the rest of us. One of the others asked me why I had done it, acted as leader before the clan. I had no answer. I had understood the clan leader’s questions and I had responded. There had been no agenda, it was instinct.

We made camp at nightfall, one of the other students taking lookout. I fell asleep watching the campfire.

We woke in pitch darkness to screams and the breaking sounds of violence. Then pounding footfalls and branches snapping, a man running.

Taveon struck a lantern into flame, he swayed the light across us all and across the campsite. Finding the corpse of our lookout slumped against a yew tree that seemed to lean over him, its curled branches reaching for him.

Taveon ordered us to gather our belongings and run. He held Arlan by the arm and assisted him in our haste. We stopped only at dawn, exhausted. We stayed at this site until midday when the clan leader appeared.

Taveon stood, we all stood with weapons ready. I held my knife, a hunter’s knife. Taveon ordered me to his side.

The clan leader stood alone, he spoke. Distrust, he said, and disobedience. He offered us our retribution to wash clean the path between our two peoples.

A number of his men appeared then and walked up beside him, dragging a bound and blindfolded man with them. The leader grabbed him by his arm and threw him to the ground before Taveon. Kill him, he said, make clean the path. I translated his words to Taveon. The bound man lay on his back, he lay still.

We make vows when we become Druids. To break any one of them is to forfeit our status as such. Doing so, we become just any other man or woman. I knew Taveon could not kill one who is unarmed. One who is bound and blinded.

I looked at the clan leader who watched us in our hesitation. I saw him judge us for it, judge us no better than children and of no use, no advantage to him. I stepped forward, I stood over the blindfolded man, the bound and discarded man. I struck my knife down and pulled it across his exposed throat. I made a deep wound and I gave him a death as speedy as I was able to.

The clan leader met my eyes as I stood up. He smiled. I had set right the balance between us.

I realised then that Taveon had not stopped me, though I knew also that he would blame me.

The clan took the corpse and left. We left to find a new camp. No one walked with me.

We rested for a few days. Arlan did not recover from his exhaustion. Taveon treated him with herbs and with prayers. It was only a few days before Arlan died in his sleep, it was gentle.

With Arlan gone, I began to sense something of the land beneath us. As though Arlan had woven a protective barrier around us that had vanished along with him. I sensed it as I lay down to sleep at night and as I walked during the day. Twin rivers running deep beneath the earth, flowing through subterranean caves, seeping into rock and soil. Rising in the roots of the trees.

They were rivers of creative force that I felt. The psychic forces of minds ancient and unnamed. One, a river of light, and the other, a river of pure power.

The others must have felt it also. We spoke less to one another, barely at all. Even Taveon pulled back from each one of us, retreated into himself.

One morning, we rose and prepared our food. All of us simply watching as one of the other students stood up and walked into the forest. We lost sight of him as the trees closed across the distance he drew away into. He did not return. We did not search for him. He made a choice, were Taveon’s few words about the matter. It may prove, Taveon said, that his was the correct choice.

We became careless with our food and with our water. Not scrutinising it as we once had. Two of the remaining students fell sick with this carelessness. They could hold nothing in their stomachs for days that dragged on until they, too, passed away from this world.

There was now only Taveon, myself, and one other student. We were like this for a time, progressing in a steady trek towards our goal. Until Taveon told me to leave. He took me aside, asking me to collect river water with him, leaving our sole companion alone at the camp.

At the riverside, Taveon told me to go and seek a place with the clan whose scouts still followed us at a distance. He told me I was more of them than I was of the Order. He told me he would return alone to the camp, that I should go now and meet those scouts where they waited, hidden along the overhanging ridge. They were not more than a hundred paces away, he said, if I did not find them, it was no concern as they would find me.

I was furious, I realised then how much I despised him. He turned his back on me to leave the river. I took a rock in my hand from the riverbank. I struck it across the back of his head. Across the side as he fell.

I returned to the camp and told the student that we had to find the clan scouts. That Taveon had slipped and fallen into the swift-running river. It had taken him into its course.

The student complied, dazed and befuddled. We made it to the scouts, who took us to the leader. I offered to teach him all that I had learned, all that I knew. I told him of my growing connection. I offered him the rivers.

This story is an excerpt from LAHANA, A Saga of the Savage Innocence and Power of Ancient Druidism, by Tamara Rendell, to be released 12th April 2026

Tamara Rendell

January 11, 2026

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Author: Tamara Rendell

Tamara’s upcoming novel Lahana is out 12th April 2026, PRE-ORDER NOW. She is the author of Mystical Tides and Autumn Moon (out late 2026).