“Threats are unnecessary. I found the magic and took from it what I could. But while I live, it is beyond your reach.”
She stared at him. “I haven’t long to wait then, do I?”
“Longer than you think. My dying is only the beginning of your journey.”
She had no idea what he was talking about. “What journey is that, Druid? Tell me.”
Blood appeared on his lips and ran down his chin in a thin stream. His eyes were beginning to glaze. She felt a twinge of panic. He must not die yet. “I have the boy,” she said. “You did an impressive job of convincing him of the lies he now insists are the truth. He really believes himself to be Bek and me to be his sister. He believes you are his friend. If you care for him, you will help me now, while there is still time.”
Walker’s eyes never left her face. “He is your brother, Grianne. You hid him in the cellar of your home, in a chamber behind a cabinet. He was found there by a shape-shifter, who in turn brought him to me. I took him to a man and his wife in the Highlands to raise as a foster son. That is the truth. The lies are all your own.”
“Don’t use my name, Druid!” she hissed at him.
One hand lifted weakly. “The Morgawr killed your parents, Grianne. He killed them and stole you away so that he could take advantage of your talents and make you his student. He told you I did it so that you would hate his greatest enemy. He did so in the hopes that one day you would destroy me. That was his plan. He subverted your thinking early and trained you well. But he did not know about Bek. He did not know that there was someone besides me who knew the truth he had worked so hard to conceal.”
“All lies,” she whispered, her anger strong again, her magic roiling within her. She would strike him down if he said another word. She would tear him apart and put an end to things here and now.
“Would you know the truth?” he asked.
“I know it already.”
“Would you know the truth finally and forever?”
She stared at him. There was intensity to his dark eyes that she could not dismiss. He had something in mind, something he was working toward, but she was not certain what it was. Be careful, she told herself.
She folded her arms into her robes. “Yes,” she said.
“Then use the sword.”
For a moment, she had no idea what he was talking about. Then she remembered the talisman she wore strapped across her back, the one the boy had given her. She reached over her shoulder and touched it lightly. “This?”
“It is the Sword of Shannara.” He swallowed thickly, his breath rattling in his chest. “Call upon it if you would know the real truth, the one you have denied for so long. The talisman cannot lie. There can be no deception with its use. Only the truth.”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t trust you.”
His smile was faint and sad. “Of course not. I’m not asking you to. But you trust yourself, don’t you? You trust your own magic. Use it, then. Are you afraid?”
“I’m afraid of nothing.”
“Then use the sword.”
“No.”
She thought that would be the end of it, but she was wrong. He nodded as if she had given him the answer he expected. Instead of thwarting his intentions, she seemed to have buttressed them. His good arm shifted so that his hand was lying on his shattered breast. She did not know how he could still be alive.
“Use the sword with me,” he whispered.
She shook her head instantly. “No.”
“If you do not use the sword,” he said softly, “you can never gain control over the magic I have hidden from you. Everything I have acquired, all the knowledge of the Old World gleaned from these catacombs, all of the power granted by the Druids, is locked away inside me. It can be released if you use the sword, if you are strong enough to master it, but not otherwise.”
“More lies!” she spat.
“Lies?” His voice was weakening, his words fatigued and slurred. “I am a dead man. But I am still stronger than you are. I can use the sword while you cannot. Dare not. Prove me wrong, if you think you can. Do as I say. Use the sword. Test yourself against me. All that I have, all of it, becomes yours if you are strong enough. Look at me. Look into my eyes. What do you see?”
What she saw was a certainty that brooked no doubt and concealed no subterfuge. He was challenging her to look at the truth as he believed it to be, asking her to risk what that might mean. She did not think she should do so, but she also believed that access to his mind was worth any risk. Once inside, she would know all his secrets. She would know the truth about the missing books of magic. She would know the truth about herself and the boy. It was a chance she could not afford to pass up. His nonsense about Druid knowledge and power was a ploy to distract her, but she could play such games much better than he could.
“All right.” Her words were rimmed in iron. “But you will place your hand on the sword first, under mine, so that I can hold you fast. That way, should this prove to be a trick of some kind, you will not escape me.”
She thought she had turned the tables on him neatly. She expected him to refuse, frightened of being linked to her in a way that stripped him of a chance to break free. But again he surprised her. He nodded in agreement. He would do as she asked. She stared at him. When she thought she saw a flicker of satisfaction cross his face, she was flooded with anger and clenched her fist at him.
“Do not think you can deceive me, Druid!” she snapped. “I will crush you faster than you can blink if you try!”
He did not respond, his eyes still locked on hers. For an instant she thought to abandon the whole effort, to back away from him. Let him die, and she would sort it all out later. But she could not make herself give up the opportunity he was offering her, even if it was only for a moment. He kept so many secrets. She wanted them all. She wanted the truth about the boy. She wanted the truth about the magic of that safehold. She might never have another chance to discover either, if she did not act quickly.
She took a steadying breath. Whatever else he intended, whatever surprise he planned, she was more than a match for him, wasn’t she?
She reached over her shoulder and slowly unsheathed the sword, bringing it around in front of her, setting it between them, blade down, handle up. In the smoky gloom, the ancient weapon looked dull and lifeless. Her doubts returned. Was it really the legendary Sword of Shannara or was it something else, something other than what she believed it to be? There was no other magic concealed within it; she would have detected any by now. Nor was there anything about it that would lend strength to the dying Druid. Nothing could save him from the wounds he had incurred. She wondered again at what had savaged him so and would have asked if she had thought there was enough time left to do so.
She inched closer to him, repositioning the blade so that he could reach the handle. She kept her eyes on his, watching for signs of deceit. It seemed impossible that he could manage anything. His eyes were lidded, his breathing rough and shallow, his torn body leaking blood into his robes in such copious amounts she did not know how there could be any left inside him. For just an instant, fresh doubt assailed her, warning her away from what she was about to do. She trusted her instincts, but she hated to acknowledge fear in the face of her sworn enemy, a man against whom she had measured herself for so many years.
She brushed the doubt away. “Place your hand on the sword!”
He raised his bloodied hand from his chest and wrapped his fingers around the handle. As he did so, he seemed to lose focus for a moment, and his hand extended past the talisman to brush lightly against her forehead. She was concentrating so hard on his eyes that she did not think to watch his hand. She flinched at his touch, aware of the damp smear his fingers had left against her skin. She heard him say something, words spoken so softly she could not make them out.
The feel of his blood on her forehead disturbed her, but she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her troubled enough to wipe it away.
Instead, she placed her hand over his and tightened her grip to hold him fast.
“Now we shall see, Druid.”
“Now we shall,” he agreed.
Eyes locked, they waited in the smoking ruins of the extraction chamber, so alone that there might have been no one else alive in the world. Everything had gone still. Even the severed cables and wires that had sparked and buzzed only moments before and the shattered machines that had struggled so hard to continue functioning had gone still. It was so quiet that the Ilse Witch could hear the sound of the Druid’s breathing slow to almost nothing.
She was wasting her time, she thought abruptly, angry all over again. This wasn’t the Sword of Shannara. This wasn’t anything more than an ordinary blade.
In response, her fingers dug into Walker’s hand and the worn handle beneath it. Tell me something! Show me your truth, if you have any truth to show!
An instant later, she felt a surge of warmth rise out of the blade, enter her hand, and spread through her arm. She saw the Druid flinch, then heard him gasp. An instant after that, white light flared all about them, and they disappeared into its molten core.
On the coast of the Blue Divide, dawn was breaking offshore through a fog bank that stretched across the whole of the horizon like a massive wall. From the deck of the Jerle Shannara, Redden Alt Mer watched the fog materialize in the wake of the retreating night, a rolling gray behemoth closing on the shoreline with the inevitability of a tidal wave. He had seen fog before, but never like that. The bank was thick and unbroken, connecting water to sky, north to south, light to dark. Dawn fought to break through cracks in its surface, a series of angry red streaks that had the look of heated steel, as if a giant furnace had been lit somewhere out on the water.
March Brume experienced heavy fog at times, as did all the seaports along the Westland coast. Mix heat and cold where land met water, stir in a healthy wash of condensation, and you could muster fog thick enough to spread on your toast—that was the old salt’s claim. The fog Redden Alt Mer was watching was like that, but it had something else to it, as well, a kind of energy, dark and purposeful, that suggested the approach of a storm. Except the weather didn’t feel right for it. His taste and smell of the air revealed nothing of rain, and there had been no sounds of thunder or flashes of lightning. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Even the pressure readings gave no hint of trouble.
The Rover Captain paced to the aft decking and peered harder into the haze. Had something moved out there?
“Pea soup,” Spanner Frew grumbled, coming up to stand beside him. He frowned out of his dark beard like a thunderhead. “Glad we’re not going that way anytime soon.”
Alt Mer nodded, still looking out into the haze. “Better hope it stays offshore. I’ll be skinned and cooked before I’ll let us be stuck here another week.”
One more day, and the repair on the airship would be finished. It was so close now that he could barely contain his impatience. Little Red had been gone for three days already, and he hadn’t felt right about it once. He had faith in her good judgment, and in Hunter Predd’s, as well, but he felt compromised enough as it was by what had befallen the members of the ship’s company in that treacherous land. They were scattered all over the place, most of them lost or dead, and he had no idea how they were ever going to bring everyone together, even without the added problem of wondering what might have happened to his sister.
“Have you solved the problem of that forward port crystal?” he asked, watching the shifting fog bank, still thinking he had seen something.
The burly shipwright shrugged. “Can’t solve it without a new crystal, and we don’t have one. Lost the spares overboard in the channel during the storm. We’ll have to make do.”
“Well, we’ve been down that road before.” He leaned forward, his hands on the railing, his eyes intent on the fog bank. “Take a look out there, Black Beard. Do you see something? There, maybe fifteen degrees off …”
He never finished. Before he could complete the sentence, a cluster of dark shapes materialized out of the gloom. Airborne, they flew out of the roiling gray like a flock of Shrikes or Rocs, silhouetted against the crimson-streaked wall. How many were there? Five, six? No, Alt Mer corrected himself almost at once. A dozen, maybe more. He counted quickly, his throat tightening. Two dozen at least. And they were big, too big even for Rocs. Nor did they have wings to propel them ahead, to provide them with vertical lift.
He caught his breath. They were airships. A whole fleet of them, come out of nowhere. He watched them take shape, masts and sails, rakish dark hulls, and the glint of metal stays and cleats. Warships. He brought up his spyglass and peered closely at them. No insignia emblazoned on flags or pennants, no markings on the gunwales or hulls. He watched them clear the fog and wheel fifteen degrees left, all on a line across the horizon, black as netherworld shades as they drifted into formation and began to advance.
Redden Alt Mer put down the spyglass and took a deep, steadying breath.
They were sailing right for the Jerle Shannara.
THE VOYAGE OF
THE JERLE SHANNARA
BOOK THREE
MORGAWR
TO OWEN LOCK
For his editor’s advice, friendship, and reassurances when they were needed most
The figure appeared out of the shadows of the alcove so quickly that Sen Dunsidan was almost on top of it before he realized it was there. The hallway leading to his sleeping chamber was dark with nightfall’s shadows, and the light from the wall lamps cast only scattered halos of fuzzy brightness. The lamps gave no help in this instance, and the Minister of Defense was given no chance either to flee or defend himself.
“A word, if you please, Minister.”
The intruder was cloaked and hooded, and although Sen Dunsidan was reminded at once of the Ilse Witch he knew without question that it was not she. This was a man, not a woman—too much size and bulk to be anything else, and the words were rough and masculine. The witch’s small, slender form and cool, smooth voice were missing. She had come to him only a week earlier, before departing on her voyage aboard Black Moclips, tracking the Druid Walker and his company to an unknown destination. Now this intruder, cloaked and hooded in the same manner, had appeared in the same way—at night and unannounced. He wondered at once what the connection was between the two.
Masking his surprise and the hint of fear that clutched at his chest, Sen Dunsidan nodded. “Where would you like to share this word?”
“Your sleeping chamber will do.”
A big man himself, still in the prime of his life, the Minister of Defense nevertheless felt dwarfed by the other. It was more than simply size; it was presence, as well. The intruder exuded strength and confidence not usually encountered in ordinary men. Sen Dunsidan did not ask how he had managed to gain entry to the closely guarded, walled compound. He did not ask how he had moved unchallenged to the upper floor of his quarters. Such questions were pointless. He simply accepted that the intruder was capable of this and much more. He did as he was bidden. He walked past with a deferential bow, opened his bedroom door, and beckoned the other inside.
The lights were lit here, as well, though no more brightly than in the hallway without, and the intruder moved at once into the shadows.
“Sit down, Minister, and I will tell you what I want.”
Sen Dunsidan sat in a high-backed chair and crossed his legs comfortably. His fear and surprise had faded. If the other meant him harm, he would not have bothered to announce himself. He wanted something that a Minister of Defense of the Federation’s Coalition Council could offer, so there was no particular cause for concern. Not yet, anyway. That could change if he could not supply the answers the other sought. But Sen Dunsidan was a master at telling others what they expected to hear.
“Some cold ale?” he asked.
“Pour some for yourself, Minister.”
Sen Dunsidan hesitated, surprised by insistence in the other’s voice. Then he rose and wal
ked to the table at his bedside that held the ice bucket, ale pitcher nestled within it, and several glasses. He stood looking down at the ale as he poured, his long silver hair hanging loose about his shoulders save where it was braided above the ears, as was the current fashion. He did not like what he was feeling now, uncertainty come so swiftly on the heels of newfound confidence. He had better be careful of this man; step lightly.
He walked back to his chair and reseated himself, sipping at the ale. His strong face turned toward the other, a barely visible presence amid the shadows.
“I have something to ask of you,” the intruder said softly.
Sen Dunsidan nodded and made an expansive gesture with one hand.
The intruder shifted slightly. “Be warned, Minister. Do not think to placate me with promises you do not intend to keep. I am not here to waste my time on fools who think to dismiss me with empty words. If I sense you dissemble, I will simply kill you and have done with it. Do you understand?”
Sen Dunsidan took a deep breath to steady himself. “I understand.”
The other said nothing further for a moment, then moved out from the deep shadows to the edges of the light. “I am called the Morgawr. I am mentor to the Ilse Witch.”
“Ah.” The Minister of Defense nodded. He had not been wrong about the similarities of appearance.
The cloaked form moved a little closer. “You and I are about to form a partnership, Minister. A new partnership, one to replace that which you shared with my pupil. She no longer has need of you. She will not come to see you again. But I will. Often.”
“Does she know this?” Dunsidan asked softly.
“She knows nowhere near as much as she thinks.” The other’s voice was hard and low. “She has decided to betray me, and for her infidelity she will be punished. I will administer her punishment when I see her next. This does not concern you, save that you should know why you will not see her again. All these years, I have been the force behind her efforts. I have been the one who gave her the power to form alliances like the one she shared with you. But she breaches my trust and thus forfeits my protection. She is of no further use.”