Straken (24 page)

Then the Trolls were over the side of the railing and on board the ship, and Rue was lifting away, taking them quickly out of range of their attackers. Bek broke off his efforts with the wishsong, now thoroughly spent, and hurried over to the newcomers. Seven Trolls and a Dwarf, he saw. The Dwarf wrestled free of the Troll who was carrying him and stood clinging to the rail, breathing hard.

“Tagwen?” Bek asked, coming up to him.

Tagwen looked over, his face ashen and his mouth a tight line. There was blood on his neck and right arm from wounds, and his clothing was torn and soiled.

He blinked rapidly at Bek. “I don’t ever want to come to this place again!” he snapped. “Not ever!”

Then he fainted.

T
here was no time for an exchange of information or for anything but making a quick escape from the fast-approaching storm. If it caught up with them over the Inkrim, their efforts to get free of the Urdas might come to nothing. With Bek at the helm, Rue and Trefen Morys worked the draws and light sheaths by hand to gain speed and maneuverability, heading south and west toward the relative safety of the mountain peaks below the clouds and winds building north.
Swift Sure
skated hard across the long stretch of the valley, buffeted and tossed as storm winds gusted ahead of rain and dark skies. Lightning began to flash in the heart of the encroaching dark, and thunder rumbled ominously across the heavens in long, crackling peals.

On the decks below the pilothouse, Bellizen worked on the injured Rock Trolls. Two of them were badly hurt, wounded by Urda weapons. According to Kermadec, who had managed to say a few words to Bek before
Swift Sure
set sail, his little company had tried to slip past the Urdas during the night, convinced that any attempt at
fighting to get free was useless. By then, Pen had been gone for almost a day, and they were desperate to find a way to help him. But the Urdas, furious at what they perceived to be a deliberate violation of sacred ground, had been keeping close watch on the intruders and had no intention of letting them escape. They reacted swiftly to the attempt, catching them out in the open and killing two outright. The surviving Trolls and Tagwen had fled into the tower, where they had remained, trapped and under attack.

Rain struck
Swift Sure
a broadside blow that sent her scudding sideways across the roof of the forest. Bek righted her quickly, trying not to think about Pen and what had happened in the ruins days earlier, concentrating instead on getting them across the valley to the relative safety of the mountains. Inside the peaks, they could find protection from the storm and cross into the valleys beyond. But the rain descended in torrents, inundating the decks and those clustered on them, leaving the entire ship sodden and dripping. Visibility was dropping fast, and Bek turned the ship farther south in an effort to run before the storm and remain clear of its impenetrable shroud of rain and mist.

Then lightning struck the mainmast, dancing down its length and along the conductors to the hull, sparking and flashing in the near dark. The Trolls flattened themselves against the deck until Bellizen signaled for help to get the injured below. Staggering across the slick wood with their burdens, the Trolls did as she asked, and soon everyone had disappeared below, leaving Bek, Rue, and Trefen Morys to sail the airship.

They were flying dangerously low, trying to slip the stronger winds at the higher elevations. But radian draws, stays, and sails were all giving way, tearing loose or shredding, slowing eroding
Swift Sure
’s maneuverability. Bek held the airship as steady as he could, relying on the power stored in the diapson crystals to keep her flying. When that was gone, they were finished. He could make out gaps in the mountain peaks ahead, dark passages to the valleys beyond, and he pointed toward them as the storm closed about.

The winds howled like a living thing. They slammed into
Swift Sure
with devastating impact, knocking her off course, forcing Bek to wrestle her back into line again. Rain descended in sheets, and visibility dropped to nothing. Even the dark gaps for which they were
headed began to fade. The storm was sweeping the whole of the Inkrim now, a great roiling mass of wind, rain, and darkness.

Then abruptly the mountains ahead disappeared and the gaps toward which
Swift Sure
had been heading were gone.

We’re not going to make it
, Bek thought.

For heart-stopping minutes, they hung suspended in a gray, fathomless void, directionless and lost.

Then the curtain of rain lifted and the rock walls loomed out of the rain-soaked darkness once more, massive slabs of stone lifting thousands of feet into the mists. Bek caught sight of a gap between them and banked
Swift Sure
sharply toward its dark maw.

Seconds later, they were inside a craggy split that was as dark and still and windless as a subterranean passage.

“S
avages!”

Atalan spit the word out as if to rid himself of its bitter taste. It was a word he had used three times in the last two sentences by Bek’s reckoning. Apparently the bitterness had a tendency to linger.

“Killed four of us for no better reason than to punish us for coming into those ruins! A place of dead things! Nothing there but bones and rubble and monsters like that tree!” His blunt Troll features were unreadable, but his eyes were fierce. “We should come back here with the rest of our people and wipe them out!”

He was incensed, even now, hours later. They were seated at the bow—Atalan, Kermadec, Tagwen, the young Druids, Rue, and Bek. They made an odd-looking group. The Trolls were giants with skins of bark and flat, virtually featureless faces. The Druids were much smaller and impossibly young. The Dwarf was squat and solid, his thick beard like a mask. And Bek and Rue, fatigued and weak from the wounds they had received during their flight out of Paranor, had the look of the walking dead.
Swift Sure
hung anchored above a valley floor somewhere deep within the Klu, west almost to the Charnals. The Inkrim and the storm had been left behind. It was nightfall, and the Trolls who had been wounded were sleeping below. Everyone was exhausted.

Kermadec shifted his large frame and leaned back against the ship’s railing. His rough face was impassive, his voice calm. “Let it be,
Atalan.” He nodded at Bek and Rue. “So young Penderrin has found a way into the Forbidding, after all. Your son is nothing if not resourceful. He has kept his wits about him.”

“He has his wits, but does he have the use of magic, as well?” Rue asked, reminded suddenly of what Bek had revealed of the traces of her son’s passage.

Kermadec shrugged. “He has some. He has that ability to read the responses of living things. He can discern their thinking from that. Like the lichen. Like that moor cat.” He glanced at Tagwen. “It’s a magic I wouldn’t mind having, Bristle Beard.”

“He said it was a small magic,” the Dwarf muttered. He scowled at Kermadec. “Having seen nothing to suggest otherwise, I am inclined to take him at his word. Penderrin is not given to exaggeration.”

Tagwen had recovered from his faint, though he was still embarrassed about the collapse. Kermadec had spent a long time reassuring the Dwarf that it had nothing to do with his courage, but was a result of exhaustion and stress. Anyone might have suffered the same indignity, and it would not be mentioned again. Tagwen, however, did not appear convinced.

“There is the magic he generated during his encounter with the tanequil, as well,” Trefen Morys pointed out. “To create a talisman of such power, a tremendous amount of magic would have to be released. Even if it didn’t come from Pen, traces of it would cling to him. And he carries the darkwand with him. Any reading of magic attached to Pen would be influenced by that.”

It was a reasonable explanation, and even Rue seemed to accept it. Only Bek knew that the reasoning was wrong. The readings given him by the wishsong had told him that the traces of his son’s passage encompassed only magic that belonged to him. The blood connection between father and son was too strong for him to be mistaken. Pen had uncovered a form of magic that was still a mystery, possibly even to himself.

“I am very sorry to hear that Ahren Elessedil is dead,” he said to Tagwen, changing the subject.

The Dwarf looked down at his hands and shook his shaggy head slowly. “He was a brave man, Bek Ohmsford. He gave his life so that the rest of us could go on. We would not have reached Kermadec and Taupo Rough, let alone Stridegate and the tanequil, if not for him.”

“And the Elven girl is his niece?”

“Khyber Elessedil. Tough as old leather, that girl, though nearly as young as Penderrin. She has the Elfstones. Took them from the Elessedils and brought them to Ahren so that he would teach her how to use them. Turned out he had no choice. She used them in the Slags to sink the
Galaphile
, then again later to help us on our journey here. She had them with her when she disappeared in Stridegate.”

“But you think that she boarded one of the Druid airships that took Pen to Paranor?” Rue asked.

Tagwen looked at Kermadec and came to some unspoken agreement. “Something might have happened to her in the ruins after she left us and went in search of Penderrin, but I don’t think so,” the Dwarf declared. He looked up. “She was very close to the boy and determined to help him reach the Ard Rhys. I think she found a way, and that’s why he was able to get into the Forbidding after the Druids took him prisoner.”

“Well, the fact that the King of the Silver River told Bek in his dream that an Elven girl is one of the three who will help us reach Pen suggests you are right. But where is she now?”

“She must be at Paranor,” Kermadec answered with another shrug. “Waiting for us.”

“Then we must go there to help them,” Tagwen declared firmly. “It was the promise I made to young Penderrin before they took him, and I intend to fulfill it.”

“As do I,” Kermadec agreed.

“How, exactly, are you going to go about doing that?” Bellizen asked suddenly. Starlight reflected in her ink-black eyes. “Do you have a plan?”

Neither of them did, of course. No one did. There was a long silence as they pondered her question. They had been so consumed with reaching Paranor that none of them had given much thought to what they would do once they were there. It wasn’t at all clear, they realized as they reflected on the possibilities, what their course of action should be.

“What are we up against at Paranor?” Bek asked finally, looking from Bellizen to Trefen Morys. “How much support does my sister have?”

Trefen Morys shook his head. “Very little, I’m afraid. There are a handful of Druids who openly support her and will stand with her
when she returns, but most have been dismissed from the order. Those who remain support Shadea. It isn’t that they believe so strongly in her; it’s more that they mistrust your sister. She has never been able to shed her image as the Ilse Witch, not entirely.”

“Some will stand with her when she returns,” Bellizen added. “But only some, and I do not think we can count their numbers with any degree of certainty. Some will stand with her because, like us, they believe in her. Some will stand with her because they have seen how badly Shadea a’Ru has dealt with her power. But most will take no stand at all.”

“That works both ways, of course,” Kermadec pointed out. “They do not choose to stand with her, but will not stand with Shadea, either. That gives us a chance.”

“Why do you support her?” Rue asked Bellizen, glancing at Trefen Morys, as well. “Why have you taken her side?”

Bellizen blushed. “It is not easy to explain. I do so in part because she was kind to me when others were not. She brought me to Paranor at the suggestion of another Druid, from a village in the Runne where my talents were considered abnormal and my safety threatened. I do not know how she found out about me, but she told me that I belonged with her. I believed that. She has never given me cause to think badly of her or to want her gone. I think she is the Ard Rhys we need. I think she understands the purposes of magic better than anyone.”

“I came from a village close to Bellizen’s,” Trefen Morys added. “We did not know each other before Paranor, but have become friends since. I came to Paranor on my own, seeking a chance to study with the Druids. My mistress gave me that chance. She gave me responsibilities and taught me herself on more than one occasion.”

“She is a great lady.” Bellizen bit her lip, glancing quickly at her companion. “Those who follow her are mostly younger and never knew her as the Ilse Witch. The others, the older ones, cannot seem to forget. They think of her still as a dark creature, capable of reverting without warning. They do not know her as Trefen and I do. They are less forgiving because their lives are too deeply rooted in the past.”

“They are not alone,” Bek said quietly. “Perhaps that is just the
way of things.” He surveyed the faces of the others. “Very well. We know what we have to do. We have to find a way into the Keep and the sleeping chamber of the Ard Rhys. That is where Penderrin and Grianne will reappear when they return from the Forbidding.”

He almost added,
if they can find a way back
, but he caught himself just in time. Rue didn’t need to hear him saying anything about the odds. She understood them well enough.

“It is more complicated than that,” Trefen Morys interjected quickly. “We have to find a way to be inside the sleeping chamber at just the right time. We have to devise a way of knowing exactly when Pen and my mistress will reappear. If we don’t choose the right moment, Shadea and her allies will find us out.”

The little company went silent, dismayed at the prospect of being stopped after they had come so far and endured so much. But the task the young Druid had just described seemed impossible.

Bek turned to Tagwen. “The King of the Silver River said that the keys to helping Pen were in the hands of his companions—Kermadec, Khyber Elessedil, and yourself. Maybe we should start there. Can you think what he might have been talking about? Is there some special kind of help that you can give us?”