Antrax (7 page)

Truls Rohk bent close, big and menacing. “Too bad for us if you can’t, isn’t it? Try again. Cast about as if you’re throwing a net! Pretend you’re draping images with cloth. It isn’t me you’re looking for—it’s my shade. Do it!”

Again he was gone, and again Bek summoned the magic and cast it out. This time he was more successful. He caught pieces of Truls Rohk moving left to right and back again, ghostly presences that hung on the midday air.

“Better.” The shape-shifter was back in front of him again. “Once more, but hold tight to a corner of the magic you’re releasing. Then draw it in, fisherboy.”

On this try, he caught all of Truls Rohk’s movements, a series of passages clearly defined, moving all around him and back again. Like shades released from the dead, they hung suspended on the air, one after the other, each moving slowly to catch up to the next, as if runners slowed by quicksand and weariness.

They worked at it steadily, and then the shape-shifter changed his look to match the boy’s, and suddenly Bek was casting for his own images, seeing himself replicated over and over across the meadow. Back and forth, this way and that, from one end to the other and into the trees, Truls Rohk cast his own image and the boy’s until the meadow was filled with their shadows and the trail was hopelessly tangled.

“Let her try to sort that out,” Truls Rohk grunted as he led the boy through the drifting images in a zigzag fashion, making for a set of mountains east. “We’ll do it again a little farther on, somewhere close to water.”

They ran on, not so quickly and furiously as before, the shape-shifter setting a more reasonable pace, one the boy was able to keep up with more easily. They did not speak, but concentrated on their effort, on putting as much distance between themselves and their pursuer as possible, on conserving their strength. Twice more they stopped to produce a confusing set of images, a tangled trail, crossing
a deep stream once, doubling back twice at right angles, choosing difficult, rocky terrain for their passage.

It was nearing nightfall when they stopped finally to rest and eat, the light fading rapidly west, the forestland already cloaked in lengthening shadows. Night birds lifted out of the growing twilight, dark winged shapes against the sky. Bek watched them fly away and wished he had their wings. He carried no food or water, but Truls Rohk had come bearing both, stolen from
Black Moclips
on leaving, the shape-shifter prepared as always.

“Though I did not think it would come to this,” he admitted grimly, handing over his water skin for the boy to drink.

Bek was exhausted. He had not faltered, but his muscles were drained and his body aching. He was used to hard treks and long hikes, but not to running for so long. Life aboard the
Jerle Shannara
had helped prepare him, but even so his endurance had its limits and did not begin to approach that of Truls Rohk.

“Will she give up now?” he asked hopefully, passing back the water skin and gnawing hungrily on the dried beef the other passed him in return. “Will she lose interest and go back for Walker?”

The shape-shifter laughed softly, wrapped in his robes and hood, his expression and thoughts hidden away. “I don’t think so. She isn’t like that. She doesn’t give up. She’ll find another way to track us. She’ll keep coming.”

Bek sighed in resignation. “I’ll have to face her again sooner or later. There isn’t any help for it.” The Sword of Shannara lay at his side, and he glanced down at it. His expectations for its use against his sister seemed foolish and desperate.

“Maybe. But we have other problems to solve first. We can’t just keep running for no better purpose than to escape the witch. Even if we lose her or she gives up, where does that leave us? Somewhere in the middle of a strange country without an airship or friends, without adequate supplies or weapons, and without a decent plan, that’s where. Not so good.”

“We have to go back for Quentin and the others,” Bek answered at once, convinced that was the right choice. “We have to help them if we can. We have to try to find Walker.”

It sounded so obvious and so logical that the words were out of his mouth before he realized that he was ignoring obstacles that rendered his response only a few steps shy of ridiculous. Even given their respective magics and the shape-shifter’s skill and experience, they were only two men—one man and a boy, he amended ruefully. They had no idea where their friends were. They had no means of searching for them other than to go afoot, a mode of transportation hardly conducive to the sort of search required. Their enemies outnumbered them perhaps fifty to one and that wasn’t counting whatever it was that lived belowground in Castledown.

Truls Rohk didn’t say anything. He simply sat there, looking out at the boy from within the shadows of his hood.

Bek cleared his throat. “All right. We can’t do it alone. We need help.”

The shape-shifter nodded. “You’re learning, boy. What sort of help?”

“Someone to even the odds when we go back to face the Ilse Witch and the Mwellrets and whatever else is waiting.”

“That, but also someone who knows a way past the things that guard those ruins and protect the treasure Walker’s come to find.” Truls Rohk laughed bitterly. “Don’t think for a moment that the Druid, assuming he still lives, will give up on the treasure.”

Bek thought of all that the company of the
Jerle Shannara
had endured to come so far, of what had been promised and what given up. He thought of how much Walker was risking to make the journey, both of life and reputation. Truls Rohk was right. The Druid would rather die than fail, given what was at stake. Even from the little he knew of Walker, it was certain that failure to gain the support of the Elves for a Druid Council at Paranor would
be the end of him. It was everything he had worked for, all that mattered to him now. He had spent his life as a Druid seeking that support. Bek knew it from their conversations. He knew it from what he had heard from Ahren Elessedil. Walker had tied his fate to this voyage, to the recovery of the Elfstones and the finding of the treasure on the castaway’s map.

And weren’t they all tied in turn to the Druid in coming with him, Bek as well as the others? Weren’t their fates all inextricably linked?

“Sleep for an hour; then we’ll set out again.” Truls Rohk sat with his hands locked together in front of him, animal hair on their backs gleaming faintly, like silver threads. “I’ll keep watch.”

Bek nodded wordlessly. An hour was better than nothing. He took a moment to look back the way they had come, to where the Ilse Witch was, to where his friends and companions were, somewhere in the dark.

Be strong,
he prayed for all of them. He prayed it even for Grianne.

D
ozens of miles away, deep within the glacier-draped mountains that warded the coast of the peninsula, bracketed by the thousand-foot walls of the gorge that channeled the ice melt out into the Blue Divide, the
Jerle Shannara
drifted in solitary grandeur. Rudderless, unmanned, sails in shreds, she rode the twists and turns of the winds that howled down the canyon, moving as if drawn toward the pillars of ice that blocked the way out. Clouds roiled overhead, mingling with mist off the ice and the spray off the crash of waves against the rocks below, white sheets of gauze layered against dim shards of sunlight. Shrikes circled and dived past the rigging, bright anticipation in their gimlet eyes, each pass bringing them closer to the dead men who lay sprawled across the airship’s decks. Echoes from their cries and from the pounding surf mingled and reverberated off the cliffs in eerie counterpoint.

Ahead, growing closer with each twist and turn of the airship, the pillars waited. Giant’s teeth ground together and withdrew, opening and closing over the gap through which the ship must pass, hungry-sounding, ravenous, as if anxious to catch hold of what
had escaped before, as if needing to feel the wood and metal of the
Jerle Shannara
reduced to shards of debris and its crew reduced to bones and pulp.

Battered and dazed, barely conscious, Rue Meridian dangled from a rope nearly fifty feet below the stern of the ship. She hung from the rope with the last of her fading strength, too weary to do anything else. Blood coated her left arm and ran in rivulets down her side, and she could no longer feel her right leg. The wind howled in her ears and froze her skin. Ice had formed in her hair, and her clothes were stiff. Everything leading up to this moment was a haze of fragmented memories and jumbled emotions. She remembered her struggle with the Mwellret, both of them wounded, their tumbling to the deck of the airship, then sliding inexorably toward the wooden railing, picking up speed and unable to stop. She remembered them striking the railing, already splintered and broken by a falling spar, the Mwellret first, taking the brunt of the impact. The railing had given way like kindling, and they had gone through in a tangle.

It should have been the end of her. They were a thousand feet up, maybe more, with nothing between them and the rocks and rapids below but air. She had kicked free of the Mwellret instinctively, then grasped for something to hold on to. By sheer chance, she had caught this length of trailing rope, this lifeline to safety. Slowing her rapid descent had nearly dislocated her arms and had torn the skin of her hands as she ripped down its length to a knot that brought her up short. Twisting and turning in the wind, she clung to the rope in stunned relief, watching the dark shape of her antagonist tumble away into the ether.

But then shock and cold had set in, and she found she could not move from where she hung, pinned against the skyline like an insect on paper, frozen to her lifeline as she fought to stay conscious. She kept thinking that eventually she would find the strength to move again, to make some effort at climbing back
aboard, or that someone aboard would haul her to safety. Her mind drifted in and out of various scenarios and near unconsciousness, always unable to do more than tease her with possibilities.

But she was not so far gone that she didn’t realize the danger she was in and how little time was left to deal with it. The
Jerle Shannara
was drifting ever nearer to the ice pillars, and when she reached them she was finished. No one aboard ship was going to help her. Those who were topside were all dead, Furl Hawken among them. Those below were locked away in storerooms and could not break free or they would have done so by now. Her brother, Redden Alt Mer. The shipwright, Spanner Frew. Her friends, the Rovers from her homeland. Trapped and helpless, they were at the mercy of the elements, and their end was certain.

No one would help her.

No one would help them.

Unless she did something now.

With what seemed like superhuman effort, she unclenched one frozen hand from the rope and reached up to take a new hold. The effort sent pain through her body in ratcheting spasms and shocked her from her lethargy. Ignoring the cold and numbness, she hauled herself up a notch, freed the other hand, and took a new grip. She felt fresh blood run down the inside of her frozen clothing, where her body still maintained a small amount of warmth. She was freezing to death, she realized, hanging there from that rope, buffeted by the wind blown down off the glaciers. She forced herself to take another grip and pull to a new position, one hand over the other, each length of rope she traversed an excruciating ordeal. Her eyes peered out of ice-rimmed lids. There were glaciers all around, cresting the mountains and cliffs, spreading away into the mist and clouds. Snow blew past her in feathery gusts, and through gaps in their curtains she glimpsed the pillars ahead, slow-moving behemoths against the white, the light glinting
off their azure surface. Booming coughs and grinding shrieks marked their advancement, collision, and retreat, and she could feel the pressure of their weight in her mind.

Keep going!

She climbed some more, still racked with pain and fatigue, still hopelessly far beneath the broken railing she needed to reach. Despair filled her. She would never make it in time. Had she made any progress at all? Had she even moved? She hurt so badly and felt so helpless and miserable that a part of her wanted just to give up, to let go, to fall and be done with it. That would be so easy. She wouldn’t feel anything. The pain and cold would be gone; the desperation would end. A moment’s relaxation of her tired hands would be all that was necessary.

Coward!

She howled the word into the wind. What was she thinking? She was a Rover, and above all else Rovers knew how to endure anything. Endurance demanded sacrifice, but gave back life. Endurance was always the tougher choice, but gave the truer measure of a heart. She would not give in, she told herself. She would not!

Stay alive! Keep moving!

She tucked her chin into her chest and put one hand over the other, the second over the first, hauling herself upward inch by inch, foot by foot, refusing to quit. Her body screamed in protest, and it felt as if the wind and the cold suddenly heightened their efforts to slow her. Frozen strands of her long hair whipped at her face. She dredged up every source of inspiration she could think of to force herself to keep going. Her brother and the other Rovers, trapped within the ship, dependent on her. Walker, stranded ashore with the others of the landing party, including her young friend Bek. Furl Hawken, dead trying to save her. The Ilse Witch and her Mwellrets, who would never pay for what they’d done if she did not find a way to stay alive and make them do so.