* This article is about the character from The Fall of Shannara tetralogy. For the character from The Sword of Shannara, see Shea Ohmsford.
Shea Ohmsford is a character in The Fall of Shannara tetralogy. He is a young orphan boy who plays a key role in assisting the former Ard Rhys Drisker Arc infiltrate the Orsis Guild.
Biography[]
Shea was living on the streets of Varfleet by the time he was five years old. He grew up on the streets never knowing his parents, how he got his name, or the meaning behind it.
Some time after assisting Drisker Arc and Tarsha Kaynin in Varfleet, Shea is employed by the Rover Rocan Arneas to help him free the scientist Tindall from Assidian Deep, the Federation prison complex located in Arishaig. Shea learns that Tindall has created a machine called Annabelle that can theoretically alter the weather.
After rescuing Tindall from Assidian Deep with the help of Rocan Arneas and the air sprite Seelah, Shea accompanies them as they flee Arishaig and head to the Westland, taking Annabelle. It is there that he is reunited with Drisker and Tarsha, who were seeking him out on the direction of the Ilse Witch.
Upon learning that the Skaar are invading the Four Lands because a perpetual winter has settled over Skaarsland and made it uninhabitable, Shea reveals to Drisker the existence of Annabelle and what the machine is purported to be capable of. Upon learning of the machine, Drisker immediately sets about convincing Rocan and Tindall to transport Annabelle to Skaarsland to see if it could be of any use in altering the climate. Together with Rocan, Tindall, Seelah, Dar Leah, Ajin, and Brecon Elessedil, Shea sets out for Skaarsland on a massive Rover airship called the Behemoth.
After the Behemoth has been traveling for nearly two weeks over the Tiderace and is near Skaarsland, it encounters a massive freak storm and is blown off course, ending up hundreds of miles south of Skaarsland. The airship lands on one of the islands of Nambizi, where Shea manages to befriend another boy despite a language barrier. The boy, Borshawk, exhibits a level of control over certain creatures on the island.
Later, when Dar and Ajin go missing while the Behemoth is still being repaired, Shea turns to Borshawk for help. Together with Seelah, they fly across the island on a giant war shrike Borshawk commandeers to track down Dar and Ajin. They manages to save the pair from a party of cannibals, but Borshawk insists that they all ride the war shrike back to safety while he walks, since the shrike cannot carry all of them out.
Shea initially refuses to leave Borshawk behind but is not able to dissuade his friend, and he is distraught after they fly off and leave him behind, assuming the worst. However, after the Behemoth is repaired and begins flying away from the island, Borshawk appears next to the airship on the war shrike's back, waving farewell to Shea and the party.
Eventually, the party makes it to Skaarsland and lands by a river, far downstream from the Skaar's palace and city center. Ajin leaves for the city to find out what has happened to her mother, while the rest of the party begin working to set up Annabelle so that they can run the machine and see if it will work in altering Skaarsland's perpetual winter.
After Ajin has been gone for four days, Dar and Brecon head to the city themselves to look for and rescue her. Because this mission might alert the Skaar to the presence of outsiders and because of a massive oncoming snowstorm, Rocan, Tindall, and the rest of the Behemoth crew resolve to get Annabelle ready and to deploy her as soon as they can, the same day that Dar and Brecon head out.
After arguing about who will go up in the Behemoth to operate Annabelle in the midst of the coming storm, Rocan and Tindall agree to fly up together, and the entire Rover crew go up with them. Shea insists on going with them, pointing out that Drisker Arc had said he was needed for this task, but he is ordered to stay on the ground with Seelah. Before boarding the airship, Tindall hands Shea some documents he had drafted in case he doesn't make it back. He suggests that Shea give them to the Skaar people, or to whomever else he thinks appropriate.
The outer edges of the storm reaches the Behemoth as it takes off, hampering its ascent and throwing the crew about. By the time the ship reaches the clouds, lightning has arrived as well.
From the crow's nest of the Behemoth, Rocan begins operating Annabelle above the clouds, using hoses to spray chemicals over them with the hopes of driving away the frigid climate. However, the ship begins to lose altitude and is struck by a massive bolt of lightning which incinerates the crow's nest and instantly kills Rocan and half the crew. The storm winds toss the airship about, sending casks of Annabelle's precious chemicals overboard, and more lightning strikes, breaking the casks open and destroying the rest of the Behemoth and its crew.
Shea, watching helpless from below with only Seelah with him, sees the Behemoth explode and disintegrate and sees the mist from the expended chemicals floating in the upper air doing nothing. Distraught and horrified by his friends' mass sacrifice and by the realization that it may have all been for nothing, he screams.
The sheer magical power in his scream echoes in the sky and initiates the necessary chain of reactions for the chemicals to activate and do their work, and the perpetual clouds covering Skaarsland disappear almost completely. Overwhelmed by his newfound power and his emotions, Shea falls asleep in Seelah's arms. When he awakes, the shape-shifter is gone, but Dar, Brecon, and the rescued Ajin come and find him.
After Ajin learns that her father was assassinated in the Four Lands, she recalls his troops back to their home country, since her people's motivation for leaving Skaarsland to find a new home had vanished now that the climate was back to normal. She is crowned Queen of Skaarsland, and Shea leaves Tindall's documents with her since they contain plans and instructions for more machines like Annabelle in case the Skaar might need such a thing again.
Dar, Brecon, and Shea then travel to Emberen in the Westland to find Tarsha Kaynin. They tell her about their adventures, while she tells them about hers: Drisker had been trapped in the Forbidding by Clizia Porse through the use of a triagenel, and he had been killed by Weka Dart while helping Grianne Ohmsford get both him and herself out of the Forbidding using the darkwand. As a form of thanks to Drisker, Grianne had helped Tarsha kill both Clizia and the Jachyra she had summoned from the Forbidding in exchange for imprisoning Drisker there. In return, Tarsha had taken Grianne back to Stridegate so that she could be reunited with the tanequil and go back to living out her days as an aeriad.
For Shea's part, he told Tarsha that the magic in his voice, which he discovered when he screamed and set off the chain of chemical reactions that altered the Skaarsland climate, was definitely the magic of the wishsong and that he was therefore an actual descendant of the Ohmsfords, like herself. He asks to stay behind at Tarsha's home when Dar and Brecon leave for Arborlon so that she can teach him how to control the magic, and she agrees.
After some time spent living with and training Shea, Tarsha is finally strong enough to open and read Drisker's last letter to her, which he had written in case he didn't make it back to her and which Grianne had given to her. In it, Drisker reveals that with him gone, Tarsha will be the last of the Druids. She will be able to continue the Druid order, should she choose to accept that role, or she could let the Druids as an institution die. Drisker says in in his letter that while his predecessors would argue that she should definitely take up the mantle of Ard Rhys and revive the Druid Order, he doesn't necessarily know if that should be the case and will therefore leave it up to her to make the right choice.
Uncertain, Tarsha resolves to fly to Paranor to figure out what to do, and once told about the letter and its contents, Shea, who has begun to openly express his attraction to Tarsha, insists on coming with her. Later one night, in front of the dark and abandoned structures of Paranor, Tarsha prevaricates on whether the Druids are needed anymore, especially since the world has science like Tindall's machine. However, she points out that ultimately Annabelle needed Shea's wishsong to work, and that she saw the merit in science and magic coexisting.
Shea resolves to support her no matter what she decides to do, and together they sit in front of Paranor, contemplating a variety of possible futures.
Physical Appearance[]
Although he is described as a young orphan boy in The Black Elfstone, in The Stiehl Assassin it is revealed that he is fifteen years old, four years younger than Tarsha.