Morgawr (8 page)

She watched the two riders circle in tandem, talking and gesturing from the backs of their Rocs. Holding her course, she peered back toward the coast, for some sign of the other ship. But there was nothing to be seen as yet, so she returned her attention to the Wing Riders. The discussion had become animated, and the first vague feelings of uneasiness crept through her. Something about the way they communicated, even from a distance, didn't look right.

You're imagining things,
she thought.

Then Hunter Predd broke away from Po Kelles and flew back to where she waited, swinging about to come alongside before dropping down and below the aft railing. Taking hold of the line he had left dangling from before, the Wing Rider swung down off the bird and pulled himself up, hand over hand, until he was back on board. A hand signal to Obsidian sent the Roc wheeling away to take up a position beside them, flying to keep pace.

Rue Meridian waited as the Elf hurried over to the pilot box and climbed inside. Even in the faint new light, she could tell that he was upset.

“Listen to me, Little Red.” His weathered face was calm, but strained. “Your brother and the others are flying this way, but they are being chased. A fleet of enemy airships appeared off the coast yesterday at dawn. The
Jerle Shannara
barely got away from them. She's been flying this way ever since, trying to shake them off. But fast as she is, she can't seem to lose them. They tracked her all through the mountains, all the way inland, even after she'd changed course to go another way entirely, and now they're almost here.”

Enemy airships? All the way out here, so far from the Four Lands? She took a moment to let the information sink in. “Who are they?”

He made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “I don't know. No one does. They fly no flag, and their crews act like dead men. They walk around, but they don't seem to see anything. Po Kelles got a close look late yesterday when the Rovers set down to rest, thinking they'd lost them. Not an hour passed, and there they were again. The ones he could see were men, but they didn't act like men. They acted like machines. They didn't look as if they were alive. They were all stiff and empty-eyed, not seeing anything. One thing is certain. They know where they're going, and they don't seem to need a map to find us.”

She glanced around at the brightening day and the ruins below, her hopes for continuing the search fading. “How far away are they?”

“Not half an hour. We have to fly out of here. If they catch you in
Black Moclips
by yourself, you won't stand a chance.”

She stared at him without speaking for a moment, anger and frustration blooming inside. She understood the need for flight, but she had never been good at being forced to do anything. Her instincts were to stand and fight, not to run. She hated abandoning yet again those she was searching for, leaving them to an uncertain fate at the hands of not only the Mwellrets and the Ilse Witch, but now this new threat, as well. How long would they last on their own? How long would it be before she could come back and give them any help?

“How many of them are there?” she asked.

The Wing Rider shook his head. “More than twenty. Too many, Little Red, for us to face.”

He was right, of course. About everything. They should break off the search and flee before the intruders caught sight of them. But she could not help feeling that Bek and the others were down there, some of them at least, waiting for help. She could not shake off the suspicion that all that was needed was just a little more time. Even a few minutes might be enough.

“Tell Po Kelles to take up watch for us,” she ordered. “We can look just a little longer before giving up.”

He stared at her. She knew she had no right to give him orders, and he was debating whether or not to point that out. She knew, as well, that he understood what she was feeling.

“The weather is turning, too, Little Red,” he said softly, pointing.

Sure enough. Dark clouds were rolling in from the east, borne by coastal winds, and they looked menacing even from a distance. She was surprised she hadn't noticed them. The air had grown colder, too. A front was moving through, and it was bringing a storm with it.

She looked back at him. “Let's try, Wing Rider. For as long as we can. We owe them that much.”

Hunter Predd didn't need to ask whom she was talking about. He nodded. “All right, Rover girl. But you watch yourself.”

He jumped down out of the pilot box and sprinted back across the decking to the aft railing and disappeared over the side. Obsidian was already in place, and in seconds they were winging off to warn Po Kelles. Rue Meridian swung the airship back around toward the ruins, heading in. Already she was searching the rubble.

Then it occurred to her, a sudden and quite startling revelation, that she was flying an enemy airship, and those on the ground wouldn't know who she was. Rather than come out of hiding to reveal themselves, they would simply burrow deeper. Why hadn't she realized this before? Had she done so, perhaps she could have devised a way to make her intentions known. But it was too late now. Maybe the presence of the Wing Rider would reassure anyone looking up that she wasn't the Ilse Witch. Maybe they would understand what she was trying to do.

Just a few minutes more,
she kept telling herself.
Just give me a few minutes more.

She got those minutes and then some, but she saw no sign of anyone below. The clouds rolled in and blocked the sun, and the air turned so cold that even though she pulled her cloak tight about her, she was left shivering. The landscape was spotted with shadows, and everything looked the same. She was still searching, still insistent on not giving up, when Hunter Predd swung right in front of her and began to gesture.

She turned and looked. Two dozen airships had materialized from out of the gloom, black specks on the horizon. One led all the others, the one being chased, and she knew from its shape that it was the
Jerle Shannara
. Po Kelles was flying Niciannon toward it already, and Hunter Predd was calling to her to tack east and head for the mountains. With a final glance down, she did so.
Black Moclips
lurched in response to her hard wrench on the steering levers and the surge of full power from the radian draws she sent down to the parse tubes and their diapson crystals. The airship shuddered, straightened, and began to pick up speed. Rue Meridian could hear the shouts and cries of the imprisoned Federation crew, but she had no time for them just now. They had made their choice in this matter, and they were stuck with things as they were, like it or not.

“Shut up!” she shrieked, not so much at the men as at the wind that whipped past her ears, taunting and rough.

At full speed, her anger a catalyst that made her as ready to fight as to flee, she flew into the mountains.

Eight

In the slow, cool hours before sunrise, Quentin Leah buried Ard Patrinell and Tamis. He lacked a digging tool to provide a grave, so he lowered them into the wronk pit and filled it in with rocks. It took him a long time to find the rocks in the darkness and then to carry them, sometimes long distances, to be dropped into place. The pit was large and not easily covered over, but he kept at it, even after he was so weary his body ached.

When he was finished, he knelt by the rough mound and said good-bye to them, talking to them as if they were still there, wishing them peace, hoping they were together, telling them they would be missed. An Elven Tracker and a Captain of the Home Guard, star-crossed in every sense of the word—perhaps they would be united wherever they were now. He tried to think of Patrinell as the Captain was before his changing, a warrior of unmatched fighting skills, a man of courage and honor. Quentin did not know what lay beyond death, but he thought it might be something better than life and that maybe that something allowed you to make up for missed chances and lost dreams.

He did not cry, he was all done crying. But he was hollowed out and bereft, and he felt a bleakness that was so pervasive it threatened to undo him completely.

Dawn was breaking when he stood again, finished at last. He reached down for the Sword of Leah where he had cast it away at the end of his battle, and picked it up again. The bright, dark surface was unmarked save for streaks of blood and grime. He wiped it off carefully, considering it as he did so. It seemed to him that the sword had failed him completely. For all its magic properties, for all that it was touted to have accomplished in its long and storied history, it had proved to be of little use to him here in this strange land. It had not been enough to save Tamis or Ard Patrinell. It had not even been enough to enable him to protect Bek, whom he had sworn to protect no matter what. That Quentin was alive because he had possession of it was of little consolation. His own life seemed to have been purchased at the cost of others. He did not feel deserving of it. He felt dead inside, and he did not know how he could ever feel anything else.

He put the blade back into its sheath and strapped it across his back once more. The sun was cresting the horizon, and he had to decide what he would do next. Finding Bek was a priority, but to do so he had to leave the concealment of the forest and go back into the ruins of Castledown. That meant risking yet another confrontation with creepers and wronks, and he did not know if he could face that. What he did know was that he needed to be away from this place of death and disappointment.

So he began walking, watching the shadows about him fade back into the trees as sunlight seeped through the canopy and dappled the forest floor. He dropped down from the hills surrounding Castledown to the level stretches he had abandoned in his flight from the Patrinell wronk two days earlier. Walking made him feel somewhat better. The bleakness in his heart lingered, but something of his loss of direction and purpose disappeared as he considered his prospects. There was nothing to be gained by standing about. What he must do, no matter what it took, was find Bek. It was Quentin's insistence on making the journey that had persuaded his cousin to come with him. If he accomplished nothing else, at least he must see Bek safely home again.

He believed that Bek was still alive, even though he knew that many others in the company had perished. He believed this because Tamis had been with his cousin before she found Quentin and because in his heart, where instincts sometimes gave insights that eyes could not, he felt nothing had changed. But that didn't mean that Bek wasn't in trouble and in need of help, and Quentin was determined not to let him down.

Some part of him understood that his intensity was triggered by a need to grasp hold of something to save himself. He was aware that if he faltered, his despair would prove overwhelming, his bleakness of heart so complete that he would be unable to make himself move. If he gave way, he was lost. Moving in any direction, seizing on any purpose, kept him from tumbling into the abyss. He didn't know how realistic he was being in trying to find Bek, all alone and unaided by any useful magic, but the odds didn't matter if he could manage to stay sane.

He was not far from the ruins when he caught sight of an airship flying out ahead of him, distant and small against the horizon. He was so surprised that for a moment he stopped where he was and stared at it in disbelief. It was too far away for him to identify, but he decided at once that it must be the
Jerle Shannara
searching for the members of the company. He felt fresh hope at this and began walking toward it at once.

But in seconds the airship had drifted into the haze of a massive bank of clouds coming out of the east and was lost from view.

He was standing in an open clearing, trying to find it again, when he heard someone call. “Highlander! Wait!”

He turned in surprise, trying to identify the voice, to determine from where the speaker was calling. He was still searching the hills unsuccessfully when Panax walked out of the trees behind him.

“Where have you been, Quentin Leah?” the Dwarf demanded, out of breath and flushed with exertion. “We've been hunting for you all yesterday and last night! It was pure luck that I caught sight of you just now!”

He came up to Quentin and shook his hand warmly. “Well met, Highlander. You look a wreck, if you don't mind my saying. Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” Quentin answered, even though he wasn't. “Who's been looking for me, Panax?”

“Kian and I. Obat and a handful of his Rindge. The wronk tore them up pretty thoroughly. The village, the people, everything. Scattered the tribe all over the place, those it didn't kill. Obat pulled the survivors together up in the hills. At one point, they were planning to rebuild their village and go on as before, but no longer. They're not going back. Things have changed.”

He stopped suddenly, taking a close look at Quentin's face, finding something in it he hadn't seen before. “Where's Tamis?” he asked.

Quentin shook his head. “Dead. Ard Patrinell, as well. They killed each other. I couldn't save either one.” His hands were shaking. He couldn't seem to stop them. He stared down, confused. “We set a trap, Tamis and I. We hid in the forest by a pit and let the wronk find us, thinking we could drop it in. We used a decoy, a trick, to lure it over. It worked, but then it climbed out, and Tamis . . .”

He trailed off, unable to continue, tears coming to his eyes once more, as if he were a child reliving a nightmare.

Panax took Quentin's hands in his own, steadying them, holding on until the shaking stopped. “You don't look as if you escaped by much yourself,” he said quietly. “I expect there wasn't anything you could have done to save either that you didn't try. Don't expect too much of yourself, Highlander. Even magic doesn't always provide the answers we seek. The Druid may have found that out himself, wherever he is. Sometimes, we have to accept that we have limitations. Some things we can't prevent. Death is one.”

He let go of Quentin's hands and gripped him by his shoulders. “I'm sorry about Tamis and Ard Patrinell, truly sorry. I expect they fought hard to stay alive, Highlander. But so did you. I think you owe it to them and to yourself to make that count for something.”

Quentin looked into the Dwarf's brown eyes, coming back to himself as he did so, able to form a measure of fresh resolve. He remembered Tamis' face at the end, the fierce way she had faced her own death. Panax was right. To fall apart now, to give in to his sadness, would be a betrayal of everything she had fought to accomplish. He took a deep breath. “All right.”

Panax nodded and stepped back. “Good. We need you to be strong, Quentin Leah. The Rindge have been out exploring since early this morning, before dawn. They went into the ruins. Castledown is littered with creepers, none of them functioning. The fire threads are down. Antrax, it seems, is dead.”

Quentin stared at him, not comprehending.

“Well and good, you might say, but look over there.” The Dwarf pointed east to a steadily advancing cloudbank, a huge wall of darkness that stretched across the entire horizon. “What's coming is a change in the world, according to the Rindge. They have a legend about it. If Antrax is destroyed, the world will revert to what it once was. Remember how the Rindge insisted that Antrax controlled the weather? Well before that time, this land was all ice and snow, bitter cold and barely habitable. It only turned to something warm and green after Antrax changed it eons ago. Now it's changing back. Feel the nip in the air?”

Quentin hadn't noticed it before, but Panax was right. The air was growing steadily colder, even as the sun rose. There was a brittle snap to it that whispered of winter.

“Obat and his people are going over the mountains and into Parkasia's interior,” the Dwarf continued. “Better weather over there. Safer country. If we don't find another way out of here pretty quick, I think we'd better go with them.”

Suddenly Quentin remembered the airship. “I just saw the
Jerle Shannara
, Panax,” he said quickly, directing the other's attention toward the front. “It was visible for a moment, right over there. I saw it while I was standing where you found me, and then I lost it in those clouds.”

They stared into the darkness together for a several moments without seeing anything. Then Panax cleared his throat. “Not that I doubt you on this, but are you sure it wasn't
Black Moclips
?”

The possibility hadn't occurred to Quentin. He was so eager for it to be the
Jerle Shannara
, he supposed, that he had never stopped to consider that it might be the enemy airship. He had forgotten about their nemesis.

He shook his head slowly. “No, I guess I'm not sure at all.”

The Dwarf nodded. “No harm done. But we have to be careful. The witch and her Mwellrets are still out there.”

“What about Bek and the others?”

Panax looked uncomfortable. “Still no sign. I don't know if we can find them, Highlander. Obat's people still won't go into the ruins. They say it's a place of death even with Antrax gone and the creepers and fire threads down. They say it's cursed. Nothing has changed. I tried to get them to come with me this morning, but after they saw what had happened, they went right back up into the hills to wait.” He shook his head. “I guess I don't blame them, but it doesn't help us much.”

Quentin faced him. “I'm not leaving Bek, Panax. I'm all done with running away, with watching people die and not doing anything about it.”

The Dwarf nodded. “We'll keep looking, Highlander. For as long as we can, we'll keep searching. But don't get your hopes up.”

“He's alive,” Quentin insisted.

The Dwarf did not reply, his weathered, bluff face masking his thoughts. His gaze shifted skyward to the north, and Quentin turned to look, as well. A line of black specks had appeared on the horizon, coming down parallel to the storm front, strung out across the morning sky.

“Airships,” Panax announced softly, a new edge to his rough voice.

They watched the specks grow larger and begin to take shape. Quentin could not understand where so many airships had come from, seemingly out of nowhere, all at once. Whose were they? He glanced at Panax, but the Dwarf seemed as confused as he did.

“Look,” Panax said, pointing.

The airship Quentin had seen earlier had reappeared out of the darkness, moving swiftly across the sky east toward the mountains. There was no mistaking it this time; it was
Black Moclips
. A cry for help died on the Highlander's lips, and he froze in place as it passed overhead and receded into the distance. They could see now that it was attempting to cut off another ship, one further ahead. The distinctive rake of the three masts marked it instantly as the
Jerle Shannara
. The witch and her Mwellrets were in pursuit of the Rovers, and these new airships were chasing both.

“What's going on?” Quentin asked, as much of himself as of Panax.

A moment later, the pursuing fleet split into two groups, one going after
Black Moclips
and the
Jerle Shannara
, the other breaking off toward the ruins of Castledown. This second group was the smaller of the two, but was commanded by the largest of the airships. In a line, the vessels swung over the ruins, where they prepared to set down.

“I don't think we should stand out in the open like this,” Panax offered after a moment.

Quickly, they moved into the cover of the trees, then retreated back up into the hills until they found a vantage point from which they could look down on what was taking place. It didn't take them long to decide that they had made the right decision. Rope ladders had been lowered from the airships, which hovered a dozen feet off the ground, and knots of Mwellrets were climbing down and spreading out. On board the airships, the crews kept their stations. But there was something odd about their stance. They stood frozen in place like statues, not moving about, not even talking with one another. Quentin stared at them for a long time, waiting for any sort of reaction at all. There was none.

“I don't think they're friends,” Panax declared softly. He paused. “Look at that.”

Something new had been added to the mix—a handful of creatures that lacked any recognizable identity. They were being placed in slings and lowered by winches from the largest airship, one after the other. They looked a little like humans grown all out of proportion, with massive shoulders and arms, thick legs, and hairy torsos. They hunched forward as they walked, using all four limbs like the apes of the Old World. But their heads had a wolfish look to them, with narrow, sharp snouts, pointed ears, and gimlet eyes. Even at a distance, their features were unmistakable.

“What are those?” Quentin breathed.