Ilse Witch (38 page)

“But the Federation is determined to rule the Borderlands,” Bek pointed out. “They want the Borderlands to be part of their Southland empire. What about that?”

The Dwarf spat. “The Borderlands will never be part of any one land because it’s been part of all four lands for as long as anyone can remember. The average Southlander doesn’t give a rat’s behind if the people in the Borderlands are a part of the Federation. What the average Southlander cares about is whether those ash bows that are so good for hunting and those silk scarves the women love and those great cheeses and ales that come out of Varfleet and those healing plants grown on the Streleheim can find their way south to them! The only ones who care about annexing the Borderlands are the members of the Coalition Council. Send them to the Prekkendorran for a week, and then see how they feel about things!”

There were small adventures to be enjoyed during those
eight-odd weeks of travel between islands, as well. One day, a huge pod of whales came into view below the airship, traveling west in pursuit of the setting sun. They breached and sounded with spouts of water and slaps of tails and fins, great sea vessels riding the waves with joy and abandon, complete within themselves. The Highlander and the Elf peered down at them, tracking their progress, reminded of the smallness of their own world, envious of the freedom these giants enjoyed. On another day, hundreds of dolphins appeared, leaping and diving in rhythmic cadence, small glimmers of brightness in the deep blue sea. There were migrating schools of billfish at times, some with sails, some brightly colored, all sleek and swift. There were giant squids with thirty-foot tentacles, as well, who swam like feathered arrows, and dangerous-looking predators with fins that cut the water like knives.

Now and again something aboard ship would break down, and what was required to complete repairs could not be found. Sometimes supplies ran low. In both instances, the Wing Riders were pressed into service. While the third rider remained with the airship, the other two would explore the surrounding islands to forage for what was needed. Twice, Bek was allowed to accompany them, both times when they went in search of fresh water, fruit, and vegetables to supplement the ship’s dietary staples. Once he rode with Hunter Predd aboard his Roc, Obsidian, and once with a rider named Gill aboard Tashin. Each time, the experience was exhilarating. There was a freedom to flying the Rocs that was absent even on an airship. The great birds were much quicker and smoother, their responses swifter, and the feeling of riding something alive and warm far different from riding something built of wood and metal.

The Wing Riders were a fiercely independent bunch and kept apart from everyone. When Bek screwed up his courage to ask the taciturn Hunter Predd about it, the Wing Rider explained patiently that life as a Wing Rider necessitated believing you were different. It had to do with the time you
spent flying and the freedom you embraced when you gave up the safeties and securities others relied upon living on the ground. Wing Riders needed to view themselves as independent in order to function. They needed to be unfettered and unencumbered by connections of any kind, save to their Rocs and to their own people.

Bek wasn’t sure that much of it wasn’t just a superior attitude fostered by the freedom that flying the Rocs engendered in Wing Riders. But he liked Hunter Predd and Gill, and he didn’t see that there was anything to be gained by questioning their thinking. If he were a Wing Rider, he told himself, he would probably think the same way.

When Bek told Ahren of his conversation with Hunter Predd, the Elf Prince laughed. “Everyone aboard this ship thinks their way of life is best, but most keep their opinions to themselves. The reason the Wing Riders are so free with theirs is that they can always jump on their Rocs and fly off if they don’t like what they hear back!”

But there were few conflicts in the weeks that passed after their departure from Flay Creech, and eventually everyone settled into a comfortable routine and developed a complacency with life aboard ship. It wasn’t until one of the Wing Riders finally sighted the island of Shatterstone that everything began to change.

It was the Wing Rider, Gill, patrolling in the late afternoon on Tashin, who sighted Shatterstone first. The expedition had been looking for it for several days, alerted by Redden Alt Mer, who had taken the appropriate readings and made the necessary calculations. An earlier sighting of a group of three small islands laid out in a line corresponded to landmarks drawn on the map and confirmed that the island they sought was close.

Walker was standing with the Rover Captain in the pilot box behind Furl Hawken, who was in command of the helm that afternoon, discussing whether they needed to correct
their course at sunrise on the following day, when Gill appeared with the news. All activity stopped as the ship’s company hurried to the rails, and Big Red swung the
Jerle Shannara
hard to the left to follow the Wing Rider’s lead.

Finally
, the Druid thought as they sailed toward the setting sun. The prolonged inactivity, the seductive comfort of routine, and the lack of progress bothered him. The men and women of the expedition needed to stay sharp, to remain wary. They were losing focus. The only solution was to get on with things.

But when the island came into view, he felt his expectations fade. Whereas Flay Creech had been small and compact, Shatterstone was sprawling and massive. It rose out of the Blue Divide in a jumble of towering peaks that disappeared into clouds and mist and fell away at every turn into canyons thousands of feet deep. The coastline was rugged and forbidding, almost entirely devoid of beaches and shallows, with sheer rock walls rising straight out of the ocean. The entire island was rain-soaked and lush, heavily overgrown by trees and grasses, tangled in vines and scrub, and laced with the silver threads of waterfalls that tumbled out of the mist into the emerald green landscape below. Only at its peaks and on its windswept cliff edges was it bare and open. Birds wheeled from their aeries and plummeted in white flashes to the sea, hunting food. Below the cliff walls, the surf crashed against the rocks in long, rolling waves and turned to milky foam.

Walker had the
Jerle Shannara
circle the island twice while he noted landmarks and tried to get a feel for the terrain. A thorough search of Shatterstone by ordinary methods would take weeks, maybe even months. Even then, they might not discover the key if it was buried deep enough in those canyons. He found himself wondering which of the three horrors of Ryer Ord Star’s vision guarded this key. The eels would have been the mouths that could swallow you whole. That left something that was blind but could find you anyway
or something that was everything and nothing and would steal your soul. He had hoped the seer would dream again before they reached Shatterstone, but she had not. All they had to work with was what she had given them before.

He watched the rugged sweep of the island pass away below, thinking that whatever he decided, it would have to wait for morning. Nightfall was close upon them, and he had no intention of landing a search party in the dark.

But he might consider sending down Truls Rohk, he thought suddenly. The shape-shifter preferred the dark anyway, and his instincts for the presence of magic were nearly as keen as the Druid’s.

The Wing Riders landed on an open bluff high above the pounding surf on the island’s west coast and, leaving their Rocs tethered, began a short exploration of the area. They found nothing that threatened and determined that it was safe enough for them to remain there for the night. No attempt would be made to journey inland until morning. Redden Alt Mer anchored the airship some distance away on an adjoining bluff, fixing the anchor lines in place and letting the ship ride about twenty feet off the ground. Again, no one would leave the ship until morning, and a close watch would be kept until then. Darkness was already beginning to settle in, but it appeared that the coastal skies would remain clear. With the illumination provided by a half-moon and stars, it would be easy to see anything that tried to approach.

After dinner was consumed, Walker called his small group of advisers together in Redden Alt Mer’s cabin and told them his plan for the coming day. Though he didn’t say so, he had abandoned for the moment the idea of using Truls Rohk. Instead, he would fly with one of the Wing Riders over the peaks and into the canyons in an attempt to locate the hidden key using his Druidic instincts. Because the key had such a distinctive presence and would likely be the only thing like it on the island, he had a good chance of determining its location. If it were in a place he could reach without endangering
the Wing Rider and his Roc, he would retrieve it himself. But the canyons were narrow and not easily navigated by the great birds with their broad wingspans, so retrieval might have to be undertaken by the ship’s company.

Everyone agreed that the Druid’s plan seemed sensible, and the matter was left at that.

The following morning, the dawn a bright golden flare on the eastern horizon, Walker set off with Hunter Predd and Obsidian to conduct a methodical sweep of the island’s west coast. They searched all day, dipping into every canyon and defile, soaring over every bluff and peak, crisscrossing the island from the coastal waters inland so that nothing was missed. The day was sunny and bright, the weather fair, the winds light, and their search progressed without difficulty.

By sunset, Walker had found exactly nothing.

He set out again the next day with Po Kelles, seated behind the whip-thin Wing Rider on his gray-and-black-dappled Roc, Niciannon. They rode the back of a strong wind south along the most forbidding stretch of the island’s shoreline, and it was here just after midday that Walker detected the presence of the key. It was buried deep in a coastal valley that opened off a split between a pair of towering cliffs and ran inland into heavy jungle for better than five miles. The valley was unnavigable from the air, and after ascertaining the approximate location of the key, Walker had Po Kelles fly them back to the airship. Postponing any further effort for the day, he asked Redden Alt Mer to move the
Jerle Shannara
to a bluff just above the valley he intended to explore at dawn, and they settled in for the night.

He waited until everyone but the watch was asleep and then summoned Truls Rohk. He had neither seen nor spoken with the shape-shifter since he had come aboard, although he had detected the other’s presence and knew him to be close. Walker stood at the back of the ship, just down from the aft rise where the Elven Hunter on sentry duty peered out at the jungled island darkness, and sent out a silent call to Rohk. He
was still looking for the shape-shifter when he realized Rohk was already there, crouching next to him in the shadows, virtually invisible to anyone who might be looking.

“What is it, Druid?” Rohk hissed, as if the summoning were an irritation.

“I want you to explore the valley below before it gets light,” Walker answered, unruffled. “A quick search, no more. There is a key, and the key feels like this.”

He produced the one he carried and let the other touch it, hold it, feel its energy.

Truls Rohk grunted and handed it back. “Shall I bring it to you?”

“Do not go near it.” Walker found the other’s eyes and held them. “It isn’t that you couldn’t, but the danger might be greater than either of us suspects. What I need to know is where it is. I’ll go after it myself in the morning.”

The shape-shifter laughed softly. “I would never deny you a chance to risk your life over mine, Walker. You think so much less of the risk than I do.”

Without a word, he vaulted over the side of the ship and was gone.

Walker waited for him until nearly dawn, dozing at the railing, his back to the island, his thoughts gone deep inside. No one disturbed him; no one tried to approach. The night was calm and warm; the winds of the day died away into soft breezes that carried the smells of the ocean to higher ground. Inland, the darkness enfolded and blanketed everything in black silence.

He might have dreamed, but if he had, his memory of it was lost when Truls Rohk’s touch brought him awake.

“Sweet dreams of an island paradise, Walker?” the other asked softly. “Of sand beaches and pretty birds? Of fruit and flowers and warm winds?”

Walker shook his head, coming fully awake.

“That’s just as well, because there are none of these in the valley you seek to explore.” The dark form shifted against the
railing, liquid black. “The key you seek lies three miles inland, close to the valley floor, in a cavern of some size. The jungle hides it well, but you will find it. How it is concealed within the cave, I could not say. I did not enter because I could tell that something keeps watch.”

Walker stared at him. “Something alive?”

“Something dark and vast, something without form. I felt no eyes on me, Walker. I felt only a presence, a stirring in the air, invisible and pervasive and evil.”

No eyes. Was it something blind, perhaps? Walker mulled the shape-shifter’s words over in his mind, wondering.

“That presence was with me all the way up the valley, but it did not bother with me until I got close to the cavern.” Truls Rohk seemed to reflect. “It was in the earth itself, Druid. It was in the valley’s soil, in its plants and trees.” He paused. “If it decides to come after you, I don’t think you can run from it. I’m not certain you can even get out of its way.”

Then he was gone, disappeared as suddenly as he had come, and Walker was left standing at the railing alone.

Dawn broke brilliant and warm across a still, flat sea. The winds had died completely, and the sky was a cloudless silver blue. Everywhere, the horizon was a depthless void where air and water joined. Seabirds wheeled and shrieked, then dived past the cliffs and down to the ocean’s surface. Thick patches of mist clung to the island’s peaks and nestled in her valleys, hiding her secrets, obscuring her in gloom.

Walker chose Ard Patrinell and three of his Elven Hunters to go with him. Experience and quickness would count for more than power in the confines of the valley jungle, and the Druid wanted veterans to face whatever kept watch there. Redden Alt Mer would take them into the valley aboard the
Jerle Shannara
for as far as the airship could go in the narrow confines. Then the Druid and the Elven Hunters would descend in the winch basket to the valley floor and walk the rest of the way in. With luck, they would not have to walk far.
Once Walker had retrieved the key, the five would make their way back to the basket and be pulled up again.