Ilse Witch (51 page)

Grianne!
he heard himself call out.

Blackness cloaked and hooded him once more, and a new series of images began. He saw himself as a child in the care of Coran and Liria. He saw himself at play with Quentin and his friends, with his younger brothers and sisters, at his home in Leah and beyond. The scenes were dark and accusatory, memories of his growing up that he had suppressed,
memories of the times in which he had lied and cheated and deceived, in which his selfishness and disregard had caused hurt and pain. Some of these scenes were familiar; some he had forgotten. The weaknesses of his life were revealed in steady procession, laid bare for him to witness. They were not terrible things taken separately, but their number increased their weight, and after a time he was crying openly and desperate for them to end.

A wind of dark haziness swept them all away and left him with a view of the Four Lands in which all that was bad and terrible about the human condition was displayed. He watched in horror as starvation, sickness, murder, and pillage decimated lives and homes and futures in a canvas so broad it seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. Men, women and children fell victim to the weaknesses of spirit and morality that plagued mankind. All of the races were susceptible, and all participated in the savagery. There was no end to it, no lessening of it, no sense that it had ever been other than this. Bek watched it unfold in horror and profound sadness and felt it to be a part of himself. Even in his misery he could sense that this was the history of his people, that this was who he was.

Yet when it was over, he felt cleansed. With recognition came acceptance. With acceptance came forgiveness. He felt cleansed, not just of what he had contributed to the morass, but of what others had contributed as well—as if he had taken it all on his shoulders, just for a little while, and had been given back a sense of peace. He rose up within the darkness, strengthened in ways he could not define, reborn into himself with a boy’s eyes, but a man’s understanding.

The darkness drew back, and he stood again on the deck of the
Jerle Shannara
, arms lifted, sword outstretched. He was still masked back and sides by Walker’s magic, but the way forward was clear. The Squirm had opened anew, its pillars swaying seductively, beckoning him to proceed, to come within their reach. He could feel the cold that permeated
them. He could feel their crushing weight. Even the air that surrounded them was infused with their power and their unpredictability. But there was something else here as well; he felt it at once. Something man-made, something not of nature but of machines and science.

A hand reached out to him, not made of flesh and blood, but of spirit, of ether, of magic so vast and pervasive that it lay everywhere about. He shrank from it, warded himself against it by bringing the sword’s light to bear, and abruptly it was gone.

Walker?
he called out in confusion, but there was only silence.

Ahead, the pillars of the Squirm rocked in the ice-melt sea, and the gulls flew round and round. Bek tested the air and the temperature. He joined himself to the ice of the spikes and the rock of the cliffs. He immersed himself in their feel, in their movements, in the vibrations of sound they emitted, in the shifting of their parts. He became one with his immediate world, extending into it from where he stood, so that he could read its intention and anticipate its behavior.

“Go forward,” he instructed, gesturing with the sword. The words seemed to come from someone else. “Ahead, slow.”

Walker must have heard him. The
Jerle Shannara
eased cautiously toward the pillars. Like a fragile bird, it sailed within their monstrous jaws, through the misted gaps of their teeth. “Left fifteen degrees,” he said, and heard Walker repeat his orders. “Ahead slow,” he called. “Faster now, more speed,” he instructed. The airship slid through the forest of ice, a moth into the flame, tiny and insignificant and unable to protect itself from the fire.

Then the pillars shifted anew and began to close on them. Bek was aware of it from somewhere deep inside, not just through his eyes, but through his body’s connection with the sword’s magic and the sword’s magic with the land and air and water. Cries rose from members of the ship’s company, frantic with fear. The boy heard them as he heard the crashing
of waves against the cliff walls and the whisper of gull wings on the morning air. He heard them and did not respond. “Go right twenty degrees. Take shelter in that pillar’s crevice.” His voice was so soft it seemed a wonder to him that anyone could hear.

But, hearing the words repeated by Walker, Redden Alt Mer did as Bek instructed. He rode the
Jerle Shannara
swiftly into a split that warded her while all about the ice pillars clashed and hammered at each other, and the air turned damp with spray and the sea white with foam. The sound and the fury of it deafened and shocked, and it felt as if an avalanche were sweeping over them. In the midst of the madness, Bek ordered the airship out of its protection through a momentary gap in two of the surging towers. The ship responded as if wired to his thinking, and an instant later, a wedge of ice broke off from the pinnacle of their momentary shelter and crashed down to lodge in the crevice they had just departed.

Forward they sailed, down through the haze, through errant and sudden collisions, through the closing of icy jaws and the grinding of sharpened teeth. A tiny bit of flotsam, they weaved and dodged, barely avoiding a crushing end time after time, riding spray and wind and cold. What must have gone through the minds of his shipmates, Bek could only imagine. Later, Quentin would tell him that after the first few moments, he had been unable to see much and had not wanted to look anyway. Bek would reply that it had been like that for him as well.

“Up! Quickly! Go up!” he cried a sharp and frantic warning, and the airship rose with a sudden lurch that threw everyone to the deck. Kneeling with the sword outstretched and his legs spread for balance, Bek heard the explosion of an ice floe beneath them, and a massive piece, propelled from the water’s surface like a projectile, just missed the underside of their hull before falling back into the sea.

Sword raised to the light, magic entwined with the air and
the ice and the rock, Bek shouted his instructions. Relying on instinct rather than sight, on sensation rather than thought, he responded to impulses that flashed and were gone in seconds, trusting to their ebb and flow as he guided the airship ahead. He could not explain to himself then or later what he was doing. He was reacting, and the impetus for what he did came from something both within and without that lacked definition or source, that was like the air he breathed and the cold and damp that infused it—pervasive and all-consuming. Again and again, huge shadows fell over him as the pillars of the Squirm swept by, barely missing them, rising and falling in the misty light, advancing randomly, soldiers at march through the gloom. Over and over, the monoliths collided, splintered, exploded, and turned to jagged shards. Lost within himself, wrapped within his magic, Bek felt it all and saw none of it.

Then the gloom began to brighten ahead, the haze to thin, and the sound and movement of the pillars to lessen. Still focused on the crushing weight of the ice and rock, Bek registered the change without letting it distract him. There was a sense of growing warmth, of color returning, and of smells that were of the land and not the sea. The airship surged ahead, propelled by an expectancy and hope Bek had not felt before. He lowered the Sword of Shannara in response, and his connection with the magic was broken. The warmth that infused him drew back, and the light that encircled the blade faded. Still on his knees, exhausted, he sagged to the decking. He breathed in deeply, gratefully, head lowered between his shoulders.

Walker took the Sword of Shannara from his hands and knelt beside him. “We’re through, Bek. We’re safe. Well done, young Ohmsford.”

The boy felt the Druid’s arm come about his shoulders, and then he fell away into blackness and didn’t feel anything.

* * *

When he regained consciousness, he was lying beneath the foremast with Joad Rish bent over him. He blinked and stared down at himself for a moment, as if needing reassurance that he was still all there, then looked up at the Healer.

“How do you feel?” the Elf asked, concern mirrored in his narrow features.

Bek wanted to laugh. How could he possibly answer that question after what he’d been through? “I’m all right. A little disoriented. How long was I unconscious?”

“No more than a few minutes. Walker said you were thrown into that crate and cracked your head. Do you want to try to stand up?”

With the Healer’s help, Bek climbed to his feet and looked around. The
Jerle Shannara
was under sail, moving down a broad, twisting channel through a bleak landscape of barren cliff walls and small, rocky islands. But the mist had begun to clear, and traces of blue sky shone in the bright light of an emerging sun. Trees dotted the ridgelines of the cliffs, and the glaciers and ice floes were gone.

A rush of memories crowded into Bek’s mind, hard and fast and dangerous, but he blinked them away. The Squirm and its pillars of ice were gone. The Sword of Shannara was gone, as well, put back into its casing by Walker, he supposed. He shivered momentarily, thinking of all he had experienced, of the feelings generated, of the whiplash of power. The sword’s magic was addictive, he realized. He didn’t need more than one experience with it to know. It was terrifying and overwhelming and incredibly empowering. Just to have survived it made him feel strangely exhilarated. As if he could survive anything. As if he were invulnerable.

Quentin came up and put a hand on his shoulder, asking how he was. Bek repeated Joad Rish’s story about hitting his head when the ship lurched, playing it down. Nothing much. Nothing to give a second thought to. It was such a ridiculous explanation that he felt embarrassed giving it, but he realized it seemed ridiculous only if you knew the truth. One by one,
the members of the ship’s company came up to him, and he repeated the story to each. Only Ahren Elessedil voiced any skepticism.

“You’re not usually so clumsy, Bek,” he observed with a grin. “Where were your instincts when you needed them? An Elf wouldn’t have lost his footing so easily.”

“Be a touch more careful next time, young hero,” Little Red joked, ruffling his hair. “We can’t afford to lose you.”

Walker appeared momentarily, shadowed by the slight, silver-haired figure of Ryer Ord Star. Distant, he nodded to the boy without speaking, and passed on. The seer studied the boy carefully before following.

The morning had passed away into afternoon, and the landscape began to change. The sharp-edged cliffs retreated from the waterline and softened to gentle slopes. Green and lush in the sunlight, forests appeared. From where they flew, the ship’s company saw rolling hills stretching into the distance for miles. The river they followed split into dozens of smaller tributaries that spiderwebbed out through the trees to form lakes, rivers, and streams. There was no sign of the ocean; the peninsula was sufficiently large that its outer shores were too distant to spy. Clouds were gathered on the horizons to either side and behind, markers of where the shoreline probably lay. Bek thought that Redden Alt Mer had been right not to try to fly over the cliffs to come inland. Even had they been able to do so, they would probably never have found this channel in the maze of rivers that surrounded it. Only by coming through the Squirm could they have known where to go.

The channel narrowed, hemmed in by old-growth spruce and cedar, the scent of the trees fragrant and lush on the warming air. The smells of the sea, of kelp and seaweed and fish, had faded. For all that remained of the coastline and its forbidding passage through the Squirm, they might have passed into another world entirely. Hawks soared overhead in slow, sweeping glides. Crows cawed raucously, their calls
echoing down the defile. The
Jerle Shannara
edged ahead carefully, so close to the shore at times that its spars brushed against the tree limbs.

The river eventually ended in a bay surrounded by forest and fed by dozens of rivers and streams. A huge waterfall tumbled into its basin at one end, and a handful of smaller falls splashed over rocky precipices farther along. Birdsong filled the air, and a small herd of deer moved quickly off the water’s edge on sighting their craft. The
Jerle Shannara
eased into the bay like a large sea creature that had wandered inland, and Redden Alt Mer brought her to a stop at the bay’s center.

Gathered at the railings, the ship’s company stared out at the destination they had traveled so far to find. It was nothing special. It might have been any number of places in the Westland, so similar did it look with its mix of conifers and hardwoods, the scent of loam on the air, and its smells of needles and green leaves.

Then Bek realized in mild shock that it didn’t look or feel like winter here, even though it was the winter season. Once through the Squirm, they hadn’t found anything of ice or cold or snow or bitter wind. It was as if they had somehow found their way back to midsummer.

“This isn’t possible,” he murmured softly, confused and wary.

He glanced quickly at those around him to see if anyone else had noticed, but no one seemed to have done so. He waited a moment, then moved over to where Walker stood, alone, below the pilot box. The Druid’s eyes were leveled on the shoreline ahead, but they registered the boy’s approach.

“What is it, Bek?”

Bek stood beside him uncertainly. “It’s summer here, and it shouldn’t be.”

The Druid nodded. “It’s a lot of things here it shouldn’t be. Strange. Keep your eyes open.”

He ordered Big Red to take the airship down to the water
and anchor her. When that was done, he sent a foraging party of Elven Hunters ashore for water, warning them that they were to stay together and in sight of the shoreline. The company would remain aboard ship tonight. A search for Castledown would begin in the morning. What was needed now was an inventory of the ship’s stores, an updated damage report, an unpacking and distribution of weapons to the members of the shore party, and some dinner. The Elven Hunters under Ard Patrinell and Ahren Elessedil would accompany him on the morrow’s search, along with Quentin, Bek, Panax, Ryer Ord Star, and Joad Rish. The Rovers would remain aboard ship until their return.